Lucas Ohio Pattie

It was 2005 when Lucas Ohio Pattie and the band discovered one another while playing various clubs, bars, and coffee houses in and around San Luis Obispo, California. Soon the Shamblers were born. The band featured singer-songwriter Lucas Ohio’s powerful vocals and hard-driving, muscular, rhythmic guitar style. Completing the original band were musicians Mike Marotto on bass and lead guitar and Colby James on drums. The band emerged with an energetic sound topographically and sonically surprising -- a hard-edged rock fused with elements of blues, folk, pop, jazz, and country. A riveting performer delivering songs in an impassioned voice, Lucas Ohio leads a band that San Luis Obispo’s New Times declares “a new folk rock phenomenon” -- a band exceeding the sum of its parts.

Lucas Ohio’s dynamic songs contain the timeless, evocative lyrics of a poet, and are supported by shifting tempos, textures, and adventuresome arrangements. Delivering energetic and scorching sets, the band developed a large, loyal fan base, quickly leading Lucas Ohio and the Shamblers to become one of the most talked about bands along California’s Central Coast. Both their 2006 self-titled debut “The Shamblers” and their 2008 CD “Steps Toward Home” were critically well-received, cementing their reputation as one of the hottest bands between Santa Barbara and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lucas Ohio and the Shamblers are perhaps best described by Elton John’s first producer and lead guitarist Caleb Quaye as a “tight (and) extraordinary” band with “great riffs, changes in time, and compelling arrangements . . . Lucas Ohio is a great storyteller . . . songwriter . . . and expressive vocalist.”

Born at home in Los Angeles in 1983, he was given the name Lucas Ohio Pattie. He is named after James Ohio Pattie, among the first pioneers leading an exploration party into the Southwest and California in 1827. Lucas moved north to the East Bay when he was 10. After earning a degree from the College of Agriculture at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and becoming a musical force on the Central Coast, he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2009. Since resettling, he has surrounded himself with veteran Bay Area musicians including Don Bassey on bass, Don Fox on guitar, and Steve Trovao on drums.

Music Critic Rick Alan Rice at rarwriter.com writes that “Lucas Ohio Pattie may be the next smart young blues-folk-rocker to be accepted into the pantheon of San Francisco Bay Area illuminati . . . a bright guy with a vision for something fresh and different.”