Dog Legs & Feet
Now Available: Bottom (A Live Collection)
"One of the most delightful and fun albums ever!"
Dog Legs & Feet's classic 1999 live album, "Bottom (A Live Collection)" gives listeners a front-row seat to the band's intimate live show, full of heart, energy and improv-troupe charm.
The album is newly remastered for streaming but preserves the raw authenticity of the original CD release.
Recorded at Pato's Good Tacos in Austin, Texas, in March 1998 - on what was supposed to be Michael Mergen's last night with the group - "Bottom" captures the band giving it their all because they are not sure they'll get another chance.
Listeners have called it "One of the most delightful and fun albums ever," "passionate," "lovely," "fun and unique," with a "cool raw sound" and an "old-school vibe."
Music
About the band
Equal parts jug band, pit orchestra, and plucky alt-folk ensemble, Dog Legs & Feet began winning hearts in 1997 with intimate live shows and engaging original songs.
Personnel include Jeremy Edwards (a.k.a. Jerome Freely), lead singer Jon Watson, bassist Joe Trent, and multi-instrumentalists John Botti, Michael Mergen, and Brett Youens.
Perhaps best known for setting Shakespeare's songs to modern music, the band was born out of the Austin, Texas community theatre scene. They scored, worked backstage on, performed in, and even directed plays with numerous local outfits including the Rude Mechs, Zach Scott Theatre, the University of Texas’ Shakespeare at Winedale program, and others.
The music romps through folk, bluegrass, country, rock, jazz, pop, and -- yes -- Elizabethan drama, combining tight vocal harmonies, catchy melodies, funky basslines, howling harmonicas, the odd trumpet, clarinet, or accordion solo, and lyrics both new and very, very old.
Dog Legs & Feet recorded three albums together, or four, depending on how you count.
"Bottom (A Live Collection)" was released in 1999, then remastered and rereleased in 2023.
"Last Night," recorded in 1999 but never released, marks the band’s evolution into a more confident folk-rock ensemble.
"Shakespeare's Palpable Hits," produced in collaboration with Winedale in 2005, leans into the band’s theatrical roots. Palpable Hits presents modern takes on songs used in and around Austin-area Shakespeare plays over more than a decade.
Several DLF members and guest musicians recorded a fourth album, "The Volpone Soundtrack," under the band name "The Fricace" in 2001
Press photos
