Low-Country Audio

"The band came about at a friend’s crawfish boil in New Orleans. We were just jamming with friends, and some folks from the Maple Leaf showed up and invited us to play there,” says Thomas Johnson of his Southern rock, psychedelic outfit Low Country Audio. Containing two sets of brothers—Ryan and Vaughn Daigle, Will and Jake McMains—along with Johnson, Taylor Winton and Scotty Labelle, the roster has extensive history in blues, classic rock and funk bands and bring it all together in the heavy soul groove of the band.
“Our sound is heavily fueled by our rhythm section’s passion for creating really deep, improvisational grooves combined with the lead players’ desire to write original and inspiring songs,” says Johnson.
In a live setting, the group sits somewhere between the chicken-fried soul of The Allman Brothers and a plasma-burnt psychedelic funk, but they manage to keep a tight reign on the songs and refrain from spinning off into noodly virtuoso showcases. Johnson credits that to the McMains boys who make up the band’s rhythm section “This bred a sort of telepathy between these guys,” he says. “Same goes for the Daigle twins. With a solid foundation, the house of jam can be built.” Jam on. myspace.com/lowcountryaudio. - 225 Magazine

Despite my personal deep-felt identification with the Mexican victory over the French in the late 1800’s, I opted out of fighting the margarita crowd at La Carreta, which was spilling over into the street, to check out Low Country Audio at Spanish Moon, along with the two hippies from the previous evening. This was my second outing with this band and I saw a lot of growth, moving from a mostly instrumental to strong, heavy groove southern rock, with an older gentleman manning the saxophone. At points they sounded like what the Saturday Night Live Band would sound like if they were cool, other times they built up a nice swirling psychedelic miasma of grits-and-gravy sonic bliss. - 225 Magazine

When Low Country Audio played at Chelsea’s on Thursday night, viewers were given more than a night of foot-tapping Southern rock. Low Country Audio has grown to become a band that doesn’t just play music; like all the best bands, they give their listeners a distinct sense of place.

These musicians, more than almost any other local band, know what it is to live in South Louisiana as a whole – not just New Orleans -- and have captured all the romance and bluesy eloquence that the setting provides.

Listening to a beautiful song like “Blue Winter,” for example, with the Prufrock-ian lyric “I feel my skin grow old,” is like sitting in the cool shade beneath the long, lazy limbs of a Louisiana oak tree, leaning back against the trunk, thinking sentimental thoughts about how your life might turn out.

Not to mention the breezy “Number One with a Bullet,” in which lead vocalist Thomas Johnson croons, “Go on and tell them, tell them you’ve come from somewhere far. Tell them to believe you when you tell them that you know just who you are,” and calls his sweetheart “my silly super duper star.”

It’s actually an optimistic sort of precursor to Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia,” where the dreams of a silly super duper star have finally failed, and Gladys wails “A super star, but he didn’t get far.” But for dreaming, Low Country Audio has much brighter eyes.

And eyes that keep on brightening at that. Their music has evolved considerably in the past year, going from light, lovely indie-country (“Spanish Oaks”) to meatier rhythms like “Valhalla.”

But most noticeable of all is the chemistry between the band members on stage. Anyone who watches live music knows that a performance is only as good as the feeling that the band members generate together. Low Country Audio is able to do this so well that it feels like you’re being tricked; the effect of the band’s being so completely on the same wavelength is that there is the constant quality in the performance of a card being kept under the sleeve. It’s the sign of true rapport, and audiences feed off of it.

The band started playing together spontaneously at a friend’s backyard crawfish boil in New Orleans. They played so easily with each other that someone actually took them for a band and booked them at a bar for the next night. Frequently describing themselves as “a family affair,” most of the band is related to each other, with the exception of the lead vocalist and guitarist Thomas Johnson, who often plays with TJ Black and his myriad blues bands.

The rest of the musical family includes Will McMains (drums), Jake McMains (bass), Vaughn Daigle (electric piano/synth/vocals), Ryan Daigle (guitar/vocals), and Scotty Labelle (organ/vocals). Labelle’s father often plays saxophone with the band at concerts and can be heard on many of their recorded songs.

Low Country Audio is a band truly coming into their own, with music that seems to embody the region we live in. They can take a Louisiana black-top road, throw in a wink and a smile, and turn it into a song. - Tiger Weekly

Back in April at a neighborhood crawfish boil on Zimpel St. uptown, six musically oriented and talented buddies got together to put on a jam session for the aural pleasure of those already in the process of satisfying their epicurean desires with hot, fresh and spicy crawfish while sipping down the perfect, natural accoutrement, cold keg beer.

One of the members of the crowd who was taking a load off and enjoying some "mud bugs", just happened to be the owner of the legendary and quintessential New Orleans bar for great live music, the Maple Leaf Bar. He liked what he heard the boys playing and during a break offered them an opportunity, which soon became the genesis of Low-Country Audio: a gig at his club the following Sunday. And of course, what aspiring musicians could turn down that offer?

Drummer for Low-Country Audio Will McMains explains, "We were like S***! We don't even have a band but we would love to play the Maple Leaf. So we did and they kept asking us back on some Sundays after that".

LCA as a group consists of 6 dudes: two sets of brothers, Jake (Bass) and Will McMains (Drums), twins Ryan (Guitar/Vocals) and Vaughn Daigle (Piano/Synthesizer/Vocals), Scotty LeBell (Oragan/Clav/Vocals) and Thomas Johnson (Guitar/Vocals).

The two sets of brothers, along with the fact that the band mates are close friends, adds a family feel to their group, a feeling intensified when Mr. LeBell (Scotty's father) makes a cameo to jam out on tenor saxophone. LCA is a brand new band that is making waves by playing venues like the Maple Leaf in New Orleans and the Varsity Theater, Chelsea's, Phil Brady's and the Spanish Moon in Baton Rouge.

The band has only been around a few months but has already managed to put 25+ shows under their belt and after a truncated September schedule for everybody to get one last vacation in and get their affairs in order for the fall, will be back at it, giving it all they have for audiences in South Louisiana.

LCA's influences include but are not limited to The Allman Brothers, Parliament, Grateful Dead and even some James Brown that puts a "pop" in LCA's eclectic and diverse sound.

If you are lucky enough to catch a show, expect mostly originals with a few random covers like "Dirty Laundry" (Don Henley), "Out in the Country" (The Meters), or the timeless Steve Miller Band tune "Take the Money and Run".

When you get home tonight and are bored, it will definitely be worth your time to go to http://myspace.com/lowcountryaudio or their website www.lowcountryaudio.com and listen to the tracks posted to get a feel for a great, young, talented South Louisiana band that you will probably be tapping your feet to at an establishment near you. - Warning Magazine