The Hot Club of Los Angeles celebrates a decade of jazz jams at this Culver City bar

Dressed in suits, the five members of the Hot Club of Los Angeles settled onto a tiny stage inside the Cinema Bar in Culver City on a recent Monday night, as they have every week for the last 10 years, barring a few months during the pandemic.

There’s just enough room for the band’s fedora-wearing drummer, stand-up bassist and two guitarists sitting on chairs to crowd onto the platform. The accordion player stands just to the side of them on the dance floor.

The 50-person capacity bar only has a handful of people inside, but that doesn’t bother the band, which is made up of working session musicians.

You see, the Hot Club of Los Angeles isn’t trying to rack up millions of TikTok views, they just want to have a good time playing an old-school form of European-born hybrid jazz.

“It’s music for folks who just want to celebrate. This music has the energy of rock and roll but it has the intellectual properties of something more elevated, and it’s a hell of a good time,” said Jim Doyle, the drummer and vocalist for the Los Angeles-born band.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the band’s decade-long residency at the Westside institution, the group will feature guest musicians on stage every Monday night during December, but they’re not naming names as to who may show up.

“We’ll have folks sitting in with us every night, we’ll try to make it special,” Doyle said.

Along with Doyle, the group includes co-founder Carl Byron on accordion and vocals as well as Paul Eckman on upright bass, Josh Workman on guitar and Jake Bluenote on guitar and vocals.

When Roderico Castillo heard the Hot Club of Los Angeles play 10 years ago, he knew he wanted them as a permanent fixture for his venue.

Castillo has owned the Westside institution, which opened in 1947, for nearly 30 years, and loved the band’s energy and musical appeal.

“People just love their vibe and the music. Their fans vary in age from young to older, in the middle, everyone seems to really like it,” said Castillo, who has owned the bar for nearly 30 years.

Inspired by Django

The band formed in September 2011 out of a shared love for the music of guitarist  Django Reinhardt, who is considered the founder of the band’s style of jazz, which originated in Paris in the 1930s.

“It’s organic, acoustic driven music and it takes you to Paris in the 1920s and ’30s. It’s just a party,” Doyle said.

The musicians all knew each other from working in studios around the city and they decided to have a few dinners and jam to the music, which is a fusion of early jazz, swing and Eastern European music played acoustically with mostly string instruments. It’s swinging, happy music meant to get people to dance.

“It was kind of a dinner club at first and then it was like, ‘Hey, we got a set full of music so let’s bring it to a club,’ and then one set turned into another set and then another set,” Doyle said.

They eventually named themselves after Reinhardt’s own Quintette du Hot Club de France and quickly began playing live shows, with the first show at the Cinema Bar taking place just a month after the band formed.

Doyle was familiar with the venue since he had played several shows there with other bands.

Then, in December of 2011 they started appearing regularly at the Cinema Bar every Monday night after Doyle asked Castillo if they could have the stage since no other bands were performing that night.

Over the last decade, the band has performed around L.A. and beyond, including Clifton’s Brookdale Ballroom and the Redwood Bar, Laguna Arts Festival and the Django Vegas festival.

The Hot Club also served as the house band in 2017 and 2018 for Artists for Peace and Justice benefit shows, which were curated by Jackson Browne. That’s where they backed artists including Jeff Bridges, Rufus Wainwright and Browne.

Browne has sat in with the band on occasion at Cinema Bar, where the musicians feel most at home.

The right fit

“Our audience has really grown, and the place itself, the venue has the character for this kind of music. It’s intimate; you feel like you’re part of the music because there’s not that much distance between the performer and audience member,” Byron said.

The band has attracted regulars looking for a good time on a Monday night, including 56-year-old Hollywood resident Dianna Cohen, who has been coming to see the group weekly for five years.

“I love this style of music and they’re all just really great musicians and they just take it to another level. The music has a lot of energy and usually I bring my dad, who is 91, and he dances all the time,” Cohen said during a break from the band’s set, where they performed classic jazz songs sung in French and Russian as well as some original tunes.

As the band went on to perform for a crowd of about 30 or so people, they were making new fans, too, including 21-year-old Akela Spears, who was dancing by herself near the back wall of the bar as the band played. It was her first time seeing Hot Club of Los Angeles after discovering them online.

“The musicianship is incredible. It’s my favorite music to dance to and I just really loved them,” she said.

The Hot Club of Los Angeles

When: 9-11:30 p.m. every Monday

Where: Cinema Bar, 3967 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City

Cost: Free. Bar is open to the 21 and over crowd only

Information: hotclubofla.com