DC Root – Interview : Music Interviews

DC Root is a unique creature in this music jungle; a frank and sharp urban beat poet fronting a rag-tag group of country-punk rapscallions. As ROOT!’s enigmatic frontman, he commands a steely presence, made less intimidating by his offbeat social commentaries (to say the least) and Wildean wordplay.

DC is currently explaining the genesis of ROOT!’s first DVD effort, to be released this Friday.

“I really hate collections of music videos” DC offers, assuring me the DVD will not be a cheap throw-together of film clips sold for top dollar (ever heard of YouTube, record companies?). “It’s like being, sort of, punished like Alex in A Clockwork Orange with his eyelids sewn open. We have one music video we managed to con some people into making for nothing, it’s the only reason we have one”

“The DVD started out with mainly me talking- a terrible, terrible thing- so we have leavened it with other bits that aren’t necessary relevant but…at least, visually, you don’t have to see me talking (laughs)”

“I wanted to make a movie about making the album while we were making the album; I was aware the album was this sort of laughably ambitious attempt to make a ‘classic album’- and of course I’ve subsequently been proven correct. The making-of DVD is so incredibly pompous and self-regarding that I quite like it; the album was a bit pompous; the idea of having this hour-long song cycle about modern life, so it sort of makes sense that we should be like Wilco…”

DC sees that his glorious rantlet has led me into confusion territory. He laughs and elaborates. “Wilco made this movie called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which was about how they made this fabulous album and Warner were these philistinic robots that didn’t understand Jeff Tweedy [Wilco frontman]’s fiddling around with knobs, so they sacked them, basically.”

“So this DVD, Break Your Heart, they made has that underlying narrative about how the record company doesn’t understand them. Mind you, they gave them two hundred grand to make the album. All of it would be a fabulous thing if Jeff Tweedy wasn’t so difficult to like. I say this because Jeff Tweedy is a theme that runs through, albeit fleetingly, the DVD. There is a beautiful moment on the ROOT! DVD where my face morphs into Jeff Tweedy’s face. I am ugly, of course, but I can at least grow a decent beard”

“They can make a movie like that and get away with it because they are famous and they’re a tree that falls in the middle of Park Avenue. Why can’t we make a movie like that? It’s the same movie; our art is not being understood, but on one end the budget is two hundred grand and on the other it was: “have you got any downtime in your studio?”. This DVD will be the great lost movie about the great lost album” DC muses. Anyone else super keen to see what’s on this DVD?

Though ROOT! are a fairly new inception to the Aussie music radar, DC has had a long and varied life in the scene (dig a little deeper, if you don’t know already); so when exactly will he hang up the boots?

“As long as my fans don’t think I’m an arsehole…[last year] debt made me feel that it might not be worth being in a band any more and that I might have to just make music for my own enjoyment, but that would be difficult for me. I just like having a project to work on. Music is a vehicle with which I can present a view which is mine, I just love music. It’s the ultimate; far better than playing computer games. I like to think that with everything I do, there’s going to be people who listen to it and I’m just lucky; normally a bloke my age will play golf or go to a book club. But I can actually do something that people might like, or people might play at home. That’s reason enough to keep going”

Good to see our Melbourne rock icons aren’t going anywhere fast. The album DC refers to, of course, is ROOT!’s 2009 effort, Surface Paradise, which spawned the Ronettes-esque Famous for Being Famous for Being Famous and the rabble-rousing My Other Bumper Sticker is Intelligent, amongst others.

“I’m not going ‘woe is me, no one understands me’; I totally understand. If Thom Yorke, after a long and proud career being in that band that had that song Creep, at age forty decided to do this album, sort of reflecting the alienation of modern life and calling it OK Computer- well, it would probably be OK Commuter by that time- that would never been heard, never have got on people’s ‘greatest albums of all time’ list. It would be exactly the same album but people want bands to be young, people want you to be a genius when you’re young”

“Generally speaking, nobody wants to hear from you when you’re over forty. There’s something sexy about a guy who has a really great brain but also looks good. I agree with that. Though I think I am better now than when I was twenty. There, I’ve said it (laughs)”

ROOT! have been subject to the same superficiality that all bands must suffer; appearance is so often key in an industry like this. So ROOT!, with their Route 66 cowboy hats and only slightly greying hairlines, often get pinned as the kind of fogey rock you might hear on AM radio in a Salvo’s store. But, friend, these pinners are dead wrong.

“People want you to play that sort of sedate county rock; old man slipper music; instead, we made this angry-sounding rock record. I hope, I guess, it doesn’t come across as your mum going out in stilettos…”

ROOT! play the East Brunswick Club in Melbourne this Friday April 30.

Surface Paradise is out now on Meek Joe/ Shock.

Photo by Rob Carbone