red stick ramblers

I’m back in Dallas — more to come on the now 70-year-old Mazie, newly discovered childhood home movies, and other weekend topics. For now, a simple link to the Red Stick Ramblers, the band I was supposed to see this weekend.
See, the Ramblers — a self-described “authentic Cajun gypsy swing” band — feature an old high school friend of mine on mandolin. (There was a period of time in our youth when there seemed to be a doppelganger thing going on between us — both named Josh, both going to the same small school, both blond and with mothers named Debbie, even both having at the time one tooth oddly out of sort with the others. At at least one point, we also had a crush on the same girl, although that’s a battle he won. Now all we share is ill-advised facial hair.)
My friend Lauren and I were supposed to go to see them play Friday night, but alas there was a miscommunication and I was under the impression the show was Saturday. (We could play a little edition of the blame game, but who would gain from that? Harrumph.) So all I could do was read up on them a bit more, listen to one of their MP3s, and make plans to buy their new CD.
One final note: the Ramblers will always have an edge as long as Josh’s mom continues to let them use her amazing photos as their album art. The new CD’s cover uses one of my absolute favorite photos of hers. (Which I’d love to get on my walls if it didn’t cost, um, $2,000.)