The Hot Club of Cowtown
Encyclopedia
The Hot Club of Cowtown is a hot jazz/western swing
trio, comprising; Elana Fremerman (now known as Elana James) (vocals, violin
), Whit Smith (vocals, guitar
), and slap bass player Jake Erwin, who also sing in three-part harmony. Smith (Cape Cod, MA) and James (Prairie Village, KS), originally met through an ad in the classified music section of The Village Voice in 1994, and played together in New York City before relocating to San Diego in 1997, where they spent a year playing for tips and building up their repertoire. By 1998, they relocated to Austin, Texas and in 2000 added Jake Erwin (originally from Tulsa, OK) on bass, finalizing the Hot Club’s lineup.
Since their first recording in 1998, Austin-based Hot Club of Cowtown have become a hard-swinging Western swing trio. The first American band to tour Azerbaijan, they have opened for such artists as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and continue to bring their brand of western swing to a wide range of festival audiences all over the world, but it has always been about staying true to their roots.
Remaining willfully out of the musical mainstream, Hot Club of Cowtown have created a cult following. Their name is inspired by: “Hot Club” from the hot jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt
and violinist Stephane Grappelli
’s Hot Club of France, and “Cowtown” from the western influence of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and the band's love of fiddle tunes, hoedowns, and songs of the American west. "Cowtown" is not a place but a state of mind.
Wills’ and Brown's pre-WWII recordings have always inspired Hot Club of Cowtown’s repertoire and style. “This is music from the days when guys toured and sat on a bus with no air conditioning, no real food, for days. We heard a story of a fiddler the Wills band picked up in California and by the time they had driven to the Midwest, he was dead and nobody even knew his name. They pried his rigor mortis’d body off of the bus and left him under a lamppost somewhere in Kansas,” says James, “It was a different time. These guys were pretty hardcore.”
Hot Club spend most of their time touring, crisscrossing the USA. Local traditions are becoming more diluted, and modern life more electronic, which has concentrated the trio upon keeping their music sincere, free of irony, and focused on a simpler time. “We have faith in the system that is the band. This energy that we plug into and it takes us away,” says James. Smith describes their shows as “like a rock ’n’ roll show . . . people pick up on the energy and the sincerity.” “What the trio has is a rare thing,” says Smith, “There’s a chemistry that’s unmistakable.”
Hot Club of Cowtown split in 2005, though they reunited for occasional shows in 2006-07, including the Fuji Rock Festival and a tour of Australia as Elana James & The Hot Club of Cowtown, in 2007. Whit Smith performed as Whit Smith's Hot Jazz Caravan, based in Austin, Texas. Elana toured with Bob Dylan
in 2005. Changing her last name to James, Elana began performing with her own trio in late 2005. Smith and James resumed playing together full time in 2006. By early 2008 the Hot Club of Cowtown had officially re-formed.
The Hot Club's first album, 1998's Swingin' Stampede
is a collection of standards, fiddle tunes, and classic Western Swing songs, including two written by Bob Wills
, a major influence on the band. Their 1999 follow-up album, Tall Tales, showcases the songwriting of Smith and James with original songs, including "Darling You And I Are Through" by James, and "Emily" and "When I Lost You" by Smith, as well as more Western Swing standards by Bob Wills, Pee Wee King, and others. Later albums continued the same formula of mixing classic Western Swing and hot jazz, with originals in the same style; including the studio albums, Ghost Train (2002) and Wishful Thinking (2009). Their most recent 2011 tribute album to Bob Wills, What Makes Bob Holler, digs deeper into their roots and refuses to modernize. The disc includes obscure B-sides with some of Wills’ most popular work. Tunes like “Big Balls in Cowtown” and “Stay a Little Longer” are songs that “people always love when we play them live,” says James, “so it was was a no-brainer to gather them into a record.” Others, like “Osage Stomp” and “The Devil Ain’t Lazy,” might not be as well known, but they are in the spirit of what originally attracted Smith and James to this music. “We’re playing what knocked us out about Western swing in the first place — the early fiery energy and jazzy improvisations,” says James.
In January and February 2011, they toured with Roxy Music
as the opening act on Roxy's UK leg of their For Your Pleasure tour.
Festivals/career highlights include the Women in Jazz series (part of Jazz at Lincoln Center
), the Cambridge Folk Festival
(UK), the Glastonbury Festival
(UK), the Fuji Rock Festival (Japan), Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival (AU), the National Folk Festival (US and AU), the Stagecoach Festival
, the Winnipeg Folk Festival
(CA), Waiting for Waits Festival (SP), the grand opening of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee, the Barns at Wolftrap, the Rochester Jazz Festival, the Strawberry Festival
, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, traveling as US State Department Musical Ambassadors to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, being inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame, and tours with Bob Dylan
, Willie Nelson
, the Squirrel Nut Zippers
, and The Mavericks
.
The Hot Club of Cowtown has been featured on television on Later With Jools Holland
and the Jools Holland New Year’s Eve Hootenanny (UK), $40 a Day with Rachael Ray
(US), The Grand Ole Opry
(US), BBC Live From Glastonbury broadcast (UK), Good Morning Azerbaijan. Film credits for songs include indie films Four Dead Batteries and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. United States radio appearances include Mountain Stage, Etown, World Cafe, A Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Sirius Satellite, and XM Satellite.
Individual media by band members:
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
trio, comprising; Elana Fremerman (now known as Elana James) (vocals, violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
), Whit Smith (vocals, guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
), and slap bass player Jake Erwin, who also sing in three-part harmony. Smith (Cape Cod, MA) and James (Prairie Village, KS), originally met through an ad in the classified music section of The Village Voice in 1994, and played together in New York City before relocating to San Diego in 1997, where they spent a year playing for tips and building up their repertoire. By 1998, they relocated to Austin, Texas and in 2000 added Jake Erwin (originally from Tulsa, OK) on bass, finalizing the Hot Club’s lineup.
Since their first recording in 1998, Austin-based Hot Club of Cowtown have become a hard-swinging Western swing trio. The first American band to tour Azerbaijan, they have opened for such artists as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and continue to bring their brand of western swing to a wide range of festival audiences all over the world, but it has always been about staying true to their roots.
Remaining willfully out of the musical mainstream, Hot Club of Cowtown have created a cult following. Their name is inspired by: “Hot Club” from the hot jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
and violinist Stephane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....
’s Hot Club of France, and “Cowtown” from the western influence of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and the band's love of fiddle tunes, hoedowns, and songs of the American west. "Cowtown" is not a place but a state of mind.
Wills’ and Brown's pre-WWII recordings have always inspired Hot Club of Cowtown’s repertoire and style. “This is music from the days when guys toured and sat on a bus with no air conditioning, no real food, for days. We heard a story of a fiddler the Wills band picked up in California and by the time they had driven to the Midwest, he was dead and nobody even knew his name. They pried his rigor mortis’d body off of the bus and left him under a lamppost somewhere in Kansas,” says James, “It was a different time. These guys were pretty hardcore.”
Hot Club spend most of their time touring, crisscrossing the USA. Local traditions are becoming more diluted, and modern life more electronic, which has concentrated the trio upon keeping their music sincere, free of irony, and focused on a simpler time. “We have faith in the system that is the band. This energy that we plug into and it takes us away,” says James. Smith describes their shows as “like a rock ’n’ roll show . . . people pick up on the energy and the sincerity.” “What the trio has is a rare thing,” says Smith, “There’s a chemistry that’s unmistakable.”
Hot Club of Cowtown split in 2005, though they reunited for occasional shows in 2006-07, including the Fuji Rock Festival and a tour of Australia as Elana James & The Hot Club of Cowtown, in 2007. Whit Smith performed as Whit Smith's Hot Jazz Caravan, based in Austin, Texas. Elana toured with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
in 2005. Changing her last name to James, Elana began performing with her own trio in late 2005. Smith and James resumed playing together full time in 2006. By early 2008 the Hot Club of Cowtown had officially re-formed.
The Hot Club's first album, 1998's Swingin' Stampede
Swingin' Stampede
Swingin' Stampede is the all-cover debut album of hot jazz/western swing group The Hot Club of Cowtown.-Track listing:#"If I Had Someone Else" – 2:52#"Silver Dew on the Blue Grass Tonight" – 3:04...
is a collection of standards, fiddle tunes, and classic Western Swing songs, including two written by Bob Wills
Bob Wills
James Robert Wills , better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western Swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western Swing and universally known as the pioneering King of Western Swing.Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with...
, a major influence on the band. Their 1999 follow-up album, Tall Tales, showcases the songwriting of Smith and James with original songs, including "Darling You And I Are Through" by James, and "Emily" and "When I Lost You" by Smith, as well as more Western Swing standards by Bob Wills, Pee Wee King, and others. Later albums continued the same formula of mixing classic Western Swing and hot jazz, with originals in the same style; including the studio albums, Ghost Train (2002) and Wishful Thinking (2009). Their most recent 2011 tribute album to Bob Wills, What Makes Bob Holler, digs deeper into their roots and refuses to modernize. The disc includes obscure B-sides with some of Wills’ most popular work. Tunes like “Big Balls in Cowtown” and “Stay a Little Longer” are songs that “people always love when we play them live,” says James, “so it was was a no-brainer to gather them into a record.” Others, like “Osage Stomp” and “The Devil Ain’t Lazy,” might not be as well known, but they are in the spirit of what originally attracted Smith and James to this music. “We’re playing what knocked us out about Western swing in the first place — the early fiery energy and jazzy improvisations,” says James.
In January and February 2011, they toured with Roxy Music
Roxy Music
Roxy Music was a British art rock band formed in 1971 by Bryan Ferry, who became the group's lead vocalist and chief songwriter, and bassist Graham Simpson. The other members are Phil Manzanera , Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson . Former members include Brian Eno , and Eddie Jobson...
as the opening act on Roxy's UK leg of their For Your Pleasure tour.
Festivals/career highlights include the Women in Jazz series (part of Jazz at Lincoln Center
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Jazz at Lincoln Center is part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. JALC's performing arts complex, Frederick P. Rose Hall, is located at West 60th Street and Broadway in New York City, slightly south of the main Lincoln Center campus and directly adjacent to Columbus Circle. Frederick P....
), the Cambridge Folk Festival
Cambridge Folk Festival
The Cambridge Folk Festival is an annual music festival held on the site of Cherry Hinton Hall in Cherry Hinton, one of the villages subsumed by the city of Cambridge, England. The festival is renowned for its eclectic mix of music and a wide definition of what might be considered folk. It occurs...
(UK), the Glastonbury Festival
Glastonbury Festival
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, commonly abbreviated to Glastonbury or even Glasto, is a performing arts festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England, best known for its contemporary music, but also for dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.The...
(UK), the Fuji Rock Festival (Japan), Byron Bay Blues and Roots Festival (AU), the National Folk Festival (US and AU), the Stagecoach Festival
Stagecoach Festival
The Stagecoach Festival is an outdoor country music festival presented by Goldenvoice. The festival is located in Indio, CA, USA. It has various types of artists that attend, whether they be mainstream or almost unknown.-2007:...
, the Winnipeg Folk Festival
Winnipeg Folk Festival
The Winnipeg Folk Festival is a summer folk music festival held in Birds Hill Provincial Park, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It features a variety of folk artists from all around the world, as well as a number of local folk performers....
(CA), Waiting for Waits Festival (SP), the grand opening of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee, the Barns at Wolftrap, the Rochester Jazz Festival, the Strawberry Festival
Strawberry Festival
A Strawberry Festival is an event and celebration in many towns in North America. In most instances, areas around these towns are, or have been, deeply involved in the production and marketing of strawberries, and the festivals are usually held in late spring around the time of the strawberry...
, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, traveling as US State Department Musical Ambassadors to Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, being inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame, and tours with Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson
Willie Hugh Nelson is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie , combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger and Stardust , made Nelson one of the most recognized...
, the Squirrel Nut Zippers
Squirrel Nut Zippers
The Squirrel Nut Zippers are a band formed in 1993 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina by James "Jimbo" Mathus , Katharine Whalen , Chris Phillips on drums, Don Raleigh on bass and sideman Ken Mosher....
, and The Mavericks
The Mavericks
The Mavericks is a country music band founded in 1989 in Miami, Florida, United States. Between 1991 and 2003 they recorded six studio albums, in addition to charting 14 singles on the Billboard country charts...
.
The Hot Club of Cowtown has been featured on television on Later With Jools Holland
Later with Jools Holland
Later... with Jools Holland is a contemporary British music television show hosted by Jools Holland. A spin-off of The Late Show, it has been running in short series since 1992 and is a part of BBC Two's late-night line-up, usually at around 11pm to 12 midnight...
and the Jools Holland New Year’s Eve Hootenanny (UK), $40 a Day with Rachael Ray
Rachael Ray
Rachael Domenica Ray is an American television personality, businesswoman, celebrity chef and author. She hosts the syndicated talk and lifestyle program Rachael Ray and three Food Network series, 30 Minute Meals, Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels and $40 a Day...
(US), The Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, that has presented the biggest stars of that genre since 1925. It is also among the longest-running broadcasts in history since its beginnings as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM-AM...
(US), BBC Live From Glastonbury broadcast (UK), Good Morning Azerbaijan. Film credits for songs include indie films Four Dead Batteries and In Search of a Midnight Kiss. United States radio appearances include Mountain Stage, Etown, World Cafe, A Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Sirius Satellite, and XM Satellite.
Discography
| Year | Album | Label |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 | What Makes Bob Holler | Proper Records Proper Records Proper Records is a record label founded in 1988 by Malcolm Mills and Paul Riley. Commencing with a handful of releases, including The Balham Alligators and Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, the label grew in stature and renown through its reissue marque, 'Proper Box', whose 4CD boxsets for... |
| 2009 | Wishful Thinking | Gold Strike Gold Strike Gold Strike is used in several ways including:It is the term used when a prospector finds gold.*Other uses:**Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall Nevada**Gold Strike Resort and Casino, Tunica Resorts, Mississippi... |
| 2008 | The Best of The Hot Club of Cowtown | Shout!Factory |
| 2005 | Four Dead Batteries (Soundtrack) | HighTone |
| 2003 | Continental Stomp | HighTone |
| 2002 | Ghost Train | HighTone |
| 2002 | Hot Jazz (album) Hot Jazz (album) -Track listing:# "Mean to Me" # "Interlude"# "What More Can a Woman Do?" # "No Smoke Blue"# "East of the Sun " # "I'd Rather Have a Memory Than a Dream"# "Singing Off"-Personnel:... (Japan only) |
Buffalo |
| 2002 | Hot Western (album) (Japan only) | Buffalo |
| 2000 | Dev’lish Mary (album) | HighTone |
| 1999 | Tall Tales (Hot Club of Cowtown album) | HighTone |
| 1998 | Swingin' Stampede Swingin' Stampede Swingin' Stampede is the all-cover debut album of hot jazz/western swing group The Hot Club of Cowtown.-Track listing:#"If I Had Someone Else" – 2:52#"Silver Dew on the Blue Grass Tonight" – 3:04... |
HighTone |
Individual media by band members:
- Chordination (2008) DVD by Whit Smith
- Elana JamesElana JamesElana James is an American Western swing and jazz violinist and vocalist.-Biography:...
(2007) CD (Snarf Records)