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| Photo
by David McClister |
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| Date |
City |
Venue |
Details |
| Thu 5/15/08 |
Rosendale, NY |
Rosendale Theatre |
|
| Fri 5/16/08 |
Monroeville, NJ |
Camp Jam in the Pines |
|
| Sat 5/17/08 |
Carrboro, NC |
The Artscenter |
|
| Sun 5/18/08 |
Nelsonville, OH |
Nelsonville Arts & Music Festival |
|
| Tue 5/20/08 |
Charlottesville, VA |
Gravity Lounge |
|
| Thu 5/22/08 |
Nashville, TN |
3rd & Lindsley |
|
| Fri 5/23/08 |
Hayden, AL |
The Acoustic Café |
|
| Sat 5/24/08 |
Hattiesburg, MS |
Thirsty Hippo |
|
| Sun 5/25/08 |
Shreveport, LA |
Mudbug Madness Festival |
|
| Fri 6/6/08 |
Albuquerque, NM |
Rio Grande Zoo |
|
| Sat 6/7/08 |
Pagosa Springs, CO |
Pagosa Folk & Bluegrass Festival |
|
| Sat 6/21/08 |
Bristol, TN |
Earhart Music Festival |
|
| Thu 6/26/08 |
Narragansett, RI |
The Towers |
|
| Fri 7/11/08 |
Winnipeg, MB |
Winnipeg Folk Festival |
|
| Sat 7/12/08 |
Winnipeg, MB |
Winnipeg Folk Festival |
|
| Sun 7/13/08 |
Winnipeg, MB |
Winnipeg Folk Festival |
|
| Wed 7/16/08 |
Middlebury, VT |
Middlebury Festival on the Green |
|
| Thu 7/17/08 |
Oak Hill, NY |
Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival |
|
| Fri 7/18/08 |
Greenfield, MA |
Green River Festival |
|
| Sat 7/19/08 |
Oak Hill, NY |
Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival |
|
| Sun 7/20/08 |
New York, NY |
Joe's Pub |
* |
| Thu 7/31/08 |
Kenmore, WA |
Kenmore Summer Concert Series |
|
| Fri 8/1/08 |
Happy Valley, OR |
Pickathon 2008 |
|
| Sat 8/2/08 |
Happy Valley, OR |
Pickathon 2008 |
|
| Fri 8/29/08 |
Woodstown, NJ |
Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival |
|
| Sat 8/30/08 |
Charlestown, RI |
Rhythm & Roots Festival |
|
| Sun 8/31/08 |
Charlestown, RI |
Rhythm & Roots Festival |
|
| Sat 9/20/08 |
Bristol, VA |
Bristol's Rhythm and Roots Reunion |
|
| Sun 9/21/08 |
Bristol, VA |
Bristol's Rhythm and Roots Reunion |
|
| Sat 9/27/08 |
Greer, SC |
Albino Skunk Bluegrass Festival |
|
| * Co-headlining with The Wilders |
|
|
Linzay
Young -- vocals, fiddle
Kevin Wimmer -- fiddle, vocals
Chas Justus -- guitar, vocals
Eric Frey -- bass, vocals
Glenn Fields -- drums
The music of Louisiana has a lot in common with the cuisine.
An initial blast of heat usually commands attention right
off the bat, but then -- slowly, but surely -- all sorts
of subtler notes start to creep in, making for an irresistibly
captivating experience. That’s the vibe that emanates
from The Red Stick Ramblers, an appropriately-named aggregation
that builds stylistic bridges spanning the decades --
not to mention connecting styles as diverse as traditional
Cajun, western swing, blues and old-school jazz.
“From day one, we were just interested in all sorts
of music, from Django Reinhardt to Duke Ellington to the
Cajun stuff that a few of the guys in the band grew up
around,” says Mississippi-bred guitarist Chas Justus.
“We never put any limits on what we listened to
or what we played. And at first, we didn’t think
that hundreds of college kids would come out to hear that
kind of music, but we added a little extra drive to it
with a drum kit and all, it was really a revelation to
see how contagious it could be."
On Made in the Shade, the Baton Rouge-based quintet’s
fourth album -- and first for Sugar Hill -- the Ramblers
romp and stomp through a crazy-quilt of originals and
classic covers with the high-octane energy that could
only come from a band accustomed to keeping dance-floors
jumping for hours at a time. From the kick-up-your-heels
raucousness of “Laissez Les Cajuns Danser”
(which positively bursts with both local pride and universal
merriment) to the smooth, slinky swing of Count Basie
and Jimmy Rushing’s “Evenin’,”
the band conjures up a mood that’s both heady and
heartfelt.
“The common thread is that it’s all dance
music,” fiddle player Linzay Young says of the genre-jumping
nature of the Ramblers’ repertoire. “Three
hour dances are not uncommon where we come from, and we’re
there to please the dancers, so it’s less like a
performance and more like a party and you’re the
entertainment. We could probably pull out a hundred or
so songs on a given night if we had to.”
A dozen of those find their way onto Made in the Shade,
with tracks like a souped-up version of “Some of
These Days” two-stepping with originals like the
wickedly wry title track -- which Young says was inspired
by both George Jones’s “White Lightning”
and the real-life moonshine-distilling adventures of a
Louisiana pal.
The Red Stick Ramblers first scooted out of Baton Rouge,
Louisiana -- where Young, Justus and drummer Glenn Fields
were studying at Louisiana State University -- about eight
years ago, suits crisply pressed and bows rosined-up and
ready to rollick. They quickly developed a following around
the Gulf Coast region thanks to their unflaggingly energetic
live shows, and spread the message even more widely with
the 2002 release of their self-titled debut album -- a
disc that brought them the tag “the great Cajun
hope.”
The Ramblers certainly demonstrated the musical firepower
to don that mantle, but deftly sidestepped the pigeonhole
it threatened to place them into on their sophomore outing,
Bring It on Down. That disc, which nodded to forebears
like Bob Wills and Johnny Cash, prompted the New Orleans
Times-Picayne to tout them for proffering “a potent
brew that swings so hard that it’s almost sick,
and rocks like crazy.”
After a few lineup changes -- notably the amicable departure
of co-founder Marc Savoy, the progeny of one of the first
families of Louisiana music -- the group solidified into
its current five-piece form. The revamped Ramblers, buoyed
by fiddler Kevin Wimmer -- a longtime member of Cajun
mainstay Balfa Toujours -- and Eric Frey, an Alabama native
who was schooled in bluegrass by his bassist dad, then
in jazz by one-time Basie sideman Cleveland Eaton, made
their entrée into the recording realm in 2004 with
Right Key, Wrong Keyhole.
“That was the album where we really established
a style that was really ours,” says drummer Glenn
Fields. “We have some really great writers in the
band and they started to show that on Right Key, just
like they do on Made in the Shade. It’s not focusing
on a nostalgic sound, but we’re not trying to drag
modern elements into the traditional songs just for the
sake of it.”
While they’re not slaves to tradition, the Ramblers
have a good deal of respect for it -- as borne out by
the stellar backing they provided on Linda Ronstadt and
Ann Savoy’s acclaimed Adieu False Heart, as well
as in their marshalling of the annual Black Pot Festival,
a celebration of south Louisiana’s culinary and
cultural history.
“We were touring around and talking about having
a party where we could invite a bunch of our friends to
play music and do cast-iron cooking, which is a big tradition
where we come from,” says Young, whose own specialty
is a zesty sauce piquante. “It snowballed to the
point where we had a couple thousand people coming through,
roasting pigs, camping out, jamming together. It was great.”
That sense of community bubbles up from just about every
groove on Made in the Shade, whether the mood is vivacious
(as on the Red Stick rendition of Clifton Chenier’s
“Hot Tamale Baby,” coated in Wimmer’s
deep, earthy baritone) or gritty (on the old-timey “Katrina,”
which was written in response to the storm that devastated
the Gulf Coast’s infrastructure, but not its spirit).
“Even though the circumstances were tough [around
Katrina], it gave people a good chance to get together
with friends and family and draw strength from each other,”
says Justus. “Traditional music has a lot of social
and cultural implications that pop music doesn’t,
in terms of getting people together. It’s not as
much about performance or virtuoso musicianship as it
is about community and I think people are attracted by
the approachability. That’s a rebellious thing in
a way, the desire to be real and not be co-opted or homogenized,
and that’s what we’d like to be seen as representing.” |
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Made
in the Shade
Sugar Hill Records
September 2007 |
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