
Hey hey, happy Spring! This is Julia from Ratboys, writing to you with some very exciting news to share…Next month, we’re celebrating our 10th Anniversary as a band! That’s right: 10 years ago this April, Dave and I put out our first EP, “Ratboy”, on Bandcamp. The EP was 5 songs that we recorded in our dorm rooms and bedrooms during spring break that year, and we didn’t really have any expectations or hopes when we put it up online… just that our friends might hear it and hopefully enjoy it.
When we heard back from our friends, that they did in fact like it, we were able to start playing some shows that summer, and boom! the rest is history.
Now that a full decade has passed (absolutely insane), we’re gonna celebrate this milestone with a one-of-a-kind full band concert, which we filmed/recorded live on the floor at Schuba’s Tavern in Chicago. This 10th Anniversary Show is unlike anything we’ve made before, and we are just so absolutely thrilled to share it with you live, April 29th at 8PM central.
The show itself features 10 songs from across our discography plus some excellent archival footage plus the four of us reminiscing on ridiculous tales from the road, meeting by chance, and figuring out how to be a band together.
We recently announced that we’d be helping Ratboys celebrate their 10th anniversary as a band by presenting a new virtual performance. However, that’s not the only way Ratboys are marking the decade: they’ve now released a surprise new album, “Happy Birthday, Ratboy”, ten years to the day after their first EP, 2011’s Ratboy, came out.
Happy Birthday, Ratboy features new recordings of all five songs on the 2011 EP, which they recorded as a duo, before expanding their line-up and signing to Topshelf Records, as well as five more of the band’s college-era tracks, and most recent single “Go Outside” (which is on the record, but not the Bandcamp stream). The new versions sound fantastic, freshly polished and fleshed out takes on songs that very much hold up, and you can see the cover art and track listing,
Ratboys would normally be celebrating their 10-year anniversary on the road, playing a mix of songs from their very first release to their most recent, last year’s critically-acclaimed Printer’s Devil. Instead, just two weeks after the album’s February 2020 release and mere days before heading out on their first headline tour, the COVID-19 pandemic forced all touring to a halt. Despite not being able to play in-person shows for the past year, Ratboys has managed to stay busy by performing their music online via their own Virtual Tour series and by finding a different way to celebrate their first decade of being a band.
Lots of time at home last year gave Ratboys a chance to hit the studio, which has led to Happy Birthday, Ratboy, a surprise party of a new album featuring 10 brand new recordings of the band’s earliest songs + a newly-written bonus track entitled “Go Outside.”
Guitar, pocket piano, ukelele, lap steel – Dave Sagan
Bass – Sean Neumann
Drums, percussion – Marcus Nuccio
Released as a surprise on April 1st, 2021,