Rick is currently working with drummer Matt Danko in the Sun Barons, a 1950s-style band featuring great cuts from the Sun Records and Chess labels, as well as other great songs of that period. If you like early Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly, and Howling Wolf, you need to check out the Sun Barons!

Rick's spent most of Winter 2009/2010 working with Jessy Dorsett, an electrifying singer who recently moved to Austin from the Northeast Seaboard. Jessy sounds like a blending of Joss Stone and Nancy Griffith -- and her voice is equally suited to belting out Aretha-style r&b or delivering a delicate love song.

Rick and Jessy also formed the Hog Branch Groove Band, which features some of the hottest young players in Austin: Matt Danko on drums, Blake West on keys, Ben Naecker & Nick Andrews on guitar, and good old Hog Branch himself on bass. Besides causing dancefloor trauma in local clubs, the band is a great choice for weddings, parties, corporate events, and festivals. Click here for booking info.

In August of 2009, Rick flew to Portland, Maine, to record tracks for the new Picnic album, Got No Lunch, Just Whiskey Punch, due out on the Hog Branch Records label in Spring 2010. In one amazing weekend, the band tracked 15 songs, with Rick playing 8 tunes on electric and 7 on upright. Musicians included the bandleaders, brothers Rich Valdmanis (vocals, guitar, banjo) and Warren Valdmanis (mandolin, guitar, banjo, keys, vocals), the incredible Rubin Nizri on drums and persussion, and Grammy-winning South African musician Vusi Mahlasela on guitar and vocals.

Picnic's first album, Stop What You're Doing, was produced by Rick in NYC in 2004. It will be re-released on Hog Branch Records this summer!

Rick played some unforgettable shows in 2009, especially while touring for nine months with the Texas Torch, Dean Seltzer. Dean's album, Lady Luck (Smith Entertainment) featured guest performances by Shelli Coe (daughter of David Allan Coe) and Matt Brooks (of Two Hoots & a Holler). The album was produced by CJ Errickson (U2, The Replacements). Rick had a blast helping support this great collection of songs.

Rick also played bass with the Wicked Brew Band for two years opening for acts like Cross Canadian Ragweed, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Keven Fowler, and Miranda Lambert. Rick recorded and produced tracks for Wicked Brew's April 2008 release, Down South, on Smith Entertainment. The first single, "I'm Alright" climbed into the Top 20 on the Texas charts! The next single, "Beer Muscles" along with the rest of the album, is available at iTunes, Amazon, Hastings, or Zune.

Rick occasionally subs on bass for George Devore and Eleisha Eagle, two of the top songwriters in Austin, among others.

Rick is currently writing songs for two new albums -- one of holiday songs and another of country duets, both to be recorded with his lovely Yankee bride, vocalist AJ Belknap.

Rick spent a decade anchoring NYC's downtown music scene
before moving to Austin in 2004. As both a bass player and producer,
Rick’s nailed a range of booty-moving styles.

His playing, recording, and producing credits incude:

• propelling NYC’s alt-country phenoms Leroy Justice and Hot Water
  (now known as the Apple Brothers) on Sire Records
• churning out grooves for the funk-metal-rap bands Bruised and Nuclear Boy
• wrecking stages with blue-collar rockers Darin Ellsworth Vervain and Todd Mangan of Mangan
• generating low-end moxie for the acoustic-rock and ambient bands Picnic, Elizabeth Gone (with Vincent James of Machine Love at machinelove.com), and Life With the Lions (with the mighty Mike Fazio of Gods of Electricity and orchestramaxfieldparrish at faithstrange records) and backing numerous other performers, including country artists The Tenkiller Twins, songwriters Stephen Clair and Tinkerbel Tompsin, songwriter/film composer Jeremy Parise (Kiss the Bride, How to Eat Watermelon...), rockabilly madman Mike Mok, swing-crooner Jen Jones (of The Camaros), and alt-punk-chanteuse Julianne Richards (of Snatch and solo on Geffen)
• Rick was also the bass player onstage in the off-Broadway production of the rock opera The Asthma Conspiracy and the record-setting Fringe
  Festival Selection Slut! in New York City.

Before leaving the family farm for the big city,
Rick learned bass by following his momma’s mighty left hand
as it pumped out boogie-tinged gospel on the upright Baldwin
at Shiloh Baptist Church in Hog Branch, Louisiana.

By high school, Rick was anchoring "Kasino,"
a Skynyrd-inspired rock band playing honky-tonks
and festivals throughout the South.