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etween Kool-Aid and cognac yawns a gap as wide as the one dividing most contemporary commercial country music and the Rockhouse Ramblers—to the delight of that band’s fans, who relish them for something more potent by far than the aural equivalent of a quick sugar fix. Such fans should have a field day with the band’s schedule for the next two months. During June and July, that is, the Rockhouse Ramblers will stage almost a dozen performances, one of the first (Friday, June 6) occurring at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room as part of Twangfest 7, St. Louis’s acclaimed four-day celebration of Americana. The inclusion of the Rockhouse Ramblers on the Twangfest bill will surprise no one who knows their music. Quite simply, regarding neo-traditional country, the band (bassist Dade Farrar, lead guitarists John Horton and Gary Hunt, drummer Danny Kathriner, and rhythm guitarist Kip Loui) can boogie with the best. In roughly three years, in fact, their artistry has earned them diverse accolades and attention. Playback St. Louis has praised the quintet variously, and local music maven Steve Pick profiled them last fall in No Depression, the main magazine devoted to alt-country. Moreover, in 2002, the Rockhouse Ramblers won in the “Best Honky-Tonk Band” category in the Riverfront Times’ annual music poll (in the 2003 incarnation of which they’re again nominated, under “Roots/Americana”). Otherwise, St. Louis journalist Thomas Crone once noted that they “sound (and look) oldtimey, like they just stepped out of a downtown Chattanooga juke joint in 1957, their Levi’s and shirtsleeves rolled up.” The Rockhouse Ramblers themselves would likely not quibble with that characterization; a love of country from the ’40s to the ’60s infuses their own work. “I think if you took a musical sample from jump swing, bluegrass, hillbilly, rockabilly, even a little blues from that era,” Hunt mused during a recent collective interview conducted by e-mail, “you would have a pretty good idea of our sound.” Loui expanded on that catalog: “I’d say the Rockhouse Ramblers enjoy and are influenced by almost any kind of pre-’70s country music styles, which include honky-tonk, rockabilly, western swing, Bakersfield or West Coast style, bluegrass, and hillbilly boogie stuff. We don’t really get too much into ’70s styles, even though we can appreciate Waylon [Jennings] and Willie [Nelson] and Merle [Haggard] from that era.” With characteris-
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tic self-deprecation, he continued, “‘Outlaw’ country is cool by us, but we kind of consciously don’t go there so as not to bite off more than we can chew.” Conversely and perhaps predictably, the members of the band expressed a general lack of interest in the sort of contemporary commercial country popularized by rock wannabes like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. Farrar referred to such country as “the watered-down new stuff,” and Hunt confessed, “I try to listen to the mainstream once in a while, but it’s mighty hard to keep it there. Not much holds my interest.” Loui concurred: “As for the majority of what’s played on commercial radio, well, it doesn’t sound much like the hard country music we prefer, so we don’t pay much attention to it. Which is not to say we’re total purists or Luddites or anything like that, ’cause we’re not. But in terms of what we most dig and what we play, our interests are rooted in the older stuff.” Among such “older stuff,” in specific, the Rockhouse Ramblers cited as inspirations artists like Johnny Cash, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Bill Monroe, Buck Owens, Johnny Paycheck, Ralph and Carter Stanley, Hank Williams, and many others. All such citations made perfect sense: the spirit of classic country galvanizes not only the band’s live performances but also their two CDs from Tempe, Arizona’s Hayden’s Ferry Records, Bar Time (2000) and Torch This Town (2002). Those discs, which together feature more than two dozen numbers, should satisfy anyone interested in the best the genre can offer. They include two covers: Charlie Feathers’ “One Hand Loose” on the former CD and Frankie Miller’s “Truck Drivin’ Buddy” on the latter. “Dade brings in these great songs, which he sings the hell out of,” Hunt related, “and we work up some guitar parts and arrangements, play them out at gigs, and they turn up on the keeper list.” Although the Rockhouse Ramblers perform memorably on the covers, however, they approach the unforgettable on the originals, regarding which Farrar, Hunt, and Loui split the songwriting and singing duties. Capsule
Photos by Steven Vance
