Dog Faced Gods fuse musical genres into a unique, eclectic sound

By Starr T. Balmer
Online Forty-Niner
Staff Writer

Dog Faced Gods (DFG) is a new Native American and Hispanic rock group on Voodoo Nation Records that show plenty of style and energy on their debut album, "Stoned Council."

Lead singer Raymond "Shorty" Galvan, guitarist David "Snakeyez" Torres, bassist  Fernando "Nando" Gonzales, drummer Paul Garcia and rhythm guitarist Jack Daniels constitute the San Bernardino based group whose album has a full dose of hard rock with a sprinkle of rap, making the album unique and out-of-the-ordinary.

Additionally, "Stoned Council" expresses the many hardships they encounter and current occurrences in the world through their screeching guitars and touching lyrics.

In the "But Me" track, Dog Faced Gods mixes hard rock and rap to express how they desire to achieve their goals and live their own lives in such lyrics as, "I spent all my life living for you, not me."

They even show their softer side as they created a track to show they feel alone and desire to have that special person that was once in their life. The chorus is energetic and expressive, yet the remaining part of the track becomes softer and calmer as the band sings, "I will miss you so much."

Some of the songs explain how they felt going through obstacles like in the track "Will I Ever Fit In." So many emotions ran through them as expressed in the lyrics, "the pain I had as a child, it's still today."

"The emotion is inside the lyrics," Snakeyez said. "What we go through we put it down."

The group members have a mix of Hispanic and Native American heritage and reside on the San Manuel Reservation in San Bernardino.

Their different musical interest created a distinctive album like no other.

"Some of the songs are mellow, some of them hard, some of them funk, some of them are classic rock...we do it all," Snakeyez said in a press release.

Twenty-six-year-old Shorty started as a rapper but was persuaded one night to sing at karaoke and did very well. After that experience, he realized he could use his natural talents in a musical group.

"I was always kind of embarrassed to sing, so I rapped instead. But this friend kept bugging me to get up and do karaoke one night, so I sang this Bon Jovi song. She thought I was great, and I was even surprised myself," Shorty said in a press release.

After finding a new singing talent, Shorty was trying to hunt down members to form a rock group and found guitarist Snakeyez, who was inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix.

The two paired up and began looking for other members to complete the group. Their rigid search ended as Daniels jumped in the hot seat as rhythm guitarist while Nando and Garcia filled the slots as bassist and drummer for the group, respectively.

Music producer Robert Brooks assisted the group in creating the 15-track album. Brooks observed the Cahuilla/Serrano culture as he resided at the reservation for six months to help produce their album.

No tour dates have been set but Dog Faced Gods have planned performances at The Roxy, House of Blues, The Whisky-A-Go-Go and other well-known locations.

Since their album has been completed, Dog Faced God's focus is reaching audiences to listen to their diverse album that they worked on for months.

"It takes a lot of hard work and dedication," Snakeyez said. "Fans first before anything."

"Stoned Council" is a pretty good album and if they keep working diligently and start reaching audiences, they would definitely succeed and reach the top.