At the core of Canadian four-piece Dragonette you’ll find a picture of unadulterated domestic bliss, with the happily married Martina Sorbara and Dan Kurtz having initially formed the band. Now based in the UK, in their early days Dragonette played their second ever show as the support act for New Order (and in New York City no less…), and ever since their career has shown no signs of slowing down.
Songs like I Get Around and Competition have seen them straddle the divide between indie and club crowds, although it’s not the first success vocalist Martina had in her career. In a previous life (ok, it was only a few years ago), she was a solo singer-songwriter, releasing two albums and even featuring on the soundtrack to the 2003 film Uptown Girls.
It’s a far cry from her current situation, and her husband’s summation of this part of her career is rather amusing, Dan describing it “tampon music” and “the soundtrack to a girl riding a white horse wearing white pants, feeling very confident she won’t stain anything”. Right, now we’ve got that out of the way, we tracked Dan down to find out how the band are preparing for their first ever Australian tour as part of the Parklife festival.
Firstly everyone loves a good love story, what attracted you to each other?
I think it was vodka fuelled, raw, sexual energy. That was the initial thing, and then afterwards we realised we really had a lot in common. We wanted to make music, we could do it together, we wanted to travel around the world and so we did. We got married, we made a record and we traveled around the world.
How long after you met did you get married?
Just under 11 months.
And who proposed?
That was my job, and it was one of the most fun things I have ever done, it was really cool.
What did you do?
Martina was on tour so I flew to Vancouver where she was, [as we] met in Halifax, which is on the east coast of Canada. I asked her to get married while we were standing over the west coast ocean… so I gave her a wax mold of the ring I was giving her, it was bright blue with all these little stones, she really liked the wax ring so I knew I was in pretty good shape, and then I went home and waited for her to finish her tour.
For a husband and wife to work side by side it must means you share every waking moment together. Are most of your fights about Dragonette or is it domestic things such as the washing?
Well, often working on a Dragonette song, because we do that at home, [it] feels like doing the washing up. I would say the fights are spread between the two. Our last professional argument was a couple of weeks ago, but we have definitely had fights about how badly I wash the dishes.
There are rumours that you’ve had a fight with your record label, is it true?
Not a fight, [but] our next record isn’t going to come out on Mercury in the UK, which I think is probably good for everybody… I think our problem that we had with our record label is that we turned out to be a pop band that they were ready to sell. I also think that they were so overwhelmed by British radio’s lack of interest in a Canadian pop band… I think we just moved on and they also have moved on, and that is just the way it goes. I think it has worked out just fine; us being with them for as long as we were gave us the chance to become a band instead of just two kids in a basement writing songs. They got us to the UK, which has really worked out great for us, and now we just have to figure out what we have to do next, which will be really fun.
Have you been to Australia before?
No, which is probably the best part of this unbelievable tour, we have been asked to come and play Parklife! It is really exciting, Australia for Canadians feels like you’re the cousin… it is also a really far [away] place to go, so being able to go play shows there makes the 24 hour agonising flight worthwhile.
What do you plan to do on your time off in Australia, are you going to do any sightseeing?
Well I haven’t really had time to do much planning because I have been so busy here in England, but I think we are going to go visit some friends we have over there. Beyond that I haven’t really thought of anything, except there is a company in Sydney who make really fun effects guitar pedals and I really want to go see what they do, that is one thing I have got in my mind already.
Who and what inspires your music?
Generally the way it works is; the music part I write, and the lyrics and the melody part Martina writes. Generally [I’ll] click around on a keyboard until I found a sound I really like and that grows. Writing lyrics is something that really impresses me, because I cannot do it at all. I don’t know where it comes from [or] what she is thinking about, so she must be thinking about a lot of things because there is a lot of writing that takes place. In terms of what kind of music we like, who inspires us… the first time I saw Martina she looked like a singer-songwriter playing an acoustic guitar, and the next time I saw her sing she stood up with a jazz band… a couple of months later I was listening to her sing opera in her kitchen, and then I listened to Kate Bush for the first time – because that is what Martina listens too. At the same time, I listen to led Zeppelin, Elton John, a bunch of early house music, a lot of Beatles records, the Beach Boys… and it has all fallen into what we sound like now.
How did you feel when your second ever gig was supporting New Order in New York?
It felt terrifying, and then all of our fears were realised when it turned out that their fans didn’t give a fuck about Dragonette. It was trial by fire, and I think we got a little burnt… but it is okay, I think I have had worse gigs. I can’t remember when and where, but that was defiantly one of them.
Was it worse then supporting Duran Duran?
Oh, the Duran tour was amazing, it was really fun other than the fact that some people got really offended in the way Martina was dressed. We made a lot of fans on that tour… ironically because Duran Duran’s fans are generally women in their late 30s to mid 40s, we have a lot of friends on MySpace who are in that demographic.
So you’re coming to Australia to play at Parklife, do you enjoy doing festivals or prefer to do your own shows?
I think festivals are amazing when they don’t have the feeling of it being like a war zone… we only feel like that backstage as musician, as you have to set up in 4 seconds, it’s pissing rain and everybody is in a bad mood because it’s been pissing rain for three days and everything is half an hour behind… and you have raced all day to get there from whatever airport, that is generally the feeling of festivals. Except in this case, Parklife seems like a dream festival, in that there is time for everything and it is the same show that moves from one city to another… and everyone we have dealt with so far has been so fucking wicked. I will be surprised if it doesn’t become the best tour or festival we have ever played. They have been so cool so far, and generally that is the thing that falls away with festivals, you get closer and all the organisers are so stressed out. All the little things that make life tolerable for bands who spend all their time airplanes and shitty vans… [instead it’s about] ‘do what you got to do to get it done’ and that is not the best environment to play in.
Dragonette tour as part of Parklife, proudly supported by inthemix. For all the latest on this year’s festival head to www.inthemix.com.au/parklife:
Sat Sep 27th – Adelaide
Sun Sep 28th – Melbourne
Mon Sep 29th – Perth
Sat Oct 4th – Brisbane
Sun Oct 5th – Sydney
