By Ben SalmonThe Bulletin

The title of the Moon Mountain Ramblers’ new album, “Let It All Be Good,” sounds like it could be

a mantra for the Bend-based Americana band.

Not to read too much into it, but it seems as though it could be a theme song of sorts for the Ramblers, sum-ming up their life philosophy in one eas-ily digestible phrase.

A five-word guiding light for one of Central Oregon’s most popular bands, perhaps.

Not so much.“I wrote that song back in high school

and … I don’t know why I called it that,” said the Ramblers’ 28-year-old mando-linist, Joe Schulte.

“It was in the song, and I thought it’d make a good title, and that’s about it,” he said. “I can’t remember what was going through my head at the time.”

Well, fine. Let’s just pretend, then, that “Let It All Be Good” is a harbinger of an ascendant 2009 for the Moon Mountain Ramblers, who’ll celebrate the album’s release with a show Saturday night at the Tower Theatre in Bend (see “If you go”).

It’s been almost nine years now since Schulte moved from Alaska to Bend and started jamming with bassist Dan McClung.

If you goWhat: Moon Mountain Ramblers CD-release showWhen: 8 p.m. Saturday, doors open at 7 p.m.Where: Tower Theatre, 835 N.W. Wall St., BendCost: $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Advance tickets available at Music Makers (541-382-3245), The Cosmic Depot (541-385-7478), Bend’s Indoor Garden Station (541-385-5222), Ranch Records (541-389-6116) and String Theory Music (541-408-6671) in Bend.Contact: 541-420-4165 or www.moonmountainramblers.com

Bend’s Moon Mountain Ramblers unveil their third album

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The Moon Mountain Ramblers are, from left, Dale Largent, Dan Mc-Clung, Matt Hyman, Joe Schulte and Jenny Harada.

Courtesy Ben Moon

GOOD TIMES AHEAD

Over the next few years, they recruited Jenny Harada (who’s 30 and part of the team that puts GO! Magazine together each week) to play fiddle and Matt “Mäi” Hyman, 31, to pick the guitar, and started calling them-selves The Chili Dawgs, a tribute to newgrass hero David “Dawg” Grisman.

The name made sense. The band shared Grisman’s pen-chant for blending bluegrass, jazz, roots-rock and just about anything else into their music. Eventually, though, they be-came the Moon Mountain Ram-blers and released two albums, a self-titled debut and 2006’s “Borderline.”

Both are good and each raised the band’s profile on the local and regional scene. In the past couple years, the Ramblers have hired a manager and toured around the West, playing festi-vals and clubs from California to Washington.

But “Let It All Be Good” is a next-level step for the group, which added percussionist Dale Largent a couple years ago.

The album, recorded by Lar-gent, 41, and mixed by McClung, 56, in Largent’s home studio, is a punchy, polished collection of 11 songs (including two covers) that do what the Ramblers do: meander without care across musical styles, ignoring the pa-rameters that so many so-called string bands seem to follow.

Schulte’s title track is a joy-ous blast of rock ’n’ roll, com-plete with piano, drum kit and the cheeky lyric “Listening to our music, you got great taste.” Harada’s “Chasing The Sun” is a new-traditional fiddle tune that will flutter its way into your heart. Hyman’s songs are the twangiest of the bunch, evoking visions of cowboys and camp-fires. And McClung’s instru-mentals incorporate a little jazz, a little swing, and a whole lot of Middle Eastern flavor on the 11-minute-long jam “El Serpiente.”

Altogether, the record is a giant step forward for the Ramblers. And that’s not a sur-prise, given the amount of time these people have been playing together.

“You just hope to be a lot bet-ter after nine years,” Hyman said. “I think we totally are. I see improvement nearly every practice. I think we’re always moving forward, for sure, and that’s why I’ve stuck with it, because I can see that positive energy moving forward, and there’s always something new and different.”

Largent has a slightly differ-ent perspective, having joined the organization two years ago.

“I think the band has gotten tremendously better from its origins to now, and in the music business, to get better means to get better in umpteen areas,” he said. “You have to get better at your instrument. You might even want to learn other instruments to expand your sound. You want to get better at songwriting. You want to get better at singing, and then you want to get better at harmonies, and then you want to get better at business and re-cording and marketing, and it just keeps going on and on.

“I think this band has in a really healthy, steady way im-proved all of those areas, kind of in balance,” he said.

All that said, it was impor-tant to capture the improvement in the studio when the band started recording “Let It All Be Good” about a year ago. So they ditched the method they used on “Borderline,” when they tracked their parts individually, and de-cided to focus on what they do best. Just play.

“We feel like such a live band,” Schulte said. “Most of our play-ing is live and rockin’, so when we listen to ‘Borderline,’ it al-most doesn’t feel like us. We just wanted to get more of what we feel like when we play live. We feel like that’s our strength.”

McClung described the differ-ence between the two processes.

“Rather than, ‘I wrote a song. Everybody learn their part and record it,’” he said, “it was ‘I wrote a song. Let’s learn the song as a band, perform it, tweak it, find out where it really lives, and then record it.’”

The new method worked. The album is “a little rougher some-times around the edges, but maybe a little more energetic,” McClung said. And Hyman likes the organized chaos of the track list, the mix of the members’ in-dividual styles drawn into one cohesive sound.

“I think it’s our best one, for sure. I can just hear all the ef-fort we put into it,” he said. “We went into this album thinking more of the overall sound of the whole thing, the flow of the songs and trying to make an al-bum instead of just recording in-dividual songs and putting them on there. We really considered what it would sound like from beginning to end.”

Now it’s time to go out and play the songs for people. After this weekend’s kick-off party (and some studio time in Febru-ary to record the next Rambler record), the band will gear up for another summer of shows. Last year, they opened for blue-grass legend Del McCoury, played the Willamette Valley Folk Fest, competed at North-west String Summit, and head-lined their own namesake shin-dig, the Moon Mountain Music Festival. This year, they expect to do even better.

“Summers are always our peaks, and every summer has gotten better. We’ve gotten cool-er gigs, more gigs,” Hyman said. “So I get excited because every summer’s better than the one before.”

And even after nine years, the Ramblers — Largent calls them a family rather than a band — aren’t tired of playing, or play-ing together.

“If we have one person listen-ing we all just come alive, even if it’s a soundcheck,” McClung said. “If there’s nobody in the room, it’s fun, we’re getting it together. But if we notice some-body in the back of the room watching, suddenly we’re per-forming. Any response at all from anybody just brings out the performers. It’s where we live.”

Ben Salmon can be reached at 541-383-0377 or bsalmon@bendbulletin.com.

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