Embedded Files
No telling of the legendary Flint Jacobs’ story can be complete without the story of a band called The Dogs of War. The flamboyant violinist we know and love may be renowned for his experimental orchestral performances, but that’s not where he got his start. Before his days in the professional strings section, Flint Jacobs was making a name for himself in the alt scene.
Flint - “I knew I wanted to do something with my music, but the traditional scene just wasn’t ready for someone like me. I broke the rules too much. So, after a couple years of being a music tutor and getting strangled by different orchestras, I got into alternative stuff. I bounced between a handful of bands. For about six months I was in a band called Flight Risk. It was nice to be a part of something, but I knew they only wanted me cause I was an alright guitarist. They never let me play to my own strengths much.”
Ilya - “Is that around the time you met Nick Tremblay?”
Flint - “Yeah, it is. Nick Tremblay. Now that’s a man with vision. In a scene full of old-fashioned stuck-in-the-past losers, Nick was a guy who saw something special in me.”
Ilya - “What was your first meeting?”
Flint - “There’s this shitty little bar back in my home city, Grigg’s Pub, they were having three bands play some random Friday night. Flight Risk was one of them, the others were The Dogs of War, and some other band I can’t remember the name of. I hadn’t heard of either of them before. The Dogs of War were up first, and I remember being kinda shocked. When you’re in local music scenes, you get used to the fact that most of the music you hear kinda sucks. The Dogs of War blew me away by not just ‘not sucking,’ but by being actually pretty good. They were certainly better than Flight Risk, and I get the feeling everyone in the bar knew it. We were the second band that played, and we got a lot less applause than Dogs of War. After that set, the band was a bit upset and ready to leave, but before we could go, this husky with a dozen piercings in his face walks up to me and starts chatting me up. He was the pianist for The Dogs of War, and wanted to chat, so we talked for a while. He was super into the idea of me playing such an odd instrument, and was disappointed that Flight Risk had clipped my wings a bit by only letting me play it in one song. Then, he invites me to come drink with the rest of his bandmates.”
Ilya - “Right off the bat, he invited you to drink with them?”
Flint - “Mhmm. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was testing my chemistry with the band, seeing if I fit in with them so he could get me to join them.”
Ilya - “He poached you from Flight Risk?”
Flint - “He didn’t poach me, I defected.”
Flint Jacobs became the first non-founding member of the band, and the only non-founding member to ever be considered a true “Dog of War.” With our subject honey badger among their ranks, they had solidified their six-person lineup. Singer, guitarist, pianist, bassist, drummer, and the special oddball of a violinist and cellist.
Though The Dogs of War may seem to us only a stepping stone to Flint’s future fame, for a long time, it was his life.
Ilya - “Introduce yourselves, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Marley - “I’m Marley Frey, I was the lead guitarist and graphic designer for The Dogs of War.”
Jackson - “And I’m Jackson Suharto. I was the drummer and the manager.”
Ilya - “You two were in the band before Flint joined. You got to meet Flint as a perfect stranger, and get to know him as he developed his place within the band. What was it like, having him join?”
Marley - “Me personally, I was a bit skeptical of him. I remember telling Nick, like, ‘five people is already a pretty big band, and we’re thinking of getting a sixth?’
Jackson - “There was definitely an air of skepticism at the beginning. I think Grea and Nick were the only people who were into it from the start, and Vera just didn’t care.”
Marley - “The fact that he played violin and cello just made it a bit harder. Even Grea agreed that he wasn’t sure where a violin fit into our music.”
Jackson - “Still, though, as we got to know him, and he brought his ideas to our practice sessions, the more we warmed up to him.”
Marley - “He was a fully fledged Dog of War in less than a month.”
Ilya - “His skills must have been very impressive for you to induct him, in spite of how ‘odd’ his instruments were.”
Marley - “They were. I mean, violins are good instruments, and they’ve been used in plenty of punk or grunge songs from lots of artists, but they’re almost always a twist to the occasional ballad. Having a violin part in a song is one thing. Our band evolving to have a violin or a cello as a mainstay is a whole other leap to make.”
Ilya - “And Flint was special enough that you were willing to make it?”
Jackson - “He was.”
For a while, The Dogs of War was just like any other local band. In time, their unique style and great music earned them a special sort of notoriety among those local artists, but they were little more than a favorite of a relatively small music scene. Though their first album, “Let Slip the Dogs of War,” has since acquired a cult fandom, at time of release it sold less than a hundred copies.
This did not deter the group from their work, however. The Dogs of War continued writing songs, performing shows, and making a modest profit from their little side-gig while dreaming of a future of fame, fortune, and glory. Hard work, however, is not always enough to get in the spotlight. Sometimes you just need to be in the right place at the right time, and be blessed with a good helping of good luck.
Ilya - “Tell me about Vera Braun.”
Flint - “That woman was special. There’s never been a soul on this earth like her. We were all Dogs of War, all six of us, but none of us were a Dog of War like she was.”
Ilya - “If you could describe Vera Braun in one word, what would it be?”
Marley - “Psycho.”
Jackson - “Lunatic.”
Marley - “Insane.”
Jackson - “Passionate.”
Marley - “Driven.”
Jackson - “Addicted.”
Marley - “Horndog.”
Jackson - “Sad.”
Marley - “Lonely.”
Ilya - “What was Vera like?”
Flint - “A crazy person in the best ways just as much as the worst ways.”
Ilya - “She’s the one who made The Dogs of War famous, wasn’t she?”
Flint - “In a way. She didn’t plan for it, she just… did. In the time I knew her, that was pretty much her approach to life. She didn’t think, she followed her instincts. That night, her instincts got us in the news.”
On August 28th, 2023, The Dogs of War played a show in a bar called “The Nook.” Unbeknownst to them, that show would change their lives. In the middle of their song “Free for All,” Vera Braun, frontman and lead singer for The Dogs of War, noticed something in the crowd.
Flint - “Something I feel a lot of people don’t appreciate about that story is how it all came down to dumb luck. Most of the time when you’re on stage, even in a shitty little bar like The Nook, you’ve got these bright lights shining in your face that make it impossible to see more than a couple meters away. That night, though, we show up, and the manager tells us, ‘alright, you’re all set up, there’s just one problem: the stage lights aren’t working.’”
Without working stage lights, the bar had to rely on its standard ceiling lighting, meaning that even on stage in the middle of the show, anybody on stage could see every individual patron in the bar. In these conditions, Vera happened to catch of glimpse of someone in the back of the bar– a man who had just drugged someone’s drink.
Flint - “I remember standing there, playing that shrieking high note in the chorus, when suddenly Vera shouts into the microphone ‘yo, what the hell are you doing back there?’ Before I even registered that something was wrong, she had jumped off the stage and was barrelling through the crowd. The rest of that night is just a total blur.”
After a brief verbal confrontation, Vera started beating the man up in the middle of the bar. By the time police arrived, she had broken the man’s nose, fractured his collar bone, and given him a concussion. The two officers attempted to arrest Vera for assault, which prompted the singer to call the officers “rape lovers” and chug the drink the man had drugged to prove his wrong doing. Vera Braun passed out in the middle of her arrest, and was then taken to a hospital. A blood test confirmed the presence of Rohypnol in her system.
Following her arrest, she was charged with assault and battery, and her case became a major controversy. People in the city protested the case, and held rallies in support of Vera, a woman who stood up against sexual assault, while the city was protecting an attempted rapist. The controversy only grew larger when a social media post about the incident went viral, turning this local headline into a week of online outrage, followed by a flood of letters to nearly every city official with even a tangential relationship to the criminal justice system.
Eventually, Vera was acquitted of all charges, and The Dogs of War could return to their normal lives. Except, it was no longer quite so normal.
Flint - “On a good night, and I mean a real good night, we got fifty people to see us, and five of them would buy merch. Any merch, even a two dollar sticker. That first show we did after the trial, we had people lining up outside the bar trying to get in. We sent Marley to go check it out, and she comes back, her eyes crazy wide. She just goes, ‘guys, there’s dozens of ‘em out the door.’”
Ilya - “With how much controversy had sparked about Vera’s trial, did any of you expect it?”
Flint - “Jackson expected it to a certain degree. Even still, he figured we’d get a dozen, maybe two dozen extra people at most. He didn’t expect the bar would be packed like sardines and still have thirty people waiting outside.”
Ilya - “And that was only the start of your rise to fame.”
Flint - “That show was pretty much the turning point for us. When we realized just how big this was, Jackson pulled Nick aside and they had to have a chat about things.
Ilya - “Jackson, you had a talk with Nick that night. What was that?”
Jackson - “Nick made me the manager of the band for a reason. I have good business sense. As soon as Marley told us how many people had lined up, I knew what was happening, and I knew we had to capitalize on it. That night would make or break us. A hundred people had come to show support for the random local musician who made a stand. One of two things would happen: they watch the show, think our music is just okay, and leave mostly just glad to make some superficial show of support, or they watch with the intent to make a show of superficial support, end up loving our music, and leave as honest-to-god fans. We had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we couldn’t afford to let it slip through our fingers.
Ilya - “So what happened next?”
Flint - “Nick comes back and he makes this big speech about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that had fallen in our laps, and how we had to take advantage of it. It wasn’t enough to be good, we had to be perfect. We needed jaws to drop. We originally didn’t plan on mentioning the Nook incident at all, but now Nick was telling Vera that after our opener she had to mention how she was almost sent to prison, and play up her stint in the jail. He says we all have to be as flashy as possible, to embrace our characters, go hog-wild.
Ilya - “And what was your character?”
Flint - “Ha! I was the flamboyant one, in my flashy outfits, and my fluttering eyelashes. While Vera played the sex icon, I played the gentle lover. Some things never change.”
Ilya - “Did people like that persona?”
Flint - “Oh, they loved it.”
Ilya - “Forgive me for asking what might be a bit of an obvious question, but did it work?”
Jackson - “It went better than I could have dreamed of. I remember while Nick was giving the band his pep talk, I was on the phone with my roommate begging him to grab the extra box of CD’s I had in my bedroom, just in case we sold out during the show. Even after he brought that extra, we sold every single CD we owned, and got names and addresses for a dozen other people who wanted CDs when they were next available. We ran out shirts, stickers, hats, hell the only thing we didn’t run out of were pins.”
Marley - “After a year and a half of the band basically being a fun side-gig for us, I started to think that maybe this had potential to be something serious.”
And serious, they were. Vera’s impromptu speech about almost getting imprisoned went viral, and with it, their music. The band’s Instagram account exploded, going from around nine hundred followers to nine thousand overnight. By the end of the weekend, they had hit fifteen thousand.
Jackson - “Me and Nick started working overtime. We were putting every song we had on every social media platform we knew, and creating accounts on every website we hadn’t already signed up for. We were making and uploading videos every single day, constantly replying to comments and DMs. It was exhilarating.”
Marley - “I thought we were dreaming.”
From then onwards, The Dogs of War only continued to grow in popularity. In October of 2023, not even eight months after Let Slip the Dogs of War had been released, they published their second album, Bite Back. The album was a massive success, earning a respectable amount of sales, and unanimous praise among their new fans.
Ilya - “What was it like, suddenly having so much attention coming your way?”
Flint - “It was shocking, but amazing. I always loved the spotlight, and suddenly it felt like I truly earned my place in it. We had fans, ones who came to our shows, bought our merch, and listened to our songs.”
Ilya - “What did the financial side of things look like for you?”
Flint - “At the time, I was working as a receptionist for a hotel, and after Bite Back came out I made more money in a week than I had made in months working at that hotel.”
Ilya - “Were you and your bandmates considering doing music full time?”
Flint - “We threw the idea around. Some of us were more confident than others. In the end, we decided it would be best not to jump the gun. We’d made a lot of money on Bite Back and all the merch sales, but for all we knew this spike in popularity might not have lasted. We decided to keep on a steady course for a while, keep the band as a side-gig on paper, let some time pass, and see how the next album went.”
What followed was the longest time period The Dogs of War had ever gone without releasing an album. For fourteen months, the band continued performing to large crowds, on some occasions even travelling to do shows in different states, all without any word of a new album. By the time fans started getting impatient, however, they released the double-album Excommunicator in January 2025, and found themselves once again raking in mountains of cash.
Flint - “We thought Bite Back was a success, but we hadn’t seen anything yet. Excommunicator, despite being a glam/punk/grunge double-album in an era where nobody listens to albums, and nobody gives a damn about punk music, managed to get triple the sales of Bite Back. That was when we knew this was going to work. I put in my two weeks notice at the hotel three days after the album came out. Nick didn’t even put in notice for his job, he just quit showing up.”
The Dogs of War now had over a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. “Put Me Down,” the final track of Excommunicator, had over eight million streams on Spotify, with the band having over three hundred thousand monthly listeners on the app. They had finally reached a level of success that afforded them stability– the chance to focus entirely on music. With every passing year, they continued to grow in popularity, and with each album they released, they raked in more and more cash.
Jackson - “A bad show for us was three hundred people, with a fifteen dollar ticket each getting about $4,500 gross, nix about five hundred for expenses, split the rest as profits, and we walked home with about $650 each, just for one show, not including merch sales. That was considered a bad night.”
Ilya - “And what was the average night like?”
Jackson - “Five or six hundred people, twenty dollars per ticket, with us all taking about one and a half grand each. Include merch sales, that’s another few hundred per person.”
Ilya - “Quite an impressive feat for an indie band, especially considering you never had any agents or marketing deals.”
Jackson - “It was just us and our music. Any marketing that ever happened was by us.”
Ilya - “It sounds like you all made a decent living just on your live shows. How much did your albums earn?”
Jackson - “It varied from album to album obviously, but assuming a record had fifty thousand sales, and all fifty thousand of the sales were purely digital, which came at a price of about twelve dollars for our single albums, that’s six hundred thousand dollars gross. After taxes, expenses, fees, all that shit, we could expect well over fifty grand each.”
Ilya - “For most people, that’s a solid annual income on its own. Fifty thousand plus maybe a thousand every concert is a lot of dough.”
Jackson - “It is, but we still ended up making more than that because of physical releases, some years we released more than one record, and a few of our records are double albums.”
Ilya - “So in those early days, you were living quite comfortably.”
Flint - “Comfortable is an understatement. I was twenty-four and living like a rock star. I mean, I owned a home and had it paid off before leaving my mid twenties. We had the money to rent a professional sound-proof studio instead of practicing in my moms’ garage.
Ilya - “And this fame wasn’t fleeting. The Dogs of War weren’t some one-hit-wonder flash in the pan.”
Flint - “Not at all. We were living large for years after Bite Back.”
The Dogs of War went on to publish six more album during these prime years. September 2025, Light Up. April 2026, Wanted: Dead Nor Alive. February 2027, Yet Another Double Album. December 2027, Low Down Dog. April 2028, Caged. The band’s wonder years culminated in March 2029 with the release of Fame, Fortune, and Fear, a double-album rock opera based on the band’s experiences with the music industry. The album is their biggest financial success, and their second most critically acclaimed album.
Ilya - “What were those years like?”
Flint - “It’s hard to put into words. They were wonderful. At the time, they were the best years of my life. The Dogs of War were my best friends.”
Ilya - “So what were your relationships with your bandmates like?”
Flint - “Nick was the one I was closest with, but that was kinda the case for all of us. He was a bit of an idiot, and he was also an asshole– god was he a fucking asshole– but you just couldn’t help but love him.”
Ilya - “What about him made him so loveable?”
Flint - “He genuinely cared about you. Sure, he was a dick, but he’d give you the clothes on your back if you asked him to. Was he obnoxious? Sure, but it was endearing, because he was sincere. Nothing about him was faked to please you. And he loved to talk. He didn’t care what it was about, he just wanted to talk to you, hear whatever you had to say. He was everyone’s best friend.”
Ilya - “And the others?”
Flint - “Me and Marley always got along. We had a bit of a special gay bond, you know? I’ve always been an absolute flaming homosexual, and when we met she was a young queer woman still figuring out who she was. Me and Jackson were always friendly, but… how should I put it… we didn’t always mesh that well. Vera was a party animal. Just a wild mutt you knew you could always rely on for a good time. Me and her relationship was a bit… strained, at one point, but for the most part the two of us always loved going out on the town together.”
Ilya - “And Grea Davis?”
Flint - “Heh. Well, we had our ups and downs.”
Ilya - “You’ve alluded to a couple tensions thus far. It sounds like those years of fame weren't all perfect.”
Flint - “Of course they weren’t perfect. No five year span in anybody’s life is perfect. All friends have their disagreements, their arguments. Most of the time you work out your differences, and you move on. And when you can’t…”
Ilya - “Things blow up.”
Flint - “Yeah.”
Ilya - “What was it that blew things up for The Dogs of War?”
Flint - “Some people have a rough past. The Dogs of War were no exception. Nick’s past… it isn’t the kind of past that’s easy to let go of.”
Ilya - “Tell me about that night in Perry’s.”
Jackson - “Hmph. There aren’t really words for it. It was rough.
Ilya - “What happened?”
Jackson - “Me and Nick occasionally went to a bar together, partly to hang out, partly to talk shop. We get to the bar, start sipping our beers, and we’re chatting about this show we were planning that weekend, getting an estimate for how much merch we needed, stuff like that. Around the time we’re halfway through beer number three, a panther walks up to us. He knows our music, says he recognizes us as Dogs of War.”
Ilya - “Was that something that happened often?
Jackson - “I mean, it’s not like we were Hollywood stars or anything, but we occasionally got recognized. It was pretty normal, so I’m mentally preparing to sign an autograph, get a picture or something, when suddenly, right as Nick turns and makes eye contact with him, they both freeze. The panther goes silent mid-sentence, and his eyes go wide. Before I could ask what was wrong, the guy starts stammering, and… god… Nick just, pulls out his gun, and he shoots him… as casually as you put food in the microwave.”
Ilya- “Did he say anything?”
Jackson - “I was sitting there freaking out, asking him what the fuck was wrong with him, and he just puts his gun back in his holster, leans on the bar, sips his beer, and tells me ‘make sure the band goes on without me.’”
On the night of April 4th, 2029, Nick Tremblay was arrested for second degree murder after shooting Felix Atwater three times in the chest. A week later, he pled guilty, and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He is currently in the tenth year of his sentence. Thanks to his good behavior, and some negotiations from our producers, I was able to interview him under the condition that a guard be present during the process.
Ilya - “That night in Perry’s, you told Jackson that you wanted the band to go on without you.”
Nick - “I did. The Dogs of War was my baby, the output of all my creative energy, but it wasn’t mine alone. I knew my time was up, but that didn’t mean I had to bring it all crashing down with me. It wasn’t enough to give them my blessing to go on without me, I had to command them.”
Ilya - “What happened that night? Why did you kill Felix Atwater?”
Nick - “To atone for my cowardice.”
Ilya - “Could you explain that?”
Nick - “I wasn’t a good kid. Ran in bad circles, did a lot of bad things. I was never in a gang myself, but I had connections, and my friends did too. When I was nineteen, me and my girlfriend of the time, Jamie, were planning a party at our place. We needed drugs, so we set up a meeting to get some. Jamie was… she was special to me. When I ran away from home, she was the person I stayed with. We had been dating for three years, and lived together for two. We go to this meeting, just a normal drug deal, we’d done it a thousand times, but the guy we meet looks at us, and he looks at Jamie, and says he recognizes her. Says he’s seen her hanging around with some guy who was in a rival gang, and accuses us of setting him up. We try to keep things calm for a few seconds, it’s all just a panicked blur to me, but then… everything else I can see it as if I was still standing in that alleyway.
Ilya - “I understand–
Nick - “Shut the fuck up. He pulls up his shirt, flashes the piece in his waistband– a silver and black Wilson Combat nine millimeter. It was a nice gun. Nicer than what I was carrying. All I had on my hip was a shitty Makarov I stole from my dad. Jamie was packing too, and she made it known. She pulls up her hoodie, shows off the Sig-Sauer in her waistband, and tells him not to threaten her. He drew faster than she could. He pulled the trigger twice, both bullets catching Jamie in the stomach. I sprint down the alley and duck behind a corner as a third shot rang out. That was when I drew. I knew Jamie was down there, I knew she’d been shot, and I knew that bastard was still at the other end, waiting to finish me off. I stood there, gun in my hands, shaking like a leaf. I wanted to ventilate that bastard. I wanted to check on Jamie. I wanted to see if she was alive, or… if she wasn’t, at least get her body. But I couldn’t. I just… ran. I ran away. I left her there. I don’t even know if she was dead yet.”
Ilya - “That’s horrible. I’m… very sorry to hear.”
Nick - “I spent eight years haunted by that night. No matter how much time passed, no matter how much I thought I had moved on, I could still see her face at night, smell her perfume every time I held another woman. Worst of all, I saw his eyes in my nightmares. Bright, yellow cat eyes. I could never forget them. After eight years of living in the shadow of those mistakes, I stared them down again in a shitty bar. I recognized him the moment we locked eyes. Bright, yellow cat eyes. He recognized me too. My instincts took over again, only this time I didn’t run. I stood my ground. I paid him back for every shot he took at us. Two for Jamie, one for me. Only I didn’t miss the third.”
Ilya - “For such heat of the moment rage, you were quite calm when you surrendered to the police.”
Nick - “I didn’t kill him out of rage. I killed him cause I needed payback. I surrendered myself because I had gotten even, and there was no point in running. Don’t mistake my hatred for rage.”
Ilya - “Was there a reason you surrendered peacefully? Why you pled guilty without even taking a plea bargain?”
Nick - “Cause I committed murder. No way around that. It had been eight years since he killed Jamie. I didn’t even know the guy’s name until the headline got published. He may have been a completely different person from when we crossed paths in that alley. A lot can change in eight years. Way I see things, he didn’t deserve to live, but I still deserve punishment for killing him.”
Ilya - “So, do you regret killing him?”
Nick - “The only thing I regret is that killing him doomed The Dogs of War.”
Ilya - “How did Nick’s imprisonment affect you?”
Flint - “I took it hard. We all did. Nick was my best friend. One of my only friends. I felt like I’d lost a brother. Hell, it felt like I’d lost a mentor. I owe a lot of who I am to Nick, and… it wasn’t easy seeing him in that orange jumpsuit through the visitation room glass.”
Ilya - “So, Nick told you he wanted the band to continue without him. What did the band do?”
Jackson - “I mean, we honored his wish, as best as we could at least. We auditioned for new keyboardists, landed on a jackal named Nande Louw, and tried to keep doing shows without him.
Marley - “Things were never really the same though.”
Ilya - “What kind of effects did that have on the band?”
Flint - “For a while, we tried to act like things were business as usual, but we all knew it wasn’t. Nande was a very talented person, but she wasn’t a Dog of War. She wasn’t Nick. Nick wasn’t just a talent, he was the glue that held us all together, whether he knew it or not. Without him, things just kinda started falling apart.”
Ilya - “How so?”
Flint - “We had all lost our best friend. We were miserable. Our moods got worse, we were more irritable. Every little disagreement between us piled up into this mountain. Tensions between us all just got worse and worse.”
Ilya - “How did you react?”
Flint - “I think most of us could see the writing on the wall, but I was the one most willing to read it. I don’t think I intended to, but I started becoming a bit more distant from the band. We all did some solo work on the side, songs that didn’t fit the Dogs of War vibe, or didn’t make the cut for the next album. I started drifting more and more into my solo work, became less present during practices. That caused a lot of tension, especially between me and Jackson.”
Ilya - “What was going on between you and Flint?”
Jackson - “I liked Flint, but the two of us didn’t always see eye to eye on management stuff. There was always something he wanted us to do differently. He didn’t like that we insisted on staying completely independent, or that we only collabed with small artists. He thought I wasn’t ruthless enough, always complaining about how we could have been making millions from big record deals. No matter how much success we had, I was never doing enough. I was too gentle in an industry that needed to be cutthroat.”
Flint - “In hindsight, I think a lot of my disagreements were unfair. I targeted a lot of blame at Jackson cause I thought he was weak, and could be doing more for us, but I never really got that I was the odd one out.”
Ilya - “What do you mean?”
Flint - “I was the only one doing it for the fame. Nick, Jackson, Marley, Grea, Vera, they were doing it for the passion. Don’t get me wrong, I had passion, and I still do, but not like they did. To everyone in that band, the money was a nice bonus, something that allowed them to do their passion as a full-time job. Even Vera, who loved attention almost as much as me, didn’t want fame for fame’s sake. But me? Fame was all I ever thought about. Jackson was doing everything the band ever wanted him to. I was the only one unsatisfied.”
Jackson - “As much as I like Flint, there was always a rift between us that just couldn’t be mended. Through all those years of success, all I ever thought about was what I would do with my fame. What could I do with all this money? What could I do with the audience I’ve built? How can I make a difference? For Flint, all he ever wondered was how to get more money, have more eyes on him. We got along, and we’re on okay terms, but that kinda philosophical difference isn’t the kind of thing you can ignore. At least I can’t.”
Ilya - “Did you have any noteworthy scraps with your other bandmates?”
Flint - “Me and Grea got into a couple bad arguments. Neither of us were really in the right on those. Before you ask, no, I’m not gonna talk about it.”
Ilya - “What kind of issues was everyone else dealing with?”
Flint - “Jackson had it particularly rough. On top of dealing with my shit, he had sunk into a bit of depression. I imagine it was pretty hard for him to witness that. Marley was stressed out beyond belief. The poor girl was the only thing holding us together for a solid six months. And Vera…”
Ilya - “What one thing, would you say, was what ended The Dogs of War?”
Nick - “If not me, then Vera.”
Marley - “Vera.”
Jackson- “Vera.”
Flint - “Vera got worse than she already was.”
Marley - “Without Nick around, keeping the band stable wasn’t easy. I spent a lot of those days being a mediator, trying to keep everyone off each other’s throats, consoling people, giving advice. Vera was… particularly bad. She was never the most stable person, but with Nick being gone and the band tearing apart at the seams, she got even more unraveled than usual. She did more drugs, drank more alcohol, and got more… obsessive.”
Jackson - “There was one show we did, a music club with a pretty decent crowd, that she showed up to half an hour late and absolutely hammered. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that intoxicated. She could barely fucking stand. She slurred the lyrics, kept fucking up the riffs, to the point I had to tell the band to just get into improv mode so we could follow whatever she did.”
Marley - “I had to drive her home. She spent the whole car ride crying about her ex from three years ago.”
Jackson - “She was a mess.”
Marley - “I was already concerned for her, but after that night I decided I had to do something. So, a couple days later I went to her apartment, and I talked with her.”
Ilya - “An intervention?”
Marley - “Not in the traditional sense. I deliberately tried to keep it as little like an intervention as possible. I didn’t want her to feel like we were conspiring behind her back, or ganging up on her. I wanted it to just be her friend telling her that she was concerned for her safety. I told her I was afraid she was going to hurt herself, that I was worried for her. I remember leaving, we hugged, and I told her that I loved her. That all of her friends did. That we would always be there for her. I… fuck… I didn’t know that would be the last time I would ever speak to her.”
That night, November nineteenth, 2029, Vera Braun excessively consumed alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, and fatally overdosed. She was discovered dead the following night by Marley Frey, who did not wish to discuss this event. Vera’s funeral was arranged by her mother and sister, and held privately between her family and friends.
Flint - “If Nick’s arrest was The Dogs of War stepping into the grave, Vera’s death was the final nail in the coffin. Things just got worse for all of us. Nick was Jackson’s best friend, and Vera was his number two. Suddenly, he had lost both of them, and his depression just got worse. The guy was inconsolable. Poor Marley blamed herself for Vera dying, thought that Vera might have stayed alive if she hadn’t confronted her. I don’t think many people can understand how hard that kind of grief can be. She started thinking she didn’t deserve to be a Dog of War. Me and Grea’s occasional fights came to a head, and we had a really bad argument. Bad enough that we weren’t on speaking terms for a long, long while. All of us went to the funeral, but we didn’t really talk to each other. We didn’t have any words. We all understood that was the end.”
Ilya - “But it wasn’t quite the end yet, was it?”
Flint - “It wasn’t, but it was.”
Jackson - “We agreed on one last album. A memorial to Vera. No concerts, no tours for the album, no songs on it that didn’t have to do with Vera, and no non-Dogs of War. We let Nande go, and got to work.”
Ilya - “For the first time ever, The Dogs of War was making an album without its two core members– the founder and the frontman. What was it like, working on that album with the band in that state?”
Flint - “It wasn’t the same. It was less energetic. We didn’t talk as much. We didn’t joke around as often. We showed up to the studio, talked about what we were writing, workshopped things, and just… did business. We didn’t feel like a group of friends anymore.”
Nick - “It was a depressing time. Vera was my best friend, hands down. We’d been best friends since our school days, and I couldn’t even pay my respects at her funeral. Then a week or so later, Jackson comes during visitation and breaks the news that the band was breaking up. It was hard. The only thing that kept me going was knowing we were making Sleeping Dogs, and that Jackson was doing everything in his power to involve me in it. The fact that I was able to participate at all was a miracle, let alone play for the whole album.”
Jackson - “I had to pull a lot of strings, lean heavy on Nick’s good behavior, do a bunch of schmoozing, and make a hell of a lot of money change hands, but I was able to negotiate two days of supervised leave for him to record his parts.”
Nick - “Every day, one of them came with a notebook and jotted down my ideas, got pen to paper on the songs I’d been brewing in my head. I felt like fucking Beethoven, writing my parts without a keyboard to play them on. I just had to go off the dome. Vera was the only other Dog of War who had even the slightest fucking clue how to play a damn piano, so I couldn’t even get them to record a voice memo or something of the part.”
Marley - “When the time came we were getting ready to record it, I was going to the prison once a day with our songs written in a notebook and holding it up against the glass for him to study. We only had two recording days with him, which meant we couldn’t waste time learning the parts as we went.”
Flint - “I remember those days in the recording studio, we had two police officers in there with us. It was freaky. The whole time we’re playing the music we’ve got these guys carrying rifles watching us, as if Nick would lash out and kill them the moment they took their eyes off him. As odd as that was, though, I think the weirdest part of recording that album was how different Nick seemed. He was cheery, chatty, glad to be back with us, but he wasn’t the same old Nick I remembered. After a year and a half of being behind bars, something had changed in him. Heh, I don’t think I’d ever seen him be within ten feet of a cop and not call him names.”
On November nineteenth, 2030, the one year anniversary of Vera Braun’s death, The Dogs of War released May Sleeping Dogs Lie Gently, their tenth and final album. The double album consisted of a mix of songs written by Vera Braun prior to her death, and songs about Vera written by her bandmates.
Flint - “That album was hard, but I also think it’s the greatest piece of music we ever made. To this day, I don’t think anything I’ve ever had a part in had as much soul as that album did.”
Ilya - “You have songwriting credits for two songs from the album, ‘Daughter of the Night’ and ‘Barghest.’ Could you tell me about those songs?”
Flint - “‘Daughter of the Night’ was a purely instrumental song. I’ve always been of the belief that you don’t need words to convey profound emotions, and ‘Daughter of the Night’ may be my most ambitious take on that belief. It’s a song about loss, about grief, about the pain I saw her go through, and wished I could have shared the burden of. It’s a song about emotions no words in any language could ever convey.”
Ilya - “And ‘Barghest?’”
Flint - “To this day, that was emotionally the hardest song I’ve ever written. It was about the monster Vera made herself into… and… how I sometimes encouraged it, because I saw myself in that monster. To this day, I can’t bear to listen to it. I only ever listened to the finished track once, when we were making sure the album sounded right.”
Ilya - “What’s your favorite song from the album?”
Flint - “‘Untitled.’ The final track. It was the last thing Vera had written in her notebook that she kept her songs in. She never finished it. She’d written the first two verses, the chorus, the medley, and about half of a guitar solo for it. We considered trying to finish the song, but Nick wanted to leave it unfinished, and make it the finale. It was… interesting. That song wasn’t really finale material, you know? But we left it unfinished, recorded all of what was written for it, and let the album end where the song suddenly cut off. And that was that. The song just has so much emotion spewing from it, and you feel it all the way through, just for the guitar solo to come around, and it drops you. It’s heartbreakingly unsatisfying. When we were giving the album a test listen, and the guitar solo just stopped, all four of us broke. Grea collapsed to his knees, Marley and Jackson had to hold each other. I had to leave. I went on a walk to clear my head. I physically couldn’t speak for almost an hour. No song has ever affected me that way.”
When the album was released, it was met with unanimous critical acclaim. Despite its massive success, however, just as the band agreed, they did not do any live performances of any songs from the album. No tours, no concerts, no new merchandise.
Jackson - “We divided the profits from the album the same way as every other album. Six equal cuts, one for each Dog of War. Vera’s cut was given to her sister, Layla, and her mother, Madeleine. We also gave them Vera’s normal cut of merch sales.”
Marley - “Once we figured out the splits for the profits, we officially broke up. We all hugged– most of us, at least– and we went our separate ways.”
Flint - “Those goodbyes were difficult. Especially with Grea. Marley and Jackson stayed in the studio to close up shop and turn in our keys, and me and Grea walked out together. It was awkward. We still weren’t really speaking. The whole walk to the parking lot was completely wordless. When he was about to get in his car, I stopped him, and asked if things were okay between us. He just kinda shrugged. We wished each other the best, and he left.”
Ilya - “Did you all keep in touch after the breakup?”
Flint - “Yes and no. Marley and Jackson were already dating by that point, so they were talking to each other, obviously. We all visited Nick pretty often in those days. The rest was a little spotty. We were all still a little shocked from the whole turn of events, so for a while it was radio silence between us. I didn’t talk with Marley until almost six months after we said our goodbyes at the studio. For Grea, it was over two years before we talked again.”
Ilya - “And when you all started talking again, what was your relationship like?”
Flint - “It was never the same as it was before. We would hang out, have a couple drinks, maybe even go to a club, but we never had that same familial bond we used to. As time went on, I started to drift further and further away from them. I try to keep in touch these days, call them, text them, whatever, but the kind of life I live doesn’t really accommodate friendship well.”
Ilya - “When was the last time you saw your former bandmates in person?”
Flint - “It’s been at least three years.”
Ilya - “What do you think of Flint and his success in the field?”
Jackson - “What do I think? I don’t know. I’m happy for him.”
Marley - “He worked hard for it, he’s got what he’s always wanted.”
Ilya - “I mostly ask because I know the two of you had your disagreements on the subject.”
Jackson - “Look, I’m not gonna talk shit on the guy. We don’t share the same perspective on success, but we don’t need to. I’m not his manager, I’m not his bandmate, I’m just a guy he used to be in a band with. His success doesn’t matter to me any more than what he had for breakfast this morning. I’m happy for him, and I’m glad he’s doing well for himself.”
Ilya - “If Flint were here, and you could tell him one thing, what would it be?”
Marley - “Well, I guess I’d just tell him congratulations. He’s a talented guy with a lot of dedication.”
Ilya - “What kind of advice might you give him?”
Marley - “I think I’d tell him to be the inspiration many people see him as.”
Ilya - “And you?”
Jackson - “Don’t forget that you’re a person. Fame can’t hold you when you sleep at night. It can’t pat your shoulder when you’re feeling down. Fame didn’t make you the man you are today, and it won’t be there for you when you need a helping hand. Don’t forget the things that can.”
Nick - “I guess I’d just tell him to remember his roots.”
Ilya - “Your success with The Dogs of War was more than most can dream of, but it’s still almost nothing compared to what you have now. In spite of that, I’m sure you would agree it played a large role in where you are today.”
Flint - “Oh, one thousand percent, yeah. The Dogs of War made all of this possible. My success then was the only reason I was able to make it so far in such a strict, traditionalist field. I learned everything I knew from those days.”
Ilya - “ You were in The Dogs of War for about nine years, a significant portion of your life. I’m sure in such a long time, you learned a lot of things. If you could pick one thing you learned in those years, the one lesson you think is most responsible for your success, what you would tell someone who wants to learn from your life, what would it be?”
Flint - “The most valuable piece of advice I ever learned was from Nick. ‘Only follow the rules long enough to know how to break them properly.’ I believe I owe my entire career to that sentence.”
It has been nine years since the breakup of The Dogs of War. While Flint Jacobs became a worldwide celebrity, his former bandmates have all lived their own lives, and gone down their own paths.
Marley Frey and Jackson Suharto have been romantically involved for nearly ten years, though they have no intention to become legally married. Marley works as a freelance artist and graphic designer, while Jackson works as a writer, doing political commentary as well as music critique. The couple have also continued to pursue music on the side as a passion project with their folk band, Stripes and Scales.
Nick Tremblay is scheduled to finish his sentence in June of 2044. Though many of his fans hope to see him triumphantly return to the alternative scene after his release, he says he currently has no plan to make such a return. If he does continue his career in music, it will most likely be notably less glamorous than The Dogs of War.
Grea Davis declined the offer to be involved in this documentary, but he has continued a successful career in music himself. For nine years, he has been the frontman of Hang ‘Em High, a pop-punk band he founded with other musicians he knew from his city’s local music scene. The band’s popularity is less than but still comparable to that of The Dogs of War in its prime, with their most popular song, Lockout, having just under twenty million streams on Spotify. Just one year ago, Grea married Hang ‘Em High’s keyboardist.
The Dogs of War were a transformational aspect in the life of Flint Jacobs. Without The Dogs of War, the genius of his experimental musical prowess may have never had the chance to shine in the limelight. At the heart of every song Flint has ever written, there are memories of the climb from local artist to world-renowned musician. Behind every groundbreaking symphony Flint has ever composed, there are the words of a Siberian Husky who gave him the freedom to bend and break the rules.
Flint - “The Dogs of War has been over and gone for nearly a decade, but no matter how much time passes, it will always be a part of me. Once a Dog of War, always a Dog of War.”
Google Sites
Report abuse