Despite its abbreviated three-piece lineup, Hot Club of
Cowtown is the pistol-packin’ ruler of Western swing
and all the genres that lead up to it. The band puts forth a classic array of
tempos and grooves with an understated allegiance and aplomb. It’s like Django Reinhardt
in the tumbleweeds, or Bob Wills sipping coffee at a
pre-war Parisian cafรฉ.
HCC treads
lightly whenever it slips into a genre, offering nothing in the way of
ownership through interpretation or variation. It doesn’t bogart
the tune. Anything — any style from any era — this band performs, maintains its
history and identity. Neither the band, nor the song is compromised. And yet
HCC is truly one of a kind with its swingin’ swagger.
As the name
alludes, HCC plays hot jazz: music inspired by Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s Hot Club of France with a powerful lean toward
Western swing. The Austin, Texas-based group — vocalist and fiddle player Elana James, guitarist Whit Smith, and bassist Jake Erwin —
has been circling the globe since the release of its first album, “Swingin’ Stampede,” in 1998. A dozen albums and several
solo outings later and Hot Club of Cowtown rides on still; its versatility and
virtuosity abound.
City tracked
down James to ask a few questions and walked away with an education. Here’s
what was said; here’s what we learned. An edited transcript of that
conversation follows.
City: What’s
the latest in Cowtown?
Elana James: Our
latest album is “Midnight on the Trail,” which came out in February 2016.
It’s available online and on our website, and of course, at all our live shows.
How’s
“Midnight on the Trail” been received?
“Midnight on the Trail” is actually one we put out ourselves
and have not publicized too much — it was intended as a live show album to add
to the collections of our true believers, of which there are many. It’s a
collection of some of our favorite Western swing tunes and also some cowboy
ballads — songs by Gene Autry, Cindy Walker, Johnny Mercer, as well as some
traditional songs. We are doing a lot of those live on this tour, and also are
continuing to play a wide array of our own songs and things from our hefty
repertoire of the past almost two decades.
Tell
us a little about the making of “Midnight on the Trail.”
We made it in Austin late last year, very simple, in about
four days. There are no guests, just we three in the studio. These are very
traditional songs and though we came up with all our own arrangements for all
of them, we recorded them traditionally without any fuss.
What
do you like about this album? What sets it apart from your earlier ones?
“Midnight on the Trail” completes a set of our three most
recent albums, along with “Rendezvous in Rhythm” and “What Makes Bob Holler,”
that showcase the band’s roots and inspirations. We write many of our own songs,
and in our live show, we play a number of them, but because we are an
improvising hot jazz and Western swing trio, nothing ever gets served up the
same way twice.
“Midnight on
the Trail” has some songs on it that we have loved for a long time, or been
playing live and never yet recorded. So it’s a clearing house for some of
those. It’s also a western-themed collection. A lot of our earlier albums were
a combination of jazzy Western and originals. We’ll likely go back toward that
format for our next album — forthcoming in 2017-18 –which is the band’s 20th
anniversary. We are amassing new songs and writing for the next record right
now.
What
is it about your band — and you as a solo artist — that over the years has
other musicians like Roxy Music and Bob Dylan inviting you on tour?
I think there are a few things at play. One is that the band
was born from our love for playing our instruments first and our excitement and
obsession with this repertoire. We wanted to become fluent and live inside it,
and that zeal we brought to it really created a sound almost like a
contemporary of the kinds of bands that first inspired us — early hot jazz and
Western swing from the 1920’s until the beginning of WWII.
So many
greats that have careers based on their own songwriting, or whatever modern pop
or innovations that they are known for, have a deep respect for, and vast
knowledge of, this repertoire of American Songbook standards, hot jazz,
traditional American music. All of that has gone into their own alchemy in
becoming the artists we know them to be. But I think our sound appeals to some
of those kinds of people because we have hewn to a pretty authentic style, and
also, we have come at it as instrumentalists first, and writers second.
That has
kept us in a seemingly dwindling minority of acts who come at the music first
to learn it and only later to put their own stamp on it — as opposed to being
songwriters first. I know that Whit, Jake, and I are Luddites in the sense that
we have great respect for the roots of this music, and have tried to continue
on in the tradition as tastefully and respectfully as possible, but we also infuse
our shows and our playing with a modern, live dynamism to rival any rock or pop
band.
I often
think of music as being very similar to cooking: some things are just timeless
and don’t need to be constantly messed with to be deeply satisfying. It’s an
improvisational style and we serve it fresh every time we play together. That
is really just a traditional approach to American swing and early jazz, and I
think all those sorts of things have allowed us some of the wonderful
opportunities we’ve enjoyed over the years: Bob Dylan tours, Willie Nelson,
Bryan Ferry, Gatemouth Brown, Dan
Hicks.
Do
your Gypsy jazz leanings completely meld together with the sound of Western
swing, or do they possess separate identities depending on the song?
It’s interesting how seamless the transition can be from
traditional fiddle tunes like “Ida Red” to hardcore ballads like “Someone to
Watch over Me” during our show. In the 1930’s and 1940’s especially, there are
infinite recordings of bands anchored with fiddle, guitar, and bass (the Quintet
of the Hot Club of France to Hugh and Karl Farr with the Sons of the Pioneers)
that can swing in any direction.
Stephane Grappelli may play “Swanee” and turn
around and kill “How High the Moon” and anything else he wanted. The Farr
Brothers recorded countless standards, like “Deed I Do” and “Up a
Lazy River,” but were best known for being the instrumental anchor for the
Sons of the Pioneers. The common denominator is swinging rhythm, inspired
improvisation, and a rich, acoustic approach to early swing before it got cool
and taken over by wind instruments. Obviously the unbiased account of history
from a fiddle player.
How do
you keep a contemporary relevance to your music, particularly with classic
tunes by artists like Bob Wills?
Again, to me that’s like asking a chef how they can keep
serving beef in 2016 when people have been eating if for thousands of years.
Personally, I am exhausted by the insidious premium on “innovation”
or things seemingly needing to be “new,” especially in music.
Speaking for
myself, I don’t always like things that are new, and I know I must not be the
only one. Every day we wake up is new, and we create something fresh every day from
the raw ingredients of our own lives. Music is no different. A song you may
have heard played one way on a recording from 1947 is going to sound the same
but different if you play it today. It’s that historical connection that I
think can be deeply satisfying for people.
That’s not
to say we don’t write our own songs — we absolutely do and will continue to.
But there is nothing wrong in connecting your writing and playing to the
zeitgeist of what people may already know and will respond to. Just because
people used to eat biscuits years ago in the mountains of Montana, are we
supposed to think that time to eat biscuits has come and gone? No. When we bite
into a biscuit, or hear an old fiddle tune, or have a glass of wine and listen
to Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang playing in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, or see a
band play live, improvising and being completely in the moment, it can be
deeply satisfying on an ineffable level that never loses emotional relevance.
How do
you put your tag on a cover tune that isn’t necessarily in your genre? For
example, “Someone to Watch over Me.”
I first approached this music as a violin player, and only
later began to sing. When we do a song like “Someone to Watch over Me” I try to
let the song do its thing, and not mess with the melody at all. Personally, and
this is just my personal taste, I don’t like overly-filigreed interpretations
of lyrics, generally speaking.
Some of my
favorite vocalists — Mildred Bailey, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee,
Blossom Dearie, Kay Starr, Willie Nelson — are people who, to my mind, let the
song speak for itself — or give the illusion that it is, and the technique they
bring to that seems invisible, so that the singing is effortless, almost like
they are just speaking the truth. That is a masterful thing to pull off. That’s
my favorite kind of singing so I try to stay with that as my guiding
inspiration. Is it true? Is it emotionally true? That’s what I try and put
first.
Will
you always remain a trio?
Three definitely is a magic number. It has worked for us so
far, and so we have no plans to change it up.
What
are you most proud of?
I think it’s pretty incredible that we’ve been able to tour
internationally and play professionally, to do this for almost two decades, and
that we have been fortunate enough to find — and continue to grow — an audience
for what is undeniably an almost breathtakingly non-commercial format of music.
It really is a case of do what you love and you’ll never work another day in
your life.
We would be
playing this music (and do) for fun whether we were professional musicians or
not. To build a life playing music, to support ourselves doing it, to not be
beholden in any way to anyone else’s idea of what we should be doing, what
would “sell” better, that is a great gift that only feels sweeter as time goes
by. We have achieved what we have so far because of the love and loyalty of our
fans first and foremost, and because we somehow believed it could work. And so
far, it really has.
Is
there a better guitar player on the planet than Whit Smith?
No.
One
hundred years from now what will they be saying about Hot Club of Cowtown?
Hopefully we’ll be considered part of an illustrious
collection of American roots artists who contributed to 21st century American
music in a unique and unforgettable way. Also we may be known for our fearless
and deeply committed tour manager of the past 13 years, Eva, who is my dog and
is a legend in her own right.
This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2016.
Great interview! Awesome show!