NOTE: “Today” and “tonight” refer to Friday, Sept. 18.
PORT TOWNSEND — Here’s how Hot Club Sandwich, the gypsy jazz-swing-Latin band, plays a dance.
“You just watch everyone’s feet, and you try to connect with what they’re doing and what they want,” said Matt Sircely, the sextet’s mandolinist and spokesman.
He almost makes it sound easy. And maybe it is, for these guys, who’ll have a guest player with them for the Discovery Dance group’s season-opening event tonight: Tracy Bigelow Grisman, a well-known bassist from Jefferson County who’s been living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Grisman’s coming home to make music with Sircely and the Hot Club, which also features drummer Joseph Mascorella, fiddler Tim Wetmiller, dobro-steel guitarist Chris Herbst and guitar man Ray Wood.
Discovery Dance, formerly known as the Olympic Peninsula Dance Club, will start the evening at 7 p.m. with veteran instructor Janice Eklund’s East Coast swing lesson at the Port Townsend Elks Lodge, 555 Otto St., so dancers of all levels are welcome.
Admission is $10 at the door, which organizer Laura Brogden noted is down from the previous $15. People complained that was a bit much, so last season the club opted to see if it could keep on for less — and “we did, barely,” she said.
This season is the first with the new club name. Discovery Dance honors Discovery Bay, the Olympic Discovery Trail connecting Port Townsend to Clallam County, from whence many dancers come — and the act of discovering new styles.
The club will be inviting people to the Port Townsend Elks Lodge every third Friday of the month, when local bands are slated to play country two-step, swing, Latin dance music and beyond, always with a lesson at the beginning of the night.
In the case of Hot Club Sandwich, not everyone is local. While Sircely is a Port Townsender, the rest come from Seattle and Olympia; Wood, for his part, has been playing dances around Kitsap County since the mid-1950s.
“Ray Wood is a great individual,” said Sircely; he’s been an honorary member of the band since its inception in 2000 and an official member for about eight years.
Study abroad
The Hot Club has been around. Its members have studied music from Mexico to Japan, and “we just love all kinds of music,” Sircely added. To wit, Hot Club Sandwich plays waltzes, a Mexican polka titled “Viva Tlapehuala,” and a song called “La Playa” that Wood learned by listening to it over and over on a jukebox inside the Tokyo airport. He had to pour a lot of yen coins in, but he and Hot Club Sandwich have it down.
The group has since played dances from California to Alaska and, earlier this year, dished out the vintage swing music for a lesson and dance at the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles.
Brogden invites dancers — including beginners — to the rest of 2015’s Discovery Dance events. All feature local bands at the Port Townsend Elks for $10: Kevin Mason and the Yacht Club will supply R&B, soul and Motown on Oct. 16, Three Chords and the Truth will bring country and honky-tonk Nov. 20 and Robin Bessier will arrive with her swing and Latin band Dec. 18.
Also at all of these get-togethers, the experienced dancers are encouraged to come and help beginners, and while couples are welcome, you don’t need to bring a partner in order to get out there on the floor. One more thing that’s traditional: The dances are kept smoke- and perfume-free.
These Discovery Dances date back, Brogden noted, to April 1995 when Jim Tolpin, Michelle Bruns and Jenny Bruns threw a party at the Palindrome in Port Townsend. Their core group would evolve into the Jitterbug Dance Club, which included longtime members Hiroko Dennis and Joe Thompson, who welcomed new dance enthusiasts over the years. In 2010, the group changed its name to the Olympic Peninsula Dance Club. And for now, the website still carries that moniker: www.OlympicPeninsulaDance.com.
