"Western Box Turtles draw from the music’s deeper-than-Nashville roots…" – Shepherd Express "…twentysomething neo-swingers and folks old enough to be their grandparents turn out to hear the band." – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "…that knucklehead element you just can’t buy." – Dave Maleckar Host, Hotel Milwaukee April 27, 2000 By Nick Carter of the Journal Sentinel staff The Western Box Turtles swing. But precisely what does swing mean in the aftermath of the recent lounge and swing-music revivals? To which brand of swing do the Box Turtles bow? Count Basie's? Benny Goodman's? Asleep at the Wheel's? "None of them," says lead vocalist and fiddle player Danny Smith. "We're more along the lines of western swing blues bands like Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys." Click here to view the rest of this article online & listen to a sample of our music. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel June 30, 1999 By Nicholas Frank The new swing revival is already old hat, but Milwaukee's Western Box Turtles showed Tuesday night that old Western swing done right is ageless. The roots of Western swing run deep, and the Box Turtles don't fail to acknowledge their sources. Songs by Gene Autry, Junior Brown, Louis Prima and Bob Wills made up the Turtles' two-hour set at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino Stage with Sprecher Brewery and the Onion Newspaper. Hilarious Louis Jordan rousers "Fat Back and Corn Liquor" and "I Like 'Em Fat Like That" inspired energetic dancing from both oldsters and youngsters. Newest Box Turtle Eddie Rivers coaxed the lap steel guitar into mimicking train whistles and crying loons. Danny Smith's fiddle jigs inspired "yee-has!" from the crowd. Guitar, bass and drums kept the rhythms glued tight. Mandolinist Tom Schwark's dry, wry vocals on "Lookin' High and Low For My Baby" and "That's Alright, Mama" turned the blues into joy. "Milwaukee's Only Western Swing Band" jokes that it plays songs by dead people, but it let the audience know the music is alive and well. NightLife Section March 26, 1999 By Gemma Tarlach Here it is, straight from the Turtle's mouth: "Our music is just absolutely a hoot," says the Western Box Turtles' bassist Mark Hembree. "We make the damnedest racket." The Box Turtles have been fiddling around with western swing for four years. The musical style, popularized by Texas legend Bob Wills in the '30s and '40s, marries fiddles and two-stepping with big band bopping. An affinity for Wills and western swing classics, such as "San Antonio Rose," brought the Box Turtles together. Ranging in age from mid-30s to just shy of 50, the band's members each did time in a variety of bluegrass, country rock and "psychobilly" bands. Singer and fiddler Danny Smith, formerly of The Miller Brothers, started the group in 1995 with fellow fiddler Tom Schwark, who also sings and plays the mandolin. Drummer Andy Pagel and guitarist Steve Hajduch signed on soon after. Hembree, an alum of the Union Hill Boys, rounded out the lineup in 1998 after the original bassist left. The name Western Box Turtles came to the band just moments before a gig at the Schlitz Audubon Center. "In the room where we were getting ready, there was an empty terrarium that said 'Eastern Box Turtles.' We changed the sign to 'Western' and put it up on an easel (next to the stage)," remembers Schwark. "We never bothered thinking of another name." The Box Turtles have since become favorites at pubs and clubs around town where twentysomething neo-swingers and folks old enough to be their grandparents turn out to hear the band. They also played Summerfest in 1998, opening for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. The Box Turtles members don't want to be mistaken for yet another flavor-of-the-month swing band, however. "We were playing this long before the trend hit Milwaukee," says Schwark. "We don't get out much. We didn't even know there was a fad going on. And other people talk about doing western swing, but I want to know, where's the fiddle?" "Hey, we've got two fiddles!" quips Pagel. What makes the Box Turtles distinctive, Smith says, is their own arrangement of tunes usually played by big bands. "Most swing bands have horns," says Smith. "We think we can do a lot of the horn section on strings. It's a different tone, a different timbre, but we think we can pull it off." The Box Turtles' repertoire includes the works of Wills and his Texas Playboys as well as the more traditional swing and jump blues of Louis Prima and Louis Jordan. Responding to fan requests to take the Box Turtles home, the band is releasing a 10-track CD that was recorded "live in one big take" in a converted church in Cascade. "My dad said the band reminded him of a runaway bus, coming down the road, and you're worried that a piece might fly off and hurt somebody," says Hembree. "We wanted to capture that feeling of danger on our album." "It's a poor man's Rolling Stones' 'No Security' album," adds Schwark. "We're not here to solve mankind's problems. We're here to have fun." Click here to view this article online & listen to a sample of our music. March 25, 1999 Re: Cd Release Party By Dave Luhrssen Swing certainly isn't just the Mighty Blue Kings, nor even Louis Jordan or Count Basie. During the 1930's and 40's, swing penetrated country music, infusing it with a rhythmic drive it had never known. The result was a genre called western swing, and the Western Box Turtles have been keeping Western swing alive in '90s Milwaukee. Their debut disc features songs by western swing's biggest star, Bob Wills, along with country classics and tunes by such African-American contemporaries of Wills as Louis Jordan and Slam Stewart. Their performances have a lightness and grace, stiffened by a little unpretentious grit that keeps their music close to its sources without simply replicating the past. It's a delightful effort. Shepherd Express Reader's Poll 1998 Best Country Band Western Box Turtles Not just a bunch of goons in big hats, no, not at all! Western Box Turtles draw from the music's deeper-than-Nashville roots, mixing it up into a sound they call "messed-up western" and "swingabilly." This Week's Top Pick: The Western Box Turtles featuring Eddie Rivers Fyfe's Corner Bistro, E. Wash. @ Dickinson Friday, April 2, 9:00 p.m. Click here to view article.