There’s something in the American soul, I think, that makes us all want to hop in the car and just drive somewhere far away, spend a few hours there, and then drive somewhere else, maybe farther away or maybe a little bit closer, and spend a few hours there too; and we’d repeat the process as long as money or the desire to do so held out. (I suspect the desire is more likely to last than the money.) I don’t think we ever really get over the idea of the road trip, since so much of American history can basically be described as a road trip writ large. What were the Lewis and Clark Expedition or the blazing of the Oregon Trail, if not great road trips?
When I was in college, the idea of a road trip was simple: Just drive from point A to point B and drink at every bar in between. No, we weren’t much for subtlety then, but as I matured a bit and became keenly interested in baseball, the idea of the dream road trip shifted from just drinking in a lot of bars to spending a summer traveling to every single ballpark in Major League Baseball, maybe hitting a minor league park or two along the way, if only because at those parks the seats are a lot closer and the beer is probably cheaper.
In more recent years, I’ve found my love of baseball waning a bit — I still love it, but the old idea of going to each ballpark seems a lot more farfetched now than it did then. In a way, I’m back to the “Hit lots of bars” idea for a road-trip, but with a difference: the focus would not be on beer, but on music. I’d want to go from city to city and hear the best Celtic or Irish rock act each town has to offer, preferably in a bar full of patrons who know the songs and the band members and the chipped glasses from which the Guinness Extra Stout flows.
Which finally brings me round to the subject of this review, because Hair of the Dog is one such band, and the best part is, I wouldn’t have to travel very far to hear them. They hail from the Albany, N.Y., region (I may be wrong, but I think one of the liner photos from Let It Flow has them standing amidst the four identical skyscrapers that constitute the Capitol of New York State.)
The three albums reviewed here are of similar character: Irish drinking songs and ballads, played with an instrumental sound combining guitars, banjos, and the occasional fiddle or mandolin to create a blend of Irish rock and American country. There is the occasional whistle, but beyond that, there is little traditional Irish or Celtic instrumentation to be had in Hair of the Dog’s music. Lovers of the bodhran or the Uillean pipes who come to this music expecting something along the line of the Chieftains may be disappointed, unless they are willing to grant the charms of this kind of Americanized Irish music.
Those sticking around for the entire act will find a great deal of said charms, such as in protest-type songs like “The Boys of the Old Brigade,” or in the surprising covers of such classic American rock tunes as CCR’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” and Don McLean’s “American Pie.” The performances are crisp, and I especially liked the differences in tone among the three men who divvy up the lead vocal chores, with Mike DeAngelis’s more throaty, lower delivery contrasting nicely with the higher tenors of Rick Bedrosian and John Hagerty. They give their singing a pleasant Irish “lilt” without exaggerating the effect. My only reservation would be that in the humorous songs like “The Scotsman,” the joking element is not driven home quite enough: the band seems to lean toward fairly straight interpretations of such songs, where other bands I’ve heard performing these songs prefer to really ham them up. They make up for this very small misgiving, though, by the sheer confidence with which they dig into everything else. This is not a shy band, by any means.
Music such as that performed by Hair of the Dog seems to be an undercelebrated part of the whole Celtic music vibe. These types of Irish bar bands may not produce the most authentic music, and they may not produce the most original music, but a lot of time, they’re the ones producing the most _fun_ music. That’s no small thing. I had a lot of fun listening to these three discs, which is partly why it took me so long to review them: I kept wanting to listen to them just once more, because they’re fun.
(October Eve, 1997, 2001, 2003)
