- I was wondering what your thoughts were on playing these three past shows?

TYMON:  "I enjoyed Filthy's where I did a show that was more or less like I would have done back in 1974 when I was living in Chippenham Road. Most of the people there were totally unaware of those songs; most of them had never been recorded or even performed for a really long time. It was interesting to play them thirty-four years on. Carbon Casino was good fun - Jasper (Williams) and Muz (McHattie) and Alex T all played great. It was quite eerie to be back in the area where I used to live from 1973 - 1981. Again, it was an off-the-cuff gig really because Mick [Jones] had asked me to take part in the series of gigs he was running there. Half Moon was great because the sound is so good there and the venue has an interesting history - loads of well known people played there over the years - and in the last year because of the energy and vision of the new owner some of that legacy is coming through. He's got a great PA and good attitude. The promoter who organized the night, Klarita (Pandolfi), did a good job too...she finds a lot of interesting acts - like Glass Glue, a band she also manages..."

TDNET:  You were recently interview by two US writers - Kristofer Engelhardt and Stefan Granados - with regards to two different projects in some way featuring your music. Kristofer Engelhardt interviewed you for a revised 2008 edition of his book Beatles Undercover, while Stefan Granados talked to you for his new (or possibly revised) book about The Beatles' Apple Records years (and a planned Shingdig music magazine article feature). Can you tell me a bit more about both interviews?

TYMON:  "They were interested in the recordings I did with Apple, who played on them (Paul McCartney and James Taylor, for example) and the story behind why they weren't released..."

TDNET:  Have you ever thought about professionally recording and releasing a live album some day?

TYMON:  "Relentless (Tymon's 1989 LP) was live in that it had no overdubs on it, I recorded it at home and just played the songs, they were all violin and vocals. But yes, that's a good idea to record a stage performance because with a live audience something else is happening and they affect your performance very much. It would be good in the right venue - one that lent itself to good live recording - I don't know where at the moment. You don't want it too sterile and then again you don't want people talking or making too much noise, moving round, getting drinks and stuff. Probably more of a concert-type environment would be best."

TDNET:  fRoots magazine editor Ian Anderson interviewed you for October 2007 issue of his magazine. In this article it was mentioned, among other things, that you involved with the following musical projects. I was hoping you would be able to elaborate on these particular moments/events in your life/career. First, working with Malcolm McClaren in the '80's (around the time of Duck Rock)…

TYMON:  "Malcolm came looking for me in the early 80s because he wanted to get a new folk band together - about a year or two before The Pogues appeared and Dexy's Midnight Runners were still playing sax. Malcolm's interest in working with me at that time would have sent a message to the music industry that Folk was cool again after no-one daring to go near it. Malcolm liked taking something that wasn't hip and making it hip, but most things disintegrated on the way!"

TDNET:  - living in Spain and subsequently working with Enrique Morente:

TYMON:  "I lived in Granada for three years from 1996 - 1999. Jose Sanchez was putting together a record to mark the centenary of Garcia Lorca's [Spanish poet] birth. I recorded a track in Enrique Morente's house. I was playing violin and producing Lagartija Nick's contribution. Enrique was meant to be singing on the track and wanted me to teach him how to pronounce the words of a Lorca poem translated into English - when I sang them for him he decided that my version was pretty good and left my voice on it!"

TDNET:  - playing a gig (on violin) with Compay Segundo:

TYMON: "This was also due to the double album. It was before Buena vista social club came out so I didn't know who he was. I played the violin on stage in Madrid at his gig there and Robert Wyatt was present - he's a massive Compay Segundo fan - and kept telling me after 'Wow! You've played with Compay Segundo' but I wasn't aware at the time of his stature in Cuban music only that he was an amazing musical talent, to be playing and singing like that in his 80s!"

TDNET:  - and prior to 1999, working with Irish singer songwriter Sean Miller (aka Doctor Millar):

TYMON:  "Sean asked me to produce his first album, I said I'd do it if we could do it in three days and with two electric guitars - a telecaster and an stratocaster. He played telecaster and Jim Walker played stratocaster. We recorded The Bitter Lie in Dublin and it was nominated for several awards the next year along with Van Morrison, Gavin Friday and Paul Brady. It was well received because of Sean's excellent songwriting - we had a brilliant time doing the record. It all came together really well. The engineer, Katherine, everyone worked really well together and we did it in three days, mixed it later, in another studio. Sean and I played some very strange gigs together - like some up the Swiss mountains about ten years ago. I hope we work together again - we had a lot of fun."

TDNET:  I don't ever recall reading what model violin/s you own or prefer to use, have you just the two (the wooden one, and the blue electric), or do you use several - I am not a violinist, therefore do not know whether several are needed for someone who plays them in the way you do on stage, or is it more the fact that you need to replace the strings often, and not the violin itself?

TYMON:  "My violin is a French one from 1890, so it has survived quite well! It's been very loyal and very strong. It withstood being put in a bonfire when they were filming for The Future is Unwritten in Granada and being bashed about a bit on stage. The blue one is just something I picked up in a shop - a standard electric violin. I like the colour of it...

TDNET:  I understand that you are someone who prefers to concentrate on the here and now, rather than the dwelling on one's past. I was wondering therefore, what you future goals might be in terms of playing/recording/writing music? Also, are there any musician/s working today that you like to work with one day, or any musician/s that you would liked to have worked with from the past?

TYMON:  "I appreciate musicians in their own right and if I met someone and we worked together it would be to form something different from what either of us had ever done before. So you can't predict or guess who you'll work well with. Sometimes working with people from a very different musical sphere creates something of great value..."

TDNET:  Out of the hundred-odd songs you have written so far (that I know of…), which ones are your personal favourites - either to play live to an audience; in terms of sheer song writing; or the songs that mean the most to you in some personal way?

TYMON:  "When you write a song it's your personal favourite at the time you're writing it. It's difficult to tie yourself down to one because they are all written to reflect an aspect of your life or feelings at any one time...but a song that you can sing in the moment over a long period of time shows that it has its own universal soul - for example, I am still singing 'Beyond this Frontier' thirty years on because it still seems so relevant to me."

TDNET:  Finally, I read on some Internet site (I forget which) over a year or so ago, that Charlie Drake was apparently your second cousin. I've been meaning to ask you for ages now whether this was true or not. So, to clear up this curiosity, was Charlie Drake indeed your second cousin?

TYMON:  "Not that I know of! But I'll ask my family..."

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.

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."

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."

TYMON:  "I first started building this instrument in 1984 when I was cat-sitting for Paloma 'Palmolive' Romero who had given up drumming in The Slits and gone to the States for a visit with her new husband Dave (McLardy). 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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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.

TYMON:  "Yes. Dan is a very talented singer-songwriter and we have plans to work together both live and recording soon."

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."

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."

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!

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.

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 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 (Strummer) 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 (Headon) and Paul (Simonon) 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?’"