Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Saturday, March 20, 8 p.m., F.M. Kirby Center (71 Public Square, Wilkes Barre).Tickets: $21-$35. Info: 570.826.1100, KirbyCenter.org, BBVD.com
It was 1993, Nirvana was at the top of the charts and young musicians wanted to wear grungy clothes and emulate Kurt Cobain.
Scotty Morris, however, was fresh out of music school and working on forming a band that could combine an upbeat and eclectic style of jazz, big band swing music and rock.
A lover of all types of music, the Ventura, Calif., native simply wanted to play what he wanted to play how he wanted to play it. After a year of searching, the vocalist/guitarist/producer finally hooked up with drummer Kurt Sodergren, who proved to be an effective collaborator. From there, over the next two years they put together the rest of the band that would become known as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. On the roster are trumpeter Glen “The Kid” Marhevka, pianist Joshua Levy, saxophonist Andy Rowley, Dirk Shumaker on string bass and Karl Hunter on sax and clarinet.
Seventeen years later, Morris and his creation are still different than anything out there. It’s an old-school good time reminiscent of the 1940s and ’50s. The composing process remains the same, with Morris writing the lyrics and music and Levy handling the arrangements. BBVD continues to play more than 150 dates a year while constantly writing and recording new material.
“It took me a long time to try to find people to do it,” Morris said. “It was weird trying to get people to play swing and jazz, because Nirvana was the biggest thing on the radio. I wanted to play a combination of everything that I like.”
For Morris, that meant everything from jazz and swing to punk rock, classic rock and The Beatles.
Now the multi-platinum-selling band is touring in support of its seventh studio album, the 2008 release “How Big Can You Get (A tribute to Cab Calloway).” Later this year BBVD will release a greatest hits album, and a new album of originals. It will pull into Wilkes-Barre to play the F.M. Kirby Center Saturday night at 8 p.m.
Fans will be treated to the full suits, fedoras, slick dance moves and illimitable live energy that has become synonymous with BBVD.
“We go all out every single time,” Morris said. “That’s a huge priority for this band.”
In the mid ’90s in California, swing had an underground revival, and BBVD became the Wednesday night regular at the Brown Derby in Los Angeles. One fan, however, would change the guys’ lives forever.
Then unknown actor/writer/director Jon Favreau, who has since gone on to direct “Iron Man” and “Elf,” became friendly with BBVD. After a while, Favreau handed Morris a script and asked if the band would be interested in playing on screen in his low-budget independent film “Swingers.”
Morris and the guys agreed. When the film came out in 1996, which featured BBVD performing “You and Me and the Bottle Make Three (Tonight)” and “Go-Daddy-O,” it became a sleeper hit with a cult following that launched the careers of actors Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston (“Office Space,” “Band of Brothers”) and director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Jumper”). It also propelled BBVD into the mainstream. It went from playing 600-seat venues to 3,000-seat venues all over the country. BBVD went on to play the Super Bowl XXXIII Halftime Show in 1999. In 2004, American gymnast Carly Patterson used its song “Mr. Pinstripe Suit” during her gold medal-winning floor exercise routine.
“I met Jon early on,” Morris said. “I didn’t know he was an actor, I didn’t know he was a writer. One night he handed me a script and said, ‘I think you guys would be great for this part.’”
Morris never saw himself as a frontman. With his style of writing being different than most, he simply couldn’t find anyone that would give the vocals the sound he heard when he wrote.
“It wasn’t until 10 to 15 years ago that I realized I was going to be a singer for the rest of my life,” he said. “I was always about writing and performing. I didn’t hardly sing until I started to write all the music. I didn’t like the way other singers sounded on it. I was kind of a singer by default.”
Just last year, BBVD had songs featured on the Disney Channel’s “Fergie & Ferb,” “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance.” BBVD has made regular appearances on “Last Call with Carson Daly” and provided the theme song. BBVD also appeared on “The Tonight Show,” MTV’s “Total Request Live,” “Ally McBeal” and the original “Melrose Place.”
Still, the guys pride themselves on never giving in to the pressure to conform and be more commercial, never selling out, and always playing exactly what they want to play.
“We changed by not changing,” Morris said. “We put out music we want to play, not what we’re supposed to play. The people that like us, they’ll find us.”
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