Fact is, 20 years have passed since singer-bassist Toby Leaman and guitarist/vocalist Scott McMicken started making music as eighth-graders at a West Grove, Chester County, middle school. Dr. Dog formally came into being in 1999 when the compadres found a bigger band of brothers at West Chester University.
But living up to their gleefully eccentric name in both sound and attitude, Dr. Dog has always opted to chase its own tail rather then "next big thing" headlines. So shared McMicken in a chat last week, amid band rehearsals at the Electric Factory for the dog pound's biggest national tour, timed to the release today of their seventh and maybe best long-player, "Be the Void." They'll close the tour at the Factory for two shows March 23 and 24.
"In some places we're now theater and ballroom headliners," McMicken detailed. "In others, like Salt Lake City, we'll still be playing a small bar, leaving most of the gear and our new stage production [their most elaborate yet] in the truck. That's cool. You want to keep the focus on the right thing - the music. And in the long run, it's much better to have growth that's incremental [and] organic than to attract a crowd here today, gone tomorrow."
Dr. Dog has won loyalists and some well-placed endorsers along the way, starting notably in 2005 when My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James invited the band to be show-opener on a tour. TV host Conan O'Brien, for whom they'll perform again tomorrow, is another Dog devotee.
And for their last album, "Shame, Shame," also their first for the well-established Anti label, the guys allowed major-league producer Rob Schnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith) to lure them out of town to record and polish up their sound.
