There’s a band called The Lost Dogs who just finished up a tour in support of their latest album, The Lost Cabin and the Mystery Trees, with a couple of shows in southern California. I caught their San Bernardino show on Saturday night at a Community Church. About 125 people showed up, many of them there to support the mission trip that this concert was serving as a fund raiser for. I couldn’t help wondering what some of the senior citizens were thinking about during the screaming guitar moments, but the Lost Dogs play such a wide range of music that I’m sure there was something there for everybody. And for those with ears to hear, we lucky few superfans in the audience, we got some of the best music being made these days from a group like no other.

The Lost Dogs are veteran musicians who each have their own bands and/or solo careers, but who come together to form a super-group with so much talent that it’s just sloshing around the stage. Never mind the hundreds of songs from their bands of origin, they’ve been working together as the Lost Dogs for so long now (since 1992) that they’ve got a deep catalog of classics to draw from. And on top of that, their music sounds ancient the minute it’s made: most of their work tends toward the deeply traditional sounds of Americana, folk, country, roots-rock, blues, and other forms so primal that they wheeze history and bleed heritage. There’s a river of music that runs through American history, and it occasionally splashes out into the pop consciousness in something like the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, or Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger sessions. But the Lost Dogs are permanent residents on the banks of that river, and they are doing their strongest work right now.
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