Steve Wynn takes us on tour through the highways and byways of The Dream Syndicate’s scenic and kaleidoscopic catalogue
Whilst Steve Wynn’s lengthy and storied career as a solo and side-project journeyman has provided plenty of quality interest, his marshalling of The Dream Syndicate over four-and-a-bit decades of on, off and on-again activities, certainly merits the most significant attention and affection.
This is something that the ever-affable Wynn seems more than content to live with, along with the band’s long-running affiliation to the Paisley Underground. The fecund scene that began in early-1980s California – which also yielded the divergent likes of The Three O’Clock, Rain Parade, Green on Red, The Long Ryders, The Bangles and others – that continues to bubble away through rewarding latter-day reunions involving various key protagonists.
Through The Dream Syndicate’s formative 1981-1989 run, across multiple labels and line-ups, the group delivered much to be proud about. Beginning brilliantly with the seminal strains of 1982’s The Days of Wine and Roses, with its blend of Velvet Underground chug, Germanic motorik, wiry Anglophile post-punk and sultry psychedelia coiled around sturdy songcraft, the hybridising self-rejuvenating dye was cast from the start. Through the ensuing Americana desperado narratives of 1984’s Medicine Show, the twangling road trips of 1986’s Out of the Grey and the underrated self-summarising diversity of 1988’s Ghost Stories, The Dream Syndicate cemented a strong and memorable long-player legacy before an initial dissolution.
It’s a legacy that certainly left behind some kind of itch to re-scratch as the decades slipped past. Hence, a well-received live reunion in 2012 has subsequently paved the way for a doubling of The Dream Syndicate’s studio album canon.
Since rebooting things off-stage with the soaring kosmische-infused propulsions of 2017’s How Did I Find Myself Here? – with the band reconstituted robustly around Wynn, co-founding drummer Dennis Duck, long-serving bassist Mark Walton and new-to-the-band guitarist Jason Victor – The Dream Syndicate have continued to have a strong second act. This has manifested through the expansive textured travelogues of 2019’s These Times, the sprawling yet enthralling cosmic jazz-laced jams of 2020’s The Universe Inside and the more compact reunion-story-so-far encapsulations of 2022’s Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions.
In-between a rightly well-received and long-awaited full run of UK live shows in March of this year and the launch of a gargantuan boxset comprehensively bundling-up The Days of Wine and Roses-era of the band on Fire Records and the release of the How Did We Find Ourselves Here? documentary film, time felt more than ripe to reel in Steve Wynn himself, to discuss and decode The Dream Syndicate’s long-playing discography to date.
You’ve not long returned from leading the first ever full UK tour with The Dream Syndicate. Why do you think it took so long to happen, considering that you’ve played a lot – in various group and solo guises – in countries on mainland Europe over the years?
We just would usually play London and then move on. There were just too many shows to play on the Continent and we chose to do the more extensive tours in places like Italy and Spain and Norway. Unfortunately, the longer we went without playing the rest of the UK, the less demand there was for us to go there. This tour last March almost felt like a new band starting out. That being said, it went really well.
I was lucky enough to see and wholeheartedly enjoy the show at The Fleece in Bristol. With Vicki Peterson of The Bangles as a revelatory guest stand-in on guitar and the Rain Parade along as the support act as well as encore accomplices, which all added up to a Paisley Underground family mini-reunion. You made an in-between songs speech about how you were happy to embrace that vintage scene affiliation, which is unusual given that many ‘veteran’ artists often seek to shed such labels. Could you explain more about your contentment in carrying the Paisley Underground tag?
That may have been my favorite show of the tour. Great venue and I’ve always liked Bristol, having played there a few times on my solo tours. I always wonder why people are so quick to disavow their past. Maybe they’re embarrassed of it in some way. Not me. I like the records we made early on and the Paisley Underground has always been evocative of a good time with good friends, fun shows, lots of inspiration. No reason to be anything less than keen on that period as far as I’m concerned.
The Days of Wine and Roses (1982)
Why do you consider that The Days of Wine and Roses has endured so robustly over the years? It is down the convergence of the right songs, the right time, the right age, the right people and the right recording environment?
We were just a good band caught at the right time and both the budget limitations and also the aesthetic choices of our producer Chris D. meant that the record was a document of our live show which was in peak form at that point—still weird and raw enough but also more assured than it had been only a few months earlier.
As part of a recent interview feature for Shindig! magazine you suggested that the band’s magpie musical approach was often missed with overly-simplistic Velvet Underground comparisons in the early days. Do you think that The Dream Syndicate’s wider range of reference points, would be simpler to spot now, given that most people have frictionless access to a broader historical range of music?
Hard to say, especially since all of those influences which were pretty esoteric and relatively obscure at the time have all become common building blocks for indie bands and rock bands in general. I know that when I hear that first album, I’m often surprised at how Anglo it sounds. You can definitely hear that I was taking most of my cues at that point from your side of the pond.
I’ve loved the title track ever since seeing you perform it a stripped-down solo show in the early-2000s at The Borderline in London. Musically, it twists, turns and chugs as a post-punk-motorik epic and lyrically it’s one of your strongest storyteller pieces. Can you recall what went into its synthesis way back when?
Like most of my favorite songs that I’ve written, it came about quickly and almost randomly. I walked into the door, home from my record store gig one day in mid-1982 and just wrote down the title words which, of course, I knew was already the title of a song and movie. But somehow it spoke to me and I was brash enough to say I’m going to write my own “Days of Wine and Roses.” It all took about ten minutes.
Are you able to remember what propelled the composition of the two other pinnacle pieces from The Days of Wine and Roses, “Tell Me When It’s Over” and “That’s What You Always Say”?
“That’s What You Always Say” is the only song on the album that predates The Dream Syndicate. I had written it about a year before and recorded it as a solo single of sorts, [under the name] 15 Minutes. But it was just a wordless ooze at that point and actually fully took shape and flight once I played it with the band. “Tell Me When It’s Over” was influenced by “Save It for Later” by the English Beat—I really liked the way that song just went round and round in a circle and wanted to write a song like that.
Does the new 4CD boxset edition for Fire America aim to be the definitive archival statement for the album and its surrounding history, by pulling together things from other expanded reissues and digging even deeper into the tape stores? Were there any particularly interesting rediscoveries through the whole assembly process?
I was surprised how familiar all of the live material felt to me. We really used to listen to our own live shows a lot in those days, a mix of pride and even amazement that we had become the realization of some idea of what our favorite band might sound like. I hadn’t listened to those shows since way back when but it’s funny how it all came back in a rush when I listened again.
Medicine Show (1984)
How much did the departure of Kendra Smith and her replacement by Dave Provost on bass and the addition of Tom Zvoncheck on keyboards, combined with the creative tensions you had with Karl Percoda, change the dynamics and direction of the band when it came to the writing and recording of Medicine Show?
Immeasurably. Kendra brought a thing to the band—sonically and spiritually—that could not be replaced. It was obvious to us back then and it still is today. I think that once she left—amicably but also abruptly—we didn’t even bother trying to be the same band. At the same time, we were just getting better and to try to continue that spirit of being spiky, inspired amateurs would have been dishonest and hollow.
You cut the album with Sandy Pearlman, a bigger name producer who worked with The Clash and Blue Öyster Cult, and it took a somewhat staggering six months to make. Despite those factors, it still often sounds looser, rawer and weirder than The Days of Wine and Roses. What do you think explains that assessment of the end result?
You think so? I agree. It’s actually a weirder, more idiosyncratic and, to this day, more unique record than the first one. Over time I’ve heard other bands that mine the same turf that we did early on but I’ve never heard another album quite like Medicine Show. The closest thing would be some of the early Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums, and I’ve been told over the years that he was a fan of that album. Anyway, yeah Sandy. I think his kind of Stockholm Syndrome approach to production—repeat repeat repeat until you wear ‘em down—had a big impact on the album to a positive degree and to my drinking at the time to maybe a more negative degree.
Songs-wise, there are a lot of dark outlaw character studies and you talked on the C86 podcast about wanting to make a ‘damaged losers record’. What at the time was steering your songwriting?
We’d spent the first half of 1983 mostly on the road across the US and I spent a lot of time in bars, observing and also aspiring to plumb some kind of romantic depths. I felt like bringing things like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Flannery O’Connor and James Cain to our music both sonically and lyrically.
“John Coltrane Stereo Blues” has always felt like the longer and even more flexible sibling to “The Days of Wine and Roses”, with both still being expandable live staples. Have you always valued their open-endedness as much as the more structured songcraft within The Dream Syndicate’s canon?
It’s funny. For all the songs I’ve recorded over the years, it’s always “Coltrane” and now “How Did I Find Myself Here” that get the best results on stage. I think that I just have an affinity for the longer songs and giving myself up to a free-form approach that comes across well night to night. I’m surprised I don’t do it more often.
Out of the Grey (1986)
Was it a surprise to find yourselves ditched by A&M after Medicine Show?
To be honest, we weren’t ditched. They liked the band and were happy to keep us around. But we got tired of the slow path of making demos and trying out producers and not having a new record to take on the road and finally asked to be let go and they very kindly and generously complied.
The band broke up temporarily partly as a result I believe. What brought things together again, with some further line-up changes that found Paul B. Cutler take over on guitar from Karl Percoda and Mark Walton assuming the bass role that he’s held ever since?
It honestly felt like a full breakup when I walked away from the band at the end of 1984. Most of all, I just couldn’t get along with Karl – and vice versa, I’m sure – and didn’t want to go on pretending that I could. We had just moved too far apart. But I realized that I missed playing with Dennis and Mark and started looking for a new guitarist to round out the quartet and Paul was the perfect and obvious choice, especially since he went back to our very beginning, having produced our first EP.
This was an album I found the hardest to embrace for a while, due to some of its period production values and – more superficially – its artwork, but I’ve warmed to it a lot more since last year’s expansive multi-disc reissue on Fire, particularly as I always knew that there were some good moments semi-concealed within. Do you consider that it has been The Dream Syndicate album to benefit the most from a restorative re-curation?
Period production is correct and we’re not the only band of that era to have been hindered by the big snare drum and digital reverb effects of the time. I was actually amazed and quite pleased to find out how much Fire Records and Pat Thomas were able to do to strip away a lot of that dated sound when the record was remastered. Turns out it’s not that bad a record at all, although it’s still my least favorite Dream Syndicate album.
Is it a big ongoing Herculean task, as someone who has released a lot of records wearing multiple hats, keeping control of and keeping available your back catalogue, especially in physical form? The ‘first era’ Dream Syndicate albums have, for example, passed through lots of record company hands since they were originally released.
We recorded four albums for four different labels. That certainly did not make it easy to keep things in print and that’s the case to this day, although I’m hoping we can give Medicine Show a proper reissue treatment sometime soon. We’re definitely working on it.
Ghost Stories (1988)
This is one of my favourite Dream Syndicate releases; with some great tense rockers on par with the best parts of The Days of Wine and Roses and Medicine Show, a few earthier barroom brawlers reminiscent of post-Heartattack and Vine Tom Waits and some sincere piano-framed ballads benefiting from the keyboard skills of then new-recruit Chris Cavacas. Given such strengths, were you saddened that it wasn’t better received?
It was received as well as could have been expected. It’s not like we were the newest thing on the block anymore and there were other stories to be told out there. But I know that we were very proud of it and the fans liked it then and most have a similar reaction as you—that it was a good summation of all of our various eras, a hint to where I was going next and ended up being a nice one to go out on at the time.
How easy was the transition into being a full-time solo artist afterwards?
Very easy—I was already doing a lot of acoustic shows on my own and also with Robert Lloyd and Chris Cacavas. At the time, I had the idea to do solo records and Dream Syndicate records but my manager at the time talked me out of it. But it’s obvious I had one foot out the door and needed to try on some different hats for a while.
Is the album in the queue for an expanded reissue on Fire, along with Medicine Show?
Most likely. There’s a lot of material from that period, so it would be easy to tell a good story with a box set along the lines of the other ones they’ve done for us.
How Did I Find Myself Here? (2017)
Having reconvened The Dream Syndicate as a live entity in 2012, did you take some convincing to make it a studio reunion too? Was there a lot of relief that it turned out so well, after a thirty-year gap between LPs?
We’d been having a great time on the reunion circuit and had already pretty much played our favorite cities, some of them even for a second time. We all agreed that we didn’t want to keep doing the nostalgia thing and that it wouldn’t make sense to keep going unless we had some new songs to play. Our thought was that we had nothing to lose—spend a week in the studio and if we like it, release it. We ended up surprising ourselves and not only liking what we had recorded but also finding that we had a new direction and sound that still felt true to our history.
Whilst it’s still unmistakably a Dream Syndicate long-player, there’s an even more pronounced Neu!-like pulse and psychedelic edge in places. Does that shift reflect what you, Dennis, Mark and Chris had absorbed in the intervening years and reflect the input of new-to-the-band guitarist Jason Victor?
Strangely enough, that influence and some of other ones on that album harkened back to what we were doing and listening to when we started in late 1981. Krautrock, free jazz, repetition and groove—those were some of the elements we gradually lost in the 80s and they’re some of the strongest foundations for what we’re doing now.
Was the biggest logistical challenge bringing Kendra back into the fold for the guest spot collaboration of “Kendra’s Dream”?
It was less of a challenge than an actual shock. I wrote that song with different words—it came out later as “Steve’s Dream” [on the How We Found Ourselves… Everywhere! mini-album]—but didn’t like where it was going, so I had the wild idea to ask Kendra to sing it. We’re still friends and remain in touch, so none of that was difficult. But I never thought she would actually do it. And her lyrics and performance were way beyond anything I could have hoped for or expected. She really took the song somewhere else. I’ve never asked her what the song is about but sometimes I hear it and think she’s writing about the band and how we started.
These Times (2019)
This one feels very like much a confident continuation of its predecessor, though with more soul, blues and some electronic elements added to the melting pot. Did the songs come easier for this second post-reunion record?
I was writing a lot of songs on a step sequencer, almost in a way that Pete Townsend had done for Who’s Next. It gave me some rough, repetitive frameworks that I brought to the band, trying not to overwrite the songs and leave room for texture and improvisation in the studio. It eventually worked but it wasn’t easy getting there. Second albums—and this really was essentially our second album—are tough. There’s a pressure to repeat all the things that worked the previous time but also a desire to try new things—and we were testing the edges of that balance throughout the session.
As well as being motivated by your own record collections, has the expansiveness of California and all your touring road trips also been a big influence, as seems particularly noticeable on These Times?
That’s a pretty good assessment. I get a lot of ideas while looking out the window of the van. And we spent a lot of time on the road leading up to These Times. But as much as it can feel like an extensive road trip, the record and the session was more of an internal, psychedelic journey. It’s definitely a headphone record.
The Universe Inside (2020)
This is unquestionably the most radical sounding Dream Syndicate album to date, with a strong cosmic jazz infusion and a more instrumental-led direction across five songs ranging from seven to twenty minutes in duration. I understand that it grew out of an hour and half of jamming recorded at the end of the These Times sessions, which you then edited and added to afterwards. Are you able to briefly explain more about how it all came together and what informed your approach?
It was an eighty-minute unbroken jam that we started about midnight one evening during the These Times sessions when Stephen McCarthy dropped by the studio at the end of our day. We just figured that with an open studio, available engineers and a bunch of energy, it made more sense to socialize with our instruments in hand rather than over a six-pack of beer. But it ended up being one of those magic recordings and jams where everyone just connected and followed each other effortlessly.
We all found ourselves listening to the raw jam for pleasure in the following year and I finally decided to start finding melodies and lyrics and suggested structure to turn it into a series of songs. I’ve only had a few sessions in my life that came easily from start to finish. Days of Wine and Roses comes to mind as does [my solo album] Here Come the Miracles. This was another one of those—every decision was the right one. I love when that happens.
You’ve described it as one of the favourite records you’ve ever made…
Yeah, it’s right up there. I listen to it and almost can’t even believe I’m a part of it—it was definitely an out of body experience from start to finish. We all connected really well, both in the initial jam and then on all of the things that got added. Adrian Olsen who owns the studio in Richmond where we made the record had a lot to do with the eventual shaping of the record—he and I took it all to the finish line.
Has its construction made it harder to translate into live performances, given that it was the only album not to be represented on your most recent live setlists?
We’ve never even bothered to try it live. It would be frustrating and selling the record short to try to simplify it to a rock band approach. I hope that someday we can take it on the road with a six- or seven-piece band and all of the great videos that went with the record and do some kind of stage performance of the record. It would probably be a big money loser but we’ve all agreed we want to do that at some point.
Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions (2022)
Bringing things pretty much up to the present day, this most recent album has a more ‘portable’ nature but is high on sonic diversity. Do you feel like it is a good summary selection of what The Dream Syndicate’s ‘second era’ has all been about so far?
It’s funny you say that. Yeah, it’s a summation of this period the same way that Ghost Stories tied together what we had done in the 80s. There are elements of all three of our 21st Century records. It’s also the friendliest, easiest—both to make and, I think, to listen to—of the albums we’ve made. It really reflects how happy we were to see each other and play music together after being apart for those first eighteen months of the pandemic.
Are you already brewing ideas and songs for another Dream Syndicate album, or do you have an urge to put together another solo record beforehand?
I haven’t made a solo record in over a decade and I think that will be the next thing I do, at least after I finish the upcoming tour with The Baseball Project for our new album. I’m having that same bit of restlessness I had back in the late 80s but this time I won’t make the mistake of breaking of the band. I’m sure we’ll do something else, be it shows or a new record, at some point soon.
Do you have anything else new and/or retrospective in the offing that you can tell us about? I’ve seen that there is a forthcoming Dream Syndicate documentary film due for summer release in addition to The Days of Wine and Roses boxset for starters…
There’s definitely a lot going on this summer—that box set you mentioned as well as the documentary and the Baseball Project album. But once the projects get released, the work is done—and I’m already thinking ahead to the solo album and whatever else is down the road.
Main feature photo credit: Chris Sikich
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