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Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue have the perfect recipe for success.
One part traditional country – think a dreamy Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash’s hard-edge, Merle Haggard’s tell-it-like-it-is approach and the legendary Bob Wills – another rockabilly – heavy drums and a faster beat, the band is a celebration of American twang, honky tonk and western swing with a New Orleans’ spin.
And, good news, Houma, “The Gal” and the boys are coming to town at the Best of the Bayou Festival.
Gal Holiday, aka Vanessa Niemann, fronts the band. The Maryland native has called the Big Easy home for more than a decade. A job transfer lured her to Louisiana, but singing gigs rooted her.
Surrounded by so many female jazz singers, Niemann found her niche in yesteryear’s country sounds.
Accompanied by the Honky Tonk Revue – Dave Brouillette, upright bass; Steve Spitz, pedal steel guitar, Gregory Good, rhythm guitar; and Chris Adkins, lead guitar – Gal Holiday is expanding its faithful base since its 2004 start. They’ve also garnered a number of awards, including the Big Easy Awards’ Best Country/Folk Band for 2008, 2009 and 2010 and Offbeat Magazine’s Best of the Beat awards for Best Country/Folk Band.
“Initially, I started out singing professionally Big Band and jazz and some surf music – that was a brief interlude. But I was attracted to rockabilly from the late ‘50s and ‘60s and R&B. I always enjoyed dance music.”
The shift to traditional country lends itself to a blues feel, Niemann explained. And injected with New Orleans’ swinging feel, the music comes full circle.
“Again, it is dance music,” she said. “Everything here swings in a different way than it does, say, in Texas.
“If we do a cover-tune heavy set, we have people come up and say it’s the same sound as the original, but we are doing it so differently.”
The band’s eponymous first CD, released in 2007, sold like wildfires, and in the second – Set Two (2010) – fans caught a glimpse of Gal Holiday’s original compositions, “Louisiana Waltz” and “I’m Coming Home” intermingled among the covers.
Pre-production on their latest project, “South of I-12”, is in the works courtesy of fans on Kickstarter. The band spent the first week of the month in the studio recording. Along with several originals, Niemann said the group was debating adding one cover – maybe a Charlie Rich, or possibly a bluegrass rework of Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield,” which they first played at the Big Easy Awards in 2011.
“We played it on the Gentilly Stage (at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival) last year and it went off great,” she said.
Locals can expect to hear “South of I-12” material, as well as the stuff that put Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue on the map.
