Ethan Emerson, Ray Bergstrom, and Justin La Chance may say that they aren’t true gypsy jazz musicians, but their musical style and playful mischievousness definitely embody the spirit of the genre that was popularized by Django Reinhardt in the 1930s. On July 1st, I caught up with the gentlemen of The Icy Hot Club at one of their Sunday afternoon gigs at The Artisan House in Downtown Los Angeles. We chatted about their unique style in between sets of music that make one thing clear:
It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.
From Left: Ray Bergstrom (Guitar), Ethan Emerson (Guitar), and Justin La Chance (Bass)
AB: Your music is obviously heavily influenced by Django
Reinhardt and the gypsy jazz movement.
I‘d love to hear about how each of you first discovered gypsy jazz.
RB: As a guitar player, you hear about Django because he’s
awesome. I had heard about him for
a long time, but ten or fifteen years ago, I was in Germany with my family and I
went to a record store and they had a Django collection. I bought this 2 disc Django
Reinhardt set from Germany. I
thought buying it in Europe was way more cool than buying it in the U.S. and I
listened to it every day for ten years.
EE: My mom
listened to Django on vinyl back in the 70s. So, I heard it when I was a kid and I just always loved the
music. I studied Jazz in college,
and I really liked [Gypsy Jazz] because it [incorporated] improvisation, it was
on acoustic guitar, and I liked the sound and the timbre of it. It sort of combines classical and
harmony a little bit and it was really fun to play.
JL: Well, I saw
Django’s profile on match.com and it said he was married and looking for an
outside relationship. So, I sent
him an email and he wrote me back….No, I had a French roommate about ten years
ago, and he was completely obsessed with Django. He had books and pictures all over the house. He would come home from his wait shift
at 3 in the morning and you could hear his car in the carport blasting
Django. His Django-guitar-playing
friends would come over all the time and they would always beg me to play bass
for them which I didn’t want to do because bass playing on gypsy jazz is really
actually boring. It’s a lot of
two-beats and it’s almost like you’re playing tuba. All of his friends that played gypsy jazz guitar
passed my number around to all the other people in LA that played gypsy
jazz. It wasn’t anything that I
went after or was like, “I love this music and I want to play it.” But, I love the music now. It’s kind of custom tailored for who I
am.
AB: Your
repertoire includes a lot of gypsy jazz classics like “Minor Swing” and
“It Don’t Mean a Thing”, but you
guys have also made some amazing covers of a wide range of current music from
the Beatles to Nirvana. How do you
pick what you want to cover?
RB: I hear a song and then I think, “Can I strum this in the
generic gypsy jazz strumming pattern?”
If the answer is yes, then we’ll play the song.
EE: Yeah, it’s
a lot of just listening to the radio and being like, “Could we do that one?”
JL: I tend to pick what I like. If I hear it and I like it, then I feel like people are
going to know that I am enjoying myself and they’ll enjoy it.
RB: I think we
pick a lot of rock tunes and pop tunes because we know we’re not traditional
gypsy jazz players and we’re not trying to be authentic. [We don’t want] people out there to
think that us white American boys think that we’re real gypsies playing real
gypsy music. We enjoy the music.
EE: Well, I
think I’m a real gypsy.
RB: Well, Ethan thinks he’s a real gypsy.
JL: But, that’s true.
Ray is making a good point right now. We’re really not gypsy jazz musicians, the real ones are in
Eastern Europe.
RB: The real ones are way better than we are. But we’re funky personalities, we like
playing this music, we like rock and roll, and we like mashing them up. It’s a lot of fun.
JL: And it’s kind of fun like hoodwinking the audience. Like dropping “Africa” by Toto. It’s the unexpected, which is the
tradition of gypsy jazz music—doing something sneaky and unexpected.
AB: So, the two albums that you
already have out are essentially cover albums. Should we be on the lookout for any original music from The
Icy Hot Club?
JL: Here’s the thing.
Before The Beatles were The Beatles, they did a year in Hamburg and they
played 8-10 hours a day and it was all covers. Together, eight hours a day, every day, playing other
people’s music, and finally, the originals started to evolve out of that. I feel like we’re probably getting to
that point because I’m slowly collecting lyrical ideas. I think we’re all kind of gearing up
towards that next move.
EE: Original songs are the next
step and we’ve got some in the works.
JL: I think, truthfully, next I’m going to force [Ethan and Ray]
into the studio this summer because people always ask for a CD of our 80s
stuff. People really want a CD of
just contemporary cover songs.
AB: Last question: If each of you weren’t pursuing music, what
would you be doing?
EE: Well, I just got my Masters in School Counseling and
Marriage and Family Therapy. So
I’m in the Psychology field.
JL: I think I would be a rabbi or I would own a methadone
clinic. Both rewarding.
RB: I’d be a brewer.
I’d make good beer.
AB: Have you had any experiments?
RB: I’ve brewed a couple beers. They turned out really good. I was amazed.
Yeast are magical micro-organisms.
They eat sugar and poop out alcohol.
EE: We should write a song with those lyrics.
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