Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. No, I'm not going to start like I did last time. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie.

And this is Hollywood Mike. Oh, you asshole. That's where you started the last time.

Welcome, Mike. Welcome to the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. This sounds too creepy.

We can't keep doing this. You know, it's the PBS version, man. Yeah, I don't know.

But we still don't know what our names are. What's your name? I forgot. Raymond Aloysius Bernardissius? It's Ray the Roadie.

Ray the Roadie. That's right. Okay.

You sure? We don't want to just call you like Ray Road? Maybe. Or Ray Rod? Raydy? That would be like my porn name. Yeah.

Yeah, that could be. Yeah. Isn't your porn name the name of your first pet in the first street you lived on? There's all kinds of different ones like that.

Yeah. But I'll tell you what, though. If that were the truth, though, um, I have the best porn name in the world.

I do. My name would be Dexter Avers. That's a porn name I've ever heard of.

Mine would be, mine would be Petey Francisco. Oh, my God. You win.

At least it's not Rev Dog. Reverend Dogface Shithead in the Herd or whatever the hell. Something like that.

They like to go. Exactly why we had to shorten it to Rev Dog. That's why they're Rev Dog.

Welcome to the studio. We have Rev Dog in the studio, everybody. I may have the best, the best porn name.

Smokey Maplewood. Oh, not bad. Smokey Maplewood.

Yeah. Yeah. I know a guy, he would have been Harry Elm.

You know, we could do this all night long. We could do a, I was just thinking we should start a podcast of porn names. Of porn names.

Yeah. Might go somewhere or might go nowhere. So tell us all about Rev Dog.

Well, now with that entry, I don't even know where to go from there. You know what you got to tell us now. How did the, how did the name start? So yeah, everything else is going to be disappointed now.

It wasn't Rev Dog. It wasn't Rev Dog and the Reverend with the shithead. And like, like I said, it was something else.

Yeah. You know, we, we started off as Reverend, the dog man in the herd. That's it.

We still go by that. We still go by that. The process of picking a band name was pretty frustrating.

Oh, it was terrible. Yeah. With the invention of Google, you come up with a cool band name and somebody's got it.

No, even, even back in the day, if we can all remember this MySpace, you'd find the most two random words that you can put together. And you look, I'm like, Oh no, somebody's got that name already. Yeah.

It's out there. Yeah. So we took a hodgepodge of all the names we had.

And then we play, we're kind of, we call it blues infused classic rock. It's, it's a lot of rock songs that have been influenced by the blues. And we've been around for a while now.

So we've kind of branched into some contemporary stuff too. And some pop stuff as well. But, but the, the, the, the Reverend part was influenced by the best movie of all time, the Blues Brothers.

Well, no, no, not the best movie of all. No, for me it is. Reverend Cleophas, James Brown.

So I was kind of envisioned myself. It is not, it's not very accurate, but that's kind of the vision I had for, for the leader of the band. So you're going to wear hot pants.

Hot pants. I'm going to make you see the light too. So, yeah.

So we were, John was trying to come up with some sort of name that would associate with the blues. And, you know, he wasn't one eye or lefty or, you know, shorty. And we'd come up with some, some adjective to describe him.

And so we kind of joke about him being the good righteous Reverend. So that kind of came along. And then the dog man, I think John can probably cover that a little bit better than I can.

But I do know that for a long time, he had his favorite guitar. And he actually had the bone from the leash or the collar from his dog on there a long time. So he became the dog man for a long time.

So, yeah, that's, that's true. And who was the herd? Well, the herd came along because we felt like we needed a longer name because Reverend Dogman was just way, way too short. Yeah.

And so we kind of, kind of come up with something, a quip, you know, you know, we're going to be the destroyers. We want to have something to, to be the rest of the band is, we figured his kind of a pseudonym was Reverend Dogman. So we kind of think about dogs and gathering people around.

We said, well, herd, like the herd people around, but we didn't want to use our herd, like you're herding cattle or something. So we tried to do a play on the word to make it H-E-A-R-D. Although we still find out that that becomes somewhat problematic because a lot of venues now still times will spell it wrong.

So, yeah. So shortening the name, it's probably helped out quite a bit. Yeah, it fits better on the marquee.

Yeah. Right. So, and all the blues bands too, they were, you know, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers.

Always somebody and the something or else. Could have been Reverend Dogman and the flock. That's true.

We'll add it to the list. Yeah. Somebody else had it probably.

So we had to move on. Yeah. So, yeah.

So the name kind of came back. We didn't, we probably searched for a long time. And then that all came together in just about one night.

And I said, okay, well, let's see what happens. Sounds like it did. Well, now you can't put a lot of thought into that.

That's the kind of thing that gets, gets to go. Diarrhea. Tim is now leaving the building.

Tim, can you please come back in the building? Well, nowadays you got AI. You can put anything you want in there and you're going to come up with a name. Oh yeah.

Exactly. It's scary. I don't like it at all.

Yeah. So, so yeah. So that kind of came about with the style of music that we were trying to play and try to be a little bit different.

So just not to be the average band named Diarrhea that was out there. But that would be a cool name. That's true.

Some punk band somewhere, it was called Diarrhea. Oh, sure. Certainly.

Yeah. So that kind of just came along with the style of music that we were trying to play and to go with. But then we had to branch out because we feared that we wanted to get hired and not all the blues bands were broke and not getting hired anywhere.

So we had to come up with the classic rock edge. It's a requirement though to be broke. Yes.

And have the blues. Maybe you got to play somewhere though. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. So blues is it. I just happen to find something just coming in hot off the press here.

There's a band Diarrhea Planet, a six-piece garage punk band from Nashville. Diarrhea Planet. All right.

Everybody has a name. It's always taken. Yeah.

They're probably shitty. Do we have a drum roll on here? Oh, there you go. Oh, there you go.

Yeah. It's AI. I'm being replaced.

Yeah, who needs these guys if you have buttons? Do that again. Set me up again. Yeah.

So. Well, to describe what we play, blues infused rock is where it started. And we've added classic rock.

We've added some Motown type hits as well. In addition to John, we also have a female vocalist. So that opens up the set list to some fun songs.

In my mind, what I would tell everyone is that in a world of tribute bands that play great music that we've all heard a million times and we love it. I love it too. But in that world, we're a little different.

We play great music that you've probably heard, but not a million times. Some of the songs maybe you didn't hear, but they're all great songs. And you'll enjoy all of them.

Danceable, fun, blues rock bass, and then spanning out from there. OK, all right. And what kind of clubs are you guys playing with this blues infused rock and roll? Yeah, all the local clubs.

And coming up, we were branching out to a place called Tuffy's in Wilmington on the 29th. God, I've played there a thousand times. OK, so you had to tell me afterwards because I took it blindly because somebody said, you guys would go over well here.

And so I took it blindly and I am looking forward to it. And so that's kind of cool. And then we got the Cubby Bear after that.

We're going to open up for a great band, Joe Ryan and the AM Drinkers. And then we'll be in Naperville in Quigley's. You know, the Tuffy's place is actually we should talk about it.

And if anybody's wondering, we are looking for sponsorship. Yes, we are. Yeah, out there in Wilmington.

I mean, it's not downtown Wilmington, but it's considered one of the main drags. It's right off of 53 after you pass the racetrack and the whole bit. When you first pull up to the building, you kind of you're like, OK, where are we kind of thing, because it is pretty much like a looks like a metal or a white steel corrugated shed kind of thing.

And then the sign kind of looks like, you know, like Tuffy's auto parts, you know, and everything. But inside of it, there's a bar area and where the bands play. There's an actual stage.

I haven't played there in like 15 years. But yeah, there's an actual stage there and they've got tables and everything set up. So it holds a couple hundred people or so.

It's not a huge place. But yeah, I must have played there about 20 times. I was in a band many years ago.

Again, talk about long names. It was a blues band and we were trying to figure out same exact thing. We were trying to figure out what are we going to call it? Right.

So we just randomly started throwing words together and we ended up calling it the Bubba Fats Blues Band. There was nobody in the band named Bubba. There was nobody fat.

There was it was just that's just what it was. Right. You didn't play blues.

We did. We did. But yeah, we played there like once a month because the bass player in that band lived right down the road in Gardner.

He booked us there. So no, you guys have a good time there. It's a good time.

Yeah. And they can't go back to the name there. There's no Reverend Dogman in the band officially.

It's almost like a hootie kind of a thing. Right. Where yeah, so even though Darius Rucker is.

Oh, there's a hootie. That's true. It's just not him.

Exactly. Yeah. So people call me Rev Dog.

That's much better than hootie. So who put the band together? How did it all start? I started and it's kind of cool. I played with Tom before a while and I was on hiatus.

Yeah. Last century played in the cover band. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's kind of cool because it almost seems divinely inspired because me and my girlfriend at the time we were going to Naperville Rip Fest and we were going to go see Sticks. And we're looking forward to that and everything. And we get to the parking lot, get on the bus that's going to the shuttle bus that's going to go over there.

We find out that Sticks is sold out and they're like, go figure. So yeah, yeah. So so we're like, oh, man.

And we're like, well, who's on who's on the second stage? And they're like Kenny Wayne Shepard. And I'm like, OK, I know a couple of the songs. You know, I don't know if I go out of my way to see him, but, you know, he's going to be there.

Literally, did you know? So, yeah. And so at that point, I'm just looking forward to the bucket full of waffle fries with covered in cheddar cheese. And I find out sometimes when I have lower expectations for something, I'm pleasantly surprised.

And once they start playing, they go into the riff of King B by Muddy Waters, followed up and then up with Voodoo Child from Hendrix and everything before that. And my hair was just boom, standing up. And I left there and I said, I want to play that.

And so I said, if I could play guitar like Kenny Wayne Shepard and sing like Noah Hunt, a singer, I'd be happy. I can't do either, but I'm happy trying anyway. Yeah.

So you're unhappy. Yeah. So, yes, I feel almost divine inspiration that those sticks was closed.

And then I went to see that and I'm like, wow, how cool is that? That I wanted a former band after seeing that. Yeah, no, he's he's spectacular. I'd seen him a few times, but where I really learned that how good he actually was, I went to the Chicago Theater got years ago, must be must be 12 years ago.

And I saw the Experience Hendrix tour. You know, it's a Joe Satriani show, right? It's his production. Right.

And the backing band that night was Living Color. Oh, good. Right.

So you had Vernon Reed there playing, playing guitar. Right. And Buddy Guy was there that night.

And Eric Gales was there. And gosh, I can't remember. Oh, and Eric Johnson was there.

And of course, Joe Satriani played. And I'm watching all these guys get up there, these guitar virtuosos. And what was disappointing about the show is I was looking so forward to seeing Eric Johnson, you know, and all these guys, you know, just do what they do.

Right. And they were they seemingly were more concerned with all of the effects that Jimi Hendrix would put into his music. So you heard all the phasers and the wah pedals and all that.

And there was a lot of wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah crap going on with everything. And I wasn't hearing them play guitar. And then Kenny Wayne Shepard closes the show and he comes out.

Right. And nobody sat down. He played.

He by far played the longest. Everybody else played like three songs and he played like 10. He played like the last 45 minutes or so to an hour.

And he was unbelievable. And I think everybody left, you know, thinking, OK, we just need to see him next time. The guy was so good.

That's how I named him. Oh, my God. He's so he's so much better live than his recordings.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Wow. Amazing. You know, he's a name that doesn't get mentioned enough.

I don't know what it is. True blues purists, for some reason, you know, turn a deaf ear to him. I don't I don't know why.

But and he was young when he first started. Young, young, young. Virtuoso type.

Yeah, yeah. And what is it? He went to high school. He went to the same high school, if I'm not mistaken.

He went to the same high school that Eric Johnson went to and Johnny Lang. So it's like the same hospital in Texas, hospital, hospital, high school. I don't know why I said high school.

Something in the water. Yeah, yeah, the same high school in Texas. Johnny Lang, when Johnny Lang hit it, he was young too.

Yeah, right. John, go drink that water. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.

And actually, by you mentioning that, that is pretty much the idea of why we had to branch out into other artists, because people were not familiar with him. He sold millions of records, but bar owners were not familiar with him or anything like that. So we had to come up with something a little more familiar.

Mainstream. Yeah, mainstream, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so when John approached me, he's like, yeah, I'm thinking about putting a band back together, and I'm thinking about doing something a little different. We're gonna do the blues. And I come home and I tell my wife, I go, John Lewis wants me to play in another band with him.

And she's like, oh, that sounds good. And I go, what are you gonna play? Oh, the blues. She's like, the blues, are you kidding me? She's like, do you wanna play the blues? I go, not in particular, I don't think so, but it's with John Lewis.

And just to say something about the Reverend here, I go, he's as good a person as he is a guitarist. And I mean, I think everybody can agree that musicians could possibly be slightly fickle people. A little bit.

And just a little bit difficult to work with. And John just has to be one of the easiest people to work with. A great musician, great person to work with.

So I said, I don't care if he wants to play polka, I'm in the band, we're doing it, we're making it happen. You guys want a moment alone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do, we do.

I'll be happy to turn the lights. Well, you got us all worked up on the poor names and I just can't get off of that, okay? So, but then you figure he's all, he gives us a nice little speech right here, but then he won't even share an umbrella with me. I was wondering why we're walking in the rain over here.

My goodness. Boy, boy, oh boy, oh boy. Well, I'll tell you what, let's listen to some blues.

I think we should. Why don't we take a break and give these guys a chance to tune up, you know? All righty. With the vocalizers and we'll be back.

Sounds good. All right. Be right back.

You're listening to the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And this is Hollywood Mike of the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

If you've been joining our weekly program, we have great news for you. Just tune in to Road to Rock Radio on Mondays at 7 p.m. Central Time and you can hear a rebroadcast of one of our past episodes. Then again on Thursdays at 7 p.m. you can hear our most current episode brought to you by the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66.

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24 seven, all music with its roots in Illinois. And we are back for the first time tonight live in the studio. We've got Rev Dogg.

All right. Hey now. Take it away.

We're gonna jam in a little song here. It's funny, my favorite movie of all time is the Blues Brothers. But the longest running song of our set list is from the Blues Brothers 2000, which is the only good thing about that movie I know is the opening scene.

And you hear just a voice and a clapping. Son Howell's going, ♪ Tell me who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ In the book of the seven seals ♪ So that's kind of the, that's another aha moment where I said, I wanted to play there. And we just need to put a few instruments in there.

So. ♪ So tell me who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ In the book of the seven seals ♪ ♪ Tell me who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ In the book of the seven seals ♪ ♪ I got a name, answer ♪ ♪ Cause there's naked and there's shame ♪ ♪ So tell me who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ ♪ That whenever he laid his hat was his own ♪ ♪ And when he died is all that he left of the seven seals ♪ ♪ Who's that riding John the Revelator ♪ All right. Yeah, they brought their fans.

Again, a bunch of dudes. So, yeah. Bunch of dudes.

Bunch of dudes came out with them, everything. Yeah. Yeah, but you also see now, I love that stuff, but you gotta get hired.

So you gotta branch out and do the more familiar stuff too. Well, it's almost like you're playing originals, you know, and they don't know what they are. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Yeah. Even though they're not. Yeah, so even though you have the same ZZ Top, kind of boogie kind of a thing, people like to know what they're hearing.

Right, right. So you can stick a few things in here and stuff like that, but. We, you know, it's funny that you mentioned that the Blues Brothers 2000, God, that was a God awful movie, wasn't it? That was, that was a, that was just, that was just.

So you're the two. You're the two that saw it. Oh my God, that was a horrible movie.

No, but the funny thing is though, what's the song, New Orleans, down in New Orleans. It's the song that they do at the end of the movie where it's the big super jam and Eric Clapton's there with his horrible acting in the whole bit. Oh my God, that was terrible.

Yeah, I had, I had what my daughter calls it adjacent embarrassment when you're watching a movie and you're embarrassed by somebody's performance. But anyways, yeah, Eric Clapton was awful in that. It's a good thing he plays guitar.

But yeah, we, we performed that song in Cadillac Grove. Nice! And it's, it's, there was good music in the movie. The movie itself was just terrible.

It was, it was, there was, exactly. Yeah, I only came when I say it was the only good thing. But there was some good, there was some good cuts in there.

Oh yeah, a lot of good, a lot of good songs in there. Yeah, yeah. Some, some newer stuff and new artists.

I mean, Johnny, Louie, Johnny Lang, we were just talking about him. He was in that. Yeah, yeah, just a youngster too, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, young, young kid in the laundromat song. I can't remember the song was. It was, yeah, it was a phone number.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but no, we, we do that song.

We do New Orleans in Cadillac Grove and it's one of those where the horn section walks around the crowd and everything. And it's, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just good music from it, yeah. So yeah, we need to get horns. Yeah.

That's right, see. You can't have ours. Yeah, so we found out when we do, we play venues and you never know when you go see a concert, they do like, there are two big hit songs and then everybody goes, oh, we're gonna do a new song for you that's coming out.

That's generally when everybody goes to the washroom. Yeah. We would find that kind of happens to some of them.

Yeah, it's true. We find that kind of happens to. All at the same time.

Yeah, right. Like a mass exodus, you know, we don't know the song, we're not here. And so we find out that, you know, that'll be sometimes at a lot of our gigs, we'll be doing, we'll do a rolling songs or doors or again, something that was blues infused, but it's a rock song that people will know.

And then you pull out a Stevie Ray Vaughan or a Johnny Lang or something. And then we see that happen. It's like, okay, everybody was dancing and now everybody goes to the bar and gets a drink.

And so, so we try to, we try to pepper our music with enough of a classic rock and then just throw the blues in because that's what we enjoy to do. And trying to find a nice balance between what we want to do and what the audience wants to hear. Yeah, it's true.

And I don't know about you guys, but that's kind of one of our sticking points. Like as far as, as far as picking songs, you know, the banner says blues infused classic rock. And we try to stick to that.

Tim is really good about keeping me on that because I like to branch off and I'm like, okay, whatever gets us hired and whatever is more flexible and whatever will get us more fests or something like that. And cause we have Amy Flynn now who's joined us and she's a powerhouse vocalist. And my big idea, cause we play in church with her.

We're all church musicians. And we play in church with Amy and she has no aspirations of being a big rock star or anything like that. But she's got this tremendous talent.

And we were working with some rock stuff during COVID, I think, and stuff like that. I said, you gotta bring this, come out to our shows and play the first set with us or whatever you want to do, you know? And so I always wanted to turn her into, like I would say, like the Caucasian Coco Taylor. And I was gonna say, well, turn her into like Vanilla Taylor and I found out that's not really, it's either in you or it's not.

And it's in her, but it doesn't come naturally. So we had to play to her strengths and it's like getting a great draft pick, you know, on a football team or something like that. You have to work around that person's talents or else you're gonna fail.

And we found out that we had to branch off and we branched off into the Fleetwood Mac stuff. Adele. So Adele, yeah, she's, yeah, yeah.

And it's all really, it's kind of all bluesy bass too cause we're kind of just kind of all grooving out. And Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline. Yeah, so, and I only know one scale, so I gotta fit that all in.

It's all becomes. We do Jolene and I'm like, oh, by Tally Partners. She's like, no, by Miley Cyrus.

And I'm like, oh. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on, I got a, I got a pain right there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, yeah. So at least you didn't say Beyonce. God, that drives me crazy when people do that.

You know, it's like you work with somebody and you're like, hey, let's do this. Last time it happened to me was after midnight. I know, I only know the Eric Clapton version of After Midnight.

And somebody knew a version of it by like one of these newer R&B artists that it came out literally with like the last few, three, you know, few years with that dubstep beat to it and everything. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that. No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.

It does bring up a good point though. No, actually a lot of our songs that we do that we don't even know. I mean, if you go back to the history of several of the songs that we do, they are old blues songs that most people don't even realize they were originally by a blues artist.

So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was kind of a kind of a cool, you know, like something like I Just Want to Make Love to You that from the Flockette, from the Flockette. You know, that was all Willie Dixon.

And there's a different version. And I find myself getting inspired by remakes. So I know it's almost blasphemy, but I do, I find myself getting inspired by remakes of the band.

Like we do American Band and we do that because I happened to come across a video by the Dead Daisies doing it. And I was like, wow, this is such a cool song that, you know, we gotta bring it back and put it to the set list. And that's one of our favorite ones to do, so.

You know, another band out there that did a lot of remakes is the Stones. People think a lot of the Stones music is original stuff, and it's not. Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin, yeah, sure. No, there's a lot of bands out there. You know, there's a lot of people, I hear it all the time, it's, you know, you mentioned somebody, a band like Pink Floyd, right? And everybody, and, or you mentioned blues and somebody says, no, I'm a Pink Floyd fan.

Well, you know, you're a blues fan. If you're a Pink Floyd fan, you're a blues fan, you just don't realize it. You know, they found a way to make the blues progression palatable for absolutely everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all how you market it, you know? It really is how you market it. You know, you were talking about, you know, you call yourselves blues-infused rock, right? And I'm not giving anybody advice or anything, but what I have found works better is, okay, yeah, we play blues-infused rock.

Okay, what else you got, right? Come up with a catchy name for it. You know, like the person that- That was our catchy name. Well, the person that comes to mind, and I've actually stolen this from a couple of times, Tad Benoit, you know, he refers to his music as swamp rock and roll.

Yeah. You know, instead of saying it's, you know, blues with a New Orleans or Cajun sound to it, you know, snooze description, it's swamp rock and roll, and that's what he calls it, and that's what, and all his fans know, you know, he plays swamp rock and roll. That's interesting.

You know, it's almost like it's its own genre, and when people hear swamp rock and roll, they know it. They know that that's why he calls it swamp rock and roll. It's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because we're always, you know, looking for, because we know that we're pretty much behind the eight ball because of the whole marketing thing, and it's so easy to book a tribute band because you know exactly what you're getting, and so, and it's hard to say, we're blues, pop, country, soul, disco, and stuff like that, so yeah, yeah, so that's, we realized that, and, but I'm not very smart, so as I had, you mentioned the song, After Midnight, and that was another song that, when we were starting this off, I'm like, you know, Eric Clapton played in a beer commercial a long time ago. Where he's playing that song, yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Oh gosh, now I'm trying to think, now I'm trying to think, was it Miller Highlights? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It may have been totally 80s and genuine draft.

Yeah. So, yeah. ♪ Mm, after midnight ♪ Yeah, that was it.

♪ We're gonna let it all hang out ♪ So yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just a, yeah. Until Miller found out people were waiting till midnight to drink.

Till midnight to drink, they didn't sell that much. Yeah, yeah. That's fine, Eric, we love it, but how about after 4 p.m.? Yeah, that's fine too, yeah.

♪ After breakfast, pour yourself a Miller Light ♪ Yeah. So I guess at the end of the day, after all of that, is that we don't have any dissatisfied customers, but there's no pinpoint label. You're gonna hear a lot of different things, and you're gonna like it all.

Whether you've heard it before or not, it's all fun, it's all a good time. So do you guys take a classic rock song and blues it up, or do you take blues music and add a little rock and roll to it, or are you pretty much playing it straight? How are you guys doing this? You know, if there's like a signature lick on something, we'll definitely put it in there, but definitely if we're playing like an Adele song or something like that, which are really cool, but I definitely put the blues licks in there, and everything, like I said, I only know one scale, and you're gonna hear it 100 different times at night. And so yeah, yeah, so we put a little twist on it.

We own our own brand on it. Absolutely. I think if I understand your question, though, for the most part, when we play a song that you've heard before, we'll be as close as we can to that original.

Sure. You know, you alluded to, I forget the song title, but somebody brought up a newer version or something. Yeah.

No, we're gonna be playing you as close as we can get to that. Yeah. And it's all real, too, because, you know, I know the backing tracks is a kind of personal thing.

This is all real. There's amps on the stage. All vocals, like them or leave them.

And the blood, the sweat, and the tears. You get it all, but it's real. The tears may not be ours, but.

So your personality comes through in the music that you're playing, in other words, is what I'm saying. Absolutely. No, I totally get that, too.

I'm the same thing. I'm the master of the pentatonic scale. I'll play that nine ways to Sunday.

And whenever I play a rock and roll song, it could be a heavy metal song, and I tell people right off the bat, I don't pretend to be a metal guitarist. I'm a blues guitarist, so you're gonna hear the blues in this. I mean, it's just gonna come out.

Absolutely. Yeah, I totally get that. We're spring-age young, too, so.

Do you guys write any original music at all? You know, we have, I've got a million things waiting for release, but we've only done a couple by ourselves, and I know that was years ago, and we didn't really see a. Pursue it. Yeah, yeah. Whether it was time or just, yeah, just one of those things that's in the back of our mind, and we just have not done it yet.

So yeah, yeah, so. So why not do it now? That's exactly true. On the spot, right now, let's go.

So yeah. Seriously, go. That's right, yeah.

It's all we need is three chords, that's right. Yeah. So yeah.

Seriously, go. I don't know how many times I gotta say it. Play the guitar, let's go.

No, but seriously, it's time. Play another one for us, man. We wanna hear you again.

All right. Yeah. What would you like to play there, Tim? This was the conversation that we never finished on the way here.

Yeah. If we're asked to play, what should we play? Yeah, do you wanna play an American band? That's a long title for a song. Yeah.

Sure. So, yeah, let's do that. What happened? Did you click off? All right, I should tune up and probably.

I didn't, something. Tune. Since when do we tune? Why start now? Tune, you know, yeah.

This would be a good time for those backing tracks. No backing tracks with riffs. Pure, maybe.

Where do you wanna start at? Just the vocals. Just kinda, sir. One, two.

♪ Blues and ladies, they treat me right ♪ ♪ As long as we can make it to the show tonight ♪ ♪ Go to your town, have a good party ♪ ♪ Point your genies from Omaha, oh ♪ That was very nice. That was good, too, man. Yeah.

No. We only got an hour or so. Wow, they just stopped dead in the middle like that.

Yeah, I know. Wow. What do you think this is? They're gonna, you know.

You gotta come to one of our shows to hear the rest. Even the fans didn't applaud. Okay, hold on.

Yeah, where's the button? Well, you see this smart-ass over here? Watch this. It's gonna be funny. We're not gonna hear his voice anymore in this podcast.

Amazing, he just went away. Yeah, you know what? Now, if I'm not mistaken, you guys are playing instruments that you normally don't play. Aren't you? You're a drummer.

Yes. Do you play drums in this band? No. You don't? I did at one time.

You're the drummer in the band. Tim was actually the backup drummer for years. Okay.

So when I couldn't make a gig, Tim was always filling in for me. Okay, because the first time we met was at the Uptown Tap and he was playing the drums. Yeah.

So there you go. And tell them the story about how we asked you. Oh.

So yeah, drums is my original instrument I've played since I was a kid. And John and I go to church together. We're in the worship band at church and John's got this band.

And as I got to know him, learned about it, and he said, hey, I need a fill-in drummer for such a date. And I was not playing out at all at this time. I was just playing at church.

And I said, wow, that's exciting. Yeah, I really, raising kids, you know, I was busy anyway. So yeah, that'd be great.

Yes, yes, John. I'd love to do it. Two weeks later, I see him again, I say, you know, John, yeah, that date, you know, again, again.

Oh, and by the way, I don't have any drums. So I'm like, you know, Tim, if you don't want to do that. So he stole the drums out of the church.

So yeah. That would have been a good idea. But yeah, I'd be like, you know, Tim, if you don't want to do it, that's okay.

Yeah. He thought I was making that up. But no, I just, I never practiced at home to play.

I just listened to the music and show up and play it. Still doesn't. Yeah.

Right. Practice. What's that? So I acquired some drums and, and yeah.

So then I was- To play the gig. Right. Like you borrowed a set or something.

No, I bought a used set. Cause I figured, yeah, if I'm going to do this, I should anyway. Right.

So yeah, I bought a used kit. Hey, yeah, dude, I got a set of drones here in the back of this truck. Yeah, totally.

Almost. I stole them from a church. This guy was an instructor and he bought and acquired any used drum he could.

I went to his house and it opened a garage door. It was just filled with drums. He said, here, put a few together and give me a couple of hundred bucks.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, they were nothing fancy.

You had a blue one, a red one, a black one. Yeah. I wound up with a five piece kit that were all the same color.

And so then as, as Tom said, I was a backup drummer for Rev Dog for a number of years. I had always dabbled in guitar since I was a kid as well, kind of self-taught and I just jammed a lot back in the day and always wanted to give that a try. And so a few years ago, John's rhythm guitarist was, let's call it retiring.

Can we really retire from, but you know, he was done. They were having grandkids and he wanted to, he, you know, he was done. So he, he stepped out and, and I said, Hey John, what do you think about me giving that a try? And he said, hell no.

No, he didn't. It wasn't the back of my head. Cause I had no idea that he played at all.

And I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, how am I going to tell him my, one of my good friends know that he can't. Well, yeah, we had this crazy moment where we had two musicians. It's like all bands.

We had two musicians that had decided they didn't want to play anymore. And John and I were sitting at some music concert and John's like, what do we do now? And I said, well, well John, I'm not dead yet. So let's, let's figure out where we go from here.

And we started going through what musicians that we knew. And, and I said, well, we, we, we know a common musician named Gen C and they said, well, Gen C's got fantastic guitarist and singer. Let's see if we can get him in.

And then he goes, well, what about Tim? And I go, wait, Tim plays drums. Don't we have a drummer already? And he's like, well, sort of, I'm like, I play guitar, but there's no way I'm playing guitar in this band. Cause I'm not a guitar blues player.

So I'm like, okay, let's do it. And he goes, well, I think Tim plays guitar. So we're going to bring Tim in.

So all of a sudden we ended up with an excess of drummers and guitarists all together. And everybody kind of took switch of instruments. So Gen C who normally plays guitar, played bass.

And Tim would normally play his drums, played guitar. And we went from there. And later that day, Tim returns to the alley.

Hey dude, I need a guitar. You looking for a guitar? Come here. I got a bunch in the back of my truck.

Yeah. So you found this guy that had a bunch of guitar parts in his garage. There you go.

Yeah. Which you can do if it's a Fender Strat or a Telecaster. That's right.

Yeah. So I showed up at the first practice and John had a microphone set out in front of me. And that's where it all went downhill.

Yes. I said, that wasn't part of the deal, but evidently it was. Because you never put a microphone in front of a drummer.

Well, he wasn't a drummer anymore. But I got out from behind the drum. But I gotta tell you, I'm forever grateful to John for, for giving me the chance.

Cause I love playing. I'm always a drummer, always will be. I love that.

And the analogy that I've come up with in making this change is in that rhythm section is particularly on drums is you're building a brick wall. Brick by brick. And it's gotta be perfect.

If anything's crooked, everyone will notice. Yeah. And out front, I feel like I'm splashing color.

You know, it's that's it. He's building the brick wall now. This is getting deep.

I get to, I get to splash graffiti on it and I'm, I'm having a ton of fun doing it good or bad. I'm, I'm having fun doing it. Yeah.

The energy is awesome. Good. Every now and then we run into the problem where we feel like we have two drummers and we're struggling a little bit over the tempo every now and then over who's going to take control.

But overall, we, we work it out in the washroom. And Hey, you get to call yourself a musician now. No, no, no, all self-taught.

You've heard that joke before though. Haven't you? You had to have heard that. Yeah.

I've seen it on a marquee at a music store. Music lessons for all musicians and drummers. And drummers.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Then you need to be a little longer now. We got to find a different one. I'll find, I'll look for another one.

I don't know. So how can, how can people find you? We got to, we got to talk about that before we get the heck out of here. How you guys got a website, Facebook page.

What, what do you have? Yeah. We just do the Facebook thing. Yeah.

Facebook.com. Rev dog, man and the herd. We've got to go by that, but a full name. Cause we had Reverend.

Yeah. But Reverend dog, man and the herd. So yeah.

Spelled with an a. H E A R D. Like you heard something. Oh, okay. Absolutely.

And yeah, everything else is just a word of mouth and smoke signals. And we're not, it's funny. This young girl told me this, that a TikTok.

Easy. hey, take it easy. Did he okay? She was, she was in her fifties.

Yeah. Yeah. She felt the need to tell me that TikTok is a social media.

She didn't explain it to you. Yeah. I'm like, man, oh man.

Okay. Did she really explain it to you? Yeah. She's like, and so this is on TikTok, this social media thing.

I'm like, oh really? Is that? Yeah. She didn't refer to it as the TikTok. So yeah, that was me.

How do I get on the TikTok? Yeah. Do I have to call them? And let's see. So what? These guys are going to be coming out in about two weeks.

Yes. Two weeks. About two weeks.

So what kind of shows, what kind of shows you guys got coming up? Let's say like April, May, June. Yeah. At the end of, let's see.

At the end of, on the 29th of March, we'll be Tuffy's in Wilmington. All right. April 9th, which is a Wednesday, we'll be playing at the Cubby Ware, Cubby Bear.

The Cubby Ware. The Cubby Ware. I understand that's a bar in Chicago.

Yeah. That's the Cubby Bear. I'm not wearing my socks jersey.

Just letting you know. That's a good one. So let's see here.

And then a couple of days after that, we're at Quigley's in Naperville. So it all goes back to Naperville. That's where the band started.

Naperville Rib Fest. And it's been a wild ride since the whole time there. All right.

Well, I think that about wraps it up. Yes, it does. We have Reverend Dogman and the Herd, otherwise known as RevDog.

That's what our friends call us. Thanks for coming in. Thanks a lot, guys.

Appreciate talking to y'all. Thank you. RevDog.

RevDog. Gotcha. We're ridiculous.

And there's no bourbon in us. What the hell? What the hell's happening to us? I don't know. I think, you know, as we get older, we just don't give a shit.

I think you're right. That's what it is. I think you're right.

Yeah, you don't get cooler. You just care less about being cool. Yep, you don't.

Only thing I worry about is getting the kids off my lawn. That's it. Get off my lawn, I'll be happy.

That's it. Hey, Blues Rock. Blues Rock.

They gotta come up with something. I don't know, rock and roll from the Delta? Something like that. Something, yeah, you gotta come up with something cute.

Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, people, they don't listen. Yeah, yeah.

But they're good musicians. They're fun guys. They are fun guys.

I bet you they're a lot of fun. A lot of, quite mushroomy. Yes.

All right. So. On that note.

On that note, it was a lot of fun seeing them, guys. Get out there and see them. They'll appreciate it.

Tell them you heard it from us. And thanks for joining us. Make sure you check in every Tuesday because we come out with another new episode of world famous episode of the Rock and Roll Chicago podcast.

See you next Tuesday. The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast is edited by Paul Martin. Theme song courtesy of MNR Rush.

The Rock and Roll Chicago podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.