and throttle it down to what fits on their record . You very rarely , if ever , get the opportunity to cut loose and play from your heart . We started playing western swing music because it ’ s just fun , happy music , and it allows for that very thing . When it ’ s time to solo , you just have all the freedom in the world , playing all you want to play , and you have nine people backing you up . That ’ s why we started back in ’ 98 , and we had no delusions of anything ever happening with it but a Monday night jam session . As people started demanding to hear it , we started recording and we had to find us a bigger place to play because we were turning too many people away . I guess the point I ’ m making is none of this was intentional , we were just playing music for the fun of it and all the other stuff has sort of happened .
But if you had set out to do something
specific , it may not have worked out the same way . Your fans feel like they ’ re part of the family , and part of it ’ s probably that you have that regular gig where people can see you and get to know you . And that ’ s rare , you don ’ t get a lot of bands where you feel their pain and you share in their victories .
Absolutely . Had we set out to do this , we wouldn ’ t have gotten off the ground . As far as that Monday night gig goes , we hang onto that for the same reason we started it . It ’ s just fun . Any Monday night we have a certain amount of regulars that come almost every week . But the rest of the audience might be from anywhere . It ’ s real usual that we have people from Europe in there , from Australia and Japan that have come here and specifically planned on Monday night . And that ’ s just so cool . We have older people
22 October 2016
INSIGHT