Having made an all-to-brief visit to Austin, Texas a few
years ago, it wasn’t too difficult to absorb yourself into the psyche which
made this alternative oasis ‘the live music capital of the world’. So whenever exports
from the capital of the Lone Star State hit your town, it’s best to expect the
unexpected albeit usually with a high quality guarantee. Upon their return from
a six month stint in Austin, Birmingham based The Toy Hearts have wasted no
time in extending the invitation to
share the talents of the Jitterbug Vipers with a UK audience. In line with several
previous evenings over the past year, the band played host to their guests and shared
a bill at the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath.
For the record, the Jitterbug Vipers are a four piece band
specialising in creating a sound that swept through the jazz rooms of
prohibition era America but the challenge is how to put into words the ambience
and mesmeric atmosphere which emanated from their interaction during the hour-plus long set. Amidst a scene
of onstage eccentricity and joviality, the audience were seduced by a sound split
between smart originals and ongoing standards which provided a taster of an era
where legalised drugs reigned supreme over outlawed alcohol and gambling.
However before we were immersed into the vibes of viper
jazz, The Toy Hearts announced their return to a home town crowd with a staple
and well executed set of that other great musical sound of Austin, Texas –
western swing. With a mixture of self-penned tunes and covers from that genre
spanning the decades, the trio of Hannah, Sophia and Stewart Johnson have hit
on a style which has seriously moved their live show forward. The promise of
new material recorded during their extended Austin visit was delayed a little
longer. However while this is highly anticipated, the reproduction of songs
from their recent CD WHISKEY and carefully selected covers still retain that
embedded ability to showcase the high quality sounds from Stewart’s triple neck steel guitar, Hannah’s mandolin and Sophia’s, on this occasion, electric
guitar.
With a reasonably sized audience in the venue’s smaller
music room suitably entertained by one strand of Austin music, the stage was
set for the quartet of Sarah Sharp (vocals), Masumi Jones (drums), Francie
Meaux Jeaux (bass) and Slim Richey (guitar) to take you on a journey of
discovery deep into an inner world where artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie
Holiday and Bessie Smith were central figures. The mood inducing sultry vocals
of Sarah are the cornerstone of a Jitterbug Vipers’ set and she extends her
talents to co-writing the original material, all of which appear on the latest
record PHOEBE’S DREAM, incidentally also produced by her. A touch of
eccentricity flanked Sarah in the guise of married couple, Slim and Francie. We
learned that they had been married at least 13 or 14 times as well as owning a
large piece of land in the wide open spaces of West Texas costing a mere $5.
Perhaps the most intriguing and entertaining member of the band was Masumi who
added a sheer infectious joy and radiant aura to her percussion role as well as
some impromptu off mic yells.
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| Photo by April Miles |
