Andy Scott’s Honky Tonk swings into Cowes
Phillip Island Jazz presents Andy Scott’s Honky Tonk Swing Band on Sunday, January 15, from 2pm – 4pm at the Phillip Island Bowling Club.
This year Andy Scott and band are back with a more string based western swing band in the tradition of Billy Jack Wills and brother Bob Wills.
The more jazz-based swing bands of the 1920s through to the late 50s shared a fair amount of repertoire with western swing bands of the era.
The western bands included country music, fiddle tunes and blues played on stringed instruments as well as piano, bass, drums and trumpet. Expect melodic standards with vocals by Andy and Matt and instrumentals western style.
Lineup: Matt Kirch on guitar and vocals, Sam Lemann on guitar, Steve Grant on piano, Lachland Wallace on drums, Steve Temple on trumpet and leader Andy Scott on bass and vocals.
For those not aware 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.
It’s dance music, often with a tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.
The movement was an outgrowth of jazz. The music is an amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, old-time, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing; and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound. Later incarnations have also included overtones of bebop.
Western swing differs in several ways from the music played by the nationally popular, horn-driven big swing bands of the same era. In western bands, even fully orchestrated bands, vocals, and other instruments followed the fiddle's lead. Additionally, although popular horn bands tended to arrange and score their music, most western bands improvised freely, either by soloists or collectively
Prominent groups during the peak of Western swing's popularity included The Light Crust Doughboys, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, Spade Cooley and His Orchestra and Hank Thompson And His Brazos Valley Boys. Contemporary groups include Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Asleep at the Wheel, Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys and the Hot Club of Cowtown.
According to country singer Merle Travis: "Western swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, you have western swing." And does it swing? You betcha!!
Venue is Phillip Island Bowling Club, 40 Dunsmore Road, Cowes commencing at 2pm. Entry is $20 for members and $25 for visitors.
Please contact Robin – 0432 814 407 or Jill – 0417 416 300 to purchase tickets.
