If you tell, we’ll deny it

This is Rocky. He's the mascot and logo for Howling Music and the spirit animal of the entire company. To be clear: Rocky is a bulldog. He's a real dog, he’s still living, and he’s somewhere in the greater Nashville area. How he became the polestar and Musical Zen Master Guru of our company is kind of a long story, and it’s not for the faint of heart.

One Summer day, Rocky was in the backyard, snuffling and gruffling for bones and biscuits, when he suddenly saw the bright lights and heard the unmistakable whoosh of a UFO. Like any good guard dog, Rocky charged the saucer. Snarling and barking, fangs showing (they usually show anyway due to a massive underbite), he scared the ET's into hitting him with a death ray.

Rocky was only stunned, but in a classic case of mistaken identity, the aliens assumed he was representative of all Earthly life, and would therefore need to be scanned and probed--which seems to have occurred. But, as he was coming to, he noticed something unexpected: There was a piano on the space ship! Had they brought it from home? Did they grab it on their way out? Who knew! The point is, Rocky had seen us play many times and thought he'd give it a go.

He pulled his squat body up, got his paws on the keys and started to pound away. His performance was not perfect--Rocky has no opposable thumbs or fingers--but he didn't let that stop him. He banged out Long Tall Sally and Cold As Ice then ventured into more experimental numbers which were easier to pull off given his lack of hands. According to Rocky the aliens were impressed! Enough so to let him go.

A day later we were back at our studio (Rocky is a music company dog--he's in studios all the time), when Rocky waddled over to our Yamaha C7 Grand Piano, and for the first time we'd ever seen, started to play--much as he'd done on the hangar deck of the alien space craft. We were pretty stunned since we didn't think Rocky had ever even heard of Coldplay, but the fact that he could play at all was also a big surprise.