“There’s a little folk, blues, indie rock, soul, bluegrass—and a whole lot of down-home harmonizing. It conjures images of old friends sitting on a porch swapping instruments and just letting the tape recorder run.” - Doug Wallen
Dr. Dog has been creating music in various incarnations for a good four years now. Beginning with The Psychedelic Swamp, a concept album realized in the damp ruin of a flooded basement with waterlogged guitars and a digital delay pedal, the band has simmered on the back burner of our musical lives for most of its existence but we’ve recently renewed our resolve to forge ahead and give Dr. Dog the attention we think it deserves.
Although Dr. Dog has as many as 20 honorary “members” who have assisted in various (mostly spiritual) capacities through the years, the core of the band consists of five musicians. Our standard instrumentation includes two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard and three part harmonies. The Beach Boys, Beatles, Tom Waits, David Bowie and Neil Young are influences, but we would be remiss in not acknowledging our debt to Pavement, Palace Brothers, R. Stevie Moore or Roy Wood.
Currently, the lineup is as such: Toby Leaman on bass and singing, Scott McMicken on woof+mud distortion solo guitar and voice, Andrew Jones on lean clean occasionally tremolo’d guitar, Juston Stens on trapset and harmonies and Zach Miller on keyboard(s). We’ve all done our share of playing. Toby and Scott have played together in a myriad of bands including Raccoon, Unleash the Bastards, and Beard; Andrew played bass in Raccoon and manages the phenomenal The Teeth; Zach has played with Bradford Trojan and Traffic Jam and studied jazz guitar; and Juston is the man behind the punk outfits It’s Turbo Time and Oddnormal.
We’ve played around Philadelphia at a good number of places, including the TLA, North Star, the Fire, Khyber, Mill Creek Tavern and Doc Watson’s, the Lucky Cat and StarFoods (Brooklyn and Manhattan, respectively), Rex’s (West Chester, PA),. We have accompanied My Morning Jacket on two short tours, - the second of which also featured M. Ward - who personally requested that Dr. Dog open for them.
Aside from the aforementioned Swamp album - a self-produced, self-recorded low-fi four track recording - we have two other recordings. Toothbrush is a compilation of fourth generation eight-track recordings culled from the past few years. Easy Beat was recorded earlier this year and is our first proper album.
Easy Beat has since been released, followed by the EP Takers and Leavers and the full album We All Belong.
