DeWolff are renowned for ‘wild and exciting’ live shows and an organ-fuelled brand of rock that blows audiences away.
The psychedelic group from the Netherlands are set to release their new album Grand Southern Electric this Friday 2nd May. A perfect blend of great song writing and next level riffery combined with some of the grooviest drum grooves known to man all topped by a stellar vocal performance by Pablo van de Poel.
Produced by Grammy award winner Mark Neill at Soil Of The South Studios in Valdosta, Gerogia it sounds like a classic. We asked the gents to take us through track-by-track on how each song came to be and the experience they had working with Neill.
Stand Up Tall
“I was just noodling on my guitar and this riff came out. We started a jam and after some time Robin came up with a Hammond part that perfectly interweaves with the guitar riff. The verse started out as a joke, Robin and I were trying to piss each other off by constantly repeating what the other played. Then we figured that it actually sounded pretty cool, and we kept it. The lyrics are about standing up to people that are putting you down. When I was growing up I always responded to these jive ass mothergrabbers in a non-violent way, thinking I was above that.”
Evil Mothergrabber
“Luka, Robin and I were in our car and this Daft Punk song “Robot Rock” comes on the radio. We figured it actually had a pretty bad-ass riff and after some investigation we learned that it actually is a sample of the song ‘Unleash the Beast’ by Breakwater, a band from the 80’s. The initial title for the song was Evil Motherfucker, but Mark Neill wouldn’t let us record a song with a title like that. He said people in America would associate it with gangsta rap. He then suggested we change it to Evil Mothergrabber, which would be the Southern version.”
Ride With You
“I went to Spain on a holiday with my fiancée and we saw an amazing flamenco show in a small club in Sevilla. I was really inspired by it and when I got back home I knew I wanted to do something with those flamenco hand claps. I had written the riff for ‘Ride With You’ a long time before that, but after that trip I knew it had to be acoustic. That super funky, partly backwards, solo at the end is Mark Neill playing his Danelectro 6-string bass guitar by the way. Initially we wanted to put a pedal steel solo in there but the 6-string bass really out-funked that pedal steel guitar with flying colours!”
Healthy Friend
“This song is about being drawn to something, a place, a country, a person, that is very demanding; financially, emotionally, whatever. It seemed like it was worth it at the beginning, but as time passes you realize that the thing you originally had or the place that you originally were, wasn’t that bad at all. But of course there’s no way back and you get paranoid and everyone turns against you and the world goes up in flames and a dragon comes and rescues you.
Musically we were very inspired by the band Crazy Horse (Neil Young’s Crazy Horse, but without Neil Young). Their first album is amazing; it’s groovy, it’s dirty and the songs are terrific.”
Satilla No. 3
“I wrote the lyrics to this song in 5 minutes so that I could put some words to a demo that we recorded. I wanted to rewrite the lyrics later, when we’d go to Valdosta to record the actual album. When I was looking up some stuff about Valdosta I read that the first train that ever entered Valdosta, back in 1860, was called Satilla no. 3. Damn, that is a cool name, I thought. I knew this had to be the name of this song, even though the lyrics didn’t have anything to do with a train whatsoever.
I just could not get the original lyrics out of my head and Mark really liked them as well, so in the end we kept the lyrics and just called the song Satilla no. 3 in honor of Valdosta.”
Restless Man
“The song is about a really weird party at my house that suddenly ended because the police came. They put out a fire we made and then we had a big argument with them. It sounds really rock n roll, but actually it was all quite silly. And then the song goes into another part that is about doing your thing and not letting people – women, wives, girlfriends, parents, teachers, bosses, pets, etc- hold you back from doing what truly makes you happy in life. That is not autobiographical.”
Dance Of The Buffalo
“The riff for this song came out of a really cool and long late night jam. Originally we wanted to put a flute in this song but in the end we all agreed that that was too Stone Henge for this record. The first line originally was “I was sitting in a little tree house”, but when I sang it over at Mark’s studio we all started laughing. “Little tree house” clearly wasn’t rock n roll enough, so I changed it to a “deer stand”, which is an essential element in every good rock n roll lyric.”
Ripple Faced Thing
“We started writing this song with Robin playing Hammond organ and me humming a melody. Robin would play a chord and I’d said: “no, play this note” and then he played something else and that was cool too; on and on we went and after some time it turned out we had written a song with a hundred chords. The song is about being so broke you secretly bring your own drinking cup to IKEA to have it refilled 100 times. For free! Another part of the song is about a rich kid that wants to hang out with the cool boys, because he thinks that’s how he’s gonna make it.”
Working Like A Dog
“I think this is the angriest song on the record. I get scared every time I read the lyrics. Musically, this song is a good example of a song that could only have been written by the three of us together. It’s so simple, but the groove is so good! You can’t come up with that noodling on your guitar, alone in your bedroom. You need drums, Hammond, guitars, good times. This is three guys in one room, grooving like they’ve never grooved before!”
(Ain’t Nothing Wrong With) A Little Bit Of Lovin
“I think the intro of this song is really cool because it has a thousand chords in it, but it actually sounds like fun. It probably has so many chords because I wrote it on a piano and I can’t play the piano. Robin does a really cool Leon Russell thing on the record, just before we go into a super heavy rock n roll song that ends with an Afrobeat-on-speed jam in some weird time signature. Luka is really into Afrobeat, the end of this song is were you can hear that influence very well.”
It’s About Time
“‘It’s About Time’ is actually two songs put together. We had written two songs but we didn’t know what to do with it. We sent the demos to Mark and in the meanwhile we figured the songs would be perfect if we’d combine them. Robin does an incredible wah wah Hammond solo on this one. The problem was that the bass guitar is playing a very daunting bass line at the same time. So, too proud to go for the easy way, Robin locked himself up with his Hammond and after three hours he could play it! He’s a one-man band. You really gotta see it live to believe it!”
