Remember back when pop wasn't a dirty word spoken with shame, when rock 'n' roll was just rock 'n' roll and not a hyphenated mess of sub-categories, before giants like MTV and Clear Channel had effectively smudged out the line between art and marketing?
Probably not. Neither do the Redwalls, but they aren't letting that stop them from reclaiming the spirit of rock's formative years and channeling it into everything they do. Whether it's their songs, their appearance or their showmanship, they operate by a simple idea.
As Justin Baren, who plays bass and shares vocal duties, explained, "We just try to be a good rock 'n' roll band."
In this day, what it means to be a good rock 'n' roll band is difficult to define. For Justin, his brother Logan (guitar/vocals), Andrew Langer (guitar/vocals) and Ben Greeno (drums), this means forgetting the last couple decades happened at all.
It means dusting off the sacred rock canon of Beatles/Dylan/Stones and taking aim at an industry saturated with reality stars posing as American Idols and pretty girls (and boys) posing as punks.
Greeno described the Redwalls' sound as "a fine wine," but spend a little time with them, and it's apparent they are far more comfortable playing music than talking about it.
Onstage, their youthful enthusiasm and earnest passion remind the crowd what most concerts today are lacking; a level of innocent enjoyment that all music should produce.
It's as if they are saying, "Look how much fun this can be!"
Of their performance, Greeno explained, "We just want people to sit back and enjoy it."
The Redwalls are currently on tour with British acts Keane and the Zutons, a tour that visited St. Louis last Saturday at the Pageant.
They played a mix of songs off their 2003 debut, "Universal Blues" (released on Undertow, an independent label based in St. Louis) and the upcoming "Day Nova," scheduled for a June release.
"Day Nova" is their first album for Capitol Records, and the major-label deal has had its effect on the recording process.
"There's a lot more money involved, with a big studio and big producer. We can do whatever we want, use whatever instrument we want to use," Justin said.
For "Day Nova," this means the addition of horns. But big-label freedom does not find the boys abandoning their back-to-basics approach, which has attracted a reverence from fans of all ages.
Unfortunately, with this attention comes resentment. You won't make it past the first couple of sentences of an article about the Redwalls without learning how young they are. The boys shrug off the critics' fixation with their ages.
"Every journalist has to have their angle," Justin reasoned, adding, "Most bands are young when they start out, I don't know why it was such a big deal [with us]."
The big deal is not that they reference the rock deities that aging critics are so careful to protect, but they do it unnervingly well for guys who weren't born until after John Lennon died.
But if you can get past that, you'll discover tightly packed, catchy songs that you could imagine teens dancing to on "American Bandstand" but still fit comfortably between Radiohead and Ryan Adams on your iPod.
It would be na?ve to expect the Redwalls to launch a kind of rock 'n' roll renaissance, a widespread return to the ideology of the past.
But one can hope that this is only the beginning of a long career for a group of four young men who seem to really understand what rock 'n' roll should be about.
After all, that is all they want: "We want longevity. We just want to make as many albums as possible," Greeno said.
