Same As It Ever Was
The story of local band Skydog Gypsy comes with a pocketful of legend.
By Frank Etheridge
“There are people who have been to hundreds of our shows — and that’s more shows than I’ve played,” Josh Becker (half) jokes about the rabid fanbase for Skydog Gypsy. Four (or five) phenomenal talents playing transcendent tunes with jaw-dropping prowess, the seminal Columbus jam band – in the four (or five) years following its 1998 debut at the Uptown Tap — toured hard and earned a mythical status on the Deep South hippie circuit before imploding 20 years ago while flying high on a star-crossed path to rock ‘n roll fantasy.
“Insane. Just the greatest people doing outrageous things to make it to the shows,” Becker says of the scene surrounding Skydog. “The dedication, creativity, and positivity of the family around us … that was the most special thing to me about the band. The music is amazing. The camaraderie in the group is fantastic. But the people who coalesced around us? That, to me, is the most magical thing.”
Becker reflects while seated at his keyboards at guitarist Jason Ezzell’s Spinnaker Studios. Band practice is starting soon. “What puts into perspective how important this is to us is the fact that we’re currently communicating across three time zones, ”Becker explains. The other current Columbus resident, guitarist and vocalist Dean Tovey, talks on speaker phone while ill at home with a sick family. Bassist Aaron Goldberg dials in from Birmingham, steady gigs include playing an upright in a jazz trio, while drummer Allen Aucoin comes across the screen from his home in Colorado.
“Who knows? That’s way-back time machine stuff,” when all five are asked exactly when and where Skydog Gypsy formed. The story goes that Dean and Josh started playing together in 1997 after first getting into Phish and Grateful Dead. Dean “was always a garage guy” in his early days, developing into the distiller of face-melting psychedelic excellence as a student at Shaw High School, where his buddy Allen played drums in the Raider’s ‘Sound of Silver’ marching band. After graduation, Allen attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he met Aaron.
Allen jammed with the boys a bunch one summer in Columbus while home from Berklee. When he got back to Boston, he went to Aaron and told him, “Dude! There is a special project going on down South and you have to come with me.” Aaron came to Columbus and jammed for a weekend. “It all just kinda happened,” Allen explains. “Somehow, we all magically found each other and already had that connection. The minute I started playing with Aaron it was like we played together forever. It felt like that with all the guys in the band.”
Everything clicked and, next thing you know, Skydog Gypsy had top billing in 1998 at the beloved, bygone Uptown Jam (the first installment of which brought Widespread Panic to town in October 1993 to celebrate completion of the Riverwalk).
Skydog’s first show out of town was at Blind Willie’s in Statesboro, one wild-ass college town which would form a core spot in a rotation with others such as Auburn and Athens. Tales from the road include a sorority that begged them to ‘play a song with words’ before never inviting them back, to a show in Montgomery at Jubilee Fest with the likes of John Mayer, Blues Traveler and Dickey Betts (the Allman Brothers Band.), where the crowd of 10,000 strong was convinced that Dean was, in fact, John Mayer.
Committed to their craft way more than making money, Skydog took the cash they made along the way and invested it back into the business of being a touring band: a bus, a trailer, full PA system, a five-person crew and a rehearsal space where they’d convene every Tuesday after taking Monday off and hitting the road to play shows every night Wednesday through Saturday before coming home to Columbus on Sunday.
“We were at the peak of a wave about to crash and take over – in a very good way,” says Aaron.
The band was on its way to play a potentially career-making opening slot at Bonnaroo when the wheels came off (figuratively) and the dream unglued, the passion unhinged.
Next, the Disco Biscuits recruited a stagnant Skydog’s lighting engineer (Johnny R. Goode) to join their operation. A year later, their sound engineer, Pat Hutchinson was gone too. “Nobody wanted to admit it at the time, but we weren’t a band at that point,” says Allen, “So when Pat got the call, it was just sticking a fork in it. It was done. I was invited by the Biscuits to be in a drum-off in November 2005. My first official shows were for the New Years run in December.”
Aaron says despite the setbacks, Skydog Gypsy was a living, breathing thing that “was always simmering on the back burner.”
“One of the contributing factors to what I like to call our ‘fundamental hard-wiring’ is we’re super tight,” says Aaron. “Even though we haven’t played in years, it’s super easy for us to fall back in the pocket with one another. Just musically pick up where we left off, stunning, humbling, exciting to each other.”
The five gather the jam, virtually and intimately, at Ezzell’s Spinnaker Studios to rehearse and record material for the upcoming EP “ … and then there were five” – a nod to Ezzell’s most-welcomed return to the quartet (now quintet) and long-awaited follow up to Skydog’s blistering live album “You Should Have Brought Your…” The new EP hits all streaming services on November 30, when Skydog will welcome friends old and new to boogie at the Live Wire venue in Athens the day after the typically raging Thanksgiving Week home against Tech.
“Personally I like “Life Underground” as my favorite song,” Dean says of the songs being considered for the coming LP release, one of many Skydog tunes he composed. “It’s kinda fitting since we’ve been underground for so long now.”
Josh’s favorite new track is “Quicksand.”
“It’s so hopeful,” he explains. “Such an anthemic guitar solo at the end that lifts you up. It’s so positive. Dean wrote it about some friends of ours who were having a rough go of it and, without Dean even knowing it, I was having a tough go of it at the time in my own personal life. It’s definitely a more mature Skydog. We used to play like a helicopter falling out of the sky, now [we’re] learning how to land the plane, intentionally and with less collateral damage.”
Of the new material, Josh says he’s “really excited for people to put their ears on it. We’ve added Jason back to the mix and, somehow, by his addition, there’s more space in the songs now, both in a compositional and a jam sense. It’s very interesting and fun to explore.”
So, at this point in their busy, far-flung lives, why work so hard to return to the source of Skydog’s magic and brew up another batch after all these years?
“Because we love it,” answers Aaron. “I think it’s weirder to NOT do it, really,” Jason chimes in.
“We missed each other for the past 20 years,” Allen says. “As we’re getting older, our friends are dying, and that has put life into perspective. It was Josh who actually reached out to all of us and said, ‘Hey, let’s at least start hanging out. And if we play every now and then, that’s cool. Of course, we get together, we want to play. Then we want to play some more. Then we want to do some shows, then we want to write an album.”
“When I was in my early 20s, I was very immature, very stubborn and headstrong,” Josh confesses. “I thought I was the smartest guy in the room. I had a lot of character flaws back then that definitely contributed to some of our interpersonal issues. So I am very grateful for the opportunity to correct some of those wrongs, especially with these guys.”
Josh’s inspiration to reconnect was the result of the tragic, unexpected death of brilliant Columbus musician Ryan Rulon (Spy for Hire) in a traffic accident last year. “After that, I couldn’t imagine one of us passing on and us not having taken advantage of the opportunity to play together. We’ve all been the one in the band to get the ball rolling at different points over the years. What’s different this time is we’re all feeling the pressure of time. We know if we’re going to do something, we need to do it now. Because of that pressure, there’s a fire in us that hasn’t been there before.”
Skydog Gypsy celebrates the release of its new EP, “… and then there were five” on Saturday, November 30 with a show at Live Wire in Athens, Georgia.