Why New Orleans Blues Rock Survived the Move to Switzerland on Rising by Jeb Rault

A Self-Produced Third Album Recorded at Marigny Studio with Friends From His Teenage Years

The album opens with Pretty Pictures, a guitar song with a country lean. Ten tracks later, it closes on a funk groove, with a guitar solo and a saxophone solo winding around each other. On Rising, Jeb Rault carries blues rock, southern rock and New Orleans funk through one record. The New Orleans-born guitarist, singer and songwriter moved to Switzerland in 2018 and released the album on 15 September 2023.

Jeb Rault’s Rising is in the playlist below, next to the electric blues this desk keeps in rotation, and earlier features live on the Jeb Rault artist profile. The album came to MusicRoots.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Give it a listen, then keep reading for how it was put together.

---

Who Played on Rising With Jeb Rault

Rault recorded the album in the spring of 2023 at Marigny Studio in New Orleans, with sound engineer Ben Lorio. He wrote all of the music and lyrics, and he also produced the record. He told Punk Head that producing was a seat he had never taken before. Rising is his third full-length album, after several EPs and singles, and L Nix Mastering in Memphis mastered it.

The players matter here, because they go back a long way. Jeb Rault made Rising with some of his oldest musical friends, people he has known since they were teenagers. Lee Schwartz plays drums, Logan Emory plays rhythm guitar and Matt Wisdom plays bass. On a few songs, New Orleans players also sit in. Wayne Lohr adds keyboards, Joe Crachiola adds saxophone and Charlie Denard plays grand piano. Afterwards, the same group took the album on tour through Switzerland and Germany. Sinusoidal Music also listed the full line-up in its review.

The Guitar Comes First

Rault describes himself first as a guitar player, then as a songwriter, a singer and now a producer. The cover art says the same thing in one picture. A guitar rises out of a swamp that stands for Southern Louisiana. Behind it, mountains stand for his move to Switzerland and his years of touring central Europe. That picture is the album’s whole story, and the guitar sits in the middle of it.

His lineage is easy to trace. Led Zeppelin has always been his favourite rock band, and Jimmy Page’s no-holds-barred playing shaped how he plays. Later, the Grateful Dead pulled him in, and he saw five of their shows before Jerry Garcia died. New Orleans funk sits underneath both. Growing up, he watched The Meters, the Neville Brothers, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint play live in New Orleans. He later sat in with Dr. John.

On Rising, Riches To Rags Brings Jeb Rault Home to a Changing New Orleans

Of the ten songs, Rault picked Riches To Rags as his personal favourite. He still keeps a place in New Orleans and goes back as often as he can. On those trips, he has watched changes in his home city and in other major American cities. The song is about those changes. Its message, as he explained it, asks people to notice how good things have been. Otherwise, he warned, they can lose them.

The guitar leads on that song carry the second half of the story. Rault said he was proud of them. He also pointed to the classic rock players he grew up on, Jimmy Page above all. In other words, the lyric looks at the present while the solo looks back at the records that taught him.

Two other titles follow the cover. My Mountain Girl and On The Top of the Mountain point at the mountains behind the swamp in the artwork. Meanwhile, Sometimes I Let It Get Dark, at track six, is the first song to turn inward. The Brazilian site Music for All heard it as the album’s most introspective moment. It also noted a more broken groove than the songs around it.

The Running Order of Rising Moves Jeb Rault From Southern Rock to New Orleans Funk in 38 Minutes

The structure is classic: ten songs in 38 minutes and 2 seconds, a length that fits a single vinyl record. Rising came out on CD and vinyl as well as on streaming services. The running order uses that space to move between styles, while the guitar tone ties the songs together.

The first half covers the most ground. Pretty Pictures leans towards country and southern rock. Rocket Me follows with a funk groove, and the guitar solos begin. Riches To Rags is direct, traditional blues rock. After that, Meet You On A Better Day returns to a rough southern rock sound with blues underneath. Then My Mountain Girl opens in a hard rock style before settling into blues rock.

The second half slows down and widens out. After the inward turn of track six, Church Song brings back a relaxed southern rock feel. Its guitar solo leans country rather than blues. Step Aside (For Your Sister) is mostly acoustic. Now That You’re Gone has the fullest arrangement on the album, with piano and horns. Finally, On The Top of the Mountain closes on funk, so the record ends on a groove, not a farewell.

Why Jeb Rault Kept the New Orleans Practice Alive on Rising

That shape also explains why the old practice survived the move. Rault started on the New Orleans club scene at 17. He played rooms such as Tipitina’s and Carrollton Station, and he formed the Jeb Rault Band in 1996. Later, the New Orleans country artist Kim Carson hired him as her guitarist. Her 2013 and 2014 European tours added up to almost 80 shows in two years. Those tours built the European audience that led him to Switzerland in 2018. Even so, Jeb Rault cut Rising in New Orleans, with New Orleans players. As a result, it still carries the city’s mix of blues, funk and rock.

The story is still moving. According to his own biography, Rault played his first shows in Japan in May 2026. In August 2026, the band played its first UK dates, in and around Liverpool. The band has also pencilled in a return to the UK for 2027. Next comes a new all-original band album, which he plans to record in Switzerland. The songs will appear as singles first, before the full record, Fire Horse, arrives.

From the MusicRoots.News curator team: “Play Riches To Rags and then On The Top of the Mountain. The first is Rault the writer, looking hard at the city he left. The second is Rault the player, letting the band and the saxophone carry the album out on a New Orleans groove.”

Who Rising Is For

Rising suits listeners who grew up on classic rock guitar and still want a solo in every song. It also suits Americana and southern rock fans who like a record made by a band of old friends. In addition, it suits anyone who follows the New Orleans tradition of funk and blues living side by side.

Follow Jeb Rault across platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, and the official site.

---

About The Author