Cody Shaw & The Rhythm Boys

The CD Review that went with this story inadvertently got left out of Buddy Magazine, so Scene In Town posting both of them today. Story first.

Mary Jane Farmer, Scene In Town

There are formulas in music, no matter the genre, and most musicians ease into one or the other, hoping to be able to fill in that ReverbNation slot that asks: “Sounds like…” in a recognizable way that will automatically give an idea of what fans can expect.

Cody Shaw & The Rhythm Boys can’t fill in that “Sounds like…” it’s blank on their ReverbNation site. The only formula they might fit in would be “eclectic,” and that might not be broad enough. They play original and covers, they play pop, salsa, country, Broadway sound-alikes, they play music in the style from the 40s, and they play it for the fun of it.

Recently, the band released its first full-length CD, “Eclectico,” and more on that 10-song record is included in this issue, in the ‘Record Review’ section.

Cody Shaw, his father Ben Shaw, Nick Ghanbari, Randy Burch, and Chris Booth make up Cody Shaw & The Rhythm

Chris Booth

Boys, and together they are making waves and fans with every show.

These guys have been together about three years. Cody begins the show by saying their name and adding, “and we play country music.” That’s true, they do play country music. After all, Cody learned a lot from his guitar-gifted father, Ben, who managed to successfully support his family by playing country music. And they play a whole lot more.

This band is the third generation of The Rhythm Boys. Cody’s grandfather led the first band, then played lead guitar when it became Ben Shaw & The Rhythm Boys. Now, Ben plays lead guitar for his son, and it was only tradition that the band name move on with the Shaws.

Let’s talk ‘eclectic’ now… Ben Shaw worked in Nashville, and has done the studio musician bit with success, led his own country band, and other guitarists (no names mentioned) have said he is beyond the word “master’ when it comes to picking the guitar. Randy Burch cut his teeth in the rock-a-billy world. Nick Ghanbari has his college degree in classical guitar, and multi-tasks from his corner of the stage on keyboards and steel guitar. Chris Booth, on bass, is maybe the more country of them all, but doesn’t let that slow him down. Together, they just kind of follow, fill in, and fill out Cody’s leads.

Influences? Yes, jazz, Hollywood, rap, “anything that comes from Justin Bieber to Taylor Swift, we listen to a lot of weird stuff,”

Randy Burch

Cody said, then they all added, “jam bands, improvisational bands, classical, the Allman Brothers, Amanda Shires, Grateful Dead, rock-a-billy…” and they kept on adding to the list.

Cody Shaw answered, when asked if he has a theatric background that might explain how he is able to convey more emotion, that he’d never thought about that as an influence. But, Ben kicked in saying that he remembered Cody acting when he was eight years old in ‘Annie Get Your Gun.’ “You had to be 12 to play with that theater group,” Cody said, “but they gave me the role anyway. I kept doing a lot of local theater, like ‘Pump Boys & Dinette’ and such. But I stopped before going into junior high.

That explains the emotions, both comic and serious, Cody can add to the songs with just his face, also evident in a video they put out in July. It can be found on YouTube, searching for “Walk On,” Cody Shaw.

And, boy, can the man dance. “I couldn’t tell you where that comes from,” Cody said. “I dance around the house all the time, and always have, since a child. I think I got it from my mother. Actually, I look like a paraplegic when she’s on the stage.” Cody added that, when playing guitar, ‘Your moves are limited. You can’t move your arms, so it’s your face and what’s below the belt that you

Nick Ghanbari

can use to accent the songs.”

Cody and the Rhythm Boys write and arrange most of their songs. But, they have one writer near their Wichita Falls home base that they draw from as well.

“Ben Atkins was on HighTone Records. He started out in the very early Texas music scene, about the time Pat Green did, and I played bass for him for years, off and on. He wrote ‘Walk On.’ We are picking through his catalogue and he will be our ‘outside songwriter.’ We’re not dipping our toes in the ‘seeking songs’ water, we write 90 percent of our songs, but his we’ll use.” And that was Cody talking about the songwriter he admires to the nth degree.

“We’re very particular about who we allow into our pretty tight group,” Cody said, in a protective way. “We are our own managers, our own booking agents. Nick makes all our posters, Nick and Chris handle our social media. It helps to understand personalities and people on the road, to be more comfortable, than to bring in others.” Chris added, “Yeah, and there’s hotel etiquette to consider,” which brought another laugh to the group when Ben added that it was a bonus to even have hotel rooms included when on the road.

This is a band that is a band working together “We haven’t had any knocks on the door, people out there handing us money. We’re hustling as hard as we can to build a fan base and reach new venues in Texas and Oklahoma, “ Ben explained. “It’s one fan and one venue at a time, and we hope we are building real fans.”

“We’re not the Texas Country, Red Dirt sound and formula. Some club owners don’t know what to do with us, and some crowds don’t want to,” Cody said. “We don’t work ‘the formula’ a lot, we’re elaborate and over the top, sometimes too eccentric, but they (the audiences) always seem to warm up to what we are doing, usually by the second song.”

They travel in a 6-seater van, usually taking their videographer, Joel Hicks, along and keeping him busy collecting fresh footage for the next video.

“Our music goal is to burn up all the fossil fuel we can, keep out on the road and playing our music,” Ben Shaw said.

www.CodyShawandTheRhythmBoys.com

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