Formed in the Fall of '03 by brothers Curt and Will Arledge, Rat Jackson (pronounced Rat-Jack...Son) has undergone several changes in look and sound over the past few years. Originally used as an outlet for the short, powerhouse rockers, co-penned by the brothers Arledge, most of their time in the early days was spent rattling the walls of dormitory common rooms on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. Adding high school friend Rusty Sutton on bass in Nov. 03 and adopting the name The Zombie Attack, the brothers hoped to broaden their sound and add the necessary punch to their bluesy, tid-bits of rock.

In the Summer of 2004 the band began tweaking their sound, reworking their own songs into a more danceable and improvisational style for the live setting. This was due to many things, including the discovery of the music of bands like the North Mississppi All-Stars, Robert Randolph and the Family Band and The Drive-By Truckers and the band needing to tone down their live shows to make them more digestable to the crowds they were playing to. In early 2005 the boys thought it was time to drop the name they had been wearing out on the road, being misbooked as a goth-metal band due to its reference to the walking dead. It was in May '05 that the name Rat Jackson became written in stone. It was conceived, like most things among these childhood friends and long-time mates, from an inside joke concerning a jewish rat and the troubles he deals with living with such hard rockers. After a short hiatus for world travel, the boys added childhood friend Steve Oliva to the lineup in the summer of '06, in an attempt to once again add to the sound they could pump out and the musical alleys they could travel down.