Dring - To Be Needed At All interview#

Dring is a returning character - she is a small up-and-coming folk musician from Nottingham. Her debut EP is a force to be reckoned with, and I decided I would give her a call to gauge her thoughts on the release and to catch up. What followed was a lengthy call of interesting details reagrding the release and various intrusions from animals.

Bri: Who are you, and what do you do?
Dring: I’m Dring, I am a young up-and-coming singer-songwriter. I do folk-y stuff, I do 70’s folk stuff sometimes, but mostly I like to write with my guitar.

B: You’ve just put out To Be Needed At All, your first EP. What was the creative process behind building the EP like?
D: It wasn’t like I sat down and decided to write an EP. I just started writing songs and did some co-writes (Jack Kenworthy & Jez Ashurst). It felt like I was writing what was in my head and so I started banking them - I wrote some songs before that weren’t it and then I wrote “She Holds Me”, and that’s where I was like “this is the evolved Dring sound”.

B: I love the phrase “evolved Dring sound”.
D: That’s what I was aiming for. I like music that feels really small or giving you a hug, like Vincent by Don McLean, or Cherry Wine by Hozier (it’s a bit depressing but it’s so good) - I’ve written music that I would be impressed with if someone else wrote it.

B: Do you have a favourite song from the EP?
D: ‘She Holds Me.’
B: Correct answer!
D: It was my first fingerpick-y song and it was also my first outwardly gay song. It’s like my favourite child.

B: Your cats are all over the advertising and the single covers for the EP. I mean, they’re on the cover. What was the significance of including your cats in your artwork?
D: Well, I started writing the EP a year and a half ago. And halfway through that, two of my cats passed away. It was a huge part of my life at the time - it felt like if I was going to do anything with the cats, I had to include them on the EP, to kind of honour them. I knew I wanted to use cats at some point in my marketing, and given two passed away, it felt like the right time. I’d had all of them since I was 4/5 - I can’t remember not having them.
B: Did they influence the songwriting or just the advertising?
D: I wrote a song about the grief of it, but it didn’t end up on the EP. Boyfriend wasn’t going to be on the EP - the other song needed too much production and we couldn’t get it right. Then I went down to record tracks and we (Jez and I) wrote ‘Boyfriend’ - Jez is one of those writers that does a therapy session beforehand, a little “what’s going on in your life” to get writing inspiration. So we demoed that. Then as we went to release the EP, Rich - my A&R guy - asked “why don’t we put ‘Boyfriend’ on the EP?” because it didn’t need any more production. So we put it on there.

(We paused as Chloe went to chat to her animals.)
(off-camera) D: Do you wanna see my cat in a hammock?
B: Yeah I do!
D: She likes being swung in it.

B: What was the cut song called?
D: Wait… I can’t remember! Oh God… ‘Gone’. It may be released, it may not be released… one day.

B: I find it interesting that ‘Boyfriend’ wasn’t going to be on the EP. You’re advertising that song a lot for a last-minute addition! It’s like a fourth single. D: It kind of is. It’s easier to promote one song than say “there’s five more to listen to” - it’s the poppiest song off the EP, so it definitely works well on social media.
B: I know for a fact that a friend of mine’s favourite¹ on the EP is ‘Boyfriend’.
D: Whenever I listen to the EP now, I feel like it would be empty without ‘Boyfriend’. With the songs in order, it doesn’t feel complete without ‘Boyfriend’.

B: If you could compare the EP to three other artists, who would you compare it to?
D: Marcus Mumford is always my main inspiration, but mainly his solo album. All of his music sounds so minimalistic but so interesting, even in production. ‘Lethal’ was very Marcus Mumford. Hozier, I like Hozier. I have always wanted to be Hozier if he actually was a lesbian, you know that meme? I want to be Hozier as a lesbian. He’s lovely and so talented. I would say Fun but I don’t think they’re me. The way they write has influenced me, but not this EP. Oh, Joni Mitchell! Joni. I only found Joni like 2 years ago and like 20 people told me I sound like her and so I started listening. Now I sound like her even more.

B: What colour is the EP in your head?
D: I think it’s like a burnt orange, because the EP to me is ‘She Holds Me’. If it were a place it would be in a cottage next to a campfire, and it’d be campfire orange.

B: What’s your favourite song from the EP to play live?
D: With backing vocal and strings, ‘Lethal’ is beautiful live. It’s really spooky, almost, and it’s very difficult to play live, but it is beautiful.
B: Acoustically?
D: I have one specific song that’s not on the EP that I really enjoy playing live. It’s quite jolly actually, but it’s in that ‘She Holds Me’ small fingerpick-y world - it’s really enchanting live. That one will almost definitely be on the next project, and I’m playing it at my gig.

B: What’s next?
D: I have my headline show, 3rd of December.

Go see Dring live for free!

D: I was gonna have a cello but now a violin, and Daisy is doing backing vocals for me! And then after that, more music! I obviously have some songs written that need to be released. I’ve been writing more planned - there are songs I want to be on the next EP, but I want it to be more like a body of work. I want to write like I’m building a very specific world. It won’t be soon - next year probably.

B: Is there anything you wanna tell the people?
D: Stay sad, stay gay, stay folky. (So I still have a target audience.) I hope you enjoy it! Come to my gig!