By now, the story of any Red Stick Ramblers album is what mood they’re in. They’ve demonstrated that they can play Cajun, Western Swing, hot jazz, blues and country, and what differs from album to album is the balance of styles. On My Suitcase is Always Packed, they’re in a honky-tonk mood. Ramblers Eric Frey and Chas Justus display a facility for the tears-in-your-beer song, the best being “Bloodshot Eyes.” In it, Frey quick-sketches the end of a love between a couple that enjoyed the wild side of life, and the song gains gravity for all the details he glosses over: “It’s better if you and I part / so that we might live long enough to see heart to heart.”

The Ramblers undercut the song’s potential for melodrama with a lovely, graceful melody set on Linzay Young’s fiddle, and here and throughout the album, they’re not in any hurry. After the high energy “Je T’aime Pas Mieux,” they relax and let the songs and arrangements do the work. They swing easily on the comic “The Barnyard Bachelor” and the cad-about-town title track, and the unhurried pace suits their voices. The result is a very entertaining album that sounds supremely confident.