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Oceans Of Slumber are opening up tonight on a pretty diverse bill. Yourseves, Myrkur and headliners Epica. How did you get the tour? Dobber – “Someone from the Epica camp messaged us and asked if we wanted to be involved with the tour. We discussed it between us a bit as the fit for us wasn’t so bang on. I’m really specific how we are handled and marketed. Because of the size of the tour, we said fuck it, let’s do it. We toured with My Dying Bride, which is more of our market, and because they don’t tour that much, everything was really well organised and nice. We assumed that it would be the same with Epica.” You mentioned the tour with My Dying Bride. You’ve also toured with Enslaved, and soon you hit the road in the US with Insomnium. That’s a varied range of bands. What is it about Oceans Of Slumber that makes you fit in with so many different bands? Dobber – “We have just as much in common with the extreme metal side as we do with anyone else. with My Dying Bride, it was a good fit, Enslaved was a bit of a departure, and Insomnium we’ve got elements that match. It’s good to be able to do that, especially coming off a tour like this one, but the crowds on this one have been fairly receptive so far.” Recently, we had some freaky weather. I was speaking to a band from the States who had travelled over here for a tour, and they had to cancel a few shows because of it. They were saying how much cancelling two gigs had actually cost them. That’s scary! Cammie – “That’s still two days where you have to sustain yourselves.” Dobber – “Money still goes out, but doesn’t come in.” Cammie – “That’s why we get so disgruntled with them, and they don’t get it. If we don’t get our guarantees on time then that’s money to get us to the next place. We didn’t come loaded.” Dobber – “We’re not doing it prima donna style. It’s hard. We did a van tour. We did seven weeks in a van, and we’re not teenagers anymore. We did that to be as economical as possible. On this tour, we did the same thing; we got a higher guarantee, and we got a van that doesn’t have any sleeping facilities. Luckily, we have friends out here who are letting us sleep there, but failing that, it’s by the side of the road.” Cammie – “Touring is not what people think!” Dobber – “With the Insomnium tour, the bus is arranged for about $1,100-1,300 a day, We’re sharing the bus, so let’s just say that everything is 50/50, that lets you know our operating costs per day… and that’s per day! Even days when we are not playing. Our guarantee is less than what the bus costs, we have to sell an amount of merch every night to make up the difference, and if we don’t, then we are in a negative. The merch has been paid for up front, so every dollar we make goes towards paying everything else off.” So basically, every night you play you need to make sure that you are getting the most out of it as possible? Dobber – “We are doing it for the love of the game.” Cammie – “It’s very real, and it’s what we needed. Obviously, we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t need it.” Dobber – “It’s catharsis” There is a lot of Northern British influences within Oceans Of Slumber, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, etc. How does someone from Houston, Texas first come across these bands? Dobber – “Man, you’ll remember, back when magazines were following music and not following trends and everything else, you would see these bands. But for myself, as a kid, I’d get a Pantera album, or such, and look in the thank you lists. The old way! And if there was a band listed there, then you knew to check them out. So, if a band like Crowbar or Type O Negative were thanking My Dying Bride, then you checked them out. Bands didn’t get signed for fucking nothing back then, you had to be somewhat good. We have a lot of different influences in Oceans Of Slumber; Pantera, Neurosis, extreme metal… everything.” Extreme metal is still quite an underground movement… Dobber – “Yeah, in Houston it’s still underground. The death metal scene is huge though, but music is changing. Everything is more online based these days. It’s ruined it, because when you gave the freedom in creating music, when you made it easy to do, it did give more people the opportunity to do it, but it also gave that same opportunity to a lot of people that weren’t ready for it.” Anyone can record a song these days, stick it on YouTube, and then get slaughtered for it. No-one has the chance to grow with negative comments getting thrown at them. Dobber – ”Yeah, it’s like opening up the road to people not ready to drive yet. You don’t have to learn to drive or afford a car, everybody just gets a free car and gets on the freeways.” Dobber, you also play the piano. I’ve seen videos of you on YouTube playing Chopin! Cammie – “It’s different watching him play the piano. I like it when he switches instruments. On the drums, it’s all the maniac, all the force, but on the piano it’s about the composition.” Dobber – “Music is about saying things that you can’t actually say, so the piano gives you the chance to speak in ways that you can’t normally speak. Piano is the most perfectly expressive instrument, you don’t need anything else. It’s calming, soothing, but the drums… the pulse defines everything about a song. I can sit and play R&B and it is just as satisfying. I also play the guitar, twenty years now. I play the solo on ‘Fleeting Vigilance’, I tracked all the guitars on ‘The Banished Heart’ the song…” ‘The Banished Heart’ is an astonishing song. Dobber – “I wrote that song, the main theme of it, for Cammie. We had started hanging out more, connecting more. I sent it to her one night, saying that I had written this song for you. She sent a message back all crying…” Cammie – “He had shared some writing with me, very private, and I made it into a song! Some of the lyrics are straight what he had written to me. He had written it for me, but I wanted it to be about him.” Dobber – “The music was about us, but the texts were about my former wife and about the pitfalls and stuff. The line “If you could find me, would you even know me?” and “An empty room, an empty heartbeat…” I sent that and then thought “Shit! No-one is supposed to see them!” That’s my personal writing!” Cammie – “But this is supposed to be a journey, and it needed to start there, because that was where we found each other, it’s a whole encompassing journey.” Dobber – “On the second half of the song, after the stops and the big climax, there is the piano, and that’s why the video has me and my little girl in it. The whole second half of the song is pretty much music and about my daughter, about how I have changed. In turn, Cammie wrote lyrical themes to do with that, and by the end of it, when Cammie comes back in, the cinematic stuff… that was the triumph and the feeling I got from my kid. The overwhelming power that came from having her was like… fuck! I didn’t know anything like that until I had her. Intellectuals talk about the highest form of love and how no-one really knows about love until they have a kid. It’s fine if you don’t want to have kids, but if you do have them, it will change you! It doesn’t matter who the fuck you are, it will change what you are… unless you are some deadbeat who runs off on their kid.” Cammie – “While I haven’t birthed a child, I love his daughter, and I just took it and I was thinking how would I want to explain to her how I love her. What would I tell my first born. How could I convey that. As a little kid you learn to be loved, and as you grow up you learn to love other people… then, if you have kids of your own…” You must miss her incredibly while you are on the road? It goes back to the whole “cost” of touring… not just financial, cost but also the emotional cost. Dobber – ”My God! I can’t even begin to tell you how much… it’s bankrupting. It sucks! She’s four, so she’s at that age where to talk on the phone means she has to stop playing… she doesn’t realise that she is traumatising her Dad by not talking!” Cammie – “It’s a double edged sword. It’s very hard to be away, and very hard to do this, but sometimes you want to create something in the world that will still be there for her. It takes someone caring enough to do it, if we can do these flashes of magic for her, and are fortunate enough that we can do that… then the sacrifice is worth it.” Dobber – “Everything that we release, one or two things are directly for her.” What’s next for Oceans Of Slumber then, recording wise? Dobber – “It will be an EP. I’ve got some covers that I want to tackle. A Stevie Wonder song, for instance, ‘They Won’t Go When I Go’, Dead Can Dance, and some other bands.” That sounds interesting, looking forward to hearing that. The best of luck with the album, it’s truly something special. Connect with Oceans Of Slumber here. Interview: Dave Live images: Rob Wilkins ]]>
