Doseone Talks Subtle Tour, Wolf Parade Collaboration

Second on the bill: Jeffrey "Jel" Logan, who just dropped his latest full-length, Soft Money, on Anticon.

But the big attraction will be the genre-crashing group Subtle, featuring Jel as well as MC Adam "Doseone" Drucker. In February 2005, their first big tour was cut tragically short when their van crashed near Atlantic, Iowa, leaving the band's keyboardist, Dax Pierson with a broken neck. While he's still confined to a wheelchair, Pierson has made some progress in his recovery.

Pitchfork spoke with Doseone recently about Pierson's health, Subtle's return to the road, and his own projects.

"He's back in the Bay," said Doseone of Pierson, by phone from Vancouver. "Amoeba [Records, Pierson's former employer] bought him a van. He's doing great. He's pretty much running a small business, which is his health. He has to hire all his health care people. He basically has someone in the morning and the evening. It takes him three hours to get in his chair every day. That's his morning. And then he's up, and he goes to bed at night and has another attendant come."

Pierson made it into the studio for Subtle's next full-length, for hero: for fool, due out in "late summer." Doseone said, "We took a lot of his suggestions, sampled his voice, and filtered it and made it into parts, and then the whole last song is all made out of all his demos that he made before the crash. They're so heavy man, it's him beatboxing and playing piano at the same time."

"There's something about this whole experience that's really added a lot of meaning, and ability to appreciate meaning in all of us," he added. "He's struggling. He has a little more than half his lung capacity...There were a lot of hurdles, but it was a blast, and he was killing it."

If you hit the San Francisco date of the Subtle/Jel/Fog tour tomorrow night, you may see Pierson in the audience in his signature pink wheelchair. Touring, unfortunately, is out of the question for him, and Subtle will soldier on as a five-piece.

The full triple-threat tour itinerary:

04-06 Los Angeles, CA - Knitting Factory
04-07 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
04-08 Eugene, OR - WOW Hall
04-10 Portland, OR - Doug Fir Lounge
04-11 Seattle, WA - Neumos
04-14 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club
04-15 Chicago, IL - Abbey Pub
04-16 Detroit, MI - Magic Stick
04-17 Toronto, Ontario - Drake Hotel
04-18 Montreal, Quebec - La Sala Rossa
04-19 Boston, MA - T.T. the Bear's
04-20 New York, NY - Knitting Factory
04-21 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
04-23 Atlanta, GA - Drunken Unicorn
04-24 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon
04-25 Austin, TX - Emo's
04-26 Denton, TX - Hailey's
04-28 Tucson, AZ - Plush
04-29 San Diego, CA - Casbah

They'll be hawking their new CD/DVD, wishingbone, which features remixes and collaborations with Mike Patton, Ms. John Soda, Beck, Hrvatski, Fog, and Console, plus three videos by London animation firm SSSR.

Musing on the tour and the art of the remix, Dose tossed out this idea: "We should do a live remix. We shouldn't play shows-- we should just hand out audio files on CD-R, tell everyone to go home and remix and come back at the end of the night. It'll be like a workshop. It's probably safer. We don't have to bring any fucking gear, first of all. We can just get in a nice SUV with air conditioning and just roll around doing these little workshops."

The future of the touring industry--you heard it here first!

Doseone also told Pitchfork that he's been recording music with the locals in his new hometown of Vancouver, including Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner, who lives down the street. They have three songs in the can so far. "I have only home studio upbringing, and he's completely from the opposite end of the spectrum, which is great. He only made music in bands. And I only made music in headphones." As Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat would say, opposites attract.

Subtle: http://www.subtle6.com
Dax Pierson: http://www.daxpierson.com
Anticon: http://www.anticon.com/