Since 2010, Police Dog Hogan have fused country-roots-Americana with a wholly British sensibility. Banjo player Tim Dowling’s Guardian column highlights their comic touring tales, but their music remains emotionally powerful, featuring driving country-rock with guitar, fiddle, banjo, accordion, and trumpet.
The band have spent early 2025 touring to promote their 6th studio album, Lightning Strike, recorded over a single weekend at Middle Farm Studios in Devon. Lightning Strike followed on the heels of 2022’s success with Overground, which spent 4 weeks on the UK Folk album chart.
PDH have played dozens of festivals, many of them repeatedly, including Glastonbury, Latitude, Cropredy, Cornbury, Beautiful Days, Kendall Calling and the Sidmouth Folk Festival. The band have played sold out shows at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Union Chapel, Scala, and Cadogan Hall, and have performed in Nashville, Ireland and France. In 2018, their song Devon Brigade was nominated for best original song at the AMA-UK Awards. The album it came from, Wild By The Side of the Road, spent several weeks in the Official UK Americana charts.
Late 2024 saw Police Dog Hogan release a Christmas single, Pull Away, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the RNLI. Previously the band released another single, My First Christmas Alone, in winter of 2020 that helped to raise over £50k for Crisis and reached No. 1 in the iTunes country charts.
Police Dog Hogan are: James Studholme (guitar vocals), Eddie Bishop (fiddle, mandolin), Tim Dowling (banjo, steel guitar), Emily Norris (trumpet), Shahen Galichian (accordion, piano), Don Bowen (bass), Alistair Hamer (drums)
‘They manage to fuse bluegrass, folk, country and more in a way that few others can match.’ RNR MAGAZINE
‘Since they made their album debut back in 2010, Police Dog Hogan have been building a reputation as one of the country’s finest live bands and folk-country acts… Overground is their finest hour yet.’ FOLK RADIO
‘A good night out guaranteed.’ MARK RADCLIFFE, BBC RADIO 2 FOLK SHOW
*Sons of Town Hall: * "Seamless vocal harmonies...stories of sea voyages, betrayal and desolation... a more coherent concept you’ll be pushed to find" - The Observer
"Amazing...Equal parts care and craftsmanship, joy and sorrow, it is a splendour to behold....They simply exist on a different plane than everyone else, as does their album" - Folk Radio UK
"A study in beautiful storytelling through song" – RNR Magazine
"It’s part balladry, part performance art, and totally cool. … Think Simon & Garfunkel lost at sea, and you get a sense of the mythic world at play here." - Philadelphia Inquirer
“Sensational!” - John Platt, WFUV
“Nothing short of stunning” - Lisa Schwartz, Director Philadelphia Folk Festival
“Unique and beautiful…unforgettable.” - Phil Collins (Austin, TX)
“Purposely timeless yet anachronistic, a sort of aural steampunk” - Santa Fe New Mexican
Welcome to the mythic world of Sons of Town Hall, the international, waterborne duo of George "Ulysses" Brown (UK) and Josiah "Chester" Jones (US). The pair transcends time and space, dressed in threadbare Victorian outfits, they meditate about the ocean, and sing songs that beg you to sing along. Their songs are masterful in their own right, poetic turns of phrases sung with voices so perfectly matched it is impossible to tell them apart, harmonies so sublime they will seem the work of witchcraft, and intricately finger-picked guitar parts worthy of Apollo himself. But it is Sons of Town Hall's presentation that sets them apart from every other guitar-slinging songwriting team out there.
The show is three-parts concert, one-part theater and unlike anything most have ever experienced. George and Josiah's between-song repartee is unique and absolutely hilarious, as they share their tales of traveling the world on the water and roaming the frontier looking for work. The affection they feel for each other is contagious, and audiences leave in love with both of them, with each other, and with life in general.
You will laugh. You will cry. You will be transfixed and transformed, drunk on adventure and the tragic beauty of the human condition.
Highly, highly recommended.
www.sonoftownhall.com instagram.com/sonoftownhall
Watch their incredible video for “The Line Between”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ2L9AS4JeM
Or their love song for “Louise” in New York City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDmr1X3NDbc
Or “Holes in a Western Town,” from Gold Hill, Colorado: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mudpvc6ispg