Audry’s Old Bed already has quite an interesting history for being a fairly new alternative-folk father-son duo. John and Kyle Herbert were based in pre-Katrina New Orleans. Shortly before Katrina, they invited musician friends Eddie Ecker, Tom Marron, and Beth Patterson, to join them at Ground Floor Productions in St. Bernard Parish to record a full-length album. Like most of St. Bernard after Katrina, the studio was completely destroyed along with the master tapes for Tragedy on Dogpound Road. Luckily, a few mixed and mastered copies of the album had been passed to friends, so the project was finally completed in 2007.

The album is a collection of heartfelt folk songs with earnest and enduring lyrics. “Cannonball,” begins with soft acoustic guitar strumming along a harmonica melody line, which gives way to John Herbert’s Springsteen inspired vocal howl, “I want to follow you into some kind of forgotten midnight dream / my god knows just what I mean / and I’ve been shot through the night like a cannonball.” The album does lack a bit in terms of diversity, with many songs sharing the same guitar tone and structure. The last two tracks are a bit more experimental, however. “Signals” has a darker production and features some exceptional theremin work, while “Shining Path” was written solely by Kyle Herbert and features a haunting ending with sirens and Moog synthesizer sounds. Tragedy on Dogpound Road is a warm album that recalls floating down a muddy Louisiana swamp on a sultry summer nights.