SPILL FEATURE: THE HEART BEHIND THE MAD SCIENTIST – A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS DOLBY

THE HEART BEHIND THE MAD SCIENTIST

A CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS DOLBY

Thomas Dolby is one of rock’s most interesting stories. Going from busking to having international hits to composing soundtracks, to being involved with technology to being on the faculty at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University (he leads Peabody’s Music for New Media program, which enrolled its first students in the fall of 2018), he has never stopped moving forward and developing his talents and learning himself. He also founded Beatnik, a Silicon Valley software company which developed the polyphonic ringtone engine that played back the Nokia tune and this technology has been embedded in more than three billion cell phones and devices made by Nokia, Microsoft (MSFT) and Motorola (MSI). There is a lot more to Thomas Dolby than “She Blinded Me With Science”.

He is also a well-known producer who has worked with a number of artists, such as Prefab Sprout, Joni Mitchell, George Clinton, and Belinda Carlisle to name a few. “A lot of production is about arrangement. It’s like if you have great parts, you might come up and mix them properly and you have great production,” Dolby told me during our recent conversation. “It’s not just about twiddling knobs.”

This April, he is embarking on a small tour in the East Coast and Midwest of the U.S. However, unlike previous tours, Dolby is not performing as a solo act, but rather with a small, but powerful band, featuring Gail Ann Dorsey on bass and vocals (who was a key member of David Bowie’s band for a number of years), Mat Hector on drums, and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Lipke on guitars and vocals. Dorsey will also open the show with her solo set.

“I typically tour on my own, these days, economically, it doesn’t always make sense to tour with a whole band and tour bus. I often prefer to be nimble and do it on my own. But I am touring with a full band this time, because I am building up a larger project next year, playing with a symphony orchestra, but before I get anywhere near an expensive symphony orchestra, I need to experiment with the material, get it together, get my schtick together. The arrangements, structures and so on.”

(PHOTO CREDIT: CARLI SCHULTZ)

For Dolby, performing live allows him a certain degree of freedom with his music, rather than trying to duplicate an album on stage. “If you set out to just replicate a recording then every night is just a percentage of success or failure. You go, ‘well tonight was pretty good, it was maybe a 92%, last night, not so good, maybe 89%.’ Whereas if you let the music happen organically, good things happen. You respond in real time to the atmosphere, the crowd, the acoustics of the room. All of that matters. There is a resonance that happens in live music, but not if everything is rigidly programmed or recorded.”

And with his current touring band, this will allow for even more freedom with the songs. “Yeah, I’ve got some great musicians with me, with great vocals. Gail Ann Dorsey on bass is also an incredible alto singer as well. She sang the Freddie Mercury parts in duets with David Bowie in concert. And a local guy from up the road in Philadelphia, Andrew Lipke, who is a very respected songwriter, composer, conductor, orchestrator, who has done a lot of hybrid shows. And Mat Hector on drums, who played with Iggy Pop and Thom Yorke and various others over the years. I actually met Mat because he was in a wedding band at a wedding in Tuscany that I went to,” laughed Dolby. “I heard his drumming and thought he was great and so I plucked him. He was working as a fireman, and I plucked him out of obscurity. Not what you expect at a wedding.”

For Dolby, this is a band, not an artist being out front and anonymous players behind. “I pick songs that allow my band to shine.” But with a band, not only will he be playing the hits but some deeper cuts as well. He will also be telling stories from his memoir The Speed Of Sound: Breaking the Barriers Between Music and Technology: A Memoir. Dolby will also be talking about and referencing music that he grew up with and that influenced him. One piece of history that he volunteered was his performance on Live Aid as part of David Bowie’s band. “That came together in a hurry. He only knew about it 10 days before the show and his then touring band was not available, they were doing other things. So, he put together a band of young British musicians, who I guess he knew would all know his stuff. He didn’t really have an idea, until the day of the show, what songs he was going to do. But we all grew up with them, so it was relatively straightforward to play them. It was obviously a thrill to be backing him up at that show. It was a highlight of my career. He was an absolute gem, an absolute sweetheart to work with.”

Dolby has always embraced new technology, as seen through his career, although at the base of his work is a strong, melodic song. He just uses tools that are often seen as more technical. “I’m not sure if hardcore fans see it as technical. I think what they are attracted to is the humanity of it. The ‘brand’, if you like, deliberately came across as mad scientist, but you know there is a heart behind it.”

THOMAS DOLBY, SUFFOLK, 2010 (PHOTO CREDIT: KATHLEEN B)

And with AI. Now here and being used, he does not fear that technology. “I’m always attracted to the next new frontier, an area in which I haven’t worked in before, whether it is a musical idiom, or a new technology.  I am always very positive about new technologies, I am not a sort of ‘glass half empty’ type. I am never one to say, let’s put the breaks on and wind back the clock. Even things like AI, which is very controversial. I just see immense creative possibilities with it. I think music and art have to keep rolling on. It is fine to be nostalgic about the previous era, but you can’t turn the clock back. I would rather be one of the ones pressing forward and showing the world the creative possibilities about new technology.”

“Like everybody else, it is annoying when there’s lots of mediocrity, people mashing up artists, like Drake and Taylor Swift…that is definitely worrying. Whenever you get new technologies that perforate something, you are going to get a lot of mediocrity. You remember when desktop publishing came in and suddenly everything was this nightmare of fonts and colour. You get all of this random noise, because it is possible. But then, what emerges from that is the good stuff. The stuff that has heart and soul to it. I use AI in my work, in my writing, I try to discourage my students from using it to cut corners on their assignments. I would rather they work with limited resources than unlimited resources. How to solve a problem like MacGyver, trying to get out of a locked room with nothing but a carrot and a piece of copper wire. That is how you get creative, when you have limited resources.”

This current tour is serving that purpose a little, in terms of having Dolby work things out prior to a bigger show next year. Fans will still enjoy the show, but it is a step towards the future for Dolby. “I’m going to be performing next year, with a symphony. Some stuff I have written myself, and some that quotes from a lot of the music that influenced me over the years and some of the music I have been involved with, with different artists. Weaving all of that together in a narrative story about my own musical journey. Some talk and storytelling and guest vocalists. But before I get anywhere near an expensive orchestra, I need to workshop the material, in terms of the flow, the arrangements, the content and sharing the vocals with other vocalists because I can’t do it all myself. So, the sensible way to do that is in a club and theatre setting and take risks and use the audience as my testing ground. I have done a little of this in the fall, and people were blown away by it, and I had to encourage them not to take pictures and videos and post it on social media because I don’t want to give the game away at this point.”

Although his current tour is not coming to Canada, it is a place that Dolby holds dear in his heart, and he hopes to return soon. “I love coming to Canada, it is one of the few places where I had a number one, “She Blinded Me With Science.” I always enjoy coming. It is just harder now than in previous years, for obvious reasons and makes things much more complicated. And the whole thing with visas and work permits is getting quite complicated. I have international musicians in my band, so it is not practical this time. But, hopefully, with the symphony I will be able to come to Toronto and elsewhere in Canada.

THOMAS DOLBY UNITED STATES TOUR DATES

APRIL
14 Plymouth, MA Spire Center
15 New York, NY Racket
16 Kingston, NY Assembly
18 Lansing, MI Grewal Hall
19 Indianapolis, IN The Vogue
20 Chicago, IL House Of Blues
21 St. Louis, MO City Winery

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Main Photo Credit: Felipe Gonçalves (Refocus Portrait Studio) | Background Photo Credit: Carli Schultz