"Like an escapee from a secret shadow lab where 1930s sideshow girls, '40s film-noir nightclub dames, and the criminal flip-side of '50s rockabilly queens were genetically blended, Lady Viola seems to be from another time and place. Viola fronts Ragwater Revue, an evolving ensemble that plays spookabilly and country blues for an accursed roadhouse eternally shrouded in fog. (This is where Large Marge, the ghost trucker from Pee-wee's Big Adventure, probably gets her whiskey kicks.) The band's song titles speak volumes: "Cemetery Sal", "Alligator Baby", "Glass Eye & a Leisure Suit", and on and on down the doomy line that runs between the graveyard and the swamp on Highway Zero. There's a schtick at work here, of course. But Viola & Co. keep the hijinks to a thankful minimum, preferring to perform the songs as straight as such stylized inventions can get. That doesn't mean you can't play along, though. I'm sure they'd be stoked if you dressed as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy for the night."
-J. Graham SF Weekly
"Imagine an old seedy bar in the 1930s where women adorned in puffy mink shawls smoke using long Cruella DeVille-like cigarette extenders and dark-haired men in suits slowly tap their feet to some jazzy blues. Ragwater Revue would be the band on the stage."
-Artsweek, California Aggie
"With songs that tell wild tales of alligator babies, glass eyes, and cemeteries, Ragwater Revue envelopes its listeners in a prohibition-era haze. The dirty blues band, who incorporate hints of rockabilly and jazz, is brand-spankin'-new to San Francisco, having just moved from Kansas City, Mo., last January. Songstress Lady Viola's gramophonelike vocal stylings fit perfectly with Kris Daniel's sleepy guitar work."
-Fiore, SF Bay Guardian
(A poorly translated yet very amusing review, from Belgium's 'Roots Time Magazine'...this has to be one our favorite reviews. Thank you!)
"The duo from San Francisco Ragwater Revue distils songs from the brackish water marsh where good people like The Cramps and Dead Bolt impacts to fish. Innovative from the corner in this genre are the furthest distance is not a priority, which is well known. Revue Ragwater cross but head and shoulders above comparable today in the margins of the rock-'n-roll mud using garage orkestjes. Smiths song and multi-instrumentalist Kris Daniel know how simple it means writing a catchy song and the group with the voice of Lady Viola, a soulful Negress trapped in the body of a corpse pale vampirella, the ingredient to keep their music to a higher plan to lift. Gruizige, Cramps-like tugs as "Poor John Button 'and' China Trapman 'alternate with the mouthy dustbins blues of' The Creep 'or the very Waitsiaans titled" A Glass Eye & Leisure Suit. " But it can also be subtle. In the blue neon glow of the smoky "San Francisco Song" is the half past five in the morning. While the chairs onto the table and the waiter whether the brush is listening to the final, stubborn stamgasten how Lady Viola, with a lazy blues guitar and drums as the only noise disturbing group, the mild loss of her beloved bezingt. Very nice. The uptempo 'Cemetery Sal' shine again clearly rockabilly influences by one notch, while the baritone embellished 'Interlude' evokes images of previously secretly creeping pink panthers. In combination with the strong songs and vocals makes this doorleefde diversity of the disc without more bacon for the mouth of types that might be lit on Monday nights with unhealthy interest in cemeteries struinen. Really something for you. "
-BENN, Roots Time Magazine
