In the lounge and mixing room of Studio 1093 in the heart of the Normaltown neighborhood, multicolored tracks stack on top of each other on the large screen over the mixing board. Someone hits play, and the racing sounds of Dog Person’s new music hits my ears. Even in its unmixed state, singer, keyboard player and founding member Lauren Gregg’s vocals are unmistakably unique.
They’re paired with breezy chords on her Casio keyboard, Robbee Cucchiaro’s horn playing dialed in over years of touring with some of Elephant 6’s most notable groups, drummer Steve Hendriksen’s crashing rhythms, Jay Domingo’s playful bass and Gray Reilly’s shimmering guitar.
Dog Person began as a small batch of songs that Gregg had written on her old Casio keyboard, a sort of aggressive bedroom pop. She began collaborating with Domingo and eventually Hendriksen, both adding intense depth to songs which had been written for a single, fairly limited instrument. The result was an unclassifiable sound that builds itself around the chords from the keyboard, and a carefree energy that sometimes contradicts the lyrical content.
Now, after two years of playing live shows in houses and venues around town, Dog Person is in the final stages of tracking for its debut album to be released this summer.
Sitting at 10 songs, the album’s runtime is expected to be somewhere between 15–20 minutes, due to a timekeeping metric exclusive to the band called “dog minutes,” in which no song lasts over two human minutes. Blazingly fast, infectiously catchy songs are Dog Person’s forte.
I find myself needing to seek the answer to a burning question: Is “Dog Person” meant to represent a person who has identified as being fond of dogs over cats, or does the name allude to a half-human, half-canine creature, an anthropomorphic dog?
“I think it’s whatever you want it to be,” Gregg says.
Cucchiaro says that in the town of Athens the band’s name takes on an even deeper meaning in the form of Dawg Person. He is dressed in strikingly canine apparel, donning a pink snoopy onesie and a stylish, dog-headed cane.
Early Dog Person merch depicted the Disney character Goofy reclining in a La-Z-Boy style chair, and the idea is presented of creating UGA spirit wear of the graphic, thus combining the properties of two historically litigious institutions.
Current Dog Person merchandise features an original design by Gregg, herself a professional illustrator and graphic designer, of a dog wearing a bowler hat, lending credence to the anthropomorphic interpretation.
“I think the idea of an anthropomorphic dog works really well,” Domingo says, “because the band eventually became an expression of a dog. It seems very dog-like. There’s goofy, happy, wild songs, but also very earnest emotion going on.”
So, the jury is still out.
But, to really get a feel for the band, which straddles the line between the honest and the absurd, it should be admitted that the majority of the time with the band is spent discussing animals and their various quirks and characteristics.
We talk about chickens, of which Domingo has several, and compared them to both tomato plants and dinosaurs. Cucchiaro reminisced on an episode of “The Golden Girls” in which Rose discovers a musical chicken able to play piano.
We talk about bird people, cat people, horse girls and fish people. Domingo discussed the etymological origins of the term “vomitorium,” and the whole band commiserates over the ultimate burden of the dog person: ensuring your dog’s glands are properly and regularly expressed.
Despite what the band’s name may lead you to believe, however, a shocking amount of members have proven themselves to align with other pet camps, from cats to horses. As part of the interview, Gregg agreed to include photos of every acting member of the band and their accompanying pets, which can be found below.
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