Although they may be Nashville’s best kept secret, Red Carpet Rats are undoubtedly one of the hardest working bands to come out of the Music City.  This four man rock collective not only wrote every song on their radio-friendly debut release, “The Year of the Rat,” they also produced it, initiated a digital marketing campaign, and formed their own label, Chauffeur Records, to oversee it all.

The Red Carpet Rats story began taking shape when guitarist McCabe landed a production deal at a local studio in Boston.  He started auditioning potential band members and responded to lead singer Uni Pereira’s ad in a northeastern music magazine.  They clicked instantly.  Agreeing on the importance of great material, they started to make regular trips to Nashville to hone their writing skills.  They soon opted to relocate and completed the band line-up, with drummer Tige Bucchino, who had come to Nashville from San Antonio with thoughts of being in a country band, and Doc Singles, who drove all the way from North Carolina to audition for the bass position.  The band, who took their name from a less-than-stellar online traveler review given about a hotel stay in Uni’s hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y., was set, and wasted no time creating edgy, gripping tunes with four-part harmonies and catchy pop melodies.

“I suggested that we all move in together, enabling us to get to know each other so well that we knew what to expect from one another,” explains McCabe, who has been affectionately christened “The Businessman” by his band mates for his take charge approach.  As well as co-writing all 12 songs on the album with Uni, he also handled production duties.  The Bostonian has been playing guitar since he was only three years old and performed his first paying gig at nine.  “My dad was a DJ and I knew every song in his collection, and actually wrote my first song at five.  But I was drawn to melodies.  I didn’t really pay attention to lyrics.”

For frontman Uni Pereira, who is driven to be the consummate showman, the opposite is true. “I was about 7 or 8 when I started writing down little poems, or lyrics as it were. Just writing about the standard stuff for a kid that age . . . friends, games, getting into trouble.  Ya’ know, throw in a bit about girls and it’s the exact same things I write about now!”  A published writer who has worked as a DJ for a U.K. based radio station, Uni is also a scholar of popular music history, stating, “If there’s a music biography or documentary out there on a legendary band or singer, I’ve probably checked it out . . . at least once!”

Although he hides it well, Doc Singles, is RCR’s resident geek.  Chided as the “professor of useless knowledge,” the classically trained bassist has a degree in laser and electro-optics (don’t even ask!).  Doc has also been busy collaborating with Uni to develop and prepare a Red Carpet Rats comic book series to be published by Viper Comics. “I never dreamed I’d get the opportunity to mesh my interests of music and comic books, and quite frankly, didn’t know I had it in me,” he states.

Tige Bucchino is the craftsman.  “I’m big on building things,” he says. “Studios, consoles, staging, drums, houses, whatever.  And I bring the technical proficiency of a craftsman to my drumming for RCR, while most importantly, just playing whatever the particular song needs.”

“We really kept everything in-house, you might say.” explains Uni.  “McCabe and I wrote all the songs together while sitting at a laptop in my bedroom. I handled the lyrics and he supplied the melodies. Then we worked out the arrangements and rehearsed it with the whole band in the living room until we felt all the elements were there.”

They knew they were ahead of the game when they released five songs on their “Rug Burns” E.P. and received stellar reviews with airplay on over 80 college radio and internet stations, as early versions of “Photographic Memory” and “Written in the Scars” both reached  #1 on Live365.com. However, the culmination of their hard work was their first full-length CD, “The Year of the Rat” which was mixed by Grammy-winning engineer Kevin Beamish (Elton John, Henry Rollins), and mastered by Randy LeRoy (Relient K).

“Ultimately we were disappointed with much of what we heard from many of the major label executives we met with. We were looking for more of a partner than an employer. So McCabe and I decided to start our own label to release the record,” Uni states.  “The fundamentals of running a business are universal,” adds McCabe.  “So we took the reins and built this whole operation from the ground up, making Chauffeur Records a full service independent record label.”

“Chauffeur Records is doing everything right,” according to New Music Weekly magazine. And Red Carpet Rats has proven that their sound has no boundaries, with two new singles charting on two different radio formats. “Photographic Memory” is heating up the airwaves of pop and alternative stations and “Going To Hell,” with its harder, darker edge, has caught fire on rock stations across the country.

Not stopping with the music, RCR has signed on as official “spokesband” for the Tennessee chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America, providing entertainment at the charity’s events, creating public service announcements, speaking at local school assemblies and mentoring young fathers as part of the “Kids Don’t Come With Instructions” program.  The band also host “Create Your Own Success” seminars for fellow entrepreneurial musicians, and actively participate with their fan organization, The Rats Pack.

As they embark on their first tour, this hardworking foursome look forward to the next step in their musical evolution, and, to borrow one of Uni’s lines from the band’s ode to the grind, “Hard Living,” . . . they will surely keep busy “taking everything that life has to offer!”