In the center of a bustling downtown full of nightlife there is an old brick alley way and a sign that points to a place that is one flight of stairs beneath the street level. Take an elevator down a flight and into the past.  Step into a place that is called the Scat Jazz Lounge. It is just a few blocks from a neighborhood that was once called Hell’s Half Acre but the Scat Jazz Lounge is a slice of heaven in a thriving north Texas city.

The Scat Jazz Lounge is full of folks drinking, smoking and listening to music. There are no televisions flickering behind the bar and no neon beer signs cluttering the walls. On the stage is a group of young musicians playing an old Roy Brown tune and making it their own. It can’t be Saturday, April 28, 2012, but it is. We can’t be in Fort Worth, Texas, but we are and The Royal Rhythmaires are tearing up the bandstand.

The Royal Rhythmaires (TRR) is a group of musicians who are playing their own version of post war rhythm and blues. The crowd is made up of local hipsters dancing to sounds from the mid-1950s in a town that revels in the cowboy culture of the mid-1850s.

TRR is made up of saxophonists Alex Hernandez on baritone and Douglas Brown on tenor, Damian Sisca is the bands pianist. The rhythm section is made up of bassist Ed Cannon and Brendon Fenno on drums. TRR’s not so secret weapon is a singer with simply amazing chops, style and taste. Her name is Jai Malano. She has a vocal delivery that is all her own. Malano and the rest of TRR sound right at home in the Scat Jazz Lounge. They would have sounded right at home in a nightclub on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue in the late 40s and early 50s as well. It is this west coast blues, jump blues or what is referred to as rhythm and blues that has captivated the audience on a Saturday night.

I caught up with TRR’s baritone man, Alex Hernandez last Friday. We talked about his background in music, his band mates and their great new recording.

David Mac (DM): How long has TRR been together?

Alex Hernandez (AH): We formed the band about three years ago. We did our first gig on July 3^rd , 2010, at the Fort Worth Block Party.  

DM: When did you first develop a feel for this type of music?

AH: I grew up in Los Angeles listening to jazz and rhythm and blues. I got involved with rockabilly and the jump blues scene out there.  I was playing in bands in and around Los Angeles when I was a senior in high school. I was playing in over 21 clubs about four nights a week. The rockabilly and blues scene was going pretty strong out there in the 90’s You could see great live roots music practically any night of the week in Southern California. The last band I was in was called, Howlin’ Al and the Sharps.  It had three horns, a piano, bass and drums. I would even sit in with Big Jay McNeely and Joe Houston on occasion. Once I moved to Texas I knew I wanted to start my own band.  

DM: How long have you been in Texas?

AH:  I moved to Fort Worth about eight years ago. 

DM: How did you go about putting the band together? 

AH: It took me a year and a half to find everybody who understood what we were trying to do. In Fort Worth when you say you’re a blues band, they assume you’re going to be a Stevie Ray Vaughan cover band or something along those lines. What we do has a real raw roots sound. Not everybody knows how to play this music. 

Our bassist Ed Cannon is from Fort Worth. When I first came here he was playing with Big Daddy Alright. They were looking for a sax player. I backed them up at some of their shows. I played with them for about three years. Ed and I kind of branched off and started looking for other people to form a band.

There are so many killer musicians in this part of the country. You have the world famous jazz school at the University of North Texas about thirty miles north of here in Denton. Many of these players though have a better background in jazz. They might be very technically proficient but if you don’t understand what rhythm and blues is supposed to sound like you can’t play it correctly.

Doug Brown is a tenor player who used to play with the great Johnny Reno back in the day. He understood the style. When he plays, it sounds like one of those old recordings. We are lucky to have such a great pianist in Damian Sisca. Our drummer, Brendan Fenno, is the most recent addition to the band. He has been with us about five months.  He is a big Louie Prima fan.  He fit right in and understood what we are doing.

DM: That leaves your vocalist Jai Malano. She is special. You hit the jackpot when you found her.

AH: Absolutely! I’ve always been in bands with great musicians, but without a great vocalist out front, it  just doesn’t work.  When we first met Jai she told us she sings real loud. She asked if that was going to be a problem.  Her speaking voice is kind of quiet but when she starts singing man, she lets it rip! I keep telling her, “You’ll never hear me tell you you’re singing too loud.  Whatever’s going to come to you, you just let it go.” She has the perfect voice to compliment this music. Her voice is unique and powerful.  Not many people can do what she does.

DM: I am sure you get asked this all the time but I have to ask. You don’t have guitar player in your band. Why?

AH: Go back and listen to those Big Joe Turner records. They had piano up front with really heavy horns and you had that voice. I don’t think I consciously didn’t want a guitar player in the band.  The last thing I had to worry about in Texas was finding a guitar player. What we needed was a pianist and a singer. Once we got around to having the band’s sound take shape, it was like, “No we’re not going to get a guitar player.  It sounds good the way it is. I’ll make the horn arrangements so we don’t need the guitar.” When we are trying to book a gig a lot of people say, “You don’t have a guitar player?” They aren’t sure what to make of us. When I try and explain to folks what we are doing they still don’t get it but when they hear us play they love it.

DM: Let’s talk about the new album.

AH: The CD is called, Shuck and Jive. It was recorded live in the studio on February 18^th and 19^th  of this year. It came out on April 6th. The album was recorded straight, live in the studio in a day and a half.  Every recording on that album is all of us standing in one room. We had one mic for the two horns, one mic on Jai, two mics on the piano, one on the bass and a couple mics on the drum set. Every recording is just one take from beginning to end, nothing is overdubbed. It is just us live playing together in one room.

DM; That’s the way they used to make records.

AH: Exactly!  We wanted to capture that sound.  Back when this style of music was originally recorded they all did it in one shot.

DM: That is what made those old timers such great musicians.

 AH: Absolutely....they had to do it right and a lot of things they didn’t do right made it onto those old records. It makes it interesting.  You listen to the old recordings and you can hear all the little nuances and all the little things that maybe if they had the chance they wouldn’t have put on there. It gives those recordings that authentic sound you know. 

DM: I noticed that you went down to the Fort Horton Studios down in Wyldwood, Texas, to record the album.  

AH: We knew about Billy Horton’s recording style. Once we knew we were going to record an album, we knew that he’d be the one who would understand exactly what we would want. He’s like an encyclopedia for recording styles, especially for music of the 40s and 50s. The microphones, equipment and everything we used for this recording was vintage except for the hard drive that we recorded on.

DM: The CD has lots of original material written by the band that sounds great. There are some very cool covers as well. How do you go about selecting that material?

AH:  I have about 2,000 different rhythm and blues songs on my computer (iTunes). I tried to pick songs that were more on the obscure side. Many of these tunes were popular in their day. People could dance to them. Many of these tunes however are just not covered by other bands anymore and they have kind of fallen off the radar through the years. In their day they were popular and they were popular for a reason.

DM: What’s on the horizon for TRR?

AH: We’re already starting to write some new material for our second album that should be out late this year or early in 2013. We’re just trying to get the word out about who we are and what we do. We are booked for a couple of shows in Austin.  We have our regular gigs here in Fort Worth. We are also trying to get some dates in LA in August or September. We would like to do some European festivals as our brand of blues is very popular over there.   

DM: What is it about TRR that you would like people to know?

AH: We know that the music we play is not main stream. It is a very small niche in the larger music world. We also know there is not much money in playing this style of music but we don’t care. We do it anyway because we love it. We are very glad that we are finding an audience that loves it too.

DM: Thanks for your time this evening Alex. I enjoyed it and thanks for the great music.

AH: It is my pleasure. Thank you, Dave.

Editor's note: Visit our links page on this site to find out where you can see this band live and get a copy of SHUCK AND JIVE.