“Music is all I’ve ever known. My dad’s been a Deadhead and music fan his whole life. He always had a guitar around the house. He was teaching me chords at age three. He’d play the Dead’s View from the Vault videos. I used to dress up as Bobby, stand in front of the tv and jam along to the whole show. Those are my first memories of music.” – Jimmy Law
“We all knew we wanted to start a band. No matter what that looked like. When I first came to Jersey, I met this community which was starting to brew. The Asbury Park music scene is so tight knit. Everyone knows each other. There are so many friends and family invested in this thing from the very beginning. The spirit was undeniably present.” – Brian Murray
You don’t have to dip your toe deep in the vast musical ocean to understand the importance and history Asbury Park and the Jersey Shore plays in it. Greetings from Asbury Park, Bruce Springsteen’s 1973 debut launched his Hall of Fame career. The area also kickstarted the career of fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Bon Jovi. Not a bad standard to try and live up to.
Asbury Park is far more expansive than rock. For generations, it’s been a home for African, jazz, R&B, soul, blues and on and on. From Count Basie to Megadeath, the multi genre audience support is bountiful with the beautiful Atlantic Ocean serving as the backdrop.
For a little over a half century, the hallowed halls of the Stone Pony has been the epicenter for musicians to converge. The venue has hosted the best… Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Ramones, Elvis Costello, Sam and Dave, and on and on. It’s also been a place for locals and newbies to hone their chops and cut their teeth.
For a little over a half decade, Asbury Park and the Stone Pony has been a home base for Dogs in a Pile (DIAP). An uber talented, perfectly matched quintet rapidly rising the ranks of the jam band world.
Guitarist Jimmy Law, drummer Joey Babick, and bassist Sam Lucid have called the area home their entire lives. Keyboardist Jeremy Kaplan and guitarist Brian Murray, who attended Boston’s Berklee School of Music with Lucid, grew up about 80 miles away in New York.
Lucid, Kaplan, and Murray spent their time at Berklee immersed in all things music. Their time away from class was filled with as much education as they were getting in it. Murray reminisces on a standard Berklee hang with Lucid. “We’d have a party at Sam’s apartment. Everyone was centered around his keyboard. He would just do these chord quizzes. He’d quiz everybody on intervals and what kind of chord this is. Different songs and stuff. We’d sit there and share ideas. We would just write, write, write.”
Years before three-fifths of DIAP was at Berklee, Babick and Law had formed a friendship on stage and off. A relationship that according to Law, almost made them family. “I’ve known Joey since I was little. Our dads knew each other in high school. In fact, his dad and my aunt dated in high school. When Joey’s dad and mine started hanging out again in 2012, we became friends.”
Already embedded in the exploding Jersey music scene, Babick and Law’s fate as musicians was sealed very, very, early. “He was six and I was ten.” Law recalls. “We’d jam by ourselves and with Joey’s dad who is a bass player. He’d always have guitars at the house so we would start jamming together on Dark Star and Birdsong. All the open jam band stuff. Joey and I grew up the same way. Soaked up the music and became Deadheads at a young age. We’d just hang out and play. The studio we rehearse at to this day is attached to my dad’s office in Point Pleasant.”
Still pre-puberty, Law’s guitar play shined to the point where he’d take advantage of the Stone Pony’s openness to rising talent. He’d start playing the same venue as music’s elite. “The Pony was my first serious gig. They’d do open mics on Sunday. You sign up online. You can be and play whoever you want. My neighbor Laurie was friends with Kyle the guy who runs the Pony. When I was ten, I would play guitar for her. She recommended I do the open mic night. That was my intro to the Asbury scene.”
Not only did the Pony provide Law the confidence of playing in front of a live audience, but it also established a foundational pillar to future success, loyal fans and friends. “From there I got some opening gigs. New Jersey is wild. It’s overwhelming.” Law muses. “You have a regular crowd everywhere. You can go out every night of the week in the Jersey shore and see different live music. A lot of the fans I’ve made go back to age 10 or 12. I’d sit in with bands like Splintered Sunlight or Rainbow Full of Sound.”
By high school Law was still playing the Pony. His band East Bumble Funk featured Babick on drums and original Dogs guitar player Eric Villalobos. It was the connection between Villalobos and Lucid that would seal the destiny of DIAP.
Shockingly, Lucid has only been playing the bass since 2016. Making up for lost time, he’d practice non-stop. Using his youthful exuberance and energy to absorb all elements of music. When Villalobos invited Lucid to jam with Law and Babick at that same Point Pleasant rehearsal studio, permanent pieces of Dogs in a Pile entered the atmosphere.
With the Jersey part of Dogs in a Pile in place, the universe had a plan to bring the Berklee three together. Murray shares the tale of his fortuitous meeting with Lucid. “My second semester I met Sam. I was at school a week early. My dad had dropped me off. Nobody was in town yet. No college kids. I walked out of my dorm with the goal of just letting the wind take me wherever. Just see what happens. This other guy I barely knew said he was going to a party to listen to music and talk about some tunes they had made. I went but it wasn’t my scene. I didn’t know anyone.”
Murray continues “Then I saw a light peering out through these double doors in the apartment. I walked through and heard Jerry’s guitar. I heard the Grateful Dead. I opened the door and there was Sam jamming on the bass to Phil Lesh and the Grateful Dead. We immediately connected and talked about how we want to start a band. He said come over tomorrow and we’ll get to it. I went there every day for the next handful of weeks. Every single day to get things started.”
With an enormous talent pool around them, Murray and Lucid tried numerous combinations to grow what they had been creating. It wasn’t until Murray remembered a keyboard player he met first semester for everything to click. “I met Jeremy first. My first week at Berklee. He was sitting there with a giant keyboard case. I was like, oh, do you play keys? He said yeah. I got his number, but we never really connected that first semester.” Murray remembers. “Sam and I went through a few keyboard players and drummers. Looking for someone to fill those roles. Then I thought I should hit up Jeremy.”
Once the Berklee three got together, Murray says things fell into place immediately. “The first song we played together. The three of us had written out a chart for Go Set. It was just an instrumental song at the time. It felt super cool, so we started a band up there. It was originally called Scotch Bonnett. Then we bounced around with a few different names. Otherwise Useless Children was one. We had a great time writing songs and talking about music and what we wanted to do.”
Combining Babick and Law with the Berklee three was a two-part process that began in the summer of 2018. Law picks up the tale from the Jersey side. “While at Berklee, Sam, Jeremy, and Brian met. Jeremy came down to the shore one weekend with Sam and we started jamming. Then we had the fifth piece of DIAP. Unfortunately, Eric left. He went on to other things and just plays guitar for fun now.”
Murray plugs in the final piece of the Dogs in a Pile puzzle. “Sam was already jamming with Jimmy, Joey and Eric at the same time we were in Berklee. In Summer ‘18, Sam brought Jeremy down and they were doing the band with Eric. I heard about it and watched a video of them playing. I thought it was awesome. Sam would bring me down to hang out. I think around January of 2019, I sat in and played a gig at the Wonder Bar in Asbury Park. When Eric left, they were a four piece for a while. I was sitting in at the time. Eventually I worked my way up to playing half the show. Then full shows.”
With all the pieces in place, the band went all in and as Murray reflects, the results were immediate. “I remember the first time the five of us jammed together in the rehearsal space. There was an explosive peak that happened. It felt so right. So cool. There was another moment in 2019 when we played Rye Bread music festival in Troy, NY where I walked off stage. I think we may have debuted Can’t Wait for Tonight that night. It’s just a song about getting stoked to go to a Dog show. I walked into the trees and was in awe. I was like this is it. This is definitely the thing. We need to do this.”
Coming up in part two, Dogs in a Pile use their home field advantage and Dog Pound to cement their spot in the jam band world. The waves of a Berklee education crashing into Law, Babick and the Jersey Shore send Dogs in a Pile on a voyage with unlimited destinations. Tales from their travels and plans for studio album number three are on the horizon. Stay tuned.