Benjamin Tod & Lost Dog Street Band

Saturday, April 20
Doors: 7pm
$28.50
Benjamin Tod & Lost Dog Street Band
‘Survived’ Album Release Tour

Saturday, April 20th, 2024

Thunderbird Music Hall
4053 Butler Street, Pittsburgh, PA

Doors @  7pm
Show @  8pm

AGE RESTRICTION: 21+ or Accompanied by Legal Guardian

https://www.lostdogstreetband.com/
https://www.benjamintodmusic.com/
Raised in Sumner County, just outside of Nashville, Benjamin Tod was primarily raised by his grandmother and grandfather. However, at age 7, his mother surprised him with a cheap electric guitar –then his competing father bought him a pawnshop classical guitar. With nobody to show him how to play, they were little more than toys. However, at 14, he and a friend each received a Fullerton parlor guitar from his friend’s father. The boys started getting interested in folk music and protest songs, which led Benjamin to the streets of Nashville to busk.

Meanwhile, Ashley Mae was spending more and more time in Nashville, where her mother worked the overnight shift at rock station WKDF. She’d already tapped into the small punk scene in Rapid City, South Dakota, where she grew up, but found an even deeper community in Music City. At 20, she taught herself to play fiddle, shedding as much of her classical violin training as she could. When she met Benjamin Tod at a punk show, introduced by a mutual friend, they bonded immediately.

At 17, they left Nashville together for a life of street performance, hopping trains, and scraping by on less than $300 a month. After four years of terrible gigs and almost no traction, Benjamin Tod decided in 2016 to abandon the band. “I’d been a hardly functioning drug addict and alcoholic for over a decade. I was sick of the lifestyle and it seemed like it was going nowhere,” he admits.

An invitation from the band Devil Makes Three came out of the blue in 2016. Benjamin Tod found out about it in a train-yard, about to hop a train from Asheville, North Carolina, to Knoxville, Tennessee. “Without that, Lost Dog never would have moved forward from that point,” he says.


Ticket Tier Info:
General Admission Tickets – Standing Room Only

There are no additional entry protocols at this time. Entry requirements are subject to change. By purchasing tickets to this event you agree to abide by entry requirements in effect at the time of the event. Check the venue website leading up to your event for the latest protocols. Please visit https://thunderbirdmusichall.com/safety/ for more information on Covid-19 Safety. 

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Lost Dog Street Band was created in the winter of 2010 after a long and bitterly cold trek on foot to Tennessee. Splitting paths from their former project Barefoot Surrender, Benjamin Tod and Ashley Mae set out to craft their own original music as a duet. Drawing on inspiration of hard times on the road, personal tragedy, the power of love (and of course their dog) Benjamin continued on with a long legacy of songwriting that cuts to the quick. Knitting together musical influences from traditional country, old time, and blues Ashley Mae and Benjamin began to refine what is their original take on American storytelling songs. With their packs, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and pup they set out on foot traveling coast to coast by hopping freight, and hitchhiking with the vision of sharing their music. Along the way, they met many inspirational musicians. Amongst them was Nicholas and Shannon Ridout with whom they formed the project Spit Shine in the year 2012. After the tragic loss of their dear friend Nicholas, Lost Dog Street Band hit the road in search of solice and a deep seated need to continue sharing music as a source of comfort. Today, Benjamin and Ashley have made a home in the country side of Tennessee, working the land and carrying on their lives as full-time musicians. As they tour regularly, perhaps you will see them roaming across the country in their van with their dog Copper.