Dog is Blue from Damp Digital on Vimeo.

Last fall we played at our favourite Ottawa hangout, Raw Sugar. As we were setting up a dude came up and asked if he could video our set. Sure, why not? Nice of him to ask–next thing you know he’s got some pretty hefty A/V gear and we’re suddenly being captured in HD glory!

That dude was Matt from Flat Head Dog Productions. He shot and edited this montage of our set that night, played to the album cut of “People.” It’s a pretty fun glimpse of the gear/demeanour of a Dog Is Blue show and we’re hoping to work with Matt on more videos in the future.

There aren’t many pedals out there that an astute DIY enthusiast can’t build. However, if there’s one company that keeps pushing the envelope away from the same tired, easy to build overdrives and fuzzes it’s Electro Harmonix. Case in point, their Freeze pedal—a sound retainer effect—is next to impossible to piece together on my own. Thankfully Laura was kind enough to buy me one for my birthday and even kinder enough to give it to me a month and a half early!

After a quick test so she could see how happy I was, it was off to the drill press to add some holes into my new gift. In the end, as the above video describes (with a first attempt at annotations too!), I changed the stock stomp switch, went with an expression pedal jack to optionally control the effect level my foot, and added an effects loop. The latter allows me to run just the ‘frozen’ signal through things like a tremolo or phaser and not affect my guitar signal at all.

I couldn’t really find any guidelines on how to do any of this online (the usual suggestion of disconnecting the wiper of the level pot and inserting the effects loop there didn’t work), so I ended up tracing the circuit with an audio probe. All told, I took the ‘send’ signal from R3 and returned it to the wiper of the level pot (there could be an easier way, but I’m no guru—just a lunatic with a soldering iron).

That said, if you’re looking to do this to your own Freeze just be aware that it’s all SMD components and I almost lost R3 a few times (it’s about the size a hangnail). But you know what they say, “He who dares…” blah blah blah.

We used this newly modified bad boy at a show on the weekend and it worked really well. A friend later remarked that he what sounded like an organ playing under my guitar, which is exactly what I was hoping for!

I also really love how we’re both lazily glaring at the other through the corner of our eyes, like we might turn on each other at any moment (which really does capture our live shows well…).

We’ve both been pretty busy with artistic endeavors of the 2-D kind lately, but it’s always a shot in the arm to hear that people liked our last show! In this case, Deanna Danger wrote a very flattering review of our set at The Silver Dollar on July 21 as part of the Music Maul CD release party (with The Leonids, who were fantastic–Jeremy took the photo above too!).

Check out Deanna’s review here, suffice to say that bits like this made us all gooey inside:

“The evening began with a soft introduction that swiftly changed, making me realize how pleasantly loud a two piece can be. The evening was hilarious and sweet all at once, with beautiful music that reminded me of the Civil Wars and Blue Rodeo; a perfect combination of Canadian tales and sweet harmonies.”

Not to mention her enjoyment of our cover of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own,” a song we tried for the first time that night when I called an audible in the middle of the set, much to Laura’s dismay!

We’re hoping to set up a few more shows in the coming months so stay tuned for lots of updates.

I’ve been teasing this for a while, but the first batch of the limited run of custom Dog Is Blue fuzz pedals is finally ready! The design is basically a more efficiently laid out version of the kickass little Bazz Fuss circuit that is all ballsy, synthy and nasty fuzz. Check out the video above for a quick demo of the prototype (the only one with the power jack mysteriously on the front…) and there are in-progress photos below.

The first four will be available off the stage at tomorrow night’s show at The Silver Dollar for the Music Maul CD release for a measly $40, so get them before they are gone!

I usually have at least one delay pedal with me on stage, but I’ve always wanted one that really pushed the envelope, which is where guitarPCB’s ‘D’lay’ circuit comes in, as there are some really zany mods that can be added with the stomp of a switch. See the video above for what I mean, as I added as second stomp switch that, when held down, lets the repeats in my signal ramp up like crazy (you can read about the mods here). It’s already been a lot of fun at the last few shows.

Not only is it a very fun pedal to use, but take a look at that awesome tin! Fossil was kind enough to send me a box full of their watch tins after I expressed that they were perfect for building pedals (in my humble opinion, anyway). You’ll be seeing a lot more of these beauties!

Not only that, but I recently found a weird old amp at Goodwill called “The Can” and couldn’t resist checking it out. It’s a solid state amp from the 80′s that’s shaped like a gas can. Made in the Crate factory in St. Louis, there were supposedly only 10,000 of these made. It’s actually pretty cool sounding too!

We haven’t played an acoustic show in a very, very long time. It will be nice to get away from all the toys for a couple sets (not to mention break out our Hall & Oates cover!).

Clocking in at around 1670 frames this quirky video sees a baby picture (of yours truly) that we had hanging comically in our studio take on a life of its own.

I can’t express how happy and excited I am to finally unleash this quirky beast on the world!

In retrospect, I guess this is the answer to the age old question of “how do you follow 100 drawings of Batman?”

Also, the drawing for the poster was sketched on my iPad. It originally had stronger colours, but I actually prefer the monochromatic version as a drawing. In the end it stands out a bit better with a bit of colour…

The good news is, Dog Is Blue is a two-piece that lives together, so rehearsal/writing is as easy as turning off Game of Thrones (which is actually really hard to do) and turning on the amps.

If nothing else I just wanted to share the above photo so you know just how much stuff we’re going to try and fit into our apartment!

Songs that were recorded here include our Big Star cover, “Thirteen” :

Our Gordon Lightfoot cover, “High & Dry”:

Not to mention our combo Stan Rogers/Flaming Lips Christmas song, as well as yet-to-be-released tunes like a ukulele version of “Raise Your Dead” and several gazillion attempts at The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait.”