From Buffalo to Los Angeles, Orange Dog Club has been taking the stage across the country.

By Chloe Kowalyk

(Image above: Orange Dog Club poses with Bandit Booking. Image via @orangedogclub on Instagram).

Orange Dog Club is a local band fresh on the scene, originally forming in 2021, but they’re far from inexperienced. 

Led by Tim Turner as a personal project, Orange Dog Club is an indie rock group featuring members from the Buffalo and Rochester surrounding areas, with Turner himself growing up outside of Rochester and attending University at Buffalo. 

The rest of the band is an eclectic mix of Matt Reesor on drums and backing vocals, Salvatore Constantin on guitar and backing vocals, Joe Butler on bass and backing vocals and Bernie Bazzett on guitar. 

For Turner, taking the reins of a project like Orange Dog Club has always been a dream. “I always wanted to be a musician,” he said. 

Turner started playing music at around 10-years-old, first taking on piano and then learning guitar. 

In his early teen years, Turner started writing his own music as well, which he said is the “most fun” for him. 

Once he was in college, Turner met who would become the founding members of the band, and in 2021, they would join a school talent show. After placing third, Turner knew he wanted to keep the project going. 

This is also where the band got its name, “Orange Dog Club.” 

Turner, who frequently jokes that the name’s origin is a secret in interviews and media, revealed the truth behind the name in a recent interview with The Buffalo Hive.

However, announcing it to the public seems like it would take away from the fun of the mystery. So, for now, the backstory remains a mystery.

Turner later played music with some high school friends who had also been in a band, and about a year later, in 2022, he began releasing music as Orange Dog Club. 

That year, two singles, “Feel Inside” and “Gimme My Money” were released.

In 2023, Orange Dog Club released another single, “untitled,” and released three more songs under “Summer is Dying.” 

They then released one more single titled “Some Things Are Never Going To Change” in 2024.

Turner also hinted at a new album releasing soon that he has been working on for the past few months.  

The art for Orange Dog Club’s singles all have a hand-drawn, painted look to them, all featuring a namesake orange dog in them. “[Orange Dog Club is] a silly name, but it does give a good enough mascot,” Turner said. 

The art was first done by Bazzett’s brother Eddie, and is now done by Butler’s girlfriend, Alexis Hilliard-McDowell (@universalbrainwave on Instagram). 

“We’re lucky to know both of them for sure,” Turner said. 

For those who have heard Orange Dog Club before, you’ll know their music is intricately written, with meaningful lyrics. 

Many of the songs feature a strong sense of yearning and passion, a display of affection and heartbreak, combined with high energy guitar riffs and energetic drums on many songs, like “Gimme My Money” and slower, passionate tunes in others like “Why Don’t You Adore Me?” and “That’s What I Get.”

Turner displays many of the pangs of entering your early twenties – heartbreak and unrequited love, a sense of loss, desire you can’t act upon. 

We all experience these things, but what Turner can do so well is put it into song — not just with words that say what he’s thinking, but with sounds that resemble what he’s feeling. 

The recognizable riff in “That’s What I Get” seems to come straight from the heart. 

Turner said his favorite song he has released is “That’s What I Get.” Due to its slower, more somber sound, he explained that “That’s What I Get” “gets a little static when you’re playing it.”

“We had a practice last night (at the time of the interview last week) where we spent, like, an hour. We’re like, ‘how do we make this more fun live?’ And we ultimately concluded on nothing,’” Turner said.

Described as “indie garage rock” on Spotify, Turner takes inspiration from groups like The Strokes, Car Seat Headrest, Chet Baker and Brazilian artist Jorge Ben. 

“Those are the four that are, like, constantly, like, in my rotation, and I really like to take inspiration from [them],” he said. 

With strong lyricism present in Orange Dog Club’s music, Turner said his messaging is “straightforward,” particularly on his upcoming album.  

“I do try to be very literal, like say exactly what I’m trying to say. There’s people that do vague things, and that’s cool too. I try to say it exactly,” Turner said. “I would say, if you’re looking for whatever the message is, because I always wonder, does anyone actually like reading the lyrics, or do they just like the songs? Everybody’s different in the way that they listen to music. But it’s all there.”

Orange Dog Club has surged in popularity as a result of their active online presence and promotion on social media platforms such as TikTok. 

At the time of writing this, the band has over 60 thousand monthly listeners, and well over a million streams on Spotify on two of their songs already. 

Much of the group’s listener base came from users online. 

“It started out as TikTok, and then the trick is, you want to get people on the apps first, but then what that does is it gets Spotify to do all the heavy lifting,” Turner said. 

This tactic has been successful for Orange Dog Club as “Gimme My Money” has almost 1.7 million streams on Spotify, and “That’s What I Get” has close to 1.5 million streams. 

Utilizing platforms like TikTok for artist promo is actually a bit controversial, as some believe it is less respectable or a way of selling out. Others warn of creating a toxic “TikTok” fanbase. 

Turner disagrees. 

“I think it’s democratized music in a way. I think it’s really cool that you can just kind of do this with your buddies now,” Turner said. “It’s totally opened it up” for local artists and smaller artists to gain a platform and share their music. 

“I think that the hate that the artists get on those apps is insane,” Turner said.

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“I get that people don’t want to make dumb videos, like, I don’t like doing it, [but] there’s never been this opportunity before, and it’s like, maybe not ideal, and the streaming system isn’t fair to the artists, but I think it’s certainly better than what it was, [playing] a bunch of venues, and hoping some guy from a label is there, hope that he notices you, [or] you have some family connection… Whatever it was, it’s better,” he said.

Orange Dog Club actually has an Instagram account separate from their main page, @orangedogclub_reels, where they post promo videos. They actively post on TikTok as well. 

This has allowed some songs, such as “That’s What I Get” to blow up, with videos promoting it garnering thousands of views on both Instagram and TikTok. 

Promotion aside, once the band takes the stage, the project shifts from Turner’s personal project to a live band experience. He teaches the members the material he has created, and the group performs together live.

Turner explained that the live sets are not a 1:1 ratio of the actual studio releases. 

“Sometimes we’ve changed things from the studio to the live, so there’s definitely input there,” he said. 

Turner was initially doing all of the music released on streaming platforms himself, using separate tracking and computerized drum backings. 

As the band’s lineup begins to be finalized, Turner is planning to have the new album feature the other band members. For instance, Reesor, the band’s drummer, will be playing drums in the recordings. 

“I don’t like the robot drums, like, let’s get, you know, a human on it,” Turner said. 

The group has been recording in a home studio at a friend’s to work on the upcoming project as well. 

While working on releasing new music, Orange Dog Club has been performing live in venues across the area, where they have seen an increasing fanbase.

“It’s cool. When we started, it was just parents and friends coming, and that was cool. But, you do that for like, a year or two, and you’re like, ‘what are we doing now?’ It’s gotten to a point with doing well enough online, or now we start to see random faces we don’t know, and that’s really cool,” Turner said. “It’s been cool to meet other bands in the scene, and feel more of a part of something.”

When Orange Dog Club performs live, the project shifts from Turner’s personal project to a live experience with friends. “Performing live is really awesome because I get to create sounds with my best buds that strangers like to hear,” Butler said. 

The group takes their friendship from practices to the stage when they perform live. 

“Playing live as a band I think is cool because we practice in the basement and work shit out, but then on stage we have more connective moments with each other and get to see how random heads react to what we think is cool,” Bazzett said. 

Reesor agreed. “I love to see our personalities translate to being on stage. I always love interacting with the other guys while we’re playing,” he said. “ It takes away a lot of the pressure knowing that all of us are just up there having some fun.”

When playing live, the band members each have their favorites. 

Reeser said he likes “Untitled” due to the high energy drum parts. “It’s a song that gives, at least me, a little more room for artistic freedom which is always cool,” he said. 

Butler, however, prefers “Some Things Are Never Gonna Change,” while Turner likes performing “Gimme My Money.” 

While they play frequently in Western New York, Orange Dog Club has also landed on national stages. 

This past April, they joined Archer Oh on their The Internal Theater Tour in Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, Fort Wayne, Mich. and Chicago.

The group got connected with an agent named “Cam” at Bandit Booking, an independent booking agency that works a lot with bands who have gained popularity online. He booked the group’s first show at Mohawk Place, and also got them connected with headliners for other shows, like the recent tour. 

Orange Dog Club’s connection with Bandit Booking also gave them an opportunity to play a show with Archer Oh in Los Angeles. 

“So it kind of came full circle,” Turner said. “We had our first show, and then he also got us, like, the biggest shows we’ve ever played, and we got to meet him in California. That was super surreal. I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

The recent tour and trip to California was a new experience for Orange Dog Club, as they hadn’t really performed out of the area. 

“It was, well, it was really scary,” Turner said. “We had never left, honestly, we’d only ever played in Buffalo. We would play the odd gig in our hometown, or at some restaurant. We haven’t played in Rochester, so just leaving the area was crazy.” 

The band’s members agreed that California was one of their favorite experiences so far. Bazzett, Reesor and Turner all described the feeling as “surreal” 

“It all happened so quick, I didn’t even really have time to process what was happening. Best musical experiences of my life for sure,” Reesor said. 

The crowd in California was large, in fact, the largest the band had ever performed in front of. 

“Going to California was awesome,” Butler said. “Biggest crowd we’ve ever played to, and [we] got to hangout with some really cool bands.”

Turner said the band first questioned if they were even ready to do something like a tour. However, when they began performing in these different cities, they saw people singing along to their songs. 

“We thought we would get, like, one or two people in each city, and we would meet them. It would be cool. And then we got there, and we were like, doing our part, contributing our part of the audience. It wasn’t just the headliner. We were also bringing people to every city too,” Turner said. “And even Fort Wayne, that was definitely the smallest place we played. And we were getting people out there.” 

The tour was a great experience for the band and they were able to connect with their national audience. 

“People were coming to the shows, which we didn’t expect, and they were singing along, and they were buying merch, and they were coming and talking to us after … somebody was crying when they met us,” Turner said. “At the time, it was like, you know, this is it. This is what we always wanted.”

Reesor said that his favorite part of touring was  “meeting all the amazing fans that would come out to hear us. That’s definitely the most rewarding part.”

The group also did “post game interviews” following their touring shows, which proved to be a favorite memory for both Butler and Reesor. They also enjoyed simple things, like getting dinner with Archer Oh, and Butler said they even had fun playing dress up with them.

Many of the band members, including Turner, were still in school during the time of the tour.

 “It felt like a double life, almost,” Turner said. “We just went home and, like, went to school and went to our jobs.”

As for what’s next, Turner is hoping to have the new upcoming album done this year. 

“It’s going to be all new stuff, and it’s getting close, and I feel really good about it. I think it’s better than the other stuff we have. But of course, we’ll, we’ll see if that’s true,” he said. 

Reesor said he is “excited” about the new project as well. “Definitely looking forward to what’s to come,” he said. 

The band is playing their first show in Rochester, despite Turner being from there originally, this Friday, June 20 at Flour City Station, with other shows coming soon. 

You can check them out on Instagram @orangedogclub and @orangedogclub_reels and on TikTok @orangedogclub. 

You can also listen to them on Spotify here.