The Last Music Podcast
The Last Music Podcast
The Hot Club of Cowtown's Elana James and Whit Smith talk about the making of "What Makes Bob Holler," Side 2.
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Perhaps the first thing one notices when listening to the Hot Club of Cowtown is its lack of irony, self-consciousness and forced hipness in embracing a style of music that so easily lends itself to such things…Stylistically, the band steps out from the shadow of its influences to become more than a faithful retro band that likes to raise its tempo every now and then. It’s writing more of its own songs and varying its delivery… conscious always that above all else, the music is for dancing and an old-fashioned good time. ~ Neil Strauss, New York Times
In this podcast, Elana James and Whit Smith talk about the making of What Makes Bob Holler back in 2010, while listening to it for the first time on vinyl. The Hot Club of Cowtown celebrates 25 years in 2022.
Did you miss Side 1? Check it out HERE.
To order or stream "What Makes Bob Holler," click here: https://smarturl.it/bobholler
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You can find The Hot Club of Cowtown's upcoming tour dates and other news at http://www.hotclubofcowtown.com.
Brought to you by The Last Music Company, an old school haven for fine music in this mad world.
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This is Malcolm Mills welcoming you to the second part of the Hot Club of Cowtown podcast from The Last Music Company. In this episode, Wit Smith and Alana James conclude their story of the making of What Makes Bob Holler while listening to tracks from the vinyl edition. At the time these two meetings were recorded, bass player Extraordinaire Jake Irwin had retired from the band. His truly excellent full-time replacement Zack Saponar wasn't included in these podcasts as he wasn't involved in the recording back in 2010. In the first of these episodes, we heard Ilana and Witt playing side one of the vinyl track by track. And guess what? Part two is the two of them playing tracks and talking about side two. Make the most of it because there's no side three. So let's head over to Ilana's kitchen in Austin, Texas and rejoin the pair of them for another glance in the rear view mirror.
SPEAKER_01Okay, we got testing one, two, three, four. Ready? Smith's real.
SPEAKER_04That's a good song.
SPEAKER_01I think I could call that on winded real. On the line of winded.
SPEAKER_04That's a good one. I like it.
SPEAKER_01So that's a lot of James over there on the fiddle. Hello, Alana.
SPEAKER_04Hello, Wit. This is Wit Smith on the guitar and singing. Well, we didn't sing yet, but.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to our podcast.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we're just taking a look at the second side of uh what makes Bob Holler, which came out or is coming out on the final. And it's pretty neat. I'm just looking at the songs, but we still do like I feel like we do every song on the second side, but still.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we picked a bunch of good ones that time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Um listen, let's listen to our the version of the fitness world that we recorded in what we were with it.
SPEAKER_01Uh this was 2010, May 2010, recorded in London.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, three days. So three days in May. Three days. Okay, can you drop the needle? Because last time I didn't do a very good time.
SPEAKER_01We are uh practicing learning about how to use a record player. We've just taped two pennies uh onto the needle, so it should track pretty well. Here we go with Smith Reel. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Can you lift the the needle up?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let's lift up the needle here. No.
SPEAKER_04Sounds good. I was just listening, I wanted to hear, um, I just wanted to compare that for just a second to uh what I'm sure was our original inspiration, which was the Bob Wills Like Tiffany Transcriptions version. Can I just hear the Yeah?
SPEAKER_01I think we may have had another cup of coffee because it might have been another. But that's about right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I just wanted to get a sense of our typo, but yeah, sometimes I feel like I remember those songs as being brighter than they are, and then we record them like super amped up. But that was cool. I like that. I like I like our original, I like the um I like the kind of the quality of the recording. It has a kind of a flat, uh vintage flatness to it that I I I enjoy listening to. I don't like records that are like too trebly, you know what I mean? And and this has kind of like a dark um matte sound to it, which I have.
SPEAKER_01A warm fuzzy. A brown sound. Uh you know what I always think of that song, and this this might be a stretch for a lot of people, but I this song is actually our version of Cottonai Joe and some of the fiddle tunes. I I really make a connection with South African music, believe it or not. And the the the what is it, the I had a record called Zulu Jai. Totally. And it it's there's this warm little melodic bounce that's going on in the background. You don't even realize it till you go and listen to it uh, you know, a couple times. But like I know that when I'm playing, I'm always thinking, like, you know, instead of just going dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, I'm always going, you know, uh and that's a little straight, but on that bridge, and it takes a little while to get into it, but I can hear it. It's such good, it's such neat music.
SPEAKER_04Actually, you know, I I do agree with you in that one thing that um I was, you know, for Christmas. Um my boyfriend got me the Harry Smith B-sides, you know. Remember this? This is like the 50th anniversary of when this the collection came out of like the definitive recordings of like the American folk tradition. But anyway, I started listening to him, and it's like like you said, a lot of these uh songs on this collection sound like completely they sound they they're so pentatonic, they sound African, they sound Asian, they sound like it's amazing the overlap between what we think of as like these American traditional folk songs and and the international sound of so many.
SPEAKER_01Well, and clearly like it also reminds me a bit of uh well the way I'm playing it, I'm I I is different, but reminds me also of the Irish guitar, the way that the accompanies um.
SPEAKER_04I think Smith was Irish, the Smith who came up with Smith's Real, don't you think?
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm a Smith and I'm Irish, so uh why not?
SPEAKER_04I mean that's one thing about Western swing in general, too, that like I didn't really put together probably till we started playing together, but just that you know, the fiddle can do whatever it does, but if it doesn't have that trampoline of the rhythm underneath it, it's not really gonna like leap and dance on its own. I mean it can, hopefully.
SPEAKER_01No, well, we don't play that like a bluegrass person would at all. Right.
SPEAKER_04In fact, I'm not sure how a bluegrass person would play, but it's just having a bounce. It should, yeah, and I didn't really know about the bounce early on, but now it's just like you know, yeah, if Wit didn't show up for the show, God forbid, could the fiddle still convey that? So that's what I try to go for. But without the guitar underneath it, it's a lot harder to go.
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't mind hearing that, but it's probably not true. Anyway, what's the next song?
SPEAKER_04That's a good song. That was a good one. And we still play it. We should do that this week when we go on tour.
SPEAKER_01Um gladly. All right, Devil Ain't Lazy. The Devil Ain't Lazy. Now, Fred Rose wrote this. He wrote a lot of songs. Uh Hank Williams did a lot of these songs. I always thought this was uh Cindy Walker. It is not Fred Rose. The Devil Ain't Lazy. This is cool. Let's give it a listen.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um now what one thing we mentioned this earlier in the on the first podcast was uh we had to relearn a lot of these vocals in uh different keys because I had that crazy laryngitis, and they had to give me a shot, I won't tell you where, and uh, and they gave me a bunch of these steroids so that I could speak and sing. So we we could, but I had to learn the song several keys lower, but I don't think it really hurt it. Let's see what happens here. The devil ain't lazy. The devil ain't lazy. The devil ain't lazy runs around with six and stones, pussy out his moons and drones. The devil ain't no lazy bones. He works twenty four hours a day. The devil ain't lazy The devil ain't lazy us fight and fuss. Then he blames it all on us, he works with the four hours a day. It travels like a lightning streak strikes from town to down. If he gets you when you're waking up, lazy ears, lazy ears tells us he won't hear the fly, and he makes us steal it line, keeps us in it until we die. But see how low that is? I mean it's good though. Anger B flat right in there. Down low, so now we put in D.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Devil lazy. No. Devilly lazy. Runs around. Passes out its moons and bones. It was 24 hours of A.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's cool in A, it's kind of even more nominous and dark.
SPEAKER_01It was, it was, it had a sort of a uh um, well, it just sounded like you were very relaxed, didn't it? Very, very relaxing.
SPEAKER_04It's neat. It also has that kind of flat woolly sound, which I kind of like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not flattened pitch, but flattened. You know what you're saying? Not all amped up, not augmented with any uh bells and whistles.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that was just the three of us. There are no um overdubs. We're playing and you know, singing all making noise at the same time. So that was kind of uh, that was interesting. The devil ain't lazy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I like that one. Here, let's play a second just in D.
SPEAKER_01D-ish anyway.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna do the last eight just to see how it compares to that version.
SPEAKER_01Okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04I want two D.
SPEAKER_01Devil and lazy, nose three. Devil and lazy, nose three. I'm around with sticks and stones. 24 hours today. Yeah, see, it's a lot, a lot brighter, uh, but not uh not necessarily better, it's just a different flavor. Better in a nightclub, maybe.
SPEAKER_04It might carry better indeed, but it's a nice, it's a pretty good, you know. It's like, you know, you make this record. We made this record, what, 11 years ago?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And uh, it just goes to show you that, you know, you're not always the best arbiter of like what what it's just it I feel like it ages well. Like you listen to it, like, oh, okay, yeah, it it's it's kind of bare and it got across the point.
SPEAKER_01Like, you know, well they sure do sound better later. That's inevitable. That has nothing to do with is it better or worse. It's just it's a funny thing because it you're not listening to what you were trying to do, you're listening to what you did.
SPEAKER_04Right, you forgot. You had to give up on whatever you were trying to do.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, what else is in the along the Navajo Trail, we still do this one too.
SPEAKER_01Alrighty, and this goes along with our 1945 set, too, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_04Well, this has like seven different writers on it.
SPEAKER_01I didn't realize so many people had their whole bunch of guys got together along the Navajo Trail and wrote this one. Shall I drop the needle?
SPEAKER_04Uh yes.
SPEAKER_01Hopefully I'll hit the groove. Along the Navajo Trail.
SPEAKER_04It's a beautiful song.
SPEAKER_01Well, every day, along about evening, when the sunlights beginning to fail arise with the slumbering shadows Along the Never Trail When it's twilight, crickets are calling, and coyotes make him wail. I are smolder and fire. Along the Navajo trail. I love that I listen to the music.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's a good one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that one.
SPEAKER_04You know, one thing about I I love I love our horse songs, you know, like about actually being out west and riding and stuff. And I always try to think about the tempo in terms of like is that the tempo a like a walking horse, you know, like shambling through the woods.
SPEAKER_01What did you think of that one?
SPEAKER_04That was pretty good. I mean, I think if we do it any faster than that, I think it tends to be a little bit uh you know, off the mark. But I thought that was a good tempo. Also, sometimes when we play this, I try to think about like way back when we first met, I used to, well, I still do sometimes, but you know, go work out west. And there was a guy I worked for before I even met you, it was like in 1993 and in Colorado. And I remember I think about this when we played this song, but in the woods I had like a couple of pack horses or something with me, and I remember it was so early in the morning and it was like late fall. And I remember bringing the horses, I had the pack needles or whatever, and there was snow on all the pine trees, and I hadn't brushed my teeth, and so I took out my toothbrush and I just like pulled the snow off of the pine needles and brushed my teeth as I was riding with my two pack horses, and I was like, this truly is the life for me. And so when we played Navajo Trail, I always think about I often think about that moment and just like uh just a piece of being out in the middle of nowhere, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's a good memory. That's a good one.
SPEAKER_04It's a great song though, and uh actually, you know, there's one of my favorite licks I think I heard first from Andy Stein on playing on Pray Home Companion.
SPEAKER_02It's probably a Jovi Nudie lick, but just like I love that.
SPEAKER_01It's very it's got that ethereal little twist to it, but uh this one we employed that uh because that once again, there's no overdubs, it's just the three of us playing that we employed that. And you play the melody?
SPEAKER_04I'll play that first.
SPEAKER_01So you play the melody first by yourself, go ahead. There's nothing wrong with that. Okay, so yeah, when you add the harmony on above and below, it gets turns into something else.
SPEAKER_04It's beautiful. I also think about, you know, just the Bob Wills original version, I think from the Tiffany transcriptions, and I think Joe Hawley is playing fiddle, you know, in the background, and he plays so many beautiful, so many chirping kind of wilting lines around the vocal. I guess it's Tommy Duncan singing, but at the very end he also does or something underneath that last vocal side. All this really bluesy stuff over the C M is recorded, and I always try to pretend I'm Joe Holly for like the last eight bars of this song because I love him so much.
SPEAKER_01Yay Joe.
SPEAKER_04Yay Joe. Okay, oh what's what I know it's an accent is like a classic. The ultimate.
SPEAKER_01We didn't sing this one. Originally, I don't think it was sung. Originally.
SPEAKER_04Really?
SPEAKER_01Um I want to say that new faded love was sung. But I could be wrong about that. It's worth it's worth Googling if you're really stuck there and looking at it looking into things.
SPEAKER_04Um we just play it for a second before we hear our version of it.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, okay, sure. Well, what happens if let's see. Let's do that. Uh alright, I'll try to play it in tune even. I just feel like playing it for just a second. Yeah, do it. It's nice.
SPEAKER_04This is like the national anthem of Texas, wouldn't you say? Or in a sense, I mean it it probably is, yeah. For dancing for sure. Like if we play a show or mid-world where it's an actual dance and nobody's danced yet, for sure, like this will get them off the floor up on the floor for sure. Such a beautiful one.
SPEAKER_01No charge for the secret track.
SPEAKER_04Oh, actually, you know, and that does remind me, just before we listen to it, or um, we played our friend's wedding several years ago. Do you remember this? I always think about this song. And we were supposed to play the procession on it. Oh, okay, up in Maine, I think it was uh we played we were supposed to play I'm confessing though I love you, remember? And then when the bride was coming up to the altar, we were gonna play like Maine's prayer. And uh anyway, everybody was running really, really late. So we had already played I'm confessing for like 10 minutes, and then we'd already done Maine's Prayer, and uh and then Stardust was supposed to be like the last one or something, but we we had to fill the time because everybody was running so late, and so we played faded love before the procession, which I thought was terribly karmically, and and I just like no bride should approach the altar to faded love, and actually they didn't stay married for more than six months. I always thought that somehow you know to self like never play faded love and you know for the wedding, the wedding itself at the after a party that's totally fine, but I always uh I didn't realize it had.
SPEAKER_01That mojo, that kind of power.
SPEAKER_04That's that's what I I personally attribute to part of the reason that their marriage didn't last is that they technically faded love for the other.
SPEAKER_01Well, do they know that?
SPEAKER_04Uh they weren't that I might have apologized. But yeah, you want to wanna hear what it sounded like in 2010?
SPEAKER_01Let's see what happened. Okay, dropping the needle onto faded love.
SPEAKER_04So great. Faded Love. It's a great song. It's like it plays itself, you know. I love it so much.
SPEAKER_01Uh I don't know about it play itself. It took me two years to learn how to play the mill. Uh what we got here? What's the matter with the mill?
SPEAKER_04Uh oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01It broke down. This is uh this is an original.
SPEAKER_04We haven't done it lately.
SPEAKER_01No. Um this is Bob Will's Tommy Duncan.
SPEAKER_04I think we took it a little fast. I think I counted it off a little bit. Right. I got a little hyper on this particular one. But uh I think it works. I mean, these songs were recorded at so many different templates, too. That's the thing is like sort of a reference, you know. I'm sure there are versions that were as fast as ours. But uh let's hear it. I don't I don't see where we stand here.
SPEAKER_01What's the matter with the mill?
SPEAKER_03The matter once the mill said the mill broke down. What's the matter with the mill? What's the matter with the mill? I can't get all grind. Tell me what's the matter with the mill. Old Uncle Buzz is just standing around as I stop porn again, getting that's it.
SPEAKER_04That's cool. Actually, can we just try it for one second? Now we do it in C.
SPEAKER_01We do it in C now.
SPEAKER_04Try to do it.
SPEAKER_01You didn't even have a Langergitis, you just played lower.
SPEAKER_04I think we like I mean it should be like an old timer temple would be like in mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03Broke down. That's not a wake the mill.
SPEAKER_01The dumb broke down.
SPEAKER_03That's not a wake the moon.
SPEAKER_01The dumb broke down.
SPEAKER_03I think it goes round down what's the matter with the mill with the mill It's close.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think it should be like I I I just played a little hyper at the time, but a fatter, slower kind of version, maybe more authentic. A little more swagger. I think we kind of have a reputation for, if not rushing, just an excitable set of tempos for the most part.
SPEAKER_01Playing brightly.
SPEAKER_04Which brings me actually, we only have a couple more songs on the side of it. Um, but this is one that uh has a lot of different tempos and uh I wanted us to record it pretty bright. I can't remember.
SPEAKER_01It's funny, on the credits, it says Bob Wills, but I'm pretty sure that some of those old uh territory bands that they used to call used to play this one.
SPEAKER_04You wanna play it for a second?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what happens? I just love it. This is recorded it over the years several different ways.
SPEAKER_04I mean, some of the did it at dance with duty uh baby but I don't like that tempo.
SPEAKER_01You wanna go fast?
SPEAKER_04It depends on where in the set it comes and also if you're playing it for dancers, but uh more of like a sparky, you know. Okay, sparky. Someone called me with an unsolicited call. Nobody calls me all day until we're recording, so we can do that in the airplane mode and continue on.
SPEAKER_01We'll let's pick it up where we left it off.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Osej Jan.
SPEAKER_01Osejant, so fresh off the territories.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, let's just play how I like a brighter tempo. I don't remember what tempo we recorded at, although I do remember. I think I was pretty happy with how it worked out, but you wanna play it.
SPEAKER_01Wicked fast right now.
SPEAKER_04This is the version I tend to like, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01Uh hanging on for your life.
SPEAKER_04There it is. Okay. One, two, I went to do it.
SPEAKER_01You got some fast muscle muscle memory.
SPEAKER_04I could have given you a song though there, but I might uh I'm glad you didn't, actually.
SPEAKER_01I think my fingers would have popped off.
SPEAKER_04Uh hey, let's just listen to it.
SPEAKER_01All right, let's this is uh back in 2010 with uh the amplifiers in the studio playing uh Osage Stomp.
SPEAKER_04It's cool. I like the shuffles, that's one of my favorite things about it. And then it's like, was it who did the uh was it Keith Coleman who is famous for like the double shuffles?
SPEAKER_01He had remarkable uh uh intonation because the double shuffle move two notes around at once.
SPEAKER_04Some somebody did like the the triple shuffle. I remember hearing, you know, a lot of people do it, but I I thought to throw it into this one because you know it sounds like it's coming from space or something. Yeah, it's cool. That's a good idea. Well, hey, there's one more.
SPEAKER_01Here we are at the end. This has been fun. Uh we can do another podcast about something else anyway.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we can we well we were talking about um, you know, the uh all the problems in the earth actually early before we even started recording the video, and kind of like. Oh, this is more uplifting. Yeah. Um, we'll turn it together.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, stay a little longer. That's the last song on the sign B. We still play this one all the time.
SPEAKER_01Lives went down on Jimbo Nellish, the number on the gate and the number on the door. The next house over is a grocery store. Stay all night, stay a little longer, dance all night, dance a little longer, pull off the cord, I throw it in the corner. Don't see why it'll stay a little longer.
SPEAKER_04That was probably a uh the I've got a cold vocal.
SPEAKER_01That was the well this is the laryngitis sessions. So yeah, we had to re- we learn vocals. And um, yeah, so I'm I'm singing stay all night, stay a little longer, dance all night, dance a little longer. Just do it. Which is sing your part there, which is really kind of and then single. Oh, you want to play a melody or you want to play a play a verse.
SPEAKER_04Okay, one and then sing it.
unknownOne, two, three.
SPEAKER_01Grab your gas, cut her on the hit. She don't like miscissy girls don't really quick. About half broke, jump on a man like a dog in the phone. Stay all night, stay a little longer, dance all night, dance a little longer, pull off your coat, throw it in the corner, don't see why I don't stay a little longer.
SPEAKER_04Is that what you sing now?
SPEAKER_01Which is what I used to s which I sang on this record now. But I think I actually do think that might come from the what Tommy sings on the Tiffany transcription version when they have like, you know, four people singing the bridge.
SPEAKER_04Sing that sing that part one more time, just for me.
SPEAKER_01Alright, it's uh uh one, two, three, four, stay all night, stay a little longer, dance all night, dance a little longer, pull off your coat, throw it in the corner, don't see why don't stay a little longer. So that's not really the melody. Right, it's a lot of things. I think Jake is singing the melody on this record. It's a melody, it's mellow. He's doing the melody on the record, and and you don't um Yeah, he's like, Stay off, stay all night, stay a little longer, dance all night, dance a little longer, pull off your coat, throw it in the corner, don't see why don't stay a little longer. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_04There's a Those harmonies have migrated over the years, I think they just keep moving around in like a living organism.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That was fun.
SPEAKER_01That's kinda interesting. Alright, well, uh Can we play one before we go? Yeah, like we should play one before we go.
SPEAKER_04Well, there's so many songs we couldn't put on this collection. Maybe we could do a what makes Bob Holler part two at some point. I mean, am I there's a lot of things?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, we could do a uh swing, uh one of the swing or an all-original thing, and it depends on what you want to do.
SPEAKER_04Like a Loon Star rag or a rat. Sure, just something like a Beaumont rag or something like that's a great idea. Which one do you want to do?
SPEAKER_01Uh uh Beaumont sounds like fun.
SPEAKER_04All right, well, thanks for joining us today, folks.
SPEAKER_01Um, wherever you are, if you're on a long walk, I hope it's a nice day. Wherever you are, right? Podcast. If you're d on a drive, okay?
SPEAKER_04All right, shall we?
SPEAKER_01Let's do it. The uh Beaumont? Beaumont rag.
SPEAKER_04Do one more time and do it slower and so fast. I'm like, oh my god. Can we just do one more?
SPEAKER_01Do it from the beginning?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, uh, hey, I got a great idea. Why don't we play the Beaumont rag? I will book mark bookmark our session. That's a good idea. All right, the Beaumont rag.
SPEAKER_04One, two, three.
unknownOh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, there you have it. That's all from Ilana and Witt on the making of What Makes Bob Holler by the Hot Club of Cowtown. The record's been out of catalogue for a couple of years, but it's been released on vinyl for the first time in September 2021, along with a reissue on CD and Digital. Glad you checked in for another podcast on the last thing to cover. See you later on.