The following Q & A feature with Tymon was arranged via email thanks to Susan de Muth. On August 7th 2007, Susan sat down with Tymon to go over my list of assorted questions with regards to Tymon' s musical past, present, and future career. A big thank you goes to Susan for kindly arranging this, and to Tymon for taking the time out to answer such questions. I appreciate the kindness and ongoing help/assistance you have patiently given me with this site. Here are the answers I received to my inquiries:
WWW.TYMONDOGG.NET: Any news on a forthcoming album with The Quikening or solo LP by any chance. I heard you play a new song called “Time Is Moving On” on a recent Sound Projector radio show guest spot and also read that you have a new number called “We Dragged Ourselves”. Are these going to be recorded and released at some stage?
TYMON DOGG: "Yeah I have loads of new songs to put out. I expect my album to be out by Spring 2008, it will be with other musicians from the ever-expanding Quikening collective contributing their various talents. I don't know yet what it will be called but I want the album to really stand in the moment because I feel music and the words come from the moment as we stand and breath and this is more important than anything else. Actually the song you are talking about is called 'It's Time for Moving On' ... this song truly represents my situation in the recent past and is like a bridge between moments and I really enjoy singing it.
"'We Dragged Ourselves' is a relatively new song - I was thinking about my Dad coming back from the second world war and being housed in a pre-fab that my mum and dad lived in while she was pregnant with me. The electrics were so dodgy she got a very big electric shock while she was waiting for me to be born. All they had was a shack to live in after he risked his life in the war. He felt that England had betrayed him and he told his seven siblings to get out of the UK and its slums and five of them did - they went to the States and Canada where they did very well, thank you very much. But he - and one sister - stayed behind in Liverpool."
TDNET: Any plans for a tour of some sort in 2008?
TYMON: "I am planning to do a tour of Europe and I have learned some of my songs in French (translated by Susan de Muth). I've been offered some gigs in Japan and that's also a possibility. I did the Big Green Gathering in Somerset in early August this year which was absolutely amazing. It was like festivals used to be and should be; before and beyond fame... it made me feel that I'd like to do more festivals next year."
TDNET: You recently played the big Strummercamp 2007 Festival in Manchester. How was this experience for you? Do you think you will return again next year?
TYMON: "Joe and I had a long term friendship and musical collaboration - I have to be very sensitive to Joe's many fans but for me he was a true traveller on the path of life and that was our main connection."
TDNET: At recent live performances you can be seen playing an instrument of your own design called the “New World Harp” or “Pyramid Harp”. What’s the background on this instrument?
TYMON: "I first started building this instrument in 1984 when I was cat-sitting for Paloma (Palmolive) who had given up drumming in the Slits and gone to the States for a visit with her new husband Dave. I told him I had an idea for a new instrument and he said 'we've got a lot of wood in our shed, get on with it mate!' The development of the tuning changed up until 1992. It marries rhythm and melody in the same way as African Kalimbas and Marimbas do. The thought behind it was to make an instrument to blend many chords and in building it I discovered the power of shape."
TDNET: At a Reading Arts Centre gig on October the 3rd 1989, you performed a 6-minute song called “A Song For Chico Mendez”. The song, it was reported, was to be released as a single, yet has never been released or featured on any album, why is this?
TYMON: "I don't remember it ever being scheduled as a single. I haven't heard or sung this song for many years. It meant a lot to me at the time because I was touched by Chico Mendez as a person."
TDNET: You’ve mentioned a possible release some day for your unreleased 1983 “Hollowed Out” album in the near future; I was wondering if there were any other plans to release either live shows or old Timon era songs, perhaps even a collection of your various music one day?
TYMON: "Because you survive the past doesn't mean it's that important. What is essential from the past for me will be made available. But the moment must always take precedence because it is where we are. Hollowed Out has some music worthy of release and if it means something now for what we are now I'll put it out but not just as a piece of history. "
TDNET: In 1987, you released an album and subsequent 7” single on the Coda label with musician/artist Helen Cherry under the guise of Frugivores. Helen featured as the vocalist on most tracks, though you wrote all the songs. This collaboration apparently started as early as 1985 and continued through to 1990 or so. How did this unique collaboration come about?
TYMON: "Helen was an art student and a friend of Joe Strummer back in 1971 - I met them both around the same time. In the early 80s I realized she was singing really well and thought it would be good if she sang some of my songs. Her singing seemed somehow effortless and so the songs sung themselves."
TDNET: You recorded a song sometime in the 1980’s called “Mirror” or “Mirrors” which possibly features The Clash’s Mick Jones on backing-vocals, along with session bassist Ralf Schmidt and 101’ers/PiL drummer Richard Dudanski. Apparently this track was recorded at EMI, do you recall anything about the recording of this song?
TYMON: "Mike Finesilver, who owned Pathway where many classic records by the Police, Elvis Costello, Ian Drury and God knows famous who had done records, came with us and helped produce it. He also did 'Fire' by Arthur Brown. Mick Jones had nothing to do with this recording but other personnel details are correct. We were being squeezed by 80s drum machines and techno soulnessness and made this track under that cloud... then left."
TDNET: After 40 odd years of being a professional musician who has seen and done a lot in those 40 years, what’s the key to keeping your integrity and sticking to your own style even when I’m sure you’ve been told to do things differently, as in what happened during your early Timon years?
TYMON: "Nice question... if you don't trust yourself, who are you going to trust? I've used this as the yardstick throughout my career and life.
TDNET: Your nephew Daniel Sumner is also a singer-songwriter, who has just released a new E.P., titled “Caesar’s Things” through indie record label Walk Fast Die Young. Have you any plans in the near future to record with him?
TYMON: "Yes. Dan is a very talented singer-songwriter and we have plans to work together both live and recording soon."
TDNET: In 2001, The Mescaleros recorded a version of Thomas Moore’s “Minstrel Boy” for the “Global A Go-Go” album. Have you ever thought of recording a solo version of this tune, or any other Mescaleros songs you co-wrote on the Global' LP?
TYMON: "The version of Minstrel Boy on Global a-Go-Go was put down by me with the drum machine going and me on violin and Joe Strummer cheering me on. It was 20 minutes of Tymon Dogg. Whatever it's sold as, that's what it was."
FEBRUARY 2007 - TYMONDOGG.NET
The following Q & A feature was originally conducted via several email messages that I sent to MAPMUSIC (www.mapmusic.net) who then kindly passed on to Tymon himself to answer for me. Due to some misinterpretation on my part, various errors were made with the original transcript. This has now been corrected thanks to Susan De Muth, and also Tymon, as he was kind enough to re-answer the original set of questions. Many thanks to Tymon, Susan, Bianca, and MAPMUSIC for going to the trouble of arranging this.
TDNET: Firstly, I was wondering why you decided to perform under the name of "Tymon Dogg"?
TYMON: "I was about fourteen and was playing down the Cavern [in Liverpool] – I wanted a pseudonym to create a sort of performing persona that was separate from being a schoolboy - which I was at the time! I got the name from the Shakespeare play Timon of Athens. If you want to get really detailed I changed the 'i' to a 'y' because people kept calling me Tim-on and I could see where that was going - Tim! The Dogg happened when I moved into a new flat and made a joke to a landlady that I was called Mr Dog and she believed it and said, 'What a beautiful name you have' and then told her sister. They always said 'hello Mr Dog' after that and my friends heard it and thought it was hilarious. So it stuck."
TDNET: Which musicians have been influential on your violin/fiddle playing? Has Folk music played much of a part?
TYMON: "I was sixteen or seventeen when I got my first violin I didn't know anyone who played it or who could teach me and I didn't know anything about it - not even how to tune it. I got it for £2 from an old school mate called Raphael and it didn't have any strings. I didn’t really try to play it until I was about 20 - much to the horror of the people I was living with at the time [in Vomit Heights] who thought I was pretty good on the guitar but had to listen to this horrible screeching on the world's worst violin. I had strung it with guitar strings and tuned it like a guitar, because I knew about the guitar - 4th instead of 5ths. I tried to play chords on it and bowed them - I still play like that quite a lot actually. Then I found out the 'normal' tuning and tried that - I realized it gave more range so I had to start learning how to play it all over again. My first impulse was to write songs to it like I was already doing with the guitar. The first song I wrote that way was 'Comes the Rain' and I arranged an American spiritual song called, 'Death don't have no Mercy' - they've never been released. And I arranged some Woody Guthrie words from a songbook that I didn't know the tune of. I've still never heard how he did them!
"Irish music was definitely an influence in general on my music at the time and I heard some fantastic Irish fiddlers, just playing in bars in Dublin, Galway and everywhere between. I was just traveling around, sleeping under a piece of polythene in ditches and fields or, in Dublin, on Steven's Green. In Clifden I was playing in a bar, singing and playing the violin and harmonica (on a brace) at the same time. I found an old derelict cottage on the hillside and slept there - I'd been given a lift by this couple and they drove off to sleep in their van. The guy, Patrick, was Irish he thought I was crazy to sleep there he said, 'We'll come back in the morning and I bet your hair's gone white with fear - have you never heard of the Banshees?' In the middle of the night I did get scared and thought I was seeing a ghost but it was just a draught from a crack in the wall blowing stuff around. There were some old convict's clothes there and some crutches but I thought, 'Hey it's free!' The next day Patrick and his girlfriend came back and when they saw my hair hadn't gone white they moved in! Anyway back to the music –
"The next influence was Indian. A friend brought back a harmonium and I started droning on that and playing the violin along to it. It sounded great. Then I found out there are some amazing Indian violin players like L Shanka and L Subramanium. His father had taught four or five of his sons to play fantastically and music is passed on from father to son in India as it's all done by ear - it was never written down. This was considered their family trade. I was very influenced by the way they were playing the violin.
I also empathize with a lot of world music - especially Bulgarian gipsy music where they use the violin to accompany the voice as I do.
"The strange thing was that I'd been doing things intuitively trying to break away from the American-Anglo dominance of rock music which I felt had peaked with Hendrix, Dylan, the Beatles, the list goes on...and then I discovered afterwards that these musical treasures existed in other musical cultures. It felt like synchronicity."
TDNET: About your earlier years when you released two singles under the sole name of Timon. Is there anything you'd like to say about that time in your life?
TYMON: "Yeah, I had a really good job doing screen printing, posters and stuff in Southport and I got a phone call from Spencer Leigh [now a DJ on Radio Merseyside] who had been promoting some gigs for me and generally encouraging my songwriting, he'd given my tape to someone at Pye records. Spencer said, 'Can you get the day off; we're going to London tomorrow because Pye records are interested in your work. When I got there one of my great heroes, Ray Davis of the Kinks was lurking around in the studios and people like Tony Hatch [wrote 'Downtown' etc.] were sitting typing and saying 'hello how you doing?' it felt really surreal! They gave me an advance that was the equivalent of a year's wages, but there was a big commercial pressure to make a hit single when I actually wanted and needed to develop the type of songwriting I'd already started. They were recording songs, like 'The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane' I'd written when I was sixteen and seventeen, some of the first things I'd written that I considered even just about passable. In retrospect I could have kept the job and waited until I felt my songwriting had matured. But it got me on the move anyway; I left Liverpool and moved to London. I went to the studios and Jerry Martin [arranger and producer] had lined up this orchestra - a long way from solo guitar and voice! Jerry Martin also got John Paul Jones [later in Led Zeppelin] on bass and I think Jimmy Page played lead guitar. Jerry was always telling these sessions guys they should get their own band together! Anyway I appreciate Jerry Martin’s exceptional skill to arrange and write out all those parts.
"Paul McCartney heard 'Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane' on the radio and wanted a go at producing it again. I declined but we did record three other tracks at Apple - 'Something New Every Day,' 'And Now She says She’s Young' and 'Who Needs a King'. James Taylor brought his backing band to do the rhythm section and Paul played the piano. This is all getting to sound like a 'Who's Who' of the 60s but people weren't that famous then... except Paul, he was famous enough for us all! I went off and wrote a very commercial song I think they would have definitely gone for called 'The Eye in the Pond' but I said I'd only do it if they would let me do a whole LP - like they were doing for James [Taylor]. At that time it was usual to have some commercially successful singles out first and then graduate to an album so we sort of fell out. If I had been in it just to make money I'd probably have gone around things differently. For me, music was, and is, the expression of my soul and I believed the great artists of that era had inspired this feeling in me.
"I thought I'd wander off round Europe. I went to live in Nice and Paris for a while and just played on the beach and I always got enough to get food and stuff. When I got back the Moody Blues had heard my songs and asked me to go on tour with them. We recorded a single - 'And Now She Says She's Young' and another five tracks. Only 'I'm Just a Traveling Man' was released on Threshold."
TDNET: Have you released any other records apart from: The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane (single), And Now She Says She's Young (single), Tymon Dogg (LP), Lose this Skin (single), Battle of Wills (LP), Relentless (LP)?
TYMON: "Well of course there's my new EP, 'Guantanamo' with my new project, the Quikening and there was an album I did under the name 'Frugivores' and one song with Lagartija Nick [check spelling] for Songlines, under Step Murray, but as far as under Tymon Dogg records go, no."
TDNET: In 1977 you formed Tymon Dogg and The Fools. Could you tell me more about this band?
TYMON: "Yeah we had a guy called Ron Harvey who had made his own strange one-string bass, which he played with a bow on some numbers, Richard Dudanski of course on drums [later with Pil]. It was just us three. We did this gig with The Slits who hadn't played for six months because Malcolm McClaren was keeping them under wraps. I'd just got 'the Fools' together and I thought it would be great if we supported them and the place got sold out immediately. It was funny because it was so packed that the front part of the audience got pushed up on to the stage and we were crammed up at the back of it. I had an Indian harmonium and there was no room for the bellow to go back and forward to get more air in it - imagine trying to play the accordion on a stage so crowded that you can't actually pull the squeezebox open, it was like that! And so many people got on the table the mixer was on that it collapsed and the soundman still talks about it to this day how he had to stand there and hold the mixer in his arms. We only did three or four gigs and then I went to India."
TDNET: Could you tell me about the Hollowed Out album from 1983 that Glyn Johns produced and Joe Strummer helped finance?
TYMON: "Yes, it hasn't been released...YET!! The master tapes have just been unearthed in a corner of Joe's workroom and I'm thinking of remastering it and putting it out. It's all songs written by me. Joe produced it with me and he played rhythm guitar on some of the songs, Richard Dudanski played drums and a guy called Ralph Schmidt played the bass - who co-incidentally just got in touch by email this very week.
"There's also a version of 'Once You Know' with all the Clash playing on it, which was recorded in Electric Lady Studios in New York when they were doing 'Combat Rock.' I was playing the violin through a guitar synthesizer and it came out like a Moroccan orchestra; Joe was in the control room and started shouting 'It's a Casbah, Man.' I wasn't sure what a Casbah was. Joe started leading a chorus with Topper and Paul shouting 'Rock the Casbah'. I didn't think any more of it because I was trying to concentrate on the track but when I came to the studio a few days later they said they'd written a song about me, I couldn't get the link at all when they played it - I thought it was a disco song, then they explained 'don't you remember us all shouting 'Rock the Casbah' at you?’"
