broken mic

The black walls and curtains in the corner of Covington’s Mad Hatter were decked out last night to look like some kind of botanical garden, complete with all kinds of plants and flowers, and even a couple plastic flamingos. Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog was in town, as part of their fall tour, which has covered most of the country over the past month, including stops at the Austin City Limits Music Festival and San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. The majority of last night’s songs came from their most recent record, Fate, while the rest came from their previous two efforts, We All Belong and Easy Beat.

The night actually started off with comedic, singer/songwriter Jeffrey Lewis and his band The Junkyards. It took me quite awhile to build up any interest in this band, as the lyrics were a little too simple and appeared to have no real deep meaning, while the vocals and singing styles were average at best. The music alone would’ve been just enough for me to get into, had this been an instrumental band, but I felt that the lyrics and vocals really hurt this band. That was until I heard their song about the history of Communist Russia and the rise and fall of leaders like Lenin and Stalin. Lewis, who’s also a comic book artist, accompanied the song with a slideshow of drawings depicting the comical-yet-serious story of the song. It reminded me a lot of comedian Demetri Martin, who often uses music and drawings in his show.

As for Dr. Dog, this would be the third time I had seen the band, the first two times being in 2007 at Bonnaroo and while they were on tour with Wilco in Louisville. There’s nothing quite like that first time you hear about a band and see them in concert when you have no idea what to expect, but Dr. Dog still puts on an exciting, energetic, raw show. Part of that has to do with combining many styles of music like bluegrass, folk, psychedelic rock and soul.

Personal highlights of the Dr. Dog set included older songs like the opener “Worst Trip”, “The Way the Lazy Do”, “Ain’t It Strange”, “Die, Die, Die” and “Oh No”, and newer songs like “The Breeze”, “Hang On”, “My Friend”, “The Ark” and the show closer “The Rabbit, the Bat, and the Reindeer.”

After their fall tour ends, Dr. Dog will be going back into the studio to work on material for their next album.