With their first album out, 45 shows behind them and another 50 or so coming up, Greg Dulli and Mark Lanegan are pondering the future of their joint project, the Gutter Twins. And they’ve come up with … well, no discernible conclusions.
“I think we’ll do it again,” Dulli tells Billboard.com. “I don’t know when. I don’t know if it’ll be the next record that we do; it may, it may not. Right now we’re just kind of in it. We still have 50 shows to play. But I do know we really enjoyed it and we’re still friends, which is always a plus when you’re doing things like this.”
The Gutter Twins released their first album, “Saturnalia,” in March via Sub Pop, after a lengthy association between the pair that dates back to Lanegan’s guest appearance with Dulli’s Twilight Singers album “Blackberry Belle” in 2002 and Dulli’s subsequent involvement on Lanegan’s 2004 solo album “Bubblegum” — which included being part of Lanegan’s touring band. They began writing songs for the Gutter Twins after that and entered the studio in January of 2007 to work in earnest on “Saturnalia.”
“From knowing Mark as long as I have, we sort of work in a similar fashion,” Dulli says. “It’s very organic. We get a group of songs that sound good together, and then you start reacting to the material.”
While this year is focused on the Gutter Twins, Dulli — who owns and operates a hotel and a bar in New Orleans — says he’s also been working on songs for the Twilight Singers. Mostly, however, he says he’s learning to enjoy some down time and isn’t driven to work in the same way he once was.
“Lately I’ve been talking walks and reading books and … being very quiet,” he says. “For the first time in five or six years I’m not really in a rush. I figure that will steer me into whatever’s supposed to be next.”
The Gutter Twins play at the Sled Island Festival on June 28 in Calgary before kicking off their next tour July 10 in Los Angeles, including the Sub Pop 20th anniversary show July 12 in Seattle and Lollapalooza gigs Aug. 2 and 3 in Chicago. The group will then travel to Europe for the rest of August.
