Sir Chloe On Casting Sheep, Touring the UK and the Release of Their Debut Album ‘I Am the Dog’
Heavy hitting and unforgettable, the sound of Sir Chloe lingers in your mind for a long time. Composed of Dana Foote, Teddy O’Mara, Emma Welch, Palmer Foote, and Austin Holmes, the band has just released their debut album I Am the Dog on May 19th. Procuring the questions of “what is a dog to a shepherd; what is a dog to a sheep,” the album explores the endless facets of Sir Chloe’s saturated emotionality and sonically exhilarating vision. After releasing their debut EP Party Favors in 2020, the band sprung to center-stage, enticing fans with a distinct and captivating encounter in their rock-heavy, experimental production.
Collaborating with a plethora of creative visionaries such as producer John Congleton, director Molly Hawkins and songwriters Teddy Geiger and Sarah Tudzin, I Am the Dog is an eleven-track project infused with genius. In a conversation with Unpublished Magazine, lead singer Dana Foote discussed the band’s upcoming tour along with delving into the story behind Sir Chloe’s debut album.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Your debut album has been released for a couple of weeks now, how are you feeling?
[DANA]: It's been good. We released it and then the day after, we flew to Ireland to start a tour through Ireland and the UK and Europe. So, we've been really busy. And I think that's good after releasing something so personal, just get working, so you're not just staring at the numbers all day.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Is there a song that you’ve enjoyed playing live on this tour?
[DANA]: Yeah. I've really been enjoying playing "Salivate" live and "Obsession" live has been fun.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Have you been exploring the cities that you have been visiting?
[DANA]: A little bit. We have more time in some cities than others. We were just in Nottingham for like three days. So, we got to actually see quite a bit of that city, which was really fun and we really enjoyed it. We went to a haunted museum. That was lovely and we walked through a graveyard and had a lot of fun. Now in London, we're going to be here for just a few hours. So, we might not be able to see too much of the city. But last year when we were here, we were able to hang out a little bit in town, which was nice.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Looking at the title of the record, what does the statement “I am the dog” mean to you?
[DANA]: Honestly, the title of the album just kind of came from the title of the song, which was the first song that was written for the record. And that was just like a song that I wrote from this dog that I was living with at the time. I wanted to kind of write a song from the perspective of the dog. And you know, I like the title of the song. So, it just became the name of the record. Originally, I set out to make a concept album through the eyes of a dog and it didn't quite turn out that way. But, that was sort of the idea of what "I'm the dog" means.
[UNPUBLISHED]: When did you start writing this album?
[DANA]: I believe it was in 2020. I think it must have been the springtime, like March of 2020. March or April.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the collaboration process on this album like between you and songwriters Teddy Geiger and Sarah Tudzin?
[DANA]: Well, Teddy and Sarah are fantastic songwriters. They both have very different styles. We met Sarah through John Congleton who produced our record. She works really fast. We went to her house two days in a row and we sat down with her for about a couple hours at a time and the first time that we sat down with her was the day we wrote the song "Hooves." We were at the very homestretch of making the record and this was at a point where we'd been told that the record was finished and approved and then suddenly it wasn't finished and approved. And we were pretty desperate to finish it because it had been going on for a lot longer than we thought the process would take. When we got to Sarah, we were just kind of like "please get us a song," get this album approved. We sat down with her and listened through everything that we had and we all kind of agreed that the thing that was missing from the record was a song that was urgent and a song that started urgent right away. She programmed a beat on Logic and then we just wrote really fast. So, she's really fast, super matter of fact. When you write something, you move on right away. She programmed that beat and then Teddy O'Mara, who's my lead guitarist who I write all the songs with, just made a little guitar lick and as he was noodling around, I was writing lyrics. Then you get it down and then you move to the next section. We're not listening back and questioning our decisions. I think it took maybe three hours, tops. Which is honestly a lot faster than it typically is. I think it's three hours. I don't totally remember though. So, I think a grain of salt with that one. The second day we went we wrote the song "Center" and she said that she was thinking about a heart shaped lollipop. Like what if we wrote a song about a heart shaped lollipop? And that was the genesis of that song which was so cool because I think it was one of the first times that we had ever gone to a writing session where someone came in with a prompt. She's just really creative, she brings so much to the table and has so many ideas and really just drives the whole process forward and there's really no dilly dallying, which was so great and also was such a relief. It can just feel like such a slog sometimes, just getting everything through a chain of commands and getting things approved and writing with a million people over your shoulder. Having someone who worked so quickly and coming out of it with something that we liked is so comforting.
Teddy Geiger, she's like a little bit of a mad scientist. When we would write with her, we would spend pretty much a whole day with her in her studio. The first time that we wrote with her was with "Should I" and that was actually in New York. We'd kind of spend a whole day with her and it'd be a lot of turning knobs. When we came in with "Should I," it was already a little bit fleshed out. What she did with "Should I" is she tweaked a couple of the melodies to just make them more palatable and just more pleasant to the ear. Like there was a note in the pre chorus that had a few too many notes and she just compressed it into just a few and did the melodies. The second time we wrote "Know Better" together. That was completely from scratch. We were just kind of sitting around her studio, just plucking things out on the piano and on guitars and just trying to figure stuff out for quite a while until she produced that lick in the chorus that's like, "if I didn't know any better," She was the one who did that and then we plucked out the notes and tried to figure it out. From there, once we had a direction, then we were able to move forward with it. I think with Teddy, it's a lot of exploring and a lot of trying things on and seeing what works and doesn't work. She's really open to trying everything and you can go in and make anything with her. Like you don't necessarily have to go in with expectations and we wrote with her quite a few times and we've written a few songs with her. We wrote a couple of different types of songs because she's just got this really open attitude. She's not wanting to make a specific thing so you can go in and she'll just rally for anything. But, you always know that you're going to walk out with something that you're happy with because she's got a really open mind and she's just a fantastic songwriter and producer.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I absolutely love the album cover and it has a lot of interesting features. What is the symbolism or vision behind it?
[DANA]: So, Molly Hawkins came in as a creative director. She was the creative director for the visuals of the album and she brought Grant Spanier in as a director. When that photo was taken, we were filming music videos as well. So, that was a still that was taken in between shots. We had one really long day of shooting because we had worked on the album for three and a half years and then they were like, "Okay, can you give us all the visuals for the album in like three weeks?" And I mean, Molly's like a monster. She's just so incredible, has all this brain power and such a clear vision of what she wants. And her perspective, it's honestly just menacing watching her work. It's honestly very intimidating. She's got a very incredible creative presence in whatever she touches. We had sat on the phone and talked for like two and a half hours where I walked her through the story of every single song on the album. And I said this is what I want to share, this is what I don't want to share because a lot of it was really private and personal. And she came up with the metaphor which was like "What is a dog to a shepherd and what is a dog to a sheep?" Which is how the sheep got involved and we had two baby sheep and then we had an adult sheep. The one that I'm holding on the album covers is Bertha, that was her name. They had sheep agents, which was really funny. That was how they got booked. So that was her and she's one of those people who can look at a project and know exactly who to call to curate the exact vision that she's picturing. Like within no time at all, she just assembled this absolute dream team of people who came together to work on the visuals. Honestly, it was so generous because it was really short notice and people really dedicated a lot of their time to do this. It was just very touching to see people invest their time in this. Even the arch of the font, I had sent Molly a couple of antique matchboxes that I really liked. Like pictures of antique matchboxes that have curved lettering and she ended up using that with the album cover. She's just one of those people who's like a translator of "this is what I like" into a tangible really cool idea that we can now pursue. So honestly, a lot of what you see with the visuals is Molly. She would send over a lot of ideas and a lot of visuals and then together we would pick through what we like and what we do not like. It was my first time really working with anyone on the visuals for stuff. She had actually creative directed the "Michelle" video a couple years back. So, we've worked together before. But with all the visuals for the cover and stuff, it was my first time bringing anyone in. So, it was great to have someone that I trust so much because she's just fantastic.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What made you decide to have the song “Feel Again” be the closing track? What was the inspiration behind this song?
[DANA]: So, that track is the last track on the album for a couple of reasons. When we were first writing the album, what I had wanted to do was have it start off as "I am the dog" and then at the end, you turn and you're telling something else to be your dog. So, you're taking this agency that one didn't feel before, was sort of the loose idea that I was going for. It didn't quite work out that way, I wanted the track to be like a story, it was an ambitious plan. But, that track, it's very major, it was one of the really early songs that we wrote for the album. I think it was just a year or so in when that was written. I think really a lot of why it is the end is it's been the end of our set for a really long time because a lot of these songs that ended up on the album we've been playing live for quite some time. And "Feel Again" was the last song on our set for a long time because there's just something that feels really final about it. And I think the way that it ends is kind of quiet and somber. There's something exciting and triumphant about it that just feels like wrapping something up. Shortly after it was written, I think it was just decided this is the last song on the track, it was just kind of something that we knew.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What emotions or messages did you hope to evoke from the album?
[DANA]: I think this is a tough one to answer because I think the most exciting thing about sharing our art with people is that they can take their own messages from it. And the messages I take from the music I've never really felt like imposing that on anyone else. But, I think it's really exciting to hear what people take from the music. And I think that's more exciting to me than any messages that I would want people to feel. I think really just any message at all is really exciting because it's just an honor to have people listen and think anything about the music. Then as far as emotions, I think it would be really great if people felt held by the music in some way. The music that I like the most is the music that I feel like I’m meeting a friend when I'm listening to certain albums and I feel very close to the music. And I think that's really the thing that I would like people to feel in a perfect world. I think just the camaraderie that I feel when I listen to certain albums, it'd be great if people had that same experience with ours.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You released your debut EP back in 2020 and now you’re releasing your debut album. In the past few years, what has been your favorite part about releasing music?
[DANA]: I think my favorite part is definitely playing live. We started out just in school playing on our college campus and I think about that quite a bit. We started out just playing for our friends and it feels so cool and so different to look out and play to strangers who then become friends, we hang out after every show. But, I think the live element is just so fun and also figuring out how to play these songs live. All of our songs are written with live music in mind because we've always been a very live-oriented band. That was how we started and how we've continued. I think also another really favorite part of it is collaboration because before Sir Chloe, I was doing music for quite some time by myself. Then once Teddy O'Mara came in, he was the first member of Sir Chloe and we collaborated on this whole project together. It's been such a gift to share this experience with someone and make decisions with someone and bounce things off of someone and have someone's perspective. Then it's the same thing with bringing someone like Molly in and bringing even people like managers and lawyers in. Just people who are excited and want to be a part of it like Teddy Geiger or Sarah Tudzin. You go in and you make something with someone and it feels weird and vulnerable and personal. Then you walk out with a cool new thing and also a friend and then you can come to them again for more perspectives and ideas. It just feels like a real gift to be able to do this and share the creation of something with someone else. So, live music and collaboration have been the two real things that speak to me.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What are you most excited about for the future? What’s next?
[DANA]: We've got a US tour coming up at the end of the summer and we're really excited for that. We're supporting Beck and Phoenix in August, which we're really looking forward to. Short term, that's definitely the thing that we're most excited for.
