Charlie Smith – fiddle, vocals
Nicki Lancaster – vocals, percussion
Dave Gauthier – drums, vocals
Curly LaJollla – bass guitar, vocals
Mark Simpson – pedal steel

Los Cowtones blends a mix of cover and original tunes to weave a web of country, western, jazz and swing into a free flowing, fun-filled set of musical excitement we like to call Cowboy Jazz, though others refer to it as country swing. A few of the artists that are covered by the group are (click to visit the website) Merle Haggard, Gram Parsons, Bonnie Raitt, Hoyt Axton, Fats Waller, Gene Autry, Sons of the Pioneers, Emmylou Harris, Harlan Howard, The Hot Club of Cowtown, and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Some of the tunes are taken from the past and were done by many people, but never quite like we do them. We have other songs written by band members and like to think that these are some of our best material. You be the judge.

Los Cowtones has roots that go back as far as 1974, when Charlie, Mark and Curly teamed with others to start what would become one of the Pacific Northwest’s premier country rock bands (back before there was such a thing as country rock), Country Al and His Pals. New members came as other members went, and the band finally disbanded for good sometime in 1977.

Meanwhile, Nicki Lancaster was cutting her teeth with a group named Medium Rore and doing duos and trios with Steve Bradley, one of Portland’s finest rock and roll guitar virtuosos, and Doug Craven, most recently of the Hard Day’s Knights.

The early 80′s saw Charlie, Nicki and Curly come together in a group simply known as The Deal. It also saw Nicki and Curly tying the knot.

Meanwhile, Dave (our Bakersfield connection) was ripping it up, down in California, with bands such as Sloe Gin, Original Soul, and Danny Lee and the Children of Truth. After moving up to the great Pacific Northwest, he hooked up with Nicki, Charlie and Curly in a couple of local worship bands. Fast friendships ensued.

1999 found Nicki, Charlie and Curly in the basement again. Not putting the old band back together, but forming a new one that would eventually become Los Cowtones. After a few different incarnations, Dave came on board, as did Kay, whose band Shorty and the Mustangs had recently called it quits (much to our advantage). The last addition, and a mighty fine one at that, was Mark, who had spent plenty of time on stages around the NW with bands such as Country Al, Trigger’s Revenge and Arroyo.

It’s mighty fine to take 30 years of friendship, family and talent, and put it on stage for everyone’s enjoyment… especially ours. We hope you enjoy the show.

He is among Nashville’s “A” list of songwriters, with songs recorded by artists such as: Patty Loveless, George Jones, The Dixie Chicks, Solomon Burke, Mark Chesnutt, Dave Edmunds, John Mayall, Kathy Mattea, Lee Ann Womack, Gary Allan, Blake Shelton. Vince Gill, and George Strait. He also contributed several songs to the successful soundtrack of the George Strait film, “Pure Country.” Not content to just write hits for the stars, he’s toured with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rhonda Vincent and Elvis Costello, among others

Tommy Emmanuel is arguably the greatest living acoustic guitar player and recognized as the elite of the elite. Australia’s “Entertainer of the Year” and two-time Grammy nominee, Tommy Emmanuel delivers a dazzling performance with the flair unforgettable showmanship, flawless guitar skills and voluminous repertoire that never fails to amaze and engage his legions.

Emmanuel has a professional career that spans over four decades and continues to intersect with some of the finest musicians throughout the world.

A household name in his native Australia, Tommy has garnered hundreds of thousands of loyal fans worldwide. Tommy’s unique style – he calls it simply “finger style” – is akin to playing guitar the way a pianist plays piano, using all ten fingers. Rather than using a whole band for melody, rhythm, bass, and drum parts, Tommy plays all that – and more – on one guitar. Guitar legend Chet Atkins was one of the first to inspire Emmanuel to try this “fingerpicker” style as a child. Decades later, Atkins himself became one of Emmanuel’s biggest fans.

In all, Emmanuel’s catalogue includes over 20 musical recordings running the gamut of solos, duets, ensembles, cover tunes, originals, both electric and acoustic guitar. He has made 4 live performance DVDs, 3 additional instructional DVDs, and regularly teaches master classes on the road. At 54, performing live is more important to him than ever and he tours constantly, playing over 300 concerts a year for the last five years. Guitar players of all levels come to his shows to watch the magic hands of the ‘guitar Wizard of Oz,’ but his appeal goes far beyond musicians. His live shows are known for their humor, passion, and infectious joy. The power of his charismatic showmanship will be an enduring part of Emmanuel’s legacy. Tommy Emmanuel’s message is pure love for the music and his delight in sharing it with the world, one audience at a time.

Tommy’s next offering will be a Christmas album entitled All I Want For Christmas, which will be released in early November 2011 world-wide. It will feature time honored favorites and two original tunes.

Don’t miss this amazing performer as he takes the River City by storm, January 2012.

Here are some things you probably already know about Rodney Crowell. In 1977, he formed his own group, The Cherry Bombs, and in 1978 released his first album, Ain’t Living Long Like This.

In 1988 he released Diamonds and Dirt, which generated an unprecedented five number-one singles, including “It’s Such a Small World,” with Rosanne Cash, his wife and partner at the time. They split up in 1992, but they are still friends.

His acclaimed autobiographical album, The Houston Kid, in 2001 marked his break from the constraints of mainstream record labels.

There have been some awards along the way: Rodney won a Grammy in 1989 for the Best Country Song: “After all This Time.” He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. After he re-formed The Notorious Cherry Bombs in 2004 with his old pal Vince Gill, the band was nominated for a CMA Top Vocal Group award.

Hundreds of versions of his songs have been recorded over the years.

Since their first recording in 1998, Austin-based Hot Club of Cowtown have grown to be the most globe-trotting, hardest-swinging Western swing trio on the planet. The first American band to tour Azerbaijan, they have opened stadiums for such artists as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and continue to bring their brand of western swing to a wide range of festival audiences all over the world. But for guitarist Whit Smith, fiddler Elana James and bassist Jake Erwin, it has always been about staying true to their roots.

Remaining willfully out of the musical mainstream, Hot Club of Cowtown have created an international cult following for their sonic personification of joy and unique sound inspired by their namesakes: “Hot Club” from the hot jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli’s Hot Club of France, and “Cowtown” from the Western swing influence of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

Though Wills’ pre-WWII recordings have always been the fundamental inspiration for Hot Club of Cowtown’s repetoire and style, it has taken the band a dozen years to fully honor the King of Western Swing. A fortuitous tour in England in the spring of 2010 led them to London’s Specific Sound studio, where they spent two days recording a 14-song marathon of Bob Wills tunes. The result, What Makes Bob Holler, is a tribute to the American music icon, respecting Wills’ legendary music while putting Hot Club’s own signature on each song. “We have been meaning to make this album for a long time,” says James.

“This is music from the days when guys toured and sat on a bus with no air conditioning, no real food, for days. We heard a story of a fiddler the Wills band picked up in California and by the time they had driven to the Midwest, he was dead and nobody even knew his name. They pried his rigor mortis’d body off of the bus and left him under a lamppost somewhere in Kansas,” says James, “It was a different time. These guys were pretty hardcore.”

What Makes Bob Holler presents the most convincing evidence yet that Hot Club of Cowtown may be on to something. By digging even deeper into their roots and refusing to modernize, the band offers up one of their most exciting recordings to date. The disc is an imaginative pairing of obscure B-sides with some of Wills’ most popular work. Tunes like “Big Balls in Cowtown” and “Stay a Little Longer” are numbers that “people always love when we play them live,” says James, “so it was was a no-brainer to gather them into a record.” Others, like “Osage Stomp” and “The Devil Ain’t Lazy,” might not be as well known, but they are in the spirit of what originally attracted Smith and James to this music. “We’re playing what knocked us out about Western swing in the first place — the early fiery energy and jazzy improvisations,” says James.

What Makes Bob Holler may have taken two days to record, but the band has played these songs on tour for years. The album reflects the same spirited live vibe and offers the band a terrific platform to show off their ace musicianship and flaunt these inspirations: Smith’s hot electric guitar played through a vintage 1936 Gibson amplifier, James’ sometimes gorgeous, sometimes frenetic fiddle, and Erwin’s jaw-dropping slap bass, all mixed with three-part harmony vocals.

Smith (Cape Cod, MA) and James (Prairie Village, KS), originally met through an ad in the classified music section ofThe Village Voice in 1994, and played together in New York City before relocating to San Diego in 1997, where they spent a year playing for tips and building up their repertoire. By 1998, they had relocated to Austin, Texas and in 2000 added Jake Erwin (originally from Tulsa, OK) on bass, finalizing the Hot Club’s lineup.

Like any scrappy modern band, Hot Club dwells between the daily grind of touring and the euphoria of its live shows. Years of crisscrossing the USA in a silver Ford van through a landscape where local traditions are becoming more and more diluted, and modern life more electronic, have galvanized this Texas trio who are more devoted than ever to keeping their music sincere, free of irony, and focused on a simpler time.

What Makes Bob Holler arrives on the heels of 2009’s more eclectic Wishful Thinking, an Americana radio Top 100 album lauded by the Austin Chronicle’s Jim Caliguiri as “the Cowtowners at their peak,” and David Eldridge, in theWashington Times, as “one of the year’s most unexpected listening pleasures.”

While What Makes Bob Holler focuses exclusively on Bob Wills music, Hot Club of Cowtown’s live show will remain an engaging mix of what the band does best — whatever moves it at the moment, setlists be damned. “We have faith in the system that is the band. This energy that we plug into and it takes us away,” says James. Smith describes their shows as “like a rock ’n’ roll show . . . people pick up on the energy and the sincerity.”

“What the trio has is a rare thing,” says Smith, “There’s a chemistry that’s unmistakable.”

As Bob Wills might say, “Aaaaaaaaaah Haaaaaaaaaaah!”

Since their first recording in 1998, Austin-based Hot Club of Cowtown have grown to be the most globe-trotting, hardest-swinging Western swing trio on the planet. The first American band to tour Azerbaijan, they have opened stadiums for such artists as Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson and continue to bring their brand of western swing to a wide range of festival audiences all over the world. But for guitarist Whit Smith, fiddler Elana James and bassist Jake Erwin, it has always been about staying true to their roots.

Remaining willfully out of the musical mainstream, Hot Club of Cowtown have created an international cult following for their sonic personification of joy and unique sound inspired by their namesakes: “Hot Club” from the hot jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli’s Hot Club of France, and “Cowtown” from the Western swing influence of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

Though Wills’ pre-WWII recordings have always been the fundamental inspiration for Hot Club of Cowtown’s repetoire and style, it has taken the band a dozen years to fully honor the King of Western Swing. A fortuitous tour in England in the spring of 2010 led them to London’s Specific Sound studio, where they spent two days recording a 14-song marathon of Bob Wills tunes. The result, What Makes Bob Holler, is a tribute to the American music icon, respecting Wills’ legendary music while putting Hot Club’s own signature on each song. “We have been meaning to make this album for a long time,” says James.

“This is music from the days when guys toured and sat on a bus with no air conditioning, no real food, for days. We heard a story of a fiddler the Wills band picked up in California and by the time they had driven to the Midwest, he was dead and nobody even knew his name. They pried his rigor mortis’d body off of the bus and left him under a lamppost somewhere in Kansas,” says James, “It was a different time. These guys were pretty hardcore.”

What Makes Bob Holler presents the most convincing evidence yet that Hot Club of Cowtown may be on to something. By digging even deeper into their roots and refusing to modernize, the band offers up one of their most exciting recordings to date. The disc is an imaginative pairing of obscure B-sides with some of Wills’ most popular work. Tunes like “Big Balls in Cowtown” and “Stay a Little Longer” are numbers that “people always love when we play them live,” says James, “so it was was a no-brainer to gather them into a record.” Others, like “Osage Stomp” and “The Devil Ain’t Lazy,” might not be as well known, but they are in the spirit of what originally attracted Smith and James to this music. “We’re playing what knocked us out about Western swing in the first place — the early fiery energy and jazzy improvisations,” says James.

What Makes Bob Holler may have taken two days to record, but the band has played these songs on tour for years. The album reflects the same spirited live vibe and offers the band a terrific platform to show off their ace musicianship and flaunt these inspirations: Smith’s hot electric guitar played through a vintage 1936 Gibson amplifier, James’ sometimes gorgeous, sometimes frenetic fiddle, and Erwin’s jaw-dropping slap bass, all mixed with three-part harmony vocals.

Smith (Cape Cod, MA) and James (Prairie Village, KS), originally met through an ad in the classified music section ofThe Village Voice in 1994, and played together in New York City before relocating to San Diego in 1997, where they spent a year playing for tips and building up their repertoire. By 1998, they had relocated to Austin, Texas and in 2000 added Jake Erwin (originally from Tulsa, OK) on bass, finalizing the Hot Club’s lineup.

Like any scrappy modern band, Hot Club dwells between the daily grind of touring and the euphoria of its live shows. Years of crisscrossing the USA in a silver Ford van through a landscape where local traditions are becoming more and more diluted, and modern life more electronic, have galvanized this Texas trio who are more devoted than ever to keeping their music sincere, free of irony, and focused on a simpler time.

What Makes Bob Holler arrives on the heels of 2009’s more eclectic Wishful Thinking, an Americana radio Top 100 album lauded by the Austin Chronicle’s Jim Caliguiri as “the Cowtowners at their peak,” and David Eldridge, in theWashington Times, as “one of the year’s most unexpected listening pleasures.”

While What Makes Bob Holler focuses exclusively on Bob Wills music, Hot Club of Cowtown’s live show will remain an engaging mix of what the band does best — whatever moves it at the moment, setlists be damned. “We have faith in the system that is the band. This energy that we plug into and it takes us away,” says James. Smith describes their shows as “like a rock ’n’ roll show . . . people pick up on the energy and the sincerity.”

“What the trio has is a rare thing,” says Smith, “There’s a chemistry that’s unmistakable.”

As Bob Wills might say, “Aaaaaaaaaah Haaaaaaaaaaah!”

Tommy Emmanuel headlines RiverCity Music Festival, Jan. 6-8
Portland — The popular RiverCity Music Festival, born the RiverCity Bluegrass Festival, has evolved, matured – and gotten even better. The festival, scheduled Jan. 6 – 8, 2012, at The Red Lion at Jantzen Beach, offers one of the most exciting and eclectic collection of musicians ever to perform in a single Portland weekend.
Two-time Grammy nominee Tommy Emmanuel is one of Australia’s most respected musicians. The legendary guitarist has a professional career that spans five decades and continues to intersect with some of the finest musicians throughout the world. A household name in his native Australia, Tommy has garnered hundreds of thousands of loyal fans worldwide. Tommy’s unique style – he calls it simply “finger style” – is akin to playing guitar the way a pianist plays piano, using all ten fingers. Rather than using a whole band for melody, rhythm, bass, and drum parts, Tommy plays all that – and more – on one guitar. Guitar legend Chet Atkins was one of the first to inspire Emmanuel to try this “fingerpicker” style as a child. Decades later, Atkins himself became one of Emmanuel’s biggest fans.
Now in its seventh year, the RiverCity Music Festival has developed into an eagerly anticipated weekend filled with national bands of so many genres that if you were to give it a theme, it would probably be just exceptionally good live music.
In addition to acclaimed bluegrass performers (The Boxcars, Steep Canyon Rangers, young prodigy Sierra Hull and Hwy. 111, Jim Lauderdale, The Peter Rowan Band), the festival has musicians from the top of other musical genres.

These include: Hot Club of Cowtown, one of the hottest swing bands today from the Austin area, David Lindley, a combination of American folk, blues and bluegrass, who before forming his own band El Rayo-X, was the featured accompanist for Jackson Browne. Plus Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks, featuring Jim Kweskin and including premier steel player Cindy Cashdollar. See a complete list of musicians below.

Dates: Friday, Saturday & Sunday, January 6, 7 & 8, 2012

Location: Red Lion On The River (Jantzen Beach), Portland, OR

Hours: Friday, Doors at 4 pm, Music starts at 5 pm. Saturday: Doors at 10 am, Music begins at 11a m and goes ‘til midnight. On Sunday, doors open at 10 am, music starts at 11 am and ends at 6 pm.

Tickets: Weekend Pass: $130. Friday night passes are $35.00. All-day Saturday passes are $55. All day Sunday passes are $45. Children under 12 are free, 12 through 17 are $12 per day. Available on www.brownpapertickets.com or www.rivercitybluegrass.com.