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BLUE DOGS in my view by “Beatle Bob” July 2007
Bluegrass worthy of being blasted out of the windows of a Plymouth Barracuda with 451 Hemi engine, the Blue Dogs boast a personal history that has endeared themselves to the nascent “alt-country” scene with a whiz-bang melding of roots-rock rumble, bluegrass chicanary, and honky-tonk reverence.
Like mad cutural terrorists, they’ve taken the norm and fed it through a Americana blender. Youthful and deep-dyed bluegrass taken to the next level - and it is both timely and exciting!
Blue Dogs’ fans are predominantly hard-working, twenty-and thirty-plus-somethings who have developed a fierce loyalty and deep love of the collective’s conversion-by-force performances. The Blue Dogs’ fierce work ethic - long tours and long sets - and enduring spirit both are genuine. With as big-as-the-room personas, an ability to rock the doors of the most jaded clubs, the heart to hold a room completely still, and a genius for arrangement, these merry makers are one of the most unique bands around. They are in favor of laying themselves at the feet of a rambunctious, freewheeling, unfettered sound, and wood-shedding it until so-called roots revivalists, snooty bluegrass purists, and alt-country poseurs are sent into paroxysms of self-doubt and years of expensive therapy.
And just who are these South Carolinians who dare to breathe fresh life into the overly stoic, staid and mossback world of bluegrass? Anchoring this rambunctious lot with his percussion guitar and gift for lyrics is Blue Dogs founder Bobby Houck. Bobby has testified as a most innovative songwriter and performer, content on warping the classic Nashville sound and embracing the eccentric. Houck can work the crowd like a carnival barker who also happens to write tender, honest songs that move the room to awed silence. His is the voice that gently and at times spiritually strokes the senses like the hairs on a feather, but can still sound like a neat glass of single malt in a world of Michelob Light.
Long-time Blue Dog Hank Futch delivers piledriver upright bass and harmonies directly from the choir (and banter directly from the truck stop parking lot). David Stewart presents a flabbergasting prestidigitation on the electric guitar, and it is rumored that he has never played a bad solo. Ever. Greg Walker provides the fiery percussion and the wild-eyed stares that fans fear to love and love to fear. Guaranteed to lighten up even the sternest-visaged among us, the Blue Dogs provide enough sensory overload to batter back whatever bummed you out to begin with. Do not miss the opportunity to catch the healing power of this band live, who will put a smile on your face and drink one with you after the show.
What’s most remarkable about the Blue Dogs’ nine CDs and live DVDs is how effortlessly catchy they are. For all the posing, posturing stuff that gets released every year — you know, the clever-clever, trendy, arch material that critics are supposed to like but nobody buys — there are always acts like the Blue Dogs — the sort of group that looks back at the ever-lengthening history of Americana music, pinches the best bits and still comes up with something that sounds original. Musically they stay close to the roots with their stellar ensemble pickin’, but their snappy original material and their ability to transform roots-rock chesnuts proves that there’s nothing retro or neo in this gang. It sounds like rib meat falling off a bone.
The only real curiosity about the Blue Dogs’ career to date is that they their recordings aren’t as eagerly awaited with the anticipation that greets the latest Ricky Skaggs or Lyle Lovett. But it’s clear that their passion for melding bluegrass and country-rock puts them in the position to bring this lively, distinctly American form of music out of isolation and into the ears and hearts of audiences across the country and around the world. Blessed with an abundance of talent and a lifetime of musical experience, the Blue Dogs have been keeping this flame for twenty years, an heroic task, and they have done so with humility and a deep love that has only gotten deeper over time. Help them, won’t you?
Beatle Bob
St. Louis, MO
July 2007
To learn more about Beatle Bob, please visit: http://www.myspace.com/officialbeatlebob
- Beatle Bob
“What stands out is the number of quality songs. Most of the bands I’ve worked with are lucky to have three really great songs on the album, and the rest is filler. These guys have at least nine or ten really great songs on this record [Halos and Good Buys].” – Don Gehman, Producer (R.E.M., Hootie& the Blowfish, Pat Green, John Mellencamp), Los Angeles, CA
“Their unique combination is the heartbeat of the Blue Dogs, a special rock/country band that sings about woman trouble and other frustrations while they keep people shimmying on the dance floor.” - John Shelton Ivany, New York Times
“South Carolina's roots-rock faves the Blue Dogs crank it up and turn in what may be their best album with the help of superstar producer Don Gehman. The album is crammed with straight-ahead Southern rock marked by the soul-wrenching vocals of Bobby Houck and the band's terrific musicianship, a blend of acoustic subtlety and electric power; think Skynyrd without the bombast, or the gritty early work of Delbert McClinton. There isn't a single, uh, dog amid these 13 tracks, many of which sound like potential classics.”-J. Poet, Harp Magazine
“This is a completely satisfying collection that finds the Blue Dogs poised for success far beyond their Palmetto State back yard.” – Billboard Magazine
“The sound of the CD combines an acoustic, country-tinged flavor with plenty of electric guitar, bass and drum. Lead singer, Bobby Houck has a voice that can go hillbilly or rocking in a minute.” - Dallas Morning News, Dallas, TX
“The Blue Dogs have put it all together. Vocally clean, technically sound and instrumentally original. It's hard to write intensively about an emotional subject and not sound fake or cheesy, but the Blue Dogs pull it off.” – Jason Starr, Summit Daily News, Frisco, CO
“Bobby Houck’s baritone is the manliest voice since Springsteen was born to run; on this, the Dog’s third studio album, Houck recalls the Boss on his slow-climbing approach to the swelling chorus in the anthemic ballad “What’s Wrong with Love Songs”. On “Janie and Me,” he resurrects the cadence and vocal quality of early Mellencamp.”
-Buzz McLain, No Depression
- Varied
Discography
1991 Music For Dog People
1993 Soul Dogfood
1995 Live at the Dock Street Theatre
1997 Blue Dogs
1998 For the Record
1999 Letters From Round O
2001 Live at the Florence Little Theatre
2004 Halos and Goodbyes
2004 DVD Live at House of Blues
2006 Live at Workplay
2008 DVD Live at the Dock Street Theatre...Again
singles released:
1997/98 "I'd Give Anything," "Long Gone Goodbye"
1999/00 "Isabelle"
2004 "Mr. Rain," (Adult Alt.) "Half of My Mistakes," (Adult Alt.) "Wrong Love at the Right Time," (Texas Radio/Alt Country) "Make Your Mama Proud" (Country)
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Bio
SOUTH CAROLINA’S BLUE DOGS CELEBRATE 20TH IN ‘08 WITH LIVE DVD
(Charleston SC, November 26, 2008): After the 2006 release of their 9th CD, the Charleston SC-based Blue Dogs quietly entered into their 20th year as a band (est. 1987) playing and singing Americana/country-rock music. To be more specific, January 2008 marked 20 years since standup bassist Hank Futch joined forces with longtime friend, fellow cub scout, and acoustic guitarist/vocalist Bobby Houck under the band name “Blue Dogs.”
To mark the anniversary, the band has released a DVD of a live performance in their hometown, recorded in Nov 2005 at a 200-year-old theatre called the Dock Street Theatre, where they not-so-coincidentally made their first live CD 10 years earlier. On Thanksgiving Day 2008, Live at the Dock Street Theatre…again (Black River) will be available exclusively at www.bluedogs.com, or at the band’s live shows.
So the video serves as a milestone in the Dogs’ career in more ways than one. With 99 minutes of footage, it includes guest appearances by some of their good friends and well-known South Carolina musicians: Blue Dogs songwriter Phillip Lammonds, Tommy Dew and Kevin Wadley from the influential 90’s Charleston band The Archetypes, Columbia’s Danielle Howle, and the Adande African Drum ensemble featuring former Dogs percussionist (‘97-’98) Jesse Thrower.
The video might as well be considered the Blue Dogs’ definitive performance. It is packed with 20 songs, pulling from all 5 of their studio releases as well as a couple of songs never released by the band. There are fan favorites throughout. And the band runs the gamut stylistically, flexing their country/pop muscles, but then also weaving in the bluegrass sensibility that goes back to the band’s beginnings, while then managing to incorporate African djembe drums seamlessly into the show.
In fact, what is so obviously present in this show is a Blue Dogs trademark: an loose unpredictability. Various local and regional bluegrass musicians step on and off the stage with ease, most with no rehearsal that day with the band. At one point in the show, the band blows an intro to the song, and without missing a beat, stops and jokes and then starts again. Not surprisingly, the moment was not edited from the footage and made the final cut.
Rounding out the band’s lineup for the show is original Dogs’ drummer Greg Walker, whose first gig with the then-acoustic band was in 1992 at the Music Farm in Charleston, where he spontaneously set up and played and has been the band’s drummer ever since. The newest member of the band is celebrating his 10th anniversary--guitarist David Stewart, who plays flawlessly on this night. Yet the star of the evening could well be the band’s some-time mandolin player, Daren Shumaker, who is all over the stage and all over the songs with tasteful solos and licks and seems to be having the time of his life. Everyone shines in this video, which truly turns out to be just the right kind of celebration as it showcases the achievements of a band 20 years in and on top of their game.
As it turned out, 2005 was a good year for the band. In January of that year, Live at Workplay (the previously mentioned 2006 release) was recorded at the Birmingham, Alabama concert venue of the same name. Produced by Bruce Hornsby guitarist and veteran producer Doug Derryberry, the CD was a warm up of sorts for the Live at the Dock Street…again DVD, pulling from all of their previous records but featuring just the core group, the current Dogs lineup (the same since 1998): Houck and Futch with Walker and Stewart.
Recorded before a very lively and intimate audience, Workplay features versions of songs from their more recent studio albums Halos and Good Buys, Letters from Round O, and Blue Dogs (all recorded after 1996, when the band went full time), but it also reaches back to their early 90’s recordings Music For Dog People and Soul Dogfood and includes several previously unreleased songs. Many of the Blue Dogs’ most-requested songs are present, including “Walter,” “Isabelle,” “Cosmic Cowboy,” “Bill Bill,” “Half of My Mistakes” (co-written by Bobby Houck and famed Texan-turned-Nashvillian songwriter Radney Foster) and “Make Your Mama Proud,” plus Hank Futch takes a turn on the acoustic guitar with the gospel song “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” and Arthur Smith’s “Conversation with a Mule.” A rendition of Lyle Lovett’s “L.A. County” and a take on Blue Mountain’s “Blue Canoe” (seemingly custom-made for the Blue Dogs) close the CD in rocking fashion.
The CD received accolades right away, from fans and critics and radio. The Midwest Record Recap writes:
“Once again we have to wonder why this bunch of roots rockers are one of the best bands you never heard of. A hard working outfit that rubs some mighty impressive elbows along their way, here they do a live recap and more of their ten years as pros. Turning the crowd on with great ease,
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