Arts & Life, Music

The Doggerels thrash around

The Doggerels started off with only two members: Cal State Long Beach student Christian Vannasdall (guitar) and University of California, Los Angeles student Cat Chambers (vocals/guitar). The duo played a few shows under a different moniker at open mic nights, until they realized they needed a drummer to help find and hone their creative sound. UCLA student Thomas Williams (drums) then came into the band after watching their performance at Viento y Agua Coffehouse.
The Doggerels performed their first concert under their official band name in spring of 2013, creating new beginnings for their musical endeavors. Now, the six-month-old trio practices inside a Long Beach warehouse, surrounded by random furniture, disposable toy trucks and other miscellaneous objects.
Despite the random setting for practices, it allows the band to play to their hearts’ content without any worry of making too much noise, even if it means having to withstand the hot temperature of the room.

Q: How did you meet and form the band?

Cat Chambers: I met them both through their girlfriends, and then Christian and I were playing music for six months, like doing coffee shop shows and whatnot. When I met Thomas, he asked if we needed a drummer.
Thomas Williams: I went to their show at Viento y Agua, and they sounded great, but I thought I could make it better.

Q: How did you choose your band name?

Christian Vannasdall: It’s sort of an antiquated term. Doggerel is really poorly written poetry. It’s almost like a Shakespearean diss. It hasn’t been used in any popular prose that I know of. I think I came across it a couple times on some lectures on Early American Literature last semester at CSULB. I was in class one time, and I was writing down things we came across. Doggerel was one of the words, and I sent [Chambers] a huge message of all the stuff I came up with.
CC: It’s like calling someone’s poetry elementary.

Q: How would you describe your sound?

CC: We’re like garage-blues with like angry-girl music …. We put sounding pretty on the back burner.
TW: It’s hard to say what we sound like, but I always try to bring rawness. I think that Cat [Chambers] has a good handle on it; I like to complement it.
CV: I feel like one thing we try to get across in live shows is an energy and frustration. Technique and musicianship go out the window, especially for me. I kind of just thrash around.

Q: What do you mean by angry-girl music?
CV: Men had predominantly sung Blues music, and it’s always been this frustrating gender battle, so I think it’s a cool thing about [Chambers] singing the lyrics, you get to hear her side of the story.
CC: The music scene in East L.A., if you have a female singer, they made a stylistic decision to sing very ‘Best Coasty’ — very monotone, subdued, and I think it’s not as fun for me to sing that way. It doesn’t feel as good, and I like to sing loudly, and right now there is a definite male dominance in the garage rock scene, so I’d like to be able to hang. There’s that and that was a personal frustration because you grow up listening to Janis Joplin and it’s like, ‘Why aren’t you singing like that?’
TW: I feel like playing shows, we have faced some gender-biases. I remember playing diPiazza’s and people were like, ‘Oh, a girl singer. How cute.’ Sometimes you just got to kick the door down.

Q: Chambers plays with her vocals a lot as she sings. Do you ever know what she’s singing about, or do you guys just add your sound into the mix?

TW: There are some songs where I can make out the vocals, but most of the time I’m just feeling it, musically not lyrically. We had some recordings a few months ago, and it was the first time I heard the lyrics.

Q: What are your musical influences?

CC: Top influences would be Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, Janis Joplin, Ella Fitzgerald.
TW: I like all kinds of music, but if you’re talking about playing drums, I like Ty Segall, The Flaming Lips and The Beatles.
CV: I listen to a lot of the Delta Blues Men, Robert Johnson and stuff like that.

Q: Why don’t you have a bassist?

CC: I think they’re clutter. Honestly, if you have a good enough drummer, you don’t need a bassist.
TW: Also, for the sake of the vibe of the band, at least in my experience I haven’t met a bassist that I thought was a cool guy.
CV: It’s how we’ve managed to carve out our own groove and sound.

Q: Do you have an EP coming out?

CC: We’re working toward one. We’ll be recording on Sunday.
CW: We have music on our Bandcamp, and we also have a Youtube channel for our live performances.

The Doggerels are planning some shows in the near future and will meanwhile work on releasing their four-track EP. For more information, check out their Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/thedoggerels.

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