Police Dog Hogan
London, England, United Kingdom | SELF
Music
Press
“…Police Dog Hogan got off to a loud and lively start with a jangly banjo and fiddle instrumental. It’s very traditional country and western and their live performance is flawless. Second track ‘why does everything have to be so hard?’ is up-tempo and infectious with a big chorus brought to life by multiple, perfectly synchronised vocals. ‘Slingshot around the moon’ with its soft fiddle intro fooled me into thinking that they were going to slow things down but it’s high octane all the way with this band."
Moved to a later timeslot due to cancellations elsewhere in the scheduling, I’d say it did them a huge favour. They drew a bigger crowd than they might otherwise have done and that’s a good thing because they really deserve the attention…” - MAVERICK Festival Report, Wednesday 18th August 2010, Louise Rodgers
"...Other highlights included the London urban bluegrass band Police Dog Hogan.
Their individual style, with lyrics full of amusing extended metaphor, filled The Barn and really got the audience going.
I spotted in the band's midst The Guardian's columnist Tim Dowling, who obviously has considerable talent with the banjo as well as the written word. (In fact, he wrote about Maverick in his Guardian Weekend column a week later.)" - BBC Suffolk
Discography
Albums
Police Dog Hogan, 2010
EPK
Fuzzy Folk Riot, 2009
Radio Airplay
Shitty White Wine (BBC Radio 2)
Photos
Bio
Police Dog Hogan is a 7-piece urban bluegrass outfit formed in stages over the course of a year. The nucleus of the present group first performed together in early 2009, founded on strict principles based on the simplicity of the instrumental line-up: guitar, fiddle and mandolin. The later addition of banjo, bass and drums badly undermined these core principles, but the resulting sound was worth the betrayal.
Some time that summer the fiddle player told an amusing story (although really, you had to be there) about a police dog biting someone, and Police Dog Hogan became the first band in history to be named in honour of a serving canine officer.
In a sense, however, Police Dog Hogan have been around for much longer: most of the members have been in one band or another, on and off, since the 1980s, and James, Pete, Ed, and Adam were in a band together back in the mid-90s. All their songs are informed by experience, because Police Dog Hogan are, to a man, old enough to be your Dad.
The group perform original material, written individually and together (four of them are also professional writers), occasionally reaching into their ample collective back catalogue for an old song to put through the urban bluegrass mill. Theyve played at the Maverick festival in Suffolk, the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall and in various venues in and around London. Police Dog Hogan released a triple A-side CD, Fuzzy Folk Riot, in 2009, and their first album, Police Dog Hogan, in late 2010.
Regular onstage guests include Lucy Bailley on cello, Bill Amberg on the jaw harp and once (memorably) Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on tambourine.
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