ALBUM REVIEW: FM359- ‘Truth, Love And Liberty’ (2014)

The first album of 2014 hits my doorstep and have to say it is a corker! For a while there last year it looked like trouble was abrewing in Street Dog town and it seemed they may be splitting up. Looking back they like just needed a break from the constant touring and as a consequence they came up with this in their spare time.

Two members of the Street Dogs, Mike McColgan and Johnny Rioux, Murder The Stouts Hugh Morrison, original Dropkick Murphy guitarist Rick Barton and a few mates came up with this album of country, gospel inspired, mostly, acoustic punk rock. I suppose you could call this as a side-project but for Johnny Rioux he’s already got this here, Rick Barton has Continental, who only just toured the UK with their country tinged punk, and Hugh Morrison, who is also playing in loads of bands, so for some this is a side-side-side-project so gotta have your doubts we’ll see them in britland anytime soon!

They’ve described it themselves as having ‘a humanitarian (non-religious) GOSPEL Americana (punk) rock sound’ and that’s as good a description as anyone could make. Vocal duties are split around the various members with Johnny Rioux particularly impressing on ‘I Saw The Light’ the albums most country song.

“I travelled far from sea to sea, to see if I could find my heart of gold.  And when I found the one that I loved, I fucked it up and now I’m all alone”

Topics seem to revolve around the struggle of the American everyman and the politics are a lot more subdued than previously but still ramped up higher than 99% of most American bands. It all seems a bit personal and autobiographical as on Mike McColgan’s ‘It Stay’s With Me’

“Remember cold Tuttle Street days, just to run down Grampian Way. Dreamers sprung loose by Catholic cages, come take a walk with me, I’ll read my pages”

There’s plenty of touches of celtic-punk here but the various members are to be congratulated on making a superb album containing so many disparate strands of music and yet marrying them together to make something pretty much unique as well as perfect!

Out on Pirate Press Records

Contact The Band:  Facebook

ALBUM REVIEW- JOHNNY RIOUX ‘CowbOi!’ (2013)

many of us who come from Irish backgrounds will have had the misfortune to have heard a quite a lot of country’n’western music…and when I say a lot I mean a LOT. although what we grew up listening to was not strictly country’n’western it was country’n’Irish a hybrid of the worse in country music AND the worse in Irish music! names like Big Tom, Margo and that giant of c’n’I Daniel O’Donnell an still bring me out in cold sweats and nightmares of sitting in our local Irish club with a coke and crisps being forced to listen to 4 middle aged Irishmen from Derby wearing cowboy hats singing Take Me Home Country Roads!

well what a surprise I got this morning…

I had’nt heard of Johnny Rioux until very recently and it turns out that not only is the Boston based musician in The Street Dogs but he’s also part of Texan celtic-punk band Murder the Stout (along with fellow Street Dogs guitarist Marcus Hollar) and he’s been in and also worked with a shed load of other bands including record producing for Flatfoot 56, the Street Dogs and Roger Miret and the Disasters.

The album itself is a mix of ‘country-fied’ punk and Oi! standards (and a few less so) but more in keeping of Johnny Cash than Jim Reeves! This fits in easily with the recent wave of alternative (punk?) country bands like Old Man Markley and Banjoey Ramone. As a offshoot of celtic-punk its great to hear old fashioned music given a new twist and like celtic-punk it may hopefully inspire people to delve into the back catalogues of some of the best country artists…just as long as they stay the hell away from country’n’Irish!!

Here’s a 30 minute set from YouTube to whet your appetite for buying the album!

Johnny Rioux’s Facebook page is here

Track Listings:

01 – Working (Cock Sparrer)
02 – If The Kids Are United (Sham 69)
03 – Voice Of Generation (Blitz)
04 – Someones Gonna Die (Blitz)
05 – Societies Fools (The Bruisers)
06 – Crucified (Iron Cross)
07 – A.C.A.B (The 4Skins)
08 – Oi! Oi! Oi! (Cockney Rejects)
09 – Police Oppression (Angelic Upstarts)
10 – Evil In Brain (Blood For Blood)