Akron singer/songwriter Roger Hoover made quite an impression on the local music scene with his band the Whiskeyhounds in the mid ’00s.
His albums Panic Blues (2005) and Jukebox Manifesto (2006) earned high praise in the local media for their affecting assimilation of various blue-collar folk-rock tropes, driven by a strain of unsettling darkness.
He never quite lived up to that initial promise, sneaking out his Magpies release, Strangers, in 2010 to very little notice. His latest lineup, the Hurt, released Lay My Rituals Down last year. It features 13 songs that demonstrate that whatever demons have held him back, they haven’t taken the edge off his raw blues/folk-based songwriting and mournful, battered vocals.
Hoover & the Hurt play the Happy Dog, with Brent Kirby, a singer-songwriter-rocker as ubiquitous and productive as Hoover has been elusive and erratic, opening.
Admission is $5.