Dr. Dog performing at Coachella 2009. Photograph by Cody Peterson (Creative Commons License)
Being in a rock band is pretty much synonymous with infighting and egomania. From Paul McCartney and John Lennon to Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis—the list of rock star breakdowns and band break-ups goes on and on.
But you’ll never hear stories like that from Dr. Dog singer and guitarist Scott McMicken.
"Musicianship has always been secondary in Dr. Dog to your general disposition,” he says. “We used to have people in the band that didn't know anything about music but just had a great disposition. The band was built out of that, and then of course, accidentally, we've become musicians."
Not only have they "become musicians"—they've become great ones. Their music, a tight blend of pop and old-school blues, sounds like the work of old pros.
Which, in actuality, they are—McMicken and band co-founder Toby Leaman have been playing together since the day they met in eighth grade.
"I had an electric guitar and...[it] seemed like such a strange and super awesome thing to a 12-year-old mind," McMicken recalls. "[Leaman] immediately just wanted to play music with me. So I'd play guitar and he'd sing, and then a month later he got a bass and...we've been playing ever since."
The two spent the rest of high school recording songs on a cassette four-track, using a drum machine to keep time. When they left for college, McMicken says, the pair's hopes for careers in music "took a pretty significant leap in tangibility." They added a few more members to the group and gained a proper name, but they still remained mostly a "concept band."
"We had it all fleshed out in our head, and we were like living for it, but it wasn't reliant on people hearing us or playing shows," McMicken explains of those years. "It was more like this kind of fairy tale we were spinning for ourselves and recording a lot of music."
The fairy tale did eventually become a reality when the band was invited by Jim James of My Morning Jacket to open for their next tour. The tour lead to Dr. Dog recording a formal debut LP—Easy Beat—which, in turn, attracted the attention of a manager and garnered the band a record deal.
"And all those things...paved the way for more and more opportunities," says McMicken.
The band is now touring on their fourth album since Easy Beat, entitled Be the Void, released in February 2012—and they show no signs of stopping.
McMicken says that even though he and Leaman have been playing music together since childhood, they've never struggled from the same tensions and conflicts that seem to plague similar bands.
"I guess that we're just kind of blessed...I do believe we'd be as close of friends at this point in life were it not for the band," McMicken says. "We both care a lot about the band and...it's never been more his band than my band or more my band than his band. We've always been sort of a two-headed beast about it.
"You have to set aside your own expectations of another person," continues McMicken. "Or set aside your own feelings a lot of times for the sake of the music and for the sake of what's going to help the situation musically."
This generous spirit starts with McMicken and Leaman, spreading to each member of the band. McMicken says that he feels that it's crucial that each member of the band to be "enjoying and deriving some purpose or joy or even just a laugh out of what we're doing."
