Jair-Rohm Parker Wells – An Xperience Interview

Jair-Rohm Parker Wells – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

Photo By: Mitch Levine

RRX: I am very excited about the Doom Dogs, and I know you guys are coming to town, to our neck of the woods, on January 8 to The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. So, if you don’t mind, just a brief history of how Doom Dogs came to be.

JP: Well, thank you for asking. It’s a fun story. It basically started at the end of the 1980s, when both Reeves and I, who were unknown to each other, were endorsing Steinberger guitars. And as endorsers, we were invited to demonstrate at the Frankfurt Musik Fair on behalf of Steinberger. We were both doing our separate demos. At one point during a break, we happened to meet in the Steinberger booth and started chatting. Reeves had been demoing with a DAT tape; he was playing along to it, and he was getting pretty bored with that. So, he asked me if I would be up for joining him on his next demo set. I said, well, sure, why not? What will we play? He was with (David) Bowie at the time, and I didn’t really know any of that material except for the older Bowie material. I didn’t know the new Tin Machine stuff. So what will we play?

He said, “I don’t know, we’ll see when we start.” So we just went up there and improvised, and it clicked. It was happening! Fast forward to some weeks or months after that; we stayed in touch after the fair and figured it’d be a good idea to get together and do more of that in front of more people. A proper audience, like, make a band of it. At the time, I was living in Sweden, and I had my band there, that included the drummer Bill Bryant, who I had worked with in Machine Gun.

RRX: Right.

JP: I suggested to Reeves that we do a trio with Bill, and that would alleviate the need to have to bring over two guys from the US because Bill was there in Sweden as well. And that’s how it started. We started playing in Europe, pretty much any and everywhere we could – whenever David (Bowie) was working in Europe, he would have Reeves over with him. That gave us the opportunity to be able to play more. Then it turned out that I started coming over to the US more to do shows, mostly in the New York area, like at the Knitting Factory and whatnot. In that context, I became acquainted with the drummer Lance Carter. So Reeves and I started playing with Lance because, in the US, it was easier to just work with Lance and not have to go through all the trouble to get Bill over there. Back then and to this day, Bill had a very successful business in Sweden. So it wasn’t easy for him to get away. So, yeah, we carried on, on both continents.

Between Bowie tours, essentially. Lance was with Cassandra Wilson at the time. We were really fortunate that Cassandra and Bowie were in Europe at the same time once. That gave us an opportunity to do a bigger thing and spend more time together.

RRX: It started way back then, but if I’m not mistaken there was a hiatus in there. Right?

JP: Oh yeah, a few things happened. First, Lance passed. I don’t know if this is actually chronological. It’s just that was one thing that led to the slowdown. Reeves moved from LA to Nashville and also stopped playing with Bowie. Things became kind of complicated for him because getting him over to Europe wasn’t as convenient anymore, and for me, coming over to the US. I was touring with a Swedish act that was really huge at the time, an act called Dr. Alban. So that took up, like, all of my time. And, like I said, Reeves was in Nashville working really hard to establish himself. So, we didn’t really do a whole lot for a few years. We kept in touch and looked for ways to get together, and then he started doing the thing with the Cure. He ended his relationship with Steinberger essentially, when he started his relationship with Reverend Guitars. He was doing a whole other thing with Reverend; he was basically designing guitars. It was a much deeper commitment than just being an endorser like I was and still am with Steinberger. That kind of put us in separate worlds entirely; that was basically the 12-year hiatus.

RRX: That makes sense. I mean, I have a hard enough time getting my band together, and we all live around here. So I get that. I’m really into the whole “no shows are really gonna be the same,” improv things Doom Dogs does, I love that!

JP: Oh yeah, that’s the way it’s been from the beginning. It goes all the way back to that first conversation with Reeves, and that’s been the process ever since for, like, 30-plus years now. We don’t talk about the music; we play the music.

RRX: Right, you let the music do the talking for you.

JP: Exactly. the recent incarnation started … if I’m not mistaken. It was July of last year. What happened was Reeves and I discovered that we were both living on the East Coast again, and it was like, dude, let’s get together, let’s do Doom Dogs. We were looking for drummers. I had done a record with Grant Calvin Weston around that time, and he was the first choice for both of us. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available. We kind of sat around thinking, there are a lot of great drummers out there, and then I was like, there is a drummer I’ve been a fan of for many years, I’d like to call him and see if he’d be up for it. So, I called Jonathan Kane.

He said, “Yeah, great, sure, I’d love to!” He made the gig … that first show was at ShapeShifter Lab, Matthew Garrison’s place in Brooklyn. Beautiful place. And the story is … up until this point, we’re at the venue, we’re setting up. I noticed Jonathan, whom I’m just meeting for the first time at the show, because, like I said, I’ve been a fan. I’ve never met him. He looks nervous. I figured, well, he doesn’t know us, so maybe formal introductions are in order.

So, minutes before we go on, he comes over to me and says, “Listen, what do you want me to do?” There is a Doom Dogs album from the ‘90s. It’s the only album; we’re actually getting ready to release a second album with Jonathan on it. He’s still like, ”What should I play? What do you guys do?” He’s asking all these questions …

RRX: Sure.

JP: I realized, oh, he thinks that this is some kind of worked-out thing, where there’s a formula and whatnot. And I told him, I said, “Listen, Jonathan, you’re here because I’m a fan. You’re just here to do what you do. We got on stage and he totally went above and beyond the call of duty. I mean, he was fabulous. So that’s the way it is, the way it’s been and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

The Lift Series at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall

Featuring Doom Dogs January 8, 2025 – 6pm

Check out the band’s website HERE!

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