Song Dogs
the Song Dogs
were created accidentally in the summer of 1987 when David "Little
Train" Wayne secretly turned on his tape recorded and enticed us to
write a song. "We Live for Pain" was born : a cheap live recording that
sold a few thousand copies as a single CD to the locals of Toledo Ohio
... though you can't find even one anymore who admits they bought it.
we are redoing this classic - which opened up our first album - on our
new 4 CD studio set, which will contain all our classics plus a whole
bunch of new compositions by the individual members of the band and by
the newly reformed group as a whole. ♥ ☆ ♬ ♬ ☆ ♬ ♬ ☆ ♬ ♬ ☆ ♥ home page
Wake evolved from a series of seemingly random events,
way back at the end of the last Millennium ...
Recently we had the chance to interview Greg Robertson - co-founder
of the band Wake - because we were curious about a lot of things ...
"How did you and Angie Meet?"
"It's been more than ten years now, but I remember as if it were
yesterday. By the spring time of 1999, I had found myself in St.
John's, Michigan, working at a variety of temporary, part-time jobs. (I
heard somebody say once that real musicians have day jobs, although -
to me - the opposite should be the maxim). One of these jobs was at the
local Wal-Mart, where I was assigned to the same department as Angie,
who had been working there for a while already. Inevitably, since we
worked in the department which sold music, we each discovered that the
other was musically inclined as well.
"Another job I had was at a local dry-cleaner/laundromat
where I was the closing clerk. After I closed I would sometimes bring
my guitar in and jam/practice for a few hours. Angie got wind of these
'sessions' and asked to stop by and participate. The first night she
came by she mostly asked me to play for her but she played a bit. She
didn't have a lot of structure but I could see she had at least some
latent talent. . . And she knew where to put her fingers. I told her to
go home and practice a bit, with the promise that if she had 'something
there', that I'd . . . 'Teach you everything I know...' I believe is
how I put it.
"I didn't see her for a few weeks, us both having moved on from
Wal-Mart by then, and then, out of the blue she called me. She was very
excited about having written a song and wanted to know if I 'still did
that laundromat thing.' I told her I did and she stopped by that night
and played a very nice piece she had written.
"I made good on my promise and for the next, probably, year and a half,
the last two or three hours of every day were devoted to me teaching,
playing for, playing with, Angie. During this formative time for her I
eagerly watched her development into a class-A musician."
"How did the name 'Wake' come about?"
"At first Angie wanted to call the group, 'Spiritual Skye'. Since there
were a whole buncha bands called that already, she decided to call the
duo 'Chains of Poe'. After about a week of that, she was sky gazing
towards the big dipper and we became 'Ersa Major.' I wanted to keep the
'U' but put an umlaut upon it; I had trouble 'splainin that an umlaut
is that sideways colon kinda thing but she went for the 'E' for the
mis-spelling. But all these points were mooted when she fell upon WAKE.
I was still at Little Ceasars then so it musta been 2000 or 1999;
although it wouldn't matter till we hadda album in print and
copyrighted and stuff.
"I always wondered why she was so firm on the name, WAKE. We went
through three names in as many weeks; why stick with this one? She
always said that this one just felt right and so it did. Months later,
about the time the album was first released [2001-ed.], I was looking
for some obscure stuff in this old biblical concordance. It had all
kinda Greek and Hebrew words in it. I looked up the Greek word
translated into the word wake in the bible and it is the Greek word, transliterated gregario
a variant, obviously, of my Christian name! This seemed bizarre because
Angie has had no Greek and didn't even know then what a concordance is!
Just one of those bizarre things you notice.
"So we went on to record the album in 2001 so, from that point on we became, and still remain, WAKE."
for more of the story - home page
