By JOHN EBY
Dowagiac Daily News

The only thing loud about Dan Hicks is his bold outfits.

Dowagiac can decide for itself March 13 when the Californian brings six Hot Licks to Wood Fire for “Tangled Tales” in folk swing.

Released last March, “Tangled Tales” puts music to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (for a film festival), resurrects “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” from 1912 and includes lyrics for only the scat-sung title track (“Bah bey bah-deet dot doody-doot doot de da-lee dot doo…”).

A proper label for Hicks’ “kind of blending” has always proven elusive, but it involves two girl singers who provide percussion, violin, bass, lead guitar and himself on vocals and rhythm guitar.

Hicks described his music this way on July 3, 2007, in Breckenridge, Colo.: “My music is kind of a blending. We have acoustic instruments. It starts out with kind of a folk music sound, and we add a jazz beat and solos and singing. We have the two girls that sing, and jazz violin, and all that, so it’s kind of light in nature, it’s not loud. And, it’s sort of, in a way, kinda carefree.

“Most of the songs are, I wouldn’t say funny, but kinda maybe a little humorous. We all like jazz, so we like to play in a jazzy way, with a swing sound you know, so I call it ‘folk swing.’ There are a lot of original tunes that I’ve been writing through the years, so that has its personal touch on it.”

“We need six people to make our sound,” Hicks told the Daily News Tuesday afternoon in a phone interview from the Mill Valley in Marin County north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Tangled Tales was recorded in Sausalito.

All 12 tunes are catchy, but the last, “Let It Simmer,” is particularly infectious.
“Let it simmer/cook it slow. Cool your heels/let it go. Don’t get hot/why be a fool? That’s the thought/don’t lose your cool … Count to 10/then count again … Don’t pop a vessel/don’t pull your hair,” goes the mellow national anthem. Maria Muldaur, whom he has played with, also recorded the song. She is best known for her million-selling 1974 hit, “Midnight at the Oasis.”

Ironically, since Hicks started on snare in marching band, his bands, rooted in folk, often lack a drummer.

Best known for the hit “I Scare Myself,” Hicks, 68, was born in Little Rock, Ark., on Dec. 9, 1941.

His dad was a career military man. His mom played some piano. At 5, he moved with his family to California, eventually settling north of San Francisco in Santa Rosa. By 14, he was performing with area dance bands.

He has been playing with different lineups of Hot Licks since 1968.

Signed by Epic in 1969, the album “Original Recordings” was issued.

That version of the group lasted until 1971.

The next version recorded three albums, culminating with 1973’s “Last Train to Hicksville” – and finally added a drummer.

Always a critical success, that recording was commercial enough to land him on the cover of Rolling Stone, whereupon he promptly disbanded the group.

While that makes a good story, “We were ready to disband anyway,” he said March 2.

In 1974, he explained that he didn’t want to be a bandleader anymore, which he found a “load” he didn’t want to shoulder.

The red or yellow-plaid suits aside, he is “basically a loner,” and the group had gotten too democratic.

The group reunited in 1991 for an “Austin City Limits” which aired in 1992 and also featured his new group, The Acoustic Warriors.

The Acoustic Warriors recorded one CD, “Shootin’ Straight” on Private Music in 1996.
It was recorded live at McCabe’s in Santa Monica.

“Beatin’ the Heat” in 2000 some call his Hot Licks “comeback” album, although he’s been around since 1965 when he got out of college and has never really gone away.

“I’ve been playing all along,” said Hicks, though sometimes he might be found singing jazz standards “like Mel Torme.”

Not only did he collaborate with Elvis Costello, Bette Midler, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones and swing revivalist Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats, but his label, Surfdog “got a couple of ladies down L.A. way” for his “Lickettes.”

Karla DeVito. Think “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” with Meatloaf. And Jessica Harper, the Chicagoan who also writes children’s books and has acted in Woody Allen movies.

To pull off an album like that, “You make a list of people you think are compatible and are mutual fans,” Hicks said. I approached Tom and Bette on a personal level with a phone call. I had a nodding acquaintance with them.

“(Costello) has liked a lot of my songs and thought about recording one of them. It’s a mutual fanship.”

Does Dan feel a kinship with another Dowagiac visitor, Leon Redbone, given their longevity, reputation for musicianship and that they are invariably described as “eccentric?”

“Leon’s the eccentric one,” Hicks says amiably. “I played with him recently. I like his picking, his choice of tunes.”

Not only has Hicks “sat in the audience to listen to him, which I rarely ever do,” but he has talked to Redbone’s wife and knows where he lives.

Like Redbone, Hicks pops up in unexpected places, from the 1991 film “Class Action” with Gene Hackman to advertising spots for Levi and Bic lighters.

The current lineup of Hot Licks has been together varying amounts: 10 years for the guitarist, seven for the Lickettes, Roberta Donnay and Daria, and “zero” for the new violinist embarking on his first five-day tour of “major metropolises.”

“He’ll be wrestling our suitcases into the hotel lobby while we primp in front of the mirrors,” Hicks jokes.

Hicks, who was 19 when he picked up guitar, said song ideas “float around without being finished. The beginning of a song could be 20 years old.”

In the mid-Sixties he played coffee houses around the Bay area and in Nevada.

Then he moved to Haight-Ashbury.

In fact, he spent the Summer of Love there in 1967.

“I guess I was a hippie,” he allows, “but I had a job. I was in a band. Not bumming.”

Yes, he knew some of the Grateful Dead, including Palo Alto’s Pigpen before he joined Jerry Garcia and the former Warlocks.

When he first appeared on the scene in the Sixties, he was a young guy playing older sounds, though in a fresh and original way.

His melancholy voice and sly point of view set him apart in any era.

In “The Blues My Naughty Baby Gave to Me,” he enumerates 17 ways to bring yourself down (“There are blues you get from women/when you see them going swimming/and you haven’t got a bathing suit yourself”), but the pace is too jaunty and full of flurries of flamenco notes to be anything but a blues antidote.

In vintage Dan Hicks form, Tangled Tales mashes outlaw swing music, insightful charm and brilliant melodies that have endeared him to audiences and fellow artists for four decades.

Featuring a world-class collection of musical talent including instrumental virtuosos David Grisman, Charlie Musselwhite and slide-guitarist Roy Rogers and produced by Grammy-winning roots music producer Chris Goldsmith, Tangled Tales delivers eight original tunes that feel like instant Dan Hicks classics.

Also available is a limited edition vinyl version of Tangled Tales, with cover art and packaging designed – as always – by Hicks himself.

For 40 years Dan has created all of his own album art and promotional materials – cutting and pasting and drawing and illustrating – all by hand.

Hicks has always had a clear idea of the aesthetics that best complement his music.
In fact, the visuals are essential for Dan to further communicate the message of the songs, and he considers them an extension of the musical vision of each album.

Family and friends who visit his home know this first hand, as remnants from magazine clippings, pieces of his drawings, old photographs, pages from books and atlases and more can be found on his floors throughout; clippings that, more often than not, find their way into his work.

Tangled Tales is a more-than-worthy addition to Hicks’ already massive body of work.
It is an irresistible nod to Hicks’ undeniable musical legacy and a potent reminder of all of the musical inspiration that this great American songwriter has spawned.

Hicks, who has also collaborated with Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett, serves up his unique fashion, attitude and swagger that are embodied in his eccentricity and totally unique sound.

His counter-culture appeal, which twice landed him on the cover of Rolling Stone, has always been rooted in his songwriting.

His lyrics have been touted as some of the sharpest-tongued, driest-witted and subtly hilarious bits of irreverence ever committed to rhyme.

He sets these lyrical gems to quirky tunes that trade on a bagful of jazz chords and irresistible rhythm. He readily acknowledges the “retro feel” to his music.

“My taste evolved,” said Hicks, who doesn’t look much like a loner in his red suit or relating humorously with listeners, though “I’ve tried not talking to the audience,” he said.

Tickets cost $50 and include a buffet.

Hicks performs about 8 p.m.

www.danhicks.net
www.woodfiredining.com