COUNTRY MUSIC : Hot and Frothy : Caught Red-Handed, the workingest C & W band around, will bring its brand of dancemania to the Ojai festival on Sunday.
By now you have probably noticed: Ventura County is country country. The generalized country-Western craze of late has hit Ventura with a vengeance. Restaurants are starting country nights and clubs are popping up in places where you least expect them.
Take, for example, Alexander’s, nuzzled up against the Ventura Harbor. This was long the home of harmless Top 40 acts, until Michael Kaufer brought his Blue Monday series--and American roots music--to these nice harborside digs.
Then along came Caught Red-Handed, the workingest C & W band in these parts, to play on Wednesday nights. Last week, the “hump day” crowd was full and hopping and the band was working up its usual froth. Once the line dancing began, the dance floor population grew to overflowing. They surged and tilted in sync, an undulant wave of humanity speckled with cowboy hats.
Much as the band knows how to stoke the fire of country dancemania, Caught Red-Handed is more than a human jukebox. It’s a tight unit capable of maneuvering dangerous musical curves and dizzying tempos.
Lead singer Troy Robinson belts out the favorites and occasional obscure gems with a strong, pure voice, while guitar wiz Jim Monohan exercises his typically dazzling bag of licks. On the speedy two-beat tune “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” Monohan swapped riffs with pedal steel player Al Flaa. Fingers flew. Feet on the dance floor shuffled in and out of slipknots.
On Sunday the band will be on the daylong bill of the first Ojai Country Music Festival in Libbey Park. The festival comes not two months after another newly launched country music festival in Solvang.
There are many definitions of country music, and the festival lineup will offer a mini-dictionary approach to programming. Other acts include the ever-popular Desert Rose Band (featuring Ojai resident Chris Hillman), the rockabilly of Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys, the accordion-laden Tex-Mex/zydeco blend of Los Rock Angels and the acoustic blend of the Acousticats.
There will also be a rare appearance by Ojai-based singer-songwriter Alan Thornhill, who will be appearing with a band. Opening the show at noon will be old-time fiddlers.
Country culture is running hog-wild. What gives here? Can we thank Garth Brooks and his runaway success story for all of this? “Everywhere is feeling this country music surge,” Robinson said.
It wasn’t always this way. Robinson originally came to Ventura in 1986 because of his cousin Ron, now the bassist in the group. Music wasn’t on his mind at the time. Hailing from Noble, Okla., Robinson came to work in construction and take a break from the music business.
But he couldn’t stay away from the mike stand. Sitting in at Ventura’s country haven, the Ban-Dar, he struck up with steel player Flaa. They have played together in a variety of groups, starting with the band Troy Robinson and Little Oklahoma.
Almost three years and a few personnel changes ago, Caught Red-Handed came into being.
“When I came here,” Robinson said during an interview at his home, “there wasn’t hardly anyplace you could play. There was the Ban-Dar and the Frontier in Santa Paula and then the Galleon Room in Santa Barbara. And that was it. Even the Chaparral wasn’t open when I got here.”
“Now, everybody is into it. This new place, Jake’s, wants to do a country night. The Black Angus has gone country five nights a week. It’s totally turned around.”
What triggered the boom? “Garth Brooks and Clint Black have been around for about two years--that’s when it started. I would say around the beginning of ‘92, there were more phone calls than I could imagine getting. I could work seven nights a week.” As if on cue, Robinson’s phone rings: Someone wants to hire the band for a private dance.
Robinson’s right-hand Red-Handed bassist, cousin Ron, is a fairly recent convert to the country-Western impulse.
“He played gospel for years,” Troy noted. “When I moved here, he asked me to play him a song. I played him a George Strait tune and ever since then, that’s the direction he’s wanted to go. He used to hate country music, the whole ideal of it. Now look at him.”
Monohan has long been a local legend in the Ventura guitar scene. More than a decade ago, he played in the R & B/fusion band Mr. Skin, featuring guitarist Larry Nass and drummer Bob Nichols--who also plays in Caught Red-Handed.
What you hear from Caught Red-Handed in local clubs is mostly a well-delivered greatest C & W hits package, but the band has higher ambitions. “We write our own stuff,” Robinson said, “but in the clubs, you just aren’t required to do a whole lot of it. Everybody wants Garth Brooks and George Strait. You’ve gotta do the line dances or else forget it. We slip some originals in, depending on what kind of mood I’m in.”
If his plan works out, Robinson is not long for this county. Next month, he’ll be Nashville-bound to cut a demo with well-known producer Norro Wilson, a connection through a family friend that Robinson established when he was 20 (he’s 27 now). Robinson and his wife, who is four months pregnant, plan to move to the heart of the country music industry once they sell their house.
“I’ll tell you what--eight years ago, I’d never have been ready for it.”
* WHERE AND WHEN
Ojai Country Music Festival at the Libbey Park gazebo, Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. For more information, call 646-7230.