In your ear - Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Doc and Merle Watson,

Music review column from The Daily Yomiuri,  May 27, 2004

In Your Ear

By Kevin Wood/Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Jerry Garcia and David Grisman

Been All Around This World

Vivid, 2,625 yen

When people talk about Jerry Garcia it is usually in the context of the Haight-Ashbury hippie scene and his long strange trip with the Grateful Dead. He's probably more famous as a countercultural icon than as a musician. But forget everything you think you know about Garcia and lend an ear to Been All Around This World and you will hear a master folk singer and acoustic guitar picker par excellence.

The king of the 20-minute psychedelic electric guitar solo got his start playing the squarest of traditional folk and bluegrass songs on banjo and guitar in the very early 1960s and never really left it behind, working on and off over the years with his longtime partner in acoustic wizardry, mandolin virtuoso David Grisman.

In the end it's Grisman we have to thank for Been All Around This World. The creator of the bluegrass-jazz fusion dubbed "dawg music" had the presence of mind to insist on recording hours of his informal jams with Garcia in the early '90s, resulting in a number of brilliant collaborative albums that include So What, Shady Grove and The Pizza Tapes (with guitarist Tony Rice). Grisman hints in the liner notes that Been All Around This World is likely to be the last in the series, but it is hardly the bottom of the barrel.

The disc leans heavily on country and bluegrass repertoire with songs by Merle Travis, Mel Tillis, George Jones, and Jimmie Rogers, with a few odd digressions--notably Jimmie Cliff's "Sitting Here in Limbo" and James Brown's "I'll Go Crazy." The performances are built around Garcia's heartfelt, rough-hewn tenor and Grisman's expressive mandolin breaks and fills. The tempos are mostly relaxed, and the two talented players stretch out for long, melodic solos that lack the demonic intensity of some of their other duets, but are no less tasty for the laid-back, sunny, Sunday afternoon feel. The sessions were some of Garcia's last, and while he strains to pull off the vocals on the aforementioned James Brown number, he's at his plaintive best on "Limbo" and Travis's "Dark as a Dungeon."

All in all an excellent introduction for those new to bluegrass and the acoustic phenomenon of Garcia and Grisman.

Doc and Merle Watson

Sittin' Here Pickin' the Blues

Rounder, 2,519 yen

A remastered reissue of Doc and Merle's 1985 album Pickin' the Blues with an additional eight tracks from their early '80s recordings for Flying Fish Records. Arthel "Doc" Watson and Merle Watson were undeniably the finest father-son team in music--bluegrass or otherwise. Doc's high-speed flatpicking and unadorned, warm baritone paired with son Merle's fluid slide and finger-style guitar were a potent combination unmatched since Merle's 1985 death in a tractor accident.

Even for folk and bluegrass, this music is so down-from-the-mountains square it has corners. However, even as cornpone as some of the songs may be, these performances by two monster guitarists render them indisputably hip. Merle's slide playing on "Taking to Casey" will make any rock fan forget Duane Allman's name.

In addition to the guitar pyrotechnics, the other real joy on this album is Doc Watson's simple, straightahead singing. His cover of "Stormy Weather" is the perfect antidote for the stale vocal gymnastics of the so-called pop divas, and his "How Long Blues" and "Honey Babe Blues" prove that a white man can sing the blues without trying to sound black and still have plenty of soul. Guest appearances by the likes of star blues harp player Charlie Musselwhite and bluegrass stringman Sam Bush provide the last unneeded push into the stratosphere of must-have recordings.

In Your Ear - Norah Jones, Brad Mehldau Trio

Music review column from The Daily Yomiuri, March 11, 2004

IN YOUR EAR

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Norah Jones

Feels Like Home

Toshiba EMI, 2,427 yen

How do you follow up a debut album that wins eight Grammy awards and sells 5.1 million copies? Do you try to catch lightning in a bottle a second time or move in a different direction to avoid comparisons with the previous platinum standard?

With her sophomore effort, Feels Like Home, Norah Jones has done a bit of both.

All the things that made Come Away With Me a massive hit are here: The same simple, sparse, mid-tempo arrangements, warm jazz-inflected vocals, and relaxed, romantic atmosphere inform every track. While her debut album leaned heavily toward light jazz while giving a nod to folk and country with songs like "Lonestar" and Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart," Feels Like Home plants a foot firmly in the country while still demonstrating jazzy roots.

It's debatable whether an album that includes guest appearances by Dolly Parton and The Band's Levon Helm and Garth Hudson can really be called jazz, but what else can you call a cover of Duke Ellington's "Melancholia" (with lyrics added by Jones to become the 2 a.m. heartache torch song "Don't Miss You At All")?

If we reject such artificial pigeonholing in favor of Louis Armstrong's maxim that there are only two kinds of music: good and bad, Feels Like Home must unequivocally be considered good.

Top-notch guitar work by Adam Levy and Kevin Breit give a rootsy feel to tunes like "Toes" and "In the Morning," with Jones' piano spotlighted on "Carnival Town." Jones and her bandmates have clearly grown more confident as songwriters--of the 14 tracks on the album she had a hand in five and six were written by members of her band. Their compositions hold their own against the aforementioned Ellington adaptation, a catchy cover of Tom Waits' "The Long Way Home," and a country-blues version of Townes Van Zandt's "Be Here To Love Me."

This is truly adult contemporary music--not the tuneless schlock usually associated with the term. It has none of the tawdry, tacky, MTV-driven, image-making fluff and in-your-face attitude normally associated with the latest in pop music. It is tasteful, timeless, modern and mature music by and for grown-ups.

Brad Mehldau Trio

Anything Goes

Warner Music Japan, 2,520 yen

Anything Goes, a collection of straight-ahead instrumental jazz covers by the Brad Mehldau Trio--pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jorge Rossy--offers few surprises and breaks little new ground, but delivers 10 tracks of virtuoso playing by a trio so tightly coordinated they must be reading each others minds.

Mehldau is an outstanding technical player with a fast, fluid Charlie Parker-like ability to play twice as many notes as anyone else while never sounding busy.

The songs are mostly standards like the Cole Porter title track with a few curveballs --Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place" and a wonderfully nostalgic version of Paul Simon's "Still Crazy After All These Years"--thrown in for variety.

Slower ballads such as Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You" counterbalance the barely contained exuberance of Thelonius Monk's "Skippy." The angular, outside, bop arrangement of Harold Arlen's "Get Happy" still manages to swing and the Charlie Chaplin chestnut "Smile" is rescued from sentimentality with Grenadier taking the melody line on bass while Mehldau holds down the bottom end with his left hand

In Your Ear - Ani DiFranco, The Asylum Street Spankers

Music review column from the Daily Yomiuri, Feb 26, 2004

In Your Ear 

Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

ANI DIFRANCO

Educated Guess

Victor, 2,400 yen

The Little Punk Folkie That Did is back. After a decade of making albums with a backing band and producer, Ani DiFranco holed up alone in a New Orleans shotgun shack with an eight-track recorder and emerged with Educated Guess, a 14-track one-woman effort for which she did everything but personally stuff liner notes into CD cases.

Educated Guess marks a return to DiFranco's roots as a solo performer armed only with her acoustic guitar, her taut, airy, potent voice and lots of attitude, but also shows far a greater degree of musical and social sophistication and maturity than early albums.

The anger, militant feminism and strident liberalism of the early years is still there, but the bull in the china shop has become a matador, cloaking the sharpest lyrical steel in a velvet cape. She's still in your face, but you can never be sure whether it's to plant a kiss or an uppercut until the lyrical jolt has been delivered. Songs such as "Origami" and "Animal" demonstrate that DiFranco has not mellowed with age, she's just gotten craftier.

The layered, ringing guitar on Educated Guess shows off some impressive technique and compositional chops. DiFranco may not be the fastest or fanciest on the fretboard, but she is certainly one of the most original.

On first listening, the high-pitched chirps, wails and echoes of the backing vocals DiFranco has laid down seem superfluous, distracting and at times even grating, but repeated listenings show them to be the key to the deeper inner funkiness of "Bliss Like This" and an appropriate accent to the minor key mournfulness of "Bodily" and "You Each Time."

Three tracks are poetry recitations with accompanying soundscapes, ranging from the short personal "Platforms" to the longer sly broadside of "Grand Canyon."

DiFranco's all-too-brief tour of Japan--one show each in Tokyo and Osaka early next month--is not to be missed.

The Asylum Street Spankers

Mercurial

Buffalo Records, 2,099 yen

Hot on the heels of the release of their concert DVD Sideshow Fez late last year, the acoustic daredevils of The Asylum Street Spankers are back with Mercurial, a studio album of covers that have been a staple of their unbelievable live performances.

The band that has audiences on three continents asking "What the hell was that?" serves up smooth old jazz (Ivory Joe Hunter's "Since I Met You Baby") and smoking traditional blues ("Got My Mojo Working") straight up, with a chaser of hard-to-believe covers of The Beastie Boys, The B-52s, Black Flag and Jazz Butcher. Gangsta rap meets the Grand Ole Opry on "Hick Hop" and kitsch meets cool on "Shine on Harvest Moon."

The Spankers are far more than a simple though deeply weird comedy or novelty act. Veteran jazzman Stanley Smith's cool clarinet accents and Nevada Newman's slide guitar solos alone more than establish the Spankers' music credibility. Singer Christina Marrs could make the pope kick a hole in a stained-glass window with her frankly erotic version of Bessie Smith's "Sugar in My Bowl," while the antic efforts of violinist and dobro player Korey Simone and singer, harmonica player and general ringmaster Wammo are best described as acid burlesque.

In the unlikely event that this album alone isn't enough to make you smile, during March, Buffalo Records is giving away copies of a 17-track CD label sampler (including tracks by the Spankers, Hot Club of Cowtown, Ryan Adams and String Cheese Incident among others) with the purchase of any of the roots label's CDs--while supplies last.

Concert for George, Let It Be...Naked, Lennon Legend, Beatles on Ed Sullivan

The Daily Yomiuri, December 21, 2003

In Your Ear


By Kevin Wood
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

VARIOUS ARTISTS Concert for George
Warner, 3,400 yen (CD)

Whether you view them as long-lost musical gems, heartfelt tributes or crass attempts to turn leftovers into cash, CDs and DVDs hitting the store shelves for Christmas this year prove that phony or not, Beatlemania has not yet bitten the dust.
Of the three items here, Concert for George is the only one to provide anything that approaches new music. A live two CD recording of a tribute concert held on the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, the album provides a better musical look at the concert than the film of the same event, which cuts back and forth between rehearsals and performances by concert organizer Eric Clapton, former bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and others.
The first disc features Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, performing and conducting mesmerizing yet impressively energetic Indian music.
The second disc is more conventional rock written by the Quiet Beatle and performed by those who knew and loved him. While it suffers from some of the usual excesses of live tribute concerts, such as Billy Preston's overlong "My Sweet Lord," Concert For George provides a showcase for a terrific songwriter who was too often overshadowed by the Lennon-McCartney hit factory.

THE BEATLES
Let It Be...Naked
Toshiba-EMI, 2,667 yen (CD)

Let It Be...Naked is, in essence, something of a correction. The original album was recorded in 1969, before the lushly layered Abbey Road. The original intention was to rehearse a number of new songs with an eye to performing a live concert and to film the whole process with the concert providing the film's climax. The four lads from Liverpool were unable to settle on where and when the concert would take place, finally compromising on an impromptu gig on the roof of the recording studio.
The film was made and the tapes handed over to hit-making producer Phil "Wall of Sound" Spector, who added strings and choirs to the live recording and even slowed down the tape on "Across the Universe" to turn out a chart-topper.
The 2003 version is stripped of Spector's dross and uses different takes for some songs. Six of the 11 tracks are virtually unchanged, though the sound quality has been drastically improved. There are two good reasons to buy this release: to hear what "The Long and Winding Road" really sounds like now that it has been excavated from the mound of saccharin it was buried under for 30 years; and the inclusion of "Don't Let Me Down" not previously on the album.
The bad news is that the bits of studio chatter and telltale Beatles humor have also been stripped away. In Japan at least, an effort has been made to make up for this with a second disc of between-takes banter. "Fly on the Wall" really is only for the truly obsessive, but it does give a brief first look at a few songs that ended up on later solo albums.

JOHN LENNON
Lennon Legend
EMI Records, 3,890 yen (DVD) The latest attempt to stripmine the collective memory of John Lennon for cash, the Lennon Legend DVD, is surprisingly good. A number of previously unseen film clips, such as Lennon's last live performance in 1975, and bits and pieces from the family archives are included along with 20 song videos.
The gut-wrenching video that accompanies "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" will allow you to reclaim the song in all its idealistic glory.
Collectors should also note that a two-DVD set Ed Sullivan Presents The Beatles is also available.

Robert Randolph and the Family Band - Unclassified

By Kevin Wood
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Unclassified
Robert Randolph and the Family Band
(JapanTour -- Dec. 9 - 12)

The cat is out of the bag on one of the best kept secrets in music.
The aptly titled Unclassified is the first major label release by Robert Randolph and the Family Band.

The group's roots rock R&B sound is slightly different from the standard guitardriven instrumentation, eschewing a second rhythm guitar for John Ginty's funky Hammond organ and piano. The key difference though is that the band is built around Robert Randolph's pedal steel guitar instead of the usual six-string electric sound.


While slide guitar is a rock and blues staple, the more fluid sound of the pedal steel guitar is generally associated with the slippery, weeping sound of Nashville's country crooners. The 10, 13 or 20 stringed pedal steel guitar is played seated at a desk-like platform, plucked with a pick, fretted with a slide and foot pedals are used to modify the sound. They may not look as cool as a low-slung Stratocaster, but they sound like a blues dobro on steroids in the hands of an expert like Randolph.


New Jersey native Randolph, 25, came to the instrument through the "sacred steel" tradition of the House of God Church. Congregations unable to afford expensive organs began substituting the pedal steel guitar to accompany choirs in the 1930's and an African-American tradition grew up apart from the instrument's country and western roots. Randolph's father was deacon in the church and his mother a minister and Randolph began playing pedal steel in church as a teenager, after his parents divorced. His father remarried with the daughter of sacred steel legend Ted Beard, who taught Randolph the basics and encouraged him to play in church.



Joined by cousins Danyel Morgan and Marcus Randolph on bass and drums respectively, the Family Band was born.


Randolph's sound is reminiscent of slide guitar great Duane Allman, Canadian rock and blues slide player Jeff Healy and Lenny Kravitz filtered through Stevie Wonder, with a dash of Stevie Ray Vaughn's blues fire thrown in for good measure.

Anchored by the Morgan's funked-up bass, Unclassified is energetic, soulful and driving, with Randolph's extended seat-of the pants soloing broken by occasional keyboard wails and screams and impassioned vocals from both Randolph and Morgan, whose clean falsetto gets a work out on the funky Stevie Wonderesque rave-up "I Need More Love" and the more mellow, minorkey "Problems."

Randolph may be the star attraction, but Morgan is the band's not-so-secret weapon with his complex slap and twang playing style giving the Family Band a driving funk-soul feel.
Randolph's gospel roots show through despite the secular songs, giving tunes like "Going in the Right Direction" a decidedly spiritual flavor in a Sly and the Family Stone kind of way.
The ballad "Smile" is a true family affair that features Randolph on acoustic guitar and shining guest vocals from Robert's sister Lenesha Randolph and cousin Ricky Fowler.
Playing to the frontman's true strengths, four of the 11 tracks on Unclassified are instrumentals. "Squeeze" has a southern rock jam feel to it, with the combination of pedal steel and Hammond organ evoking the best of the Allman Brothers Band The album's closing track, the instrumental "Run For Your Life" is so scorching it ought to come with a warning to keep it away from flammable liquids.
The level of talent, soul and great grooves found here ensure that more will be heard from Robert Randolph and the Family Band and their December tour of Japan should be one of the year's hottest tickets.

The Thorns, Masked and Anonymous

Music review column from The Daily Yomiuri, August 21, 2003
IN YOUR EAR

By Kevin Wood
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

THE THORNS
The Thorns
Sony Music Japan Int'l, 2,400 yen

Grab your 12-string guitar, California folk-rock has returned.
The tasty three-part harmonies of singer-songwriters Pete Droge, Shawn Mullins and Matthew Sweet instantly evoke the The Byrds, the early work of The Eagles and especially Crosby, Stills and Nash, with an occasional hint of Tom Petty, the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas.
All three are accomplished solo artists and producers. Despite being accustomed to working alone, they were keen to try a more interactive project.
After things clicked during a brief demo session in the spring of 2002, the three spent a couple of weeks writing songs on a ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley and in a suite in the Montrose Hotel in Los Angeles. That autumn, they were joined in the studio in Atlanta by producer Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Train), ace session drummer Jim Keltner and E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan.
The result is 13 tracks (plus two extras just for Japan) that hark back to the best of the aforementioned bands while creating a new melodic, harmony-driven power-folk for the new century that owes more to 1970s pop singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne than traditional folk roots. No faux-soul boy band nasal whinging tweaked in the studio here, these guys are the real full-throated deal.
The lead track "Runaway Feeling" has a steering-wheel tapping feel and simple catchy progression that could fool the listener into thinking they've stumbled onto a lost track from Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever, and the melancholic "Dragonfly" could have been the lead single from a Vietnam-era Crosby, Stills and Nash album. "Long, Sweet Summer Night" is the kind of short, sweet pop tune that Brian Wilson wishes he could still write.
The production and arrangements are polished and bright, but the rougher original demo of "Brambles" featured as a bonus track for Japanese release indicates that The Thorns might benefit from a looser, more acoustic-based approach that lets a darkness into their California sunshine.


VARIOUS ARTISTS
Masked and Anonymous
Sony Music Japan Int'l, 2,400 yen


While film soundtracks rarely feature enough new material to merit critical attention, an exception must be made for Bob Dylan's latest cinematic effort, Masked and Anonymous. By all reports, the movie, directed by Larry Charles, is surreal, and the soundtrack certainly reflects that with four new performances by Dylan and 10 by other artists covering his compositions, often in other languages.
The Magokoro Brothers' "My Back Pages" with its Japanese lyrics might provide a good entry point for Japanese interested in seeing what all the fuss is about. Los Lobos add a little Latin spice to the semi-cajun "On a Night Like This" and the album even includes an Italian rap version of "Like a Rolling Stone." One of the most interesting interpretations is Sertab Erener's Arabian-flavored "One More Cup of Coffee."
America's greatest living songwriter tackles the traditional bluegrass number "Diamond Joe" and the Confederate anthem "Dixie" with equal aplomb and his scorching reworking of "Cold Irons Bound" from his 1997 Grammy-winning album Time Out Of Mind is the high point of the album.
A must-have for serious Dylan aficionados, but for the casual fan there are better collections of covers available.

Music review, June 20, 2003

IN YOUR EAR
The Daily Yomiuri, June 20, 2003
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Everything Must Go
Steely Dan
Warner Music, 2,400 yen
Back with a new album after a relatively short break this time, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's follow-up to 2000's album-of-the-year Grammy winner Two Against Nature is more of the same jazz-infused pop soul that made the band one of the greatest of the '70s and '80s.
Becker and Fagen have not mellowed with age, merely honed their dry, dark wit. The differences between Everything Must Go and earlier classics like Aja (1977) and Can't Buy a Thrill (1972) are superficial and tracks from the new album would have been quite at home on any of the band's earlier albums.
Gone are hot studio guitar players like Skunk Baxter and Denny Diaz from the early incarnations of Steely Dan. In their place we find Becker's polished, precise riffs and Fagen's lush horn arrangements.
Fagen's keyboard chops and clear, plaintive voice have lost nothing from the band's heyday, and Becker, in addition to playing all the driving, funky bass on the album, has come up yet another notch on this album from his exceptionally tasty solo guitar work on Two Against Nature. He also makes his debut as a lead vocalist on "Slang of Ages."
From their earliest work, there has always been a decadent feel to Steely Dan's immaculately arranged studio pop. That theme continues here on songs like "Things I Miss the Most," with the singer bemoaning the loss of "the talk, the sex, the somebody to trust, the Audi TT, the house on the Vineyard, the house on the Gulf Coast."
Such delightfully snide criticism of materialism runs through album bookended as it is with "The Last Mall," a singing commercial for an Armageddon day sale, and the title track, a last memo from a corrupt CEO whose corporate malfeasance has caught up with the whole company.
A Steely Dan album is like a chocolate eclair--its arrival gives us pleasure and its departure merely makes us hungry for more.


On and On
Jack Johnson
Universal, 2,427 yen
Former professional surfer and filmmaker Jack Johnson's second album On and On, is, like its creator, a product of Hawaii.
The album was recorded in Johnson's studio there, with one track recorded live, complete with breaking ocean wave accompaniment, at a beach barbecue at his brother's home.
Johnson is reminiscent of that guy you knew in university who played old classic rock tunes on acoustic guitar around the bonfire or in late night dorm-room jam sessions. He wasn't the greatest guitarist or singer, but fun to listen to. Now suddenly that same guy is making hit records, but he hasn't really changed. By most accounts, Johnson's success as a musician has come almost in spite of his relaxed approach. The intimate feel of On and On gives new meaning to the term "laid back."
Simple three-chord guitar grooves, backed with basic drums and bass and topped with idiosyncratic lyrics delivered in an almost hip-hop cadence make for a folky, eminently listenable, relaxing album.
Despite the laid back feel of On and On there are flashes of poetic cleverness in songs like "The Horizon Has Been Defeated" ("People are lonely and only animals with fancy shoes") and Symbol in My Driveway ("I've got a perfect set of blueprints/I'm gonna build somebody else") and some fairly muscular guitar work that in another setting might seem bombastic, but here acts more like an extra

Music review column May 23, 2003

IN YOUR EAR  

Daily Yomiuri, May 23, 2003
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer 


KELLY JOE PHELPS 
Slingshot Professionals 
Rykodisc, 2,177 yen


Slingshot Professionals is the fifth full-length album from Washington-born singer-songwriter-guitarist extraordinaire Kelly Joe Phelps. Stylistically, it follows the path laid out by 2001's Sky Like a Broken Clock, with long dramatic story-songs and impressionistic lyrics balancing Phelps' driven-yet-restrained acoustic slide guitar. Phelps delivers a shot of intimate blues filtered through jazz and the virtuoso folk of performers such as Bert Janch, with a generous chaser of Tom Waits. The result is something reminiscent of an acoustic Dire Straits playing Leonard Cohen songs. However, to pigeonhole this music would be wrong.  
Singer-songwriters often succumb to the pitfalls of their avocation, becoming too personal, taking themselves too seriously and becoming pretentious, emphasizing lyrics at the expense of instrumental work, or, as is often the case with virtuoso players, showing off their chops at the expense of the song. Many are just too whiny, too wimpy or too self-involved to be appealing.  
Phelps is none of these things. His lyrics are mysterious, evocative and telling, never trite. His guitar work is restrained and subtle with just enough flash and testicular fortitude to grab the ears of the most dedicated guitar fan. To the credit of producer Lee Townsend, the music is seamless and polished but without any hint of affect or slickness. The addition of jazz guitarist Bill Frissel, a longtime Townsend collaborator, simply makes more of a good thing.  
This is not an album you are likely to put on first thing in the morning unless you've been up all night. It's intense and energetic, but not in a bouncy, get-up-and-dance kind of way. Slingshot Professionals is impassioned, but never loud, and rootsy without any Nashville twang to it. It is a very rare thing: A record that contains no cheese of any kind. A sort of CD equivalent to those stay-up-until-sunrise conversations you had with your best friends back when none of you had to worry about working the next morning.  


DAVE BILLER  
LeRoy's Swing  
Buffalo Records, 2,500 yen

This album, the result of a single live session by the Austin, Texas, quintet Les Niglos and released under the name of lead guitarist Dave Biller for pronunciation-driven reasons of social sensitivity, is not to be missed by fans of jazz guitar giant Django Reinhardt.  
According to Biller, Les Niglos was originally formed by the members to have some some fun playing the music of their hero, Reinhardt.  
Both the sense of fun and the overwhelming influence of Reinhardt on the band are very evident on LeRoy's Swing. Of the 13 tracks, four are Reinhardt compositions and six are songs the famous gypsy jazz guitarist often covered, including '30s hot jazz standards like "Tea for Two," "Sheik of Araby" and "Japanese Sandman." The remaining three tracks written by Biller blend so perfectly with the other material as to be almost indistinguishable.  
The decision to name the band for Biller is a sensible one, as it is really his guitar playing that is showcased. Clarinetist Ben Saffer plays Stephane Grappeli to Biller's Reinhardt, and the addition of a reed to the string ensemble gives the group a warmer, smoother sound. Bassist Ryan Gould and guitarists Anthony Locke and Jeff Seaver make up the airtight rhythm section.  
If Reinhardt and Grappeli with the original Hot Club of France Quintet were a blazing bonfire, then Biller and Saffer are the same fire a few hours later. The flames may not leap quite as high, but that allows us to stand closer and enjoy the warmth more.