Post-recording interview with Andrew Bassett / The Hound of Love

[DD] Drunk Dial prohibits writing or rehearsing the cover before going into the studio, but did you prepare for the day of recording in any other way?
[AB] Well I think because I am the first solo project I was able to bend the rules JUST slightly hehe. I essentially prepared the technical parts of the instrumental tracks, such as setting up all the inputs and outputs from the drum machines and synthesizers, so that I wouldn't have to do that while blotto. Then, after giving myself a template to work with I did the rest all twisted up, all over town. So the studio in this case was my apartment, a friend's basement, a bar, and even a car2go.

[DD] Did you have any specific fears going into the studio? What ended up being the most difficult part?
[AB] The most difficult part was having to do it all on my own! The Drunk Dial format is ideal for BANDS but pretty hard to adhere to ALONE. When Drunk Dial first hit me up I thought they wanted a MEAN JEANS project, which would've been fun, but we are all living in different cities so I was pretty sure it wouldn't work out. Maybe in the future, who knows, but I was certainly stoked when Jordan corrected me and said he was asking about doing a HOUNDY 7". Right on. So basically my only fear was finding a place where I could sing my bullshit, because there's no way I'm gonna sing in my apartment.

[DD] Why did you choose to cover Rancid’s “Journey to the End of the East Bay”?
[AB] I am copy and pasting this really long boring story from my answer to the "press guy" that asked this same question: Well first of all I really have loved Rancid, the And Out Come the Wolves album in particular, since I was about 13. So it's not an ironic cover, although I do find humor in covering a Rancid song, synth pop style, for sure. Cracks me up. But the reason I chose it is pretty funny. Mean Jeans were on tour in Denmark years ago and I found one of those tiny iPod nano things buried in some dirt and grass in a courtyard somewhere. Plugged it in once we got in the van and it turned on, so I checked out what was on there. There was a bunch of hilarious stuff, but this band Scooter was the definite highlight. The most absurd Techno music with totally over the top German-accent broken-English vocals and fake overdubbed rave crowd noises etc. For years after that I would put on Scooter in the van to "get in the zone". So recently I was researching Scooter and found out that some of the members used to be in a synth-pop band in the 80's called Celebrate the Nun. I downloaded one of their albums out of curiosity at the airport before I was boarding a flight. As we were taking off a song called "Cry No More" came on. Quickly I realized it was the same chords (what I call the "forbidden chord progression", used on 10 billion songs, and at least 5 other songs on And Out Come the Wolves) as Journey to the End and I started singing along in my head. It cracked me up so much that I made a mental note of it, "I should do a Rancid cover in this style". Not long later when Jordan from Drunk Dial hit me up and said he wanted 1 cover song and 1 original song for a 7", I thought "perfect". If you listen to that "Cry No More" song you can hear the direct influence.

[DD] Do you prefer playing music sober or buzzed?
[AB]

[DD] What is the best cover song of all time.
[AB] Probably when Sublime "covers" Lori Meyers by NOFX for about 9 seconds at the beginning of "Seed" hahaha

[DD] It's closing time at a bar full of your friends, there's only time to play one more song on the jukebox. What do you play?
[AB] "Drop Baby Drop" by Eddy Grant