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Tour features are enough work as it is - you follow a band around the country (or if you’re lucky you go international), find a shower and something that’s not fried “chicken” or kebab “meat” for dinner, get the gig done, bear witness to the backstage debauchery, get smashed, get wasted, wake up in a different city and it all begins again. But this is child’s play for one band; a feisty "Laahndan" based five piece with gallons of attitude and more strut than the Stones.
The Dogs are on a sell-out tour, and Gigwise is on it with them.
It takes us nearly four hours to get 40 miles outside of London - in the time that we’ve spent on the road we have had a reassuringly unhealthy breakfast on the pavements of Islington, read the newspaper - sport section only, and raided the bank. We had to stop off in Islington for Dogs soundman Alex, who is dragged onto the bus after having woken up in the gutter - from the looks of him it was a good night out n’ all.
“SO WHAT’S THE PLAN?” shouts Gigwise over the radio. “What?” replies their tour manager. Dana dan dan danana! “THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD” yells front man Johnny Cooke as he nearly gives Gigwise a black eye throwing both fists up into the air. They’re actually touring with the Modfather in November and finish with two dates at London’s Alley Pally in December - Weller rang them up and personally asked them to support him, and with three massive Jam fans in the band there’s nothing that’s going to stop them from sharing his stage. It’s only after The Jam classic is over that any sense can be made of the initial question. This is not just a tour - on every date the Dogs are filming the video for their next single ‘Tarred And Feathered‘. Gigwise is told that on their site Dogs fans who are as mad about footie as the band, can enter a competition to appear in the video and meet the band; but they have to turn up in their football strips. “Won’t that cause trouble between rival clubs?” “We don’t think it will, but if it does it’ll be a good fight!” comes the reply. Oh my sainted aunts.
First stop is “the home of underground music in Stoke” - The Underground in the picturesque city of Stoke-on-Trent. A sound check later and… “special fried noodles” says drummer Rich in his broad northern accent. The Dogs and their crew have taken over a small Chinese restaurant bedecked in tacky red and gold decorations with a suspiciously empty fish tank bubbling gently behind the boys, much like the conversation. It’s like the lull before the storm, listening to snippets of band gossip before they head back to the venue. “What’s the time?” quips Jeff their tour manager. Literally two seconds later Dogs are haring down the road and burst into The Underground screaming for the storm to begin.Amid dimmed lights they step onto the stage and the opening riffs of ‘London Bridge’ peel out of the amps as they drip from the fingers of guitarist Rikki. This song describes Dogs perfectly, “When battered heads dissemble and descend into a mess upon the city/When bleeding hearts awake from single beds and paint themselves so pretty” they manage to do what few bands can. Pulling at your heartstrings, whilst throwing two fingers up to the world, the poetry of this perfect opener hits hard with stomping bass lines, cascading guitars and vocals that are spat out to the beat of the drums.
“Highs.” begins Johnny “Stoke, Glasgow, London”.Why Stoke? “Cos it was the first night and I couldn’t hear the lyrics over the crowd and it’s the first time that’s happened and it just put big smiles on our faces!” It’s also the first time for a long while that they played ‘Red’. This is a song so personal and painful that only three lines appear in the album sleeve- “She loves you, like you know she would / She’ll echo through the cold just like you know she would / So Long” . It’s a song that’ll make you weep - no matter what mood you’re in, listen closely to the lyrics and you’ll understand. When they play it Johnny stands on the stage staring into another world, completely lost amid the crowd and football shirts that have invaded the stage. It’s amazing, almost frightening to watch.
Johnny: “We played it once before at the Barfly (Camden) and yeah… because the album’s out now you gotta play everything ‘avent ya? I can’t just not play it cos it sometimes makes you feel uncomfortable. People wanna hear it. So you give ‘em it…plus the rest of the band wouldn’t let me get away with it!” They’ve also got new songs in the pipeline “but we’re not going to unleash them yet", to use a dog pun. ‘This Stone Is A Bullet’ is gonna be a great tune, the other titles are not set yet.”As the night proceeds, more and more of the 33 Litres/8 Gallons/One Keg of red wine is drunk. Yes the Dogs bring a keg of red wine on tour with them. A fucking keg. Two days later the band stomp through Norwich, set the fire alarms off in Canterbury where they’re dragged off stage to wait in the car park and later finish the set back inside the venue. But it’s the next date that is perhaps the most important and one of the highest points of their career. London’s Kings Cross Scala.
The film crew are tearing around the place faster than greyhounds on speed and the crowd that’s just burst into the main room all run for the barriers. Wires, battery packs and gaffer tape fly across the stage as the cameras are set up. The chaos out front is matched only by the band’s excitement that’s building up in the less than clean dressing room; with a leaking roof it’s exactly the kind of place you have to look before sitting down, but it might as well be Buckingham Palace tonight cos everyone is fucking buzzing. “Aaaaamaaazing Graaaace!” Rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist Luciano Vargas is warming up. And as this handsome Argentinean belts the hymn out in an interpretive style everyone is stood there with shocked smiles as they listen, but the best expression by far is the grin plastered across Duncan’s (bass) face.
Stepping onto the side of the stage Gigwise surveys the packed room - there’s not a space to be seen; people are hanging off the railings, leaning down from the side steps and pressed up against the barrier - “Move Back! Move Back!” shout security; the crowd isn’t going to even if they could. Not only is the video filming still going on, but it’s one of the few gigs that’s being broadcast live on the web. They rip through a blinding set with an energy so fucking raw it hurts watching them. A wild crowd scream, sing and throw themselves along to every. single. word. With chants of “DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!” the boys in the band strut back onto the stage for an encore and leave to an applause befitting such a performance - it’s a night that everybody will claim they witnessed. “We were fucking amazed at how packed it was. We got 1100 in there and it’s a 800 capacity. Just shocked at the support and fucking chuffed about it - everyone went nuts for us!” Johnny later exclaims.The only let down of the tour is Johnny, Duncan and Luicano’s hometown of Cambridge, you’d reckon it’d be packed out but as the front man puts it “the turn out was bollocks. It was the only one that didn’t sell out so it was disappointing”. Despite this one anomaly “there’s not been that many lows, it’s been really encouraging and I could do with some new fucking socks!”
You might be able to get some in Japan. (After sound check in Coventry someone announces to everyone else “We are going to Japan”. Clunk! That was the sound of jaws dropping to the floor. Dogs will be playing their first Japanese date ever on October 16th at Tokyo’s Bandstand and it’s gonna be bloody crazy!) Johnny: “Do they do socks out there?! They’d be tiny though! (Johnny is over 6ft tall) Don’t they have M&S out there? “Do they?!” You might be able to get a ‘normal’ pair there!
“But I’m skint! (are these hints for Gigwise? No, we‘re not asked to sacrifice ours and stockings wouldn‘t suit him.) We’re going on something’s castle then coming straight home! It’s gonna be mental. Tokyo, fucking To-K-Yo (he says in the plumiest of accents). A mystery land that doesn’t really exist…I can’t wait to see it and eat a spring roll!!!” How do you think the crowd will react to you though, because it’s so different out there? “I haven’t the foggiest. We’ve got some Japanese people on our message board that rant about us, but the album’s not on general release over there so they must have got it off the Internet. It’ll be a surprise.”
From Birmingham to Sunderland, Glasgow to Manchester (another amazing gig) life on the road is as rock n’ roll as it gets. Finding a used condom in one of the dressing room showers - which, we would like to point out had NOTHING to do with us; running around the streets at night with kids on our heels yelling “YOU’RE ROCK STARS AREN’T YOUS?”; Jeff the tour manager writing a poem for Gigwise; “every morning,” smiles Johnny “coz my bunk was on the bottom at boxer shorts level, Jeff would walk past fucking playing with himself - but everyone loves the fuckin’ nut case!”; Babyshambles kids nearly having a scrap with Dogs kids in Liverpool; finishing the tour on a massive high after all being thrown out of the last bar open along the Mersey; arriving in London so wasted Luciano thought we’d driven to Japan. That country ain’t gonna know what’s fucking hit it!
But, as always Johnny has the last word. “I’d like to say thanks to everyone that came down fucking proper sincerely cos it was a fucking good tour”.
For anyone who didn’t make it to the tour, Dogs are playing on October 30 at 93 Feet East in London’s East End as part of the CEKI mini-fest in aid of Breast Cancer UK. Get down, get donating, get to see Dogs.
