The other day I was presented with the opportunity to interview Des Rocs (Danny Rocco), who is one of the most refreshing, unique, and authentic modern rock artists in the game. Our discussion covered his experiences on the year-long Dream Machine Tour, his integrity as an artist, impacts of the Dream Machine album, and his takes on the modern music scene.

 

So, you’ve been doing the Dream Machine Tour since January almost non-stop – how are you still going? Are you not exhausted?

 

I am exhausted; I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t exhausted, but when I hit the stage that all just melts away. It’s really just like a testament to the power of music in my opinion – you know what I mean? You can be so miserable and so tired but when you get on stage it all goes away. 

 

Do you feel that being on stage is revitalising?

 

I wouldn’t say revitalising in the classic sense like an energy drink or something like that, it’s – I’m trying to think of the best way – it’s more religious, it’s more ritualistic for me you know? It’s like a religion that I practice and the routine of it is very important to my mental health, my spiritual well being.

 

It’s more religious, it’s more ritualistic for me… the routine of it is very important to my mental health, my spiritual well being

 

Dedicated to the craft then, I can appreciate that. Can you give me any standout moments from the tour, onstage or offstage?

 

No, I think every night for me is a standout moment, like any time just like a single person is singing a song that I wrote, that’s a standout moment for me. 

 

I wanted to ask about your Amsterdam show where the power went out in the whole city during your performance – what happened there? How were you feeling? What was going through your mind?

 

There is very little going through my mind during a show to be honest – I’m kind of like a creature of instinct and I’m just on autopilot. So my instinctual reaction was just ‘Ok, how do you make music with the power out? It’s just acoustic.’ So I grabbed an acoustic guitar and you keep the show going as long as you possibly can until the power comes back.

 

How long was it out for?

 

Ten minutes, maybe? That being said, I didn’t know it was going to come back on.

 

But you were prepared to do the whole show? The show’s got to go on surely?

 

Yeah, I don’t have a choice – I’m old school man; the show’s got to go on – I’m there, there’s a couple hundred Dutch kids there, and we’ve got to party.

 

I wanted to talk about the extended edition of the Dream Machine album you’re releasing in a few weeks, the ‘Lucid Edition’ – it features your very first collaboration with Underoath; why choose now to do a collaborative piece? Was there any reason? Why did you choose Underoath specifically?

 

Well we’ve got a lot of mutual friends the two of us, and we do very different things – we are very different artists. But we draw on the same emotional beats in my opinion, and I think it’s really cool that we achieve similar things through very different means, and they just do it at such a high level. And for me, it’s so different from what I do that that combination of worlds is so exciting, you know what I mean? Like it’s so boring if I did an artist that’s tangential to myself you know? It’s not furthering the genre, it’s not creating new rock music – and for a post-hardcore emo band to reimagine a classic rock-inspired ballad about grieving is to me new music, and that’s new art, and that’s unbelievable – that’s what we need in rock – so it was really exciting from an artistic perspective. 

 

How was it working with them, even just working with another band? Were you really involved in the process of making the track?

 

I mean I’m pretty involved in everything, but it was the first time I’m not playing the instruments. So it was very refreshing because, if I do a guitar take and I play it back, I’m going to hear that guitar take totally differently to how you hear it, you know what I mean? I’m going be having all these insecurities about what I’m listening to and everything like that. But it’s cool when someone sends me their guitar playing, and they’re like ‘Oh I’m unsure about this’ and I’m like ‘no it sounds great’. I get the gift of objectivity which is something I rarely get when I’m making music.

 

There’s a few extra tracks on the ‘Lucid Edition’, and I wanted to talk about why they didn’t make it into the original Dream Machine album; what is your criteria for deciding what makes it onto the album, and why have they made it on there now?

 

Oh man, it’s tough because some of them are my favourite songs but they just don’t sequence well with the album, you know? So they didn’t tell the story – I very much knew the format of the album as an art form in addition to the songs that are just on it. These songs – some of them are my favourite ones – and they just didn’t sequence, they didn’t fit into the narrative. So it’s cool to release them as this like standalone little weirdo cousin package that just gets lopped on because it’s like this whole separate body of work, and that to me is exciting. It’s just going to be this standalone release – the ‘Lucid Edition’ – you know, it just kind of adds to the story of the album. And it’s cool, you can kind of see how the album almost went in these very different directions – like it almost went really dark, like a lot of these songs are pretty dark. But yeah, that’s kind of the story of that. 

 

You can kind of see how the album almost went in these very different directions… like a lot of these songs are pretty dark

 

Kind of related to this, I wanted to talk about your selection process for creating and constructing these albums, but also your song writing process; you’ve been described as a very traditional songwriter – what is your process? Are you blocking out time to write or is it more ‘inspiration hits and I’ve just got to write right now?’

 

I think it’s all of the above – I think sometimes my process is the perpetual pursuit of a process. I’m always looking like ‘Hey I wish I could wake up and just write songs from 9am to 5pm’ and sometimes I do get that. But most of the time songs visit me in the middle of the night and I drag my ass out of bed, start humming some melody – and 90% of the time I listen to that melody the next day and I go ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ But 10% of the time I’m like ‘oh that’s great, lets try and bring that to life.’ I think so much of the process is just trying to bring to life something in my head and that’s the challenge – like making it come out. 

 

If you’re writing very often and going through countless ideas, do you feel it’s really difficult to potentially make an entire song from scratch and ultimately it doesn’t work out when it comes to recording and release? Maybe it doesn’t fit with the album like you mentioned earlier, or you only have part of a song and you just can’t make it work with anything?

 

Yeah all the time; I mean some of my favourite things I’ve ever written are just scraps – like 35 second things that I just cannot figure out how to do justice to. It’s an eternal struggle of mine. 

 

As you’ve released more and more music, has your decision making process for constructing songs changed over time? Do you do it completely independently? Can you consider other people’s opinions without compromising your own artistic vision?

 

Sometimes, there’s a very small circle of people whose opinions I trust, but often it just kind of messes you up when you place that on other people. I find the process of playing a song for somebody enlightening, because as I’m playing it for that person, I’m then having my own reaction to it which helps me understand how I really feel about it – just the act of playing it out loud for somebody else. So yeah, if I were to play you a new song, and as it’s playing I’d be like ‘ah let’s skip this one, let’s go to the next one’ , then I’m like ‘oh so I don’t like this one’. 

 

I quickly wanted to touch on the impact of the Dream Machine album and the striking impression it made on Dana White, president of the UFC. How did you find out about it? Have you had any opportunities arise because of it?

 

Yeah I mean tonnes – I mean I’ve been to Las Vegas way more times than I ever thought I would. But Dana is a champion; he saw us opening for another band called The Cult, and I think our band just delivers a certain type of authentic, extreme expression that a lot of bands lack today. Like a lot of bands play it cool and look at their shoes and want to be cool, and we don’t give a damn about that. Like, all we care about is expressing ourselves in the most authentic and intense way possible, and I think that really resonates with someone like Dana. 

 

Lets broaden things out – what are your thoughts on the present day music scene? Like the charts, and popular rock music; how do you feel about it?

 

I don’t give a damn about any of it – I don’t really know anything that’s going on, I couldn’t be more independent of that; I don’t fit into any scene. There’s not a single contemporary artist that makes me feel like I have to work harder or do better – which sucks; I wish I had them. Maybe the only one who makes me feel really stupid is Queens of the Stone Age – you know when you see QOTSA live – I’ve been side-stage at a festival that we played together with lots of other bands, and every single band was like ‘we feel so uncool’. But then again they’re not really contemporary – I watch Prince, I watch Queen, I watch Elvis, Bruce Springsteen – those are the artists I’m obsessed with, those are the ones that make me go ‘damn, I’ve got to get to work’. But the modern scene, I’m woefully ignorant of it – I’m optimistic, I hope that people just make rock music that is authentic to themselves – but yeah that’s about it.

 

Just quickly, I wanted your opinion on AI music – how do you feel about AI artists and AI software being used to create such a high volume of content?

 

It’s weird, but if you feel threatened by that, then I think you need to embrace the things that make you unique now more than ever. I think it sucks for generic bands who make generic music, but if you don’t make generic music, I don’t think you have anything to fear. 

 

If you believe in something that strong enough, all the things you’re talking about, they’re not going to get in the way of that

 

What’s your motivation? Live music is very risky – someone who’s new to the scene but has the drive to make it big might still fall short due to financial reasons; what keeps you going when things get too much?

 

I’d say it’s like blindly chasing a dream, the whole concept of the Dream Machine – since I was in second grade, I’ve had a vision of something Des Rocs-like and what that looks like and feels like on stage, not only in 2024 but 2054. And if you believe in something that strong enough, all the things you’re talking about, they’re not going to get in the way of that because you just have to be so passionately committed to that vision. Obviously there’s ups and downs, but I’ve been possessed by this since I was a kid.

 

Dream Machine – The Lucid Edition releases October 11th, 2024. 

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