Search - Red Mountain White Trash :: Sweet Bama

"Sweet Bama" is the third CD by this Alabama-based old-time string band. The Trash is best known for its playing of traditional fiddle tunes in a powerful, driving style that has made them highly popular with dancers across the country. In recent years they've made a name for themselves onstage in clubs, concerts halls and festivals, where audiences enjoy their old-time blues numbers, songs (just about everybody in the Trash sings) and their friendly and funny on-stage banter. "Sweet Bama" features many of the numbers they do on-stage as well as a number of potent dance medleys. The seven members of the Red Mountain White Trash started playing together around 1985. They all lived in Birmingham on Red Mountain in a historic neighborhood that was being gentrified by young professionals. Slow to renovate, the band members wondered if they were considered the "white trash" of the neighborhood and savored the concept of BMW's up on blocks and obsolete espresso machines on the front porch. Thus came the band name that has been loved by some, deplored by others. Though their name is facetious, they take their music seriously. Many of their tunes were collected from older fiddlers in Alabama and Tennessee, and they play in a style that reflects the region in which they live. Folks often describe Red Mountain White Trash as a wall of sound. Components of this sound are twin fiddles played by Jim Cauthen and Ed Baggott, guitar by Joyce Cauthen, mandolin by Phil Foster, harmonica and banjo uke by Jamie Finley, autoharp by Bill Martin and bass by Nancy Jackson.