R.I. native John Dwyer has new LP and new book showcasing his art - Entertainment & Life - providencejournal.com
Thee Oh Sees' Dwyer has a prolific career as a rock musician, concert promoter and record label owner in California.
Despite a discography of punk records and sleeve tattoos that might suggest otherwise, John Dwyer is ever the gentlemen when it comes to discussing the “massively delayed” distribution of his new book of artwork, "Exploded Globes." He praised, for example, the Czech press that sent out the initial shipment in shoddy packaging. Despite having to return some 1,300 dog-eared and tar-stained copies, Dwyer appreciated the press’ speedy work and willingness to experiment with a new venture.
Coincidentally, these are the exact qualities that have propelled the 42-year-old Rhode Island native through a prolific career as a rock musician, concert promoter and record label owner in California. His band, Thee Oh Sees, releases an LP a year, often to critical acclaim and always to critical attention. His label, Castle Face, has launched the careers of adored indie acts like Ty Segall and White Fence.
Delays and surface blemishes aside, "Exploded Globes" elegantly presents the paper trail — mostly posters — of this ascent to fame, which began in a small but fertile scene of artists in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence.
Dwyer writes of two such artists in his book’s introduction: “I collected the hell out of Matthew Brinkman and Brian Chippendale’s work. They made me fall in love with printing and I watched them avidly at Fort Thunder.”
Brinkman and Chippendale are RISD-educated printmakers whose bands — particularly Forcefield, Lightning Bolt and Mindflayer — garnered international attention for their innovations in the noise music genre.
At 17, Dwyer left his home in East Providence, bouncing between Providence apartments before finding illegal housing in a mill across Atwells Avenue from Fort Thunder, an old warehouse occupied by Brinkman, Chippendale and other artists from 1995 to 2001. Dwyer described the famous live/work space as “totally drunk with art.”
“Everything they made would get stapled to the wall or ceiling,” said Dwyer. “Eventually, it was just ten layers deep and there were no more right angles in the building.”
Dwyer spent his late adolescence playing stints with various bands in the neighborhood, including Landed, a noise outfit with an outsized collection of road stories for a primarily local existence. Briefly: Lead singer Dan St. Jacques once set himself on fire in concert, finishing the set before getting emergency room treatment and later selling the footage for $8,000 to a reality-television program; another show, timed with the release of their record "Dairy4Dinner," ended with the audience doused in ice cream and dancing on a tiled floor.
Dwyer was evicted from the mill on Christmas Day 2007, and Fort Thunder fell in a similar way soon after. At 23, fleeing the wreckage, Dwyer packed his bags for San Francisco.
“The second I got out of the car there, I walked into a cafe and saw a lot of art and it was sunny and there was a beautiful girl working there who was really mean to me,” said Dwyer. “All the pieces felt right.”
From there, "Exploded Globes" shows-not-tells the rest of the story, which consisted mostly of booking shows, playing shows, and making posters for shows, interrupted by the occasional odd job, like painting Sharon Stone’s house. It was a cheaper San Francisco then, and Dwyer writes that his monthly rent didn’t surpass $350 for years.
There are some highly creative printmaking experiments in "Exploded Globes," including two attempts at promotional anaglyphs (3-D images rendered in 2-D), though Dwyer said viewing them with glasses is “probably more nauseating than three-dimensional.”
One can also find a hot dog on wheels, a gorilla riding a shark, crooked cops, jellybean creatures, a phallic rocket ship, some graphic portraits of cannibalism and numerous other grotesqueries from Dwyer’s cluttered imagination.
The book is not organized chronologically, but equipped with the knowledge that Dwyer fronted the band Pink and Brown, then Coachwhips, then Thee Oh Sees, a careful reader can trace Dwyer’s progression from bars and butcher paper to concert halls and card stock.
Just how far has Dwyer come? Stuart Berman, a critic at the online music magazine Pitchfork, has been following Dwyer’s career since the beginning. He remembers a 2004 show that ended with Dwyer cracking a guitar over the promoter’s head.
“I didn’t put two and two together until way later, when I realized, ‘That’s the guy from Thee Oh Sees!’ ” said Berman over the phone.
In his review of Thee Oh Sees' latest release, "A Weird Exits," Berman does his best to describe a record made by a talented man with eclectic taste — “Beatlesque lullaby,” “psych-folk pastorale,” “mushroom-heady funk,” “jazzy guitar refrains,” and “mournful, church-organ melody” are only a handful of the phrases evoked by Berman in the short write-up. Evidently, the music is hard to categorize, but the vibe has attracted many acolytes.
“I see John as this father figure now,” said Berman. “He’s nurtured so many bands through Castle Face — King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Ty Segall, White Fence. To think of John as someone who smashed someone in the face with a guitar doesn’t quite jive.”
“I guess he’s an industrious dude and he does things his own way,” Berman concluded.
To give a sense of his work rate, the music website Discogs lists 20 full-length LPs, six EPs, and 21 7-inchers under Dwyer’s various monikers. Tallying the records he’s contributed to in a smaller capacity, either as a producer or contributing musician, is a feat not even Dwyer has attempted.
Thee Oh Sees will tour the country for the umpteenth time this September, with one New York City show alongside a Providence band: Sept. 9 at Warsaw with Oceans of the Moon.
As evidenced by posters in the book — look for shared bills with Lightning Bolt, Arab on Radar, and White Mice — Dwyer’s career has long served as a pipeline between Providence bands and a larger audience.
Oceans of the Moon, for instance, will release their debut album on Dwyer’s label later this year, which will be frontman and Tiverton resident Rick Pelletier’s second Castle Face release.
Pelletier describes Providence as a town with a “laid-back attitude” when it comes to record making.
“I think getting out to California was a good idea for John,” said Pelletier. “The guy is the hardest-working musician that I’ve ever met.”
Over the phone, Dwyer, who has since left San Francisco for Los Angeles, expressed pride for the hometown he left some 20 years ago. “I learned everything I know in Providence,” said Dwyer.
See for yourself. A second pressing of "Exploded Globes" has already hit book and record stores unscathed.
— Ben Berke is a freelance writer and recent graduate of Brown University. He can be contacted at ben.berke@gmail.com.
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