Dr. Dog heads back to the 'Swamp'

It was from the Psychedelic Swamp that Dr. Dog first emerged, and to the Psychedelic Swamp they have now returned.

That is, at the turn of the millennium, when Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman of Philadelphia indie band Dr. Dog were students at West Chester University, they recorded a low-fi concept album called The Psychedelic Swamp that was never intended for release.

But a decade and a half later, that project - about a man named Phrases who attempts to escape his humdrum daily existence by making an ill-fated getaway to a place called the Psychedelic Swamp - became the focus of a 2015 Philadelphia Fringe Festival production called Swamp Is On that was a collaboration between Dr. Dog and the Pig Iron Theatre Company.

Now the band is getting ready to release a newly recorded version of the album that might qualify as the most experimental and catchiest music Dr. Dog has ever made. It comes out Feb. 5 on the ANTI- label, and the band will support the disc with hometown shows March 17 and April 16 at the Fillmore in Fishtown.

Like the Beach Boys' Smile, Psychedelic Swamp has always held mythical status for fans - an obscure, lost album whose significance is debated by enthusiasts who may or may not have actually heard it.

"We always called it our 'personal masterpiece,' " says guitarist and songwriter McMicken. "That's a humble way to acknowledge that, to us, this is a masterpiece. But we don't expect anyone else to ever agree with that."

That draws a laugh from Leaman, who plays bass and shares songwriting and vocal duties with McMicken. They've been writing songs together since eighth grade.

"And that's one of the things that, when we started working with Pig Iron," Leaman says, "and they actually heard it, that quickly became apparent . . ."

". . . that it had a lot of holes," McMicken says, finishing the thought.

The duo, who grew up in West Grove, Pa., were sitting around a kitchen table last week smoking cigarettes - Leaman Camels, McMicken American Spirits - in the former silversmith mill in Clifton Heights, Delaware County, that they and bandmates Zach Miller, Eric Slick, Frank McElroy, and Dimitri Manos converted into a 5,000-square-foot clubhouse and recording studio.

A dozen guitars and banjos hang on one wall. The painting of a woman holding up a man with a shotgun that was on the cover of their 2008 album, Fate, is on another. The hardworking band, who spend about nine months a year on the road, recorded their 2014 album B-Room and Psychedelic Swamp here, plus another all-but-finished release that has been temporarily shelved to make way for Swamp.

At the time Psychedelic Swamp was conceived, McMicken and Leaman were juniors at West Chester, and Dr. Dog was rounded out by Doug O'Donnell, another West Grove native, who taught them the ins and outs of the harmony singing that has become a Dr. Dog trademark. O'Donnell would soon depart the band, but he plays on several songs on the new Swamp.

"One night we were recording in my bedroom," McMicken recalls, "and the concept was the three of us were going to write three different songs while sitting in the same room. It was in the basement, and it was flooded, and we were really stoned. We developed this thing about it being very swampy and psychedelicized. There was the self-perpetuating inertia of the concept, and, for the next couple of months, we became immersed in it."

Two of those three songs are on the version of Swamp that comes out next month: "Fire on My Back" and "Swamp Theme," a bonus track in a remix by reggae dub master Lee "Scratch" Perry that's included with the album on iTunes.

The loose Swamp concept - which was fleshed out theatrically in September in the Pig Iron production at Union Transfer - also dates to the early days.

"The story," Leaman says, "is that this guy Phrases is sort of fed up with his day-to-day lifestyle. And he starts hearing ads for the Swamp."

Where?

In his head, probably.

"He's hearing what he wants to hear. It's not like he's being promised a million dollars or a trip to the moon, but he's thinking, 'It's a different life. I might as well go there.' "

The world he lands in is stranger than the one he comes from, but the existential lesson is that he winds up living an equally stultifying life. "It's of his own making," Leaman says. "But he has the epiphany too late."

Phrases' response to that is to contact Dr. Dog and entrust the band with the responsibility of communicating his message.

"He sends tapes to us," McMicken says, picking up the story. "He trusts that we can decipher the gibberish and turn it into American pop music so the masses can understand this message he feels so strongly about. Which is: Don't try to use these trivial ways to escape your problems. Make your life count for yourself. There's no easy way out."

When they recorded the original Swamp, the band made a few dozen cassettes for their own use. In 2004, when touring with My Morning Jacket, they made 20 CD-R copies to sell at the merch table.

And as Dr. Dog's consistently pleasing, kind of psychedelic, kind of rootsy, melodic rock has gained in popularity, beginning with the 2005 breakthrough Easy Beat through last year's Live at a Flamingo Hotel, Psychedelic Swamp was pushed aside.

"But we always knew we would return to it," says McMicken, 37, who now lives in Groton, Conn., when not on the road or in the studio. Leaman, 36, lives in Wilmington.

The opportunity for that return arose when they were approached in 2013 by Pig Iron. Leaman had played a role in a Tom Waits cabaret performance put on by the troupe, and Pig Iron artistic director Dan Rothenberg is a fan.

"We were mutual admirers," Rothenberg says. "They're interested in experimental theater. And although it's pop music, there's a message that runs through their music that I'm going to say is spiritual. Even in their other albums, there's a yearning for signs from another dimension."

Early discussions led to the Swamp. "We had this story that we were sitting on," says McMicken. And the collaboration sparked the band creatively.

"They were fearless," McMicken says of the actors playing sci-fi technicians and swamp creatures in the production, which they hope to reprise in 2017 in Boston.

"It was good for us," Leaman agrees. "Sometimes, you get stuck." Working with creative people in another artistic discipline gave them a break from their own album-plus-tour routine. "That was part of the appeal of it."

In Swamp Is On, Dr. Dog becomes the pop group they need to be to bring Phrases' message to the masses, amusingly dressing up as "a duct-tape version" of a boy band, as McMicken puts it.

To do so effectively, of course, they needed pop songs. And that's one of the winning elements of Psychedelic Swamp. Along with low-fi, futuristic sound effects and spaced-out storytelling, it's filled with catchy tunes like "Bring My Baby Back," a Leaman-sung grabber that was not included on the original.

"The concept is, now we're the rock band for the masses," says McMicken. "It's kind of like Spider-Man - with great power comes great responsibility. Phrases needs us to make this album the biggest album ever. So it's Dr. Dog's pop album. We don't have any delusions of it working on that level. But conceptually, that's the approach."

Dr. Dog will play the Fillmore, 29 E. Allen St. at 8 p.m. March 17 with Hop Along and April 16 with Speedy Ortiz. Tickets for each show are $32. Information: 215-309-0150 or www.thefillmorephilly.com.