The Dismemberment Plan gets rich

Since it formed in 1993, the Dismemberment Plan has had a reputation in its hometown of Washington, D.C. as one of the city's top live bands. The rest of the country started hearing about it last year, thanks to frequent touring and the word-of-mouth success of its album, Emergency & I. On Thurs., Jan. 25, it stopped by New Haven's Tune Inn, treating the small but enthusiastic crowd to a stellar show. The Herald talked with guitarist and vocalist Travis Morrison about dancing, major labels, musical influences, and the future of his promising band.

COURTESY DISMEMBERMEMTPLAN.COM

Yale Herald: Your last album, Emergency & I, came out in late 1999, but it took a while for it to get rolling as far as garnering acclaim from fans and critics. Do you have higher expectations for the next album, now that you've made a name for yourself?

Travis Morrison: I try not to. I think it's certainly the first record we've ever made in the context of it even occurring to us that anyone beyond our friends cared. Before, people beyond our friends did care, but they were kind of scattered. It doesn't really seem to inform the writing at all. I can see how it could influence us, but I don't think it is. I'm trying to figure out whether it's influencing us sub-consciously.

YH: You had a short-lived contract with Interscope?

TM: Yes, we did. We signed to Interscope with the feeling that this is an interesting company to do business with. We got into this because we didn't want to have ordinary lives—we wanted to have interesting experiences. At that time, Interscope was the label that had Nine Inch Nails, Dr. Dre, Drive Like Jehu, Primus, and Helmet, and it was making a lot of money. And you have to look at that situation and think, "Wow, that's a pretty interesting scene. I don't know what's going on over there, but that's really cool." And then we signed.

To say we got dropped by Interscope is in some ways a misnomer, because the company that dropped us was not the same company we signed to...they had just become a completely different company with no real institutional memory of being involved with us at all. And our presence at the old one wasn't very prominent to begin with. We were lucky, because there were a lot of people who had more at stake with their major label relationship and got burned. Aimee Mann had a miserable time dealing with her major label. We were lucky because we were not thought to be as important as an Aimee Mann, so they forgot we existed; and when you're dealing with big companies, sometimes the best you can hope for is that they don't notice you. And they didn't notice us.

YH: Your recent single, "The Dismemberment Plan Get Rich," is there a little bit of sarcasm there?

TM: Oh no, no, we're swimming in dough. It's sarcasm, but people expect us to be angry about the whole experience. Whatever—we signed a contract with a huge company and it didn't work out.

YH: So you still have day jobs?

TM: No. Actually, we had day jobs when we were at Interscope, but we don't now— what does that tell you?

YH: In my experience at least, you've become one of the bigger independent rock bands in Washington. Now that you've gained a measure of success, do you feel you have a responsibility to support the local music scene?

TM: Well yeah, absolutely. We got support from all the older people when we were young. We got support from Jawbox, from Fugazi, from the people who work at Dischord, so it would really be comically cheap for us to not do the same thing. As much as possible we try to have D.C. bands open for us. There are always great bands from Washington.

YH: Your live show seems to be a big part of the Dismemberment Plan experience. Do you put a lot of emphasis on getting people moving?

TM: We've had a lot of focus the last couple of years on us being a "funky band"—a band you go to dance to. And I think that's awesome; I think dancing is a beautiful thing...More important than dancing, or jumping on people's heads, or whatever, is just the sense that you want people to show up at a concert with their minds open. There's a great quote I heard from Iggy Pop talking about shows. He wanted to give people something to do, not something to see, and that's as good a distillation as I could ever come up with for what we want to do ourselves. You want to be responsible for an hour or two where people can kind of let themselves go and explore other possibilities of who they are. That's a very highfalutin' goal, but it is the goal; I don't know why we should shoot for anything else.

So is dancing necessarily a part of it? Yeah, dancing is a very good way of expressing physical and mental freedom, but you don't have to dance. You just want everyone to come with their blinds up, mentally. A lot of times you go see rock shows and everyone's blinds are down; nobody's really open to the moment, no one's seriously excited about it.

YH: You said you like to use funk and a number of other types of rhythms. How do you go about that? Do you intentionally try to incorporate elements from your various influences?

TM: I don't think it's intentional, I just don't think we could do it any other way. Music is communication: communication between me and my bandmates, communication between the band and the crowd, communication between our records and the listener, and also, communication between us and all the records we've heard. When you hear a song we've made, hopefully, if we're spiritually on point, then it's bound to.

I still go out and buy records, and I still pay attention to the new stuff that's coming out. It still intrigues me as deeply as it ever did. None of us can help but respond to the things we like. I've always noticed that when I hear something I really dig, because it makes me want to pick up my guitar. Because I feel like when I hear a great record, I want to talk to it. You can't talk to a record, but in a strange spiritual way, you can when you pick up an instrument. It's kind of an oblique way of communicating with the music that inspires you.

YH: Do you have any current favorites—band or records—that you'd like to share?

TM: Well, I've been listening to a lot of Bob Marley. That guy had it all together. He was the man. A lot of older stuff lately. There's been some underground hip-hop I've really enjoyed. I like the new Talib Kweli...but in terms of the things that are really sparking me, it's been a lot of old, really well-crafted stuff, like Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, the Beatles. I've always loved the Talking Heads, and I've kind of gotten back into them again lately...A lot of it has been kind of this old-style, people who could do anything, from the late '60s and '70s—that's been my thing lately.

YH: Any words about the next album? Has it been recorded, or is it being recorded?

TM: No, we're writing it—it's gonna be real good! It's gonna be really melodic, really complex. I think our last record has some of the best songs we ever wrote, but I want to make something like Kid A [by Radiohead], or What's Going On by Marvin Gaye. It's not just 11 songs, it's 50 minutes of music that you listen to the whole way through. We're getting there, we're getting closer. I think it's gonna be a really good record.

YH: Is there going to be any reggae, especially with all the Bob Marley you're listening to now?

TM: Well, no reggae, but you know what? That guy, he didn't write about bullshit; he just wrote about the important stuff, the stuff that matters. So we're trying to get there.

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