THE NASHVILLE SESSIONS
When Rich confirmed that there would be no Exit/In show for the band in 2026, we were crushed. Nashville and Dick Jr. & The Volunteers are so connected in our hearts, we can't think of one without the other. Thankfully, we're not alone. For our latest exclusive, we catch up with Dick Jr. on recording in Music City, and hear how an old friendship is helping shape album number 3.
DICK JR.: "We’re just kinda seizing an open window, y’know?
I want to record some new stuff; Billy wants to be a part of that as well, and I feel like if we don’t do it now, we won’t do it this year, because the years get crazy with family and work. We saw a window of opportunity in February and we’re jumping on it – I’m available, he’s available, and the people we want to record with in Nashville are available."
THE NASHVILLE VOLUNTEERS
"We’re doing something different – not because what we were doing wasn’t working, because it was - it was awesome, but I don’t know how many more cracks at this I’m gonna get – or gonna be willing to take – so we decided to switch it up. And we’ve had such a good time playing live with in Nashville with the Jules Belmont, Rob Calder, Jon Epcar lineup, that we’re gonna record with those dudes. And with Emma Fitzpatrick, obviously.
And obviously Billy will be there playing guitar and producing, and it’ll just be a different studio, different set up, different creative minds in the space, and I’m kinda fired up about it. The engineer’s gonna be different too - it’s somebody that Jules Belmont is close to.
It’s gonna be great; it’s gonna be a really interesting experience. It’s a personal thrill to record in my hometown. Nashville is just chock-full of phenomenal musicians, and phenomenal spaces to record. And I’ve just enjoyed getting to know Jules. I think he’s such a ball of energy and fun to play with on stage.
He’s just so creative and collaborative, and his positive energy is infectious, so I think that’s gonna be a great addition to the creative space. He’s not just coming in to play guitar - he’s gonna be at the board, he’s gonna be really involved, and I’m excited to have him not just along for the ride, but essentially part of the creative process.
Man, it was just so fun playing with those dudes - Jon and Rob as well - so we are all fired up to be seizing this opportunity that arrived; to go to Nashville and record in a space there."
THE RETURN OF SAMMY AND RICHFUNKEL
"We’re demoing the songs, we’re getting new material ready. Some of these songs were co-written with my buddy Sam Klein. Sammy is a great musician, great songwriter, who was my first musical buddy – and my first California buddy – when I started going to college at USC. He and I immediately became friends, immediately started recorded music together on a four-track recorder. If we’d have had GarageBand at the time, we would have bailed out of school and never left the dorm, so I’m glad we didn’t!
But we recorded a *bunch* of stuff. Sam was a prolific songwriter, and some of his songs I loved so much. And most never got played live; they never even got played by somebody other than Sam, because he would sit up in his room and record these things. One or two of them are songs that I recorded with him and that we got to play live, but for the most part, it’s songs that he came up with that might not have been fully baked, but that had the core elements of some great music. And so I’ve picked up the ball and run with it, and used Billy’s skills as well. They are collaborative efforts, they are co-write songs, but the seed of the song was planted years ago, and now we’ve dug it up from the ground and replanted it in the Dick Jr. & The Volunteers yard, and are watering it, and watching it grow.
Some of this music is really, really cool, and I’m fired up, and Sam’s fired up, because these are songs that he thought would never see the light of day. It’s been really fun using older, wiser ears to reshape some of the composition of the music itself, and lyrically make some adjustments. But the core elements that Sam had in mind were there and we’re just building upon that, and it’s really awesome. It’s fun collaborating with him, always has been, and now, all these years later, it’s been fun to circle back and do it again. I’m doing some writing on it, and obviously Billy’s working with me on some stuff, but Sam Klein’s creative voice will be on this album, in several places.
I have no idea when we’re going to release. Right now, we’re focused on getting it done, and getting it done well, and having a good time doing it.
For the first time ever, Dick Jr. & The Volunteers are recording in Nashville, Tennessee. And that’s freaking awesome.”
Dick Jr. and Sam - a musical history
The writing collaboration at the core of the third Dick Jr album is the latest chapter for a musical partnership which began in the late 1980s.
Sam and Rich’s college band, STRANGE NEIGHBORS (1989 - 1992) was a four-piece, completed by drummer Steve Cavit (who would go on to win three Emmys as a composer), and Chuck Facas (who would go on to be celebrated by French convention-goers as the writer of the classic “Quand Je Suis”). And we should probably mention that guy who sat in on harmonica, too - one Timothy Omundson.
MEET THE BAND
“And now for your listening enjoyment…Strange Neighbors!
Not so strange, really. No stranger than any other campus band struggling to survive its infancy. Just a motley-looking foursome brought together by what they call ‘blues rock ‘n’ roll’
Sam, tower of blond goatee and ponytail, of baggy jeans and beer and chemical experimentation, was the lead singer.
But the group’s main spokesman was its bass player, Rich, scruffy and spastic boy-faced man of a thousand t-shirts and an occasional Tennessee twang.
There was Chuck - mellow, disheveled and virtually immobile beyond what was necessary to play the guitar or smoke a cigarette.
And there was Steve, the clean-cut business major who became the group’s drummer after wandering into a party at Chucks house on 30th Street.”
From ‘Strange, but this group used to be our Neighbours’, by Jordana Blese, staff writer for USC’s ‘The Daily Trojan’
After Strange Neighbors, Sam and Rich continued as an acoustic duo under the moniker “Sammy & Richfunkel”. When “Lovely Larry” (Pennings) joined them in 1993, they became FUGITIVE POPE (1993-1995). The band would release one grunge tinged album, “Dumb and Uncomfortable”, in 1995, and even film a moody promo video for the track ‘Snow’.
In 2024, I asked Rich just how seriously he had taken the band –
“Oh sure, I would have quit acting had it taken off, but I never made the band my sole focus. I wasn’t in the headspace of living out of a van on the road to play crap bars trying to ‘make it.’ To me, playing music and being in bands has always been an outlet of sorts. Social, artistic… all of it. There is so much pressure, self-applied and otherwise, to succeed in the TV and film business that I had zero desire to attach that pressure to music. It was fun, and I wanted it to stay that way. Now, had the band taken off, that would have been a very unexpected and awesome surprise. I am sure I would have enjoyed the ride.” - From ‘Fistfights and Hug-Outs – Dick Jr. on the band’s sophomore album’
The band were, at their core, a three piece, with Sam as vocalist, Rich (credited as Dick Jr.!) on rhythm guitar, and Lovely Larry on lead guitar. For the album sessions, producers Steve Plunkett and Tom Weir brought in bassist Paul Bushnell, and drummer Josh Freese (The Vandals). Freese would go on to become a member of Devo and A Perfect Circle, replace Matt Sorum in Guns and Roses for a spell, and even be briefly welcomed as a full-time replacement for the late Taylor Hawkins in Foo Fighters.
While Sam moved to Oslo, Norway (where he works as an illustrator, comic book artist, and author of children’s books), he did reunite with Rich for a introduction to the Supernatural fandom in 2011. Rich brought him along to the UK’s Asylum 6 convention, where the two performed “I Only Love You When I’m Drunk”, with Sam on lead vocals. Rich has also performed the song solo on a couple of occasions, including in a 2017 acoustic lounge at Rockwood Festival in Germany.
Most recently, Rich gave us a taster of what's to come on Dick Jr & The Volunteers' next release when he played the beautiful Klein-penned ballad, “The Cowboy Way”, at ‘The Heist Before Christmas’ in December, and ‘The Speightion Breaks’ February show.