FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

SEE THE DUTCHESS AND THE DUKE THIS WEEKEND

The Dutchess and the Duke are a lady and a dude from Seattle who make music that is both irritatingly catchy and terribly depressing all at once. Their first album, She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke gave me the feeling that Jesse and Kimberly (the Duke and the Dutchess, respectfully) were screaming into my earhole from about six inches away. The record was good, to say the least, and while many have tried to chuck them into that new, or "freak folk" can, they bring a lot more to the table than pretentious lyrics and acoustic guitars.

Advertisement

Sunset/Sunrise, D & D's second album, was written around the time Jesse's first child was born and helped him to realize he needed a divorce. Although I got an overall positive feeling from the record, it makes sense that most people are divided on the overall vibe it's supposed to convey.

D & D are playing a show tonight at Union Pool and tomorrow night at the Mercury Lounge. I called up Jesse while he was relaxing in Connecticut and asked him a few questions.

Vice: Before we start I feel I should let you know that our current issue is the Anti-Music issue. So feel free to be cynical about everything.
Jesse Lortz: OK. Yeah, that's perfect.

What's the shittiest part about being in a band?
Oh man… I don't know, I guess the shittiest thing about being in a band is probably when it becomes your job. Especially for me and Kim because it's just two of us--just hanging out with one person all the time gets pretty tiresome pretty fast. We've also been touring a lot, so when we get off tour we don't really talk to each other.

So would you prefer to be in a big band so you guys could do a better job of keeping each other entertained doing whatever it is bands do when they're on the road together?
Well on one hand it's really cool, because as far as logistics and the money goes, it works out really well. But as far as personality and breaking the monotony of it, it's kind of… it's just one other person and you've heard the same stories over and over.

Advertisement

I know that you and Kim were in a band before this one, but how did you decide to collaborate with The Dutchess and the Duke?
I used to do this little record label, Boom Boom, and I wrote "Reservoir Park" and just thought it would be better to have a girl sing it with me. She was pretty much the only girl I knew who was in band or could sing. After that it became our full-time band, and then Hardly Art wanted us to do an album so we were just like "OK, I guess we'll do this for a little while."

So you just picked her because she was the only chick around?
Honestly, yeah. I mean, there were other reasons--we had been friends for a long time and she was just kind of there and it made sense because she can learn shit really fast. So it was kind of perfect.

A while ago I read that you were still in school. Are you done yet?
No, I was going to school for graphic design, but then I had a kid. Well, my ex-wife had a kid three weeks before graduation so I kind of had to bail on that to stay home with him for a while.

Is it tough touring? What with having the kid and all.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I just got divorced last November and I basically just asked our tour guy to get me the fuck out of town. So I've been nonstop touring since November. Whenever I would come home I would be home for like a week. I would hang out with him for a couple days and then just go back out on tour. But now touring is really slowing down so I've actually been able to be home for a month and a half and I can take him a lot more and get on some kind of human schedule. It's been really nice. Just hanging out with him is really cool.

Advertisement

Is Kimberly a good travel parter? I've done a little bit of traveling with women too and it's like they always have to pee, or they're perioding all over the place. How does that work out?
[laughs] Yeah, she's great. Once we get on the road she's a fantastic travel partner. Getting out of the door is kind of a bitch though. I wake up really early naturally, so I've already taken care of all my shit by the time she gets up--I'm ready to go. She needs to sit around and smoke some cigarettes and take a shower or whatever, so that makes us late to a lot of shit. But recently I've started to get up and go get breakfast or go to the leather store or go run errands and shit wherever we are. Then she'll call me and tell me she's up and we can go. But she is pretty low maintenance when it comes to feeding and stuff. [laughs] It sounds like I'm talking about a pet. You know, she doesn't have to bathe that often… not a lot of food required.

Did you say that you wake up and go to the leather store?
Oh yeah, I stared getting into working with leather when I was on tour because I was so bored. So I'll just look around to see what's in the town and go buy some leather or something to make some stuff with.

Are there a lot of leather stores in a lot of towns?
Yeah, there's this place called Tandy Leather Company. They have stores all over the place.

So it's just a chain of leather stores? Do you make clothes with it? What do you do with the leather?
I made some moccasins for my kid, a tobacco pouch, just stuff like that. I made a little pouch to carry my toothbrush in so it doesn't get lost, you know. It's just something to keep my hands busy.

Advertisement

That a very manly habit.
Thanks.

You get to pull a tooth brush out of a leather pouch when everybody else just has those weird neon-colored plastic ones.
Totally.

I read that you wrote Sunset/Sunrise over Spring Break. Is that true?
Yeah--wrote and recorded it over Spring Break.

Isn't Spring Break only one week?
It was like two weeks. I booked the studio a month in advance and I kept stressing out about it. I was like, "Oh shit, I need to write these songs." I was trying to quit smoking, and I had actually quit, but it was kind of a part of the song writing process, or the artistic process for me I guess… which is kind of cliché or sad. But once I was like, "Fuck it, I'm just going to smoke some cigarettes and write this record," it just kind of all came out. It didn't take that long to write.

So it was all thanks to the cigarettes.
Oh yeah. Cigarettes are the key to my creative vault I guess.

It seemed like it had a more positive vibe than your first album.
Yeah, it's weird. Some people think it's more positive, some people think it's more negative. I wrote all the songs and recorded it and then as I was listening to it over and over again I realized I needed to get divorced. It was just like, "Man… I'm really unhappy. I need to get out of here."

Oh. So maybe it wasn't so positive?
Well, I think in the end it was positive. People have told me it seems like a "hopeful" record, and I think any of the hopefulness off that record was just me looking forward to not being in that relationship anymore. Not to talk shit about my ex-wife or anything--she's a great lady. She's just not for me.

Advertisement

Well I was going to ask if it had a more positive vibe because you wrote it over Spring Break, but I guess not.
[laughs] Yeah, well I was actually in Florida on Daytona Beach… on a boat. There were these girls who kept flashing me.

Really?
Oh yeah! They just kept flashing their tits at me and drinking piña coladas.

You're fucking with me.
Yeah, that would be pretty rad though. To just be like, "This is my Spring Break record… from Florida."

What's the worst show you guys have ever played?
Well, we just played in Philadelphia like three days ago and we only made fourteen bucks.

Seriously?
Yep. Fourteen bucks. It cost us like ninety dollars to get down there with gas and tolls and shit. It was pretty mind blowing.

So you guys don't have a big fan base in Philly I guess.
Evidently not. But the show itself was fine. We always have fun at shows. It's everything leading up to it that's a drag. Once we're playing it's fun, but that's only for like an hour or something, then it's like, "Well I guess we'll get drunk or whatever."

INTERVIEW BY JONATHAN SMITH

Jesse Lortz's new project, Case Studies will be released soon from Sacred Bones.