Ten Originals and No Apologies: Lower Case Blues' "Take It for a Ride"
There's a particular kind of Delaware band that never leaves and never stops improving, and Rehoboth's Lower Case Blues has been that band since 2003. Their record "Take It for a Ride" — ten all-original songs written and recorded in 2024 — is the reason to pay attention this summer, and not just because the trio still plays the beaches on a near-permanent basis.
The credentials are real and specific. "Take It for a Ride" was named the Central Delaware Blues Society's selection to represent Delaware in the self-produced CD category at the 2025 International Blues Challenge in Memphis — the genre's biggest juried gathering. That's not a hometown participation trophy; it's a peer-and-panel judgment that a record made in coastal Delaware belongs in the national conversation.
Sonically, Lower Case Blues has always been more restless than "blues trio" implies. The band — Jake Banaszak on guitar, B.J. Munz on bass, Tristan Gilbert on drums — folds Stevie Ray Vaughan grit into P-Funk elasticity and the exploratory, Medeski-Martin-and-Wood approach to a groove that refuses to sit still. On "Take It for a Ride," the all-original mandate is the point: after years of being a band that could play anything, they made a record that is only theirs. The tunes stretch and breathe like a live set, which is exactly how a group this road-tested writes when nobody's asking for the hits.
Context matters here. The beaches are lousy with cover bands — it's a resort economy, and vacationers want to hear something they can sing along to by the second chorus. A regional act putting out ten originals and then getting judged in Memphis is swimming against that entire current. Lower Case Blues has done it by being a genuine live draw first: they log the Dogfish Head and brewery-circuit rooms, the festival stages, the shoulder-season gigs that keep a band sharp when the tourists have gone home. The album is the residue of all that stage time.
Why it matters: a healthy scene needs at least one band that treats the beaches as a home base rather than a summer paycheck, and treats original material as non-negotiable. Lower Case Blues is that band's clearest current example. When a Rehoboth trio's self-produced record earns the state's IBC nod, it tells every younger player working the deck-bar circuit that "local" and "ambitious" aren't opposites.
Put "Take It for a Ride" on for the drive down Route 1 with the windows open. It was, after all, built for exactly that. And keep an eye on the brewery and festival calendars — this is a band best understood loud and in person, where the ten originals turn into twenty minutes each.
Sources: Lower Case Blues set to release seventh album — Coastal Point; Lower Case Blues — official site; Central Delaware Blues Society — IBC