12 Days of New Year’s: Dengue Fever @ The Rickshaw Stop
| December 31, 2006 | ||
| 9:00 pm |
Dengue Fever
The Gomorran
Social Aid & Pleasure Club
plus DJs
Jimmy Love (Non-Stop Bhangra)
Trev (Volume)
$30
Presented by KCRW
Dengue Fever rides in like an epidemic to The Rickshaw Stop this New Year’s Eve. In honor, we reach back into the Mesh vaults for this interview with the band:
Sudden Outbreak
Dengue Fever’s Zac Holtzman lets us in on the band’s dance tunes and dark themes.
By Paul Romo
Inside a Cambodian restaurant, just south of Los Angeles, Dengue Fever brought business to a complete halt. After finishing dinner, the band performed a few songs at the request of the owners and was unexpectedly surprised by a gathering near the kitchen. “When I started singing, they were pulling cooks from the back of the restaurant,” said guitarist and vocalist Zac Holtzman.
Playing a kaleidoscope of styles that draws from Ethiopian jazz, Bollywood soundtracks, surf/garage rock and Southeast Asian ’60s psychedelic pop, the group’s songs are all sung in Khmer, the official language of Cambodia-which Holtzman does not speak, but sings in convincingly. And while Dengue Fever frontwoman Ch’hom Nimol holds down the majority of vocal duties, Holtzman still makes time to learn Khmer, or at least pronounce it.
To practice the lyrics, Holtzman loaded up some tapes and a book, and retreated to Joshua Tree where a couple running an eatery helped him with his studies. “For the most part, when I learn a song, I learn it phonetically. Some I sing like an Italian opera piece,” he said.
Dengue Fever began when the guitarist’s brother Ethan Holtzman, who plays farfisa organ in the band, heard Cambodian pop music while traveling there in the late 1990s. Holtzman was introduced to it while living in San Francisco and playing in the band Dieselhed around the same time.
The two became immediately excited over the regional music. “We used it as a starting point to see where it would go, “said Holtzman. “It grew into so much more.”
After Ethan returned from Cambodia, he and his brother moved to Los Angeles and in 2000 and the two set out to find a suitable singer to front a band that included Senon Williams (Radar Brothers) on bass, David Rallick (Beck) on saxophone and Paul Smith on drums.
The group held auditions at a studio in Long Beach, which is home to the largest Cambodian population in the United States. After three or four girls had arrived, there was talk that Nimol, who had recently moved to the area, might show up.
Nimol had a legendary reputation-she even performed for the king and queen of her native Cambodia-and the other girls could not believe that someone of her stature would bother trying out for a new independent band in Los Angeles. When it was announced that she had in fact arrived, the other girls conceded and quickly left. “Somehow she came and changed history,” Holtzman said with a hearty laugh.
The blending of cultures injects a dose of the unknown, which the former Mission District resident said makes it hard to go back to playing simple, predictable American rock. He equates it with an artist deciding to only paint with his left hand or making compositions with only found recordings.
“It’s a bit of a challenge, but it’s as if we forced ourselves and that limit made us expand. Limiting your palette a little bit forces you to do better things,” he said. “We found our voice for this album.”
Underscoring his point, the band’s latest release, Escape from Dragon House, consists of 10 original songs and one cover, nearly the inverse of the band’s first self-titled record.
At times, the subject matter displays the horrifying side of human behavior, though you’d never know it without a lyric sheet. “Saran Wrap” chronicles the true story of a female heroin dealer in L.A. who was murdered, wrapped in plastic and placed in a van while; “One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula” focuses on pop singer Huy Meas, who was executed by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge after their takeover of Cambodia in the mid-1970s.
However, the band manages to balance out the themes with humor, assuredness and a wild display of talent. With its infectious groove and soaring chorus, “Tip Your Canoe” finds Holtzman and Nimol’s voices swaying and weaving around one another, and the result is pure magic. “Sni Bong” couples a whomping bass, scuzzed-out guitar and an exploding chorus to create the perfect pop hook with the refrain that sounds something like “hold me close to you tonight.”
“We Were Gonna” deals with the initial excitement present in a new relationship. “You’re going to write that screenplay together, open up a restaurant together, adopt a rescue dog and buy an old house together,” he said before his voice tapers off.
Dengue Fever’s current schedule is mostly relegated to the West Coast, but is looking to take the show back to its roots. “We would like to make it over to Asia,” said Holtzman. “We’d love to bring the music back from where it originated.”
In the meantime, filmmakers are finding the band’s music perfect for cinematic use. Currently Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers,” Matt Dillon’s “City of Ghosts” and the John Cusack vehicle “Must Love Dogs” all feature a Dengue Fever song in the film and on the soundtrack.
Martin Rapalski, owner of the Make-Out Room understands why, “It’s so accessible. It has that ‘60s sound and Nimol sings like a bird. Her voice is lilting and sweet. That’s the draw for me.”
Dengue Fever plays The Rickshaw Stop (www.rickshawstop.com) on New Year’s Eve. The band’s latest, Escape from Dragon House, is out now. Visit www.denguefevermusic.com for more info.
