[Dixielandjazz] Dan Hicks interviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

Dan Hicks interviewed

Bay area singer-bandleader talks about his new holiday album and tour
by Lee Mergner
JazzTimes.com, November 26, 2010
Dan Hicks digs Christmas tunes. But it took him over 30 years in the music business
to get around to doing his own album of holiday music. The singer-songwriter-guitarist
and leader of the Hot Licks, a swinging band with a cult following in the rock world
going back to the '70s, has just released "Crazy for Christmas" on Surfdog Records
and is on his way around the country on a tour he calls "Holidaze in Hicksville."
The group will perform at a mix of theaters, clubs and coffeehouses, including the
Barns at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va., the City Winery in New York City and McCabe's
Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, Calif.
Talking via phone from his home in Marin County, California, Hicks says that he's
always done Christmas tunes during that time of year with his band, the Hot Licks.
"I've been doing Christmas songs with the Hot Licks for a couple of decades. We did
about eight or ten tunes, but we didn't do them all at once. We've been doing shows
we call 'Holidaze in Hicksville.' We have a canvas backdrop with a cartoon scene
of Christmas."
During the holiday season, he also moonlights with a local group called the Christmas
Jug Band. "It's a group of professional guys that play once a year and we've been
doing that since the late '70s," Hicks explains. That's really where I got started
doing the Christmas tunes. I think the first one I did is 'Somebody Stole My Santa
Suit.' We started out with parodies and rewrites. We've done about five albums through
the years. It started out as vinyl, then cassette and later CDs."
There are several of those parodies and rewrites on this album including "Santa Got
a Choo-Choo" which uses the melody of "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" and "Christmas Morning"
with new holiday lyrics for Hicks' own "Where's the Money." In addition, he covers
a few Christmas classics, such as Steve Allen's "Cool Yule," made famous by Louis
Armstrong, and "Here Comes Santa Claus." "There are a bunch of those that fit my
style," says Hicks. "I also try to make my style go into Christmas songs." Sure enough,
Hicks' rendition of "Run Rudolph" is a great example of refashioning a holiday song
associated with a particular artist (in this case, Chuck Berry) and giving it the
Hicks treatment, an easy-going swing style along the lines of Slim Gaillard or Leon
Redbone, with warmth, humor and perhaps a touch of irony.
One tricky problem with Christmas albums is that in order to be released in time
for the holidays they have to be recorded at a less than wintry time of year. Hicks
says that he recorded "Crazy for Christmas" in April, but he didn't find it too hard
to get into the right state of mind for the material. "I knew the subject matter
and I knew what we had to do," says Hicks. "It was more like music, you know, rather
than talking about Christmas." He also says that it may have helped that he started
working on the album right after Christmas, doing arrangements and pre-production.
"Maybe it was still Christmas for me," he adds.
Those arrangements feature your basic swing jazz band instrumentation (guitar, piano,
bass and drums) with one noticeable addition: the kazoo. Hicks chuckles when asked
about the inclusion of that populist and often scorned instrument. "I swore once
that the kazoo would never be on my bandstand," he says. "But somehow the two girls
doing kazoos makes it. Now I got the kazoo every now and then with that 'kazoo duo,'
but hardly ever a kazoo alone. The kazoo is a staple of the jug band so I hear enough
of it with that band. I hear enough, period. Who doesn't? You never hear it and it's
still enough." Given that pronouncement, can he think of anything particularly positive
to recommend the kazoo? He thinks for a moment. "It's sort of like singing, though
more like falsetto for a guy. You can scat on it and get musical ideas going. You
can play it like an instrument and take a solo. That's a plus."
The kazoos are played by his back-up singers, the Lickettes, who are accomplished
jazz singers in their own right: Daria and Roberta Donnay. Singing harmonies and
counter melodies, the two provide an important complement to Hicks' often idiosyncratic
lead vocals. Pre-bebop era jazz may be the foundation of the group's sound, but Hicks
himself has much broader interests. "Well, I'm glad to be talking with a jazz magazine,"
he says, "because I've always wanted to be a jazz guy. I also do standards with a
group called Bayside Jazz. I was a jazz drummer way back in my history."
The Hot Licks group is doing about a dozen shows on this tour, from Rhode Island
to California. That's a whole lot of Christmas, but Hicks says he finds the shows
work best if they're not all painted in red and green, so to speak. "I'm going to
sprinkle the set with Christmas stuff," he says. "I always do the songs that are
associated with me, 'I Scare Myself' or 'How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?'
or 'Canned Music.' I couldn't take it either if I had to do the whole night of Christmas
music."
For his own Christmas celebration when he returns home, Hicks admits that he doesn't
do anything particularly different from any of us. "I'll go over on Christmas day
to my wife's parents' house. Most of my Christmas is wrapped up in the music, but
I give presents to a couple of close people. I send out a postcard every year to
about 200 people. I either do a collage or graphic design drawing. For the last few
years, I've been doing a takeoff on the word jumble that you see in newspapers."
But no falsely modest yet boastful newsletter, right? "No, I don't do that. No newsletter
like 'Patty spent a year in Afghanistan and almost got arrested. Whew, that was close.
She's now at MIT. Boy, are we proud.' No, thanks."
Hicks says that he has a few of his own holiday music favorites, including Charles
Brown's Christmas album (the singer-pianist, not the cartoon character) and a Django-style
gypsy guitar Xmas CD. He also confesses to owning the Chipmunks Christmas album.
He mentions one obscure album by an artist with whom he shares some sensibility.
"I've got one by Harry the Hipster Gibson," Hicks says. "It features a lot of him
singing just by himself."
Speaking of hipsters, I tell Hicks about Armstrong's reading of "Twas the Night Before
Christmas," said to be one of Pops' last recordings, in the hopes that Hicks might
consider working his magic with that piece. After all, with his languorous and sonorous
voice, Hicks would be a perfect narrator for such a piece. In the meantime, audiences
can check out the Hot Licks getting Santa-fied at the shows listed below. And we
can all hope that that we won't have to wait another thirty years for the followup
to "Crazy for Christmas."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

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