Play Blues Guitar Magazine
www.playbluesguitar.com - May 2005
By: David Cudaback

The Red Stick Ramblers
Right Key, Wrong Keyhole (Memphis International)
The Red Stick Ramblers are back to take us on another musical tour of Louisiana (and a couple of points west). “Right Key, Wrong Keyhole” is the band’s third album (their second outing with Memphis International), and it features a slimmed-down, reconstituted Rambler crew. Now a quintet, only three of the band’s original six members remain: lead vocalist and fiddler Linzay Young, guitarist Chas Justus and Glenn Fields on drums. Newcomers Kevin Wimmer (fiddle) and Eric Frey (bass) complete the lineup. The album’s dozen tracks pay credible homage to a remarkable range of genres, including traditional Cajun, zydeco,blues, jazz and blue grass. As songwriters, Young and Justus showcase particularly impressive roots music credentials here. Young (who sings and writes with equal facility in French and English) has penned a small Cajun gem with his “La Valse de Chaoui” (“The Raccoon Waltz”), while Justus nails classic country with his “Closing Time Blues” and “It’s Too Late,” a weepy prison ballad. But these Ramblers are at heart a Western swing dance band – and man, can this remarkably tight fivesome swing. With Fields and Frey providing solid rhythm backing, Young and Justus soar through numbers like “That’s What I Like About the South,” “The Devil with the Devil” and the title track; along the way they invite comparisons (albeit fleetingly) to other great violin-guitar jazz duos, but just imagine if Charlie Christian met Stephane Grappelli. In fact, Justus, who can coax richly phrased Christian-like solos from his 1938 Roy Smeck Recording King electric arch top, is something of a stylistic chameleon – sliding effortlessly from blues to sophisticated swing-band rhythm to gypsy jazz. Laissez les bons temps rouler!