I woke at 4am. The darkness was not my friend. I thought of days that used to be. I thought of days yet to come. I contemplated the in-between. This time last year, the Dream Syndicate’s Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions unfurled its liquid guitars, propulsive beats and melodies that fluttered as if in the wind, plus lyrics that seemed lifted from my life’s journey. It’s the magical nature of song, that last bit: At its best, it becomes a sonic mirror that reflects ourselves back at us.
The album ushered forth an awakening of sorts, with me digging into their oeuvre from time to time. As I’ve noted before, while I was aware of the Steve Wynn-led band in the early and mid-‘80s, one thing or another—usually cash (and a lack thereof)—kept me from picking up any of their albums. That changed one day in the late ‘80s when I managed a new-fangled CD store; out of curiosity, and most likely spurred by a review in a magazine, I freed Ghost Stories from its long box and played it on the in-house stereo system. Theirs wasn’t the addictive Day-Glo pop of the Three O’Clock or the shimmering pop-rock of the Bangles, two L.A.-area cohorts they were often lumped in with, but a darker concoction spiked with ingredients borrowed from the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan and even the Kinks. Electric guitars were a-plenty.
Until then, I only knew a few of their earlier songs—and if you know the band, I’m sure you can guess which ones—thanks to my college radio station (yes, the same one where I deejayed folk records on weekends). In fact, I was better versed on Wynn’s mid-‘80s Lost Weekend side project with Green on Red’s Dan Stuart, Danny & Dusty, than the Dream Syndicate; I bought it on cassette the same year I discovered Lone Justice and the Long Ryders, along with Jason & the Scorchers and other “cowpunk” and modern folk-rock groups. In retrospect, I wish I’d first spun The Days of Wine and Roses in 1982 instead of ’89; given that was the year of my big Lou Reed/VU phase, well, I’m sure I would’ve loved it from the get-go.
To skip ahead to the end of the book: Emiel Spoelder’s documentary The Dream Syndicate: How Did We Find Ourselves Here? is well worth the price of admission. It charts the rise, fall and resurrection of a band that never achieved the commercial success that it deserved, and does so in a way that should satisfy both longtime fans, recent converts and those, like me, who fall somewhere in between. It travels album-by-album through their career, featuring in-depth interviews with Wynn and most of his bandmates, as well as cogent insights from fellow travelers and such fans as rock scribe David Fricke and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson.
It opens with the band’s pre-history, detailing how Wynn fell in love with rock ’n’ roll when he was a little kid, plus his brief flirtation with sports journalism and his stint at his college’s radio station, which is where he met the beguiling Kendra Smith. Seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on their Darkness on the Edge of Town tour led him and Smith to form The Suspects, the lone new wave-flavored band in Davis, Cal., with future True West members Gavin Blair and Russ Tolman. The doc includes video of the band in action, which is very cool. (Longer clips are available on YouTube via The Steve Wynn Archives.)
Thus enters the film’s first (though far from fatal) flaw: Smith’s lack of participation. She’s only heard a few times via an audio interview, never seen speaking on camera. Given that her innovative bass lines formed the foundation of the band’s earliest works, it’s a shame; and her insights into the band’s formation are missed, too. She suggested Wynn reach out to drummer Dennis Duck, who anchored the beat for Human Hands, a Pasadena-based band.
Still, audio (however brief) is better than nothing—which leads to the film’s other flaw: guitarist Karl Precoda’s absence. When Wynn recounts the initial formation of the band, which occurred after Precoda auditioned (on bass) for a potential group that would have featured Wynn and sisters Kristi and Kelly Callan (who would go on to form Wednesday Week), it would’ve been nice to hear Precoda’s memories, as well as his thoughts about Smith’s recruitment and Duck’s audition, plus the rocket-like experience that happened next: Within a month of Duck’s joining, the band was on its way—its debut EP was recorded and they performed their first show at L.A.’s hip Club Lingerie, where they wowed the audience and, perhaps more importantly, the club’s booker, who immediately scheduled them again.
By year’s end, they released their debut LP, The Days of Wine and Roses, and undertook their first national tour. Life was on the upswing, it seemed. But once the tour was done, Smith left the band (only to later re-surface with Opal). Her replacement, Dave Provost, talks about how her bass parts were so perfect that he saw no reason to tinker with them.
Precoda’s lack of participation also mars the sections on the band’s major-label debut, Medicine Show, and following tour, when he and Wynn were at odds. Producer Sandy Pearlman, Wynn, Duck and Provost shed insights into the long slog that the sessions became; Pearlman hails from the school of multiple recordings and overdubs. (The result is a set that seems, at least to these ears, a tad too polished—small wonder that the same songs sound incredible on 1989’s far more raw Live at Raji’s.) Bassist Mark Walton, who replaced Provost for the Medicine Show tour, recounts how he then became the buffer between Wynn and Precoda once they hit the road. It would have been interesting to hear Precoda explain how his vision for the band differed from Wynn’s.
Suffice it to say that when the band eventually came back together to record their third LP, Out of the Grey, it was with a new guitarist—the colorful Paul B. Cutler, who also produced the band’s 1982 EP. But he also signed on at a time when, unbeknownst to the group, their future was dimming—at least, dimming in the States. They recall how a last-minute headlining slot at the 1986 Roskilde Festival changed their fortunes in Scandinavia. Going from those highs to playing before sparse turnouts across America hurt. (A large part of that was due to reasons beyond their control, of course. One not mentioned in the film is that the era’s biggest tastemaker, MTV, all but ignored the band while championing the bland.) A semi-comic AWOL attempt by Cutler didn’t help.
One thing I appreciate is how the doc fills in many of the latter-day gaps that the band’s Wikipedia page misses, such as why the band reformed in 2012 and how guitarist Jason Victor, who’s an integral force in their current sound, joined the fold. A fan of the original group, he talks about how his expectations help shape the band’s new music—and “new” it is. They have not stopped evolving, taking chances and enjoying themselves, as 2020’s The Universe Inside—which was birthed via an hours-long jam—shows. The same can be said for producer-keyboard player Chris Cacavas, who recounts how he essentially plugged himself into the group.
As I said up top, The Dream Syndicate: How Did We Find Ourselves Here? is well worth the price of admission. The biggest flaw most music docs share is that they inevitably veer away from what matters most, the music, to detail the highs and lows of the artists’ personal lives; they’re little more than Behind the Music episodes, in other words. I’m more about discovering the environmental factors that contributed to the making of art. This doc does just that.
The documentary will be available via PPV on various streaming platforms on June 23, the same day that the 40th anniversary box set of the band’s first album The Days Of Wine And Roses, is slated for release. (A limited-edition DVD will also be available somewhere down the road.)
The Old Grey Cat 
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