Interview by: Mark Lacey
Pictures: Louise Phillips / Louise Phillips Photography
Netherlands retro blues / rock trio, DeWolff discuss their return to the studio, and paying tribute to the legends of the past.
Since their formation in 2007, DeWolff’s path has been an unconventional one. From the foundations of their experimental roots, the band have become a household name in their home country and are now building a formidable reputation across the UK and Europe for their classic reinterpretation of a retro sound that harks back to yesteryear. Their last three albums have seen them embrace a more musical songwriting approach, combining their warm soulful blues style with their telepathic combined musicianship, all of which comes alive through their electric live shows.
MyGlobalMind.com caught up with Pablo, Luka and Robin backstage before their triumphant return to London’s iconic 100 Club to discuss their return to the UK, and not one, but two further new releases in 2025.
MGM: Welcome back to the UK. It feels like only six months since you were last here.
Robin: It’s so weird. Yeah, it’s two and a half years ago since we were in this venue, and it feels like last year.
Pablo: There was a tour in between. We were here a half year ago in the UK in March. I recently came on a vacation here. I was in London a few weeks ago and went to the Gibson guitar studios. I couldn’t afford everything that I really liked. I played two wonderful guitars that are still on my mind, but one of them was £8,000 and the other was £12,000.
MGM: They do a lot of sessions in there.
Pablo: Yeah, we asked them if we could play there today, but they were fully booked.
MGM: Since you were last here, you’ve had an eventful time. Luka is a new dad and has been changing nappies, Robin has got married, and Pablo, you’ve been falling off festival stages! How is your ankle, by the way? And how the did the rest of you feel when you saw Pablo disappear off the front of the stage?
Pablo: It’s funny you ask. It was all right, and then yesterday, it’s gone really bad again, seemingly out of nowhere. It’s OK, but it’s just got worse overnight.
Robin: When it happened, I saw the reaction on the faces of the audience. I didn’t see Pablo when he fell off, but the audience’s faces were horrible. I thought he had died for a split second. Then I heard Pablo saying something like, I just broke my leg.
MGM: Well, if it’s good enough for Dave Grohl! Thankfully you lived to tell the tale, and you’re back at the iconic 100 Club for the second time tonight. The last time you played here, there were lots of Dutch fans in the audience. You play sizable venues in your Netherlands homeland, so that was an opportunity for them to see you in an intimate setting. Why was it important to you to return to this venue?
Luka: It’s a legendary place. And if you like it, you’ve got to do it twice, I guess.
Pablo: The last time we played at 100 Club, I think there were only 50 people. Then we’ve moved up, and we did the Omeara and the Garage? I think now we can do this room justice.
Robin: There are actually two Dutch fans travelling behind us. They go to every UK show, and they’re big fans, and they’re really nice people. They’re going to be here as well.
MGM: Do you feel like you’ve broken the UK now? You’ve been over here two or three tours in quick succession, and every tour seems to be getting better for you guys.
Pablo: Well, to be completely honest with you, I felt that on the previous tour. We started out supporting Jared James Nichols two years ago. Then we came back and did our own headline tour. It was really nice. It was smaller size venues than the ones we did with Jared. Then the third time, we played the same venues as Jared played. We were like, wow, this is working. Textbook. Almost like a manual on how to build a band in the UK. Everything worked out. Now on this tour, for the first time, the sales have been mixed. But we are playing new towns.
MGM: The live music market is definitely having a strange 2025. DeWolff have always brought something new to your shows, and it’s great to see you’ve brought your ‘Double Cream’ collaborators, the Dawn Brothers with you on this run. You’ve been leaning heavily on your last two albums for this tour, with lots of songs from Muscle Shoals, and Love, Death and In Between. Those two albums really seem to have captured people.
Pablo: Yeah, for sure. And the one before, Wolffpack.
Robin: Yeah, that was a weird album because it was released during a pandemic.
Pablo: There are some good songs on it, like on previous albums as well. But I think with Love Death and In Between, we were able to capture something very special. In a way, we were able to capture the best of what we have to offer. Once we got the hang of that, we were like, let’s just keep this thing going. In my mind, these two albums are like a double package.
Luka: Most people that are listening to our music are mainly listening to the last two albums. I also have the feeling that those records got the most airplay. I don’t know if they are more accessible than the previous ones, or maybe we are now more of a name, especially in the Netherlands.
MGM: Your first few albums are much more experimental, aren’t they? Less commercially accessible, much more experimental, and jazzier.
Pablo: Well, some of those albums are just plain weird. We were teenagers, and we made songs that were in that moment. We were really deep into some rabbit hole when we made those songs. Then when we got out of the rabbit hole, we were like, is this the music we like? Is this the music we even listen to? Is it fun to play live? Then sometimes we’ll be like, for some reason, it’s not who we really are. I think we’ve started relying much more on our intuition when it came to songwriting. I think that’s what’s changed in the last three or four albums maybe. We’ve started to rely on our intuition more.
Luka: Also, we used to be afraid of making a simple song. We would have a good song, but then we were like, this is too simple; we’ve got to make it more complicated and make it more musically interesting. We would change things, adapt things, and then it was a complicated song, which wasn’t as good as the original idea. We’ve embraced the fact that if it makes you feel good, and if it’s a good song, then keep it that way.
Robin: I think that Tascam Tapes album helped with that because we couldn’t make it complicated because we recorded on cassette with a sampler and a synthesiser. It still worked. For us, that was proof it doesn’t need to be complicated.
Pablo: I think the reason we made stuff so complicated was because when we first started, there were a lot of people saying, it’s ’60s, ’70s rock, retro rock. Then we were like, no, we’re not. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re different, and our songs are weirder, and we just desperately wanted it to be different. Now we don’t give a fuck. If somebody says, oh, it’s very retro, I’ll be like, whatever suits!
MGM: You’re well known for going back and revisiting your original albums. You’ve just announced you’re going to be doing something interesting in Amsterdam.
Luka: Some people have got tickets for both nights. They don’t want to miss out. We were able to do two nights in Paradiso, and we were like, are we going to do the same set? Or are we going to come up with something interesting? Then we came up with this idea that the first show would cover songs from 2009 up until 2016. Yeah. Then the second night is 2017 onwards.
MGM: You’ve brought your friends the Dawn Brothers along for this this UK leg. Some fans will know them as your collaborators in Double Cream. Is this the first time you’ve toured together?
Pablo: No, we’ve done that quite often. I think in 2018 and 2019 we toured a lot with the Dawn Brothers.
Luka: When we played together in Germany, we would do a Dawn Brothers song in our set, and Dawn Brothers would do a DeWolff song. I think we did Milk Truck?
MGM: You mentioned the 2 Meter Sessions earlier. This is due for release at the end of October. How did that come about?
Pablo: This is basically a compilation of all the many appearances we did. I think we played maybe four or five different 2 Meter Sessions over the years. The first one being in 2008/09, and the last one was in 2021 or something.
Luka: I think when we did the Cubie one, that was in COVID. ’22 or ’21.
Pablo: They are actually putting out all these compilation albums. We are just one of many albums that they’ve been releasing over the last couple of months.
Robin: It’s called the 2 Meter Sessions because of this guy, Jan Douwe Kroeske. He’s this 2m tall Dutch guy. Since the ’80s, he’s been interviewing all the artists around the world that come to the Netherlands and trying to get them to do sessions in different places, and studios. They would bring out these compilation albums with all these special sessions from these artists where they would do their songs. We did some of our songs over the years, and now we have this DeWolff compilation album that they only do on vinyl.
Pablo: There are some songs of us on there with the Dawn Brothers too.
MGM: One of the things people really love about DeWolff is that occasionally you’ll perform a cover version of a song from a really obscure blues or soul band from the ’60s. It seems really important for you to educate people on those founding artists.
Pablo: It’s fun. Everybody is putting out new music, but sometimes I’m like, there’s so much good music already. A lot of it isn’t being listened to at all. I have a lot of these albums at home that I think are some of the greatest albums ever, but no one’s ever heard of them. Sometimes I think, Oh, man, that’s a shame. I would like to be the person that can introduce people to that music. Maybe we should record a cover album.
MGM: Funny that … I think you are doing that!
Pablo: It’s going to come out pretty soon. We had this idea that there’s so much cool music out there that a lot of people don’t know. We figured, let’s just for fun, record an album or EP with cool covers. We’re going to do that when we get home from this tour, and it’s going to be released in December on vinyl.
MGM: Well, speaking about covers, you have been known to cover Black Sabbath’s War Pigs recently. Any chance of performing that tonight?
Pablo: Okay, we’ll do it for you. We haven’t made the set list, but we’ll put it on there.
MGM: What else is coming up for you guys?
Luka: We’re doing a Dutch tour starting in December. We’re going to do 15-16 shows, including the two Paradiso nights. We’re also going to do Rotterdam Ahoy, which is a huge arena. It’s huge!!
Pablo: You know Golden Earring, right? Their guitar player became very ill a couple of years ago, and he has recently died, sadly. They were going to do a last series of shows, but that has now changed to a lot of Dutch artists paying tribute to Golden Earring for five nights. It’s five nights in an arena in Rotterdam, where all these Dutch artists play Golden Earring songs. Yeah, so in January. We’re going to play with Barry Hay and Rinus Gerritsen, the bass player of Golden Earring.
Luka: Golden Earring are one of the most successful internationally successful Dutch bands that’s ever been.
For more information on DeWolff, and their forthcoming shows:
DeWolff’s 2 Meter Sessions are available from:
https://dewolff.officialmerch.nl/product/dewolff-live-on-2-meter-sessions-cd/
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