Rockabilly : Dawg House

In November of 1992 the founder members of Dawg House; Baz Mungham and Wayne Beauchamp met when Baz had been referred to wayne for guitar lessons in 'Elvis Style' and possibly purchase a semi acoustic guitar that Wayne had for sale. At the time Wayne was looking for a double bass player to complete the line-up for his band called Dixie Fried who had just lost theirs. After an evening's discussion about what got them excited! Baz agreed to have a go at Slap Bass and it was convenient that Wayne just happened to have one lying around. As soon as it looked like the band might be up and running the drummer from Dixie Fried quit as his mum wouldn't let him have a drum kit in the house! A few auditions later we found a local blues drummer, Gordon, who was enthusiastic although he'd never heard of rockabilly. Gordon then went on to play with the band for the best part of the next six years. Dixie Fried sorted out some songs and recorded a demo only to find out that their was already two other bands on the scene with the same name, it was then that they changed the name to Dawg House after the American Slang for the Double Bass which plays such an important part in the whole rockabilly style. It was also about this time that Dave Rounce (formerly of eighties recording band; Stage Frite) voiced an interest in joining and was snapped up immediately. The demo's went out and a few gigs came in. Dawg House's first public appearance was a Monday night in a local youth club that had just opened, with support from 'Razz the Clown'! A couple of months down the line and Gordon had to leave because of the new job he'd just got so Baz, Dave and Wayne decided to have a swap round to keep the band going. We played our first gig with Dave on the drums at The Oval Rockhouse in Norwich supporting Shakeout and we bombed out terribly. The next week was fraught with arguments and they swapped so Wayne was on the drums (Wayne was a drummer for several years earlier with a few local rockabilly bands including The Sundance cats who appeared a couple of times at Billy's Club in Stoke on Trent). Things still didn't work too well and by the time we played our first gig at The George Robey (with The Klingonz) at Finsbury Park, London, Dave had left (to spend more time fishing).

To help out, Wayne's brother; Dale (who had played together in The Sundance Cats) took over on guitar and they played some really rockin' gigs but Dale's stay with the band was only temporary as he had his own band on the go too. Gordon's work slowed down and once again he was available for practices and gigs and by the time of the last gig at The Robey the line up was back to Gordon, Baz and Wayne (this was the gig with the Deltas as the last gig booked their with the Frantic Flintstones was canceled at the last minute). In the next six months Dawg House played a pretty solid line-up of gigs which often featured Wayne's Dad; Richard on second guitar. Main events during this six months were appearances at The Norwich Arts Centre, supporting Demented Are Go at The Oval and recording their first professional demo (six tracks) at Instep Studios, Norwich. Soon after the recording, Baz left because his job as a long distance lorry driver was making it almost impossible for him to turn up. Richard moved onto bass guitar and we carried on. January 1994 the band acquired a sax player by the name of Adam Simpson who came along just for a jam. He stuck with us solidly for the next couple of years. The gigs became more frequent and Richard decided he couldn't keep up with them, he was replaced by Ron Sayer Jnr on the double bass in early 1994. Ron and Wayne had played together in the late eighties in The Streamlines. Dawg House played loads of gigs at this time and Ron was an excellent musician, he went on to with Guitarist of the year in 1997 at the finals in Wembly! We booked in once again to Instep Studios, Norwich where we recorded 10 of our favourite covers from the set just as a local promotional cassette, one of these recordings, Wild Thing, along with one of our earlier recordings, Worry 'bout you (self written), were used on the Rockhouse compilation CD; "Rock 'n' Roll at the Turn of the Century, part 5". Ron played with us when we supported The Jets in Norwich too but Ron found the restraints of bass playing, rockabilly and playing in somebody elses band to be be too much and left to form his own, very fine, band where he played funky rock on the guitar!

The stroke of luck here was that Baz had given up long distance lorry driving and walked straight back into the band (he had on and off stood in on rhythm guitar while he'd been out of the band) on slap bass and the line up became Baz, Gordon, Adam and Wayne. This was the closest we came to stability. With this line up we played a hundred or more gigs including The Thunderbird Club at Wellingborough, the first Bedlam Breakout at Northampton, supported The Jets again, played in a show at The Norwich Theatre Royal as Bill Haley and his Comets! and recorded our third demo which consisted of all originals which we done at Purple Rain studios in Great Yarmouth (the same studio responsible for sound engineering at the Hemsby Big Rumbles and recording Shakeout and The Razorbacks, I'm on Fire albums). The sound was great, the day was very hot, but we had a great laugh. From this session we had "Last Time I Saw Her" released as a vinyl single by Dynamite from Germany of the front of their magazine. While with this line-up the band had regular appearances in the line up of Richard (when he got the time) on rhythm guitar, Mr Steve 'X' Wild on the tenor saxophone and Mark Beckley on lead guitar, the band had most definitely became a party at almost every gig and gained a reputation very fast locally as the party band.

At the end of 1996, Adam left. He had far too much on his plate to carry on and wasn't exactly seeing eye to eye with Baz! Dawg House decided they'd played as a three piece before and there was no problem. Early 1997, Dawg House sorted out a deal with Loz of the Bone Tone Corporation to put out their own album of original recordings on his label, they gathered songs, wrote new material, practiced and booked Purple Rain Studio once again (which by this time had changed it's name to Purple and moved to Norwich). Three weeks before going in to record the album, Gordon left, no one really knows why! To keep on schedule we had two options, either Mark Beckley on guitar (who's great) and Wayne would move to drums or Wayne's brother Dale on guitar (who's also great!). They agreed that if Dale wanted to then that was the direction to go as he had (being Wayne's older brother) basically got Wayne into playing rockabilly, gave him the opportunity to play in his bands, helped Dawg House keep going and never had the chance to release anything himself. Dale was quite happy and his band was quite slow at the time. The band also decided to change two of the planned songs for the album to Dale's as he's such a good songwriter too. Dawg House practiced very hard for the next three weeks, even though Wayne had a bad cold, which developed into Pneumonia and even with the antibiotics it hadn't cleared up by the time they hit the studio! Four tracks from the previous studio session with Adam and Gordon were added to the end of the CD as it seemed unfair that both of them should have given so much to the band and never saw any of the payback. So with the line-up back to Baz, Dale & Wayne, the band moved onward having "that's O.K." released on CD by Totally Wired magazine and "'Boneshaker'" & "Rattlesnake Shake" released on the Bone Tone compilation; "The Devil's Jukebox". They played at the Open & Rockin' Club in Middlesex and appeared on Dell Richardson's "Good Rockin' Tonight" show on Country Music Radio on which Dawg House played live to 31 countries from the CMR studio in London.
This was all very well but Dawg House's members had varying ideas about what they should be doing and this caused a major break-up. Once again Baz and Wayne were back on the dole and Dale went back to his original band. They played a few gigs with Wayne's Dad on guitar, Baz on bass and Wayne on drums just to keep going until at the start of 1998 they met up with Adam and Gordon once again who had been trying to get their own blues band off the ground but it didn't work out. Dawg House was up and running once again, just like the old party times again. It was fun and instantly they were booked at various venues including support for Crazy Cavan at Leicester, with The Sharks at Leicester, with The Blue Devils at Northampton and loads of local stuff. The long distance gigs were not well paid (are they ever?) and both Adam's and Gordon's lack of interest in rockabilly music became an issue as they were traveling a lot and getting paid very little while Baz and Wayne saw it as an opportunity to see cool bands and get your expenses paid.
At this time too there was a second line-up of the band that featured Wayne's younger brother; Brendan playing drums with Baz and Wayne at the local gigs to take some of the heat of the others. Iit was still more than the Adam and Gordon were prepared to do and even though they were talking to Raucous Records about possibly doing a follow up album they all decided to call it quits at the end of 1998.
Although Baz and Wayne tried very hard to get something going in other directions with other members, nothing was working out, the only high point was when local bass player, Clive Perchard (who formerly played in Stage Frite with our original guitarist, Dave Rounce) who hadn't played for nine years, came along for a laugh and Baz moved to drums. Baz, although quite a solid drummer, had made up his mind to be a guitarist from now on and so they all went the separate directions. They agreed to keep in touch and played a couple of odd gigs together with Richard on guitar for a laugh under the name of Dawg House. Wayne joined a country band playing double bass while Baz was in and out of auditions for other bands usually along with Clive who had decided he now wanted to get into playing again, big time. The country band were going very well and were extremely good but Wayne's heart wasn't in it and the band found him a little too wild so they parted company.

In late February 1999, Wayne put an advert in the local paper for a drummer and bass player as he wanted to start his own band and it looked like Baz and Clive had finally got themselves a new set up. Within a day or two of the ad going in, Baz contacted Wayne saying he was prepared to play drums if we had Clive on Bass. Baz booked a hall to check it out and it was cookin' from the very first moment, for once Dawg House were three guys all into the same music and into the band in a big way ... the enthusiasm was kicked back into the set up. They decided to carve out a new set-list which allowed them to play more rockabilly than the predominantly rock 'n' roll set they had been playing, agreed to practice regularly, sorted out a photo session and sorted out a recording session with Ron Sayer who had started doing his own 8-track recording. With the Dawg House version of the Charlie Rich song; "Lonely Weekends" released on Raucous Records and a new album out called 'Shakin' not stirred' on Vampirella Records from Germany. The new line-up is already making a mark.