Live 4 Metal July 6, 2003 By Scott Alisoglu Bursting onto the scene in 1997, Sweden’s Blind Dog followed up their demo work with a self-recorded album called The Last Adventures of Captain Dog in 1999. The band soon got the attention of stoner rock label MeteorCity who signed the band in 2000. Following up with a kick ass album of blues-based hard rock and metallic grooves called Captain Dog Rides Again, the trio have pleased more than a few pairs of ears, including the legendary Johnny Z who referred to Blind Dog as “the best band I’ve heard in years.” The band consists of Joakim Thell (guitars), Tobias Nilsson (bass, vocals), and Thomas Elenvik (drums). Chief lyricist Tobias Nilsson spoke to me by phone from his home in Sweden. First Backdraft shocked the hell out of me when I found out they’re from Sweden, now Blind Dog. What’s going on in that country? I don’t know really. I’ve had that question before and I’ve never really been able to answer it. We don’t have very much contact with other bands. We used to rehearse near Spiritual Beggars a while ago, but they tore that building down. I would never have known you were from Sweden because the sound is very North American. Even with the vocals? To be honest with you, I couldn’t tell the difference. I couldn’t hear an accent. Cool. What’s the story of Blind Dog? Me and Joakim, the guitarist, have been playing a while with a couple of other guys. When we were pretty young… We were 15 when we started. Eventually, it turned out that it didn’t work out with them. We weren’t going anywhere with the drummer that we had, and we had a second guitarist as well. What year was this? Oh, 1995 about. We were looking for another drummer to do a trio. We asked Thomas, the drummer that we now have, if he wanted to play with us. He was playing with another band so he said he couldn’t. We tried quite a lot of other drummers and none of them were any good at all. Then we got an offer to play a gig and we asked Thomas again if he had just wanted to do this one gig and he said all right. It was at a party so we were gonna play like Jimi Hendrix and I think we did a Rush song as well, some Black Sabbath and Kiss. Thomas is a tremendous Kiss fan as well. Maybe you can hear it in the way he plays the drums. Actually, I hate to digress, but there is a part on the first song, “Don’t Ask me where I Stand,” that reminded me of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.” Actually, I think we played that song way back in the beginning. I haven’t thought of it. It wasn’t consciously that way. Anyway, as we tried to play together, the first time we rehearsed, we all agreed that we had to continue because it worked out so well. Did you ever consider becoming a four-piece, instead of a trio? No, we never did. We had been talking about bringing in a keyboard player, but it’s just so nice to just be three people. It’s much easier. We just have eye contact and we all know what to do. It’s easier to be tight too. Yeah, certainly. On the record, there is a guy playing keyboards. Did you come up with the name because one of the band members’ pets went blind? No, it’s quite a boring story actually. In our old rehearsal room, it was like a youth place where kids hang out after school. We were rehearsing there and there were a lot of magazines, games, and stuff. We were looking in a magazine for popular science and there was a picture of a dog walking a line blindfolded. We thought it was quite a cool picture, so we thought let’s use that picture on a poster and let’s make up a name that fits with the picture. So we called ourselves Blind Dog. Speaking of dogs, who is Captain Dog and why is he riding again? Well, I guess he’s riding again because he can [Laughs]. He got the opportunity to ride again, so why not. Is there any meaning to Captain Dog? I guess it’s sort of like an abstract mascot, like Iron Maiden’s Eddie. Except you’re not going to bring out a giant dog during your live show. No, we’re not. I wish we could afford to [Laughs]. It sounds like fun. This is your second album. Tell me about the first album. The first album was recorded without a record deal. We had a couple of songs. I think we had recorded all of the songs except three on demo tapes before, or demo CDs. We had sent them out and two of the songs were released on a single, a 7” vinyl. Other than that, no one was interested, so we just thought that these songs were too good to throw away. We were getting tired of not getting anywhere so we decided to record the album ourselves. [The name of it was] The Last Adventures of Captain Dog. It was sort of like this is it; either we score now or we might just have to quit. Did you send it out to quite a few labels? How much promotion did you put behind it? When the album was recorded, we almost didn’t have to do anything. I think we sent it to a couple of labels. I guess thanks to the Internet, things just happened by themselves. We got a couple of offers to make a contract and we decided to go with MeteorCity. We didn’t send a CD to them at first. I had heard of MeteorCity before but I guess I had never thought of sending them a CD. Jadd contacted us after hearing about the album from somewhere or another. They released it with a new cover and an extra song as well. The demo earned you a spot on the Burn one Up: Music for Stoners compilation. How did that come about? We had recorded a demo tape - in those days there were tapes [laughs], now you make CDs. We just sent it to a bunch of labels and I suddenly got a phone call from Road Runner asking us if we wanted to be on a compilation. We didn’t even know what stoner rock was at the time. This was when rehearsed next to Spiritual Beggars and I remember talking to Spice of Spiritual Beggars and he’d never heard of stoner rock either. That’s really interesting because MeteorCity are considered a stoner rock label. From what I’ve heard, the term stoner rock, I don’t know if it was the first time Burn One Up was released. It said “music for stoners” on the cover. It’s also strange to me that Road Runner of all labels would release it because they have nothing that sounds like stoner rock. I think it was this guy who put the CD together. I can’t remember his name, but it was a guy in Holland I think. I remember we were talking about doing a complete Blind Dog album and that didn’t happen because his boss didn’t like it. I can’t really blame him because that demo tape wasn’t really Blind Dog. Is Blind Dog music for stoners? I wouldn’t know that. We played in The Netherlands. I don’t know if you know about the laws in that country, but it’s all right to smoke just about anything. In Sweden, we don’t have that. We’ve never had that in mind, that it should be stoner music. That was a label that was given to you, not the other way around. Actually, we don’t speak English on a regular basis, so I didn’t associate the term “stoner” even with narcotics. It’s like when I listened to the Black Sabbath song, “Sweet Leaf.” I heard it the first time when I was a kid and I didn’t even think about it - what does he mean, “Sweet Leaf?” Ah hah! It was the same thing with “stoner.” Why do they call it…ah yes, of course! This is some of the stuff I read in the press release. They called you Swedish Prog-Thrash. Personally, I didn’t agree with it, even though the music does have a progressive element because you don’t always stick to the formal song structures. What do you think about that description? Did you even know it was in there? No, I don’t think I did. I don’t know if thrash is there at all. Yeah, I didn’t hear it at all. As far as the progressive side, no, honestly I wouldn’t say that it’s there. I think we are maybe going in that direction. I personally listen to a lot of progressive bands from the early 70s, like Gentle Giant, Yes, and stuff. There is definitely a 70s hard rock vibe on the album. I’d say that we are [influenced by 70s bands]. I haven’t bought a new album for several years [Laughs]. I’m not really interested in what’s happening in the music scene today. The other guys do though. I think there is so much to discover in the older music that I don’t know of yet. I’m still content with that. You said Gentle Giant and Yes. What other bands had an impact on you? Obviously, the bands that we started playing when we played covers songs - Black Sabbath and Kiss, Jimi Hendrix, a bit of Cream. What do you think your music sounds like? Well, I’d have to say 70s rock I guess. I’m not so sure that I would mention any bands because people tend to mention Black Sabbath when they talk about Blind Dog. There might be a little of that but it’s certainly not overwhelming. It’s a bit tiresome to hear. Sometimes people will go, “oh it’s just like Black Sabbath.” Well, we don’t want to be just like Black Sabbath, but we like Black Sabbath. We want to be Blind Dog. I assume you were proud to have Johnny Z describe Blind Dog as “the best band I’ve heard in years.” To be honest, I’m not sure if I should be ashamed of this, but I had never heard about the man before that [Laughs]. I’ve heard about him after that quote. A friend of mine had heard about him before that, so obviously he’s a real guy; he exists [Laughs]. Of course it’s always nice to hear that someone likes the music. The reason why it’s in the press release is obviously because that sort of a quote from that person has a deeper impact on other people, not on us. Right, it gives you a kind of credibility. Right, exactly. To us, it’s always nice when someone likes it. When someone else hears that he likes it, it’s not just another doghead. Is that what you call your fans? Dogheads? Well, as a joke at first. Maybe it’s something that we should spread. We weren’t sober when we thought that up. There’s a healthy dose of blues running through the songs on Captain Dog Rides Again as well. It’s what we began to play. I think we all come from sort of a…I wouldn’t say tradition really, but when we first started to play together and were jamming, we all knew how to play the blues and improvise on that. That’s the basis of everything we do. We use those harmonies to create other stuff. Did you actually listen to pure blues, certain musicians? No, not really. To be honest, I don’t really like to listen to blues at all. You’re really talking about blues-influenced hard rock. Yeah. Black Sabbath has that, Jimi Hendrix, Cream. It’s all there in the older music. You said you brought in another guy to play organ on the album. I thought your use of it on several songs sounded great. Who plays it? Actually that’s our old drummer that we used to play with before Thomas got into the band. Would you like to incorporate more of it into your music? I don’t know. Sometimes he just plays to make it fuller, to fill it up with chords in the background. There is one song - I can’t remember the name of it - when he played electric piano, a solo in the end. I think it’s “Back Off.” We jammed in the solo parts with guitar and a Wurlitzer Electric Piano. That part of the song changed completely when he did his thing there. We were thinking we should have an organ or something. We had recorded it earlier and he came along a week later just to do something. He just started jamming with the piano and we decided not to have an organ at all. It got ten times better than we thought. Are you using a Hammond on the other songs? It’s got that traditional sound. Yeah, I think it’s a Hammond. There is also a grand piano on the last song. Right, and that song [“Be the Same”] is completely different from anything else on the album. It’s more subdued. I think - maybe subconsciously or maybe we really thought about it without realizing it - it’s because we want to be open to whatever happens in the future musically. We put one song in that really stands out from the others so we can have the opportunity to go in that direction or any other direction. You’re giving the listener a taste of what could be. Yeah, or what might not be, whatever the case may be [Laughs]. Going back to the keyboards. Will you bring a session player along for the live shows or is it something you can pull off by yourselves? We haven’t planned to do it. Joakim plays a bit of organ himself. We were rehearsing today actually and talking about the idea that maybe we should bring an organ so we can have some drum, bass, and organ parts. We haven’t tried it yet, so we’ll see what happens. You actually explain each of the songs in the liner notes. What inspired you to do so? We did that on the first album as well. The first thing that is mentioned there is a quote from Jethro Tull’s first album where they say that people don’t seem to do these kind of liner notes anymore, which is a pity because it’s never a bad thing to say something even if it doesn’t amount to much, or something like that. I thought it was nice to read it. It’s quite funny to read those notes. Then also I thought about the fact that they say it as early as 1969, I think, when that album came out. There were saying back then that it was not as common as it used to be. I thought, well, let’s do it thirty years later and pick up where they left off. That was the only album I had of Jethro Tull at the time. I don’t know if they’ve continued writing those notes. I just liked the idea. So you wanted to let people know what you were thinking about those songs, rather than leave it open to interpretation. Yeah, actually that became sort of a problem, especially with this album. The first album was when we had been a band for so long and we had been playing these songs for quite a while. We wanted to say something about them. We knew them so well. Now we have the new songs and the urge to say something about them was not as strong as the first album. There were times when we thought, maybe we should mention this or that about a song and decided not to say anything. For instance, I don’t think I’ve commented on any of the lyrics on any of the songs because the lyrics are one of those things that are better to be left to the listener’s interpretation. What topics do you touch on in your lyrics? Are they personal? The first album was more personal, just an outlet for your own personal misery. I sort of took that further with these lyrics. They’re more common. Some of the song titles were interesting. What are you singing about in “There Must be Better Ways of Losing your Mind? People have actually mentioned that title before. I wrote that lyric during the Afghanistan war. It is inspired by the way the democracies are not very democratic. It’s not an attack on the United States. It’s more of a reflection upon each and every person in western societies, the mentality of just not seeming to care. So you’re thinking that maybe there is a flaw in thinking that democracy is the only way, maybe a bit of hypocrisy in that thinking. Yeah, definitely. If people in general were just thinking twice once a day, it wouldn’t be so hard, but we have been lured not to by poor television and greasy food [Laughs]. Have you begun work on the video for “Iron Cage?” It’s a friend who is working on that. He knew that we were about to put the record out and he contacted us and asked if we wanted a video for it. He’s working on different film projects. Will you have input into the creative aspects of it? Actually, since I know him from before, we just gave him a free hand to do whatever he wanted because since we’re friends we talk to each other a lot anyway. We have a natural dialogue. I trust him enough to do a good job. What are your touring plans? We are talking about going back to The Netherlands, maybe some time in October. There has been no discussion about going to the United States, unfortunately. It would be nice. Hopefully we’ll get there some time. What do you hope to accomplish with Blind Dog for the rest of 2003 and beyond? The main thing now is that we’ll have to start writing some new songs. We still have that childhood dream that we want to do something that has an impact on the world. You want to do one album that will be remembered, that will last. I think we all feel that with these two albums, the second one is better than the first one. There’s still more to come << Back to interviews