PropertyOfZack had the chance to speak with Dredg just a few weeks ago on their headline tour with The Dear Hunter, Balance & Composure, and Trophy Fire. Gavin, Mark, and I discussed the tour, positive and negative reaction to their last few records, future touring, and more. Read up below!

For the record, could you state your name and role in Dredg?
Gavin: Gavin, and I sing in Dredg.
Mark: Mark, and I play guitar.

The band is currently out on a headlining tour with The Dear Hunter, Balance & Composure, and Trophy Fire. How have dates been?
Mark: The dates have been great. They’ve been fun and smooth, and we’re sounding good, kind of.
Gavin: It started off a little rough because I lost my voice in the very beginning. We had to cancel a hometown show, which is the easiest show to make up, but since then, they’ve been great.

How many new songs have been worked into the set?
Mark: There are like four or five every night.

The supporting lineup is certainly stacked quite a bit. Has having them out every night been a nice mix with the crowd?
Mark: They’ve been great. I feel like all these bands are likeable, so the crowds have been good.

The band is supporting its newest release, Chuckles & Mr. Squeezy, which has been out for two weeks now. Have are fans reacting to it?
Mark: Some yes, some no. The vocal ones have been negative, but it’s just a different direction. Production wise they’re different. When you hear the songs live they’re still very much us. It’s kind of like Dredg songs wearing different clothing if you will, and some people can see past that.

There has certainly been a lot of discussion that it’s a major departure from your prior material. Were there nerves at all in terms of how the fans would react to it?
Gavin: This reaction is not surprising to us. I didn’t know some people would be so hateful about it. I can understand that some people wouldn’t dig it, but we’ve had all ends of the spectrum. We’ve had people say they didn’t like our old stuff, but like this. And others haven’t heard of us before and don’t have any bias. A lot of our old fans like it too. I’m just glad people are talking about it. It’s better than it hitting the internet and no one giving a shit.

What would you attribute to the change in sound?
Mark: Production. We let Dan do his thing. We like it because we knew what we wanted to do. We didn’t want to make another Dredg rock record. Not that we don’t like them, but it was the right time to do something and refresh what we were doing. Dan also attributed some writing.
POZ: Was Dan picked for that purpose?
Mark: Yeah. We knew we could go in, and he works fast. We already knew him and were friends with him. The songs live are very much us. When you change a production style people can’t see past it. It’s interesting. Live, I think it could’ve been off different records.

How would you compare the writing process to the last record?
Gavin: It was a lot faster, first of all. We wrote and recorded this in eight or nine months.
Mark: We weren’t together either.
Gavin: A lot of it was written remotely. I was living in Seattle at the time. We had to be productive in order to do it that way.
POZ: Are you guys happy you were able to do it so quickly?
Gavin: It’s not a new approach. We were doing this when we were all in college in the 90’s. We were just trading cassettes rather than emails. A few songs on every record have been written that way. We don’t really have a strict formula or format. The more approaches you take, the more diverse it will be.

The last record was pretty successful for Dredg. Did it exceed expectations for the band?
Gavin: Not really. It wasn’t that successful.
Mark: We think our fans liked it. Our fans enjoyed it. If you didn’t already know us, we felt like it wasn’t the type of record that would grab you.
Gavin: Now that some people don’t like this record, some people are coming out of the woods and saying they don’t like this one either. You can’t make all these people happy. What do you do? You can’t win in this fucking world anymore.

Dredg signed to Superball Music for the release. Was there a reason you signed with them?
Gavin: Having worldwide distribution, which we’ve never had. And Trail Of Dead is on there and we’ve had a similar career over the years, and they gave the label a really good reference. We trust their opinion. They’re pretty smart about their business.

Following this tour you guys will be heading to Mainland Europe for an extended tour. Will you change up the set?
Mark: Probably. We have a lot of festivals. So there will be shorter sets.
Gavin: The goal on this tour was to play new material and some songs we hadn’t played. We got in a comfort zone of playing songs that went over well live and it was easy to do, so we try to bring out a song from records we have, and songs we don’t normally play.

That tour finishes up in late June. When will we see a new tour announced?
Mark: We’re doing a little short run in July in some of the cities we missed on this tour. We may go back to Europe. There’s a rumor we might be main support for a band we all like in the fall. We’ll definitely be out there for the rest of the year.

Are there any tracks that didn’t make the record that may be released?
Gavin: There are definitely tracks that we have. I was listening to them the other day. We might use them for another record. It depends on how much we can work on them. Or if not, we’ll make them b-sides. There are some good ideas there.