Dan Hicks gets in the Christmas spirit (photo from 1967)

Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks kick off their annual "Holidaze In Hicksville Tour" in support of their smash debut Christmas album, Crazy For Christmas [released in 2010]. The Billboard-charting album features original Dan Hicks Christmas tunes, some classic favorites, and a few tunes re-worked for the holidays.

Dan Hicks' 2011 "Holidaze in Hicksville" tour is split into two legs, the first of which is on the East Coast and includes 11/26 at City Winery. After a week, Dan Hicks & co will head to California for a single date and then down to Florida for a string of dates. Full tour schedule and some videos to get you in the holiday spirit, below...

Continue reading "Dan Hicks touring for the holidays (2012 tour dates)"

Dan Hicks digs Christmas tunes. But it took him over 30 years in the music business to get around to doing his own album of holiday music. The singer/songwriter/guitarist and leader of the Hot Licks, a swinging band with a cult following in the rock world going back to the '70s, has just released Crazy for Christmas on Surfdog Records and is on his way around the country on a tour he calls "Holidaze in Hicksville". The group will perform at a mix of theaters, clubs and coffeehouses, including the Barns at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va., the City Winery in New York City and McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, Calif.

Talking via phone from his home in Marin County, California, Hicks says that he's always done Christmas tunes during that time of year with his band, the Hot Licks. "I've been doing Christmas songs with the Hot Licks for a couple of decades. We did about eight or ten tunes, but we didn't do them all at once. We've been doing shows we call Holidaze in Hicksville. We have a canvas backdrop with a cartoon scene of Christmas."
[Jazz Times]

Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks kick off their "Holidaze in Hicksville" tour in NJ tonight (11/27). From there they continue on to Piermont, NY before hitting City Winery in NYC with special guest John Hammond on Tuesday (11/30). All dates and a preview of the Christmas album, below...

Continue reading "Dan Hicks released a Christmas album, touring (dates)"

"There’s a world of cross-references in Dirty Projectors’ music: stuttering modal riffs from Mali, the meandering melodies of opera or modern music theater, pygmy antiphonal vocals, Captain Beefheart, Zimbabwean and Congolese rock, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. Usually Mr. Longstreth sustained a sweetly androgynous croon as the music jittered all around him, but in “Police Story” — set to slow tom-tom thumps, steady guitar chords and a descant from the women’s voices — he followed his winding, leaping melody up to a yelping crescendo of desperation." [NY Times]

More on the Bowery show HERE.