8/7/00 Eric Felton at Felix and Dixieland Direct at 219

by Alan Greenblatt

This space does a poor enough job of covering the local jazz scene, God knows, but I did catch a few of the home boys last week.

Watching Eric Felten, a journalist who plays trombone, at Felix in Adams Morgan, it occurred to me how the now-defunct swing revival was really a folk ritual. That's why you had not only a faddish sound, but particular dances, drinks, lingo and costuming that went with it. (The Felix decor, which is like a pop-up book of famous architecture, fits, sort of.)

Felten plays into this, with his period microphone and deco music stands. At Felix, he doesn't give us much of his smooth trombone, instead fancying himself a singer. He has a sure, unaffected voice with enough range to tackle "Dancing in the Dark" without causing aneurysm. He fronts a seven-piece band at Felix the first Wednesday of each month, recruiting fine musicians that he keeps tied to tightly orchestrated versions of "You Make Me Feel So Young" and "In the Mood" and all that.

The band Dixieland Direct has a bad name. They play almost no Dixieland, instead, like Felten, reaching into the rich repertoire of American popular songs from the second quarter of the last century: "Avalon" and "Stars Fell from Alabama" and "Memories of You."

Pianist Bob Boguslaw looks like a hangdog Bill Mauldin drawing but he plays with great energy. His style is resolutely old-fashioned, a barrelhouse sound, but he's capable of nice subtleties and likes throwing in musical quotations from other songs. I have rhapsodized over clarinet player Henning Hoenhe in the context of his life with the Federal Jazz Commission, but I would argue he's even freer in this band, as the only horn player. He's one of those amazing soloists who plays a melody beautifully and then suddenly creates a new one, playing a couple hundred notes all in unprecedented, perfect order.

The leader is drummer Mike Flaherty, who likes to play loud. He's not much of an accompanist, strictly keeping time, but there comes a point every time the band plays when he starts banging on the drums as though they were tom toms, Gene Krupa style, and Henning gets off a few Benny Goodman licks, and it's transporting (or at least nostalgic).

I heard Dixieland Direct at Alexandria's 219 restaurant, where they play the first Thursday of each month. It's a weird sort of room full of faded Victoriana, from the chairs to the floral carpeting, the faux-velvet curtains and the Singer-style portraits. The band also plays for Sunday brunch each week at Market Inn, near Capitol Hill, a room with much worse decor that I've made fun of in this space previously.