Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s David Surkamp. The US vocalist formed Pavlov’s Dog in the early 70s and went on to form Hi-Fi with Fairport Convention’s Iain Matthews in the 80s. Surkamp is now the only original member in the current Pavlov’s line-up and perhaps proof you can teach an old dog new tricks. He recalls the band’s glory years, being ditched by Todd Rundgren, those Geddy Lee comparisons, and the upcoming album, Wonderlust.

Words: James McNair

David Surkamp’s emotive, stratospherically high voice and aching, melancholic songs distinguished 1975’s Pampered Menial and 1976’s At The Sound Of The Bell, the two revered classics for which his band, Pavlov’s Dog, remain best known. The group formed in St Louis, Missouri in 1972, and their baroque strings, foggy Mellotron and children’s choirs proved the perfect backdrop for Surkamp’s tales of Arthurian legend, lovers distanced by the Colorado gold rush, and the seemingly unattainable Julia, subject of the truly special piano ballad of the same name.

“We’re still doing all those songs in the same keys, you know!” Surkamp tells Prog proudly, prior to heading to Greece, Germany and Belgium for gigs with Pavlov’s Dog’s current line-up. At 72, his voice remains a marvel, but his band have never really eclipsed ‘cult’ status: those in the know adore Pavlov’s Dog, but many don’t know of them at all. Further, a complete absence of 70s film footage of the band has cemented their mystique.

An early portrait of Pavlov’s Dog, 1972.

PRESS/PAVLOV’S DOG ARCHIVES

Chatting from his home in St Louis via video call, Surkamp says he was “too introverted” for the more commercial direction foisted upon him circa his band’s ‘lost’ third LP, Has Anyone Here Seen Sigfried [sic].

“Everything was becoming more corporate and I remember watching Journey go from prog to arena pop,” he explains, “but I would never have been any good at that game…”

It would be 13 years before Pavlov’s Dog returned with 1990’s self-explanatory Lost In America, the interim period marked by rumours that Surkamp had died by suicide. Another two decades went by before 2010’s home studio-recorded Echo & Boo, then something of a late-period flourish: 2014’s The Pekin Tapes and 2018’s Prodigal Dreamer, the latter a return to form.

During our two-hour conversation, Surkamp admits he “doesn’t know how to send an email” and talks fondly of his daughter Saylor, a Kate Bush fan from the age of four, who attended one of Kate Bush’s 2014 Before The Dawn shows at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. He also introduces Prog to his African Grey parrot Mr Bell (“Does he talk? Constantly, mostly about himself”), and speaks movingly about his wife Sara – also a member of Pavlov’s Dog for the last 25 years – who in 2021 sustained a severe head injury after a fall while walking with Surkamp in Munich, Germany.

“I’ve seen that comparison between Geddy Lee’s voice and mine made many times, but I could never hear it. I always thought I sounded more like one of the The Bee Gees.”