Interview: Wet Denim

Wet Denim plotted Water For Dogs on a cardboard sheet of demos stuck to the ceiling of a four-man Melbourne flat, then took the EP on tour with puppies in tow. Nick Goodwin, the Wellington four-piece's singer and guitarist, caught up with us on tour, fresh from filming acoustic videos on the Desert Road. We got the story behind the EP, the dog-friendly pop-ups and a very specific burger order.

So Nick, music wise, where did it all start for you?

As early as my memories go. I got a cheap toy electric guitar for my fifth or sixth birthday and always had this idea of being a rock star, for lack of a better term. I started guitar and singing lessons early at school.

I grew up in Timaru, which is very much a sports town. There aren't any dedicated music venues, so live music and recorded music kind of eluded me until uni. I still did Rockquest in high school and played local pub gigs. My performance teeth were cut on three-hour cover sets, and that was all it needed to be for me at the time.

Assume that this all changed when you got to Wellington?

I went to Massey and studied commercial music, and that's when the whole industry side of things opened up. I'd heard about the degree through a friend and couldn't think of a better option. I was never going to go to jazz school, and I was never great with theory.

In the first couple of weeks I was suddenly surrounded by so many like-minded young creatives, and I got to see what a proper local music scene looks like. That was a massive thing for me.

How did Wet Denim actually start?

In O-Week, the Massey halls ran a joint open mic night. Joe saw me singing a cover there, (I can't remember what it was now!). A couple of months later he messaged me on Instagram. He and his brother Jack wanted to start a Kings of Leon/Radiohead type band, and asked if I'd be keen.

I was doing a few uni things and session guitar for other people, so I was a bit apprehensive. But, it only took one jam. Joe had prepared a song and  we played it for half an hour nonstop. Right then, it was pretty clear we were going to be doing something together.

Take us through when you guys write. How does it work?

It's very collaborative and it changes from track to track. All four of us play guitar and all four of us write songs and melodies. Sometimes I'll smash out a whole track in one go and bring it to the band, and we adapt it for the instrumentation. Jack might write a chord progression and a poem, hand it over, and I'll shape the poem into a song structure and sing whatever melody comes to mind first. Joe might write something he sings himself or passes to me.

With that many people contributing, it's tricky to know when you've locked in the right idea. For this project we did writing weekends with Neil McLeod, who mixed the EP, and Ben O'Leary from Drax Project, who produced it. Having a third party to say “yes, that's the best idea”, stopped us getting caught up amongst the four of us. It never gets to bickering, but there's a healthy show of passion that can get a little heated from time to time!

Water For Dogs has just dropped, how long has it been in the works?

A long time, in the best way. It's probably our most well thought out project, and that's because it took so long. The early demos go back to mid-2024, when we all lived together in a four-man flat in Melbourne for six months. We had a big cardboard sheet up on the ceiling with a list of demos we wanted to work on. Almost every track on the EP came from that list, which got shortlisted, then shortlisted again.

Then we moved back to Aotearoa and tried to make them work as a set, because they started off quite differently. The four of us have equal input but very different influences and tastes. It's been the better part of two and a half years, so it's really rewarding to have it finished and out.

This is now your third EP, does releasing it feel different this time around?

A lot different. With the first project, and even the second, I was heavily attached to how it would do numbers-wise, how the streaming went and what doors it might open. I think that came from not being completely secure in the songs themselves. I'd wonder whether a track could have been slightly different.

This time I'm just happy with how it turned out and what our sound is now, so having it out is rewarding in itself. The more music you put out, the less attached you get to the outcome. You're always going to keep making and releasing music, and the result is a byproduct that's somewhat out of your control.

It was interesting to see which songs people picked up on Spotify, not just the singles right?

It's been cool to see, and I've noticed it the past few days too. The songs doing best right now aren't the singles. Part of that might be the shows we've been playing, since those could be the ones people are resonating with live. You have to choose which songs you think will work as singles, and often that isn't how the public receives them. So it's fun to put it all out and see what people latch onto.

It sounds like the new songs have gone down a treat live?

Yeah, I guess quite a few we've been road testing for a while. Silence is a good example. I wrote it in 2023 and we've played it since 2024, and it's a very different sounding track from the rest of our back catalogue. It's always had a good reception.

What's really heartwarming is seeing more and more groups of people who care about the music, know the words and have their own little stories with these songs. Looking out at circles of friends having their own moments, for songs we've been playing for about a year and a half, feels really cool. It's changed now that they're actually released.

Tell us about the doggy pop-ups.

We've done a lot of world building around Water For Dogs and the dog imagery, and we're always brainstorming ideas for live shows. An acoustic pop-up where dogs can come along and it doubles as a fundraiser came up early. Swimsuit in Wellington was keen to host, and we found a dog fostering charity, Chance 4 Change, who were happy to bring puppies along.

It was also a chance to share the songs differently. We always loved playing them acoustically, and when we rehearsed we realised they work really nicely stripped back. We did the Wellington one the weekend of the EP release, and it went so well we had to do it again in Auckland and Christchurch.

You don't often get to interact with people who like your music in a casual setting. A cafe with a bunch of dogs and some acoustic music is a different kind of scenery.

What's next for you?

We've got a lot of new ideas bubbling, and we're trying to figure out when we can all get time off to get a bach somewhere nice and do a writing and recording trip. After being in release mode for so long, focused on marketing and metrics and strategies, we're all keen to get back into the writing. We're playing Slackbarn in Hawke’s Bay early in the new year, and shows tend to pop up last minute, so I'm sure we'll play a bunch over summer.

The fluidity and keeping it fun and creative is what we enjoy most, and we'll keep making a point of that. We split up the admin and delegate it, and we keep it out of the rehearsal space so the business stuff stays separate from the creative stuff. And yeah, almost certainly more music next year. There's always new stuff being worked on.

What's your go-to at BurgerFuel?

The Ford Freakout, always. It's genuinely my perfect burger. The amount of avo and bacon on it, I just love it.

Wet Denim's EP Water For Dogs is out now on Spotify and all good streaming platforms. Their next show is Slackbarn Festival at Black Barn Amphitheatre in Havelock North on Saturday 16 January. You can watch their full live set at RNZ on YouTube and follow them on Instagram at @wetdenimband.