Jen Clay
Staff Writer
Courtesy of Center For The Arts
What’s left for neo-swing rockers Big Bad Voodoo Daddy?
They’ve conquered everything from Vince Vaughn movies (“Swingers”) to televised football (via the 1999 Superbowl halftime show) to televised gymnastics (via Carly Patterson’s recent gold-medal floor routine to “Mr. Pinstripe Suit”).
What’s left is more tours, more tours featuring symphonies and more good records, according to Big Bad frontman Scotty Morris.
Morris, who will play Smothers Theatre tomorrow with BBVD, talked with the Graphic Friday about the Grammy-nominated septuplet’s attitude toward the road, their fondness for experimentation, and how – like wine – the band’s success just gets sweeter with time.
After 11 years together, the creators of Morris-described “high-octane nitro jive” have released two albums this year, August’s CD/DVD “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Live” and October’s “Everything You Want for Christmas.” While “Everything” is the band’s seventh proper record since 1994, BBVD has tour dates scheduled through June 2005. Morris said it’s all in the band’s live-show philosophy.
“Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is kind of a unique situation in the fact that we constantly tour all the time,” Morris said. “Usually, we just stay on the road and play just as much as we can because we’re kind of like a live situation as far as what we’re all about.”
In keeping with their credo, the band will play their California, Arizona and Nevada dates this month and next in support of the band’s live record, while a holiday tour in support of “Everything” will begin just after Thanksgiving (and just after the current tour finishes).
Morris, who worked as a studio musician in the 1980s, said he purposely founded a band full of eclectic and open musicians, which explains the band’s Christmas release. Because 2000’s BBVD record “Save Your Soul” was very “New Orleans-influenced” (according to Morris, the band was listening to a lot of Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. at the time), this time around they just wanted to have fun.
“[The last two records] were just really studio-labor intensive so we decided to do something that we really wanted to do for the last 8 or 9 years,” Morris said.
“We’ve been wanting to make a Christmas record, a full-length Christmas record, so for us, it was really just like a real fun thing to do, have the band get out there and just go have some fun. And that’s really I would say probably the biggest bang.”
“Everything You Want for Christmas” features three original tracks and is technically the band’s second foray into recorded holiday fare. BBVD released the six-track “Whatchu’ Want for Christmas” in 1995.
While the “Everything” shows will take the band across the country on a national tour, it will also pair the BBVD members with other like-minded, live-show-loving individuals. For certain December and January dates, symphonies will once again accompany BBVD’s live shows.
Morris said the band recently began playing with symphonies to embark on a musical adventure.
“It was a really cool challenge for yourself musically, and we had just done so many different things in our career when somebody approached us on this idea we thought it’s a pretty hip idea, and it’d be cool to go for it and see what happens,” Morris said.
Two of the band’s symphony-accompanied performances turned out to be career highlights for Morris. He said BBVD’s two August 2004 dates at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic made for a “mind-blowing” experience.
“That was huge, I mean, just to hear the symphony roaring behind you and being in your hometown and having, you know, over two nights over 30,000 people show up,” Morris said.
“I think it’s pretty amazing. Anytime you get to go play with the LA Philharmonic, that’s pretty life-changing.”
After the complete the holiday tour, BBVD will make time to play the symphony shows currently scattered in their 2005 schedule. By that time, however, BBVD just might have new material on which to collaborate. Morris said the band is currently starting work on a new studio album. Given that the band has recently been listening to new records from Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Elliott Smith and Brian Wilson, BBVD’s next effort will most likely represent some kind of musical departure for the ever-evolving musicians.
“Every record I like to make a really different record than the records we made in the past,” Morris said.
So far, the new BBVD album is shaping up to have “more of a classic rat pack, big band, wild Vegas night” vibe, but the band won’t truly realize or develop the record for a few months. Morris said they will most likely work on the effort during the band’s well-deserved break between tours.
At this rate BBVD seems set to continue its cycle indefinitely. Interestingly enough, when asked to name the defining moment in the band’s career, Morris skirts around more obvious success markers in favor of a more introspective, and more relative, answer.
“You know, there’s some of the obvious things – like the Superbowl, meeting presidents, ‘Swingers,’ that kind of stuff, but it seems like the stuff that’s happened in the last few years is sweeter, you know, because we’ve just been around for so long,” Morris said. “It just – it feels better.”
If Morris has it his way, BBVD will be a musical force to be reckoned with for many more decades to come.
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy plays Smothers Theatre tomorrow at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $10 for students and $40 for the general public. For more information, call the Smothers’ box office at ext. 4522.
10-28-2004
