MARCH 2008 ONLINE EDITORIALS

Wall of Dogs - Some Crazy Skies

album cover

By Nate Harper

You’re knocking back a few at your regular bar and a band’s on stage rocking hard, covering the hits. Everyone’s enjoying the music as they talk and laugh and work on their third Bud Light, but then the conversations quiet down a little and heads turn toward the stage as the band plays a song no one seems to know the words to.

For cover bands this is the moment of truth – it can be tough to abandon the safety of the songs of others for your own music, but if you feel like you’ve really got something to say, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity of being on stage.

Fort Collins/Loveland rockers Wall of Dogs are just that band, a group that sells itself on its covers-heavy live performance, but believe enough in their own voice to release full-length albums of original material. Diversity is the first thing one thinks when looking at the list of bands whose songs they play, everything from Foreigner to Beck to Social Distortion, but surprisingly they sound like none of those acts, instead opting for what they call “Rock & Roll with Soul.”

To look at the band’s photo on the liner notes one could conceivably be surprised to hear the vocal melodies that are prominently featured on many albums’ songs. Husband and wife rhythm section Tim Elliott and Sherri Pfleiger-Eliott, on drums and bass respectively, play and sing well together, doing their best harmonizing on some of the albums poppier tracks. When Wall of Dogs treads into heavier territory, Elliott takes over on lead vocals - everybody loves a mic’d drummer - and Bob Doughty provides guitars that are full and, when necessary, crunchy.

The question remains though, if you’d just heard these guys play your favorite U2 song, followed by some tracks from Collective Soul and Jet, songs that seemingly scored your life, would you be willing to raise your glass to an original number from the band? Most of the time that answer is yes. Whether they’re offering slice of life cuts that work in acoustic guitars and piano, or they’re rocking a little harder over the aggressive boom-bap of Elliott’s drums, Wall of Dogs’ original work would definitely play well with the late night crowd.

Though lyrically the band can sometimes stray toward cliché, when they are in their element, as on the track Believe, they show they can compete with the bands that inspired them.