Hot Club of Cowtown

Award-winning Austin, Texas-based Hot Club of Cowtown may be the world's most globe-trotting, effervescent string trio, who's joyful sound blends the traditional Western swing of the 1940s American southwest with European hot jazz influences of the same era. The Hot Club of Cowtown, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, writes its own original songs and reinterprets everything from hoedowns to American songbook standards in its own, original style. The band is guitarist Whit Smith, fiddler Elana James, and upright bassist Beau Sample.

"The interplay is as sleek as ever." – The Times (London)

"The hot jazz is what Hot Club do best, and this is a staggering return to form for the band I once said I could listen to forever. That still stands." – Country Music People
 
"This trio's stylistic genesis–as well as title–stems from the realization that the great heritage of strings (guitars and violins) originates mutually with the Manouche gypsies of France and the no-less virtuosic hillbilly pickers and fiddlers of Oklahoma and Texas....the threesome...showed from the beginning that jazz and country music could exist together on the same page, a highly commendable achievement if ever there was one." – Wall Street Journal

"Hot Club of Cowtown swung light and tight, like tumbleweeds made of velvet." – Rochester City Paper

"[James's] inventive violin style can still conjure up the unique image of Bob Wills strolling through Tin Pan Alley."   – JazzTimes

"As instrumentally and vocally tight as any band out there working in any genre today....three skilled musicians who can seemingly just tune up and play, something that's becoming increasingly rare these days." – American Songwriter