We Interviewed Mitch From Born Ruffians About His Dog

Photo by Cam Lindsay

There aren’t enough band mascots in this world. The best ones out there are often the first thing people associate the music with, like Megadeth’s Vic Rattlehead, Motörhead’s Snaggletooth, Danzig’s Crystar, and best of all, Iron Maiden’s Eddie the Head. Maybe mascots are often considered “too metal” that some other bands feel too wimpy to attempt such a thing, but Toronto’s Born Ruffians may have found the solution: adopt Charlie, the cutest fucking dog in the world. Okay, so maybe Charlie the mini Goldendoodle only belongs to bassist Mitch Derosier. And maybe Charlie isn’t officially the Born Ruffians mascot. But he should be. Especially considering the band has named their new album, RUFF, which may only reference dogs in my mind, but seems like the perfect launch pad for a new mascot. The band actually named the album RUFF because it’s what their album is: a wild and impulsive response to 2013’s immaculate studio album, Birthmarks. RUFF is like the evil twin to Birthmarks, much like that episode of The Simpsons where Bart discovers he has a wretched, deformed twin brother living in the attic who eats fish heads. While it sounds unlike Birthmarks, RUFF recalls the band in their infant stage, when they were scrappy, raw and even a little crude.

Noisey met up with Derosier at the park where Charlie the mini Goldendoodle managed to eat our questions, but not before we discussed the possibility of having a band mascot, tweeting threats to strange men that pet his dog mid-BM and the joy of making potty-mouthed music.

charlie is hyped for #RUFF

A video posted by born RUFFians (@bornruffiansmusic) on Aug 2, 2015 at 10:24am PDT

Noisey: So when I heard RUFF I immediately thought of dogs. And you have a dog. Is he the official band mascot
Mitch Derosier: Since I’m doing the interview, yes. Just look at him! It’s funny, I really have to restrain myself from posting photos of him on the band’s Twitter and Instagram all the time without going a little dog-dad crazy. I've got a food dish that says “RUFF” on it.

That sounds like a great idea for Born Ruffians merch.
Maybe, look out for them! What made you want to get a dog?
My girlfriend had a dog for 16 years, and then four years ago he passed away. So we’ve been thinking about it, but it takes some time to get back into owning a dog. But we just started to get the dog itch again. And we started looking around and thought, “Shit, we are actually getting a dog.” Because once you go meet the dog it’s hard to say no.

Have you toured since you got him?
Not extensively. He’ll think I’m dead for a good part of the tour. We were away for two days this week and my girlfriend sent me a picture of him waiting at the door. But then she said, “Guess who he’s waiting for?” And it wasn’t me. It was this French lady who lives in our building who gives him treats.

How thoroughly did you research dogs before you got him?
A little. We knew we wanted a hypoallergenic dog with a good temperament that was good with kids. We didn’t want a big dog either because we have a small apartment. So we did a bit of research and learned that goldendoodles have smaller breeds, so we were into that.

You tweeted on July 10: “sir if you pet my dog while he's attempting a poo i will follow you home and do the same to you.” Did he and did you? What happened there?
Yes to the first one. So what happened was, I had been waiting all day and he was having some stomach issues, so his poos have been all over the map. So when he started doing one that was going well, I was like, “Amazing!” But then this guy came right up to him and Charlie stopped pooing. And this was a guy who owned a dog, so he should know that’s not cool! And also weird for everybody. I will leave the other question open-ended.

I read this interview Luke did with NPR about how monotonous band life can be. Has your dog changed any of that for you and the band?
In a way, kinda. It’s different. Because before I would come home from a show at 2:00 AM and just go to sleep. And now it’s, “Oh, there’s a dog here who’s now awake and wants me to take him for a walk and then play with him.” So that’s different. In general though it still feels the same.

How does the rest of the band feel about Charlie?
I’ll take him to band meetings if we’re getting together in the park… [Charlie grabs my piece of paper and a tug of war ensues]. He’s like, “End this interview now!” [laughs] He doesn’t like your questions.

Continued below…

What do you think makes RUFF so different from the previous Born Ruffians albums?
We were just talking about this yesterday. So often when you go in and work on a record you… [Charlie grabs my piece of paper again] kind of come away with it thinking, “We worked on those songs for how long, we’ve heard them a bazillion times, and never want to hear them again.” And it’s not like we sit around and listen to RUFF that much, but when we do we don’t feel that sickness. We feel weirdly satisfied and think it’s a really complete record. For the first time since we feel it’s a whole record, lyrically and sonically. It has themes running through it and has more of a point than just, “Let’s write a bunch of songs and record the best ten.” RUFF just feels more complete to me.

I believe it’s been called “the ugly innards that hide beneath the polished and presentable Birthmarks.” What’s so great about making “ugly innard” music?
I think with Birthmarks we made a very conscious decision to make a studio album and take our time. The record before was recorded to tape and how a totally different sound, so we decided to go a completely different way to see what it would be like. And once we saw that we were super happy about it and found more radio success with that kind of production we thought, “That’s great!” And maybe a different band would go further with it, but we thought, “No! We’re stupid! Let’s go the other way and do something that sounds live and more rock’n’roll.” It just felt the right thing to do where we were coming from while we were writing it. We just followed our ugly innards.

Compared to Birthmarks it does sound “ruff.”
Yeah, and that’s partly where the name came from. According to the press release, “naivety is the album’s power.” Does that mean you guys don’t know much about music?
I feel like we never really got good with our instruments in the first place. But that quote is about how we demoed this record, but we went in for two weeks and just recorded it and didn’t look back. So a lot of things that changed and just happened in the studio made it more spontaneous.

Dogs eat shit. It’s what they do. So did your dog inspire the song or at least song title “(Eat Shit) We Did It”? Also, did you guys actually do it?
I don’t think I’ve seen him eat shit. But he would if I gave him the opportunity. He will devour some shit eventually. He does like drinking his own pee though. Not like the goats at the Centreville Zoo that pee right into their mouths, but he’ll pee on the pee pads we put on our balcony and then just lick them.

The title comes from Luke [Lalonde], who one day was working on some demos and just sent them over. And we were like, “Are you saying ‘eat shit’ over and over again?” And he said he might change it, but we said, “No! That’s hilarious!” And kind of awesome. It embodies this feeling of accomplishment, which we felt with this record. We didn’t want to change it, but now feel a bit dumb because it’s never gonna get played anywhere. [Laughs]

You have another song called “Fuck Feelings.” That’s two swear word song titles. What inspired you to use such potty-mouthed language?
We’re all grown up now, so we can swear. Shit. Fuck. Going back to the difference between the two records, I feel like on Birthmarks we had a discussion where maybe we shouldn’t say this or that in a song. If Luke was hesitant about a line we would have said, “Maybe that goes too far.” With this record we told him to say whatever comes out naturally and if the song says, “Shit, fuck or cock,” which all the songs seem to have in them, who cares? That’s the music we’re making.

Cam Lindsay is a writer from Toronto. Follow him on Twitter.