Music Review: The California Feetwarmers are toe-tappin’ hot

The Monday night swing scene at Joe’s Great American Bar has become a Burbank institution. For 10 years, a rotating handful of solid retro dance bands provide a reliable draw, yet none have transcended local journeyman status. The California Feetwarmers, who perform there on Dec. 21, are the remarkable exception to the rule: In the last year, they’ve successfully broken onto the national music festival circuit, toured overseas and earned a Grammy nomination for their 2014 collaboration with modern blues stylist Keb’ Mo’.

The eight-piece band excels at a lovingly rendered mixture of Storyville cathouse ragtime and early New Orleans jazz stomps, with a passionate, rough-edged aesthetic that keeps one foot in the elemental realm of 19th-century Crescent City brass band/Congo Square influences and one hand loose for the liberated spontaneity of collective improvisation. It’s an irresistible, on-the-spot approach that they perfected, appropriately enough, performing on the streets of Los Angeles.

“The Feetwarmers began as two separate bands, Capt. Jeffrey & His Musical Chumbuckets and the Petrovijc Blasting Co.,” said Carlos Reynoso, band co-founder and washboard player. “A mutual friend introduced us, and we started hanging out, became friends and just said, ‘Well, let’s do it, let’s play together.’ Started out at Hollywood and Highland, we were out there all day, and it was a lot of fun so we did it again. And again. We were learning songs, had to get more and more songs. We were piling up the material and just kept going. “

Unexpectedly encountering the Feetwarmers in a midsong sidewalk performance was a mesmerizing experience, one that demanded not just listener attention but enthusiastic response. Their passion and skill combine for a transporting effect, and the cumulative sound — clarinet, trombone, tuba, trumpet, cornet, banjo, guitar, marching band drums and washboard — deftly evoked the swinging, funky spirits of Kid Ory and Buddy Bolden.

“We did a whole year in Santa Monica. We’d stand out there and play all day and then go back to Hollywood, late night, like 1, 1:30 in the morning, waiting for the drunks to come out of the bars,” Reynoso said. “Put some jazz in their ears and they give you money in return. It was great, there’d be all these girls in short skirts and high heels, everybody’s dancing in the street.”

“It started getting us gigs. The gigs started rolling in, at one point we had four or five weekly residencies around town, playing almost every night. We stopped doing the street, but then people got so used to you being there at these places, we realized we needed to try something else.”

Following release of their debut 2013 album, word of mouth spread among both appreciative cognoscenti and industry bookers and agents, and the band’s profile got higher and higher.

This was a big year for the California Feet Warmers, with a Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Performance for “‘The Old Me Better,” their collaboration with Keb’ Mo’. “We did not ever expect to end up there,” Reynoso said of the awards ceremony. “It was quite the experience. I must say. I mean, we are just playing old music because we love it, and to have all those people at the Grammy awards come up to us and tell that us they love it too — awesome.”

“It’s music you can’t hear anywhere else, not in a movie, not on some Hollywood bars Spotify playlist.” He added. “This is forgotten music, from the 1880s to the 1920s, basically the opposite of what everyone else does. Back then, in the ‘20s, when it went from ragtime to jazz, it was almost like punk rock. We don’t polish it up like that whole big band, 1940s thing. We play it like they did back in the day. It took a certain kind of person, a definite type of character to do that, and we try to play it that way today.”

--

Who: The California Feetwarmers

Where: Joe’s Great American Bar & Grill, 4311 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank

When: Monday, Dec. 21, 9 p.m.

Cost: Free

More info: (818) 729-0805, joesgreatbar.com

--

JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”