Featured Stories
A Way Out West Jamboree Comes to Town with Dom Flemons and Hot Club of Cowtown
Hot Club of Cowtown in San Diego. Photo by John Hancock.
Dom Flemons
Elana James breathed out a gentle laugh as she answered the question about pairing her band, Hot Club of Cowtown, with Grammy winning Dom Flemons, formerly of the Carolina Chocolate Drops in La Jolla this month. “It just seemed natural to me,” James said during our recent Zoom interview on her way home, with her musical partner, Whit Smith, from a Texas gig to her home in Austin. Both Flemons and James have spent long years trailing the musical borderland between acoustic based country and jazz, often arriving at the same imaginary roadhouse where audiences celebrate life and dance to the joyful marriage between the genres. Listening to Dom Flemons and Hot Club of Cowtown brings this listener to wonder why jazz and country were ever considered to live along some cosmic divide. Maybe the secret is in the location or history or the shadowlands of some strange cultural bias. Flemons and Hot Club’s live performances and legacy of recordings have reframed that relationship into something more akin to sweet and spicy rather than oil and water.
James said her chosen title for the show, Way Out West, also seemed right for both acts. It recalls the 1937 Laurel and Hardy western comedy of the same title, which features the pair singing and tap dancing while a young Chill Wills yodels on with the Avalon Boys. Indeed, the music of Flemons and Hot Club of Cowtown embodies this spirit of the finest of western music traditions.
The gift Flemons, James, and Smith gives us is the coming together of jazz and country like a great jubilee revival. But their entertainment is not about the past. It’s an unfolding and evolution of music that cannot be confined in historical archives. There is an immediacy and vibrancy to this music that creates less of a vintage vibe and more of a here-and-now quality. So, this double header show at the Mandeville Auditorium on the UCSD this month is a fit that offers a rare feast of American roots music.
This show is a celebration of music that brings people together. Baby boomers were accustomed to the singing cowboys typified by Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. However, their styles were lifted from the roots of country swing from Oklahoma and Texas of the 1930s. Throughout their careers it is natural for Elana James and Dom Flemons to draw inspiration from the music they explored as they dug deeper into the origins of American music. It has been a driving curiosity for them.
Dom Flemons was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. His cultural influences were drawn from his African-American and Hispanic family heritage. His reputation has given him the well-deserved title of “American Songster.” He credits his family with allowing him to absorb and study the music of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Chuck Berry. He also discovered the legends of folk music as he continued his education, which included Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and Lead Belly. The diversity of lifestyle allowed him to study English and poetry at the Northern University of Arizona as he learned the fine art of busking in the Arizona music culture.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops
In 2005 he attended the first Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina with his musician friend and mentor, Sule Greg Wilson. There they met Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson. A musical congregation was formed called, Sankofa Strings, which led to the founding of the Carolina Chocolate Drops (CCD). They were unique for their generation as an all-black acoustic-based string band that focused on old-time roots music and explored a variety of instruments and early American genres. Over the years, the band’s reputation grew in a way that led them to travel internationally as they picked up a Best Traditional Folk Grammy in 2010 for their third album, Genuine Negro Jib. The members shared vocals and instruments trading off on banjo, snare drum, bones, jug, kazoo, harmonica, and guitar. The album consisted of the music of the Piedmont Region of North and South Carolina, inspired by legendary fiddler Joe Thompson.
In 2013, Flemons ventured out as a solo artist. He released two solo albums while he was in the CCD in 2007 and 2008 respectively. In 2014, he released Prospect Hill, which included original songs as well as covers. It was his 2018 release of 2018’s Black Cowboy that brought him a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. It is a historic recording of traditional cowboy songs, with a spotlight on the black origins of songs like “Goodbye Old Paint,” which was credited to an ex-slave and black cowboy, Charley Wills. The album included the original, “He’s a Lone Ranger,” about Bass Reeves, a scout, gunfighter, and deputy U.S. Marshall. His rendition of “Home on the Range” with unfamiliar lyrics is as engaging as it is stirring. Dom Flemons as an artist carries with them through his voice, his songs, and his life the lost stories of the black cowboys of history. In uncovering the songs and their stories, he has helped them find their place in American lore. As with all his recordings, Black Cowboy brings something of the past eerily, hauntingly, and beautifully to our present times.
Hot Club of Cowtown
Hot Club of Cowtown, founded by Elana James and Whit Smith, came to the Americana-roots music scene, like Dom Flemons, through the art of busking. James was born into a musical family in Kansas City, Missouri. Her mother was an accomplished violinist while her father ran a recording studio. Her childhood was filled with horses and violin lessons. After an impressive education with a B.A. in comparative religion, she studied improvisational violin with accomplished musician, author, and teacher Marty Laster in New York City. It was there she met Whit Smith, a guitarist and singer-songwriter. They found their musical chemistry and a common love for 1930s style classic hot country and jazz, creating unique and original magic that became the signature of their Hot Club of Cowtown sound.
In 1997, they traveled to San Diego where they busked around Balboa Park in local festivals, street fairs, and small venues, sometimes for tips and food from the local Farmer’s Market. During their early days in San Diego, they released their first recordings on cassette, called Western Clambake. It was re-released in 2017 to celebrate their 20th year together. A year later, they moved to Austin where they recorded their first album with Hightone Records, titled Swingin’ Stampede. The album of western-swing covers included songs with Elana James musical hero, Johnny Gimble, the legendary five-string fiddle player for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.
Over the years, both James and Smith have ventured on their own including Whit Smith’s Hot Jazz Caravan. In 2005, Elana James toured with Bob Dylan, becoming the second female fiddle player to accompany the great singer-songwriter; Scarlet Rivera was his first fiddler, famously accompanying him on the Rolling Thunder Review tour and the 1976 album, Desire. For James it was a musician’s dream especially when Merle Haggard joined the tour. In Los Angeles she told how after the show, actor John Cusack, told her, “You have my dream job!” She recalled standing in the wings when Merle Haggard played a Texas swing duet with his fiddler. She said she wished she could have joined them for a short jam.
Today the Hot Club of Cowtown is in international demand, playing performance centers and roots music festivals around the world. Their latest 2025 release, Limelight, moves the tradition forward with western-edge songs like “Red River Valley,” “Buffalo Gals,” and “When the Cactus is in Bloom.”
Today, during these troubled times, spending a few hours with the western country, jazz, folk, and blues with two of the most gifted acts out today, will provide much needed relief that will make your heart sing and your feet move.
Dom Flemons and the Hot Club of Cowtown, Wednesday, February 11, Mandeville Auditorium, 9390 Mandeville Lane, UCSD Campus, 7:30pm.
