Batture Boys’ Muddy Americana
Tell most bands that they’re too loud, and they’ll tell you where to go before cranking the volume knob to 11. But when too many fans told New Orleans’ Continental Drifters back in ’86 that their volume was excessive, they listened. New Orleans native John Magnie, who had a solo piano gig at Tipitina’s at the time, invited guitarist Tommy Malone and bassist JohnnyAllen as well as Steve Amadee on tambourine to play quietly, with “the least we can bring.” The idea was to be subdued.“That word came up,” says Magnie, who told his band, “Okay, we’ll just do subdudes.” Moving to Magnie’s home state of Colorado, the band got a deal with Atlantic records, and were soon backing Joni Mitchell and Roseanne Cash, later going on tour with K. D. Lang, Melissa Etheridge, and Bonnie Raitt. The band broke up in ’96, got back together in ’02, and have existed in some configuration ever since. The Continental Drifters, which at one point included Peter Holsapple of the dBs, Vicki Peterson from the Bangles and Susan Cowsill from the Cowsills, lasted from ’91 till 2001 before calling it quits.
But commingling between the two bands never stopped. Drifters’ banjoist/guitarist/vocalist Ray Ganucheau contributed to the Subdues’ ’96 release Primitve Streak, and has now teamed up with Subdudes Tommy Malone as the Batture Boys. A batture is the no-man’s land between a river at low-water stage and a levee, a place for hardy adventurers who choose to live by and in the river depending on the flood stages.
“Rabbit Hole Blues” is folk rock with a country twang, like Crosby Stills and Nash with a hint of the Everly Brothers accompanied by John Fogerty’s guitar. “Time to take a walk by the sugar cane stalks/down by the riverside/light up a bowl of Columbian gold/let our minds drift away/way on down the rabbit hole.”
“Deep Water Horizon’” conjures up backporch country, but this one ain’t got nothin’ to do with dawgs, whiskey or pick-up trucks. The Bakersfield twang underscores a narration of the 2010 BP oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico through a local’s eyes. “Pelicans falling/ big rigs foamin’/ and it just won’t stop,” the duo moans.
Friend and bandmate Johnny Allen, who wrote or co-wrote most of the subdudes songs, gets two songs dedicated to him. “Send The Bones Back Home” is Ganucheau’s touching eulogy for Allen, who died in 2014. “Send the bones back home to Tupelo/Where his heart’s always remained/And his soul can finally be claimed,” Malone sings. “Johnny and Tommy had written music together on and off for as long as anyone can remember,” wife Martha said just after his death. “I don’t know how many songs they have just sitting around waiting.”
Malone says the reggae-flavored “You Had A Problem” is a song about addiction. “You tried to fix it but you didn’t have the tools but there’s the problem dude, You hung around with fools.” Malone says the song was co-written by with Allen, so nobody’s pointing fingers. “I was really speaking about myself,” Malone says, “as was he.”
Because their music blends the Louisiana flavors of swamp pop, Cajun and Zydeco, which taken together encompasses virtually all genres of music from rock to blues to gospel to country, the subdudes are often tacked up on the wall as poster boys for Americana. If that’s the case, then you’d better leave plenty of room on that wall for the Batture Boys, ’cause this sound will be hanging around for a long time to come.