Interview: King Missile (Dog Fly Religion)'s John S. Hall & Dogbowl

Almost sabotaged by a wretched Sydney hotel Wi-Fi connection, there were a few nuggets to be found when sifting through our recent conversation with King Missile (Dog Fly Religion)'s John S. Hall and Dogbowl aka Stephen Tunney. Musical collaborators on and off for nearly four decades, read selected highlights from Chris Cudby's chat with the US alt-rock luminaries below, plus be sure to catch their long-awaited first ever duo performances on local stages when they play in Aotearoa this week — brought to you by Powertool Records...

King Missile / Dog Fly Religion - John S Hall and Dogbowl
with support from Constant Hum

Wednesday 1st October - Masterbowl, Masterton*
Thursday 2nd October - Meow, Wellington
Friday 3rd October - Porridge Watson, Whanganui*
Saturday 4th October - Under The Bridge, Tauranga (noon)
Saturday 4th October - The Monkey House Theatre, Whitianga*
Sunday 5th October - Double Whammy, Auckland*

*Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Chris Cudby: King Missile (Dog Fly Religion), refers to you and Dogbowl specifically, as opposed to later versions of King Missile right? You recorded the first two King Missile (Dog Fly Religion) albums together with Kramer — what originally drew you both together?

John S. Hall: I asked him to work with me. He put music to my poems and it worked, and we added some more musicians and we had a band. We made two records and then Dogbowl did a solo career. I always wanted to work with him again and now we're doing it.

Dogbowl: I think John's words and the songs are pretty timeless and it's really great fun to work with him again. This chance to come down south of the equator is really great.

John S. Hall: And we have new songs.

Dogbowl: A lot of new songs. We have a whole new album.

John S. Hall: It should come out eventually.

You're playing a mix of classic material and brand new, never performed in New Zealand songs?

John S. Hall: We're doing 'Take Stuff From Work', 'Sensitive Artist', 'Detachable Penis', I think 'Martin Scorsese'... several others. I would say half of the set we didn't do last time when I was here.

For me as a listener, King Missile was one of the big bands that I'd hear when I first started listening to alternative radio (in the early / mid nineties). You guys had a whole bunch of tunes on rotate and you even had a hit single on the New Zealand charts.

John S. Hall: I didn't have the experience of being in a huge act in New Zealand, because we didn't come to New Zealand until much later. I heard about New Zealand and Australia, our songs were big there, but we didn't have a really good manager to help leverage that and get us over here. So that opportunity kind of went to waste. It would have been a lot of fun to be here then, but it's a lot of fun to be here now.

I went to law school in the late nineties. What was important was to always do what I wanted to do. And I always did. I made a record every few years for many years and I hope to make a few more records. We'll see what happens.

Damn straight. I'm really interested in how people can maintain an artistic practice in music over a many decade career.

John S. Hall: Well the means of production have gone down, so it's a lot easier to make recordings than it used to be. I think that's the real key to it. As long as one continues to be inspired, then I think one can keep going.

You mentioned you've been writing new songs together. What themes have you been exploring with the new songs?

John S. Hall: We have one about a woman with a blue strap-on dildo, called 'Her Cock Is True'. We have one called 'Hate Fuck Yourself', which is about masturbation I guess. We have a song called 'Go Dark', it's like a breakup song, recovering from a breakup. That one's a more serious song, not as intentionally humorous. A song about sparrows... we have like twenty songs on the (new) record.

Dogbowl: There's 'Lambie' we did. What's fun is that we had a lot of time in my living room, I transformed my apartment into a recording studio. John and I were able to work on these songs in a skeletal basis. First we just the whole thing just ourselves and then we invited different musicians in to overlap stuff. We were able to do it on our own time basis. Like when we felt like doing it and were inspired to do it.

It was really great also to start working with John again. Because we haven't worked together in this way since the They record (released 1988). There's a feeling of unfinished business that I thought was very satisfied. It's really great to be doing it again. We've had some concerts in New York, we just had one in Canada, so we're looking forward to doing this in Australia and New Zealand. This time we're doing it as two people, so we're getting to the very core of what it is that we used to do back in the eighties. It's very naked and there's no frills, but I think it's more pure.

Is there anywhere in New Zealand you're looking forward to travelling to?

Dogbowl: I've always wanted to go there, John's been there before.

John S. Hall: I really like Wellington, I really like Auckland. The other cities I don't think I've played before, looking forward to seeing some new cities.

Dogbowl: I hope we do justice to the wonderful audiences I'm sure we're going to meet. We'll play a lot of new songs and the old favourites, a lot of songs from the period when I was no longer in the band. A lot of those great songs like 'Detachable Penis' and 'Jesus Was Way Cool'. I'm very happy and honoured to be able to play on those songs as well. We've been having some very good results with the audiences with the new stuff. They seem to like it as much as the old stuff. For us as artists, we're really encouraged by the response for the new songs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.