Music from Big Pink. . .Again:Cabin Dogs' Electric Cabin

While a little kid riding in the back of my mom’s brown Oldsmobile Omega, listening to the AM radio, the Band made an impression on me. As I got older and could start to remember songs and artist names, I always had this sense that I had known the Band the whole time. It’s because in the mid-70’s those AM stations were playing “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” and “Up on Cripple Creek.”

When the Cabin Dogs sing, “And it feels real good to be back together again,” it’s like they’re singing about being back together with my mom’s Olds, reunited with the AM radio crackling the Band. Electric Cabin is completely composed of originals (except for the closing Neil Young cover, but more on that in a moment), and yet the Cabin Dogs make you feel as if you are right back there in Big Pink again.

Brothers Rich and Rob Kwait lead the band through music that is nostalgic for the Band, recalling Van Morrison, the Dead, and Neil Young, but music that also settles into today’s Jam Band groove and Country-influenced Rock swagger.

When the band hits “Golden Blue,” you’re realizing that they’re tripping the light fantastic of the 70’s, dance lights spinning around on the soft soul vamp. More than just reminding me of the Band coming through the speakers of my mom’s Olds, the track is like all of AM radio in the 70’s crackling in one sensational feeling of a song—the Band’s harmonies, soul’s vibrations, dance floor invitation, Allman Brothers guitar, and a little funk bass break.

The album closes with a cover of Neil Young’s “One of These Days,” which makes fine sense considering the way the Cabin Dogs have already worked on their sound to recall Young and others from the 70’s. Close harmonies, horse gait rhythm, Western skylines, and dreamy friendship moments makes it “feel real good to be back together again.”


Speaking of Neil Young Covers:
Sisters Euclid’s Run Neil Run
While Rob Gusevs lays out a funked-out vamp of “Dixie,” blues guitarist Kevin Breit absolutely burns the melody of Neil Young’s “Southern Man” into your brain. Drummer Gary Taylor matches the funk of the “Dixie” vamp while following Breit on some skyrocketing rides, eventually landing at the end of the song onto a runway of military marching drum. Ian de Souza’s bass under girds the whole thing with power.

That, my friends, is just one of nine Neil Young instrumental covers laid down by Sisters Euclid on Run Neil Run. A tribute album to the melody of Young’s songs, Run Neil Run celebrates how the tunes carry as much message, emotion, story, and lyricism as Young’s highly praised lyrics.

Sisters Euclid draw out the blues, funk, soul, and wandering melody on these Young songs. Slower tracks get a little too drawn out, so that a song like “Helpless” doesn’t really a hard enough stride for the chorus. Yet, it does reveal the bluesman that stands behind the Canadian troubadour. Although, that may come through better on the blistering “Needle and the Damage Done.”

Thanks to Cabin Dogs, Woodstock Records, Sisters Euclid, and NorthernBlues Music for the review CDs.