Lost Dog Street Band - The Magnolia Sessions
You can hear the crickets chirping, like an earnest audience, during this intimate performance of dark country songs by the Lost Dog Street Band. The record is part of Anti-Corporate Music’s “The Magnolia Sessions Series,” which showcases dark country, bluegrass and folk artists performing next to a large magnolia tree outside the label’s Nashville headquarters. It’s the perfect setting for this husband-and-wife duo’s haunting roots music, recorded on a humid evening in May 2021. Guitarist-vocalist Benjamin Tod and fiddle player Ashley Mae, who drove two hours to Tennessee after working on their Kentucky farm all day, sweetly complement each other musically and vocally on this collection of traditional folk songs (“Shady Grove”), originals (“Ballad of A Broken Man”) and wisely chosen covers (Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita,” Bob Dylan’s “Moonshiner,” Townes Van Zandt’s “Lungs”). The fact that Ichi, a 17-year-old one-eyed (and very sick) pit bull and longtime canine friend of the band died later that night only adds to the emotional gravity of this recording.
