Under the name Birddog, Buffalo-based singer/songwriter Bill Santen built an evocative and sometimes surreal strain of Americana, heavy with imagery and bearing a strong poetic sense. After emerging in the latter half of the 1990s, the project yielded a quartet of distinctive albums including 2001's haunting A Sweet and Bitter Fancy. Santen retired the Birddog name in 2004 and issued his first proper solo album.
A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Santen spent several years drifting up and down the West Coast before finally settling in Portland, Oregon. There he was befriended ...