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Check out other interviews with artistes appearing at the Legends of Western Swing Festival

Dave Alexander

Tells Graham Lees about what influenced his early interest in music

 

Dave Alexander is one of Western Swing's youngest and most exciting stars. After a short stint with the Dallas / Ft. Worth based Red River Brass during the late 80s (initially to promote the Red River line western wear), Dave created his own Western Swing Big Band. Alexander has opened for such entertainers as Garth Brooks, George Strait, Clint Black, and Reba McEntire and has performed at the MS Rodeo Ball with Trisha Yearwood in Dallas, Texas. He received top honours in 1999 by being named "Entertainer of the Year" by The Academy of Western Artists, when they awarded the prestigious Will Rogers award to their top Western Artists and Entertainers. It was a pleasure to talk with Dave at after his show.

"What's so strange about it, we are like an underground, we haven't taken on in a big way, but everybody who knows, knows us. When we play; the likes of George Strait and all those guys...the musicians come to hear us. Now they wont listen to the other bands around, because it is what I call throwaway music, it is good for a week and then its what's new...what's next? It is more the song, whereas we are more using the song as a vehicle to use our talent, which is kinda jazz, Americana kind of blues and all these mixtures of things that you have to be a musician's musician to play."

Where did your early influences come from?

"Two fold...one being my mother side of the family were farmers and ranchers who listened fiddle music... if it was fiddle it was kind of sacred and my granddaddy came in at noon to take a break and put on the radio and listen to Bob Wills on the air. My father's side were all musicians and so they were always trying to be in his area, music like Stan Kenton, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. That was prima; if you could be part of that you were great enough to be with the best musicians. My mother's people were earthy people, though my dad's side were earthy people, they had a farm, but inside the house it was jazz and blacks and things that you wouldn't have on my other side. They listened to the blues. Louis Armstrong was one of my biggest heroes. When I grew up there was never a racial anything in my family, because we as musicians were always together.

My dad always worked with guys like Clark Terry and a guy who was bass player for Ella Fitzgerald and all these people were just icons. And they were the people that we associated with and had respect for my father kind of in the jazz side. He had got his start having been a horn player working with those old fiddle bands. Because what would happened with them...they had certain songs that were fiddle music that they played, hoedowns and breakdowns, but then they would be asked to play something pop, play something hip. What was hip at the time was Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, so they did big band songs with fiddles and people said....yeh, now I've got both worlds...I like what's hip, but I don't wanna give away what we've always listened to! And Bob Wills really wanted to be a Duke Ellington or Count Basie; he wanted to be a bandleader like that. He was never going to shed the fiddle because that was so good to him, so he kind of did both. And that is why with my band, when we come to play, all those other musicians come to listen and there is much more of a respect thing than there is a competition.

They are really nice to us, but towards themselves... musicians of the same calibre they don't talk they just get on with the job. One bus parks over here and one over there. I'm not going on until you guys are off. It's just crazy! They have these little mind games; I'm not going on first and he's opening for me! Nobody's playing, the people are waiting and don't know about it. When we come out, it's...man you know Bobby Boatright...you know Billy Briggs...we just love that kind of stuff.

I still feel it has its place! I don't want it be Top 40, because then it won't last very long. I want it to stay an esoteric style of music!"