Pee Pee
This week’s most notable band name
Normally the snarky minds behind Namecheck don’t solicit an explanation from the bands whose names they so gleefully pick apart. But when it comes to Denver “porch-core” collective Pee Pee—which is collaborating onstage with Nellie McKay when she makes a tour stop at the Mercury Café on Saturday, November 22—Decider decided to have philosophizing frontman Doo Crowder weigh in with the story behind his group’s preschool-friendly moniker.
Pee Pee, "Jaroline"
Decider: So... why Pee Pee?
Doo Crowder: It was kind of inspiring to me, naming the band that. It opened up a new vein of, like, "Who is this Pee Pee? What kind of band is this?" To me, it’s a liberation from compartments, too. When we started out, it was just like a hangout thing, different people playing every week. It was kind of a reaction to music as this pressurized, perfected thing. Like I say, it was just hanging out. We might stop in the middle of recording and talk, or we’d make jokes in the middle of a song, or someone would come in or out with drinks and cookies and stuff. It became this spontaneous thing.
Doo Crowder: It was kind of inspiring to me, naming the band that. It opened up a new vein of, like, "Who is this Pee Pee? What kind of band is this?" To me, it’s a liberation from compartments, too. When we started out, it was just like a hangout thing, different people playing every week. It was kind of a reaction to music as this pressurized, perfected thing. Like I say, it was just hanging out. We might stop in the middle of recording and talk, or we’d make jokes in the middle of a song, or someone would come in or out with drinks and cookies and stuff. It became this spontaneous thing.
A lot of people take Pee Pee like it’s not serious or it’s not worthwhile, like, “How can we take it seriously if they don’t take it seriously?” But to me, Pee Pee is serious. A band named Pee Pee can do whatever it wants. We can be unserious and serious. We have license. Because we’re Pee Pee. [Laughs.] Pee Pee doesn’t want to destroy everything that was before it—it doesn’t care about what was before it. It just wants to care about whatever it cares about. You can’t be in there with an orthoscopic camera. Those things are for surgery, not for music.
