The bass player for the New York/ New Jersey based jam band Dogs In A Pile joined our Eric Leventhal for a zoom chat.
Dogs In A Pile come from the popular music scene of Asbury Park, New Jersey, a place known for birthing eclectic and energetic artists. The band’s origins can be traced back to jam sessions between various members who crossed paths through mutual friends and local gigs. The band consists of Sam Lucid on bass, with whom we spoke, in addition to Joe Babick on drums, Jimmy Law on lead guitar, Brian Murray on Rhythm Guitar, and Jeremy Kaplan on Keyboards.
The music of Dogs In A Pile is a blend of funk, jazz, rock and roll, and psychedelia. The band plays originals and a wide range of covers, from Skynyrd, Zappa, Hendrix, Paul McCartney, to Stevie Wonder, to Kenny Rogers.
Eric: How did you get your start playing music, and who were you really into when you first started playing? What were your biggest influences as a kid?
Sam: I started taking guitar lessons when I was probably ten or so, and it took me a while to really get into it and become passionate about it. But you know, some of what I was really into, like, 90s rock when I first started playing. So I was really into, Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters, and stuff like that. And I had this really cool guitar teacher who who lived a couple towns over from me, and he just introduced me and my brother to so much cool music.
We were already really into the Dead. So he would show us a lot of the Dead tunes. And then he showed me stuff like Herbie Hancock and Steely Dan. I think the first song I ever learned from him was “Wild Thing” by The Trogs on guitar. And then, anyway, when I was in high school, I was still playing guitar, but no one ever really wanted to play bass. So when I was a senior in high school, I just ended up picking picking up this bass that I had around, and started just trying to play as much as I could. And kind of just fell into the role of being the bass player with whoever I was playing with which, which was cool, because it was hard to find a bass player when I was a kid playing music around.
So what was the first band you played in, and what kind of band was it?
So the first band I ever played in was with my friend. His name was Anthony Ferraro. We never even had a name for the band, but we did a couple shows, but it was me, this guy, Anthony, who’s a really, really killer blues guitarist. He’s actually, blind too, and he’s, he’s really, he’s really famous on Tiktok and stuff now, but, and he does, a lot of speaking. Really good dude. Anyway, it was me, this dude, Anthony, and then these two brothers, Al and Tommy, who played drums and and guitar, so and we just played blues. We just played, like, a lot of those classic soul songs that, like Jerry Garcia band would play. I remember we would play “Second, That Emotion”, stuff like that. So it was really fun. But that was, that was the first band I ever played.
So how, how did you come to join Dogs In A Pile?
When I was in high school, I met Jimmy, our guitar player and Joey our drummer. I’m a little bit older than them, so I started playing with them. We played a lot of Greg Lake covers, and, a lot of blues and stuff, kind of similar to the other band. And then eventually, when I graduated high school, I went to Berkeley College of Music in Boston, and I met the two other members who were from Long Island, Brian and Jeremy. And then eventually, you know, the guys up in Boston and the guys in Jersey, we kind of just merged the groups together and took a little bit for it to, feel totally smooth and natural, but obviously, eventually it worked out. And, you know, it’s a great band.
So you’re with the Jersey group, but you introduced the Berkeley School group to the New Jersey group?
Yeah, exactly.
What was the first song you guys ever played as a quintet? If you recall?
Oh, I really don’t remember. Honestly, I remember we used to play “Cold Rain and Snow” a lot, and “Little Wing” by Hendrix. I feel like those were some really early songs we would jam on. And then we decided to start, you know, trying to focus on original stuff. So the first originals by the Dogs that we ever all played, were our song “Bugle”, our song “Go Set” and our song “Bubble”. Those are some of the first ones we ever played together as a band.
Speaking of of originals, who are the principal songwriters in the group, and do you do, like, one person brings an idea, or does it come out through a jam? And like, who’s responsible for lyrics? How? How does a song go from idea to finished product?
Um, it could really happen in any number of ways, and everyone in the band, writes, but, I’d say for me, a lot of my favorite songs, I kind of started the idea. Some of the lyrics had an idea of the melody and chord progression, and then a lot of times someone has helped me finish it and bring it to completion. So a lot of time it is, collaborative songwriting. But also, there’s been a lot of songs that someone has just wrote entirely on their own and brought it to the group. But yes, it’s it’s cool. We don’t really have a set way that we write, it happens in a bunch of different ways.
So I know that the field of jam bands is kind of saturated with a lot of bands with similar sounds, very similar roots, right? Everyone kind of draws from The Dead and Phish, to some extent, one of the other or both. So how do you how do the dogs stand out amongst the field? What’s your what’s your special sauce?
I think a really, a couple really cool things about us. One is that, all of us have different musical backgrounds, and none of us are really, totally interested in the same style, per se. I mean, we are, but everyone has different influences. Brian, for example, likes bluegrass chicken picking, like Nashville, and Jimmy’s a big EDM guy. Jeremy and Joey, like Zappa and Froggy kind of stuff. I’m a big Jazz, Jazz rock, kind of soft rock fan. A big, Steely Dan fan. So just when all those different influences mash up, it’s really cool and leads to some really awesome things. And also, as well as that, everyone is just really interested in playing different styles of music and challenging ourselves to have different genres of songs and keep it interesting for us.
I’m looking at some of these set lists you’re going to see in terms of covers, everything from Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Howlin Wolf, the band Elton John and the Who.
I was just wearing this cool Deacon Blue Shirt.
Since you’ve all got those different influences, what’s your biggest musical guilty pleasure?
Ooh, musical, guilty pleasure. That’s a good question. Let me think about it for one second. I would say probably, the pop music from my childhood, like Shawty, “Like a Melody” and, all those cheesy songs from 2009, that’s probably my guilty pleasure. If I, if I hear those, I’m like, “Okay, I love this song”.
I know you guys are super multi disciplinary. What style is is next for the dogs? What do you think is the next big stylistic thing you want to introduce? You said one guy did. EDM, that’d be pretty rad.
Yeah, I think that that’s one kind of thing we have been pushing and tapping into the last year or so is more kind of like, yeah, like EDM, kind of dancey jams and grooves like that, so that that’s a that’s a cool thing to start to implement into our music, to integrate.
What other cool bands that other members kind of introduced you to that you never would have found, never would have listened to before them, and now you’re, like, super into, how’s that cross pollination going?
Pretty good. I feel like, over the years, everyone’s shown each other a lot of cool music. Like I was saying before, Brian is really into the Nashville, chicken picking kind of guy. So I’d never listen to that kind of style of music before I met him. So he’s introduced me to a lot of cool stuff in that vein. There’s this really cool song, “Amos Moses” by Jerry Reed that we cover. This really fun song. It’s about an alligator hunting guy, real swampy song.
What’s your favorite story from your your most recent tour, whether, like a cool venue you got to play that was a dream, or, like a fun backstage event or something with another band.
I think my favorite venue on this tour so far was we played this place called The Belly Up in Solana Beach, which is right outside of San Diego. So that place,
that place, was really cool.
Who’s an up and coming band you are paying attention to? Can you recommend somebody new that no one else ever heard of?
I was gonna say Spunj, who we just played with the last two nights. They’re, uh, Portland guys, or actually, they live in Eugene, but they they opened for us the last three nights. I’d actually never seen them before, but I’ve been hearing about them for a long, long time. Hilltop, that’s a cool band from Albany. They’ve opened for us New Year’s. I’ve been friends with Jared from Big Shrimp Freezer for a long time. So there, I like to give them support.
Do you ever, you know, you go into somebody’s area and you hook up with a band there, hypothetically speaking, of course, or, how do you build these connections with other up and coming bands?
Typically, our agent or manager will find, appropriate local bands to have us that’ll, you know, help us sell some tickets and what not. So we have visited a couple of cities before where we had the opener the first time and then we came back and had the same opener, but a lot of times it switches up. But yeah, so typically, our agent or manager will find, a good support act, like I said, that’ll help us sell tickets and just bring more local people to the show. And then, sometimes we’ll have like a band, like Spunj, they opened for us in Seattle, and the two nights in Portland, because they have a good following there. So, that’s always nice too. Like we had this band Sneezy that we did five shows with around Michigan, and the Midwest.
Dogs In A Pile – Tour Dates
Dogs In A Pile – Set Lists
Here is a video of the band covering “Deacon Blues”.
Here is a video of the band performing their original “Today”.
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