James Pederson
From left: Samhain Bane, Tefman, David Payne, Anthony Salas and Dustin Harmon.
It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. But in the case of the Madison band Dogs of War, necessity is the mother of innovation.
After getting numerous noise complaints at their studio behind a north-side tattoo shop, the rap-rock collective needed to figure out how to keep playing while they scouted for a new practice space.
“The cops were continually getting called, and we just didn’t want to deal with it anymore,” says Dustin Harmon, the group’s bassist and sound engineer.
Their solution was simple: go acoustic. And in what Harmon calls “a beneficial accident,” the band was so happy with their experiment, they decided to make an all-acoustic album.
Dogs of War will drop the new record, a seven-track EP titled Unleashed, at a release show July 22 at the High Noon Saloon. Promoted as “Madison Unplugged,” the night will also include local artists Charles Grant, Chris LaBella, 3rd Dimension and beatboxer XL Big.
The five-member crew is well known to the Madison music scene. In 2015, behind their self-titled EP, Dogs of War picked up Madison Area Music Awards for Best Hip-Hop Album and Hip-Hop Performer of the Year. The group played at this year’s MAMAs and won again for Hip-Hop Performer of the Year.
Unleashed is a mix of new material and retooled older tracks by Dogs of War and the members’ various former groups. Unplugging has helped the members learn more about each other and their work.
“Only after we played [our old songs] a few times acoustically did we really learn how to play them electrically,” says guitarist and lead vocalist Anthony Salas. “Once we dialed it back, we really understood it better.”
Dexter Patterson, who raps as Tefman, agrees. “We’re so used to playing loud and at the electric pace that going acoustic was super-intimate,” he says. “The focus is on the music, the content of the lyrics. We’re letting the emotion of the songs breathe a little bit.”
The group also includes Samhain Bane, another MC, and drummer David Payne.
While the volume may be turned down on the new album, the content certainly isn’t. The tracks cover Dogs of War’s usual variety of heavy topics, including absentee fathers, alcoholism and drug abuse. But they also lighten it up with songs about parties, having fun and raising children.
Salas says much of the lyrical content comes from personal experience. “It offers other people a way to relate to something they don’t want to talk about,” he says. “Some of this is a part of my life that I’ve never dealt with but always wanted to get out.”
While the shift to playing acoustically isn’t permanent, Salas says it opens the group up to more and different gigs, such as coffee shops.
“This is our way of saying what we want, but it’s accessible to a different crowd,” he says. “Another avenue for us to express the same message.”
