Track by Track: Eaten by Dogs

Cash Savage & The Last Drinks bassist CHRIS LICHTI has released a self-titled debut album by his own band, Eaten by Dogs. He doesn’t think it’s that good. He’s wrong.

‘The Longest Shadow’

This is my favourite song on the album and it’s still too long. I give myself a very hard time writing lyrics. I won’t sing about anything that I have not come close to experiencing. I don’t mind exaggeration but I try not to lie. I have not been to prison (jail, yes) and I damned well know I haven’t been drinking whiskey and wine in Louisiana or Tennessee.

This song is as close, musically, as we can get to writing a Bruce Springsteen song. The band give their best performance and oddly enough they are barely playing anything at all. All I ever wanted to do with this life was write ‘Racing in the Streets’, and that prick Springsteen took it away from me in 1978 before I was even born.

‘If It Ain’t Killing You, It’s Sure Killing Me’

Try to imagine the saddest man in the world telling you to cheer up. Imagine a person mid-suicide attempt telling you to think things over: “It’ll be alright.” I try to imagine what circumstances would lead someone to this position, and what they would look like to provoke such a response.

In country music it’s all bleak. At least it should be, in my opinion. I don’t care about your rainy days. This is what I want songs to be about.

Some of Mick [Hansby]’s best guitar work is in this song. If he plays something that’s better than I could have made up, then I know it’s good cookin’. Sometimes you have to drag quality out of Mick. He’s like a gargoyle that comes alive in the dark as well as a gentleman of the forest.

‘Gallows in Disguise’

This song represents the other half of the album. To me, the band does the work and the lyrics take a backseat for a moment. It’s not straight country but it’s definitely a crossover that we enjoy playing.

It is also one of mine and Callum [Preston]’s favourite Mindsnare songs. Our version sounds pretty similar and the lyrics are word for word the same, but our version is definitively classier. Mr. Maunder would back us up on that too.

I am a very big fan of the chorus guitar line in this song. I like that a lot of our guitar lines can be sung or hummed. I think Josh’s pedal steel/lap steel is so effective in this song, particularly this song.

Josh [Crawley, Graveyard Train] could have taken his role as just filling in space but he became an absolutely vital instrument, melodically. I wouldn’t play this song live without him. I wouldn’t think of wiping my bottom without him.

‘Holding On to Nothing’

Our foray into the big bad riffs of the spaghetti western. Forget the lyrics in this one; it’s all about Mick’s guitar.

Musically, this song deserved some desert-themed lyrics. Unfortunately, I could not accommodate. As I have mentioned previously, I am only comfortable singing about what I know. So, what should have been Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven felt much closer to Blazing Saddles. More cliché than reality.

The lyrics will do for now. They are personal and descriptive. But I mainly enjoy the band and Mick’s guitar on this song.

‘Ain’t a Bad Man’

”I ain’t a bad man, just a sad one.”

I relate to this sentiment for about 90% of the day. When I’m eating cereal when I should be working. When I’m masturbating when I should be eating cereal. When watching wrestling is more important than masturbating.

It’s a cold, unforgiving world out there and it doesn’t help if you’re a fuckup at the same time. If this sounds like you, then there is a group of us that get together and meet once a month. You are not alone. You are a loser.

The other 10% of the day I’m on the toilet and I feel otherworldly euphoria.

‘Lord What Have I Done’

My dad’s favourite song. I think he likes it more for the guitar melody and writing structure of the lyrics than the idea that his son is, at times, a drunken, pathetic shell of a person.

Whether you can relate to a song like this or not, I wanted to convincingly keep the listener intrigued by counterbalancing the dark of the story against the light of the music. I think that is something we attempt to do in a lot of our songs.

On every other day I think the song is entirely too simple and would like another shot at the lyrics or to pursue my true calling: professional wrestling storyboard writer. “He hits him with the chair … now.”

‘At the End’

This song is about succumbing to the pressures that we put on ourselves. It is easier to never try. But I think, for me, the anxiety stemming from fear would not be as crippling as the regret of never attempting what I want to achieve.

Every other week, I question my choice to ever become a musician. I’m a bass player more often than a frontman and I love slinking into the background, nodding off at times. As a singer I hate being up the front. I’m more comfortable with an audience’s silence than applause. What the hell are you supposed to do when people clap at you?

Mick was given one hour to get his guitar tone right in the studio. I left to get some dinner and by the time I got back he’d pulled out this ridiculous 12-string guitar, which for some reason made the final edit. Mick either has vision well beyond his years or he’s incredibly lucky that everybody didn’t think he was wasting a huge amount of time, and smash that stupid guitar into his face.

Alternatively, I was probably too busy shame-eating a huge amount of KFC in a dark corner to participate in what was bound to be a very unfruitful argument. I still want to break that guitar. Don’t let the darkness swallow you whole, brothers and sisters.

‘Fallen Not Broken’

I slave away obsessively rewriting verses. It comes easy to other singers apparently – they can put pen to paper and they’ve immediately got some Hemingway shit. I rewrite and rewrite lyrics and am never happy. If I had enough time to get the standard of lyric to where I wanted them to be, we would not have finished recording this album.

Funnily, I am terrible at remembering any form of lyric: other people’s and especially my own. You’d think that for someone that cares so much about lyrics, he could at least remember his own. Propagandhi write great lyrics but I couldn’t tell you any of them. Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen and Mickey Newbury wrote great lyrics (used to; I think Springsteen hasn’t been unhappy in about 20 years) and I can only remember a line or two while it’s playing.

I love lyrics. I can tell a good lyric immediately by its efficiency, clarity and necessity within the song structure. If the song can’t do without it then you’ve got to keep it. Now go make every line as good as that. It’s impossible and can drive you insane. I wonder how other people do it.

I hate the idea that this album, to me, has about five songs with substandard lyrics. I would like to know if people can pick them. Though, at the end, it doesn’t really matter because I can’t remember all of them anyway.

‘One by One’

I’m never sure about this one. We had some structural ideas that we wanted to test in the studio that didn’t quite pan out and this was the result.

I like to think deep down that I didn’t push this song forward in an attempt to obtain radio play. But interestingly, those people that were given the CD prior to its release, by and large, picked this song as the first release.

We won’t be releasing this as a single. I like that the song takes up a certain aural space on the album. It sounds like us, but I dislike that it doesn’t sound how I had hoped and I dislike my (currently being repressed) motives behind it. It would be good to hear other people’s thoughts on this, particularly other bands’.

‘Another Round Bartender’

Not all of your problems can be solved through drinking, but many of them can and will be. Sometimes it takes some rough nights to pull you out of a hole. Other people it will consume entirely.

My friend Carlson’s favourite song on the album. His music collection is vast and his taste is eclectic to say the least. His band, Babe Jam, is the best band in the world and I am their one and only fan … for now. To know that he’s been found passed out playing this song at extreme volume is very satisfying.

“Eaten by Dogs are the best band in the world! We are the best at what we do! If you think otherwise we’ll bash your tiny brains in!”

Every Eaten by Dogs gig starts and ends this way. Admittedly, I am generally saying this to a scattered room of 10 people downing their pints in glorious solitude. I would like one day for Eaten by Dogs to be given the opportunity to prove the statement … in a flaming-tables, over-the-top-rope battle royale.

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‘Eaten by Dogs’ is out now on CD, vinyl and digital through Black Hat Rackets. The album launches tonight (Aug 28) at The Toff in Town with Brendan Welch Band and Joshua Seymour (Cherrywood); tickets here.