5:26 a.m. might not be considered the witching hour by most, but try telling that to Peter Stuart of Dog’s Eye View.

When the group set out to record their first album, Happy Nowhere, they wound up recording in a haunted house in Woodstock, NY. “We didn’t know it was haunted when we decided to record there,” Stuart said. “But then bizarre things started happening, odd things. I woke up every day at 5:26 a.m. That was weird.”

Weird is just what Stuart has come to expect, though. The New York native began playing seriously in Chicago, where he was studying film production. But even he never thought he’d come this far.

“I was always playing during college,” he said. “It wasn’t a ‘I got to be a musician’ thing. I would do a show and then someone else who saw it would ask me to do a show. It just kept progressing.”

Progressing to the point where, as an unsigned artist, he was opening up for the likes of Tori Amos and Counting Crows. Stuart formed a close alliance with the latter and was soon touring with the Top 40 band.

In addition to immeasurable performing experience, Stuart ended up selling more than 6,000 copies of his homemade demo tape.

“It’s rare for someone unsigned to play in front of crowds,” he said of touring with the Crows. “It was a huge thing— just getting the chance.”

Now, you might be asking “if Dog’s Eye View is a group, where’s the group?” Well, Stuart and whomever he has sitting in with him, is the group. On the band’s CD, the Dogs are a shifting ensemble with Stuart as the constant center.

Stuart said that while the last six years have found him mostly working all by his lonesome, he has always felt like he was playing with a band, whether or not he really was. His aggressive nature could make him the mosh pit ring leader.

“I was always jumping around on stage and banging on chords loud and hitting things,” he said.

Perhaps it was this overzealous attitude that gave inspiration to the first single off Happy Nowhere, “Everything Falls Apart.” The song, which is no doubt playing on the radio as you read these words, is about a week of “human wreckage” in the city of sin, New Orleans.

“That city is full of people getting wrecked as a sport,” Stuart said. “I was just a mess.”

But the video for the single, which is no doubt playing on MTV as you read these words, took a different approach. Opting not to depict Stuart as a slothen Mardi Gras goer, the video uses trendy camera tricks and angles to go along with the trendy pop song.

Only, the trendy pop song is nothing like the other 12 tunes. Slower and more engaging, some of the songs are “the most intensely personal, focused and dark songs” Stuart said he had written. “I stayed with lines that I would have clevered up in the past, or that I would have twisted in some way to avoid having them be so bare.”

“A pop song has more of a chance of getting on the radio,” Stuart said. “But I don’t think it’s completely different. It’s equally a side of my writing.”

Industry decisions aside, Stuart finds himself entering deeper into the world of rock stardom. An appearance on Letterman (“he was nice”) and a bonafide hit single (“I never thought it’d be on the radio as much as it is”) have launched Stuart and Dog’s Eye View into America’s view.

Their current tour brings them to People’s Bar and Grill tonight. Tickets are still available for $10. Special guests, The Wallflowers, will kick things off at 9:30. ID is required. Call 292-4501 for more info.