Dogs In A Pile and Kitchen Dwellers are currently in the midst of a joint tour and, on Halloween night, the rising improvisational acts found themselves at Cleveland’s House of Blues. Leaning into the festive holiday, the groups announced before the show that they would collaborate on a special Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater themed concert. Both groups worked selections from the video game’s soundtrack into their own sets and then joined forced on a dual-band encore.
Dogs In A Pile kicked off their show with The Reverend Horton Heat’s “I Can’t Surf,” from 2001’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, which they recently debuted on October 21, and proceeded to offer a number of other songs from the various Tony Hawk video game soundtracks, including their first takes on The Doors’ “Peace Frog,” Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The U.K,” Primus’ “Jerry Was A Race Car Driver” and Merle Kilgore and June Carter’s “Ring on Fire.” They also busted out KISS’ “Strutter,” another Tony Hawk selection, for the first time since October 31, 2024, when they focused on music from Guitar Hero on Halloween.
Earlier in the night, Kitchen Dwellers peppered Tony Hawk material into their set as well, including Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast,” Rancid’s “Old Friend,” Millencolin’s “No Cigar,” Alkaline Trio’s “Mercy Me” and Nena’s “99 Red Balloons” Dogs In A Pile guitarist Brian Murray and drummer Joey Babick then emerged to help the jamgrass outfit through another nod to the video game franchise, Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades,” at the end of their frame.
For the night’s climax, all the members of both acts returned to the stage for one final joint nod to Tony Hawk. The two bands debuted four high-energy tunes featured in the long-running series, Flogging Molly’s “Drunken Lullabies,” CKY’s “96 Quite Bitter Beings,” Goldfinger’s “Superman” and Rage Against The Machine’s “Guerrilla Radio,” before bringing things to a close.
Though Halloween was in the rearview mirror, the fun continued on Sunday at Richmond, VA’s The National. During another joint encore, the two acts came together for their debut takes on Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time” and Widespread Panic’s “Chilly Water.” The latter tune was a direct nod to Panic bassist Dave Schools, who grew up in Richmond. Their other shared encores during the run have ranged from The Band’s “Ophelia” and John Hartford’s “Joseph’s Dream” at Buffalo, NY’s Town Ballroom on Thursday, October 29 to Little Feat’s “Spanish Moon” and Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun” at Columbus, OH’s The Bluestone on Friday, October 30.
The tour will continue at Greensboro, NC’s The Pyrle this evening.
