Diversified Swingtown
There wasn’t a whole lot of swing in Swingtown’s opening Friday night set at Mark Wood’s Palm Street Beach Club. That wasn’t unusual.
The 11 members of the group were outfitted in what co-leader Dave Eastley described as their bar gear--a lot of them dressed very casually, including Eastley and his partner Dave Wells, in dark blue shorts and polo shirts. That matched the band’s casual bar mode, which included as much rock and R&B--typified; by “Mustang Sally”--as swing, represented by such tunes as “Perdido.”
“We’re always looking for a little more of a danger element than a standard big band,” said Orange resident Wells, who plays trombone and arranges a lot of the band’s material. “We just have to do something different. If you really mix it up, you can hold an audience’s attention easier than if you gear your show to one specific style.”
Variety was exactly what Wells and Eastley, a Long Beach resident who plays in Orange County regularly, had in mind when they formed Swingtown four years ago.
“We wanted to run our band our way,” said Eastley, who plays guitar and trombone as well as handling emcee duties, in a separate interview. “We can totally switch gears when we want to.”
In fact, the veterans of bands led by blues man Johnny “Guitar” Watson and the O.C.-based Vocalworks seem able to deliver almost anything. They segue from smooth ballroom sounds, as when they play a Hornblower yacht dinner cruise, or an evening of pure rock for a wedding to the rock-swing mix at Palm Street and an all-out jump-swing program, such as they’re planning for Friday at Disneyland.
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Eastley and Wells were primed to capitalize on the current jump-swing trend. Wells is a facile arranger who can take songs off records and adapt them for his group, and the ensemble consists of Orange County pros who can swing hard when they want to, as they did with “Perdido” at Palm Street. The arrangement featured solid, punchy figures from the horns--two trumpets, a trombone and three saxes--and a foot-tapping solo by tenor saxophonist Jay Mason.
Swingtown sometimes works Saturday nights at Disneyland, a ballroom-dance operation. “The crowd is little older,” Eastley said, “and we play a lot of cha-chas and waltzes.”
Fridays at the Magic Kingdom’s Carnation Gardens stage are strictly for jump swing, with dancers from their 20s to their 70s doing East and West Coast swing, the Lindy hop and other classic dances.
For these shows, Swingtown’s set list includes such pieces as “Route 66” (the Bobby Troupe standard), “Saturday Night Fish Fry” (the old Louis Jordan tune) and such big-band-era numbers as “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
While promising that the music will be robust and heated, Eastley said the band members will be more subdued than they are at Palm Street. “We’ll button our tuxedo shirts and act polite,” he said.
Not that Eastley wasn’t polite at Palm Street. But he was decidedly relaxed at the mike, and fun was an key element of the show. The group offered a version of “Do Re Mi” (from “The Sound of Music”) that included the lyrics: “Dough, a thing I buy beer with / Ray, a guy I drink beer with / Me, a guy I buy beer for,” and so on.
“We approach the club thing as a chance to hang out, play a paid rehearsal and build a following,” Eastley said.
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Cecily Gardner will be the featured vocalist Friday; Shea Chambers subbed last week at Palm Street for the band’s regular singer, Julie Ragins. Chambers scored with an emotional version of Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me,” then turned up the heat for “Think,” in a style that recalled Aretha Franklin’s 1968 Top 10 hit version.
Bassist Mike Labrador, just back from a tour with singer Paul Anka, sang “Mustang Sally,” which featured those high brass figures from the original Wilson Pickett record and a gritty baritone sax solo from Brian Williams. The number also spotlighted alto saxophonist Mark Visher in the kind of plaintive notes associated with David Sanborn.
Swingtown’s performance, which also included “When You’re Smiling” and “Fly Me to the Moon” (with Wood doing the vocals), was its second night back in the room after a hiatus of several months. It had played the room for two years when it was Gringa’s Grill; the new schedule calls for the group to appear every Sunday starting this weekend.
* Swingtown plays Friday at the Disneyland’s Carnation Gardens stage, 1313 Harbor Blvd., Anaheim. 8:30 p.m.-1:30 a.m. Included with park admission of $26-$36. (714) 781-4565. The group also plays from 8:30 p.m.-midnight Sundays at Mark Wood’s Palm Street Beach Club, 111 Palm St., Newport Beach. No cover, no minimum. (714) 673-3040.