Founded on the adage “We play the music we like, and we like the music we play!”  and inspired by numerous late night music festival circles encountered at the Live Oak and Strawberry music festivals, the Americana Cats is an amplified acoustic band of six musicians that emerged from an informal music circle started in 2013 by Ted Rhodes outside the Lucky Llama Coffee Shop in Carpinteria, California. With set lists ranging from tunes by Bob Dylan, Eilen Jewell, Hank Williams, and John Prine to Sam Cooke, Fats Domino,  and the Traveling Wilburys, we love to play a wide range of cover and original songs that venture beyond Americana music  to include blues, country, folk, reggae, rock, and a little Django swing with an occasional dash of Louisiana hot sauce.

Up until the pandemic in 2020 shortened the hours of the Lucky Llama, our members used to gather weekly almost every Friday for a late afternoon music circle outside the coffee shop, where we would often invite other local and visiting musicians to sit in.  Since then, we continue to play live music at a number of other local venues on the South Coast such as the Brewhouse, the Island Brewing Company, El Capitan Canyon Ranch, the monthly Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center’s Arts & Crafts Faire, and Stow House.  And once every week or so, on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, you might even find us playing outside the Friends of the Carpinteria Library bookstore, across the street from our old coffee shop haunt.

Band members:

Kevin O’Hara (vocals & guitar)
Lisa Swansbrough (vocals, guitar, drums, & other percussion)
Richard Warner (vocals, mandolin, guitar, & percussion)
Ted Rhodes (vocals, guitar, harmonica, & percussion)
Tom Mulroy (vocals & guitar)
Tom Wolverton (vocals, dobro, & pedal steel guitar)
Victor Garza (vocals & upright bass)