"Magic on stage.” - WFUV

 

“Simply phenomenal.” - The Times, London

 

The Hot Sardines - the mischief-makers of hot jazz who started out playing underground neo- speakeasies in Brooklyn - have had a whirlwind last couple of years. The eight-piece (seven, with a tap dancer) has toured more than 250 cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia, blowing out their vintage-on- steroids sound to crowds as big as 25,000 at the Montreal Jazz Festival. They’ve hit No. 1 on iTunes Jazz, spent more than a year on the Billboard charts and racked up 20 million streams from fans in 90+ countries on Spotify. And it’s all come as a bit of a surprise to the band's founders who bonded over a shared love of Fats Waller, at a jazz jam above a noodle shop in New York City.

 

"I wore out the grooves of my grandfather’s old Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald records as a teenager, but no way did I ever expect to at the Newport Jazz Festival one day, with my own band, playing those songs,” says co-founder and vocalist Elizabeth Bougerol。“Neither did I,” says Evan Palazzo, co-founder, pianist and onstage bandleader, a New York City-born and raised actor who studied theater at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. “Elizabeth and I both grew up loving and learning early jazz, but once we met and started arranging tunes and playing for people, that was it.” "It just felt right,” adds Elizabeth. "It was like coming home."

 

 

So when it came time to record a follow-up to 2016’s chart-topper French Fries + Champagne (Universal Music Classics/Decca), it’s that magic - and that journey - that they wanted to capture. “We wanted to record live. Everything in our DNA — where we started out, how we’ve grown - is about connecting with the audience. That’s where we feel most at home,” says Elizabeth. “And that’s where jazz lives,” adds Evan. “In the playing, in sharing that experience, in coming together to create a moment that won’t happen again.”

 

 “These are times that need live music,” says Elizabeth. “And I don’t know of anything that brings people together, in these fragmented times, like the joy of hearing traditional jazz live.” Adds Evan, “It reaches fans who are 17 or 97, who speak English or Russian or Spanish or Japanese - it’s a joy and an honor to get to play this music around the world in 2019."