Musical descendants of Bob Wills and Spade Cooley, the Bebop Cowboys certainly fit firmly into the Western Swing or Country Swing slot, but their style is as elastic as their personnel. Like bandleader Steve Briggs said, in the heyday of the dance hall in Canada (the 1940s and 50s), you had to be versatile. People were hearing many types of music on the radio, much of it coming across the airwaves from the U.S.A. Country, blues, fiddle tunes, rock ‘n roll and hillbilly music hybridized into subgenres like country blues and rock-a-billy and everyone caught swing band fever.

The Bebop Cowboys take this mixed bag called Western Swing with its swing rhythms, fiddles and steel guitar and mix it up further adding harmonica and updating it with the sounds of people like Merle Haggard and the Downchild Blues Band. They play mostly their own material and it definitely has its own character, yet their tunes sound familiar. They are country(ish) but they don’t play a bunch of cryin’ in yer beer songs. They don’t sound like cowpokes settin’ round the campfire either, they play Saturday night dance tunes, or like the title of their new CD, Canadian Dance Hall.

The Bebop Cowboys start the show with the country swing classic “Yearning (Just for You)”, featuring three fiddles. The solos cycled through pedal steel guitar, piano, guitar and fiddle and then back to the three fiddles in unison. Three fiddles with a very Canadian, even old Ontario style sound to these ears. “Dancing on a Saturday Night” (“hurry, in a car, a pick up or a surrey, just forget about your worries, be sure and come to the dance on Saturday night”), adds brass, a jazzy strut and a swinging fiddle solo from Drew Jurecka. As bandleader Steve Briggs says, “the only thing missing is a big dance floor but it’s great to have the place packed”.