Like countless musicians before her, Vanessa Niemann, better known as “Gal Holiday” of the preeminent country and western swing band Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue, was drawn to New Orleans in more ways than she could count.
The Maryland-born acting-student turned jazz singer was attracted to the incomparable music scene, the more relaxed lifestyle, the relatively low cost of living, and, of course, that timeless je ne sais quoi at the heart of the city’s allure.
Photo by Kim Welsh
“There’s some kind of glamour about New Orleans,” she said. “My grandparents used to come here in the 60s, when, as my grandmother said, ‘women still wore long dresses at night,’ and they took the streetcar in their evening attire, and they went to the Columns for dinner and a drink, you know, and all of that glamour existed here in New Orleans, and it still does. Other cities don’t have balls. There’s something about it.”
After moving to New Orleans, Niemann first joined the Shim Shamettes, a performance troupe at the forefront of the city’s now-burgeoning burlesque revival, and later on SophistiCats and SophistiKittens, and R&B/bump-and-grind band with some surf thrown in.
Five years into her new life and hungry to perform more often, she decided the time was ripe to start her own band.
Although the original plan was to pursue jazz in New Orleans, she quickly perceived an oversaturation in the genre, especially for female vocalists.
So, she embarked on a (literally) less-traveled route.
“There wasn’t much of a country music scene when we decided to start our band,” Niemann said. “We kind of ran with it, and all of a sudden all these people started coming to town and doing this old time music, and country night started up.”
A new generation of old-time buskers, jug bands, bluegrass bands, and players of related rural genres are arriving in droves and finding a fertile new environment where they can combine their various regional influences.
“I’m not saying we started it, but we were at the beginning of that, that movement,” she said. “And now we have tons of bands that we can play with and talk to about it.”
Photo by Golden Richard III
Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue (which also includes upright bassist David Brouillette, acoustic guitarist Gregory Good, drummer Michael Sollars, and a rotating lead guitarist) have definitely brought something new and flavorful to the city’s already-well-laden musical table, and they’ve absorbed plenty of their hometown’s hard-swinging, unmistakable groove in return.
“We play honky tonk music, but when we go to places like Texas, we don’t sound like those bands, because we swing a lot harder,” she said. “And I don’t even notice doing it, it just is what it is.”
She’s thought a lot about this give and take between musical roots and identity as a New Orleans musician, a balance which is especially important to navigate right now in an environment where transplant musicians are arriving in droves and city-wide dynamics are changing quickly.
“I think when you move anywhere, you’re obviously bringing your own talents and your own personality and your own place where you grew up, but I don’t feel like you should force yourself on it,” she said. “It’s tricky because there’s this old guard that really doesn’t want things to change, and I understand that… Our city has always been so integrated community-wise that I hope, I just hope that we can all come to terms with the fact that things are going to change, the city is going to change.”
Change though it certainly will, she hopes that New Orleans will be able “to maintain its integrity as the northernmost Caribbean city” and not allow modern times to squash out all those unique characteristics that have always set it apart.
“Let’s incorporate and integrate new people, and let’s hope that everyone who comes to this town appreciates, really appreciates, this city’s history,” she said. “Let’s be able to maintain that while moving forward.”
A worthy aim, and one that Niemann and the rest of her honky tonk revue embody in their own musical work.
