Blame the Dog
Biography:
Blame the Dog was a somewhat short-lived project that produced really great pop songs in the late 1990's.
The basic "BTD"sound was defined by the hooky guitar playing of Todd Moore. Todd has an uncanny ability to interject complex rhythmic accents and tasty chord voicings in purely musical ways. While totally accessible, his parts are anything but ordinary.
Scott Brown fronted the band and he is the real deal when it comes to vocals. His melodic sense, passionate delivery and lyrical abilities rival any singer on the planet. His command of texture, tone, dynamics and space has the power to make the hair on your arms stand up at times. Check out "God's Creation" for a taste of all of these qualities combined.
Marc Hudson played drums in the band and like Todd, he has an incredible sense of rhythmic nuance and note placement. He is responsible for a large share of the arrangement ideas on display in these songs. Tight and focused, he's a bass player's dream drummer.
The opportunities that Todd, Scott and Marc set up were just too good to not exploit.
I played bass in the project and threw down some pretty cool parts, if I do say so myself. Since we performed as a 3 piece band, there was lots of room for me to play polyphonic parts in many of the songs. If you listen closely, you'll hear several passages where I'm playing a bass line with my left hand and tapping chord changes with my right. Fat and tricky.
Recording Notes:
All of these tracks were performed live and printed directly to a cassette deck. I feel pretty fortunate to have ended up with tracks this good considering how crappy a medium a cassette deck is to record to.