Pet Sounds #61: Jeromes Dream, Deadguy Give Rescue Dogs ‘Hope’ on Iodine Benefit Comp
“Everyone involved in this effort isn’t making a penny. It’s so humbling, it’s hard for me to get over it, to be honest. It makes up for the times when the record industry and the music industry are an absolute shit show. It restores my faith in it a bit.”
–The Dogs of Hope compilation creator Tom Bejgrowicz
Punk-rock can save human lives, providing catharsis and community to young people in particular who struggle with being ostracized, anger issues and mental health problems. But just last month, Boston’s Iodine Recordings – which Casey Horrigan founded 30 years ago and is one of the most legendary indie labels in the Northeast – demonstrated that punk can save the lives of dogs too.
The label proved as such by teaming with Tom Bejgrowicz, an industry vet who worked on projects for artists ranging from Quicksand to Johnny Cash, for a uniquely laudable compilation called The Dogs of Hope. Consisting almost entirely of previously unreleased songs exclusive to the collection, participants include Jeromes Dream, Deadguy, Killswitch Engage, Snapcase, Enforced, Walter Schreifels of Quicksand, and other bands Iodine devotees would eat up. All proceeds from sales of the collection support the Randolph County Animal Shelter in rural Alabama.
Bejgrowicz started volunteering for the no-kill, privately run facility five years ago and decided to pursue his Dogs of Hope project as a way to offset the total lack of funding the shelter receives from the public or Randolph County region. To make matters worse, the county has zero public animal control or spay/neuter programs, and the shelter is four years into being at full capacity.
When The Bad Penny caught wind about The Dogs of Hope project, we immediately got in touch with Iodine and Bejgrowicz, as it appeared to be – and, it turns out, certainly is – supremely fitting for our ongoing Pet Sounds series. Here’s what Bejgrowicz had to say about the impact volunteering at the shelter has had on his life, his motivations for making the compilation and the tsunami of support Bejgrowicz didn’t expect to receive for giving a hand to man’s best friend.
When did you start working with Casey at Iodine?
About four years ago. We became tighter when I worked on the 30th anniversary box set version of Quicksand’s Slip [released in March 2023]. We’ve worked together on other single albums, but The Dogs of Hope was so intensive because we worked with 13 artists who have their own production style, photos, they’re on the road and scattered around. … This was definitely the most intensive project [Horrigan and I] collaborated on. [Note: The compilation features 14 songs, but two are performed by Schreifels.]
Why did you gravitate toward Iodine to release this comp? Was there something in particular you admired about Casey or his operation?
At the time, I didn’t know they were coming back [after Horrigan traveled the world and Iodine was inactive for 17 years]. As I recall, he told me he was talking to Chris [Wrenn, owner of Massachusetts-based] Bridge 9 Records. I had done a few things for BoySetsFire and Bridge 9 a few years back. And [apparently] Chris was like, “You should contact this guy.” So Casey actually reached out to me on Chris’ recommendation, and we just started [knocking out songs with bands for the comp].
Casey also knew me because I put out a Snapcase book [Optic] a few years back, and he bought it. So he called me, and that was that. And I’d already known Walter through him contributing to projects of mine in the past, so that was a simple walk-through with him. And once I got Walter in, we [started] getting other people [to participate]. They’re all really wonderful people, and in life, it’s just too hard to constantly work for assholes.
It was actually [Horrigan’s] idea to do the comp. I was saying to him, “I want to do something for the dogs.” And then he’s like, “Well, let’s do a comp.” I was like, “Yeah, OK.” And those guys worked so hard on this and didn’t earn a penny. Amy [Sciarretto] and Rachel [Rosenberg] [at publicity firm Atomsplitter PR] are doing the press for free, because they love animals. The bands are doing it with no royalties. It’s so humbling, it’s hard for me to get over it, to be honest. It makes up for the times when the record industry and the music industry are an absolute shit show. It restores my faith in it a bit.
Can you share some anecdotes about what it was like convincing the artists to participate? Some must’ve been easier to get onboard than others. And the songs are primarily dog-themed, right?
Well, for one, the two tracks by Walter Schreifels are bookends on purpose. Initially, Walter was going to cover a Syd Barrett song. Then we spoke again like a month or two later, and he goes, “No, no, no. I changed my mind. I’m going to do ‘Pigs on the Wing’ by Pink Floyd” [the two-part song that opens and closes the band’s album Animals]. And I was like, “That’s great.”
It’s fantastic because some of the lyrics – and this is the reason he picked it – are “And any fool knows a dog needs a home/ A shelter from pigs on the wing.” But that’s in Part Two. So when he turned in the track, I didn’t know if he was doing “Pigs on the Wing” Part One or Two. He tracked both with silence in between.
So I was like, “Well, how am I not going to split this into two and have it bookend the record like it did on Pink Floyd’s Animals?” I told Walter I was doing that, and he goes, “That’s what I wanted. But I didn’t want to ask to be both the first and last artist on the comp.” So we had a laugh about that. It’s absolutely perfect.
Here’s another one: So, [guitarist] Alex Skolnick does a jazz trio outside of Testament. Anytime you can sit and watch Alex play … his talent is so stupidly amazing. … I asked him if he would do something for the comp [lasting] two minutes or less. And he did, and he called it “Disruption.” It’s an homage to “Eruption” by Eddie Van Halen. He puts little Eddie-like touches in there, but the rest of it’s all his vision.
Then I was sitting there saying, “Well, Testament has toured with Killswitch several times and played a thousand festivals together over the years.” So [I talked with] Killswitch, and they had four songs that did not make their last album [February’s This Consequence]. They gave us “Blood Upon the Ashes,” and if I play the comp when [bassist] Mike [D’Antonio] is around, he gets so upset, because he didn’t ever want that song to not be on the album. It could be a single on a regular album for them.
What about the contributions from Jeromes Dream and Deadguy, two bands that recently re-formed?
Yeah, Jeromes are on Iodine as well, so that one was easy. They did a new song [“The Seventeen Downton”] with Jack Shirley [who mastered The Dogs of Hope] out West in the Bay Area, where they usually work and collaborate. It has that brutal distortion and feedback but also some beautiful moments, which they write in a lot of their segues.
Deadguy was a fun one. Now, of course, they’ve announced a new record, and they had new material at the time. They were only demos of riffs and stuff back when I started this process for the comp, so the new material wasn’t an option. But I said, “Well, how about we do a unique remix of a classic track?” So that’s where “Makeshift Black Metal Smasher” came from. It’s got a lot of dissonance and weird parts. We got the stems from the original tracks, so they used those. And there’s a scream at the end of the song that is not on the album track – but we found it!”
Discoveries and turns of events like those made the making of The Dogs of Hope all that much more fun.
Go to Iodine’s Bandcamp page to buy a copy of the Dogs of Hope compilation.
Go here for the Pet Sounds index.
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