- Rick’s been around the block

Before moving to Austin in 2004, Rick anchored some of the hottest bands in NYC's downtown music scene. Among his playing, recording, and producing credits are Hot Water (now known as The Apple Brothers) on Sire, Leroy Justice, Mangan, Vervain, Chernobyl Picnic, and elizabethGONE (led by Vincent James of MachineLove.com) Rick also backed songwriters Stephen Clair, Tinkerbel Tompsin, Jeremy Parise, Mike Mok, Jen Jones (The Camaroes), and Julianne Richards (of Snatch and solo on Geffen). Rick also played on stage in the off-Broadway productions of the rock opera "The Asthma Conspiracy" and the record-setting NYC Fringe Festival musical, "Slut!" Check out Rick's Website at www.cdfuse.com/hogbranch.

- the pre-Costello years

Rick learned bass by following his momma’s mighty left hand as it pumped out boogie-tinged gospel on the upright Baldwin at Shiloh Baptist Church in Hog Branch, Louisiana. By high school, Rick was anchoring Kasino, a Skynyrd-inspired rock band playing honky-tonks and festivals throughout the South. This photo is from a Kasino gig in 1979.

- Costello knows best

A few years later, while working on an MFA in playwriting at Washington University in St. Louis, in an odd mating ritual of the time, Rick was given a mixed tape of Elvis Costello tunes by a young bird who’d just returned from a year in Brighton. It took just one listen. The swagger of the Attractions! Costello’s sneering lyricism! Rick was hooked instantly and incessantly. (In fact, overcome with Costello-flu, the battered old bird spent three years weeping along with Blood and Chocolate as he chased Teresa Juanita to Nashville, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Paris, and ultimately London, where he finally realized that Elvis Costello had been right all along: “You’d better leave that kitten alone.” I Want You – with its pitiful eroticism and obsessive paranoia – had become the theme song of the '80s.) At any rate, Rick would still like to thank Bruce “Almighty” Thomas for writing the sickest bass lines in rock!