Album Notes

David Williams has been playing guitar for 40 years, and first began playing swing 30 years ago while studying mandolin with the great Jethro Burns. He is also a singer-songwriter who writes everything from Americana, children's songs, to swing music, and he is a well published cartoonist, fiction writer, and children's author--with a background in Anthropology and Literature. He is currently writing songs for the new PBS children's show BIG GREEN RABBIT,doing cartoons, and writing a new book about the Trickster archetype from a neuroscientific/evolutionary perspective--exploring the relationship between stories/language/song/music. You can visit David's various websites and read more his books, CDs, and carootons at www.decodjango.com www.trapdoor-media.com or www.trapdoormedia.net

Bill Pontarelli has been playing the clarinet all of his life, and has performend around the world, playing with everyone from Doc Watson via Pete Wernick's Flexigrass to the best Dixieland and swing players in the US. Backed by Emily Lites on guitar and superb vocals, and the great bassist Duane Webster, these four bring the music of Django and Grappelli alive.

Gypsy Jazz is the contemporary name for a musical form that started in the 1930s when American swing moved to Europe. The gypsy guitarist, Django Reinhardt, and the violinist Stephane Grappelli, began playing American style swing together, borrowing from the guitar-violin work of Joe Venuit and Eddie Lang, doing standards from the era, but soon they invented a whole new hot style that swung really hard and was totally inventive, infectious, driving, and moving. This became known as the Hot Club sound. But the story of these musicians' lives are even more amazing--so check out weblinks and learn about Django (1910-1953) and Stephane (1908-1997) and the amazing era of Paris in the 30s.