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Tampa's Magadog Has Its Day, Again

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 21, 2007

A track on Magadog's new album is titled 'The Seven Year Itch.' It's something the Tampa ska band seems to have experienced itself.

One of the biggest names in the Florida ska scene of the '90s ground to a halt around 2000, worn out from touring, record label hassles and the logistics of keeping a seven- or eight-piece band together.

But this dog had some fight left in it.

Magadog made its live return Sept. 15 at WMNF's Birthday Bash and headlines its own show Saturday at New World Brewery.

Plus, there's a new Magadog album, 'Sunrise.' It's a confident sounding mix of ska, roots reggae and dub, the band's primary influences since the start.

Highlights include the dub-inflected 'The Seven Year Itch,' the infectious 'On the Dial' and 'Scare Tactics,' which recalls the ghostly grandeur of The Specials' latter-day material.

The years apart only seem to have toughened and tightened Magadog's sound.

'Tight' wasn't always an apt description of the band's playing, Magadog frontman Ed Lowery admits.

'We were probably not the best musicians in the world,' Lowery says of the band's earliest incarnations. 'We were just picking up our instruments in some cases.'

But the group, which formed in 1992, quickly established itself as a live favorite and was soon among the front-runners of Florida's then-bustling ska scene.

It appeared on MTV and the NBC series 'SeaQuest,' and shared stages with The Pietasters and The Toasters, as well as ska pioneers The Skatalites.

By the middle of the decade, though, ska had become a nationwide craze with scores of bands with pork-pie hats and trombones.

Even though it was hooked up with respected ska label Moon for 1995's 'Magadog' and 1996's 'DUI-N-I,' the band was getting lost in the ska shuffle.

By the time Magadog called it quits, Lowery was behind the drum kit for The Unrequited Loves, the Tampa trio fronted by the late Mike O'Neill. Magadog's other members scattered to other area bands.

But the seeds of 'Sunrise' were being sown even as the band was breaking up.

'We started recording in 1999 or 2000,' Lowery recalls. 'A lot of the early sessions got wiped and we ended up re-recording a lot of stuff.'

Lowery and fellow Magadog mainstay, keyboardist Jim Pedigo, assembled the current lineup, which includes Brian Aulisio on trumpet, Keith Bartlett on guitar, Dave Russell on trombone, Joe Terrana on sax and Carlos Velez on drums.

Lowery jokes that he put Magadog back together because he was 'tired of getting harassed in public' by fans clamoring for a reunion.

Finishing 'Sunrise' convinced him the time was right.

'I realized 'Sunrise' was pretty good, and I had thought about getting the band back together before,' Lowery says.

'I knew it was something that was larger than anything I'd ever done before,' he says. 'It seemed like the right thing.'

CONCERT PREVIEW

Magadog

WITH: Skif Dank and The Brentford Sound

WHEN: 9 p.m. Saturday

WHERE: New World Brewery, 1313 E. Eighth St., Tampa; (813) 248-4969

COST: $6

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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