Dressed in suits, the five members of the Hot Club of Los Angeles settled down on a small stage inside the Cinema Bar in Culver City on a recent Monday night, as they have been doing every week for the past 10 years, except for a few months during the pandemic. . .
There’s just enough room for the band’s fedora-clad drummer, stand-up bassist and two guitarists sitting on chairs to penetrate the platform. The accordion player stands right next to them on the dance floor.
The bar, which seats 50 people, has only a handful of people inside, but that does not bother the band, which consists of working session musicians.
You see, the Hot Club of Los Angeles is not trying to gather millions of TikTok shows, they just want to enjoy playing an old-fashioned form of European-born hybrid jazz.
“It’s music for people who just want to celebrate. This music has the energy of rock and roll, but it has the intellectual qualities of something more sublime, and it’s a hell of a good time,” said Jim Doyle, drummer and vocalist for it. Los Angeles-born band.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the band’s year-long stay at the Westside Institution, the group will have guest musicians on stage every Monday night in December, but they do not mention names of who may show up.
“We want people to sit with us every night, we want to try to make it special,” Doyle said.
Along with Doyle, the group includes co-founder Carl Byron on accordion and vocals as well as Paul Eckman on upright bass, Josh Workman on guitar and Jake Bluenote on guitar and vocals.
When Roderico Castillo heard the Hot Club of Los Angeles play 10 years ago, he knew he wanted them as fixtures for his venue.
Castillo has owned the Westside institution, which opened in 1947, for nearly 30 years, and loved the band’s energy and musical appeal.
“People just love their atmosphere and the music. Their fans vary in age from young to older, in the middle everyone seems to like it,” said Castillo, who has owned the bar for almost 30 years.
Inspired by Django
The band was formed in September 2011 out of a shared love of music by guitarist Django Reinhardt, who is considered the founder of the band’s jazz style, which originated in Paris in the 1930s.
“It’s organic, acoustically driven music, and it takes you to Paris in the 1920s and 30s. It’s just a party,” Doyle said.
The musicians all knew each other from working in studios around the city, and they decided to eat a few dinners and jams to the music, which is a fusion of early jazz, swing and Eastern European music played acoustically with mainly string instruments. It’s swinging, happy music that should make people dance.
“It was a kind of dinner club in the beginning, and then it was like, ‘Hey, we have a set full of music, so let’s take it to a club,’ and then one set became another set and then a second set, “Doyle said.
They eventually named themselves after Reinhardt’s own Quintette du Hot Club de France and quickly began playing live shows, with the first show in the Cinema Bar taking place just a month after the band’s formation.
Doyle was familiar with the venue as he had played several shows there with other bands.
Then, in December 2011, they started performing regularly at the Cinema Bar every Monday night, after Doyle asked Castillo if they could have the stage, as no other bands performed that night.
Over the past decade, the band has performed around LA and beyond, including Clifton’s Brookdale Ballroom and Redwood Bar, the Laguna Arts Festival and the Django Vegas Festival.
The Hot Club also served as house band in 2017 and 2018 for benefit shows for Artists for Peace and Justice, curated by Jackson Browne. It was here that they supported artists, including Jeff Bridges, Rufus Wainwright and Browne.
Browne has occasionally sat with the band in the Cinema Bar, where the musicians feel most at home.
The right fit
“Our audience has really grown, and the place itself, the venue, has the character of this kind of music. It’s intimate; you feel like you’re part of the music because there’s not that much distance between the artist and the audience, ”Byron said.
The band has attracted regulars looking for a good time on a Monday night, including 56-year-old Hollywood resident Dianna Cohen, who has been visiting to see the group weekly for five years.
“I love this style of music and they’re all just really good musicians and they just take it to another level. The music has a lot of energy and I usually take my dad who’s 91 and he dances all the time, Said Cohen during a break from the band’s set, where they performed classical jazz songs sung in French and Russian as well as some original melodies.
As the band continued to perform to an audience of about 30 people, they also gained new fans, including 21-year-old Akela Spears, who danced for herself near the back wall of the bar while the band played. It was the first time she saw the Hot Club of Los Angeles after discovering them online.
“The musicality is incredible. It’s my favorite music to dance to and I just really loved them,” she said.
The Hot Club in Los Angeles
When: 9-11.30 every Monday
Where: Cinema Bar, 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City
Price: Free. The bar is only open to the public aged 21 and over
Information: hotclubofla.com
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