The Red Stick
   Ramblers

Below is the first LSUE page on The Red Stick Ramblers, originally posted in early 2002.

The Red Stick Ramblers are pictured above during a performance at Festival de Musique Acadienne on Sept. 15, 2001, during Festivals Acadiens in Lafayette. In the top photo, Joel Savoy, left, and Linzay Young are shown on twin fiddles. Young, the group's lead vocalist, is shown in the next photo. Josh Caffery is shown playing the mandolin. Glen Fields is on drums, and Ricky Rees is playing the upright bass.  In the picture immediately above, Chas Justus is shown at right playing guitar with guest musician Richard Burgess on banjo.

Click here for photos taken at the 2002 Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and at Festivals Acadiens.

The Red Stick Ramblers received offBeat Magazine's Award as the Best Emerging Cajun Band for 2002.

The Red Stick Ramblers have quickly established themselves as one of the most unique, innovative bands performing in Louisiana. They are certainly Cajun enough to be included in LSUE's collection of Cajun-oriented web pages, but their music has roots going in all directions, producing what the band calls "authentic Cajun gypsy swing."

In his liner notes to the group's first CD, virtuoso Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet refers to The Red Stick Ramblers as "cultural bohemians" who have traveled through many different musical regions. The influences they mention in an LSU student newspaper interview are eclectic, ranging from the "Western and gypsy swing of Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt to the Cajun and bluegrass of Dennis McGee and Doc Watson."

The band's two fiddlers are both Cajuns from Eunice who are in their early twenties and are students at LSU. Joel Savoy, son of the renowned Cajun musicians Marc and Ann Savoy, and Linzay Young, who is also the band's lead vocalist, have been playing together for years, including membership in Les Jeunes Gens de la Prairie, a teenage Cajun band. In its January 9, 2002, issue, the Lafayette weekly Times of Acadiana named them to its 2002 list of "Faces to Watch."   Michael Doucet says that they "play like brothers. This is harmony. This is real music." Young's vocals, like everything else the band does, are smooth and natural. These are musicians who really enjoy playing together.

Though many of the songs The Red Stick Ramblers perform date back decades, everything about the music is stimulating and fresh, and, of course, many younger listeners have never heard this kind of music before. When a band can appear before a cheering college crowd at the Varsity Theater in Baton Rouge and also evoke strong praise from members of the Eunice Rotary Club, something extraordinary is happening.

Other members of the band are Josh Caffery, whose mandolin really sparkles on numbers on the CD like "Nagasaki"; Glen Fields, a veteran drummer who has also played with groups like the Savoy-Doucet Band and the Bluerunners; Chas Justus on guitar, a full-time musician who especially admires Django Reinhardt's guitar style; and Ricky "Railroad" Rees on bass, an English instructor at Southern University whose musical experience ranges from blues to zydeco to Cajun to rockabilly and beyond.

The CD, released in late January 2002, has 12 cuts. In "I've Been Alone Before," an original song by Josh Caffery, the easy-going but poignant lyrics swing along with the music, the kind of perfect blending that makes the swing sound so appealing. The pace of "Alabama Jubilee" is much faster, but the song rolls along, with each musician finding room to express himself while they all blend together. 

"Tchavalo Swing," by gypsy jazz guitarist Dorado Schmitt, gives the band members a chance to display their instrumental virtuosity.  They also perform "Tears" by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.

As a Cajun singer, Linzay Young captures the beauty and the intensity of "Valse de Balfa." Joel Savoy on lead fiddle and Young bring their own twin-fiddling style to a couple of classic Dennis McGee tunes, "Danse Carrée" and "One Step de McGee," with the entire band joining in. But the most beautiful selection may be "Grand Tasso," a traditional song with additional lyrics by Savoy and Young. The song is dedicated to Linzay's paternal grandfather, Gil Young, who grew up in the rural community near Eunice known as Tasso and who subsequently has contributed in many ways to the development and preservation of Cajun music, including leadership in the establishment of the Cajun Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Eunice. The melody of "Grand Tasso," carried by fiddles and by Linzay's voice, is simple but haunting, conveying the deep emotions that make Cajun music so powerful.

The CD was produced by Tony Daigle and released by Louisiana Radio Records.

As the photos at the bottom of this page demonstrate, we at LSUE were fortunate enough to get to host The Red Stick Ramblers in one of their first appearances in Acadiana. The Ramblers, who were already popular in Baton Rouge, soon began performing at major Acadiana venues like Grant Street Dance Hall and Whiskey River Landing. They have also performed at the region's two major festivals, Festival International de Louisiane and Festivals Acadiens, both held in Lafayette, as well as at Bonne Fête, a festival in Baton Rouge.  In 2002, they are already booked to return to Festival International, and they will be on stage at one of the nation's premier music events, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. They have also been performing at weddings and other private functions.

Posted 1-24-02.
All photographs and text by David Simpson.

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