Sundogs: Wild Season

For those of you who weren't listening to rock radio in early 1997, Sundogs was a fantastic band fronted by Darren Rogers, who is probably best known as a vocalist on Kerry Livgren's When Things Get Electric.

Sundogs' debut album recieved a lot of airplay and attention, and the band seemed poised to break into success, but the tiny independent label they were signed to was ill-equipped to support the band's momentum. The label went under at the worst possible time, taking Sundogs with it and leaving a lot of brand-new fans scratching their heads and wondering where they went.

On top of that, the band was billed as "Alternative" at the time, but as everyone knows, in the mid-'90s no band could so much as get their foot in the door without calling themselves that. And the first 3 songs on this disc-- "Dyin'", "Veteran's Song", and "Bound to be Forgiven" pretty much fit the post-grunge mold of the time, with the typical syncopated beat and grungy distortion, though not quite as heavy and tuned-down as a lot of the contemporary stuff of the time. Track 4, "Kill the Pain", continues this pattern but with a funkier groove.

But then something strange happens: Starting with track 5, "Carries Me Away'", Sundogs ditches the "Alternative" disguise and shows its true colors as a genuine, real honest-to-goodness melodic rock band with some amazing vocal and guitar melodies to go with the lyrics. The transformation continues with the next track, "Like A River", a mid-tempo, more laid back tune that was probably the first cut off the album to get airplay, at least to my memory. This is followed up by "No Easy Way", an energetic rocker with a well-balanced blend of acoustic and electric guitars, thoughtful lyrics and powerful vocal delivery.

After that comes the absolute best song of the album, "Save My Soul". This is the one song that kept me searching for this album for a decade after it went out of print. All I had was a partial low-fi cassette recording of this song that I'd managed to get off the air, but that was enough and I knew I had to get the rest of it. The song is that good. It's one of those slow build-up songs that starts out simple and just keeps getting better as each instrument comes in.

"Save My Soul", along with "Like A River", brings back a lot of memories of my senior year in high school, particularly how I used to hear it in the car on the way to work.

The album is closed out with two more songs-- "Cold Love", a simple, short ballad, and "1000 Ships", a heavy-hitting mid-tempo meat-and-potatoes blues rocker that completes the set in a concert encore fashion that would have been gone down really well live.

Darren Rogers' vocals really shine on this disc, in the vein of Rik Emmett or Kevin Chalfant but a little more gritty.

The production is also very good, particularly the way acoustic and clean guitars were used liberally throughout. An internet search reveals that the album producer, Leif Mases, was also responsible for some other great albums such as Europe's Wings of Tomorrow.

The first 4 songs aside, this album was well worth the 10 years it took me to find it, and it was a terrible shame that Sundogs didn't get the chance they deserved. So here's yet another one for the "hidden gems" file.