The Evolution of Road Dog
The Evolution of Road Dog
my
good friend, Hankuss, in his garage.
He
played a chord progression on
his
guitar that he called “Road Dog”.
He
had only one line of lyric. It went
“I’m
a road dog baby
tell
me what did you hear”.
We video taped this session in hopes
of
creating more lyrics. That first effort
in
writing the song is what’s on this video.
We met again in a little over a week.
By
that time we had lots of lyrics. We had
pages
of lyrics to throw away. We sorted
through
some of them and then tried the
song
again. My friend, Brother John, helped
us
video tape this effort. When we played it
back,
we were both pleased. At one point,
the Hankuss hounds
were howling
along
with us. The song had taken form.
The third video happened a few weeks later.
I
arranged to play a gig on 12/13/08
at
the 133 Club between Bethel and Williamsburg
,
Ohio. The band was billed as “Hobo Clay and
A
Sheep At The Wheel”. I met with Ryan Hale,
the
lead guitar player , and we worked on the song
once
at his house. I told Marty Cummins,
the
base player, that there was a version of Road Dog
on
Youtube from the Hankuss Garage. He must have
looked
at it. He played a fine base line. The rest of the
band
consisted of Mike Thompson on Banjo and guitar,
and
Rick Hayes on mandolin. Mike and Rick had never
heard
the song. As the gig date approached, none of us
could
really make the time to have a practice, but nobody
seemed
to be worried about it. We all met at the bar 20
minutes
before we played, and those few people who
came
out to see us seemed to think that it was great.
I
thought it was great. Hankuss was there watching
and
smiling from his bar stool.
This is currently the latest version of “Road Dog”.
I
hope there are many more to come.