Odie received his first guitar at the age of seven. By the time he was ten years old he thought he might actually want to play it. His father knew three chords and four songs. These he taught to young Odie, who, socially awkward and ill at ease among the god-fearing farmers of eastern Washington State, spent 87% of his adolescence in a basement bedroom plucking away dolefully at his guitar.

After high school Odie joined the Army and spent a three-year stint in Europe as part of an "entertainment" unit, writing and performing perfectly awful rock musicals, for which he earned an Army Commendation Medal. After discharge (honorable, despite those musicals), Odie teamed up with an Army buddy and moved to Mobile, Alabama, to form a rock band. Bankrolled by the buddy's father, the band managed to blow through ten thousand dollars, played one steady gig, and disbanded.

Next Odie moved to Phoenix, Arizona, and met the love of his life, Ant Bee. Following a brief relocation to L.A., where Odie and that same buddy proved spectacularly unsuccessful in peddling their wares as songwriters, Odie started working for a living. He and Bee returned to Phoenix. Together they managed to circle the local music scene for ten years or so without ever touching down. One band, comprising Odie, Bee and their two sons, Clement and Poupon, and playing mostly Odie originals, saw modest success in a Bisbee, Arizona, coffeehouse.

After a few years of doing nothing much musically, Odie and Bee got the itch to start playing in public again. At a bluegrass jam, a guy with a weird-looking guitar offered Odie his card. Odie told him he didn’t need any insurance. “How about a Dobro player, then?” the guy said. Weeks later Three-Legged Dog stuck its tousled head into the world.