Start Up Hip Hop
Lucille Crew mastermind, Isgav “Izzy” Dotan, talks about the band’s collaborative spirit and international ambitions
The Lucille Crew is a musical collective that embraces Israel’s start up ethos. “We run Lucille Crew like a high tech company,” Isgav “Izzy” Dotan, the band’s guitarist, producer, and ringleader, says. “We’ll open a Slack when we need to discuss something. We’re a band, but we come at it with corporate HR.”
But even though they use corporate tools, their working MO is decidedly DIY. “Throughout the years, we’ve had to be self-sufficient for several reasons,” Dotan says. “One is that I am a control freak [laughs], but the main one is the money. As an independent band, you can’t afford a graphic designer for every show or a video editor, so I had to step up. We’ve became a kind of 360 production company, doing the videos the music production and all that. We’ve recently started working with different artists on their projects as well.”
Lucille Crew’s sound draws from funk, hip hop, reggae, Balkan beats, and American-style groove. Their feel is modern, although they use live musicians, as opposed to drum machines, and often employ self-referential samples. And while they recently released music in Hebrew, most of their catalog is in English, and they usually partner with American-born rappers.
But despite that Western aesthetic, they’re also indebted to their Middle Eastern roots, and, maybe unconsciously, incorporate Mizrahi-sounding timbres and scales into their music. “Those Israeli influences are in our DNA,” Dotan says. “We’ll do a hip hop song, but the guitar solo I’ll do will sound like Yehuda Keisar (יהודה קיסר) … But we don’t look at it as an influence, we see it as our own thing.”
That goes a long way to describing Dotan’s outlook, too. He does his own thing, and that was a big part of our recent conversation. I spoke with him from his home in Tel Aviv, and we talked about his international approach to music making, how Lucille Crew functions as a collective and the group’s collaborative spirit, the challenges of working as a musician in Israel’s limited market, the band’s upcoming tenth anniversary, and why, despite his best intentions, the Lucille Crew won’t be performing in nursing homes.
Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Rishon LeZion—the RLZ—and I was into music and produced some things. But what I was doing were simple remix versions of songs for weddings and stuff like that. My guitar playing, too, was a very basic, a campfire guitar playing kind of thing. I started looking into scoring music for film, and also music production, and I started getting interested in that as a career option. Eventually, I studied music and sound design for films, at Sapir College in the south, in Sderot.
While I was there, I started a cover band with some friends, and at some point, I got approached by an indie band. I was never a part of the local scene. But I got a call from a friend who was playing drums for a band and they needed a guitarist. I auditioned and through that they told me what they were going to do, and what shows they were going to do—like the inDNegev festival in the Negev Desert—but I didn’t know anything about that scene. I eventually didn’t join that band, but it got me pumped about the options in this business. I decided that instead of auditioning for other people’s bands, I’ll start my own. At the time, I was mostly inspired by Afro-American music. I wanted to create a combination of all the music I liked to listen to, and that included reggae and Balkan music and hip hop and soul and R&B and all different things. After I started that band, I collected some musicians, and we recorded one EP, which was supposed to be like a business card for us to go to New York and to make it in the States. That was my goal. It still is.
Is that why your lyrics are mostly in English?
Basically, although it’s also because that’s the music we like. I believe that the language is like an instrument, and some instruments are not the best fit for some genres. Doing metal with a saxophone might be amazing, but it would be weird. Hebrew and soul gives you another flavor, but it is not the same flavor. We are also inspired by Israeli music, and now, on our last album, some of the songs are in Hebrew. We wanted to explore our own language, too. But the initial thought was that the potential was greater doing it in English. We emphasized the international aspect of the band from the beginning. I really wanted it to branded as an international act that happens to perform in Tel Aviv, and not a Tel Aviv act that tries to go out.
Also it was easier because we had a rapper from Baltimore (Joel Covington/Rebel Sun)—now we have a rapper from New York (Ross Weems). It also makes sense to speak English on stage, even though your mother speaks Hebrew and she’s in the crowd [laughs]. But once we started touring around the world and going to places like France and Germany—and thinking about doing collaborations in French and German to open those markets—we realized, “Why aren’t we doing something with our own language, too?”
According to your press, the band is a collective. Does that mean you have a handful of core members and then bring in other people as needed? And who are the core members, you and your drummer, Yossi Adi?
Basically, we look at it as me and Yossi are the managers/producers. We set the tone. We make the decisions. We also do all the busy work. We’re like Chairmen of the Board. Then there are the other band members who have been with us for years, like Gal De Paz, and Ross, and our saxophone player, and bass player, and those guys. We also have subs who come in and out. Sometimes the subs will do the tours abroad, because people have kids and some of our band members are also obligated to other bands and have to give them priority. We can’t lock in international tours without knowing that they’ll be there for sure, so sometimes the subs do the tours.
How does the songwriting work? Do you and Yossi write everything?
It varies. Some songs, maybe Gal will come in with a complete song and we’ll do the arrangement, or change it during production. “Something,” for example, is a song I got from Gal at 20 BPM less than where it’s at now, without the horn line/synth line, or the drop. What we use as a bridge is the chorus in her band’s version. It’s like a remix of the song, but before the song was made. But it could be that someone brings in a concept and then, say, Ross will write something and I’ll make a beat that will give a certain vibe. It changes. Normally, the band won’t play it in a room together until it’s already about 90 percent recorded. In the beginning, we’d go into a room and jam, but now it is more like I’ll work with one or two people on a concept, and we’ll get it to the point that it is band-ready, and then we’ll start working on it as a band.
Meaning that after the song is finished, only then do you get together and play it. That rehearsal could be the first time the song is played together as a band.
Definitely. That literally happened two days ago. We have a song that I was working on over the pandemic. There were no rehearsals, so I’ve been working on it in the studio. The drums came in, and we did the drums, and then the horns came in. That kind of thing.
Like a lot of Israeli bands, you also have a subtle Mediterranean and Balkan flavor to your music.
We don’t talk about it because those Israeli influences are in our DNA. We’ll do a hip hop song, but the guitar solo I’ll do will sound like Yehuda Keisar (יהודה קיסר), the Yemenite guitarist who used to be the guitarist for Zohar Argov. We’ll do a lot of those very Mizrahi lines. But we don’t look at it as an influence, we see it as our own thing.
Why, because it’s so much a part of the culture?
Exactly, we have those different nuances. We may use samples that are influenced from old ‘70s Israeli music or Moroccan music. We just did a Mimouna show, and we like to embrace those influences. If in the beginning I would have found different musicians to go with me on this ride, it would have sounded completely different. The band is a weird mix and showcases everyone’s talents and influences. If the trumpet player’s vibe is very reggae and Balkan, his tendency will go there, and we’ll react to that. It is this give-and-take and within all that craziness, I am ringleader. My job is to sum it up into something that people will also want to listen to [laughs].
But you’re not a dictator. You’re allowing the other musicians to bring their personalities and influences, and allowing that to impact the band’s sound?
Maybe people would disagree [laughs]. I look at it as there's a structure, and different spots that need to be filled in a song. Sometimes it will be a horn part, sometimes you need bring energy. The lingo is different every time depending on what you want to convey to your listener. Sometimes I’ll want a show opener, and I’ll literally take applause from one of our shows and put that in. I’ll start from there just to feel the vibe. Sometimes it will be an idea for a video and we’ll write a song based on that concept. We’re very versatile in our approach. There are a lot of different ways to get to the final product.
Why does it seem that the Israeli scene has been exploding over the last 20 or 30 years, especially the level of musicianship?
I don’t know about 30 years ago, but I wonder if it is just a misconception. It’s like going on YouTube, looking for a Beatles song, and seeing that it has 500,000 hits and not millions. But that’s because they posted it when it didn’t matter. There is a very fruitful vibe here. Everybody is making music all the time and trying to explore. All the people that I work with have two or three projects in addition to what I am working with them on.
Is the scene is big enough? Are musicians able to make a living playing music, or do most people still have day gigs?
That’s the main issue. You have maybe five or ten venues around the country where you can sell tickets. In addition to that, if you’re not a mainstream act, you maybe have three or four festivals around the year that you can try to get onto. But that also pushes people higher. When we started, music videos, extra content, and releasing stuff that wasn’t necessarily music wasn’t a thing. Throughout the years, I feel as if people have had to up their game, because it is not enough to be a talented musician. You need to know how to organize your schedule. You need to plan ahead. You need to mingle. You need to network. If you don’t have money, you need to do all the other things you need to do to get your business running, and to get into the people you want to get into.
Does that mean you need to think internationally as well, and work on building an audience overseas?
It is kind of a lottery, because you can rely just on Israel. But we did tours in France for two years. We played in something like 40 festivals, and we hadn’t even scratched the surface of the country’s potential. And that was only medium-sized festivals of about 5,000-20,000 people. It was amazing because throughout the summer we performed to a total of 300,000 people. But when you do that you realize how limited it is in Israel. Unless you have a hit and you know how to bank on it. It is not an easy task doing that here, but it is possible. You just need to aim for it. Personally speaking, I can look back and identify why we don’t have a huge hit or didn’t hit mainstream. I know one of the reasons. But those were decisions we made consciously.
Is radio supportive?
We had a few songs on playlists. The last single from our last album, as well as a few songs on the 88 FM playlist and things like that. Not game changers. Although I have to say, when I say that it’s “not a game changer,” I am taking while wearing my producer/label hat. As a musician, it’s a different story. In our last show, we played our song, “Moments.” That song was on 88 FM and on the playlist, and it had an emotional story behind it.
“Moments” is dedicated to a girl who was at our show in Germany and passed away a week later. Her brother approached us and wanted some footage. He told us that that was the last time they danced together. We went back to the city the last year and I wanted to meet him, but it was too soon. We decided to dedicate a song, and “Moments” was the perfect song for that. The chorus fit perfectly. We redesigned the song in order to dedicate it to her, and that song was on the radio for a while. It was on in the morning. It wasn’t a game changer financially—our phones didn't start ringing—however, at our last show at the Barby, everyone sang the lyrics. So as a musician, not as a manager, that was a game changer. As a musician, I went on stage and people knew my lyrics. As a musician that’s one of the biggest internal game changers you can have. You need to remind yourself why you do this. That doesn’t mean that you don’t need to look at it like a business as well. You do. You wiggle between the two.
You said your goal was to get a foothold in New York. Did you ever live there or have you always been based in Tel Aviv?
I have always been based in Tel Aviv. I have a deep connection to New York. I have a lot of friends there and family. It was always my dream to live there in the most cliché way. I made a goal of going there every few months, in order to start building something, building connections, to start working with people, and to get the ground ready for moving there. On the first visit I met Ross.
What have you been doing while on lockdown?
We had a big limitation because Ross was in New York for half of the time. He was here in the beginning. He came for a tour—they shut us down in March after one show—he stayed for four months, and then came back. Throughout that time, my main issue was to stay connected to our audience as much as we could, given that we couldn’t perform and sometimes we couldn’t even perform online, because Ross wasn’t here. When he was here, we tried to be creative about how to create different shows, and also to create engagement with the crowd. We did for photography project Time Out Tel Aviv of musicians and their dogs.
We also did a fundraiser for an organization our stage manager runs called If Grandma Had Musicians (אם לסבתא היו נגנים). It’s a play on the phrase, if grandma had wheels (אם לסבתא היו גלגלים). Throughout corona, because older people live nursing homes, they are basically lockdown for the entire time. This organization brought in musicians to play in the nursing homes. I said that I wanted to perform, too, but they said no nursing home would want Lucille Crew to perform for them. It’s too loud. I said, “That doesn’t mean we can’t still contribute to the cause.” We took over the Barby and did an online show to raise money for them to create other shows. We did that, and when they cancelled one of the Barby shows because of corona, we did an open rehearsal for our people and gave out 10 VIP entrances, which was still under the regulations. It was like a show in a rehearsal room that we also broadcast. We did that, and we are also working on new music to release when everything comes back.
When is the new album due?
I realized that next March (2022) we’re going to be celebrating our tenth anniversary. Throughout this year we’re going to work on our new album, and the plan is to release it by next March. It’ll be a big event, and it’ll also be a premium package, maybe with a book and also a vinyl pressing. Our goal is to finish the album in six months and then take five months to decide how we’re going to market it, and to work on the show. We want it to be an extravaganza.
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