Hot Club of Cowtown

The Austin-based Hot Club of Cowtown explores the space where early jazz met Texas swing, where Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang met Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Guitarist Whit Smith and fiddler Elana James have become a world-class country-jazz duo, challenging each other and reading each other’s minds at every turn. This is virtuoso small-group western swing that’s beyond infectious. If you’ve seen the Hot Club before, be advised that they’re only getting better—they went on hiatus, got back together, and came out of it stronger. By now they’re one of the great improvising bands in any genre. Robin Denselow of the London Guardian praises the Hot Club for “spirit, originality, and skill that would surely have impressed Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt back in the 1930s.”