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Whit Smith (Guitar) & Jake Erwin (Bass) Elana on Whit: "Whit and I founded the Hot Club of Cowtown in 1996. We used to call it "Whit & Elana" but eventually decided that didn't really get the point across. We first met in NYC in 1994. During that time he was leading a Western Swing band called "Western Caravan" that used to play all over the East Village at places like Sine, the Rodeo Bar, Ansea, the Mercury Lounge, and, once but never again, Brownie's, among other places. Whit used to live in the East Village and be (to my mind) a total hipster. By the time I met him he had just played on a Patti Smith record and was also a regular in Tom Clark's band for many years and knew a ton of hip people. I met him through an ad in the Village Voice since he was looking for a fiddle player to play these super-arranged, twin fiddle parts. When I first met him I climbed the five flights of stairs to his 3" x 3" apartment and he opened the door in giant fuzzy slippers with a cup of coffee. We sat down and played a bunch of hoedowns and Carter Famiily songs and that day began an ongoing history together--first in Western Caravan, then when we moved to San Diego in 1996 and spent a year playing for tips for a year, and then on to Austin in 1998 where we started to really get Hot Club of Cowtown off the ground and released our first record together. We began playing shows together again in late 2006--the amazing Hot Club of Cowtown State Department tour to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia, and the Bob Dylan ballparks tour. I am honored to get to be playing with him." Whit on Whit: "I've lived so many places, it's hard to say exactly where I'm from. I was born in Greenwich, CT and lived in New Canaan until I was nine or ten. I lived in Solvang, CA during junior high but moved to Cape Cod, MA by high school. I studied (if you want to call it that) guitar with Bill Connors in New York City for a winter, but I was a bad student. I'd make a tape of myself playing scales for half an hour then I'd just play the tape while I read comic books or took a nap. This way everyone downstairs thought I was really working hard. It's funny now but I'd tan my own hide if I'd caught myself doing that today!
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