ROCKHOUSE RAMBLERS ARE RAMBLIN' AGAIN
St. Louis rockabilly band reunites behind
"lost" album "Lies and Damn Lies"
By Barry Gilbert
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
August 13, 2010
Photo by Laurie Skrivan / St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Rockhouse
Ramblers are (clockwise from front) guitarist John
Horton, drummer Danny Kathriner, bassist Dade Farrar,
guitarist Gary Hunt and guitarist Kip Loui.
|
The Rockhouse Ramblers'
“new” CD is called “Lies and Damn
Lies,” but it's no lie that the band was among St.
Louis' very best country-rockabilly outfits when it
called it quits five years ago. Which
is why quotation marks surround “new” above:
“Lies and Damn Lies” was recorded in 2004 and
would have been the band's third album. But record label
problems and band burnout conspired to keep it under
wraps.
Now the Ramblers are getting back
together to support the release of “Lies” with
a KDHX benefit show at Blueberry Hill's Duck Room
tonight, featuring special guest Brian Henneman of the
Bottle Rockets.
The Ramblers feature multiple singers
and songwriters in lead guitarists John Horton and Gary
Hunt, rhythm guitarist Kip Loui, bassist Dade Farrar and
drummer Danny Kathriner. Individually, they have been
members of some of the area's best bands, from One Fell
Swoop and Belle Starr to the Transmitters, Diesel Island,
Bottle Rockets and Colonel Ford.
Whether they're back for good, for a
while or for one night only is an open question, Loui
says. If tonight's show rivals the band's last one, a
farewell blowout at Riddles in the Delmar Loop in 2005,
who knows what might happen.
|
“That show had a good feeling, a good
vibe,” says Kathriner who joined his band mates at
Schlafly's Bottleworks recently to talk about the album. “We
had a good turnout.”
Hunt remembers “we played 40 choruses of
'Streets of Bakersfield.' John and I traded solos for 15
minutes.”
It was years of that kind of marathon
performance that led to the musicians' exhaustion. At the same
time, their new label, the soon-to-be-defunct, New England-based
95 North Records, wanted the band to tour, which would have been
a hardship on five day-job-holding family men.
“It wasn't like we were going to crack the
country music nut,” Hunt says. “And I didn't want to
travel to Chicago to make $400 like we did here.”
“Lies and Damn Lies,” which features
12 original songs and a fine cover of Liz Anderson's
“Bubbles in the Glass,” came back to life via the
urgings of band fan and St. Louis graphic artist Gene Abbey, who
found an early version of the CD among his collection, and
remastering engineer Jack Petrocek.
Only Hunt and Loui had copies of the original
masters, so “it was new to me,” Horton says. “I'd
forgotten how good it sounds.”
The CD rambles through countryand honky tonk
via Haggard and Owens' Bakersfield sound. From the opening
“Bottleneck Boogie,” fueled by the twin dueling leads
of Hunt and Horton, to the closing “Leadfoot,” Loui's
homage to country hot rod and truckin' songs, the CD is loose and
assured, a bittersweet hint of what might have been.
Farrar, looking back at the decision not to
tour and the subsequent breakup, says, “If it had been 10
years earlier, we would have been crazy about the idea. ... We
left that record at the altar.”
Rockhouse Ramblers Reunion & CD Release Show
9 p.m. Aug. 13 / Blueberry Hill's Duck Room, 6504 Delmar
Boulevard / $8 / 314-727-4444
BACK TO MAIN PAGE