INTERVIEW: IVY

Photo Credit: Philippe Garcia

I had the pleasure of speaking with Andy Chase and Dominique Durand, members of the band Ivy formed in 1994. Together with the late Adam Schlesinger, they pioneered a new sound from neophyte beginnings and achieved critical success. Celebrating the reissuing of their third studio album, “Long Distance,” now on vinyl, Chase and Durand discussed Ivy’s origins, “Long Distance,” fan relationships, and finally, what’s next for Ivy. 

Mia Anderson (MA): I want to start by going back all the way back to Ivy’s origin story because it’s quite unique. How did you guys initially meet and eventually form Ivy?

Dominique Durand (DD): I was living in Paris, studying at university, when I wanted to take a break and learn English. I thought the best place to do that would be New York, much more interesting than London or other places in the world. So I decided to move to New York, and I met Andy a year or six months later. He was a musician in New York trying to, you know, have a record deal with his own band. We started to hang out and became friends when he was like, “Why don’t you sing? I wrote this song, but I don’t really like it for myself.” 

Andy Chase (AC): Well, you skipped the part where you walked through the door at the party where we met, and I immediately fell in love. 

DD: Yeah, but she wants to look at the music. So, in any case, I sang a song that he wrote, and at that point, I had never been a singer. I loved music, but it was not something I was trying to do. It ended up being so enjoyable that we decided to do more.

AC: Back in those days, I was actually working in a recording studio that I had started, like a really low-end kind of a piece of shit studio in the East Village of New York City with cockroaches and rats. That’s how we had recording access because back in those days, you couldn’t record on your laptop like you can today on Garage Band or whatever. I was crazy in love with her, and I just wanted to, you know, spend more time with her. 

DD: Then Adam, the other member of Ivy, came along, discovered these songs, and also completely fell in love with them. 

AC: And we needed bass, so he came down, and he pulled me aside and said, “I think your girlfriend has got something.” That was a moment of epiphany for me. Both Adam and I were hearing these little charming, innocent demos and thinking there was something to her voice. She had never sung before, not even in the school choir. It took her a long time not to think that we were completely out of our minds.

MA: Wow, you’ve really evolved as a singer, coming from no experience singing at all to now being a widely recognized singer. That’s a really cool story.

AC: It’s kind of funny because she went kicking and screaming into this career. When we heard from a subsidiary label, a small label that was owned by Atlantic Records. When we broke the news to Dominique, she completely freaked out. The record company behind our backs sent the first little demo around the world. Melody Maker, which was a huge magazine that was very influential in London, picked it as their single of the week. So then the label sat us down, and they said, “I know you guys said you were just going to record the record first and then eventually play live, but we need you to do a show in three weeks.” So then we had to break the news again to Dominique. She was not happy. That show, 10 minutes before we were going to go on stage, we couldn’t find her in the venue, and I ran outside, and she was actually on the street in New York City, trying to hail a cab.

DD: I had never performed on stage before, and it was really not my dream. So, suddenly, I was pushed into it, and I had to perform something that was completely new to me. Most musicians, when they start, start at these small clubs with friends and family so they feel comfortable. In my first gig ever, I had to perform in front of all industry people, journalists from all over the world, and radio people. It took me, honestly, almost two years of touring nonstop to finally feel like, okay, now I’m in my element. 

AC: There’s nothing she could do that wasn’t great. In those early days, she gets up on stage, completely clams up, and starts singing. Adam and I are just completely crushed because, you know, she was our front person and just alienated the audience. That’s what we thought. All the reviews afterward were like. “The chant Dominic Duran doesn’t give a shit when she’s up on stage. She has this I don’t care la de da French attitude, and she just does her thing and glares around the room. We’ve never seen anybody like that.” Everything she did out of stage fright came across and connected with the audience like it was intentional.

DD: Yeah. The lesson of that is I’m a very, very lucky woman.

MA: Yeah, it shows that you had like a special spark.

AC: She really did- does. 

MA: We’re also here to celebrate the rerelease of your very iconic album, “Long Distance,” which was released on November 1. Congratulations, by the way. With the reissuance of “Long Distance,” how have your perspectives and feelings about the album changed since its first release?

DD: I was so excited to finally release this record on vinyl because I remember when we first released it, it was a CD. Back in that time, vinyls were not important. Nobody cared. But I always imagined, I was picturing in my head, that it would be so great to have it in vinyl. Because of the rerelease, I’ve been, like, listening to all these songs again, and I have to say, it still feels really fresh to me, and I love that. I don’t feel like the production is outdated; it’s sort of like timeless music. So I’m personally super excited about it. 

MA: How did the sound of this album come together, and what do you think made it resonate so deeply with your listeners?

DD: Well, I think it’s very gentle, sort of dreamy, and full of hope. I think people can resonate with that kind of mood. And I think, especially back then, it was a time of a lot of punk girl bands. It wasn’t at all what people were doing back then: dreamy pop. But I think, in a way, some people were really ready for that kind of music too, and they needed a little bit of a melancholic and atmospheric kind of cinematographic music. At least the movies loved that because, on that record, we got licensed with so many movies and TV shows. Our music is really connected with ease, gentleness, and a non-threatening kind of dreamy music.

AC: I also think, you could say, the producer and mixer of that record. We didn’t have access to a big studio. We didn’t have real drums, so by our circumstances, our only choice if we wanted drum beats was to find loops and samples on our computer. The circumstances dictated that this record was going to be mostly derived from our soundscapes and all the things that we had available to us on our computers and our samplers. As a result, the record became less rock and more ambient.

MA: You guys are also releasing an unheard song, “All I’ve Ever Wanted,” which is super exciting and allows you to spend a lot of time searching through past archives of your music. How has that whole journey of looking into the past and looking through old music been, and did it bring up any old memories?

DD: Well, after Adam passed away in 2020, we realized that our deal with Network Records was coming to an end. So we were actually going to own our records, and we needed to decide what we were going to do with them: just take them back, sign another deal with Network, or go somewhere else. Because Adam was gone, I felt like we should go back to the origin of how Ivy started, which was with this guy who now works at Bar/None Records, Mark Lipsitz. We went back to him, and at that point, we had not even talked to him in almost 15 years. I said, “Are you interested in taking all of that catalog and rereleasing it?” He was so floored. He was like, “Oh my god, this is my dream.” So, in order to do that, we needed to go back to our archive and rerelease all this music made in the 90s. We discovered all these old songs that had never been released, and we were so puzzled about why we had never released them. 

AC: I would Shazam these songs of ours, and nothing was coming up. 

DD: In the process of going through these archive tapes, we discovered so much work. That song, “All I’ve Ever Wanted,” was completely done, and we couldn’t remember why we had never released it. Suddenly, my memory started to come back, and I felt that Lloyd Cole was involved in that song, but we were not sure. So we called him up, and he remembered. He said, “Yeah, absolutely, I produced that song.” So we were like, “Oh my God, that would be just so amazing if we could finish these songs and we released it to the world.” So that’s what we’ve been working on for the last two years. Basically, new and old material.

AC: Material throughout our career, dating back to the 90s and as recently as 10 years ago, because our last album was in 2011. It was all because of that song, “All I Ever Wanted.” That song led us to discover this whole cache of new songs.

MA: For fans who are discovering Ivy for the first time through this reissuance of music, what do you hope they take away from “Long Distance?” And what do you want this album to say after 25 years after its original release?

DD: Well, for me, what I would love is for people like you, your generation, to discover Ivy. Kids your age were never really interested in our music, but now they kind of like listening to our music. When I listen to the current music in the pop world, it resonates. Ivy is not that different from a lot of things that are going on, so, yeah, I’m hoping that the younger audience will not only discover us but appreciate us.

AC: I think that, for me, what makes music timeless oftentimes has to do with the production not getting in the way and making it sound outdated and unlistenable. I can barely watch any movies made in the 80s because of all the puffy hair, hairspray, bright colors, and shoulder pads. You know immediately what movies are from the 80s, as well as the music and soundtrack of the 80s movies. There are records that are so heavily produced that really date them. I hope that people who don’t know us will hear our music and not be sure when it was recorded in a good way. The worst thing you could say is, “Oh, that sounds like it was from the ‘90s,” because that means your production was dating you.  

MA: Yeah, and I think you guys have definitely achieved that. How has your relationship with your fans changed as you’ve come out of hiatus and with the reissuing?

AC: We were lucky enough, early on, to have a friend who was running our fan club. It was the beginning of the internet; it was 1995, and most people didn’t have an email address, but the web was there. We were one of the first bands to have a fan club. Partly because of her, it really blossomed and grew. We’ve been very blessed to have great connectivity with our fans. If you go to our website, there is a link where you can write something for the band. We haven’t made a record since 2011. All things considered, it’s still pretty gratifying. We still get messages every week to Dominique and me.

DD: I’ve always liked connecting to a fan after a gig and actually connecting with them in person. That was really gratifying to me. 

AC: Fans can write emails to Dominique, and she may or may not respond. If she does, it could take four or five months, but they can come to the show, and after the show, Dominique will be out in the venue when they are sweeping up the floor and talking to fans.

MA: There is something more special about having those in-person reactions. I do think that will never go away.

AC: There is no substitute for seeing a band onstage, it’s so powerful. The connection that happens.

MA: What’s next for Ivy?

DD: I’m super excited about finally putting all of these songs into the world that we have forgotten, and also excited about Adams’s legacy. Even though he is not with us anymore, there is still going to be some of his music out there. 

AC: These were songs that might have been started, but all of these songs were re-tooled and, in some cases, almost started from scratch again. The only rule again was that if we were going to start from scratch, we were going to keep Adam cause I could replay my part, but it wouldn’t be Ivy if Adam wasn’t on it.

If you had interviewed us at any other time in the last year, in the last ten years, we wouldn’t be able to say this as a parting thought, but we finally can. Look for our new album, which is called “Traces of You,” and it’s coming out in 2025 on Bar/None Records.

This interview was edited for clarity.