Mark Kermode is bringing his 'old-time' music band The Dodge Brothers to The Wedgewood Rooms | Interview

His regular radio shows, podcasts, columns and TV shows have made him a familiar figure to cinephiles.

However, he also has another great passion – old-time music. And since the mid-90s he has also been playing music with Mike Hammond, which eventually morphed into The Dodge Brothers, a vehicle for their ‘foot-stomping hybrid of blues, rockabilly, jug-band and skiffle.’

Now settled on the lineup of Mike (lead guitar, lead vocals, banjo), Mark (bass, harmonica, vocals), Aly Hirji (rhythm guitar, mandolin, vocals) and Alex Hammond (washboard, snare drum, percussion) they are returning to the city to play at The Wedge.

It is not, though, part of a tour.

Mark, who lives in The New Forest, says: ‘Just playing a couple of gigs here and there is pretty much what we've done for years now!

‘We've been going 20-something years and we don't ever really tour, we just carry on gigging. The last gig we played was in Tromsø up in the Arctic Circle – we were accompanying a silent film in the Tromsø International Film Festival. We played (1930 Great Depression-era classic) City Girl up there, and the gig before that was in London, then before that was New Milton. That's basically how it works for us – we play as and when.’

It’s an approach they’ve carried over into their album release schedule – their fourth and most recent album Drive Train came out in 2023.

‘We've never done anything in a hurry! I think there was five years between (second album) Louisa and the Devil, and then (album three) The Sun Set as well.

‘We do everything at our own pace, so it's been three albums across two decades – there's probably another one due at some point,’ he chuckles. ‘We've probably got another album's worth of material, but it's getting to a point where we feel that we've got the songs and we're ready to go into the studio.

‘The way that this works, is that we do it because we love doing it, so we're not under any pressure to do anything – as is evident by the fact I hadn't even realised it was five years! I still introduce songs off Drive Train as something off the new album...’

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Playing without the attendant pressures of the business has allowed the four-piece to focus on the music.

‘Mike's American – he's from Alabama via California and when we first started The Dodge Brothers, I think he was in a glam band or something, but he was never really into that, he was interested in was old Americana. We met and we started discussing songs that we liked and we realised we liked the same kind of songs.’

Aly joined and eventually Alex was added on drums. ‘Alex is Mike’s son – I first met him when he was just a kid but he grew up to become a drummer... The band has happened so slowly that we literally grew a drummer from scratch!’

‘All of that time, the appeal of the music has been pretty much the same – people who like skiffle and blues, rockabilly, what some people call western swing, bluegrass – there's a strong, solid following for it, particularly live.

Really we're a gigging band which every now and then makes albums. It's old music that anyone can listen to – it's very infectious. It's as old as the hills.’

And as they like to say, they write and perform ‘songs about transport and homicide.’

‘That was a joke that Mike made which has just stuck with us,’ Mark clarifies. ‘I always say we don't write new songs, we write old songs and we don't do new jokes, we do old jokes.’

​Although their gig here will be a normal band show, as Mark mentioned, live soundtracking silent-era films has become a regular string to their bow.

This came about through their friendship with composer and broadcaster Neil Brand, who is, Mark says: ‘the country's leading silent film music composer’.

‘Neil's whole thing was that he could play along to a silent film that he'd never seen before,’ explains Mark, ‘he could just do it in the old style of playing as the film was running. In those early days of silent film, they'd have pick-up bands who'd accompany them. They'd have a repertoire of like a sad song, a love song, a fast song, a dance song and so on. Neil decided that he wanted to see if we could do this.’

They’ve gone on to perform together on numerous occasions

‘The first thing we ever did was at The Barbican, I think it was White Oak, and it went better than we expected. Then we did a Louise Brooks film called Beggars of Life, and The Ghost That Never Returns, a really mad western called Hells Hinges, and then just recently we started doing City Girl. We've made it our mission to recreate what it would have been like when you saw those films with a pick-up band. I'm not sure there's other bands doing exactly what we're doing. There are plenty of performances of live music to film, and often of films that do have a soundtrack, like for example I introduced a performance of the live score written by Johnny Greenwood for Phantom Thread. Johnny was there and (the film’s director) Paul Thomas Anderson was there and we did a Q&A in advance.’

The love and advocating for the early 20th century art form dovetails nicely with their musical concerns.

‘What we do is very specific – it's improvised live accompaniment to silent films, partly because we're quite militant about the value of silent films. Neil is a great advocate of silent film history.

‘When you do that, you get people of all ages come along, and anyone can enjoy it. Silent cinema has everything that's in modern cinema. It all came about because in the same way we're interested in the roots of rock'n'roll and the roots of bluegrass and modern Americana, we're very interested in silent cinema.

‘It's been a very nice fit – the films we do tend to feature railroads and hobos, that sort of thing, that suits what we do!’

Given Kermode’s well-documented love of the horror classic The Exorcist, even though it is obviously not a silent film, have they ever toyed with the idea of giving it a new soundtrack?

‘I have no intention of messing with that!’ he laughs.

The Dodge Brothers play at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea, on Sunday, May 21, doors 7.30pm, supported by Dan Donnelly. Tickets £15. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.