Mary Works Covington Records of the Red Dog Saloon Film

The Red Dog Saloon opened in 1965 by Chandler A. Laughlin III in Virginia City, Nevada’s historic downtown. The Red Dog Saloon quickly became a hot spot for “proto-hippies” and their music, with many celebrated bands playing there over the years. The Charlatans, a San Francisco psychedelic rock band, was the first of many bands to play at the Red Dog. Their first show was on June 21, 1965 and began a 3-month engagement as the house band for the summer of 1965.

25 years after that first show, Mary Works Covington, daughter of the Red Dog’s founder, began to write a script and work with other interested individuals to record stories of the Red Dog from the past 25 years. This led to a Reunion in 1991 and eventually the production of the well-received film Life and Times of the Red Dog Saloon, released in 1996. Although well received, the film struggled with costs associated with filmmaking and distribution. In 2005, it was re-released under the name Rocking at the Red Dog: The Dawn of Psychedelic Rock with Covington as the distributor.

Mary Works Covington grew up with the people and music of the Red Dog Saloon in Silver City, Nevada, a small town near Virginia City and just outside of Carson City, Nevada. It was not until later in life that she became interested in the history of the Red Dog and doing a film about it. Covington graduated from the University of Southern California Film School in 1989 and worked in the Bay Area for a number of companies related to the film industry, including Saul Zaentz Film Center, American Zoetrope, and Skywalker Sound, until 2001.