Country Band Brings A Show To Baltimore Area Bars

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With driving dual-guitar sound, lights and harmonizing vocals, country band Red Dirt Revolution brings a party to bars around Maryland.

The band started when a fellow musician called lead vocalist Phil Lathroum and asked if he’d like to start a country band, one that played modern country music heard on the radio, instead of classic country. Another former member came up with the band’s name.

“We started off predominately as a cover band,” said Lathroum.

Along with Lathroum, the band’s current lineup includes guitarists Chad Boston, Craig Warner and Glenn Schloer, with Andrew Florh on drums.

As the band grew, they started to play at venues around the mid-Atlantic region. They also started to make their own songs, like “A Place like This,” a love song about meeting a girl at a dive bar and “County Fair,” a tune about taking a girlfriend to the fair as a kid.

Eventually, radio stations such as WDSD in Delaware and 99.9 Froggy in Salisbury started playing their music.

Like many modern country bands, Red Dirt Revolution mixes rock elements in their songs. Because of this fusion, the band can play at venues that don’t traditionally book country singers.

“We play a lot of the clubs that would traditionally be rock rooms,” said Lathroum. “There aren’t a lot of country-exclusive bars around to play in, so that’s why we wanted to do the modern stuff that people were listening to, to expand where we could play.”

Even though they mix their music with pop and rock, the band is careful not to stray too far from their roots.

“We want to be a country band,” said Lathroum. “But we want to be a country band that puts on that big show like the rock bands do.”

Like some modern bands, they do not release physical CDs, choosing to release singles on Spotify and make music videos on the internet.

Band members grew up listening and playing music. A Pasadena resident, Schloer started playing guitar when he was 9. His two older brothers played in a popular local band that gigged around Baltimore, and Schloer started playing music to join them.

“I was going to be their guitar player until they kicked me out of the room every day,” said Schloer.

Meanwhile, Lathroum has a degree in music and teaches at St. Philip Neri School in Linthicum; Warner always played music, starting with a plastic toy guitar; Florh plays in a marching band with his father; and Boston started playing when he got a Stratocaster guitar and Judas Priest steel album from a friend in 1984.

Schloer continued to learn and play guitar, taking classical lessons to become a better-rounded guitarist. He started out playing rock before transitioning to modern country.

To make their shows and websites look their best, Red Dirt Revolution gets help from many people such as Ed Lord with Live Wire System, which does their lighting and production, and Rob Myer with their management company, Starleigh Entertainment.

The musicians’ collection of experiences and talent has established Red Dirt Revolution as a high-energy country act.

For more information about Red Dirt Revolution, visit www.reddirtrevolution.com.

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