Dog Hair Ridge

Fresh from the Ozark hills of Southern Missouri comes Dog Hair Ridge.
With offerings that lean towards the traditions of country, blues, and rock, and a focus on musicianship and songwriting, the music of Dog Hair Ridge represents the next step in the evolution of rural American music. Unlike many of their contemporaries in the ever-expanding “roots” scene, Dog Hair Ridge came by their sound, style, and even their name naturally and honestly.

Brothers Ben and Brandon Tallent, the songwriting core of the group, were raised on their family’s farm only a couple of creek-miles from the farm of bassist Brian Miinch’s family, in the foothills of Missouri‘s Ozark Mountains. It is the shared experiences of hard work and simple living that gave rise to the music of Dog Hair Ridge.

After forming under the name Farm in 2005 and honing their sound in the dive-bars and honky tonks of the mid-south, the boys of Dog Hair Ridge took heed from the rock and roll greats of a previous generation, seeking artistic refuge in the Catskill Mountain village of Woodstock, NY, making the thousand mile journey in their ’76 Econoline van. In Woodstock the Tallent brothers encountered a kindred spirit in legendary drummer/singer, Arkansas native Levon Helm.

In exchange for the performance of various chores and odd-jobs around the house, the brothers were granted admittance to Helm’s Midnight Ramble concert series, hosted weekly by Levon and Sandy at their Plochman Lane home. At the Rambles, the Tallent brothers were privileged to witness many of today’s best performing musicians in a setting whose intimacy and down-home hospitality goes unrivaled in today’s music scene. As would be expected, this experience had a profound effect on the brothers, and sparked a creative outpouring whereby the textures and images, gleaned from the simple Ozark way of life, began to take shape into new music.

The resulting album, Tapped Out, was self recorded, without a budget, at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in early 2008 while Ben was enrolled as a student. The songs that comprise Tapped Out, provide an accurate representation of where the band’s members found themselves, both artistically and personally, when given the chance to reflect from the different, yet oddly familiar landscape of the Catskills. While songs run the gamut of traditional subjects, from trouble with the law(You Come Around) to failing relationships(Lately), this collection of tunes is united under the prevailing theme of rural farm living, the only thing these boys really know anything about.