Pagans of Celtic inflection who also enjoy Celtic music should know about Scottish band the Old Blind Dogs, if you don't already.
I don't claim to be the most tapped-in Celtic music fan in the world, but neither am I the least, and it took going to Scotland a year and a half ago for me to hear of the Old Blind Dogs — the name, it appears, taken from a traditional song featuring a elderly, disabled canine with a hankering for stolen sausage. There on the island of Skye, I picked up New Tricks, their first album, produced in 1992, and it's to this tape's music we drove around Scotland. There's nothing like coming around the corner to a sight of ancient, green-pelted mountains broken open to deep glens, under a clean-washed sky, as the Dogs' version of "Bedlam Boys" (a song made famous by Steeleye Span) starts playing. Sad and wicked and fiercely joyful all at once. A very Scots feeling to me.
Other New Tricks highlights for me are the instrumental "The Garnethill/Miss Mairi MacPhail of Laxdale," the first tune in the medley written by fiddle-player Jonny Hardie and both featuring his lyrical fiddle-playing, and "The Bonnie Banks of Fordie," a gruesome ballad about a marriage-minded outlaw who proposes, unknowingly, to one of his two sisters. She refuses, so he offs her with his penknife and tries the other sister, discovers their blood-kinship and does himself in. Ah, those passionate Scots. Ah, that overworked penknife.
Back home, I quickly snapped up the CDs I could find of the Dogs': Close to the Bone and Five. Close to the Bone, a 1993 outing, is their second album, and another lovely trophy to set next to New Tricks. Here for me notable are the band's propulsive versions of "The Cruel Sister" and "Twa Corbies," both well-known Scottish ballads made new. Davy Cattanach, the Dogs' percussionist on their first five albums, is godlike. His African- and Caribbean-influenced playing makes all the difference on these albums, and to me especially on the ballads. The Old Blind Dogs from their first album were not a totally trad band, but the additions and alien inflections to me make the music live.
I also really love Hardie's fiddle playing on the two instrumentals "Seonaidh Mor/The Fall/Dick Gossops" and "The Broken Pledge/Claggy's Dilemma/Hamilton's Jig." There's something about a slow fiddle tune that just melts me, and both the beginning tunes of these medleys send shivers up my back. Then the music speeds up, and I want to start dancing. Also on this album, the bawdy a capella "The Trooper and the Maid or the Trumpet Sounds at Burreldales" shows off Ian Benzie's wild, feisty, thickly Scots-burred singing. To me, good singing, even on a lusty tune like this, questions you, leads you out, has an edge to it. This for me is always true of Benzie's work.
The Dogs' next album, Tall Tails, 1994, is unfortunately one I don't have, though I wish I did. Several Web reviewers mention as a highlight of this album "The Pills of White Mercury," said pills being a cure for the syphilis given by winsome prostitutes to the song's narrator. I know I'll search high and low to hear this.
I do have album five, named Five, 1997, for which release the band added a fifth member, piper and saxophonist Fraser Fifield — the fourth member of the earlier albums' lineup, bass and cittern player Buzzby McMillan, has been with the Dogs from the start. (Speaking of four, I'll get to album four in a minute.)
Despite the addition of pipes and sax, what stands out for me most on this album are songs led by Benzie's singing, including the traditional, and traditionally bloody, "Johnny O'Braidislee." Cattanach deserves applause here as well; as in "The Cruel Sister" and "Twa Corbies" on album two, "Johnny O'Braidislee"'s driving, driven beat, totally appropriate to a song about first a deer then a man being hunted, makes this song new for me. On another voice-led tune, Benzie gives the traditional "Parcel of Rogues" a slow, melancholy rendering that lingers. Five found the lads playing about in the studio a bit, and the traditional "Lowlands of Holland" seems a bit echoey and overproduced to me. Still, it catches my ear, especially again the singing and a lovely sax break.
For pure instrumentals, what strikes me most on Five is cut nine, "Leaving Lochboisdale," another sad, slow fiddle tune. On cut six, "Janine's," the fiddle and pipes together will take your breath away. I also liked the first track, "Trip to Pakistan," on which the Border pipes go middle Eastern, though for me it goes a wee bit long.
After Five, the Dogs shuffled members. Percussionist Cattanach left for health reasons, singer Benzie left for a solo career, and Fifield likewise went on to other projects. That left long-time members Hardie and McMillan to hook up in 1999 with Jim Malcolm, a singer of repute as well as a guitarist, percussionist Paul Jennings and piper Rory Campbell. The new Old Blind Dogs in late 1999 released a new album, The World's Room, which I recently picked up. This album's on a new label, too, the Celtic behemoth Green Linnet; the Dogs' former label was KRL.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the new lineup to me doesn't have the edge of the old. The instrumentals still take you wild places. I really like Rory Campbell's Border pipes and whistle playing, and Jonny Hardie remains one of the best Celtic fiddle players out there. But the loss of Cattanach and Benzie to me leaves a hole that has not been filled. I think Malcolm is a fine singer, Jennings a talented percussionist, but the change for me shades the Dogs' music toward Celtic easy listenin'. A couple Web reviews say the live band still has the old sound, but I didn't find that on the CD.
I don't want to think ill of the new Old Blind Dogs. Selfishly, I want them to keep playing music I love. But the difference to me was only underlined by the fact that I picked up the Dogs' fourth album, Legacy, at the same time I got The World's Room.
Legacy from first listen engaged me as had the three albums I knew of old. It's full of interesting midtempo tunes, a bit of a departure from the other albums. I liked "The Lancashire Lads," an English song in which girls mourn the leave-taking of a local soldier company, and "The Bonnie Earl of Moray," a traditional Scots ballad, contemplatively played, which mourns a well-loved, murdered lord. Onto a weaving of guitar and drums, the fiddle here builds a high filigree; as the song fades, you wish there were more. I note also "The Snows They Melt the Soonest," a ballad of a lover being left, which could be sweet sung by some; Benzie's sad, cynical rendition catches love's turn's ragged feel. The fiddle plays against his voice in lovely fashion here. I like too the pretty whistle-playing and the dark undertone to the singing and guitar work on "Tibbie Fowler/Breton Dance Tune."
Though The World's Room suffers in comparison to Legacy or the other older albums, the new CD isn't a bad outing. I recommend from this one two tracks on which Hardie and Campbell take lead, "The Branle" and "The Ritual." The latter features haunting and then toe-tapping whistle work by Campbell, as well as fine piping. Though another instrumental, "Roslin Castle," seems a tad too artificially sweetened in production, it also has some fair and eerie whistle work. That said, however, I suspect the earlier albums will stay in my CD rotation longer than The World's Room will.
For rituals, I'd try some of the slower instrumentals for atmosphere, particularly for divination or in rites invoking Celtic deities. The trouble is that the Old Blind Dogs, as with many Celtic bands, tend to combine their slow instrumental songs with jigs and reels in medleys. The only standalone slow song I found on a quick scan, "Leaving Lochboisdale" from Five, would work. The faster instrumentals, in contrast, might be good to raise energy, especially as a background for dancing. One track that's fast all through, and has longing in it good for a spell to get something you desire, is Legacy's "The £5 Flute/Donald McLennan's Exercise/What Pain I Have Endured Since Last Year." It's possible too that with some nimble tape dubbing you could separate slow songs from fast.
Anyway, if you're interested in Celtic music and you haven't got New Tricks, Close to the Bone, Legacy and Five, I say go get 'em. I myself will be hunting down Tall Tails. Also, the Dogs' old label, KRL, at the end of 1999 released a live-concert album aptly and simply titled Live, which showcases the four Dogs of the first four albums at home in Aberdeen. I'll also be sniffing this one out. Another chance to hear the classic Old Blind Dogs is well worth the price.
Maybe I'm a picky bitch. But this bitch prefers the Dogs she knew.
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