Dogs With Jobs

Dogs With Jobs grew directly out of Gord Kirchin’s attempt to take charge of Piledriver. By the late 1980s he had supplied the voice for two Piledriver albums assembled around him by different studio teams. For a proposed third record he decided to write, record and produce the music himself. That project became Shock, and it would not be released under the Piledriver name.

Kirchin described the split in blunt terms. The third Piledriver album was already at the mixing stage when the financial arrangement behind it collapsed. He said the promised recording advance was withdrawn, ending his relationship with Zoran Busic and the Cobra operation that had issued the earlier Piledriver records. Kirchin took the recordings with him, renamed the project Dogs With Jobs and financed the remaining work himself. Shock was the result.

Dogs With Jobs emerged in Toronto around 1988, and this time the group on the sleeve was real. Kirchin sang and played bass, with Sean Abbott on lead guitar, Randy Kirchin on rhythm guitar and Bernd “Hurricane” Quessel on drums.

The change of name let Kirchin move away from the Piledriver character. Piledriver had been built on masks, invented musicians, violent excess and an exaggerated heavy-metal persona. Dogs With Jobs kept the humour and aggression while giving Kirchin room to write more directly. The dog jokes developed an identity of their own, running through the band name, logo, liner notes, merchandise and repeated references to dogs, barks and dog packs.

Shock appeared on Fringe Product in 1990. The Canadian CD carried eleven tracks: “Blow My Mind,” “Bang Or Die,” “Come And Get Me,” “Scene Of The Crime,” “Sentenced To Die,” “Shock,” “I Ain’t Gonna Die,” “Ace To The Face,” “Syphilis AIDS And Herpes II,” “It’s Killing Time” and “Dogs With Jobs.”

Kirchin produced and mixed the album. It was recorded at Fifth Avenue Sound Studios, mixed at Number Nine Studios and mastered at The Lacquer Channel by George Graves.

The songs carried over the aggression and black humour associated with Piledriver but placed Kirchin’s writing at the centre of the record. Violence, frustration, sex, death, police confrontation and heavy-metal caricature ran through the lyrics, while the music pulled the speed-metal energy of Piledriver toward a fuller power/thrash sound.

A video was made for “Dogs With Jobs,” giving the new name a visual identity separate from Piledriver. The band also worked as an actual live group, something Piledriver had never been during the 1980s.

The lineup changed after Shock. By the time the second album was recorded, the group had been rebuilt around Kirchin, guitarist Dave Copeland and drummer Shawn Tilley.

Payday followed in 1993 through Fringe Product and Kirchin’s Dog Bite Records. The album was recorded at The Farm, mixed at Phase One Studios and mastered at The Lacquer Channel. George Orphanos worked as recording engineer, Eric Ratz handled the mix with Kirchin, and George Graves mastered the album. Kirchin produced the record, Copeland supplied guitar and backing vocals, and Tilley played drums.

The nine tracks were “My Darkness,” “Stone Cold Killer,” “Die Like A Dog,” “Y I Otta,” “So Sue Me,” “Terminal Velocity,” “See If I Care,” the instrumental “Bad Heart” and “Stinkin’ Piece Of Shit.”

Kirchin wrote all of the lyrics. Musical credits were divided between Kirchin and Copeland, with “Stone Cold Killer,” “Y I Otta” and “See If I Care” credited to Kirchin alone, “Bad Heart” to Copeland, and the remaining songs jointly credited to the pair.

The humour extended into the album credits. Kirchin’s bass became “Low Rumbly Stuff,” Copeland’s guitar “Squealy Deedly Stuff,” Tilley’s drums “Bangy Crashy Stuff And Stick-Drops,” and Copeland’s backing vocals were credited as “Back-Barks.”

Payday was less frantic than Shock. Speed-metal passages remained, but much of the record settled into heavier mid-tempo power/thrash and hard-rock structures. “So Sue Me,” “Terminal Velocity,” “See If I Care” and the instrumental “Bad Heart” retained the sharper and more technical edge of the group.

By this point Kirchin’s involvement extended through nearly every part of the record. Along with vocals and bass, he was credited with production and engineering, cover concept and design, and photography. Dog Bite Records carried the release alongside Fringe Product.

Dogs With Jobs lasted through the early 1990s. The catalogue remained small, consisting of Shock and Payday, but the records continued circulating among underground metal listeners and collectors after the group itself had ended.

Shock retained a particular connection to Piledriver because it had begun as the record Kirchin intended to make as the third Piledriver album. Later editions acknowledged that history.

Dogs With Jobs marks the point where Gord Kirchin’s musical history changed. On the first two Piledriver albums he had been the voice attached to a band that did not actually exist. With Dogs With Jobs he was writing, playing bass, producing records and leading a functioning group under his own name. When he later returned to the Piledriver identity as The Exalted Piledriver, he did so with a working band behind him. Dogs With Jobs had already given him that experience.

Gord Kirchin died of lung cancer on September 22, 2022, one day before his 61st birthday.

-Robert Williston