Country & Western Street Dance: with Ranch Romance at Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA, August 13, 1993

Two months ahead of the release of their third and final album, local Country band Ranch Romance took to the streets of Seattle to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Charter of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA), which followed a 1971 initiative that created a historic preservation zone and returned the Market to public management, with a swing dance. 

Ranch Romance, whose name came from a 1930s Western pulp fiction magazine called Ranch Romances, was a Seattle Country, Swing, and Bluegrass band active between 1989 and 1999. Lead singer and guitarist Jo Miller (b. unknown) and upright bassist Nancy Katz (b. unknown) were joined by Barbara Lamb (b. unknown) on fiddle and Lisa Theo (b. unknown) on mandolin until the two left in 1991 after the band had toured in support of k.d. lang, who was promoting her Absolute Torch and Twang album. Ranch Romance then welcomed Nova Karina Devonie (b. unknown) on accordion and David Miles Keenan (b. unknown) on guitar, mandolin, and banjo. The band performed several times at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas and were also popular in California and Canada. They released three albums: Western Dream (1990), Blue Blazes (1991), and Flip City (1993). Thanks to an interview with screenwriter Barbara Turner about life on the road and women musicians, Jo Miller was cast as herself in the 1995 film Georgia, starring Jennnifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham as sisters breaking into the Seattle music business, and the whole band cameoed as a club’s house band in one scene.