Tuesday 10 March 2015

Track Dogs - Forever You'll Be E.P.



Track Dogs, 'Forever You'll Be'


Info: Named after the maintenance teams that work the NYC subway system Track Dogs are a four piece acoustic act based in Madrid, Spain. Made up of two Irishmen; Garrett Wall (Vocals/Guitar/Ukulele/Piano) & Dave Mooney (Bass/Ukelele/Vocals), Englishman Howard Brown (Trumpet/Vocals/ Percussion) and Cleveland, Ohio native Robbie K Jones (Cajón/Banjo/Vocals). They've just released a new E.P. and are also coming back (well half of them!) home for an Irish Tour (dates below).

Track Dogs' music is a kind of hazy acoustic / jazzy mixture of sounds, nicely divided between acoustic guitar on one hand and trumpet on the other. Obviously there's a lot more than that going on, and I really enjoyed their harmonies in particular on their cover of The Faces 'Ooh La La'. 'Early Late' (below) then comes along with nice, simple strings, soft piano and heartfelt vocals (Mic Christopher anyone?), probably my favourite track of the three (it also contains a radio edit of the title track). 'Forever You'll Be' has country / roots tendencies and also a back-story to it, which I leave to guitarist Garrett Wall;

"January 2002 was a very dark time for close-friend-of-the-band Ronan Kirby and many others, as they lost their best friend / sister / daughter through her brutal murder by a co-worker in a Limerick hotel. For years Ronan threatened people with writing a song about it, as his way of dealing with the tragic loss of our friend. He was neither a songwriter nor musician – so it really was a threat! Finally 2 years ago he flew out to Madrid and sat down with me for a week to do exactly that. As Ronan said himself, “What started out as an angry rant in my head for so many years, has became this celebration of an incredible and most wonderful life – Forever You’ll Be”. It was brought further to life during our next Irish tour, as huddled around a turf fire on a bitterly cold Spring night in Connemara, my bandmates in Track Dogs added their own unique magic to it with cajon, trumpet, banjo, bass and a sprinkling of ukulele. The song means an awful lot not just to Ronan, but to my bandmates and me in Track Dogs too. So you imagine how proud we all were to see the Forever You’ll Be EP reach No. 1 on iTunes in Ireland on its release a few weeks ago in early February."


Track Dogs, 'Early Late'


FOUR LEGGED TOUR, IRELAND, MARCH 2015

Crane Lane Theatre, Cork - March 26th
The Harbour Bar, Bray - March 27th
Tally Ho, Longford - March 28th
Kyteler’s Inn, Kilkenny - March 29th





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