The Dynamic Drinking Club began as a passion project of Andy Hekkandi (Trench Dogs) and Anton Meriläinen (Dave Kusworth). Their debut album “Piss and Cancer” is a collection of semi-acoustic, downbeat and rather melancholic ballads. The album holds honesty-in-narrative and freedom of creativity above all else, Andy and Anton’s mutual creative respect for one another birthed a really free-flowing, natural but unorthodox songwriting style.
The once “little acoustic project” blossomed in the recording studio with the addition of a roster of talented musicians with a shared love of drink and good rock n’ roll.
The end result is a fusion of folk, punk, poetry, rock n roll, country and something rather different and unique. “Piss and Cancer” doesn’t want to capture the party, instead it finds you on the lonely drunken journey home. A tongue in Cheek juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly.
DDC Biography (Written by Andy)
Around Touring with Trench Dogs and putting out rock n’ roll records I was writing these kind of gentle acoustic songs that didn’t really have a place in the band.
My love of The Jacobites, Waterboys and albums like Darrell Bath’s “Love and Hurt” were always huge to me. I would have Johnny Thunder’s acoustic album “hurt me” spinning all through my teens when I wasn’t blasting Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds in my childhood bedroom back in Australia. That little corner of rock n roll was always a huge part of my musical obsession.
I had all these little songs and nothing to do with them so I took the bedraggled bones over to Anton (as I’d seen him playing with Kusworth) to see if he was interested in getting involved.
Truthfully I needed a musician of his calibre to bring the songs to life, I’m a pretty crappy guitar player and he is absolutely beyond brilliant so it made sense to try and get him liquored up and on board. He liked the songs and showed me some of his. brilliant. We really hit it off right off the bat, both musically and personally. The project very quickly turned into a joint effort in songwriting and we started writing under the name The Dynamic Drinking Club.
I would often take the train out to his property in Köping (because Anton just refused to come to Stockholm) for writing sessions between 2019 and 2022. We’d write music all day and then get absolutely plum-drunk in the evenings, it was a good balance between work and play. We shared books, smashed pints, visited historical sights, told stories, caused trouble and I always ended up getting injured for some reason or another. The writing was mostly done during the Pandemic years so it was actually a pretty nice and peaceful time to be in the countryside getting shitfaced, i mean, touring with Trench Dogs was suddenly illegal.
When taking our songs to the recording studio we sort of abandoned the idea of a stripped back acoustic record and opened the doors to a bigger production with friends and musicians from around the world.
Martin Andersson (Trench Dogs) was my only choice of drummer, he’s just the best guy and as solid as a bloody rock.
Tsuneharu “Gen” Fujiwara (Lipstick Killers/Naruzy Suicide Band) was keen to record some Casio Keyboards in Nagoya and had his musical companion Lily (Lily and Gen) join us with some beautiful haunting backing vocals.
Anton was all fired up to have his childhood friend Sebastian Cojocaru (Dave Kusworth) jump in on Piano, organ, mandolin and a few other bits and pieces. Sebbe was such a perfect fit and an incredible musician, a real weirdo like the rest of us. I couldn’t have been happier to have Martin and the gorgeous Romanian pirate Sebastian on board with the project, it just made sense.
The violins were recorded separately in a tiny room behind the movie screen of a cinema in suburban Stockholm, we had to wait for the quiet parts of the film to record the tracks.
The Fiddle player was a friend of mine from America and a Jewish music teacher in town. I had to beg and bribe him to be a part of the project, it was exhausting. Being so desperate for a fiddle player I even did an open-mic which told me he would meet me at (he wasn’t even bloody there for it!) I played some DDC songs to a bunch of nerds and got the fuck out of there there. Thankfully and finally he agreed to lay down those sweet strings on the Album and he was just as brilliant as I knew he would be.
Honestly I really should pay him what I owe him, I can’t keep dodging him forever.
So our “little acoustic project” now had an Aussie, a Romanian, a Finn, a pair of Japanese, a Swede and a Jewish-American.
The album was recorded at Tilt Recording Studio (by a Norwegian) in Strömstad, Sweden.
Photography by a Greek and a Swede, with Graphic design by a German, a Norwegian and a Frenchman.
Mixed by Harry Darling (Switzerland).
Mastered by Peter In De Betou (some kind of foreign? right?)
Released by Beluga Records (UK/Sweden).
I’m not sure if the album qualifies as “world music” but it sure did get a lot broader than just me and Anton playing guitar and drinking Gin in the forests of rural Sweden.
To be honest I’m not sure where this Album will live, what genre is it? Who is it for?
I know one thing, I feel sorry for whoever has to one day shelve this album into a genre section in a dusty old record store somewhere. If I could save that person some time I’d suggest putting it in the only section it belongs… The bin.
Cheers.
