[Dixielandjazz] The Time Jumpers - Western Swing

[Stephen G Barbone]

Can this "inspired flight of necromancy"  be applied to the OKOM  
scene?  Below article excerpted.
Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

May 17, 2009 - NY Times - by Peter Applebome
A Past Sound, Firmly in the Present

Even in midafternoon repose there’s a lost-in-time quality to the  
Station Inn, a low-ceilinged dive here with bluegrass posters on the  
walls, ringed by shiny new condos in a suddenly fashionable  
neighborhood just southwest of downtown called the Gulch. . .

Still, the quintessential Station Inn experience, and in a completely  
unlikely way the talk of the town, is the inspired flight of  
necromancy that plays out every Monday night when the Time Jumpers  
hold court.

The Time Jumpers aren’t likely to displace Taylor Swift. They’re 11  
musicians — 3 fiddlers, 2 guitarists, 2 female singers, an  
accordionist, sundry others — with the mismatched, 50-something look  
of a softball team for a trucking-parts company. They play music,  
mostly the Bob Wills and Spade Cooley brand of western swing, that  
evolved during the Depression and has all but disappeared. They began  
a decade ago as Nashville’s version of a garage band hatched by ace  
session guys playing for fun in Dressing Room 6, backstage at the  
Grand Ole Opry. They fit no known definition of either hot or cool. . .

Their name comes from a musician’s joke about blowing a beat, and  
whatever time jumping that transpires is definitely backward to the  
Western swing of the 1930s and ’40s, and the standards, shuffles and  
hard country of the ’50s and ’60s. But . . .  maybe the Time Jumpers  
aren’t entirely about the past.

In a place full of great musicians, where even the music writer for  
The Tennessean, Peter Cooper, has a widely admired record, this band  
draws a crowd because many of them are the best players in town. . .

Part of the appeal is the style of music, a cousin of big band swing.  
It’s like Duke Ellington or Count Basie with a twang, dominated by  
violins and steel guitar instead of horns. Part is the sheer  
proficiency of the players and the improvisational atmospherics that  
feel more like a New York jazz club. Part is the Spaceship Nashville  
aura inside the Station Inn, with its mix of musicians, Japanese  
tourists, college students and locals, and its pizza, nachos and  
refrigerator covered with bluegrass bumper stickers and full of beer.

And if it’s not for all tastes, the real trick is the musical alchemy  
— George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin’s “Embraceable You,”  
“Caravan” (made famous by Ellington), Bob Wills, and Hank Williams —  
not cover-band curios but a mix of careful arranging and pell-mell  
improvising that takes something old and makes it new. . .

Despite not having a record deal they were nominated for two Grammys  
last year for their album “Jumpin’ Time,” culled from Station Inn  
performances. Excerpts from the DVD they put together from the same  
performances have been shown on more than 125 public television  
stations. . .

And despite their evocations of distant eras, in some ways the Time  
Jumpers are oddly in tune with the present. In Nashville, forever  
navigating the tension between the traditional and the contemporary,  
they’re part of a resurgence of live music that has made the local  
music scene more vital than it’s been in years.

“For the longest time the live music scene in Nashville wasn’t as good  
as it should have been,” Mr. Gill said. “Everyone was focused on  
trying to make records. Now a lot of musicians are more focused on  
playing live, and I think Austin showed Nashville what a great live  
music town Nashville could be. Now it’s pretty lit up around  
here.” . . .

So Mr. Franklin said he does not think the country is likely to  
embrace western swing and turn the Time Jumpers into pop stars and sex  
symbols. But he does think that in their small, idiosyncratic way they  
are a window onto the way bad times can produce opportunities for  
musicians in Nashville and beyond.

“I think this is a great time for music,” Mr. Franklin said. “There  
was a time when anything that didn’t fit in the narrow framework of  
radio couldn’t find a home. Now more people are playing live, people  
feel they can be more adventurous. Look at what’s on YouTube. People  
want something different, they want something visual in the way you  
have to see this band to understand what it’s about. We’re the wave of  
the future.”