Dr. Dog brings ‘Psychedelic Swamp’ to Bend

Published 12:00 am Friday, January 29, 2016

There are really two stories behind Dr. Dog’s upcoming album, “Psychedelic Swamp.”

The tale that’s most familiar to casual fans goes as follows: In the late ’90s, West Grove, Pennsylvania-based songwriters Scott McMicken, Toby Leaman and Doug O’Donnell began writing and recording songs together on four-track tape machines, releasing a sprawling, lo-fi debut called “Psychedelic Swamp” in 2001. The equally lo-fi “Toothbrush” appeared next, and in 2004 the then-five-piece band hit the road.

As the tours got bigger and the albums got cleaner, the group developed into the psychedelic rock juggernaut it is today. In 2009, the band signed with Epitaph subsidiary ANTI- Records; it has released four albums so far with the label, including 2013’s “B-Room” — a sonic and collaborative leap forward for the group — and 2015’s live document, “Live at the Flamingo Hotel.”

Then there’s the sprawling, alternate-universe concept behind “Psychedelic Swamp” itself. According to band legend, the members of Dr. Dog received the “Psychedelic Swamp” tape in the mail from a man named Phrases, who is lured to the Psychedelic Swamp in an attempt to escape the monotony of his life. At first all is well, but as the years go by, the empty feelings Phrases was running from begin to return, and he realizes he can’t just escape from his problems.

“However, at that point he’s stuck there, and not only that, but he’s been there long enough that his ability to communicate is becoming really hindered,” McMicken said from the band’s home base in Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, shortly before heading out on a U.S. tour that will land at the Midtown Ballroom on Wednesday.

“… That’s why he makes that tape and sends it to us, and tells us to translate that tape into modern American music so that his message can be spread.”

So according to “Psychedelic Swamp” lore, Dr. Dog has spent the last 15 years touring, releasing albums and becoming the band it is today in order to translate Phrases’ message.

It’s all been building to the moment the re-imagined version of the album officially drops Feb. 5.

“We’ve had a lot of fun talking about that too, just re-framing the entire history of the band as this thing we had to do in order to prep us, to have an audience to spread this message,” McMicken said. “The whole thing has just been this investment in getting to this point where we can now — like yeah, the whole history of the band has just been building up to being able to do the ‘Swamp.’”

Here’s where the stories converge, though: Dr. Dog always meant to return to “Swamp.” Guitarist/vocalist McMicken and bassist/vocalist Leaman — the band’s main songwriters since O’Donnell’s departure in 2004 — have alluded to it in interviews over the years, and fan speculation about the record has stayed alive in online forums and fan sites.

While the story contained in the album may be fantastic, the messages and themes are all too real for the band. It’s why the album has remained a part of the band’s consciousness for so long, McMicken said.

“The whole thing is truth for sure,” McMicken said. “It’s all reflective of us. And the swamp is really, to just kind of deconstruct it down to its key, it’s just re-contextualizing what’s going on in the world around us according to how we see it and what we’re drawn to. Things like advertisements, say, or media and social media, all these things that are such a huge part of life and weren’t in exactly the same way in the late ’90s when we opened this whole can of worms up, but very much still the same kind of lens on things.

“It’s just kind of that way of doing things where you’re just re-contextualizing something, and by doing that you’re kind of showing a different aspect of its identity, which I think is what ties into the psychedelic aspect of it, psychedelic being a thing that is not exclusively this drug-induced kind of state, but more just this malleability of perspective.”

The catalyst to revisit this music came in 2013, when the band and Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company were awarded a Fostering the Arts Grant from the Knight Foundation to create “Swamp is On,” a multimedia show featuring theatrical and musical elements. The production, which follows the band’s attempts to contact Phrases for more information about the Psychedelic Swamp, was staged at Union Transfer in Philadelphia in September.

“We just decided, once it was solidified that we would be doing that theatrical collaboration with (Pig Iron), we just sort of realized now is definitely the time to do the full (album),” McMicken said.

And it has been a complete re-working, as evidenced by lead single “Bring My Baby Back” — a new song that never appeared on the original “Psychedelic Swamp,” but was inspired by another track on that album, “Engineer Says.” As McMicken explained, the band sought to capture the themes and spirit of the original, rather than precise copies of the songs.

“That’s kind of one of the paradoxes of the whole ‘Swamp’ scenario, is that there is a story, and there is the character and there is specifics that inform what makes it all up,” McMicken said. “But really when it comes down to doing anything, everything is just kind of pushed into being wide open and anything goes.”

There’s another connection to the band’s past on the record, too: For the first time since 2004, O’Donnell recorded and wrote with the rest of Dr. Dog — McMicken, Leaman, guitarist/keyboardist Frank McElroy, multi-instrumentalist Zach Miller, drummer Eric Slick and multi-instrumentalist Dimitri Manos. McMicken said the band has always maintained close ties to O’Donnell, who left after the band’s first few national tours.

“For certain, we’ve all stayed close friends ever since, and so having him back around was amazing,” McMicken said. “It was just like going right back to those days with him. He’s just — he’s so, so talented, and just the best spirit that’s really infectious, too.”

While this new “Psychedelic Swamp” is 14 tracks long, the original tape clocked in at more than 70 minutes. McMicken said the band would like to release the tape alongside the new version. The last time it was available was on the band’s earliest tours, in 2004.

“When we first got asked to go on tour in 2004, we were like, ‘Oh, we need to have some albums to sell.’ We had made hours and hours of recordings at that time, but it was such a different context,” McMicken said. “It wasn’t like we were working in a way where it was like, OK, we need to make an album; that wouldn’t have really meant anything to us at that point in time. It was just this process of doing stuff. So we took a bunch of old recordings that we had been gathering up on the four-track and stuff and turned that into ‘Toothbrush.’ … The ‘Swamp’ was obviously done by that point, too, so we burned off maybe 20 copies of the ‘Swamp,’ like CD-Rs, and sold those copies on that tour. So the stuff I’ve seen on YouTube, it’ll have the artwork that was on those CDs that we made and stuff.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7814, bmcelhiney@bendbulletin.com