Describe Lost Dog Found's sound in one sentence?
A high energy, ultra-modern sounding melting pot of Swing, Jump Blues, New Orleans Soul, and Rockabilly.
When was Lost Dog Found formed and where?
Lost Dog Found formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in early 2010.
Name three people who have influenced your music, and tell us why? Living or dead.
We've always been huge fans of The Brian Setzer Orchestra obviously; the music is electric swing, truly. He was the first one to really have a big ol' horn section being led by an electric guitar, and their energy both in their recordings and live is just jaw-dropping. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is also a huge influence for us both musically and how they go about running the band; they have a great charm about the way their songs are presented that you can't help but like them, and they've shown Lost Dog Found that it is possible to get a huge sound out of a somewhat small horn section (we only have four horns, BBVD uses five). The Beatles are an easy one for us to point to as an influence as well; you could spend your life studying how they used melodies with different chord structures to create these magnificent songs that appealed to all-ages, not to mention their ground breaking recording techniques.
How do you connect with fans and get them involved in your music?
At every show we make sure we split up the room, and each band member gets a section to go around and personally thank each person for coming out to see us, and give them a free download card for our favorite song to play live (Locomotive, available for download here). The link on the card takes them directly to a page on our site where they can download the song, join our mailing list, like us on Facebook, and buy our album right there. The download cards are a great ice breaker to start a conversation with people who came to see you, and lets them know that you are a real person who does really appreciate their support. It's an honest way to build a supportive community around your music, and people want to see you do well when they actually know you.
An even better and funner approach is what we've done with Monty the Monkey, a stuffed animal who happens to be wearing a shriners cap and has become the band's official mascot. We began bringing him to shows, and having fans have their pictures taken with them. We'd take those pictures and put them up on a special section of our web site where those fans could go to the next day and see their pictures. It's a great conversation piece at the shows, we hope that people share the pictures with their friends, and it drives those fans over to our website where they will hopefully either join the mailing list or buy our album.
What do you like the most about Jango Airplay?
The analytics are really fantastic; it's a great tool knowing what age demographic your music resonates with, and what area of the nation/world you have struck a nerve in. I think we're up to fans in 60 countries now at this point; truly a world wide way to get your music out there to people who wouldn't have ever heard of you otherwise. We've more recently been using Jango.com as a temperature gauge for what songs we should be releasing off of our new album, "The Jump Start Scandal." The tracking of likes and paid plays gives us a "hit percentage" (dividing the number of likes by the number of plays) that is a tool we can't get anywhere else, and makes it easy to know which songs we should be pushing for adds on radio stations based on their popularity from Jango.com listeners.
We just released our debut album, "The Jump Start Scandal" which has 11 all-original songs that we really couldn't be any happier in how the project turned out. We just released it a couple of weeks ago digitally, and it's already getting some awesome reviews and selling nicely for us. You can get it on iTunes, Amazon.com, and CD Baby. We've also just revamped our website to cross-brand the album with our online presence.
Are you guys playing live and do you have any shows coming up soon?
We have a pretty busy summer lined up; we usually play 2-3 mid-size venues a month, on top of our appearances at the main stage of the 2012 Petaluma Music Festival, Concord's 24th Music & Market Series, the Sonoma County Fair, and Redwood City's Concert Series. We're also currently planning a tour to support the album for later this summer, hitting parts of California we don't get to on a normal basis, pass through the Northwestern States, and back down again! Then back to the recording studio again hopefully before we start up our holiday shows!
Connect With Lost Dog Found
Lost Dog Found Official Website
Lost Dog Found on Jango Radio
Lost Dog Found on Facebook
Lost Dog Found on Twitter