Interview With Dante Fox

 

How did you get the name Dante Fox?

Tim: Erm, I’ve always really been into like double barrel names like Led Zeppelin and Def Leppard. Names that don’t mean anything but they sound good after about three weeks and ten lagers. The original band going back to 1989 I think I came up or Jenko the old bass player came up with Dante and said Dante is supposed to be the man behind the mask and I said just put Fox on the end. Dante Fox it doesn’t mean anything it’s just a double barrel name and after a while people were saying it sounded good.  We were going to be called the Big Heat for a while not the Big Feat. So that’s where it came from it means nothing, it was just a conversation we were having and like I said the double barrel thing going on so we though yeah that’ll do classic name!

 

 How did the band originally get together?

Tim: Right, I was in a band called Carrier and we used to do Magnum supports and we did one album and we were going in a direction quite a lot of glam looking bands like a Bon Jovi est common sound, it was 1989 at the end of the day, spandex and spikey hair. We got so far and we realised that the singer was a lot older than the rest of us and we decided to basically chuck the singer and get another vocalist in and it never happened in the end and things were changing Heart were coming out with some cracking albums and I was into the really old very very melodic AOR classic stuff and Sue was singing with bands already and we were going out together so it was the obvious thing to get together so in the end we recorded three songs using the Carrier backing band erm with Sue singing lead vocals and wrote some songs recorded them and then we started getting some interest and we got an interest of a guy named Tony Sylvester at the time he used to manage Power Station he got Power Station together originally so we signed like a management and publishing which we thought that was the right way to go at the time. We got some recordings out of it at the end of the day, that’s pretty much it really.  

 

How long did it take for Dante Fox to get established in the music business?

 Tim: Dante Fox formed in 89 and the first album came out in 96 so if you call that established then seven years.

 

Sue and Tim write the songs do you write from personal experiences?

 Tim: I just write riffs and things and chord changes.

Sue: Erm, not from personal experiences cause a lot of the early stuff was about love and me and Tim have been together for like twenty-one years so I sort of interpret other things that happen and channel it through that cause it something that people can relate to isn’t it. Until this latest album where I’ve sort of gone in a different direction which really has opened a whole new window.

 

Mike: It’s like to try and make sure always that we have strong lyrics and guitar licks and songs that are memorable at the end of the day. Generally we have all lots of different influences that as a group effort get into the music.     

 

How would you describe your music?

Tim: This album is very very big melodic rock big hard rock.

Mike: Hard-edged rock with a great British feel, big choruses and big guitars.

Tim: But modern as well not stuck in 1989, an up-to-date feel.

Mike: Melodic Rock with a capital ‘M’ and a capital ‘R’!

 

What do you consider the strong point of your music to be?

Tim: With this album its more so the individual performance more so than the last albums. This album is good songs and good choruses and great vocals and great performances from each individual member.

Mike: It’s a great piece, outstanding album, you know its there its in your face, everybody’s full of energy, everybody’s energy levels is fantastic.

Tim: It’s real. There are no drum machines or samples or nothing on this album it’s all real. Guitars are all played through Marshall amps and loud and it’s all real.

 You have a new album ‘Under The Seven Skies’ coming out on March 23^rd, what can fans expect from this?

Tim: Better songs, better playing, we’ve gone up to the next level, yeah we’ve definitely taken Dante Fox up to another level and the single performances of each person is great on it.

 

Why is it called ‘Under The Seven Skies’?

Sue: I wanted something to reflect time and the passing of time and each day in your life brings you something new doesn’t it. So its all about the passing of time and the seven days make the week, the week turns into years which is the title track of the song as well thrown in with the mother’s journey where her son’s been lost to her, which could be related nowadays to drugs or sexuality or love or just meeting the wrong type of person so its quite open to peoples interpretations.

Tim: We wanted it to be a big song it was the song we all came together as individual everybody put there bit in, in terms of song writing and ranging and it’s impressive and it sounds totally different

 Sue: There’s different topics under it like Firing Guns, which is another song, but there’s a lot going on in the world.

What are your favourite songs off the new album?

Mike: We all love the album and each and every track they all stand up as individual tracks themselves. The public has heard a lot of ‘Breaking Me Down’ and ‘The Last Goodbye’ which was one of the first samples. 

Tim: There’s some good love ballads on there as well, ‘Love Tried To Find You’ is fantastic.

Prior to this album, the band had considered calling it a day what inspired you to regroup and make another go of it?

 

Tim: Basically hunger. The reason why we stopped originally on the second album the record company at the time, Now And Then Records, did a deal with a company called Bare-knuckle who at the time were releasing Survivor albums and they sold it to this label who were just closing down their old department which is like great timing. So we put lots of time lots of money went to debt in UB40 studio to record it we got great press here and we expected it to be a next stepping stone in Japan and it obviously didn’t do what we expected because of backing and promotion.

 

Mike: The environment to Rock music as well had changed and over the last couple of years that environment has become more friendly to bands like ours which makes it a lot easier to get back to the position we hold.       

 

Tim: So we felt, Sue and myself, at the time and certainly the other lads felt just really fed up you know after all that hard work it didn’t meet its expectations. Jon the drummer was working for Bob Catley as well at the time for the first two Bob Catley albums, he decided to go off and start a family and whatever. So we never stopped really we called it a day we didn’t actually break up and life goes on and before you know four years had gone and I realised I was really sad without it my existence as a person is sad without doing this so we started again we got involved with a local songwriter and a local band called Pulse and I just started to get together with him and started writing songs.  

Did the writing/recording process of the new album differ from the previous albums?

Tim: Yeah because this time we were paying for it and it was set out.

Mike: It was very important to us that it all went right.

Tim: It was very well planned.

Mike: Yeah it was meticulously planned. We rehearsed before we went in to record it to make sure that we got everything right as best we could.

Tim: We had three weeks start to finish in terms of financial that’s all we could afford. So we planned it out exactly what we could do and the drums and bass literally went down within three days, which was amazing, and it sounded fantastic as well. Which then set the whole thing moving   and it put pressure on everyone else to get there parts right which is what happened and it meant that we had plenty of time to mix and do backing vocals, we got Tony Mills in to do some harmony arrangements for us and all that little icing on the cake really makes a great album.

Was there a concerted effort to change/update the Dante Fox sound to give it a grittier/heavier edge?

Tim: It’s just natural progression. It’s when you get together with these different people. Playing with Mick for example you’re not going to need such a hard rock drummer.

Mike: The whole energy of the band is different as you say Mick on the drums, my bass and Tim’s guitars and especially the link with keyboards now and the keyboards especially sound like a part of the band as maybe before it was a second thought but this time every instrument been very important and thought about.   

Tim: And I’m going to give him some credit whose sitting next to you now cause in terms of the keyboard parts instead of just playing chords what he actually did was he came up with proper string arrangements and a lot of these songs have got string arrangements you might not hear it cause of the Marshall amps.

 Sue: You’re wondering how I put up with this?

 Kim: Yeah.

How hard do you find it being a female fronted melodic rock band in a world that is predominantly male-orientated?

Sue: I don’t really have a problem with them. I don’t know why there’s not more female Rock singers. Because thinking back there’s been some cracking female rock singers that you don’t sort of see anymore.

Sue:  I don’t know you go out with Girlschool and they can Rock, they party.  I don’t see that women aren’t involved in Rock when all this drug taking going on. It ain’t all men in the room is it. I find it very frustrating and I think that’s partly why we took the break as well, for me personally I felt it was very frustrating no matter how hard I did was sort of over looked.

Tim: Also the melodic rock crowd and I’d like to say this but all the people who spend lots of time on notice boards not everybody because I do as well all they want is a Journey like band and somebody who sings in a high voice and sounds like Steve Perry, that’s all they seem to want and with drum samples that sound like they are from 1986.       

If you could join any band any time who would it be with?

Mike: It depends what year.

Mick: The Sugarbabes

Sue: Heart in the eighties.

Mike: I’d sadly join Bon Jovi.

One criticism I've heard of Dante Fox, is that most of the harder songs are of similar tempo.  The rockers are always mid-paced.  Do you never have the urge to just cut loose and really rock it up?

Mike: I think that’s something we have done on this album.

Tim: You see the first album we were originally managed by a lovely lady called Linda Bruce who owned Rich Bitch studios which is really popular. Linda has now passed away but Linda was our manager for a while and she groomed Sue and myself to try and write songs in a harder edge like Rock Set cause she was trying to get us a major deal and she thought she could do it and she did get close on one occasion. So when we were at the first album it wasn’t written as an album it was written as collection of songs to sound catchy and possibly get radio airplay and then when we got the chance to release something through Mark Ashton we just gave him that, so it wasn’t really an album it was a collection of songs we had given to Linda to help us get an album deal.

At an early Gods show, the band backed Stan Bush.  How difficult was it learning all his songs, how was the experience, and do you guys stay in touch?

Sue: We learnt all the stuff in our own rehearsal time. Then we had three days with Stan Bush to sort it all out. Cause I wasn’t even going to do backing vocals, I had only been singing his vocal line in rehearsal to keeps the guys knowing where they were. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tim: It was good cause the old band used to play two sequences. We used to have a sequence of keyboards. It was great at the time cause we were playing the Gods on the Saturday as Dante Fox and then Stan Bush on the Sunday and it was great to get away from the click. Stan was like to me a dream come true, I remember buying his album in 1986, I bought it on import and it was a classic album at the time.

Do you prefer singing/playing fast songs to ballads or do you like the variety?

Tim: I prefer playing rockier songs but I love to solo in ballads.

Sue: At the moment I’m really enjoying doing the heavier stuff. I really enjoy doing the new stuff but its new isn’t it, it’s like a new present that you’re giving out. There’s three albums what I think is a really good mix and it’s something I think has really grown. I suppose in the earlier days it was more acceptable to be female and do lighter stuff cause that’s what it was.

 How would you describe your voice? Is there any woman you consider your contemporary?

Sue: Soulful, passionate and powerful in places. I really sing from the heart. Ann Wilson and Cher. I don’t really compare myself to people and I don’t identify someone and try and write in that style. They come up with some music and I just write to it what I feel at the time the words and emotion that I can conjure up at the time. 

 What is the most embarrassing that thing that has happened to the band?

Sue: I remember the time when someone gave me fizzy water cause I have to drink a lot of water on stage. I took a load of fizzy water and I kept burping and you try and sing and burp and it just doesn’t work. I said on stage as a joke, ‘fizzy water makes you burp’ and it was in all the reviews.

Tim: Can I tell her about the radio one?

Sue: No you can’t its really embarrassing. What’s your most embarrassing one Tim?

Tim: We’ve never done embarrassing in this line up.

Who were your influences?

Mike: The Beatles, The Stones anything sixties.

Sue: I was brought up on Barbara Streisand

Tim: It’s got to bands like Journey, guitarists like John Sykes and Neal Schon. Even bands like Heart.

 

What is your strangest fan story?

Sue: That I’ve got no fans.

 

What is the best rumour you have heard about yourself?

Tim: Good question.

Sue: Where do you get these questions from?

Kim: I make them up.

Sue: Tony Marshall saying I’ve got a willy.

What song makes you think ‘Damn I Wish I Wrote That’?

Sue: Loads absolutely loads.

Tim: Mother Father by Journey off Escape.

Sue: Heart songs, Vixen songs.

Tim: Still Of The Night. By Whitesnake.

What band would you like to see reform?

Sue: FM but they have reformed now, we used to travel everywhere to see them.

Tim: Blue Murder.

What does the future hold for Dante Fox?

Roman: Topping the iTunes download chart.

Sue: Another new album. We’d like to make the most of this album. We’d like to do more work in Europe and maybe do some festivals get some exposure.

Tim: Just use Frontiers records contacts really.

Sue: It’s the snowball effect really it just takes one person to take you seriously and it just builds and builds and off you go. There’s a load of bands out there that are on the four/fifth album before they do anything that’s what they’ve matured into and then suddenly its exactly what everybody wants.     

 

Tim: We are pleased that we have come back after like seven years and realising a new album on what we and other people consider to be the best record label for this genre of music and so far they’ve been fantastic.

Sue: People like you who’s interested in talking to us and seeing what we’ve got to say. It all makes it work doesn’t it.

Mike:  We’re all very committed. We’re all loving it at the moment and that comes across when we are playing live.

Is there a message you would like to give to your fans?

Sue: Thanks for all your support. Buy the album cause we think it’s got something to offer and we think people will like it.

Mike: We know you’ll like it!

Sue: I think. I can’t see why people wouldn’t like it. I think there’s enough of a mixture in there that hasn’t been there before like you say some of it has been sort of one dimensional one paced and this time there is a good mixture in there. I think the songs are real, real songs you that people can interpret in their own ways.

Tim: And its not a project it’s a proper band that can play anytime we want. You know like these other projects that are out there, they get together and they rehash demos that are ten or twenty years old you know what I mean. Then they re-release them through these record labels just to get a profit you know we’re a proper band and we play anywhere.

Sue:  We do it to get what we do out there rather than to try and make money on it cause a talent you can’t make money on it. Everything we do costs us but we still keep doing it and we will be doing this for a long time. I mean me and Tim really noticed the difference when the music wasn’t in our lives. We went out and bought two cocker spaniels

Tim: How weird is that!

 

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