Marginal Minds: Dr. Dog

Interview w/ Dr. Dog's 'Thanks'

MM: So you guys just got done playing Bonaroo... Fun times?
Thanks: Yea it was a lot of fun. Every band member gets to bring friends, so there were like 25 of us camping out.. And we got to hang out with a lot of bands that we're friends with like the Black Keys, Cold War Kids... Unfortunately we had to leave before Elvis Perkins played...

MM: What would you say was the biggest "step" for Dr. Dog?
Thanks: Touring with My Morning Jacket in 04. Scott gave them a CD of Dr. Dog recordings, and Jim really liked it, offered to do anything he could to help the band.

MM: Do you guys have any goals, or benchmarks, to use the parlance of our times?
Thanks: I try to avoid things like goals... Basically, the goal would be to keep on doing what we're doing... recording ourselves... It'd be great to do an album-a-year, for as long as we can.
MM: I was always curious, how'd you guys come up with the name, Dr. Dog?
Thanks: Well there a Beefheart song called Dr. Dark... And a long while back Toby had written a short story about a dog....

MM: Beautiful. Do you have a personal favorite label-mate on Park The Van? Or is it like Michael Bolton songs, where you sorta likem all?

Thanks: I love everybody on Park the Van... We just toured with The Teeth... They're amazing, really great guys. We got to know them real well.

MM: What's your favorite show you ever played?
Thanks: We played a show at the Planitarium last fall... That was probably my favorite...

MM: What was it like going on Letterman?
Thanks: Letterman was amazing. Letterman's been my favorite show since I was like 13. I used to watch it all the time, it has a special place in my heart. Going there was great... Paul Schaeffer, played piano with us on the track. Also, when we played on Conan, the Max Wienberg 7 guys played horns.

MM: Is there a general birth process for the average Dr. Dog song?
Thanks: Scott and Toby usually come in with separate material. Songs are shaped during the recording... add layers, take off layers that don't sound right. It's easy for us because we record ourselves, we don't really run into any instances of impatience or stuff like that.

MM: What are your thoughts about the controversial music-pirating/illegal downloading thing? Because to be honest, I coppied your new album. I wanted to attend two different Dr. Dog shows, and I only had enough money to see you guys live once and buy the album or see you live twice, so I coppied the album off a friend and came out to make some noise at two different Dr. Dog shows...
Thanks: (after a brief pause) ...this interview is over!

(laughter)

I'm in support of illegal downloading. I've downloaded so much music illegally, especially when I got into college towards the end of the napster thing. Now I use limewire. I've heard so much music. I don't think I'd ever be able to hear all the music I've heard if I had to pay for it.

MM: Is there a conflict of interests there?
Thanks: I am conflicted about it... But if everybody did it, I feel like music... If you stop thinking of music as an industry and start thinking about it in the form that it is and what it once was in peoples lives, I think It would be a positive thing for music to just be traded for free... I think alot of the acts that have been pushed down peoples throats from things like mTV and different magazines and radiostations... they wouldn't have the money behind them, then bands like our size would have a better chance of getting more fans.

MM: Your Musical Influences?
Thanks: Beefhart, The Band... I like lots of music. I think the beach boys are one of the greatest bands ever. American punk rock, black flag, meat puppets...

MM: It seems there's one regular comment that's been made about Dr. Dog, and by some people it's been said as a criticism, and by some people it's been said as a positive: that Dr. Dog 'sounds like' bands of the past. Perhaps suggesting a lack of originality? Do you guys see your music as a tribute to the greats?
Thanks: I think that's a stickler for a lot of people that leads them to the idea that we're trying to emulate these older bands... if you start with the fact that we try to use harmonies as much as we can, I think that people think when they hear the harmonies that, because they don't hear harmonies as much anymore, they think its a throwback. Like we're gonna put harmonies on this song to give it an older feel. Which is kinda the opposite of what we're doing. We have 5 people: guitars, keys, bass, and drums, and our voices are just another instrument.. Rather than trying to make something old or new, you have a melody, chords, the next thing to add is harmonies, because they're pleasing to our ear. Everything is talking about us having some kind of retro-throwback thing. We're a modern band, we like modern things, you know... like, we like the xerox machine and stuff.

(One might feel a tinge of irony that he would reference the xerox machine while pointing out that the band doesn't copy the classics... but I digress...)

If you haven't heard Dr. Dog, you actually are missing quite an original act... Don't let the fact that their style sounds hypothetically like the Beatles meets Barret-era-Floyd hold you back from picking up "We All Belong" because you think you've heard it all before. I assure you you haven't. There's only one Dr. Dog song that perhaps sounds too close for comfort to well known classica, and it's the "I swear this is a cover" awkardness of Alaska... But they more than make up for it with amazing songwriting on a number of tracks, most notably "Aint it Strange" and "Die, Die, Die". Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the odd sense of "wow, where are these wierdos coming from?" that can come with simply hearing their recordings (especially their older EP's), will dissapeare if you get a chance to see them live, because they sell their act and their "We All Belong" mentality with energy, charisma, youth, daring, unity, and, oh right... excellent music. Dr. Dog may be the unwilling ambassadors from our generation to our parents' but I'm betting they'll still get faced and give the finger to the squares from both age-groups.

By Ryan P. Carey, D.D.S.

A pre-requisite for joining the band is that you must resemble a popular breed: