I had the pleasure of listening to Jeremiah Strauss two weeks ago at Rivershed and liked what I heard. You too can go see him, this Saturday June 29th at 6 p.m. This will be a solo show, but his band Red River North plays there too. The band plays with different lineups so July 5th you can catch him as a trio at the Queen of the South Food Truck in Chester at 6:30 p.m and the duo will be at the Long Trail Brewery in Bridgewater July 14th at 3 p.m. Their Instagram and Facebook are both under Red River North Music, so please go there for more info.
His solo show is him and his acoustic guitar. He said, “I play a lot of fairly well-known country songs but also a large layer of stuff from the Texas/Oklahoma Red Dirt Country Region, which you don’t get a whole lot of up here. It’s fun to play stuff that everybody knows but it’s been really fun to bring stuff up from bands that people may not know.” Jeremiah grew up in Broken Arrow Oklahoma, got married, and his wife and he moved to Fort Worth Texas, did a stint in Austin and then back to Fort Worth. He was in Texas for 20 years before relocating to Vermont. He added, “The way country radio works, Texas is kind of it’s own island, separate from the rest of the country. A lot of the stuff that gets super well-known, super popular bands down there, don’t get heard as much up here. I think that’s changing a little bit. That’s what a lot of the stuff I’m playing is, while mixing in some of my originals.”
Some examples of those bigger bands are the Turnpike Troubadours, Flatland Cavalry, Randy Rogers Band, Cody Jinks and Erick Willis. I have not heard of any of those, so I will be taking a listen too. Those bands are big musical influences of Jeremiah. He said, “As a musician you can’t help but want to play what you heard. Spending the amount of time I did in Oklahoma and Texas, you’re surrounded by this stuff so obviously it’s going to influence you.”
Red River North is only a couple of years old. Rick Frauton (percussion) and Jeremiah connected online after Jeremiah moved to Vermont. Jeremiah said, “We were tinkering around with some other genres we might do and while jamming, I pulled out some Red Dirt Country tunes. Rick and Michael Bade, our bass player who was there the first time we jammed, were like or we could do that which would be a lot of fun. It really started initially as just jamming and then we thought this was something cool that we could do, which there’s not a whole lot of up here. We started playing and building a set but to be honest I didn’t have hardly any of a set or songs that I knew. I’m a guitar player. The whole time I was in Oklahoma/Texas I was the lead guitar player for bands down there. We just started building a setlist from the ground up.” Almost immediately they added George Seymour on Pedal Steel. The four of them make up Red River North.
They play all over the state but since Jeremiah is in Woodstock and his bandmates are in the Waterbury area, they mainly hit those regions and go back and forth between the two. As Jeremiah puts it, “Either they’re driving an hour or I am.”
Jeremiah comes from a musical family. He first learned piano but when he was 12-13, but the guitar is what he really got serious with. He took some lessons but he is mainly self-taught. Back then he was into Alternative Rock, having grown up in the late 90’s, but in high school he got turned onto early Keith Urban records which he said, “got my attention. That was the gateway into Brad Paisley and folks like that. I didn’t dig into that style a ton, at that age, but certainly became aware of it.” On guitar, his biggest musical influence was Incubus. On the CCM side of things (Contemporary Christian Music), it’s Lincoln Brewster. Jeremiah said, “He’s phenomenal. Growing up in Tulsa, you’re going to pick up a lot of that stuff.” For about 5 years (age 14-19), Jeremiah mainly played in churches. He added, “I was playing 4-5 times a week, between all the services and different places As far as my electric guitar playing, Lincoln was, and still is a pretty big influence.”
After high school he took a break from music for about a decade. He said, “When I got back into playing music again, I connected in Fort Worth with some country artists. That took my influence way into country music. For a few years there, I played with different country bands. At that point you shed a lot of the alternative rock and pick up a lot more twang.”
5 years ago, Jeremiah’s tech work moved him to Boston. Soon thereafter, his wife and he spent one long weekend on Amherst Lake in Plymouth and fell in love with Vermont. He said, “This is amazing.” This was before Covid so immediately they began looking for places up here. Jeremiah added, “As soon as Covid hit, we got a lot more serious. Living in downtown Boston was super not fun. In October 2020, they got a place here and haven’t looked back. “We’ve just been loving it here. We’ve found the folks here are a super-cool group of people, especially getting out and playing country music, the reception has been very warm. It felt a little like home, right away.”
Jeremiah has been writing music over the years but got more serious about it this past year. The band plays his songs too. There’s no rush to record an album now, but there could be something in the near future.
Jeremiah and RRN really like playing music. He said, “We’re really enjoying playing out as a group, getting around the region, getting to know folks and letting them hear us. What drives me, and continues to, is you want to produce a sound, an experience that you feel good about, and it makes you feel good. Doing that with other people is like fuel on the fire for that. You start pushing each other, try to impress each other. That’s where it gets really fun for me. That camaraderie, that energy. Over the last year it’s evolved some where folks that are hearing us are a part of that energy now. That band thing is what really drives me. That experience of 4 people together, making something they’re really proud of.”
