Fresh off of a plane home from New York City, Tim Derricourt of Dappled Cities Fly took some time off from enjoying the warm weather to have a chat about his band and their upcoming appearance at the Pyramid Rock Festival.
Dappled Cities Fly formed back when they were attending high school. At the time, there were no big ambitions of conquering the music world; they were just looking for something to do on their weekends, “It was just fun. Not many Australian bands have been very famous…especially not very many alternative bands have had a great deal of success. It wasn’t like we formed a band thinking ‘Yeah, if we form a band we could really be successful!’ It was more we were in high school and we had nothing to do. It came about as a weekend fun thing, nothing sort of super empowering to change the world or to learn something about ourselves”.
The boys clearly didn’t foresee the success they are currently enjoying; like landing deals with American indie label Dangerbird Records in 2006, and more recently with Aussie label Speak ‘N’ Spell Records. If they had, maybe a less random name would have been chosen for the band, “We came up with it when we were young, still in high school. We’d been through a variety of different names and none of them really had stuck. Dappled Cities Fly was another one of these that we didn’t think would stick. We just came up with names really fast like, ‘What do you think of this…this’ll be funny’, it was at that time we started getting attention…and that name stuck. It was kind of a bit of a silly, it doesn’t mean anything, there’s no alliteration and it’s hard to remember. It wasn’t meant to be some kind of grand plan of an excellent name. It just came out of a book I was reading at the time”
Even though their perplexing name has remained the same after 14 years of being together, DCF has undergone personnel and sound re-vamps of late with the addition of a keyboardist, “We really wanted to make a bigger sound. When we recorded and were writing the music, we discovered we had written all of these side melodies and we really needed a person to play them live. We had a couple of excellent keyboarders play for us, and the second one we asked to join the band because he was such an integral member of the group as a touring keyboardist.”
This welcome addition came about right before the band moved to LA to finish recording their second and latest album, Granddance. DCF was fortunate enough to work with producers Jim Fairchild (of Grandaddy fame) and Peter Walker. Even though the album is not set for release in the States until this spring, the band decided to pack-up again and tour out of New York City for the past five months. While there the band garnered quite a following, picking up hoards of fans from NYC, to the Midwest, to Texas. Even though the band fell in love with the energy, the diversity of people, and the never-ending list of things to do in the big city, they have just returned to Australia to play the summer festival circuit. Next up for the band is the Pyramid Rock Festival, which has Tim pretty excited, “Festivals are like my absolute dream. You can play to so many people who have no idea who you are. The best gigs we’ve probably played are festivals”. Not one to disappoint the punters who are keen on seeing something new and fresh, Tim has something up his sleeve, “For pyramid rock, hopefully we’re going to cover our bodies in black felt and put glow sticks on ourselves and do a New Year’s Eve style dance set…that’s what I am hoping.” It looks like until they hit the stage on Philip Island between Saturday 29 December and Tuesday 1 January, we will all have to wait in eager anticipation.
Dappled Cities Fly will be performing at the Pyramid Rock Festival at Phillip Island, Victoria, over the 2007 New Year’s weekend. For more info on the festival or the band check out their website at www.dappledcitiesfly.com
