Any band who can boast a CV containing stints with The Wildhearts, Honeycrack, The Cardiacs, The Ginger Wildheart Band, Jackdaw4 and The God Damn Whores must be worth sitting up and taking note of. So it proves with The Dowling Poole, a band who came together when Willie Dowling and 'Random' Jon Poole sat and made google eyes with each other during the recording of Ginger Wildheart's 555% album. The result is Bleak Strategies, an album which is a million miles from bleak, instead being one of the most uplifting Power-Pop-Rock highlights 2014 has served up. With both of the mainmen in this band (NOT a project, as we'll find out!) possessing razor sharp wit and a reputation for zaniness of the highest order, Sea of Tranquility's Steven Reid took his life in his hands as he delved deep into the Bleak Strategies of both Willie and 'Random' Jon.
As a pledger for Ginger Wildheart's '555%' album, I had the pleasure of watching your in the studio relationship grow and flourish... was it musical love at first sight?
Willie Dowling : "Not really. He was a grower shall we say. Well, that is until I saw him sit at the piano and start jamming out some fairly serious things with his head turned to the sky like he was having a nap. And then when the red button was pushed and it was his turn to record, this serious, adept competent and considerate musician with supreme powers of concentration suddenly took over the room. That's the Jon Poole I fell in love with.and it helps that he's quite amusing of course."
A: John Poole : "Although there was a distinct lack of eye-candy on offer during that session our beer goggles were very much intact which is ultimately what bought us to your attention."
However I believe that it took the pair of you a little time to pluck up the courage to ask the other to work with them. From the outside the two of you working together seems like such a wonderful fit, why the initial bashfulness?
J: "Despite our rather forward personalities we both have a mammoth-sized fear of getting changed in the changing rooms of swimming baths. Frustratingly, this spills over into our personal life and has a knock on effect on our relationships with people. Had we not touched on this subject one drunken night then I imagine none of what followed '555%' would've taken place."
W: "I think there were a lot of reasons, not least of which the situation that we were both in with our respective bands. But also because I think that it's a bit like asking a girl out for a first date. You're so terrified of rejection it takes a good deal of bravado to pop the question."
You have both had long, winding musical paths leading up to The Dowling Poole. When it came to song writing for the album did you decide to focus on one side of your musical psyche, or did you both just let fly and see what happened?
J: "I should only speak for myself here but when I heard the mischief Willie was up to I recognised a side of my own writing that I felt I couldn't offer to other people I was working with, as it may have steered other people off in a direction they may not have been comfortable with. When I first thought, or wondered about a collaboration with Willie I imagined a multicoloured, psychedelic, summery sounding collection of classic, British pop songs. The first ideas I presented to the table were along these lines. Anything that either of us comes up with gets chopped, changed and added to via the Dowling Poole machine. The great thing is that although I had recognised similarities in what we'd previously done, I feel like we've had a positive effect on each other's writing and constructing."
W: "I think Jon had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do because he kept describing it. At the time I was not long finished with Jackdaw4 so I was still meandering a little and I'd throw songs in randomly until I caught the drift of what he was writing and how it felt, and I then got a little more focussed and started to chip in along the same lines."
Was the initial writing process a collaboration or did you bring completed ideas to the studio to thrash out?
W: "Usually, one or other of us has the bulk of a song to present but it quickly gets thrown into the pool and chopped up, taken away from or added to and enhanced, which generally means that although it is recognisably the original song idea, it has been suitably dressed and styled by a process of collaboration."
I've got all the Jackdwa4 albums, the God Damn Whores releases and the 'Random' Jon Poole solo album. Impressively right across 'Bleak Strategies' it's possible to hear aspects of both of your song writing as the songs unfold. Is that a sign of just how "together" you were on this album?
J: "Yes, I think so. As I say despite being on the same page and having a number of influences in common, somewhere along the line it gets distorted and gets plopped out of The Dowling Poole machine clear as a cloudless, summer's day."
From: https://www.seaoftranquility.org/article.php?sid=2812
