Ginny & The Dog Bites: Chew On THIS

    I wasn't expecting a whole lot on my way to see Ginny & The Dog Bites last night. I mainly went for two reasons, one being that one of my best college friends Andrew Nave is in the band, and the other being that there is very little entertainment in my tiny hometown of LaFayette, so I figured it would be something cool for my few remaining high school friends and I to do. I had seen a couple of the band's videos on Facebook, and they seemed pretty solid, but nothing like what I was about to experience. It turned out to be one of the greatest highlights of my summer so far! Not that there's much to compete with it (damn you LaF), but that's not the point!

    The Dog Bites know how to put on a show, and they definitely live up to their jam band genre. You'll find that solos are abound and executed with great precision. At times I wasn't entirely sure if some of the sax and trumpet parts were part of the original song, or something the band had made up, but either way they were hypnotizing at times and it was great fun seeing the band really get into performing them. Of course I can't talk about solos here without directing a bit of spotlight over to guitarist Mikey Dufresne, and he's far from afraid of a little attention. He delivered a couple of blistering solos that just obliterated the crowd, flames flying everywhere, screams of "My leg!!"... Watch for yourself in the seconds before Funk 'n Waffles came down in flames:

Fortunately an identical Funk 'n Waffles was built directly across from this one in anticipation of an inferno at this scale.

    Alright the place is still standing, but anyways, the band nicely pulled off a variety of genres. Blues, rock, pop, funk, it was all there. Vocalist Noelle Killius' voice fit nicely into all of them, from the feel-good pop of "Valerie" to the down n' dirty blues of "Whipping Post". There was never a moment where I felt her vocals were phoned in. Although The Dog Bites are mainly a cover band at this point, they did play a couple originals. A mellow, nameless scat featuring only 3 members of the band (Nave, Dufresne, and Killius) that provided a bit of a cool down halfway through their set, and a full song titled "My Distraction", which demonstrated good songwriting ability since I didn't even know it was an original until I was told afterwards. I thought it was another cover, meaning it's just as good as the songs they had been playing that were written by other bands.

    I firmly believe these guys have serious potential beyond doing covers if that's the path they want to take. The technical proficiency is there without a doubt, and I definitely recommend seeing them if you're looking to find some underground entertainment (literally, Funk 'n Waffles is in a basement). Ginny & The Dog Bites are a fun group to watch, joking with each other on stage and just being very enthusiastic overall, making them very likable. It'll be interesting to see what they want to do with their skill, if they want to write more original material or continue with great covers. Either way they're a fantastic group of young musicians, so go check em out if you can!
 

You can check out the band's Reverbnation page here

and go like their Facebook page here!