Vinyl LP pressing. 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/bandleader, Evan Palazzo. The timing couldn't be better for their next live album, Welcome Home, Bon Voyage. Produced by Eli Wolf, it 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 them a home, and the acoustically-magnificent Koerner Hall in Toronto at the Royal Conservatory of Music, one of the first major halls they sold out. Highlights 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.
