Django's Jewels: Live from the Hot Dog Stand

Want to add another tool to your kit of why the experience of listening on streaming isn't as rich as any of the other ways we've listened to music? Check out the last track of the debut studio album by Django's Jewels called Live from the Hot Dog Stand. "Caravan / Blue Drag", on Bandcamp, is a seamless combination of the Juan Tizol tune (with lyrics!) and "Blue Drag" at the seven-minute mark.

But on streaming, a clerical error led the track to cut off hard at seven minutes – and it's annoying to fix. Head to Bandcamp, I say.

Django's Jewels' current lineup is Aaron Loewen on guitar and vocals, Cam Boyce on violin, Wynston Minckler on bass, and Dylan Ranney on drums. Boyce has played in the majority of the band's lineups over time, Minckler is a frequent gigging partner of Loewen's including as a duo, and Ranney is also an important friend of the guitarist and de facto bandleader. "dylan singlehandedly brought me into the kelowna music scene when he brought a cajon out onto the street when I was busking on the sidewalk and for that I'm forever grateful," Loewen wrote on Instagram around release time, no-caps and all. "he's a killer drummer and super guy. always down for the spontaneity that us jazz types are prone to, including going back out for that second busk at 2am."

Ranney's studio was the location for the band to record Live from the Hot Dog Stand. Loewen has had the tunes in his bag for years. He and Boyce previously led a session in Cumberland with guitarist Lukáš Hyrman and bassist Juan Pablo Gonzalez – as Django's Jewels – that they released in 2017 as "In it for the Money". They recorded "Swing 39", an uptempo instrumental of "Caravan", and a longer instrumental of "My Melancholy Baby" back then. From his solo releases, Loewen also recorded "Minor Blues" on a 2016 solo project Okanagan Swing and "Anniversary Song" on a 2020 solo album Sounds from Dunham.

Given that I know the bass player quite well, I decided to ask Loewen to share more about the violinist. "Cam and I met about six or seven years ago when we first started the Django's Jewels project," he said. "We actually met in Montreal, but he lives on Vancouver Island. We started off playing some festivals over there, most notably Woodstove Festival in Cumberland. He plays under his own looping act called Fanfare Strings and plays in a bunch of different projects over on the island. He's played and studied a lot of music traveling Europe. In the past couple of years has worked in some theatre and film musical work over there."

I also asked Loewen about the interludes of "Honeysuckle Rose" that function like skits on a rap album. "That's really just kind of a reference to the fact that we're playing old music that was listened to on records that skip and scratch and warble," he said. "We recorded most of these tunes on the fly in kind of a one-shot scenario, and 'Honeysuckle' was the first one that we warmed up on."

"I didn't think there was really enough there for it to be released as its own track, but I liked the essence of it and thought it would be cool to still use it in some way. It acts as a bit of a transitional interlude for different parts of the album. And yeah, it's just a tip of a cap to the fact that this is old music we're playing," Loewen said.

As evidenced by their playing at venues from the 2nd Floor Gastown to Guilt & Co. to what was once called both Osita and Vivace, Django's Jewels aren't going anywhere as a Vancouver-based hot jazz act. On top of that, their ties to the Okanagan and Montreal give them a platform to continue delivering the goods, doing it their way, and offering an out-of-left-field alternative to the groups in the genre that we all know from its strong lineage in town.

released May 22, 2024 / Buy digital (Bandcamp) / Available on streaming