The small village of North Newbald, with a population of approximately 800 people, lies within the idyllic East Riding of Yorkshire, around 13 miles north-west of Hull. Despite its size, it houses a fair few attractions, including the Grade 1 listed St Nicholas Church, described as the most complete Norman Church in the area, while on the communal village green, you can still find the whipping post used in the last public flogging carried out in Britain. In more recent times, the village hall has become one of its most popular attractions, thanks in no small part to local promoter John Tomlinson and his team of volunteers, continually attracting some of the finest acts in folk and Americana music from not just these shores, but around the world.
Tonight is no exception, with Spanish-based four-piece Track Dogs making their first appearance upon this hallowed stage. The band comprises two Irishmen, founding member Garrett Wall, and Dave Mooney; one Englishman, Howard Brown; and an American, Robbie K. Jones, and are named after the dark subterranean world of New York’s subway system. Formed in the autumn of 2006 around an eclectic musical mix of acoustic guitar, electric bass, trumpet, cajon, banjo, ukulele, mandolin and four-part harmonies, the line-up has remained constant over the following 19 years, which has seen the release of 8 studio albums. That total was augmented earlier this year with the release of a new 40-track double CD, titled “Tracks Laid, Tracks Covered”, that brings together some of their finest songs from their first five albums, along with numerous previously unreleased numbers.
With no support act this evening, the band played two sets, both approximately an hour in length, starting with ‘The Way Of Things’, the first track from their most recent studio album “Blind Summits & Hidden Dips” that first saw the light of day in 2023. The song proves the perfect opener, the band lined up across the stage with Jones seated on the cajon, between Brown, whose trumpet playing helps create the Latin ambience, and Wall on acoustic guitar and lead vocals, immediately connecting with the audience that had packed the hall without a spare seat to be had. Founding member Wall initially took responsibility for conversing with the local congregation, availing himself with a warm, relaxed demeanour, quickly establishing that around half of the night’s audience were seeing the band for the first time. Dressed in a rather animated, wide-collared, short-sleeved shirt that one might associate with a beach bar in Marbella, his image is in complete contrast to Jones, who, with his well-established beard and pork-pie hat, looks as if he has just stepped out of the cover of The Band’s eponymous album. And yet this juxtaposition in many ways encapsulates the very ethos of the band, combining different styles to create their own sound without ever diluting the origin of the source.
Songs from the band’s 2018 album “Kansas City” featured heavily during the first half, with ‘Find A Rose’ and ‘A Lucky Man In Kansas City’ both offering up some delightful trumpet playing from Brown, while ‘The Deep End’ saw Wall take up the ukulele and share lead vocals with Jones. An energetic cover of the traditional song ‘A Man Of Constant Sorrow’ drew attention to the quartet’s harmonies while Jones took the lead on both the beautiful ‘Dragonfly Castle’ that first appeared on the 2020 album “Fire On The Rails”, and ‘Yeah Right’, where the need for tuning and re-tuning the banjo found him on the receiving end of some jovial ribbing from his colleagues, though with 19 years under their belts there was no sense of the well rehearsed add-libbed lines here, but rather the goodwill banter between a band of brothers.
The most recent album also supplied another three songs to the first set, starting with the reflective ‘Cover Your Tracks’ while their excellent arrangement of Lester Flatt’s ‘Sleep With One Eye Open’ saw Brown take over percussive duties on the cajon, while Jones doubled up on banjo and lead vocals, delivering a raw authenticity to this classic song that proved to be one of the evening’s many highlights, before the band closed the first half with the lively ‘Water The Lawn’ with Jones again proving his prowess on the five-stringed instrument.
The start of the second set featured another facet of the band’s repertoire as they sang a cappella. Starting as a duet, all four members eventually took to the stage and, standing around one microphone, delivered a spine-tingling cover of Steve Young’s ‘Seven Bridges Road’, in a similar fashion to the version The Eagles allegedly pilfered from Iain Matthews. Either way, tonight’s offering was a match for either, a fact borne out by the rumour that Matthews, having previously heard Track Dogs’ interpretation of Young’s classic song performed at a recent festival, was impressed enough to consider recording the track with the quartet sometime in the near future.
As with the first set, songs from the new album continued to feature with ‘Play Nice’, delivering its bilingual narrative of Spanish and English as Brown’s trumpet once again accented the Latin flavour. Prior to the band breaking into ‘Be Your Silver Bullet’, Wall invited a fifth musician to the stage as he reminisced about starting out in the music business and his first band back in Ireland. A member of that band had been harmonica player Fergal Gara, who was on hand tonight to help take this song into Paul Butterfield territory, his blues harmonica playing acting like a fulcrum for the rest of the band, who instantly shifted through the gears.
The sole representative on the evening’s set list from the 2022 album “Where To Now” was a slightly more rustic interpretation of the infectious ‘Donna Lola’, which was followed by two starkly contrasting cover versions that, in many ways, come closest to defining the essence of the Track Dogs’ sound. First up was a fantastic rendition of ‘Who Were You Thinking Of’, where bass guitarist Mooney took lead vocals on this classic number from the Texas Tornados, the American Tejano supergroup that came together in the early 1990s and featured such luminaries as Flaco Jiménez, Augie Mayers, Doug Sahm, and Freddy Fender. Their music was a fusion of rock and country, combined with a mix of European and Mexican styles, a template that shapes much of Track Dogs’ identity. The other cover inhabits a very different musical terrain with ‘Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)’, a US number 1 single from the early 1970s for the American band Looking Glass. The original hit was pure power pop, underpinned by a saccharine layered melody; however, in the hands of tonight’s four musicians, the song structure becomes less formulated, while their exquisite harmonies help to retain all the joy and energy of Elliot Lurie’s most successful composition.
By this time, the room was quite literally rocking, and as the show reached its conclusion, the band turned the burners on with the infectious ‘La Banda‘, followed by ‘Amor De Mi Vidi’, transporting the village hall in Newbald all the way to the salsa clubs of downtown Rio De Janeiro. Unsurprisingly, an encore was vociferously demanded by the audience, with the band, at this point rejoined by Gara, returning to perform a delightful rendition of pioneering country music star Cousin Emmy’s (birth name Cynthia May Carver) ‘Ruby Are You Mad At Your Man’. As the final notes faded and the crowd was on their feet in appreciation, the four members paraded between the aisles, each playing a different percussive instrument, with snare, leading bass, triangle, and cymbals in a cacophony of rhythmic indulgence, maintaining the energy levels that had started the show right through to the final beat of the drum.
It’s been suggested that despite the high quality of their albums, you don’t really understand what makes Track Dogs so special until you’ve seen them live. This evening, I bore witness to that fact, and it was an experience that will live long in the memory. Absolutely fantastic.
