Press

The Onion

Austin trio Hot Club Of Cowtown sounds like it’s spent the last 40 years in tiny rural clubs. The group’s old-fashioned mixture of Western swing and hot jazz leaves all the irony at home, and what’s left is a refreshingly sweet-natured, accomplished, old-school treat, mixing the perky rhythms of swing masters like Bob Wills with the European gypsy music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. Hot Club took a hiatus in the mid-2000s as its members picked up opportunities to work with the likes of Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, but reformed for 2009’s Wishful Thinking, which finds the band sounding as energized and enthusiastic as ever.