How about that big hunk of cowboy grit from Rusty Evans and Ring of Fire with Evans taking the stage just three weeks after quadruple by-pass surgery! The event, which also featured Rancho Deluxe and Danny Montana and the Bar Association was a fundraiser, held at Peri’s in Fairfax, for Marin’s Lagunitas School District. Peri’s itself was all decked out in bunting, red cowboy kerchiefs and a barn door backdrop that gave the place a Grand Ol’ Opry feel… Danny Montana and the Bar Association is a Bay Area band that isn’t new, but has been flying under the HWS radar for years. We’ve known about them, but hadn’t seen them at a show for so long that we’d thought they’d broken up. In fact, this 70’s-country-influenced band has been playing fairly regularly at Peri’s and at Smiley’s in Bolinas. They’re hiding out in plain sight as so many do in West Marin… You can’t keep a good tart down. Emily Stuckey and Joni Reuter, late of the Whoreshoes, are putting a new band together: Emily Bonn and the Sweet Tarts. This may be just a working name since a candy brand and another band are named Sweet Tarts… 
Laura Benitez and the Copperheads are a new East Bay quartet with plans to play some country music… The Lovin’ 44’s, who never took their group much beyond house band status at Amnesia, have retooled and are branching out as the Local 44s. New members and new directions gave them the opportunity to shed The Lovin’ 44s name which was so cool that another band was already using it… Nobody else is using the name Jay Lingo and the Kick Balers who are a new band out of Santa Cruz and hell, yeah they’ll play some Dwight Yoakam for you… The Brothers Comatose are marching to their own music. Like so many these days, they may not fit into any specific Americana niche though they are a roots band. Find them and their comatose cover of the Rolling Stone’s “Dead Flowers” on MySpace… The Sweet ‘n’ Lo’s have called it a day, leaving a gap in the country sweethearts department and relieving the Bay Area of the honor of having the only band in the world with three apostrophes in its name…
