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An interview with Meric Long of The Dodos

Ben LaMothe,
Grand Central Magazine, Editor-in-Chief

San Francisco folk-pop band The Dodos perform at The Pike Room in Pontiac, Mich., on July 12. Photograph by Elizabeth Winberg
(Click here for more images.)

Long believed to be a dead genre, folk appears to be making a comeback. And at the forefront of it is San Francisco band, The Dodos, who fuse it with a psych-pop sound to create something entirely unique. Ben LaMothe caught up with guitarist/vocalist Meric Long by phone while the band was in British Columbia to chat about the reason behind naming the band after an extinct bird, discovering that southern hospitality is real and his fondness for us Midwesterners.

Grand Central: So why name the band after an extinct flightless bird native to the Indian Ocean?

Meric Long: It was kind of a slow process. There was no definitive reason. We picked it because I put out a solo EP before forming band called Dodo Bird. I read about the story of the extinct bird from Mauritius and it just reminded me of a tragically funny story. It was hunted by settlers, and was killed off. It doesn’t exist, but is kind of funny. There were no natural predators; it was just kind of living in this happy, naïve… not naïve…a secluded island oasis. And then the settlers come. And the reason the word dodo means dumb is because settlers thought the dodo was dumb, which made it easy to hunt. It was kind of naïve because it had never seen people before, and then they got killed off.

GC: Yeah I read that about them, how they weren’t afraid of humans at all.

ML: Yeah, and then they get their brains blown out by a f*cking hunter. The whole point of hunting is getting food, but I can’t imagine this nice creature coming up to you and then deciding to shoot it.

GC: I read in an interview you gave a few years ago that you’re a fan of us Midwest people. Why’s that?

ML: Well, that was our very first tour, and I’d never been to the east coast. I’d never been outside of the West Coast, and I’d never been to the Midwest. It was really refreshing to meet people who were sincere in their friendliness. In California – and maybe characteristic of both the East and West coast – in New York, L.A. and San Francisco, there’s a different attitude. Maybe it’s more of a metro attitude. People are jaded and develop this sort of unfriendliness. On the East Coast, people are more upfront. More ‘arg-arg-arg’ – kind of grumpy, and I can appreciate that. On the West Coast people can be nice to your face but there’s always some sort of… there’s a big front in California. Not to talk sh*t about my home state, but getting away from that, the southern hospitality – it’s totally for real. People take you in. Stuff like that would never happen in San Francisco. That’s why I like the Midwestern thing. It’s kind of like the dodo bird. People say there’s a general stigma that Midwest people are less informed, but there’s a lot of benefit from being misinformed sometimes. You don’t develop such a critical attitude.

GC: The name for the new album came from a drawing that a kid did for you guys at Dorsey High in South Central Los Angeles. Does he know about it?

ML: I’m not sure. It was a special ed class, so I don’t know how much he’s able to, you know, comprehend in terms of where his drawings have gone and what they’re used for. We sent him posters, T-shirts and CDs. I know the teacher talks about us, so he may remember us. We did a Q and A session after we played, and the questions were “where do you live?”, “how much money do you make?”, “what instrument do you play?”, “what is the name of your band?” I don’t know how much they know, but hopefully…yeah, I don’t know.

GC: You were on also NPR recently. What was that like?

ML: It was cool; super fun. We didn’t know we were gonna be interviewed. It was Alison from MTV news. Allison… what’s her name?

GC: Yeah, I know who you’re talking about but I can’t think of her name. [Ed note: Her name is Alison Stewart.]

ML: Anyway, growing up watching MTV I had a huge crush on her, and here she is interviewing us. It was kind of cool. But it was like any other thing that we’ve done. NPR has a certain type of audience. But the only difference between them and any other was the professionalism. Oh, and Sarah Jessica Parker was in the building that day. We were finished doing our session and we walked out and she was standing there. She’s really short. She’s like Tom Cruise – tiny in real life. But she looks beautiful in real life. I’m not a fan of Sex and the City or Sarah Jessica Parker, but she looks like a good, genuinely friendly person.

The Dodos perform at The Pike Room in Pontiac, Mich., on July 12

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