S T E E L. D O G. C A F E

Steel  D O G  Cafe

That"GROOVE SMOOTH MOOD" music

"Blame The Foothill Tribe" is the 2nd song on our STONE FLY Album release. The track is a good introduction to the overall eclectic and experimental nature and sound of band (with a lot of stylistic colors and musical instrumentation hidden deeper in the mix - in fact, some of the instrumental voicings are buried in the mix on purpose so the listener may hear something new with each listen). Juxtaposed to BLAME THE FOOTHILL TRIBE is "WORLD UPSIDE DOWN" (also on the "Stone Fly" album). World showcases more of a lyrical journey and is witness to some of the classical blues-based rock influences on the band. For anyone interested in the album cover art or why the name "steel dog cafe" appears, The Foothill Tribe was f/k/a "Steel Dog Cafe" or "Steel Dog" on the HDIMYF EP.

Blame The Foothill Tribe

Fly Again is the B-Side for our "Hippie Girl" single. The song is an acoustic-electric blend and shows our exploration of various styles and directions at the same time. Fly Again sort of ventures into more of a Rusted Root style of hippie music (leaning heavily on percussion and bongos for the rhythm section). The song has a nice chilled out intro and then slowly builds until a full blown percussion driven ending. As a tie-in: this song style of starting sparse and then continuing to build to a crescendo (without any let up in the slow build) comes back around in later songs like "Rubicon" on the Stone Fly Album. The song (and Hippie Girl single) was recorded and mixed on a Yamaha MTX-8  Eight Track machine.      

Fly Again

This is a deep album cut from our Stone Fly record. At 6:12, the length and arrangement of the song offers room for a variety of mini-movements. The track is a mid-tempo pseudo-psychedelic alternative rock journey with "answer and call" verses (Clay / Lead Vocal & Rob / Backing Vocal). A wah' infused funk breakdown in the middle-section brings in the guitar solo before breaking down again to a "vocal only" chorus section, before building again to the ending outro which features additional percussion (bongos) with a delay on them that creates an interesting effect and sound. Sonya Gilmore sings harmony on the song.   
 
Thank  you for listening and sharing our songs. We welcome your comments and truly hope you enjoy the music.

Feelin' Like I'm Over You

As title track for our Conspiracy No. 9 album, the song is an up-tempo track that leans toward pop punk. “Don’t trust the government and don’t change who you are” sums up the message of the song. We actually recorded two versions of this song, this version which we call the “cheap trick mix” and another slower tempo version we call the “hippy mix” which also adds tambourine and additional ear candy and colors. The very ending was intended to catch the casual listener off-guard.   

Conspiracy

This song was intended as a soundtrack for the experience of that late night, 3:00 AM in the morning, rolling down the interstate, and the lines in the road passing you by - that sort of hypnotizing tunnel vision effect.  Lyrically, the track speaks to that desire to move on from where you are to somewhere else, either metaphorically or actually.    

Traveling Song

One of the more eclectic psychedelic groove tracks from our "Stone Fly" album, “Questions” is similar in feel to "Feeling Like I'm Over You."  The lyrics were mainly written by Clay, the guitarist, at a time when he was studying history and simultaneously inundating himself with current events on CNN.  The troubling crimes against humanity, both past and present, and the bleak outlook for the future of mankind weighed heavily on his mind while writing this song.  Referencing the lyrics “think I’m gonna cry,” the guitar solo section was actually supposed to be symbolic of the songwriter’s tears dripping down.  This track also marks the beginning of Clay's experimentation with the organic wave-like phasing effect for the rhythm guitars.  It was first tried on the synthesizers for "Blame the Foothill Tribe" and on "Questions" it makes the song breathe like a living organism.  This effect was used a few more times for some of the rhythm guitar on "Conspiracy No. 9" and the "Scatterbrain" EP.   We hope you like the song.

Questions

She Said, She Said is one of the deeper album tracks from Conspiracy. We were a bit nervous about posting the track at this stage. It is a clean driving track and a nice change from the wah infused psychedelia we have posted of late. The track is more of a minimum foundation than a completed song. Even though it is unfinished in its present form, we hope you enjoy the idea. 

Thanks for listening to the Tribe.     

She Said, She Said

Earth Buddy

“Always There” is one of the final uploads from our “Conspiracy No. 9” album (“CNN”). The song was recorded during the beginning of the making of CNN, and for the band it ended up being one of the jewels of the album. The song definitely leans toward our more psychedelic side, but the song also involves a swimming (but hopefully solid) slow-burn style funky groove, some interesting musical and vocal tendencies, and the ending section hints of jam sessions past and future. For me personally, the end section leaves me yearning to climb behind my drums right now as I write this. It also leaves me yearning for those moments (like the ending section of this track, or entire sections of intensity in our "Rough Lightning" jam) where we just let go and lose ourselves in the groove and music channeling through us in that moment - that's where the magic lives. 

Although we don’t recall exactly how the song came into existence, Clay had the chords for a long time before we started jamming with the ideas in rehearsal and tossing things around until we had the outline of the song, and ultimately the completed song. I remember working on the lyrics with Clay and we spent a lot of time focusing on and developing the phrasing of the lyrics in the verse. If you listen you will hear a sort of “rhythmic pulse” type of phrasing to the lyrics during the verses, and there's a subtle different in the chorus sections. It's a pretty cool thing in my humble opinion and it was great fun to sing.   

The song style and the production quality of the recording make the song sound like it could easily have been on our "Stone Fly" album. An interesting note is the last section of the song was never completely developed or finished.  During the last section of the song from around 3:15 onward (beginning immediately after the last chorus section) you will hear the band go into a stepped-up grooving sort of jam feel that is just laying the floor for more. Clay commented that he wanted to leave the last section of the song undeveloped (or to be developed later). The idea was to leave the end of the song open for an outside producer to have input on and to work with us to see where we could take the ending jam (recall during this time we were talking with different producers about possibly working with the band). As a personal note, I really enjoy Clay’s swimming guitars and his wah pedal work on the song (check out Clay's understated solo wah parts starting at 3:15 or thereabouts). The bass guitar lines and drums during the ending section combine into a pretty cool interplay and groove (one of my favorite interludes in the track is the short breakdown around 4:10 where everything drops out except drums and bass). The bass playing is some of the most interesting on CNN  in my opinion. On drums, I was doing a lot of rolling type of snare accents and the bass drum might be a bit too busy in places, but I feel like it still works for the jam-groove section because we were digressing naturally from song-mode to jam-groove-mode. For a totally unimportant note - a few times during the song you will hear me using my kit's 8" bell. This is one of few instances my kit's bell can be heard on any of our studio recordings (that I can think of at least). That 8" bell has a distinctly warmer tone than my ride cymbal (which itself is a 22" Sabian Heavy Ride - its a monster thick ride cymbal capable of cutting through the heaviest wall of guitars when struck with conviction). I know, I know, enough drum talk already.   

We really hope people find the song interesting and unique to the ear. Thank you for listening and for your feedback.  Sincerely, Rob@TheTribe. 


Always There

ROB: We were seeking creative license to go insane I guess, and I feel it is safe to say the resulting track “Space Gun” on our "Stone Fly" album is one of our most adventurous sonic assaults to date. For the best listening experience I would recommend that Space Gun be listened to cranked up as loud as possible (preferably with a sub kicking) – “so yo’ feets can move and yo’ heads can groove.” ( “Rob’ism”)   

CLAY: We originally intended “Space Gun” to end the “Stone Fly” album, but ultimately we overruled ourselves after completing “World Upside Down,” which technically ends the CD.  But as a form of compromise and so we could sort of have it both ways (and with the idea of hopefully surprising a few listeners) we separated the two songs by a long period of silence and an ambient track titled “Bugs and Bongos” (“Bugs and Bongos has an interesting story of how it came into existence - but we will leave that story for another day). “Space Gun” serves as the official end of the album and “World Upside Down” is a special, hidden, bonus track ending the disc.   

CLAY: On our first album “Beggars & Thieves” we had two instrumentals: “As a Matter of Funk” and “Wash Out.”  “As a Matter of Funk” is a short, hit and run style funk jam with clean guitars and “Wash Out,” which begins the album, is a three and a half minute, heavy hitting barn burner with distorted guitars. For our next full length album ("Stone Fly") we also wanted a couple of instrumentals, and by the time we got to “Space Gun” we already had the short funk jam with clean guitars, “Earth Buddy,”  in the can.  To distinguish one from the other, for “Earth Buddy” we took the concept of “As a Matter of Funk” and ramped it up quite considerably by putting a totally ridiculous, over the top spin on it.  So for the follow up to “Wash Out.” we wanted to do the same and write an over the top, epic, gonzo monster of an instrumental jam.  But this time we wanted to end the album with it. 

CLAY: The first things to do were double the size and then stretch it out to nearly seven minutes (at the end of the track you can hear Rob laughingly say “that was about a long fucking song” after nailing his final take). The final drum take (as with all of Rob’s drum takes) was done in a single take from start to finish (no punch-ins and no pro-tools drum comp’ing was done). Instead, we did it old school style, we just played and recorded a BUNCH of drum takes to get that “one take” of Rob’s best drum performance from start to finish. 

CLAY: I had the basic framework of distorted guitar riffs and also some funky, clean riffs for a middle solo section.  Rob and I worked it out, rehearsed it, and then laid down the drums. While Rob was recording I was also recording the basic guitar track running the Digitech processor direct to the mixing console.  During pre-production on the drums, Rob found and used a percussion sample called “space gun” that had a wicked, sci-fi laser gun sound (think storm trooper laser rifle), and so we had our title.  The “space gun” was triggered “live” (not overdubbed) while Rob was tracking the drum takes. We might have just intended on using that as a temporary title at first, but the name felt appropriate and stuck.  I had been playing around with the main, distorted riff and thought it sounded like Godzilla on a rampage through Tokyo.  But with the inclusion of the “space gun” triggered drum sample and the sci-fi title we began to envision it more like the soundtrack to an interplanetary dogfight.

ROB: The “space gun laser shot” sound was recorded as part of the original drum take by taping a drum trigger to a practice pad (which itself creates no real noise when you hit it) so I could use the practice pad as if it were another drum to get the triggered laser gun sounds. Thus, I was able to play the “space gun” sounds as if they were part of his drum kit. You can hear the interplay between the space gun shots, high-hat, cowbell, and ride-cymbal throughout the track.  

CLAY: Once the basic “foundation” tracks of drums and guitars were recorded, I spent a long time “filling in” the rest with a ridiculous amount of layers, overdubs and ear candy.  Most of it is guitars, but there’s also some keyboards routed through the Digitech guitar processor, specifically at 5:10 with the “red alert” keys and another moog synthesizer through a wah pedal. There’s also a regular piano at a 1:54, but I think even that was run through the processor to give it more of a futuristic flavor.  The main guitar riff has the phase shifter all over it, as was the custom on the “Stone Fly” album, but on “Space Gun” it’s supposed to invoke the sensation of spacecraft pitching, diving and accelerating during the battle.  I was also really into Tom Morello from “Rage Against The Machine” at the time, so I used a lot of staccato hammering on the fret board to great effect as it adds quite well to the chaos. I had first started using that technique on a track called “How Does It Make You Feel” from the EP of the same name (between “Beggars” and “Stone Fly”), but on the EP track I was using my fingers to hammer out the chords and on “Space Gun” I was using my pick, which gave it a much more brittle, metallic sound.  But actually, at some moments, I’m trying to channel Randy Rhoads and the way he used to get a similar effect by toggling the pickup switch in rapid fire succession.

ROB: There’s a short but cool little drum interlude section around 4:40 that has a definite Latin feel. I think I played every drum I had during that section (save my Congos, but they might even be in the mix somewhere). The Latin drum interlude was overdubbed after the main drum take was down. The Latin flavor actually works pretty well and it is sort of cool to hear those flams and triplets over the straight driving beat, that always creates a unique feel for the drums.   

ROB: We have always enjoyed trying to push the envelope of rock music by combining or blending styles, sounds, or genres that are not necessarily supposed to fit together (like storm trooper laser rifles and hard driving guitars). With Space Gun we feel like this may be an instance where perhaps we actually pulled it off and created a musical work that is honestly unique, something that people will find interesting and really enjoy listening to, and that will stand on its own merits as a Foothill Tribe original work. That’s our goal and while we don’t always reach it, we keep trying and keep pushing the creative envelope. 

ROB: In the end, we were proud of how “Space Gun” turned out and we hope listeners will enjoy rocking the track with us. Thanks for listening and for any feedback.      

 
 


Space Gun

BACKGROUND: We wanted to offer something completely different from our preceding upload ("Space Gun"). So, we went back and decided on the acoustic "AS THE CROW FLIES" from our 5-Song EP "HOW DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL"  (or "HDIMYF" as we often refer to it). Another reason we re-visited HDIMYF is because that EP marked a monumental shift in the band's trajectory on many different levels. Several tracks on HDIMYF - including the title track (How Does It Make You Feel) and the drum-driven (Incantations) were so different from all of our prior material, we look back on HDIMYF as the release that marked the time and date when we made a huge leap forward in our sound and our artistic direction. The EP also provides a hint of what was to follow - which was the "STONE FLY" album. On HDIMYF we truly broke free of any limitations imposed by our prior work on Beggars & Thieves (our debut album). HDIMYF also marks Clay's debut as "lead vocalist" and is the starting point for our "twin-lead vocalist" approach.

PRODUCTION NOTES: 
 
CLAY: I remember having fun playing with the vocal harmonies and it was a lot of fun to record because I was just discovering that I could do that kind of thing. It has a slight flavor of medieval fanfare with the synth. The soft guitar lead sort of represents the symbolic crow taking off in flight.  It’s interesting how much better [the HDIMYF] tracks sound compared to Beggars & Thieves even though we were using the same equipment. The acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and vocal sound production is a huge leap forward from Beggars & Thieves, but I don’t remember doing anything different.  Perhaps we had better microphones.

ROB: As The Crow Flies has a bit of a haunting nature to it, with its lyrical inferences of breaking free of life's rules and confusions, of youthful longing, and the ever-present wanderlust and desire to "if I might, hitch a ride, my friend." I refer to the song's nature as "dark psychedelia." I remember we were listening to a lot of Celtic music at the time as well, so that had some definite influence on the song. I remember being excited about the vocal harmonies too, as these were among our first attempts where we started focusing on vocal harmonies in our songs. You can hear the vocal tracks are not perfectly in sync in places, but to me the fact that they are not perfect just adds to the honesty of the recording and the vocals.    

In the end, it was Clay's contribution on synth, guitars, and vocals, combined with the bass guitar work, that truly make the song.  I love the soft guitars on the end third of the song. Clay did such a tasteful job of accenting the song. 

We realize "As The Crow Flies" is completely different from "Space Gun." We wanted to change it up a little bit. As always, we really appreciate any spins and any feedback/comments that might be offered. 

We hope people enjoy this short little haunted song. 

PS - If anyone is interested in the lyrics, let us know and we will post them. 

Sincerely,
The Foothill Tribe  

 




As The Crow Flies

“Somewhere on The Hill” is one of our darker psychedelic tracks from the Conspiracy No. 9 release. The song is a sister track to "These Are The Days" but was written and recorded some time later than These Are The Days (on "Stone Fly"). In contrast to our other psychedelic tracks, “Somewhere On The Hill” is built on a heavier guitar riff/sounds, but still features Clay's signature effects, instrumentation, and arrangements. The mix is a bit rougher than the Stone Fly album mixes, but it works out pretty well. 

Sincerest thanks for taking the time to listen to Somewhere On The Hill - we hope you enjoy the song and welcome comments and feedback. Thanks again! The Tribe. 

Somewhere on the Hill

The is basically the same track as the original, but with a trip hop beat mixed in.  Enjoy!

Hippie Girl (Free Love Mix)

"Room To Breathe" is the second of three songs on our final E.P. and swan song "Scatterbrain."  It's a mellow, melancholy track which chronicles the passing of childhood to adulthood and how the time wasting pleasures of youth transform, from the perspective of the adult, into a relentless enemy to be abandoned and avoided.  In this case, the pressure was on to abandon the pursuit of music in favor of accepting my place in society as simply another cog in the wheel.  At the time I tried to hold on to some of that youth by living vicariously through my niece, who was old enough to watch Star Wars and Pixar movies and such.  So it was my way of being able to be a kid again for a little bit longer.

We had to move out of our studio, so I had to set up the console and effects rack in my bedroom to finish.  Rob laid down the drum tracks in the studio before the move and I think it's one of the best sounding drum recordings I've ever heard.  The ambiance of the kit is extraordinary and Rob's playing is loaded with so much nuance and character.  You just don't hear that kind of drumming in rock music anymore, which is why I couldn't imagine playing with anyone else. I finished the guitars, bass and vocals in my room, then we mixed it.  in fact, the entire E.P was done in this manner.

Also of note, my cat Raz (a.k.a. Sweet Pea, a.k.a Pretty Girl, a.k.a. Little Shit) would hop up on the console and sprawl out over the knobs for a nap.  That had to be the most uncomfortable place in the room (in fact, there was a soft, comfy bed just a foot away) but, dammit, that's the place she chose to sleep and by gum she was gonna MAKE it comfortable no matter what.  I swear the psychology of a cat truly baffles me sometimes.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Clay

Room To Breathe

------  BIO -------
The Foothill Tribe (f/k/a Steel Dog Cafe) is a three piece alternative-psychedelic-progressive rock band (and recording artist) from the tiny ocean-side town of Destin, Florida, USA. The Tribe is: Clay Urquhart (Guitars | Vocals); Rob Gilmore (Drums | Vocals); Daniel Bertram (Bass Guitar).  

A Note On The Photos: The picture beside each uploaded song is the Cover Art for the Album, EP, or Single the song is on. We will update our Profile with our discography soon.   

We really enjoy (and continue) trying  to push the creative envelope with our music, whether it be with our songs or instrumentals. We often incorporate different genres, styles, and sounds into our music. Our desire and goal is to create original music that is interesting, different, and uniquely recognizable as The Foothill Tribe's own sound. Thank for listening and we truly hope you enjoy our material.   

As a three piece power trio we have no separate front man. We tried out several "would-be" front men when we were first forming the band, but ultimately we were not satisfied with any of the proposed lead singers because they just did not fit with the band or our vision for the future. Out of necessity we made the decision to handle vocals ourselves in what would become a "twin lead-singer" approach with Clay (guitars) and Rob (drums) both handling lead vocals, and with Dan (bass guitar), Clay, and/or Rob handling back-up vocals depending on who was singing lead. This twin lead-vocal approach has developed over the years and forms a key ingredient (and some have gone as far as calling it a trademark) of the band's sound.   

Over the course of writing and recording our various Albums, EPs, and Single releases the band's sound has developed significantly. There are a handful of songs along our path that show the growth of our sound and are witness to a change in the band's direction creatively. We hope to have a chance to tell some of the stories about these key songs and what was going on at the time. We try to offer a bit of background on each song, and sometimes even the lyrics are posted, in the song description for anyone who might be interested in a bit more info about a song.  
 
Since joining Sound Cloud, we have made some awesome new friends and met some great bands and artists. We really appreciate all who listen to our music and who have elected to follow us. Our sincerest thanks! We look forward to continuing to share our music, to making more new friends, and to continuing to discover new and inspiring music/artists/bands as we all grow together. THANKS TO ALL for  sharing in our story and for allowing us to share in yours!  Thanks again for listening to The Tribe!

Conspiracy

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