Interview: Everyday Dogs

Oct 16, 2020

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What got you into music, and if you had not gotten into music what would you be doing today?

My first introduction to music was through band class playing the saxophone, but I [Jesse Inglima, lead guitarist and backing vocalist] had always wanted to play guitar since I was little. If I wasn’t pursuing music, I would probably be a historian in the world of academia, since history has been a longtime passion of mine.

What do you like to do when you’re not playing music and how does that influence your creativity?

I’m a pretty avid reader and I also love watching movies and TV shows. I guess all of that stems from my love of stories across various mediums. A lot of people tend to associate storytelling within music as being limited to lyrics within certain genres, but I think that undermines how instruments alone can just as powerfully impact a listener.

How long has your band been around?

Where are you based out of and how did that influence your music?

We’re based out of Athens, GA. Athens has a well-regarded history for the bands that have emerged from there in the past (R.E.M., Widespread Panic, The B-52s, etc.) and that legacy is still very well-preserved within the city.
With Athens, there is definitely a culture of authenticity and realism in how you approach music, from live-tracking with a full band in studios, to not relying on backing tracks for live performances. Keeping the human element and heart in your music, regardless of genre, is something that has influenced us in what we strive for within our own recordings and performances.

How did you come up with the name of your band and what does it mean to you.

For the first couple months as a group, we went by a couple other subpar band names. Then my brother Julian Inglima [lead singer and rhythm guitarist] came to the band with a song he’d written called “Everyday Dogs”. We all really liked the name of the song and thought that it was good enough to serve as a band name too.

The term “Everyday Dogs” is like “average Joe’s”. It means that we try not to hold any pretensions about who we are and that we’re just guys in a band who like to play rock ‘n’ roll.

Tell me about the best and worst shows you have played.

Best show would probably be when we played at the Georgia Theatre in February 2019. There were around 1,000 people there, and it’s such an iconic venue in Athens, it’s one of those shows that’s always gonna stick with me.
Worst show would have to be playing in this barn outside of Athens called The Pit. The barn had concrete flooring, no monitors, and it got so loud that we cleared the room almost immediately and played to no one for the rest of the night. Not a great time.

Tell me about your favorite venue to play at, and do you have any places you want to play that you haven't already?

Favorite spot would have to be Caledonia Lounge in Athens. It’s a small venue that is essentially an underground punk bar, but there is so much energy with having all these people crammed together and jumping up and down to your music.
It would be cool to play at Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. Awesome spot that I got to see the band Royal Blood at a couple years ago.

If you could play any show with any lineup who would be on the ticket?

Cage the Elephant, Foo Fighters, and Highly Suspect. There would be so much manic energy on stage and in the crowd, definitely a good time.

What is some advice that you would give to someone who is just getting into playing in a band?

Make sure you’re having fun. It’s a lot of work being in a band, there’s a lot of not-so-fun things that can wear you down: bad gigs, event cancellations, hauling gear, loading in and out of venues, driving long hours, and plenty more. But at the end of the day, if you’re having fun playing the music you love, that makes it all worth it.

If you could go back in time and give yourselves advice, what would it be?

Of your songs which one means the most to you and why?

I really like “Go Find Your Love”. That was the first song that my brother Julian and I intentionally wrote together, compared to before where we would often work on song ideas individually before bringing them to the band. I also love when songs don’t fit neatly into a single genre, and that song blends a lot of different soft and hard rock elements.

Which songs are your favorite to play and which get requested the most?

“Nevada” is a lot of fun to play. A lot of times that’s our closing song for shows, and we’ll rock it out pretty hard for a big finale. People really like to shout that one out at concerts for us to play, since it has a pretty recognizable chorus to sing along to.
People also shout “Free Bird” at us a lot. We’ll play that one too, but we’ll play the 10-minute guitar solo version, because that’s the only way to play “Free Bird”.

What is the creative process for the band, and what inspires you to write your music?

Our music usually comes from an idea or framework of a song developed either by myself or my brother Julian. We’ll establish the basics of a verse, chorus, or riff on our own, and then we’ll bring it to the band as a group to jam on the various parts and see what works and what doesn’t work.

For us, we just want to write songs and play music that we’d want to listen to ourselves. We all love loud hard rock music, so we write lots of stuff with big guitar riffs and loud drums.

What kinds of messages do you like to get across in your music?

All of our songs are different, there’s no real overarching theme/mantra to our song’s lyrics. We’ve had songs about everything from girls, relationships, partying, anxiety, loneliness, and having a good time.

Do you ever have disagreements in your band, and how do you get past them?

Yes. Siblings have a tendency of getting into arguments. Usually our bass player [Tyler Griffith] serves as the 3rd-party mediator for whatever, usually frivolous, argument that Julian and I are in.

What are your plans for the future, and do you have anything that you want to spotlight that's coming up?

We’re doing everything we can to continue to reach people with our music, even with the way things are right now with live music and venues still largely incapacitated.
We spent the last year in the studio working on 6 new songs, and we’ll be releasing them as singles over the coming months.
Our first new single, “Black Fire”, is available on all digital platforms on October 23rd.
Pre-Save “Black Fire”: http://ffm.to/blackfire
Everyday Dogs on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4MOP3vbHz2uAoPh0i2Z9Hj
Everyday Dogs on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/everyday-dogs/1409698779