Dum Dum Girls started out as anything but an all- female rock outfit. Named after Iggy Pop’s “Dum Dum Boys,” the band was initially conceived as lead singer Dee Dee’s solo project, but when she decided to tour her delicate material she ended up enlisting a gang of gals to back her up. Dee Dee coralled friends Frankie Rose, Jules and Bambi and the band was officially born. “I didn’t care if they were the greatest musicians in the world,” says Dee Dee. “I made it a point to pick girls I knew and who are like-minded and had fun personalities. Touring makes it so hard, so I had to know they were going to get along and there wasn’t going to be any drama.”
I Will Be, the group’s Sub Pop debut, touts Dee Dee’s same unique combination of gnarly, funky guitars and soft melodies as her solo effort, but there’s something different this time around. “The songs are more recent so I hope they are better,” says Dee Dee with a laugh. But there’s more to it than just that. During the recording process, she enlisted songwriter/producer Richard Gottehrer to polish up the grit (brainchild behind The Angels’ 1963 hit “My Boyfriend’s Back” and The Strangeloves’ 1965 single “I Want Candy,” as well as producer for debut albums from Blondie and The Go-Go’s).
“He’s a legend,” explains Dee Dee. “He’s written some of my favorite songs and produced some of my favorite groups.” Gottehrer’s hand in the project and the group’s transition to pop-ier pastures can be heard on “Jail La La,” where he preserved the noisy, lo-fi sound and brought out the vocals to accent all that fuzz, a technique that gives the rest of the album a more ’60s girl group sheen.
Although Dee Dee keeps true to the same DIY ethic, her songs have come a long way since she started out, when she released 7-inch home recordings through Zoo Music and Captured Tracks. I Will Be is a celebration of fear, fun, love and Dee Dee’s growth as both a person and an artist, made most evident on tracks like “Baby Don’t Go” and “Blank Girl,” a duet with her husband and Crocodiles lead singer, Brandon Welchez. “I’m not so imaginative where I can make all this stuff up, so there’s always truth in what I write,” she explains. “A lot of times it’s not so direct where it’s a personal experience, but I’ve lived it to some capacity.”
The rest of the band officially met each other at the 2009 CMJ festival in NYC, but to make up for lost time, the girls have been steady on their promo grind by touring, shooting videos and, most importantly, getting to know each other. When asked about the group’s future, Dee Dee doesn’t go into detail, but there is a kind of certainty in her unsureness. “We’ll be touring pretty heavily for this album. We’ll be doing SXSW and a lot of back and forth between Europe and U.S.,” explains Dee. “But that’s so far off in the future, I don’t really know.”
