Digital Glam | The Rock Site

First of all, hang your head for a moment of silence...... There is no more Hair of the Dog. If you ever saw them live, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. HOTD knocked out some awesome tunes over three albums. Before they were even signed, they criss-crossed the US relentlessly opening for bands such as RATT, Cinderella, Skid Row, Motorhead, Ted Nugent and more! They finally ended up signing a deal with Spitfire Records. At first, everyone was totally excited but they might as well have signed a deal with the Devil.

Under Spitfire's umbrella, it was obvious that they would rather promote bigger names like Sebastian Bach and Dio rather than HOTD. They re-released their 1997 self-titled album and followed that up with their Rise and Ignite records. All were exceptional pieces of work, but with no promotion, no national air play MTV sucking as much as it does, there was nowhere to go. On top of everything else Johnny Sepetys, the guitarist discovered his hand deteriorating by the week. It turned out he was diagnosed with focal hand dystonia. With that condition, the cortex of the brain loses the ability to distinguish between individual fingers on the hand. Apparently, certain nervous systems can go haywire when they're routinely over-driven with repeated, finely-tuned movements (ie: playing a guitar). HOTD found a replacement, but by then it was to late. In order to get released from their heinous record deal, the band decided to disband.

Alright enough of the sad stuff. Let's talk tour/war stories here! My buddy and I drove from Orlando, Florida to Terra Haute, Indiana to see the Dogs for a One Night Only show. 19 hours up, dinner, drinks, more drinks, sleep, drinks, concert, drinks, sleep, 19 hours back down to Florida dodging invisible trains from out of nowhere! What a blast! But here's a hilarious story when Hair of the Dog was out with Cinderella. This was my personal War Story originally written at HOTDRocks.com

Let me just say one thing..... G*D DAMN! The HOTD and Cinderella shows hit Florida September 6th, 1998 and they were all awesome! In appreciation for designing [HOTDRocks], the guys from HOTD sent Woody and I some all access laminates for any shows we wanted. So the first stop: Jacksonville, FLA. We (me, Woody & his girlfriend Jenn) drove about 3 hours and arrived at Shades Men's Club (formerly a strip club). On the way, we spotted a KISS Army sticker on a pick-up truck we passed. We joked around a little saying 'bet I know where they're going' and stuff like that. Well anyway, after waiting outside the club about 10 or 20 minutes, guess who shows up? The KISS Army truck along with 2 others. These guys were from Ft. Lauderdale and were there to be the first opening act. They were called 'Bangtoy 69.' *personal note from the author: don't waste your time or money on this band. Back to the story. About an hour after Bangtoy showed up, so did the Cinderella tour bus and 30 minutes after that, the green Dodge van Hair of the Dog was going around in. In we went and I must say it was a nice looking club....plus it had 3 bars so that was kinda nice too! Woody introduced me to Dan, HOTD's tour manager. They had met a few weeks earlier when Woody was in Massachusetts. Dan was really cool. You wouldn't expect him to be the rocker he is just by looking at him. He's all clean cut and short hair but a rocker indeed. I have to wonder if he was sick of seeing me pop up everywhere that week. We helped set up the shirt display and then I finally met Nick. Nick was really cool too (and a little stoney =}) and can that man jam on a drum kit! Thunder who? When Hair of the Dog came to the stage the crowd went nuts. I don't know how many of the people in the audience knew them, but after Bangtoy69, they were about to be totally blown away. Without a doubt HOTD played an awesome set including a new song that will be on the next album called "Sometimes Is Enough." Finally, after their usual 'disagreement' of what song to play as the big finale, they busted out with a KISS cover of "Shout It Out." The crowd was going wild and probably upset that it was almost over. When Cinderella finally took the stage, the crowd was pumped and ready to rock. Since this is supposed to be my Hair of the Dog review, I'll just keep it short and say Cinderella hasn't forgotten a thing. They sounded as good as ever and ya know what? For every show, Eric Brittingham came out wearing a Hair of the Dog T-shirt. What a guy! After the show, we were walking around and talking to all the HOTD guys and congratulating them on a spectacular performance. It seemed that during Cinderella's set, someone had been setting Racer up with some shots so he was a little.... 'under the influence' shall we say? Ladies take note: he get VERY friendly.... He must have picked me up off the ground and hugged me like 5 times. What a nut! And Woody! LOL, Woody has long blonde hair coincidentally close in length to Nick's hair and he was sporting his HOTD tank top so every time Woody turned around, someone was in his face saying how awesome he was. If it were me, I would've played it off and said 'Thanks man' before signing some fake autographs! It was too funny! Eventually, it's time for the party to end and head back home to Orlando. Especially since the way the bouncers cleared out the place was by not letting anyone use the restrooms. PRICKS!

The next night is Tampa (Bradenton actually) and I had to go solo. Tampa is a two hour drive from where I was, but I wasn't exactly sure where the club Outer Limits was. It wasn't listed in any online yellow pages so I just had to make do and hunt for it. For a little Tampa history for all you knowledge buffs out there, not only is it the death metal capital of the U.S., it's also the lightning capital of the world. Sunny for five minutes and black the next. Let me tell you that hydroplaning in 8 lanes of traffic is NOT very fun. Well, Tampa being Tampa, the rain stopped after 10 minutes and I was approaching The Skyway Bridge. It was so beautiful! It's this huge bridge like 400 feet off the crystal blue water. Directly above me was blue sky and sunshine, while to my left and to my right was the blackest of black clouds and lightning too. I wish I could have taken a picture but my camera batteries had died right before the show started the previous night. When I finally showed up at the Outer Limits, I wasn't out of my car for two seconds before I hear this voice scream 'HEY JOHNNY!!!' It was Scott, someone I met at a HOTD show when they opened for RATT. Since I was alone and it was nice to see a familiar face I spoke with Dan and got him into the show for free. And since he was friends with Mr. Bartender, I got all my drinks for free all night. Good deal? I think so too. This was a nice club, but it was a little small and the air hockey table stole our quarters. We did manage to get some great pictures though.....especially since the stage was only about a foot higher than the ground. Once again, another stupendous show by the Dogs and this time the opening band was actually good! I wish I caught their name.... Any band with 2 lead guitars has to rock a little, right? Yeah!

I left the Tampa show a little early to beat the crowd and to get a head start on a long drive through the Everglades. The bands had the next day off before playing in Hallandale (Ft Lauderdale area) so I figured I'd have a day to kill in a town I'd never been before. The next two days turned out to be two of the worst days of my life. Half way between Tampa and Hallandale I got tired so I pulled in to a rest stop to get a few hours sleep. Okay, the last time I slept in my car it was in a February and somewhat comfortable. This time it was early September so when I woke up I was sweating my nuts off. I was NOT going to do that another night. By the time I made it to Hallandale it was about 10am or so, so I figured I'd stop for breakfast at Denny's and see what was around. After breakfast I headed for the beaches. Within 30 minutes I was fried to the point where I couldn't even wear my hat b/c my forehead stung. This is when the bullshit started. Traffic in Hallandale is nothing but old people or police and the traffic was ALWAYS backed up. Later that day, trying to find a place to stay the night, I was rear-ended by some old lady on Hollywood Blvd. There wasn't any damage, but my Mountain Dew went all over me and my steering wheel. Anyway, I found a hotel to stay and I was going to pay for it with a credit card, but no can do. Because of the Labor Day holiday, the mail didn't go through which meant my credit card payment didn't get delivered yet. I was broke. I ended up swallowing my pride and signed up for a bed at the Salvation Army homeless shelter. I think they honestly believed I was homeless since I smelled all nasty and was sunburnt (from working the streets for change, right?). So I had secured a bed but I wasn't allowed to be there until 5pm. I had to go waste a few hours so I drove to South Beach only to find more traffic with less lanes to drive in and then the parking meter ate my last quarters so I couldn't park. Back to Hallandale for me. I spent another hour sleeping in a park (maybe I really am a bum, lol) before heading back to the shelter. I was still about a half hour early so I waited in my car only to be approached by a man and woman asking for a ride to a motel. I wasn't sure whether they would be staying at the shelter or not so not wanting to make any enemies, I drove them where they wanted to go. They were looking for a cheap motel so they wouldn't have to stay at Salvie's (that's homeless slang). They ended up finding a room but while they were clearing out all their plastic bags from my back seat, I think they accidentally grabbed my HOTD laminate without me noticing. Alright, that's over so back to Salvie's. Just for giving up some personal info, I got a free bed, free shower, and a free fried chicken dinner. Couldn't complain. That was probably one of my favorite showers I've ever taken. After dinner we were allowed to go out back on the patio for cigarettes and a game of Spades. The whole experience wasn't all that bad but next time I think I'll have to stick with the hot car as my bedroom. I heard some crazy ass stories in there.

So now it's the day of the show at a club right off the interstate called Button South. From the outside it looked like a dump, but on the inside it was pretty decent.....except for the fact that the squares were falling off the disco ball during sound check. Like I said, I was without my pass so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get in or not. With a little luck the front doors were unlocked so I went in and sat in an inconspicuous place. I introduced myself to Mike, Cinderella's tour manager hoping he would say I could stay for the show. Here was the worst news of all. After all I had just been through..... Hair of the Dog wasn't even playing that night! A band, LIFT, Tom Keifer had promised a gig, was set to open instead. That sucked....and so did they. Later I kinda butted into a conversation I overheard about car audio. The guy talking turned out to be the (club?) promoter for the show. He eventually asked who I was and what I was doing there since I didn't seem to really be doing anything. I told him my whole story and that I had a pass but it was stolen and since I helped him out with his car audio problems, he gave me a pass for that night. PHEW! I'm in! Even though HOTD wasn't playing, I still wanted to stay so that all my efforts weren't totally wasted. I got a few Cinderella pix and then hung out over by Dan 'the man' and his T-shirt stand. He was still there even though the Dogs were in South Beach. I started playing pool with this girl from Quebec who was there with her roommate, a Cinderella fan, but she wasn't really a fan herself. She was in the states for 5 months to learn English. Conversation was short but we could always laugh at the woman in the corner who had too much to drink and passed out in a chair during the show. It was way too funny! Cinderella finished and I split to head back to home sweet home Orlando.

I wanted to go home So bad, but I was so tired. I slept for a few hours at a gas station and a few more hours at one of those turnpike service areas. I finally got home that day around noon. Amazing how a 200 mile drive can turn into a 12 hour trip....... Okay, so I'm back in Orlando and I hook up with Woody and Jenn again. We're off to the House of Blues at Downtown Disney. KUDOS to the HOB sound crew! I don't know how they did it, but they somehow managed to make Hair of the Dog sound better than ever. This was by far the best HOTD show I've seen yet. Half way through Cinderella's set Racer brought us to the upstairs backstage area and we hung out talking and I finally got the chance to show off my HOTD tattoo (for the dedicated fan only) to Racer, Boot, Ryan and Jay Noble (an employee at from my school). We all listened as Racer gave out some good gossip on the band's future and what Hair of the Dog has to look forward to.

Anyway, the next night's show was in Ft. Myers and I would've had to go in solo again. After my hellish weekend in southern Florida, I wasn't exactly looking forward to going back....and then the last Florida show in Panama City Beach, same situation, was a seven hour drive each way so that was that. No more HOTD shows for me until their next pass though the state and/or an act of God where I can get out of here. So until next time Dog fans, ADIOS!

Other official Hair of the Dog releases include:

Hair of the Dog (1997 & 1998)
Rise (2000)
Ignite (2001)