Guitarist/vocalist Dennis Hill is always writing songs. "I've got my notebook and my tape recorder out here, and we already have three new songs recorded on a demo," he explained during a telephone interview from Green Bay, Wis. "We've always got things going on."
Hill's band Lefty — featuring guitarist Lorenzo Giovani, bassist Scott Sommers and drummer Kenny Livingstone — will play Club DV8, 115 S. West Temple, on Monday, Nov. 13, with Fenix TX and New Found Glory. Doors open at 7 p.m.
"Every time I write a song, I want to hear it recorded," Hill said. "And once they are on a demo, we can listen to it and see if it's what we wanted. If not, we fix it."
Hill's musical influences include everything from the Clash to Elvis Costello, the Pretenders and Cheap Trick. Lefty formed in grade school in Newport Beach, Calif., when Hill met Sommers. "We got together to write simple pop songs," Hill recalled. "We wanted to be in a pop band that could play with rock bands and punk bands. I never thought we'd be classified as punk because there are so many great punk bands out there, and I didn't want to be competing with them."
In 1998, Lefty played its first show. "We never thought we'd be playing outside our own area," Hill said. "We were content in doing our own little thing in our own little place. Only now do we see how big the world really is."
Lefty can thank its album "4321," which was engineered and co-produced by Bradley Cook of Foo Fighters and Old '97 fame, for this eye-opening experience. "Once we saw what it was like in the bigger music world, we had a choice, whether or not to see what it was like or go back to our place."
Obviously, the band took its first step into the larger world. "We found that kids around the country are more into the music than the kids in our own city," Hill said with a chuckle. "The kids in the other parts of the states really like what we do.
"I remember wanting to go up to Elvis Costello to tell him what a wonderful musician he is, and now there are kids doing that to us. It's unbelievable. And it's cool to know you are making a positive impression."
As for the album, it's doing well and bringing the attention the band needs to ready itself for a new album later next year.
"Brad was a great guy to work with," Hill said of Cook. "He basically worked with us on our sound, but as for the style and the arrangements of the songs, it was just the band. Bradley made suggestions like using a fuzz guitar, and we were the ones who decided what kind of fuzz sound we needed.
"But when we started going too far or using too much of something, Brad was the one who told us to cool it."
E-MAIL: scott@desnews.com