The Hot Sardines - Welcome Home, Bon Voyage - Live (2019)

Not many bands have seized the postmillennial early-jazz spotlight with as much gusto as The Hot Sardines. An eight-piece outfit co-led by singer Elizabeth Bougerol and pianist Evan Palazzo, it has devoted more than the last decade to a razzle-dazzle reclamation of prewar swing.

"These are times that need live music. And I don’t know of anything that brings people together like the joy of hearing traditional jazz live,” says Elizabeth Bougerol, co-leader of The Hot Sardines, with pianist and bandleader, Evan Palazzo. These mischief-makers of hot jazz have been described as “potent and assured” (The New York Times) and “simply phenomenal” (The Times, London), with more than a year on the Billboard Jazz chart. The timing couldn’t be better for their next live album, Welcome Home, Bon Voyage (April 19 / Eleven Records).

“Everything in our DNA is about connecting with the audience. That’s where we feel most at home,” says Elizabeth, of playing live with the eight-piece band (including one wildly percussive tap dancer). The Sardines have gone from speakeasies and underground parties in Brooklyn, to festival crowds of 25,000 and a TV debut on Later… with Jools Holland. “That’s where jazz lives,” adds Evan. “In the playing, in sharing that experience, in coming together to create a moment that won’t happen again.”

Produced by Eli Wolf (Robert Glasper, Elvis Costello + The Roots) Welcome Home, Bon Voyage captures the Hot Sardines in two landmark rooms from their career: a hometown set at the renowned Joe’s Pub in New York City, the first venue to really give the Sardines a home, and the acoustically-magnificent Koerner Hall in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music, one of the first major halls the Sardines had sold out.

Choosing Koerner Hall is also a tribute to Elizabeth’s grandfather, jazz trumpeter Bobby Gimby, one of Canada’s most beloved bandleaders who received the Order of Canada for writing the country’s centennial anthem, “Ca-Na-Da.” He would have turned 100 in 2019.

Highlights on Welcome Home, Bon Voyage include a modern twist on the syncopated, soaring “Everybody Loves My Baby” (written by Spencer Williams and Jack Palmer, and first recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1924) to an irresistibly dissonant take on Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol’s “Caravan” (a collaboration with Bill Elliott, the Tony-winning arranger who set the Sardines’ songs to music for a symphony show with the Boston Pops), as well as the hushed, playful “Exactly Like You” and an interpretation of “Some of These Days,” that turns Sophie Tucker’s 1910 trademark into a boisterous beguine. To honor New Orleans’ 300th anniversary, the band finishes with a second line through Koerner Hall, turning the entire 1200-strong crowd into a second-line Mardi Gras parade.

“This music reaches fans who are 17 or 97, who speak English or Russian or Spanish or Japanese,” adds Evan. “It’s a joy and an honor to get to play this music around the world in 2019.”

Welcome Home, Bon Voyage features David Berger (drums, percussion), J. Walter Hawkes (trombone), Noah Hocker (trumpet), A.C. Lincoln (tap), Jason Mercer (bass), Nick Myers (tenor saxophone, clarinet, conga).