Kristal Riddell and Ryan Rettenbacher Wedding

February 29, 2020 James Guzzi

60’s country and 00’s cumbia wedding, Long Branch Farms, Half Moon Bay. Photo: Shanti Duprez

“Groom is a country aficionado, the bride prefers indie and the brides family saved their pennies to visit from Mexico. What to do? what to do? Leave it to Jamie! He figured out how to balance all of our music needs from the uniqueness of our ceremony songs to the out of right field cake cutting song. I told Jamie I didn't want the dancing to stop during the reception so, he kept my family happy with cumbias, norteñas and even some reggaeton mixed in there. It was the best to see our families mixing in together as one on the dance floor. Jamie brought the house down!” - Ryan Rettenbacher

“Jamie Jams was super cool and accommodating to our wedding music needs. We had a rustic country wedding and wanted a very eclectic playlist to accommodate my fiances family and my Latino family visiting from Mexico. Needless to say Jamie knew exactly how to handle this spicy melting pot and brought down the house during the reception with some cumbias and norteñas. We danced the night away!” - Kristal Riddell

A Rustic, Country and Cumbia Wedding in a 3/4 Wild West Town

We do special projects for people once or twice a year, and this was the mother of all special projects. In fact, it was something of a special project double header.

We know Kristal and Ryan from our club events, so we were pretty sure they trusted us and whatever we came up with they would love. But seeing as they are friends, and I’m a glutton for punishment, we decided to go the extra mile and learn two whole genres from scratch for them!

Ryan’s family likes country and it was pretty clear from the start they all knew quite a bit about it, so there wasn’t going to be any faking with country rock, or indie that sounds like coutry, or things that were country-ish but not really country.

Kristal’s family was literally flying in from Mexico and legit wanted to hear salsa, cumbia and reggaeton, and probably weren’t going to dance to anything else. Neither of these are genres I previously knew, but we took it in stride and it came out great!

A Tex-Mex Melting Pot

Now, at first glance, this pairing might not make complete sense when you’re talking about two different sides of the family that like two completely different kinds of music, but if you know the history, and you think about it a little, the country and the cumbia actually have a lot in common.

Furthermore, the venue was literally a 3/4 size wild west town. Like Main St. USA at Disneyland, only wild west. So we really had to bring the country jams, just to keep up with what was normally in their iPod, and I really wanted to impress them as well.

That said, we went to work!

Ryan was gracious enough to hip me to a good deal of rather decent modern country and Kristal and her family set about building the mother of all latin request lists, while I locked myself in the library for two weeks learning everything I could about the history of country. And the history of country is what we delivered!

A Blues and Bluegrass Ceremony

For the ceremony, we did some classic blues and bluegrass ones reaching all the way back to the first 78’s and the birth of recorded music. We opened with some train themed ones like DeFord Bailey “Pan American Blues” and Roy Acuff “Wabash Cannonball” to call everyone over to the chapel at the far end of the courtyard.

While we were there we did a few classic blues and bluegrass ones like Jimmie Rodgers “Mule Skinner Blues”, Leadbelly “House of the Rising Sun” and The Carter Family “I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and a few upbeat ones for the cocktail hour like Flatt & Scruggs “Dueling Banjos” and Grandpa Jones “Old Mountain Dew”.

A Barn Dance Dinner

For the dinner, we eased into some Texas swing with some barn dance hits like Maddox Brothers And Rose “Move It On Over” and Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys “Deep In The Heart of Texas”. I thought that was kind of funny since we were performing in the Long Branch Farms’ brand new reception hall barn that had opened literally a day earlier.

Before things got too heated, we eased it into come classic 60’s country with choice cuts from both the polished Nashville side of the equation like Marty Robbins “El Paso” and Patsy Cline “Walkin’ After Midnight”, but also the gritty, down to earth, real talkin’ Bakersfield dudes like Kris Kristofferson “The Winner”, Merle Haggard “Mama Tried" and Johnny Cash “A Boy Named Sue”.

One of Ryan’s uncle’s came up to give me props for playing it classic country 60’s style, which I appreciated, and we did a few more polished ones like Sandy Nelson “Teen Beat” and Susan Raye “L.A. International Airport” before transitioning into some countrypolitan 70’s type ones from Ryan’s list like Dolly Parton “I Will Always Love You”, Kenny Rogers “Lady” and Willy Nelson “You Are Always On My Mind”.

A Best of Modern Country Request Set

I’ll say this. I legit like Tim McGraw now, and can actually see how that inches into a little Sturgill Simpson for the indie crowd.

That said, we launched into a best of the 90’s and 00’s country set courtesy of Ryan’s epic request list with tracks like Alison Kraus “When You Say Nothing At All”, Josh Gracin “Brass Bed” and Tim McGraw “When The Stars Go Blue” before slowly sneaking up on the first dance, Loggins & Messina “Danny’s Song”, the mother son dance, Noel Paul Stookey “Wedding Song (There Is Love)” and the bride’s family dance, Abba “Chiquitita (Spanish Version)”.

Dropping the Cumbia Hammer

At this point, one might have been mistaken to think I hadn’t learned and didn’t know cumbia. But boy, did I ever!

Part of the thing about DJ’ing is: the longer you hold things back, the more you build the anticipation and the more you surprise everyone when it suddenly happens. And we teased out a few Spanish guitar licks during the country portion of the program, but boy did we drop the hammer for the dancing on this one.

From the last beat of Abba “Chiquitita” it was like all full out, bass banging, dance floor filling, latin hits.

We opened with some mariachi type banda ones to give it a little south of the border transition and then went straight into the cumbia ones like Los Socios Del Ritmo “Llorar”, Fito Olivares y Su Groupo “Juana La Cubana” and Los Angeles Azules “17 años”.

We slowly inched it more modern with ones like AB Quintanilla III y Los Kumbia Kings “Azucar”, Luis Fonsi “Despacito” and Enrique Iglesias “Bailando”. Then we filled in the bass with reggaeton ones like Ricky Martin Feat. Daddy Yankee “Drop It On Me (Remix)”, Joey Montana “Picky ft. Akon, Mohombi (Remix)” and Osmani Garcia ft Pitbull Sensato, Dayami La Musa “El Taxi”.

Then we turned it up to 11 with club classics like Daddy Yankey ft. Pit Bull & Lil Jon “Gasolina (Remix)”, DJ Snake, Selena Gomez, Cardi B, Ozuna “Taki Taki” and N.O.R.E., Daddy Yankee, Nina Sky, Gemstar, Big Mato “Oye Mi Canto (Extended Dirty Mix)”.

We even did some chill pop ones like J Balvin & Willy William “Mi Gente”, Rosalia & J Balvin “Con Altura ft. El Guincho” and Karol G, Nicki Minaj “Tusa”.

A Gigantic Request List

I gotta hand it to Kristal’s cousins who obviously went nuts with the requests. I think this was my all time largest request list topping out at something like 600 songs, and that was just the cumbia, reggaeton part. But part of the fun of doing this is having cool clients with good taste that you can nerd out about music and learn from, so this was definitely one of those occasions!

This is also a great case for setting up a separate request list for your family, especially if they have good taste and are smarter than you about something.

What’s funny is, when you play a set like this, you spend hours if not days preparing, but when you do it, it’s like hearing it for the first time along with everyone else. Like, I knew I had rinsed and sorted it all for weeks, but hearing it was really a lot of fun.

AND, I cut, scratched, did effects and made minimal emcee jokes on the mic.

Win!

Big Ups & Shout Outs

Special shout out to Long Branch Saloon and Farms. The place is really a dream and hearing the story about how you did it all one building at a time was really inspiring. One day when I live in a fantasy hobbit eco-village, I’ll have you all to thank!

Special shout out to Cameron’s Stagecoach Catering of the famous Cameron's Pub in Half Moon Bay on the 1. If you’re riding south on Route 1 and you haven’t seen Cameron's Pub yet, with the double decker bus and the English phone booth, you really have to get your eyes checked. Then turn around and go straight to Cameron's Pub where you’ll find all sorts of fun English stuff like pints of lager and fish and chips for your weary weekend roadside adventure.

Special shout out to Shanti Duprez Fine Portrait Photography, whom if I recall has a really good blog, which in part inspired me to finally spend the last 6 months of COVID updating all these entries with stories! Also, the photos look great and everyone was obviously having an amazing time, so take your photo business to Shanti Duprez.

Special shout out to Alena’s Designs on florist and Kathy’s Kreative Cakes on desert. The place looked amazing and the cake cutting was actually one of the highlights of the event!

Special shout out to Makeover Galore on hair and make up. These photos don’t take themselves and the ladies looked great.

Hope we can all work together again soon!