THE REAL SHEEPDOGS

When I was 16 years old, I invested in a Tascam 4-track recorder. I had been playing guitar, bass and drums for 3 years and I thought it would be fun to record some of the songs I had been writing. The first song I recorded was "Embryo" which had acoustic guitar, banjo, electric bass, double-tracked vocal and backing vocals. The second was "Catheter" which featured two electric guitars, electric bass, drums and a vari-speed vocal (slowed down on the verses and normal on the choruses). More experimentation followed.

I decided that I should record an album, but I didn't want it to be under the name Charlie Campbell; it didn't have a proper rock 'n' roll ring to it. I was (and still am) a Beatles fanatic, so I came up with the name the Sheepdogs. I even went so far as to create fake members for the group. Peter McGuiness on bass/vocals, Bob Sessims on drums/vocals and Larry on guitar/vocals. I played the role of Peter and my friends Andrew George (later of Funkettle) and Dan Wyatt played the roles of Larry and Bob respectively. We went so far as to make a music video (directed by Mathew Gregory Poitras) for the song "Asylum." Dan even fooled his then girlfriend, Anne Smith, into believing that the band was real. Even my friend Bryan Jones (later of Funkettle) believed it was real until I set him straight.

I got sidetracked by my three high school bands (Pelican Stride, Funkettle and Doug Gordon), so the Sheepdogs didn't really see much action. Then during my senior year of high school, our school put out a CD collecting students' music. I contributed three songs under the Sheepdogs name: "The Magic Verbs" "Where's the Ska" (a song Doug Gordon rejected), and the 15 minute "Etah: the Boy of Stone."

Then I went to college and started using the name Lowfeeder for my solo stuff, but I never really did anything with it.