CB's RATi0
CB’s RATi0 began as cover band, CB & the G Jeez, performing punk classics renditioned in Country BlueGrass Blues style. Founded as a means to keep busy & steer clear from alcohol, Blast N Scrap founder & executive director Michael “Blasti” Gormley, felt playing 3 or 4 chord songs at outlaw country's pace was all they could handle.
In time, the project bore fruit of its own, lending its learned style to the first new original content from the artist in nearly half a decade. As irony would have it, these compositions racked up time blocks in the 5-8min range. Still, songs are often expanded, further even, to hold space for NoCo’s best lead guitarist who doesn’t play guitar, violinist Shanon Cooper. Akin to a mad scientist, whose gutsy chops catch rays while they fry raw oil by blue bolt on a hot tin roof.
With seemingly the best volume control in the history of rock drumming, Brian Bowen has held the throne in CB’s for over 3yrs. His, a style that was first forced to focus on transposed arrangements of the likes of Butthole Surfers & Bauhaus, came into its own as structured rhythms that must always be ready to fracture & reframe on the fly. An architect, & its brick-layer, Bowen can blueprint a new foundation & whip cement with every improvisational shift. All while knowing the song could erupt once again in a new direction, & that each sequence has its own wick that burns while his clock ticks.
The newest spice in our RATi0’s mix, Sasha the Kid, was hunted down when heard test driving a new bass rig for potential purchase on a winter Monday evening. An unintentional audition, but one with a beckoned bellowing callback nonetheless, Sasha was quite obviously one of us as they settled into the realization that none of us made this decision. The band’s style in fact chose us. In the months leading up to the single release show for Mourning Cologne, parameters were set, forcing them to play all newly learned songs with half of the notes of his inherent instinct. This done, in order to find every nook & cranny of space in each arrangement. Thus now, as they are kicked into high gear, are able to take stage armed with a programmed sense of where each bit of breathing room hibernates between our staggered pace.
Now allow yourself to ride the current, open to the risk of your mind slipping. You might fall fully immersed in this stylistic fever dream, as we recount every shake through bullets dripped from the brow. Our set is balanced with snappy songs on the upbeat for you to catch your breath. Some silly, some sardonic, some as simple as you need for your toe to auto-tap, & be tempted to knee slap. So that after being twisted in each time signatures version of eternity, you walk away certain of one genre-esque classification: CB’s, for all intents & purposes, could be a psych rock band. That is, if the hallucinations are induced from alcohol withdrawal not Psilocybin.