David Byron Ragsdale
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Fufkin.com ..."Disappointed" is a nifty shuffle with some Spanish-sounding guitar that could have made a swell tune for Roy Orbison or Del Shannon. "Don't Bother the Waitress" might be the best track on the album – with a ballad-style melody, as Ragsdale shows some empathy for the Nickled-and-Dimed set – this finds a mid-point between NRBQ and Sir Douglas Quintet, methinks. Ragsdale sometimes comes up with numbers that have the same light melodicism of Marshall Crenshaw. "Girl from Surry" is the best of this bunch, which builds to a happy romantic hook... Casco Bay Weekly When you’re David Byron Ragsdale, pop goes the world. Specifically, thinking person’s, guitar-based, melodic pop music. As a member of perky local band The Frotus Caper, Ragsdale spreads the pop gospel from behind the pulpit of his drum kit. On Saturday night, he’ll sling on a six-string and take center stage at the St. Lawrence Arts and Community Center, celebrating the release of his solo album,In Here.
The album, as with Ragsdale’s musical taste, has been long in the making. A native of Philadelphia, Ragsdale was first drawn to music by the excitement and air of rebellion surrounding punk. But he gradually lost sympathy with the idea that “you gotta be either really serious, or you gotta be out of touch.” Besides, there was a lot of worthwhile non-punk music out there.
Ragsdale explored his musical interests, playing in various bands in Philadelphia and New York, bands with names like Sky Grits and Sir Dot, even playing in one band with a future member of Superchunk. All the while, the industrious popster kept recording his own tunes, woolgathering for a future solo release. (In fact, a song called “Woolgathering”—featuring Sky Grits—now appears on track seven of “In Here.”)
Ragsdale moved to Maine in the mid-’90s to attend the University of Southern Maine. He naturally gravitated toward WMPG, the free-form community radio station on campus, and “within six months I was the office manager,” he said. He held the job for five years, working as a DJ on various radio programs. His oddest WMPG gig was undoubtedly the show he did in the persona of “Professor David Byron,” a Welshman who had come to the colonies in order to play hillbilly records.
At the station, Ragsdale researched music he wanted to know better. The effort paid off. Last year he felt confident offering a course at Portland Adult Education called, “The History of Popular Music,” ranging from Ellington to the present. And he kept on working as a musician, doing stints with the Pinetones, King Memphis and The Long Haul Truckers before settling in with The Frotus Caper.
In Here contains 12 songs recorded over a span of 12-plus years in a broad array of musical styles. They all have one goal in common, voiced by Ragsdale on one of the disk’s rave-ups: “The crowd was happy/they were nodding their heads/to the beat of the musical hook.” Members of many of his old bands appear on the disk, and will back him at the St. Lawrence.
Ragsdale has been around the music business long enough to know that “this [CD] is not going to get played on commercial radio,” but he doesn’t much care. “There’s always been a global market for quality music,” and that market will seek quality music out. As for smart, catchy pop? “I think people are getting more interested in hearing that again.” Yeah, yeah, yeah!Bangsheet ...Jim Slade writes tunes that vent about his life, as it is now, in modern times, not how he’d imagine it in an eternally teen rockroll dream. So when he gets goosy yearnings in "Yeah Yeah Yeah" he’s quickly brought back to the kitchen table by Dorothy Haug counterpunching "now you’ve got your sweater on and your well-kept lawn". While others call it irony, some of us call it our life... — Kurt Hernon