Dog Party played its first show to an audience of its peers – a room filled with more than 100 elementary and junior high school kids during a year-end talent show. "I was really nervous," says Lucy Giles, 11. Older sister Gwendolyn Giles, 13, would have been less anxious – this was her second talent show, after all; she'd played her first the year before, solo with a guitar.....

but this time the stage lights were dimmed so she got a full, nerve-rattling view of the crowd.

"It was, like, 'Aahhhhhhhhh!' " Gwendolyn says, her voice lurching into a high-pitched faux scream. "I could see everyone."

The sisters quickly tamed their butterflies, the show (a mere two songs long) was a hit, and by the time they played their first "official" show to a packed crowd a few months later at the Fire Escape in Citrus Heights, they were downright pros at this thing called rock 'n' roll.

It's an early summer evening and the Giles girls, who perform Saturday at Cesar Chavez Plaza, are practicing in the living room of their Carmichael home. Lucy is working the drum kit with frenzied precision. Gwendolyn ("Gwynnie" to family and friends) is rocking chords on her favorite Silvertone guitar. The sisters take turns leaning into their respective mikes to take on the chorus in a call-and-response fashion.

"You doubt me, you doubt me," Gwendolyn sings, her voice sweet and girlish but cut with a hint of aggression.

"You doubt me, you doubt me," Lucy answers, her voice slightly higher, slightly spunkier

With its hook-laden beats and distressed, sing-song vocals, "U Doubt Me" is a sophisticated pop-punk song: smart, bittersweet and utterly catchy.

The sisters wrote it late one night, as is their custom, staying up till nearly 2 a.m. to finish it.

"We woke up the next morning at 8 a.m. and they were right there, wanting to play it for us," says the girls' dad, Sam Giles.
"We drank our coffee and listened and it was like, 'wow' – it was only the third song they ever wrote."

When it comes to songwriting, the members of Dog Party's approach is perhaps exactly what you'd expect from two young sisters.

"My sister just starts playing something weird and then I play some drumbeats and we make up some words," Lucy explains.

Lucy, who'll be in sixth grade this fall, is a wiry bundle of chatty energy. In contrast, Gwendolyn, who will enter the eighth grade, is quieter, more reserved. Except when she's playing guitar.

Gwendolyn first picked up the instrument three years ago when, bored with flute lessons, she decided she wanted to try out one of her dad's guitars.

Lessons followed, and Lucy decided she, too, needed to make some music.

Why drums?

"I can't sit still for very long – I needed to hit something," she says.

A secondhand drum set purchased, the sisters signed up for lessons, but Lucy, only 6 at the time, didn't have a very successful run with instructors.

"I think I was too young at first," she admits. "I took one lesson from (a drum teacher) and he quit – he really couldn't handle me."

The Giles family eventually found an instructor who could take on Lucy's boundless energy. Eventually – and perhaps more important – they also found a musical mentor in the form of Zach Goodin, a Sacramento-area musician and longtime family friend who'd grown up hanging around and eventually working at mother Angela Giles' family ski shop.

"Sam sent me this YouTube clip of Gwynnie playing the guitar and I could hear that she'd put together this song with a verse and a chores and a melody," Goodin says. "All the elements of a song – she just put them together naturally."

Goodin, who plays in Sexrat, Syncro and the Snobs, was impressed by Gwendolyn's musical acumen and he told the family it was time for her to the next level.

Goodin rigged the drums and guitar to a karaoke microphone and gave the sisters instructions how to play together – to keep a song on pace, to keep the beats together.

"He showed them how to make music together instead of just as much noise as possible," Sam Giles says.

By Rachel Leibrock
Special to The Bee
Published: Friday, Jun. 26, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 7TICKET
http://www.sacbee.com/172/story/1974734.html