Plague Dad is the most recent project from Portland, Maine-based singer/songwriter Frank Gallagher – no, not the guy from Shameless. This Frank Gallagher’s a veteran of the indie rock scene who did a couple of years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and then got his start back in the day out in San Francisco. His first band, Scouts Honor, shared stages from LA to Seattle with a long list of acts, including Nirvana, Love Battery, the Goo Goo Dolls, Alice Donut, Mary’s Danish, and Primus.
Plague Dad is an acoustic act, steeped in the old-timey sounds of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and the Stanley Brothers, but infused through and through with the punk-rock ethos that led Gallagher toward making music in the first place. The repertoire draws from a deep well of tightly crafted original tunes and carefully curated covers. And murder ballads. Lots of murder ballads.