The Ratskin Family Band bring the essence of boonies-style, wild-hearted shindigs to a grander, more metropolitan audience with their Back to the Cuntry EP. As the band’s first released collection of songs, the EP carries the standard of classic bluegrass harmonies and twang mixed with an intoxicatingly magnetic attraction that comes from the band’s honed skills as a one-of-a-kind live act. Billed as the “first and only Drag Country Band in the world”, Back to the Cuntry takes on any unwarranted divisiveness and answers with warmth, expert storytelling, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics that make up a unique and brilliant debut.
If there were any rumblings about The Ratskin Family Band being a schtick act and relying on their appearance to entertain audiences – Back to the Cuntry shuts it all down quickly, permanently, and surprisingly cordially. The idea of mixing genres like classic country, bluegrass, and folk – commonly characterized by their messages and melodies over their look, with the colourful and shining performance art of drag is a wild swing that The Ratskin Family Band crush right out of the park. The band is composed of talented artists that have cut their teeth finely on countless stages, and their choice to perform in drag carries as much weight as the message in their music.
Released September 16, The EP opens with the reimagined traditional folk ballad “Will the Circle be Unbroken” that showcases the band’s stirring harmony lines and delivers a soulful performance about loneliness following loss. The choice to start the EP with a slow but methodical track allows the band to demonstrate their skill to any naysayers, and opens up the rest of the EP to show off exactly what has made The Ratskin Family Band one of the most exciting acts to follow.
Followed by their second single “Trucker”, the band drop into classic roots-music storytelling with their own lens and subject matter that posts up somewhere between Gordon Lightfoot and Tom Lehrer.
““Trucker” details the exploits of a cross dressing truck driver, finding and losing love in truckstop bathroom stalls along the open road. A country song that speaks to the experience of a small niche of queer rural life”
– The Ratskin Family Band
The atmospheric and Americana-tinged “Coyote” is a saloon-style ballad of a queer outlaw that feels like worn wooden floors, a dark night, and smoke blending into candle light. “Rodeo Clown” is a dustbowl love song about that dangerous kind of attraction that might cause harm, but the painted heart wants what the painted heart wants. The last full song on the EP is the boot-stomping anti-fascist sing along “All You Fascists (Bound to Lose”) that hits that sweet spot between pop sensibility and full on protest anthem. Interspersed are 2 interludes about the open road leading towards the known opportunities of the west, and a vaudeville-coded welcome to the Ratskin Circus of Love.
Underlying each track of Back to the Cuntry and its classic twang tone is a clear message speaking to the experiences of queer people. The Ratskin Family Band are modern day balladeers that share much needed stories through authentic artistry that touches the heart amidst any hootenanny.
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Bio:
The first and only Drag Country Band in the world! All pickin’ All singin’ All cross dressin’.
