Tomato Dodgers
You might know the Tomato Dodgers as the band that performed on McKeldin Mall with governor-turned-presidential candidate Martin O’Malley last fall. But even if you do, you don’t really know the Tomato Dodgers.
“It felt kind of dirty,” said Asher Meerovich, senior philosophy major and a vocalist and guitarist in the band, when asked about the experience.
“It did feel kind of dirty; I felt kind of used,” junior economics major and drummer Pete Myers agreed. “Like, I don’t necessarily endorse this guy.”
“I feel like we used him just as much as he used us, though,” confessed Tera Stanton-Duffer, a 2013 university alumna and plays percussion and keys.
“But obviously, we’d do it again in a second,” Meerovich said.
Meerovich is the only member of the original Tomato Dodgers formed in 2013. He gathered the current group together last year after others left. He met senior history major and bassist, guitarist and vocalist Joe Doyle at a Prohibition party, Myers on the mall and Duffer in a philosophy class.
“They all sort of just came in and filled the gaps that the people who had been in the band had left,” he said.
“From what I remember, it was very organic,” Myers said. “It almost seemed like it all just fell into place.”
Last week marked the official one-year anniversary of the four-member band playing together as the Tomato Dodgers.
Doyle said the group’s sound is “kind of everywhere, honestly, on the spectrum of rock and roll.” He likened the variety of their music to a Jackson Pollock painting.
“It’s definitely worth listening to more than one song before you determine what our sound is,” Stanton-Duffer said, though she also said the band still has its own signature.
“One song is more metal; one song is more classic rock, but it’s the Tomato Dodgers’ interpretation of metal, the Tomato Dodgers’ interpretation of classic rock.”
While Meerovich and Doyle write the band’s songs for the most part, they said it’s ultimately a team effort to get them off the ground.
“Plenty of [songs] happen from all four of us playing. Like, even the ones I write; I don’t write every instrument,” Meerovich said. “I write an idea, and we all come together and play it out.”
“If I ever have an idea for a song for the band — if I have at least one music part and the lyrics written out — I’ll bring it to the band, and we’ll all jam on it and figure it out,” Doyle said.
Now, the four of them live together in a house they share with fellow musicians.
“It’s pretty much just a laboratory, a musical laboratory,” Myers said.
Band members share a band room in the basement where they practice and a show room used to host gigs in their home. More than 180 people came out to their last show at the house on Sept. 4, which also featured sets from bands Chain and the Gang and The Godz, and they’ll host another on Halloween.
In addition to the shows the Tomato Dodgers host, the band often performs in Washington, Baltimore, Virginia and even in Stamp Student Union on some Fridays.
Wherever they are, they are loud, bold and bombastic and do everything from dressing up in outlandish costumes to blasting condoms into the audience when they perform.
“We try to make people question what’s happening,” Myers said.
This past summer the band did its first tour, and this winter the members will do it again, visiting nine cities over two weekends, from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Harrisonburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia. Next summer, the band members will embark on their first, full U.S. tour.
For now, though, the Tomato Dodgers are hard at work, writing and recording their new album — they released their last, Ketchup Chemtrails, in February.
“We need something current,” said Meerovich. “There’s one [song] we’ve had for awhile, ‘Revenge of the Space Ghost,’ and more than one person has told me it’s our best song.”
The band agreed.
“It’s my parents’ favorite song, so that says a lot,” Doyle said.
CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, the band name The Godz was spelled incorrectly. This article has been updated.
