INTERVIEW: DICK VALENTINE aka TYLER SPENCER, ELECTRIC SIX – August 2024

INTERVIEW: DICK VALENTINE aka TYLER SPENCER, ELECTRIC SIX – August 2024
By Shane Pinnegar

Dick Valentine, the high voltage Dance Commander himself, brings Electric Six’s full-frontal assault back to Australia for the umpteenth time this month. Saying hi on a zoom call the man born Tyler Spencer is casual, sitting cross legged in shorts and a tshirt, and ready to chat E6.

Good morning. How are you?

Good morning – do you prefer Tyler or Dick?

Whatever you want – just don’t call me late for dinner. [chuckles]

Well, thank you for your time today. It’s much appreciated. Despite being a very long term fan of your music, I’ve never managed to catch you live yet. So, for a neophyte like myself, how would you describe the experience of Electric 6 live?

Well, you know, we’re older men and we just kind of stand there looking like old, old men. We move a lot less, but we still pack a punch sonically, yeah. I mean, there’s no real elaborate stage show. I think people confuse that – you know, they see the videos and they think they’re going to come see, like, The Rocky Horror Picture Show or something. But we’re just the bar band that comes out and plays like 2225 songs and has a few drinks with everybody before, during and after. That said, though, the crowds, for whatever reason – I don’t always get it, they are rabid. We have some pretty rabid fans, so they do the motion for us and there’s a lot of pushing, shoving, jumping and mayhem, so you will see that at our shows! You know, I’m 52 years old. I don’t understand it, but I will take it.

It sounds perfect to me – that’s my idea of a good night out, mate! So last year’s album, Turquoise, was a lot of fun, as all your albums are a lot of fun. You started that around about the start of the pandemic or just before the pandemic, didn’t you? So was it a tricky experience – did the end result evolve from your initial vision considering how long it took to make around that stuff?

Sure, yeah, we did. We started two of the songs – Panic, Panic and Units Of Time – which were tracked in January 2020 when we were starting the record and, you know, we thought we’d have an album by the end of the year. And then, you know, COVID happened when we got back to recording. You know, we’re literally like doing distancing – like, I’m in John’s garage, you know, , I’m not in his house where the studio is. And he’s feeding me instructions. I wasn’t even allowed to set foot in his house, you know? So we were doing vocals out there. We still wrote kind of the same way we always did. And the song Turquoise is about the pandemic. So, you know, it, it was definitely topical in that regard.

Yeah, sure. The sense of humour is still there, though. As it as it is in all your work…

Ohh yeah, yeah.

You didn’t let what was happening in the world turn things around into some big Debbie Downer or anything…

No. I drank a lot. I mean, a lot of people have. Yeah, I definitely upped my alcohol intake.

Yeah, yeah. Guilty as charged also.

Yeah, when I drink, I become really funny.

That’s what we all say though, isn’t it? Actual results may vary sometimes! I think it’s your 15th album. Is that right? Something like that.

Yeah. I get lost. I mean, I’d say 17.

That’s quite amazing. Does that surprise casual fans who maybe know you primarily from Gay Bar and Danger, High Voltage?

Ohh, I mean, yeah. When people come to see our shows, there are people who just think we have one album and there’s certainly a lot of people who, you know, who know everything about us and have all the albums. But there’s definitely a mix of people who have kept up with everything we’ve done. And there’s people who are like, ‘oh, I stopped listening to these guys after four albums, I didn’t know they had 15 now.’ So it’s all valid – it’s all fair. We’re just happy that enough people have come to the shows over the years to keep us going.

Those songs, Danger, High Voltage and Gay Bar, they and their videos are just so iconic. Is there a danger that they in some way overshadow the rest of your work since then?

I don’t think so. I mean, for those [songs] we were on a really, really ginormous record label for that first album and they didn’t wanna work with us after that. And so it just came down to, you know, the label we ended up on is a great label – they put out all our stuff, they’ve never asked questions, they’ve never A&R’d us – we just hand them the music. But that said, they don’t have the juice that Beggars Group Excel does, you know. And so, it was just as simple as that. If we had the budget and, you know, the team to help us do videos like that we would. But we have fun doing that so you just do what you can do, you do what you can afford, and we just, you know, we are not complainers, that’s for sure. We just, we just take hammered out and go to work.

It’s an amazing body of work that you’ve got – it must be difficult putting together a set list every night?

It is and it isn’t. I mean, you know, we don’t really rehearse that much. Like, we kind of rehearse on tour. So, it’s not difficult because I would say a quarter of our set list is already picked by songs we absolutely have to do. Then it just becomes, like, what we’ve been doing, and we always change it up if we can. If we get a new song in the mix, you know, we’ll take another one out. We do our best to vary it. We know that Perth and Melbourne we’re playing two shows and there’s gonna be people at both shows, so we at least try to give them slightly different shows each night.

Excellent. It’s 28 or so years you’ve been doing this since you started The Wild Bunch. Has it been everything you’d hoped for when you put a band together?

It’s exceeded my expectations by a billion. I never, never thought, you know… I never, ever, ever saw doing this as a career. Never, never saw us going to the places that we would go. I really… you know, in Detroit at the time in the mid ‘90s going into the late ‘90s even though The White Stripes were there and were formed, you had no idea that anything would happen to any of us and it just felt like you know, we were doing this band to have fun and you know had some great venues around Detroit to play. And I just thought that would be what we what we did.

Well, it it’s been an amazing career. I mean, you must be pinching yourself sometimes. It’s fantastic.

Oh yeah, I was on the fast track to nowhere! I was pretty directionless when all this happened. So, yeah, it became something I wanted to keep going as much as possible once I got it.

So you weren’t in your yearbook being voted ‘most likely to write humorous dance rock songs and travel the world’?

No. [laughs] I was most likely to be sitting in a corner eating glue or something like that. Yeah, the cool kids in high school, I think, are a little flummoxed at, like. who actually became the rock star!

The music industry is always constantly evolving and not always for the better. Considering how prevalent streaming and all that is now compared to when you first started out, is it harder to be in a rock band?

It’s not harder to be in Electric Six, but, you know, I can’t speak for other bands. We just have such a cult following and people still want to buy the vinyl, buy the CD’s, buy the physical stuff, buy the tshirts. So, we found a way to make it work. And you know, as far as streaming and Spotify and all that, I mean, you know, that’s out of our hands. It affects every artist the same way. It’s like a flat tax. So, I mean, anyone is going to be affected by it. I don’t look at it like, ‘oh, how dare you do this to Electric Six?’ I mean, they’re doing it to everybody, so you just have to adapt.

And I guess there’s a trade off because with the internet and everything comes the ability to connect directly with fans a lot easier, and get yourself out there without a huge record company behind you?

Yep, yeah. We were lucky that we got in when we did, you know, like, that we actually were around and signed to a traditional deal. I’m not sure how it works, but I’m also the last person to ask so…

So, when you had those big hits at the start – and even now, you’re doing these tours that sell out around the world and have crowds screaming for you and singing along with the words you wrote – so, how do you keep your ego in check?

I think the – you know what? When Danger, in 2003, was a big hit I was 31 years old, so maybe if I was 21 it would have been more difficult. But I mean, I had my whole 20’s of working crappy jobs and just kind of understanding like, sure, we have a couple of hits on the radio, but that is really not the biggest deal. I mean, so many bands had hits, you know? So I was just always, I guess, better at seeing that in the big scheme of things it wasn’t that big of a deal. You know, there’s things much bigger than having a song on the radio… but that said, it’s great! I mean it’s a lot of fun and for me, it’s the world travel that has been the best perk, you know, going to some of the places that the band takes me – it’s fantastic.

It’s nigh on impossible to listen to Electric Six without moving part of your body. Were you always an avid dancer or was dancing always important to you?

I am definitely NOT! Yeah, I don’t have any dance moves. The whole thing about dance and nightlife and all that is, I mean, I’m a 5 foot 9 white guy with sinus problems. I mean, I don’t dance – so that’s the whole point of Dance Commander and Dance Epidemics. I’m pretending to be something I’m not, and trying to make myself more exciting than I am.

It’s working, mate. You know, you’re talking to some long-haired dude in Australia right now about your dance moves, right? You got yourself out there. It’s working!

Thank you.

I’m intrigued – what exactly is your connection with the hard rock band Bang Camaro? I’ve looked up a few things and it’s really vague where you fit into that puzzle…

Oh, they supported us in 2008 and they were a support band in in The States for a good seven week tour. I think you know the thing is they have, like, four musicians, but on any given night, maybe 30 vocalists, you know? So, I think it’s written somewhere that I was in the band – all that meant was I stepped on stage with them and was a vocalist once! That’s all I thought it was. I mean, they were recruiting people in every city that that we went to. You know, they’re like, kind of on Craigslist – ‘wanna sing in a rock band? You can tonight!’ So they would have like 30 singers on stage and that’s how they work.

Right, right. So, you’ve got so many albums bravely going into disco punk rock territory that most bands never get into – you get to travel the world playing to great acclaim – what else is left on your bucket list to achieve?

Oh… at this point I just want to keep doing what we’re doing – exactly what we’re doing – and then, you know, hopefully get to the point where I play an Electric Six show, then I step peacefully into my coffin and then that’s that. I just want stasis. I want beautiful, calm stasis. That’s what I like.

Well, that’s that’s a goal to have, my friend. I’m looking forward to catching you when you get to Perth in West Australia and all the best with it, we’ll catch up there soon. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have two shows I think in Perth. Thank you for having me. Bye, take care.

 

ELECTRIC SIX August / September 2024 Australian Tour Dates

Thursday 22nd August – BRISBANE, The Triffid
Friday 23rd August – SYDNEY, Metro Theatre
Saturday 24th August – MELBOURNE, Croxton Bandroom
Sunday 25th August – MELBOURNE, Croxton Bandroom
Friday 30th August – ADELAIDE, The Gov
Saturday 31st August – PERTH, Rosemount Hotel
Sunday 1st September – PERTH, Freo.Social

Category: Interviews