“I’ve come here to feel the pain of the wound,” Strummer says of his escape.

In his first full-length documentary, I Need A Dodge: Joe Strummer On The Run, English filmmaker Nick Hall investigates what seems like a nearly impossible task to find Strummer’s car, a Dodge GT3700, lost in Madrid more than 20 years ago.

Why search for the Dodge? Because Strummer — who died 13 years ago — loved the car. It transported him from Madrid to Granada and the rest of Spain during his creative crisis. But the car is simply, well, a vehicle. The film’s real aim is to document Strummer’s search for a new identity. It captures his devastation as The Clash disbands for good, then follows his recovery as he dedicates himself to producing a record for 091, a young and unknown band from Granada.

The tale of Strummer’s 18-month “Spanish period” is told mostly through the memories of other musicians, who were first enamored by The Clash leader, then became his friends and collaborators. Though the film will probably captivate Clash fans the most, its themes appeal to anyone who has ever had to shift gears in life.

Before I Need a Dodge premieres in D.C. Saturday at St. Stephen’s Church, I spoke with Hall by phone about Strummer’s love of cars, what Spain offered him that England could not and his first creative endeavors after The Clash’s demise.

Bandwidth: How did you first learn about Joe Strummer’s lost Dodge?

Nick Hall: When Joe Strummer died in 2002, I noticed that Spanish guys that had known him were sharing their experiences in an online forum. And there were some great anecdotes, some great tales in there.

The car was the breakthrough, really. When I was investigating, I spoke to a guy who was very close friends with Joe Strummer in the ‘80s and he sent me his cassette of Joe being interviewed in the Glastonbury Music Festival in the U.K. in 1997, some years after his Spanish period. And that is when he says, “If anyone knows where my car is, please get in touch.” Joe puts this call out to the people of Spain to help him find his car. That kind of gave me a trigger, a good narrative thread — a contemporary search for the car. So yeah, that is kind of how it all came together.

What made the Dodge 3700GT such a sought-after car for Strummer?

It’s quite an emblematic car in Spain. An industrialist who actually make trucks and military vehicles for Franco, so for the dictatorship — he always dreamt of making a luxury family car.
He contacted various car manufacturers around the world to invite them to open a factory in Spain. And Dodge and Chrysler agreed to it and they built this Spanish Dodge near Madrid for a number of years.

On the other side, it came from Joe’s romantic streak and his love all things classic American. He loved all that ‘70s America thing — big cars, big TVs and all that stuff. When he released “I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.,” he kind of talks about all these things which deep down he actually loves. He felt his path in music and his love of music to all these great American musicians. And cars [are] part of that. A big American car in Madrid just caught his eye, and he said, “I need one of those,” to one of the bands he knew in Madrid. And they tracked one down for him.

What’s it like to drive a Dodge 3700GT?

Quite clunky. They are not easy to drive. Every time we stopped filming, we had to push start it or get some help to restart it.

There was some filming in the scrapyard at the end. There were four guys working in the scrapyard and each of them had a different method of jumpstarting the Dodge, one of which included throwing petrol straight into the car. You got this, like, knicker-high flame shooting out, you jumped back and the car started.

So they are not the most reliable vehicles, I think. But they look good. That’s the main thing. I think that is what Joe would say. Image before reliability.

What was the music scene in Spain like when Strummer got there?

It was post-dictatorship, and the lid blew off after so many years of control. That was really the trigger for it. Franco dying.

There was an explosion of creativity in the late ‘70s, which was still going pretty strong when Joe Strummer arrived in Madrid. The Movida Madrilena — the Madrid Movement — was the most famous musical movement in Spanish rock-pop history.

It was probably very exciting for someone like Joe Strummer who was getting kind of ground down by the politics of his own band and the mistakes that he made.

Why did he choose to work with this basically unknown band, 091?

The [members of 091] don’t know. They can’t remember whose idea it was. It was sort of an organic thing.

I think the best guess is that he needed a new challenge. One of the people in the film, one of the Radio Futura guys, said [Strummer] wanted to rediscover why he got involved with music in the first place through the energy of a young band who were struggling to subsist.

I honestly think that Joe thought, “I’m going to do something big here. I’m going to get this band on the map.”

What spurred Strummer to try his hand at producing?

He needed a new creative outlet and it offered him that possibility.

I think he imagined himself as the producer of London Calling, Guy Stevens. Stevens had a direct, psychological attack approach to production — swinging ladders around and almost taking the head off of the members of the band, pouring red wine into the piano — and I think that left a mark on all those guys. They thought, “That is it. That is how you produce a record.”

It’s not in the film, but one of the guys said he would have liked to have been Guy Stevens. That was the production role that he was trying to emulate.

Photo: Juan Jesus Garcia

Who knows. The metaphor of loss is quite present. The album [that Strummer produces] doesn’t go well. He leaves Spain. And the car goes missing. Yes. Whether finding it years later was so important to him, I have never — I don’t know. I have my doubts. He would have liked to have found it.

I prefer the metaphor of the Dodge: getting out of the way of something.

Joe said, “I need a Dodge. I need to avoid all the problems I’m getting back in England.” He was very clear on that metaphor.

Do you think that Strummer tended towards obsession?

Its amazing. Twelve years later he is still talking about this car on Spanish radio. He hadn’t given up hope that the car may turn up.

He recorded an album in L.A. in the late ‘80s just after the Spanish [period], and he got himself a Thunderbird. A Thunderbird is better than a Spanish Dodge. But he still wanted to track down this Dodge.

There were no half measures in anything he did. We hear about him and his time with The Clash, he was quite ruthless in a lot of the decisions that he made. Definitely determined, possibly obsessive, he is a strong character. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that he is still looking for the car, probably still wondering now what happened to it.

The film shows July 25 at 7 p.m. at St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church. It follows a preview of in-progress film Punk the Capital. Proceeds benefit We Are Family.

Correction: An earlier version of this post referred to Mick Jones as The Clash’s bass guitarist. He played guitar. The post has also been updated to clarify that the film encompasses the mid-1980s, not just 1983.

The randomly formed groups — composed of both seasoned musicians and newbies — have been playing together for a little more than two months as part of Hat Band, a project devised by Shira Mario, a library associate at D.C. Public Library.

Here’s how Hat Band came together: In February, 31 participants threw their names into a figurative “hat” via an online form. After indicating their music experience and preferred instruments, they were filtered into seven different bands of three to four people each. Those bands spent the next couple of months figuring out an act.

Finally, this Saturday at the Columbia Heights church, the hat bands will make their grand debut. They all get 10 minutes to play, and they’re each required to perform at least one original song.

Proceeds from the show will benefit music education group Girls Rock DC!, where Mario volunteers.

Mario, 29, was inspired to organize Hat Band after participating in similar events in Richmond and Philadelphia — but she also says she felt driven by what she sees as monotony in D.C.’s punk and indie music scenes.

“D.C. is a place where people play in the same types of bands over and over again and don’t break out of their comfort zone,” Mario says. “Other people want to play music but need a push. This is a fun, quick creative project to help bring those types of people together.”

Noel Schroeder, 28, one of two guitar players in Wood Bone Kitten (the name was drawn out of a hat, much like the band itself) hadn’t played in a real band since high school and was looking for something that forced her back into it.

“I wanted to create something with people of different abilities, interests and backgrounds,” Schroeder says. In its first practice, the group played covers of Green Day’s “Basket Case” and a Sleater-Kinney song, and they started working on an original. She says she felt lucky to have been matched with her bandmates.

“I’ve already learned a lot from them about writing and performing, and it’s helped me to pick my skills back up, much more than if I were just playing alone,” Schroeder says. She adds that she hopes her band lives on beyond Saturday’s Hat Band gig.

Mario, who expects most groups to play some form of punk music, finds it fitting for Hat Band proceeds to benefit Girls Rock DC!, because the two share a similar philosophy.

“Empower yourself to play music,” Mario says, “and in doing so, shake things up, build confidence and have fun.”

The Hat Band DC show takes place April 25 at St. Stephen’s Church.

Reporter Jerad Walker, a staffer at WAMU’s Bluegrass Country, talks to Bill MacKaye—father of Ian—who’s been a member of the radical church since 1960. He says the church went to great lengths to open its doors to the local community.

“I came at the same time as a very adventurous and forward-looking priest came to be rector or pastor of the church,” MacKaye remembers. “His name was Bill Wendt. His sense of what he needed to do with this congregation was get them ready for major change.”

At the time, Wendt presided over the first racially integrated Episcopal Church in D.C.— then, a radical concept in and of itself.

“Father Wendt came in here with a mission to open up the church to the neighborhood,” says MacKaye. “He not only was going to welcome in black people, but he was going to go up and down the streets and say ‘You’re really welcome. Come in.'”

Walker also talks to the younger MacKaye as well as Positive Force founder Mark Andersen, whose activist group has hosted many, many punk shows at the church over the years.

Metro Connection airs today at 1 p.m. and Saturday at 7 a.m., but you can stream the entire show online now.

Baby Bry Bry and the Apologists at Jam Jar:

The Public at St. Stephen’s Church:

Loud Boyz at St. Stephen’s Church:

Hold Tight! at St. Stephen’s Church:

State Lines at St. Stephen’s Church:

Meridian at Paperhaus:

BRNDA at Paperhaus:

What Moon Things at Paperhaus:

ASCAP, one of a few organizations that collects royalties on behalf of musicians and songwriters, is going after D.C. punk-rock church St. Stephen’s.

This morning, an ASCAP licensing manager emailed a licensing agreement and an invoice for $472 to Mark Andersen, who helps organize concerts in the church on behalf of Positive Force, the punk collective he co-founded. The invoice says St. Stephen’s owes two years of licensing fees, dating back to February 2013—when Ian MacKaye’s band The Evens played a benefit show at the venue.

Andersen says St. Stephen’s shouldn’t have to pay. So far, ASCAP has not presented any evidence to the church that ASCAP music was played there. (The email’s sender declined to comment.)

A general licensing manager from the organization contacted the church soon after MacKaye and Amy Farina’s band played the Positive Force event there more than a year ago. The manager said the show needed to be “properly licensed.” The church declined to pay, Andersen says, because The Evens don’t have any connection to ASCAP.

“The Evens’ songs are not registered with any performance-rights organizations,” MacKaye writes in an email. “The band plays no covers, and owns 100 percent of the publishing of the songs we’ve written. ASCAP has zero control, interests, or rights to our music. I don’t know why they want to get into this mess.”

If St. Stephen’s has played any music by artists under ASCAP’s umbrella, it would be subject to fees. Churches who play ASCAP music (or host performers who cover it) are only exempt from the payments if the music in question is played during religious services, says Vincent Candilora, ASCAP’s executive vice president of licensing.

Andersen says it’s possible some recorded ASCAP music was played before or after The Evens show, but he’s not sure. “If they have evidence that we’re infringing,” Andersen says, “we’d be glad for them to present it.”

Here’s the email ASCAP sent Mark Andersen today:

ASCAP’s Telephone Licensing Manager has contacted you concerning your need to obtain permission to lawfully perform the copyrighted music of our members in your establishment.  As we have not received your signed license agreement and fees, your file has been referred to me.  According to our records, we have provided information on ASCAP, our members and repertory, the copyright law and our licensing activities.  By now you undoubtedly have a better understanding of the need to obtain permission to use copyrighted music in our repertory.

An ASCAP license will provide you with the permission to lawfully perform our members’ music at your business by giving you access to all of the millions of works found in the ASCAP repertory.  In order for your business to be licensed, it will be necessary for you to sign and return the attached agreement along with payment as invoiced.  A countersigned copy of the license will be returned for your files.

We hope you will take this opportunity to resolve this matter.  Should you have any questions regarding ASCAP licensing, the attached agreement or the factors used in determining your license fee, please do not hesitate to contact me toll-free at the number listed below.  We at ASCAP look forward to serving your licensing needs.

Candilora says he’s contacted the licensing manager who sent the email and hasn’t heard back yet. But he also points out that ASCAP doesn’t have to be certain that a venue owes it money in order to send a letter like the one St. Stephen’s received.

ASCAP just sends notices (Candilora calls them “offers”) to businesses that could have played its music at some point, Candilora says. If the business has not played any infringing music, ASCAP assumes they’ll let them know and put the issue to bed. “We would expect for somebody to say, ‘This is the composer, these are the songs, and they are not with ASCAP,’ and that would be fine,” he says.

Andersen says he’s already informed ASCAP that he doesn’t believe St. Stephen’s requires a license. “Evidently that never got to us,” Candilora says.

Usually businesses are subject to the fees, Candilora says. “We have 8.5 million songs in our repertory. ASCAP has been a business for 100 years, so it’s everything from Irving Berlin on up. Most of the time, there are works in the repertory that are being performed.”

Photo by Flickr user angela n. used under a Creative Commons license.