Kurt Dahle - The New Pornographers

Kurt Dahle is one of Canada’s best kept secrets.  During his early years playing alongside his brother Ryan in the bands Age of Electric and Limblifter, Dahle was able to create his own musical voice by mixing the simplistic drum grooves of the 60’s with off-set accents, rhythmic verse structure, and his one of a kind ability to uncover and highlight a song’s hidden rhythmic composition.  As a founding member of the Vancouver-based New Pornographers, Dahle has indeed found the ideal outlet for his beyond-the-norm sense of rhythmic exploration. 

“I spend most of my time in rehearsals experimenting to try to come up with things that are a little different,” said Dahle.  “Sometimes I’m successful and sometimes not.  Carl (Newman) and I will play through a song 50 times in its infancy and I will never play the same thing twice. Eventually I will find something I think works with the song and then build on it from there.  But I am not shy about stealing classic drum patterns from our rock and roll ancestors,” he said. “Everybody does it.  I like to think I try to make everything unique and different but sometimes it just ends up sounding like Iron Maiden by accident.” 

The band’s fifth and latest recording Together, features Dahle’s signature sense of ensemble, cymbal work, and driving beats mixed to perfection behind the band’s eclectic palette of instrumentation and vocal delivery.  While the album was recorded in a variety of locations at home in Canada and in the U.S, the drums were all tracked in Vancouver at Factory Studio. 

While some drummers tend to mix and match instruments, experiment with mic placement, and audio effects, Dahle prefers to take a simpler approach. 

“I’m still loving my 60s drum sounds so I haven’t strayed from my formula,” he said.  “On the first two records I used my Ludwigs and on last three I have used Dunnett kits.  I do my drum tracks at home in Vancouver, then send them off to Carl in New York so he can put down his parts.  After that, John will bring things back to Vancouver for bass tracking.” 

“On the last three records the drums have all been essentially recorded with three mics, usually a stereo pair above the kit and a bass drum mic a couple of feet of the front head,” he said.  “We put other mics up to add more or less room sound or to fill in more snare or toms where needed but for the most part a very 60’s approach is used; bass drum empty with both heads tight and no port in the front head.”

This article appeared originally in the Oct 2010 edition of Backbeat.  Sign up to receive Backbeat, our monthly e-magazine by clicking here.