Old Blind Dogs live at Castoro Cellars

Since form­ing in Scot­land in 1992, ​‘The Dogs’ have stood on the cut­ting edge of the Scots roots revival. The band has devel­oped its own trade­mark style with an ener­getic mix of songs and tunes. Dynam­ic per­cus­sion, pol­ished vocals, soar­ing fid­dle and stir­ring pipes fuel the del­i­cate­ly-phrased melodies and tra­di­tion­al songs.

“The Old Blind Dogs play with a com­pelling ener­gy and intox­i­cat­ing rhythm,” says The Scots­man, “…as play­ers and audi­ence seem to share a wild ecsta­sy of emotion.”

Twen­ty-sev­en years is a long time in the life of any band and most who reach those mile­stones are con­tent to rest on the tried and test­ed for­mu­las that have worked in the past. Not so for Scotland’s Old Blind Dogs whose new­ly released ​‘Room With A View’ takes them once again brave­ly in many new directions.

The Dogs, one of Scotland’s most high­ly tout­ed tra­di­tion­al folk bands, are not known for shy­ing away from change. A strong, shared musi­cal vision has allowed the group to ride out inevitable line-up changes to the extent that the only orig­i­nal mem­ber still with the band is Jon­ny Hardie (fid­dle, gui­tar and vocals).

The Dogs pop­u­lar­i­ty has nev­er dimmed though and the cur­rent four­some of Hardie, Aaron Jones (bouzou­ki, gui­tar, vocals), Ali Hut­ton (pipes, whis­tles, vocals) and Don­ald Hay (drums, per­cus­sion) have proven more than capa­ble of car­ry­ing on the tra­di­tion of the band that the Mon­tréal Gazette called “…a Scots neo­tra­di­tion­al super­group with a brac­ing­ly mod­ern musi­cal attack.”