Times of Acadiana
Ocotber 1, 2003
By: Nick Pittman

Many More Roads to Ramble: This year finds The Red Stick Ramblers rambling hard and heavy across the country.

To put it simply, The Red Stick Ramblers have been busy. Busy cutting a new CD, set for distribution on Memphis International Records. Busy keeping oil companies rich as they logged 30,000 miles in a 1994 Chevy Suburban named Bourbon Gauthier. Busy exhausting the gas tank of said Suburban in the scorching deserts of Arizona. Busy playing to crowds that refused to dance.

The last five months also saw new faces answering The Red Stick Ramblers' roll call. Ricky Rees, the original bass player, played his last gig with the band at the New Orleans Jazz Fest. Most of The Ramblers' tour dates featured Oliver Swain of Scruj Macduhk slapping the bass. For upcoming dates, look for the spot to be filled by Eric Frey, a young man who left school in Alabama to saddle up with The Ramblers. However, it's Rees' licks that can be heard on the new album, Bring it on Down.

On the road, RSR performed for crowds that didn't quite know what to do with themselves as the band cranked up their Django-meets-Dewey tunes. In South Louisiana, the answer is obvious: Pull yourself away from whatever bottle or mug you are sipping from and saunter over to the dance floor and proceed to scuff it until the house lights come back on. With the exception of out-of-state Cajun festivals, crowds elsewhere weren't as clear minded.

"Everywhere we play, people just sit there and watch. In Louisiana, we are guaranteed that people are going to shake their asses," says Josh Caffery, mandolin player for the band.

"Playing around here you have to know how to make people dance," he adds. "If you are going to play Grant Street Dancehall, you got to make people dance."

Other than relieving the pressure of making an audience two-step, the venues, more akin to a sit-down concert than a wear-the-floor-out fais do-do, often meant the Ramblers ventured to the next town with a little extra dough in their pockets.

"People in that situation usually buy more CDs, 'cause they are more intellectually locked into it instead of dancing and partying," says Caffery. "When you go play a bar and people are dancing and partying, they are not necessarily thinking of whether you have a CD, they are thinking of how am I going get this person into bed with me."

Aside from their touring schedule, which took them from California to Florida and scores of watering holes in between, The RSR escaped the Southern heat wave to a farm-based Arlington, Wash., studio, where fiddle player Joel Savoy once worked, to record their sophomore release. The studio declined money up front and opted for a cut of the sales, allowing the Ramblers to record in a prime studio, which would have run them about $10,000 otherwise, for free.

Just because the band cut the album at a different set of latitude and longitude, make no mistake, its Cajun standards sounds so authentic it could have been cut on someone's back porch, but so well mastered that it could have come out of Electric Comoland.

One change in the album, however, is that it seems to take the band in several new directions. When the Ramblers formed in 1999, they crafted a sound dubbed "Cajun Gypsy Jazz Swing." Their first, eponymous album lived up to this moniker, presenting a happy, little, toe-tapping, dance-worthy blending of these styles. Bring it on Down, however, seems to take these elements apart and sees the members demonstrating their talents in the respective fields of Texas swing, jazz and Cajun, all the while retaining that refreshing old-time feel that won them acclaim and fans.

This disc also features more lyrically driven songs and originals and far fewer instrumental jams. Paying homage to the masters, the band pulls out and updates classics by Iry LeJeune, Cheese Read and Django Reinhardt.
All in all, Bring it on Down runs at a different pace from the first, but with Linzay Young's vintage voice and an upbeat, old-time feel that is very worthy of the Victrola.

After the band canned the sessions, the guys went shopping for a label that would not only put their album out but put some weight behind it. There was some courting of larger labels, but after consideration, they choose the two-year-old Memphis International.

"For one thing, they were real excited about it. That was probably the most important thing. Some of the other bigger labels we talked to were like, 'Well, we are not really sure. We'll stay in touch about it. We really like it,'" says Caffery, lowering his voice to imitate a lethargic A&R rep.

"And these guys (Memphis International) were just like, 'We're ready! Let's do it now!' Besides that, the guys that run the label are both veterans in the music industry."

The label's Bob Merlis, who struck out on his own from Warner Bros. and now handles publicity for ZZ Top, John Mellencamp and Etta James, first heard The RSR when Todd Ortego of Eunice's Music Machine and the Swamp 'n' Roll Show sent him some of their material.

"I just love this music," gushes Merlis. "I just thought it was tremendously compelling stuff. This, I think, could have a significant market beyond what is going to be experienced in Acadiana, just because all you got to do is hear it and you get it. It's the best of old-time music and Cajun music."

Rykodisc handles their distribution, which means Bring it on Down will be available coast-to-coast. Other distribution deals will put it in Canadian and selected European markets.

"You might imagine some of these tracks in an old black-and-white movie," says Merlis. "I don't know how these young guys became such old souls."