Swing Caravan gave a stunning performance at Hilltown Music’s Memorial Hall that left the audience overjoyed and stomping their feet for more!
—Gayle Olson, Hilltown Music

"I adore your new CD. Your version of Bossa Dorado is the best I've ever heard, really!"
—Jack Fields, Editor, Djangology.net

Band photography by Selena Dittberner photographybyselena.com

NEWS UPDATES

Happy 2013 Swing Caravaners!

We want to thank everyone who supported us in 2012...venues that booked us, audiences that cheered us on, and all the folks who bought CDs! Our most recent gigs have been private events and we're gearing up for some changes and new gigs this year. (Hint: We have a new regular gig every three months that's really just semi-private if you ask nicely for a public ticket...Kripalu Yoga Retreat Center! Really fun shows and next one is St. Paddy's day).

Join us for our CD RELEASE CONCERT!! We'll play the fancy new original songs from the CD and re-worked swing and Gypsy jazz. We had a great time playing the Iron Horse last summer and are waaaayyyy excited to celebrate our new cd with this show!

CD RELEASE CONCERT
Saturday March 31st, 2012, 7-9pm
Iron Horse Music Hall
Northampton MA

Buy tickets direct from the band using paypal until March 28th, 2012.
Or from the Iron Horse 413-586-8686

Are you or your fellow music lovers near Boston? We are returning to the famous CLUB PASSIM on Saturday March 24th. We have a 90 minute show to ourselves! See calendar for details.

March has brought a treasure trove of wonderful shows for us. We played an amazing house concert for 65 people at the Eclipse Mills artist community in North Adams. What an audience, what hospitality... best of all they said the recent evolution of Swing Caravan was a huge success and improvement all around (we played there 2 years ago).

Then we played the NH Jazz Center in Laconia and the Black Door Bistro in Montpelier back-to-back nights. That NH Jazz Center is just an amazing, amazing scene. Over 100 people came out... and there's a listening room policy so we played with every bit of dynamics and texture we would have in the recording studio. The enthusiastic response and encore was so much fun that we just about floated over the White Mountains to Montpelier the next day. Thanks and congrats to Jonathan Lorentz for creating this place!

Swing Caravan is a feature pick in the Advocate's Preview monthly magazine! We were psyched to see the photo and blurb promoting the Iron Horse CD Release Concert in their March issue. But, just to clarify for anyone seeking that out, the current CD project is all original music! The writers seem to have found some online reference to our WWII-era CD project that is partly finished (they didn't contact us). In any case, we will be playing a bunch of those tunes along with the originals, so no harm done.

The New CD is Finished!!!
Woohoo! This was one super fun and super ambitious project. I introduced the band (Julia on bass, Dave on kit, Geoff on trumpet) to my original songs in mid- September. We were feeling inspired to tackle something new and challenging outside of swing and Gypsy jazz. We began learning the new original tunes in the studio and made some initial recordings over Columbus Day weekend... the first three of many fun days together in the studio. We never did perform the songs live before wrapping up recording in December. That meant that discovering our approach to each song was happening in front of microphones. I even re-wrote some lyrics on the spot. In the end, every song was recorded live start to finish, including vocals.

By late March the CD will be available on our website, itunes, CD Baby, and at Western Mass stores that support independent CD sales. More details to follow.