Biography
Leading the Jai-Alai Savant on vocals and guitar, Ralph Darden pursues the overlap between first-wave punk and heavy dub reggae with a rarity matched by almost no one since the prime years of the Ruts, early Police, and the Clash’s Sandinista! period. That blend has formed the core of his musical focus since the mid-’90s at latest, when he first drew notice as one of four members in Franklin, the Philadelphia group that also included Brian Sokel of AM/FM. The band issued multiple singles and EPs plus the full-length albums Building in A and E and Franklin before disbanding in 2002. Right afterward Darden recruited bassist Mike Ali and drummer Jeremy Gewertz to lay down the Jai-Alai Savant’s first EP, The Thunderstatement, issued by the wide-ranging indie Gold Standard Laboratories. After that release he relocated from Philadelphia to Chicago, assembling a fresh rhythm section of drummer Michael Bravine and bassist Dan Nash Snyder along with the enigmatic “Major Taylor,” listed for “beats, dubs, and concepts” yet absent from the recordings themselves. A single appeared next on the European imprint City Slang, after which the updated Jai-Alai Savant put out The Flight of the Bass Delegate, a thinly veiled allegory of Darden’s departure from the Philadelphia music community.