Dogs In A Pile Interview-More Of The Same, But Completly Different

Dogs In A Pile Will Be At Slowdown on November 12th

Combining jazz, funk, reggae, and psych rock together, Dogs In A Pile have followed a tried and true road map to becoming a successful improvisational jam band. The band is full of musicians who are technically excellent at their craft, some of whom went to Berkley College of Music. The band tours constantly, and the show at Slowdown will be their fourth time through Omaha in their relatively short career. They change their setlist every night and add in fun covers and other surprises, and they make those shows available to own and collect. Most importantly, they make fun music with a lot of characters and twists and turns musically that keep their fans on their toes and engaged.

Jimmy Law on guitar, Joe Babbick on drums, Sam Lucid on bass, Jeremy Kaplan on keyboards, and Brian Murray on guitar make up the band. Their latest album is Bloom, which came out in 2023, and I hopped on a phone call with Kaplan and Murray in anticipation of their show at Slowdown on Tuesday, November 12th. Tickets available HERE.

Omaha Buzz-Can you give me a brief history on how the band formed?

Jeremy Kaplan--Brian, Sam, and I had a band together at the Berkley College of Music; we had a couple gigs here and there, and then Sam introduced us to the other two guys, Jim and Joe, in New Jersey. At first they were two separate bands, and eventually the two bands became one, and it became the ultimate rocking combo.

Omaha Buzz-Looking over your setlists it seems like you vary them a lot and add in a lot of fun covers. Can you talk about how you make your setlists?

Brian Murray-We definitely stick to that tradition of bands that change the setlist up every night. Sometimes we pick covers that are specific to the city we go to, or maybe an artist that is from the city we are in, and we will prepare a cover ahead of time and sometimes even the day before or not too long before. We like to try to spread out songs, so we don’t have to repeat a song for a few nights. Sometimes we have not repeated a show for five or six nights.

Omaha Buzz-I saw that when you palyed The Waiting Room here in Omaha that you played “Nebraska” by Moe.

Brian Murray-That was also paying tribute to Chuck (Garvey from Moe.) who had just had a stroke at the time. I really like Moe. I grew up listening to Moe.

Omaha Buzz-So, I read that you got a scholorship from Billy Joel?

Jeremy Kaplan-I went to this arts high school on Long Island, where Brian and I are originally from. The school was desperately underfunded and was going to close down. His (Billy Joel) foundation stepped in and donated a bunch of money to the school to keep it afloat and running. It is really necessary because the district programs may be good, but they didn’t offer what the school had, which is intense training, and really just focus for a half day for whatever your discipline is. It was called Long Island High School of the Arts; it had dance, music, theater, graphic arts, all sorts of stuff. It was through avenues there that the scholarship for me appeared; I wasn’t planning on pursuing secondary education as I was already working a fair amount playing in bar bands, theater, big bands, and stuff like that. I was keeping busy, and that is the path of the freelance musicians to plug away and work. The scholarship was offered to me, and how could you deny such a thing, and luckily I did several years at Berkley, which is where I met Brian and Sam, and that is really how the band was formed, so we owe a lot to that guy.

Omaha Buzz-What is the bands songwriter process. I was going to ask you Jeremy, a song like “Rinky Dink Rag” would have to start with you. Right?

Jermey Kaplan-Rinky Dink Rag is actually one of the funnier stories. It was written when we were at Berkley. Brian and I were in one of the practice rooms there jamming and throwing ideas at each other.  I had this little two-step number that was half-baked, and he helped me finish it. The intro is one of the later bits that came along, and I played the desending line and I sneezed in the break. Brian was eating Thai food, and I was in the small practice room, and I am very allergic and was a little sickly, and that is how it happened. We finished the tune up together. Pretty silly.

Brian Murray-I think I may have sneezed at some point too.

Jeremy Kaplan-Yeah, you were sick-sick or something.

Brian Murray-We both sneezed, and we decided that those would be the lyrics.

Omaha Buzz-You seem to write a lot about people or characters. Who is your favorite that you have written about?

Brian Murray-Thomas Duncan is like a character that Jeremy and I have kind of spawned in existance.

Jeremy Kaplan-Thomas Duncan is the person I thought of as well. Thomas Duncan is a character based on a real-life person with some fictional aspects. I don’t want to go into too much detail about him, as that kind of ruins the fun about it for everybody. It is fun for us to characterize people. I know for Sam the bass player, he writes a lot of stuff, and he likes writing about people too. You can fudge some details and create stories that are rooted in reality but end up off the deep end.

Brian Murray-And they are usually pretty funny.

Omaha Buzz-Can you speak about the evolution between your first album Not Your Average Beagle and the latest album Bloom?

Jeremy Kaplan-The first album was entirely self-produced and recorded, and for Bloom, we brought in a producer, and he reaffirmed to us things we were thinking about. You know the differences between being a live band and making recordings. He pushed us to get the arrangements down and tighten up the tunes as much as possible. It was a good experience for us, and we learned a lot from it, and he collaborated on writing a lot of the tunes on that album from it. It was a good time making it.

Omaha Buzz-You have to be pretty deep into promoting Bloom. Are you working out new material?

Jeremy Kaplan-Yeah, we are. Back in April we did a residency in LA, and so we booked two or three days in somebodies home studio, and it was a really nice sounding room. So we got all the basics done for our next studio album. We figured we would do a little return to form, as far as stretching out songs and trying to find that cross section between being a live band and studio band. Like, how can we really dial it in and make it as tight as it can be, but also freely improvise and experiment? We are still working on it and doing overdubbing. It’s tough to find time to do it since we spend so much time on the road. October has been very useful. I just recently got to record grand piano at the Troy Music Hall in Troy, New York, which is an acoustically beautiful room with an equally beautiful nine-foot Steinway piano, so we are absolutely plugging away on the next one.

Omaha Buzz-You have all of your live shows available to purchase. How important is that to you?

Jeremy Kaplan-It’s hugely important. People will always want to go see the live shows because there is nothing like the experience of standing before a band and getting your face ripped off. It was never a concern for me or us that we would lose ticket sales to people that want to sit on the couch and listen. It's kind of the way people and the market are now. It is content, content, content. We are lucky that every time we perform live, we get to produce content. We have a killer audio engineer and a killer video guy. We are lucky that we get to produce this content consistently, and it is super high quality.

Omaha Buzz-What is it like on the road these days?

Jeremy Kaplan-It’s tough out there; it kind of always has been from what I have read. We are not the most experienced road dogs out there, but we have done our fair share. It has gotten easier for us as we have figured out how to make it work for us. That is the challenge of every touring artist; you have to make it for you. It’s really not easy, and the money is difficult, and the body aches are difficult. I kind of think about it; what else am I going to be doing? It’s one of the best uses of my time. 

Omaha Buzz-What can older and new fans of Dogs In A Pile expect at the Slowdown show?

Jeremy Kaplan-It will be more of the same and everything will be completely different.