Interview With The New Dress

Initially, when you see a band, you probably wouldn’t think it was possible for just two people to conjure up such a passionate, gut-punching amount of raw power and intensity. But that’s what you get with The New Dress when they play their good-for-the-soul-type-folk-punk, filled out with their unique take on political sincerity and pain-ridden love sick laments. Or maybe you would. Maybe you’d be able to tell that these two have got something special going on here. I recently got a chance to see them play for the fourth time, and later on, in the hot New York City night and in the shadow of the Knitting Factory, got to discuss Billy Bragg, being a bonehead, among other things.

State your name and what you do in the band.
Laura: I’m Laura, vocals.
Bill: Bill. I play guitar and sing.

So how’d The New Dress start?
Laura: Bill used to be in a really, really sweet band called The Banned, back in the day and we met in college and had similar musical interests. I sang on a track on a Banned recording and when they broke up, Bill harassed me on a daily basis to do something else.
Bill: I kept telling her that I wanted to be in a band with her that was kinda like Billy Bragg, to sum it up.

Laura: And he would call me up every single day and act like it was a new idea, and I was like “I don’t think so.”
Bill: I’d say “hey, I got this really great idea” which I’d done like 17 times before, to the point where she stopped answering her phone. I was like “you should be in a band with me!” Finally, I played her a song that I wrote and I had the lyrics done and everything, and it ended up being a song that we still play. That kind of convinced Laura, and it kind of took off from there. It started out playing songs on an acoustic guitar in my apartment and that’s how we still practice, except now in Laura’s apartment.

You know there was a band in the 70’s called The Band, right? They had that movie The Last Waltz. (INTERVIEWER’S NOTE; until it got spelled out I couldn’t tell the difference between “band” and “banned,” like anyone can when listening, so forgive the stupidity – Costa)
Bill: Well is that The Band as in B-A-N-D?
Yes.
Bill: Well The Banned that I was in, the punk rock Banned, was B-A-N-N-E-D, like “prohibited”.
I think I saw you guys play in the Bronx
Bill: Yeah, I think we have.
At the Manheim Beach Club?
Bill: Yeah, that’s like the in the Riverdale part of the Bronx.

Holy shit. I’ve seen you guys. I found some of your shit on the floor that night, like a pin.
Laura: I carry a purse now that has a Banned patch on it still and all these kids stop me on the train all the time, like random strangers going, “The Banned? No shit!The Banned? From Westchester?”

What’s the reason you guys never decided to expand beyond a two-piece? Was it something you never thought was necessary?
Bill: I don’t think there was a specific reason. Definitely in my mind’s eye, I had a vision that it would be the two of us, somewhat like, well, I hate to harp on the Billy Bragg thing but, a folky, punk-inspired thing. Coming from a punk rock band that had gone on tour with and seen hundreds of other college-aged white dudes in four-piece bands with regular rhythm section, I realized that [The Banned] started to fall into that same sort of umbrella where we were overlooked. We just got straight-up overlooked all the time, even though I thought we were pretty good. Other bands that I also loved got overlooked. I wanted to do something different and once we got the songs together, it just made sense.
Laura: For me, The New Dress has always been about me and Bill and I kind of wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s not about trying to close off our options or anything.

Garner all the royalties for yourselves?
Laura: Yeah, right. We have a list a mile long of friends and family that have offered to play drums in The New Dress. But The New Dress is about me and Bill, and that’s what keeps it important to us.

It really struck me, because I remember seeing you guys with Polar Bear Club and Dear Tonight and someone else at North Six in Brooklyn, where I ran into some German guy who’d come to America just to see punk rock shows and work as an au pair. I remember thinking “Wow, a two-piece. These guys are really cool.” Do you guys see yourselves as a part of a bigger group, a trend in NY towards basically “better” bands, less Youth Of Today-meets-Cookie-Monster, more straight-up bands like you guys, like The Unlovables, like Dear Tonight? I mean, I see it that way, I but drink too much coffee and think way too much about stuff.
Bill: My personal opinion, though I can’t speak for both of us, I try not to look too far past the two of us and what we’re doing presently. Just the same way that we haven’t ruled out adding something on a record, putting more instrumentation, we try not to limit ourselves. In the same way, I don’t look too far past the songs that we’re writing because we kind of benefit right now from being able to keep it really honest. Right now, I don’t think about where we fit in. We definitely like playing with punk rock bands, with hardcore bands, even with rock ‘n’ roll bands because people take notice. So, for us I really don’t see outside of that.
Laura: We’re really fortunate that bands that we’re friends with, and the bands on Red Leader Records, and family members’ bands have included us and if we start doing this as the “younger sibling” of these much heavier, much more mature, much more sophisticated operations, that’s fine with us, we’re happy to be the sound that sort of stands out and it’s been good for us. We’ve made a lot of friends and we have our own little scene there.
Bill: I’ve at least thought about how we could totally fit into like a folk-punk genre, and there are definitely other bands that are similar to us out there.

Ghost Mice.
Bill: Yes, stuff like that, that we could someday play with, tour with, or whatever. Until then, we don’t really think too far outside of what we’re playing, you know?

Right. So, I hear there’s a full-length hopefully soon?
Laura: Yeah. A combination of circumstances such as me and Bill being total boneheads when it comes to this kind of stuff, having no artistic prowess, and just general bone-headery has sort of delayed this but Red Leader Records has been kind enough to make it happen, so we’re hoping by the end of July that will be something that’s in our friends’ hands.
Bill: Yeah, the music is finished, and hopefully one month away.

That’s cool, makes me feel a lot better. Was it weird recording and thinking “Oh my god, this is a full-length!”? I mean, it’s kind of a big thing.
Laura: Yeah. It made me really nervous. Well, everything makes me nervous, but it made me really nervous to have something final and finished. You only get one chance to put out your first record, you know, the heart of what your band is, your first record, it’s what you meant to do from the start. So to have a finished product means that we get to close that chapter and that’s scary, because I like this chapter and we always think that we can do stuff better. I don’t wanna say “This is the best we can do” and “see ya! No more work on that record! It’s over!”
Bill:Especially coming from just practicing in our apartment and playing shows, it’s really only the second time that we’re recording. We did a demo with a friend.

I have that. It’s really good, it’s one of my favorite records.
Laura: Thanks!
Bill: This is really only the second time that we’ve put on headphones and screamed at a microphone with one of those puff screens on it. So it felt a little foreign but luckily it wasn’t the very first time that we’d done such a thing. But for us, it’s definitely different. But the end product, we definitely think represents us. We wouldn’t settle for anything less. It’s 100% what we do in our apartment.
Laura: It’s songs that have been dear to us for over two years.
Bill: The approach is just a little bit different.

Do you have any weird sort of show stories? Ones that just stick in your head?
Bill: I blacked out for this one but well, the company I work for had a holiday party, and I got rather inebriated at that, we showed up to the show and went on first, and we were rather unspectacular. Well, mostly me.
Laura: That was wacky.
Bill: But, I guess that was the funniest, we played about four songs really, really poorly.
Laura: I actually asked if we could finish. I asked if we could be done.
Bill: I had to call Laura after that and apologize for my unthoughtful and disrespectful behavior.
Laura: At the next time we played that venue Bill said “This is the first time we’ve played here, right?” Well you know, it was a unique holiday experience.
Bill: Yeah I guess it makes for a good story.