words by Anna Gronewold | photos by Mike Bell
At every show, there’s a moment the crowd decides to commit. At the Slowdown in Omaha on Tuesday night, it was the towels.
After the opener, a stack of fluffy, absorbent towels appeared on stage, front and center, at least a half hour before the band. Dr. Dog is guaranteed to sweat, but not in a filthy, crowd-soaking way. It’s the kind of sweat that pools when six grown men dance for 90 minutes without removing their cardigans or stocking caps.
When the towels came out, so did the sold-out crowd of high-schoolers and 30-somethings the Omaha’s The Slowdown attracts, pushing toward the front, anticipating twisting, shaking, sweaty rock.
They were there, in body, at 9 p.m. for New Jersey-based opener, Saint Rich. But it was spiritless attendance. Who is Saint Rich, anyway? The crowd twitched their heads politely and listened far too quietly, prompting multi-instrumentalist Steve Marion to snag the microphone from fellow frontman Christian Peslak.
“You seem like you’re a little…tired,” Marion said. “What is it? A Tuesday? Forget that.”
At first glance, Saint Rich looks suspiciously like a Hollister ad, gangly-limbed guitarists wearing their own merch. But with a stack of diverse projects a piece, and songs like “Officer,” merging ambient, nostalgic, Strokes-like rock, Saint Rich deserved the crowd that showed up for Dr. Dog. The standout was Marion on guitar screwing with time signatures and shredding as lonely and free as his red Nike’s would allow. It’s a shame, but nothing short of Dr. Dog would earn more than foot-taps from Tuesday’s crowd.
Then there were the towels.
Dr. Dog took stage at about 10:30 p.m. with “That Old Black Hole,” from 2012’s “Be the Void,” and the ghost crowd came to life, shouting, jumping and prematurely attempting to mosh. Officially, Dr. Dog is on tour for “B-Room,” released October 2013. But Tuesday’s setlist was a compilation of the band’s 10-year history, from the stripped down acoustic of 2010’s “Jackie Wants a Black Eye” to a roaring version of 2012's “Heavy Light,” complete with fiery lighting and bassist Toby Leaman staring dramatically into the distance.
What puts Dr. Dog in the tier of great performers isn’t just that you never see Scott McMicken’s eyes behind his sunglasses. And it’s not the appropriately irrelevant set: a glowing sign with replaceable letters: “LIFES A BEACH! HAPPY BDAY TOM!”
It’s that a Dr. Dog performance promises reinvention. The bassist shuffles to the soundboard and the drummer grabs a guitar and each song feels like a brand-new band.
“’My Old Ways!’” a crowd-member shouted a handful of times, and half-dozen songs later, McMicken obliged.
“We haven’t done this in like three years,” he admitted, before launching into the Beatle’s-esque track from their 2007 album.
It’s hard to say when, but the neat stack of towels became a damp pile. The frontmen’s heavy boots pounded faster and louder onstage, and Leaman kept replacing his stocking cap and clenching the mic like he wanted his body temperature to rise.
You don’t have to be a die-hard fan to see Dr. Dog. But with an audience and performance combination like Tuesday night’s, you’ll leave one.
“Lonesome” was the obvious closer, with Leaman leaving his bass behind and jumping into the swirling crowd, not to surf, exactly, but giving willing fans an opportunity to feel the sweat they were waiting for.
Saint Rich
Dr. Dog
Anna Gronewold and Mike Bell are Hear Nebraska contributors. Reach them through Chance Solem-Pfeifer at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.