Coming to Salt Lake City: Hot House West Jazz Fest

The inaugural Hot House West Jazz Fest is this Sunday, Oct. 5, at Woodbine Food Hall. Music starts at 1pm. I caught up with Hot House West Executive Director Nathan Royal earlier this week about how it came together, his vision for the festival’s future and why jazz ought to be synonymous with dancing.  

Is there a backstory behind this festival happening a few days from now? 

Nathan: With my nonprofit Hot House West, we like bringing people together and getting them excited about swinging jazz, making it part of the community. We’ve done smaller events — like last year’s Swing Renaissance, which we did several times — and we wanted to pull together more of the jazz community, musicians we’ve been working with, and have a big celebration.

After talking with my partner about doing a jazz festival, we decided that maybe we could do it at Woodbine. Then the Woodbine folks came to me and said, ‘Have you guys ever thought about doing a jazz festival, and would you want to do it here?’ We decided the time was right. It feels like we are putting this together at the last minute for what it is, but the goal is to get it going and create a yearly jazz event.

And everyone playing is local, correct? Tell me about who’s involved?

Nathan: Closing out the festival is our organization’s band, Hot House West Swing Orchestra. We’ve got The Corey Christiansen Trio with Jake Saslow. Corey runs the jazz program at Utah State University and is well known outside of Utah as a guitar player. Jake was the tenor player for Michael Buble’s band for a long time and lives in Utah now. We’ve got Corner Pocket, a big band that does a Count Basie thing. We’ve also got Mina Thomas Brett, an incredible singer who moved to town last year. The State Street Stompers are playing, a group that was formed through our organization. There’s also a group calling themselves Doctors Without Medical Degrees, a hilarious name, and it’s run by the guy who runs the jazz program at the University of Utah, along with the guy who runs the jazz program at BYU. The Hearfolk featuring Melissa Chilinski will play, and my trio (The Nathan Royal Trio) will play the afterparty at Drift Lounge.

Stages will be set up outside. Food and workshops will happen inside the food hall. The goal is to get the community together, get them excited about jazz, and have a fun Sunday.

Where do you think we’re at, locally and collectively, as far as being a good audience for the growing talent here in Utah?

Nathan: I think it’s come a long way. A big part of why we set out to do this was we felt it had a long way to go, that there weren’t many cooperative things happening in the jazz community. There wasn’t a lot of cooperation toward building the audience and community and culture for it here. Nobody thinks of jazz when they think of Utah, but there are a lot of great players and organizations here. We wanted to pull together the swing dancers and universities, and overall excellence in the community.

When we played Kingsbury Hall earlier this year, we sold 1500 tickets. To me, that’s a good mark of increased interest. We used to have the Salt Lake Jazz Festival, and it disappeared even before COVID happened. We’re trying to bring a new, youthful, collaborative spirit to the music and get that happening again here.

As far as festivals go, this one seems pretty affordable.

Nathan: You know, we do a lot of house concerts as an organization. Because this is the first one — and because we’re doing it in a shorter stretch of time — it’s also important for Woodbine to get people in there and eat, so we’re doing a suggested donation of $25.

What does success look like to you for this festival?

Nathan: Capacity for Woodbine is 550, but I’d love to see anywhere from 500 to 1000 over the course of the day. Those are high numbers, though.

Even breaking even would be great. We want to take the energy and the joy and the camaraderie from this festival and apply for grants, so we’re able to have a much bigger runway into our second one, even connecting nearby venues like Templin Family Brewing and Granary Live and Fisher Brewing Company, with bands possibly doing parades from one venue to the next. 

I could see it growing bigger in that way, with the collective vision being to make a creative, fun, multi-venue festival over the years, primarily focused on swinging jazz.

And why jazz? What’s the draw for you?

Nathan: I like music where there’s a common language. If I learn 10 jazz standards, I can go anywhere in the world and play them with anybody who will likely know those same songs. You don’t have to sit in a room together with four bandmates and write songs that you can only play with four people. I like to improvise, too; it has a form, but it’s different every time. And I really like the swing rhythm. That 1930s thing is always fun for me, to take that and modernize it in different ways, reconnecting the music with dance.

You have a broad knowledge of playing this music, but do you see people experiencing it for the first time? Do you get to see the lights come on for them?

Nathan: Absolutely. Most people have heard jazz, and many think they don’t like it because it’s run this really long gamut of over 100 years. It’s prospered in universities where they overcomplicate or overintellectualize it. They think of jazz as elevator music or this stuff that’s hard to understand. One of my favorite things to do in the world is to take somebody who has heard it in that way and has negative connotations, then show them that, no, it’s dance music. It’s joyful and energetic and fun. I get the chance to change their perspective.

What’s your personal jazz story? How did you get into it?

Nathan: I was playing rock guitar in high school, and I joined the jazz band in high school and didn’t know anything. I don’t know how well I was taught, either. When I went to a jam in Colorado and was told to practice for six months before coming back, I didn’t. But jazz stuck with me, and I was interested in the music. I wanted to play professionally, and felt like I needed to get a degree. When I decided to go to music school, the only available program was in jazz. I was playing a lot of bluegrass at the time, but always studying jazz.

Frank Vignola came to town through the Jazz SLC series in 2010 and did his tribute to Django Reinhardt. He was playing all these Django songs with two guitars, a bass, and a violin. I got seats right up front and was blown away. It’s exactly what I wanted to do. The music is acoustic. It’s improvisational. High energy. Joyful. The day after that concert, I started the band that became Hot House West, which then became the nonprofit Hot House West.

This festival sounds like you’re taking the intimacy and camaraderie of a house concert and making it happen in a bigger house, with more bands and lots more friends.

Nathan: It’s not a big thing. We haven’t had a lot of time to really advertise it. We don’t necessarily want 2000 people showing up. Then we’re in trouble. But if we get some people down there, have a bunch of great musicians, friends, good food, and Fisher beer …

… then what else could you possibly need, right?

Nathan: We’ll have new problems to face. If it’s a really good vibe and sponsors get excited and want to throw down money for next year, we’ll have a year to solve those problems. We just want to have a great party around music and not take ourselves too seriously. Music is so good at creating that vibe. It loosens people up, almost like alcohol.

Advance tickets are available.

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