The Café Cowboys
Biography
Spawned in the hop-reeking pubs and ubiquitous coffee houses scattered throughout Portland’s wide open musical spaces, The Café Cowboys brazenly cut the wires of all musical fences. Vocally anchored in swing and Tin Pan Alley, the duo might -- without a word of warning -- romp headlong into klezmer, French cabaret, Bartok, Doo Wop, Irish, Ukrainian, the Beatles, or whatever lights their musical fire.
Greg McCarty’s musical lineage runs from
folk to Beatles, bluegrass to swing standards, cowboy yodeling to Gypsy
jazz. Before moving up from the deep south (California), he
spear-headed his own western swing band, The Bar X Bunkhouse Boys.
A fiddle player of far-ranging talents and a
woman of many hats (some of them sensible), Flauren Ricketts
first surfaced musically as a card carrying member of The 8th
Avenue String Band down in Chico, California. A mainstay of the
Portland fiddle community, she rips into American fiddle tunes or
western swing or klezmer with equal and wild abandon.