Once upon a time, in the 1980s in George West, Texas, there was a thrash-metal band that achieved a bit of success. Having started families, the members decided to take the 90s off to raise their kids. Well, it wasn’t long before these guys felt the itch again, that need to write and perform, but when they looked in the mirror, they realized they were just too old for the metal scene.
“But then,” as bandleader Bob Strause puts it, “we heard distorted guitars on Ragweeds’s Live and Loud at the Wormy Dog. And with Reckless Kelly putting fiddle on their rock songs, we knew we could find a home on the Texas music scene.”
And so out of the brush and prickly pear (hence the name) of Live Oak County, The Pear Ratz were born.
In 2004, with the core trio of Bob Strause on rhythm guitar and vocals, Rodd Daws on bass, and Chris Nelson shredding the lead guitar, along with Johnny Aguillon on drums, the Ratz set out to storm Texas with their own special high-energy musical blend.
The Pear Ratz first album, 2006's Rat Now, set the tone for what would come to be called “Ratz Rock”, a raw amalgam of country, rock, and honky-tonk. Songs like “Sing Jolie Again” — an homage to Reckless Kelly and the first song ever played on Hank Moon’s 92.5 The Outlaw — Strause’s autobiographical “Just South of the Nueces”, and a clever bluegrassy arrangement of an iconic John Lennon tune captured music fans’ imaginations. Oh, and there was also a little Strause-penned murder ballad on that CD called “Talkin Myself Outta Killin You” that seemed to resonate with the fans — the male ones, anyway.