andergraund.it

Ciao Davide (local Lombardy’s famous song-writer), thanks to give us some of your time for our interview.

Let’s start:

At the beginning of your career you took part in a band called “Potage”. Which is the way you followed to reach the folk-rock music kind and why?

I can tell you straight away that “Potage” have been a connection within good and bad things, the band was not so popular at that time. We was borned for different reasons: passions and my personal verve of a teenager that growth with famous bands like Sex Pistols and Ramones. That was for sure one of the best times in my life; I didn’t consider my-self a musician yet, I was just starting to be one and to me was just a way to get confidence with the instruments getting the same movements and the same attitudes of crazy and original groups such as the “Blues Brothers” for example. I have to say that I felt already eager of stage and even if I’m very shy, it was only my huge passion for the music and all the best singers to drive me untill the success. I still remember when I used to practise music for the first times with my friends inside a somebody-else garages, where our guide-spirit was the most pleasant carefree minds and this is the specific element that drives us in this particular kind of music that I re-called punk-folk, where we didn’t need to talk about politics, that I extremely hate and I don’t find attractive, where we didn’t need embroideries, but was very essential our credential.

Today you are knew with the name of “Davide Van De Sfroos” (Davide Plays On Fraud), but at the beginning you had just the name “De Sfroos” (On Fraud). Where the name comes from and why when you became a solist you decided to hold this relation with the past?

The name of a band actually have to be an inciting factor and have to increase the curiosity. I used for the first time this pseudonym for the production of my first album as a solist “Breva e Tivan”. This nominative was created by the barber of my little town and it was from soon my official, personal symbol and logo too, from when I used to play in local regional parties. Before being famous as a singer, I used already that pseudonym as a writer in one local magazine. So, I feel like I own that name deeply, to me is not a relation with the past, but a choice dipending for the people that knew my music and connecting me at that name and sign too, then I claim the paternity of that name that I feel mine.

During your career, we can’t no see the continuous changing of your musicians that play with you, even if seem you have a good feeling with them, the only one exception is your unsubstituteble violinist Angapiemage Galliano Persico. Which is the reason that makes the band envolving so quickly?

First of all I really like working with new and fresh people, full of energy. We are not like the Rolling Stone, I mean we don’t have a particular set of musicians, but all depends by my crazy musical mind, by the kind and the type of sound that I want to give to the album. From the musical point of view, my albums are different from eachothers. My essential way to play music makes me at same time be the victim and the executioner of my musical evolution, also I don’t want to be a tyrant or a tutor of a band that I would like always less watertightly as possible. I consider all the musicians that I worked with, during these years, very professional and I’m always proud to play with them sometimes to refresh my memory: I still have great memoirs of all. So, nothing personal, but this is ME, better “züca e melùn g' han la lur stagiùn” (Pumpkins and Honey Melons have their season)! Anyway I want to consider my-self as a good point to let young people start to enjoy music to me too.

When you go around for the streets of your town e most in general in the area that you live too, where most of your stories in your songs and books takes place, what you feel and wich is the relation-ship with the people living there?

The relation-ship with the people living there, where I lived a part of my youngness too, it’s about exchange and enthusiasm, even if sometimes somebody goes crazy about that, but it’s not my problem. I like the idea of celebrate the life of that people living in that places, that seem like coming from a postcard in a nice old cracky frame; I don’t want to be a weaks’s saver: the people from there get this so as my experiment, join different generations togheter under the stages where my showes take place.

In your lirycs you tell about crazy and incredible people: where does the inspiration come from? Are they a totaly craetion of your mind or they come from the reality?

The base to start is for the eigthy percent about the reality and so I tell about people that exsist or exsisted that I met during my life. I give life to these stories get all my past experiences and knead them with my fantasy. Now I want to change. I’m working at a new album where I will be much more straight to name people and all the references will be no more casual, but this will be a birth of a new style where I will be proud of make the protagonist of the song happy. I can’t immagine Dante in the common way that we rappresent him, with two basil leaves on his head and a silly bonnet sit down on a stone waiting for the inspiration; Dante was a LIVING person and his stories coming from life’s experiences. To me it’s much more easy think about the florence poet in another way, with the company of easy women.

In a piece of yours called “El Mustru” (The Monster), it’s really curios the principal person that had the vision of a monster in the lake of Como. Tell us how this piece was borned.

Just to start you have to know that the monster in the lake was exsisted (or somethign similar was exsisted).Essentialy the story talks about the lost of believing of the people that for unbalance, healthy reasons or for something much more bigger than them, they are taking a part; from that time the monstrousity is don’t be believed again and be consider a liar. All of as have seen monsters that are coming from the starordinary around as and that I wanted remember at all in this song.

In one other interview, you have revelated your wish to work in a “mental hospital” and the intention to be a “bridge” within the world of normal people and people living in a beat moved Universe. Wich is the emotional inspiration that you felt to talk about these situations of inconvenience?

All of that was borned by a familiar and personal experience that have get me in person and I lived on my skin too. I felt inside me a kind of energy that I had to make free; that was a bad time to me too, I was stressed and I was helpless too. That makes me feel like a good relator and I was usefull for people asking for help and support. The reason that drive me to tell about these situation is that I consider the insanity as an Universe that big or small is every-one person. This makes me see the problem with other eyes: the “mad” is considered fascinating about the Tarot and much more powerfull for the “Aztechi”.

In Italy we got a lots different ways to talk that they change zone to zone on all the national territory. Why did you decided and how was borned your idea to use the dialect form? Could be this an original way to make it run within young people that are going to loose it?

My choice of writting using the dialect form was borned in a normal way for natural effects; it never been a drove or thought decision. I inspire my-self to Dante Alighieri, that in Italy was one of the first people writting using the language from his area. I think is essential keep the dialect running and alive and I hope that my music can be a way to help young people of today using it.

How people in Lombardy where you come from accepted your idea to sing in dialect? That was been loved everywhere there with the same enthusiasm? We also know that in the last few years you popolarity goes outside the Lombardy’s borders: from the North-Est untill the South of Italy, wich is your relation with the audience of other regions?

This choice of sing in dialect was accepted in a good extremely way that I never aspected. Even in other cities as Bergamo, for example, my music and my way to sing are been accepted with a lot of enthusiasm, so as you say in the north-est of Italy, Piedmont, untill the south. I think that the dialect is not a obstacle about the diffusion of my music in other regions, because people like “strain” their mind to try understand a strange and exotic language as mine. Like me there are some other bands like the Tazenda, Mancuso Brothers or Fabrizio De Andrè him-self, little differences that makes appear big the Italy. Anyway, even if the people can’t understand the lirycs, they can loves you just for the kind of music that you play. For example in New Orleans I’ve got a small group of fans and I had the great opportunity to collaborate with the best local artists there during my live performances, even if they don’t understand a word that I sing, we are united by the universal music language.

Your appears at different Tv programms, especially on the RAI network and show in all Italy, have they helped you in anyway for the success?

Honestly I can say just few, because all my appears was in general for few times, but anyway, big or small the Tv is, it’s like a “video-stage” that shows you and makes know you untill where it is seen, also it shows most of the times small realities that in other way, probably, they will never be catched.

In the 2005 you went straight to the 12th position on the italian chart with your last album “Akuadulza” (Sweetwater). What did you feel when you find your-self work within famous artists like Antonacci, Vasco Rossi, Battisti e many more? Is that a arriving point of a path you studied first or was the album it-self that was loved by the audience?

The success in the 2005, I must be honest, was not thought in advance, it was not even a path that we studied before. For me was a real pleasure becasue in that moment we was not supported by hit parade or compilations. I have to thank all people that believed on me and thanks the people that used the hands by hands way, they have upgrade my popularity. Been at the twelth position within Vasco Rossi and Antonacci made me felt like comforted and cuddled.

Well, we have finish. Thanks for your availability, and good luck for your new album.