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Carbondale
Nightlife, July 20, 2000 “I‘ve got a last name for a first name and a first name for a last name, ” jokes Patton James, frontman for Patton James and the Synchromatics, a swing band based out of Nashville, Tennessee that specializes in the modern swing music inspired by the original Las Vegas lounge and jazz scene. Patton James plays guitar and sings. His Synchromatics consist of Dennis Taylor on saxophone, Dave Nuding on drums, Bob Kommersmith on bass and Joe "Hose" Fleming on guitar. They play a range of material, much of it original, as well as "Mack the Knife," Sinatra, and Duke Ellington. "We all play vintage instruments and wear vintage clothes," says James. "We look retro and we've got a retro sound, but we try to keep it modern. Kinda campy, kinda cakey, kinda cool." The band, which began in Nashville, has remained close to home for the first three years. James says that people in Nashville often look for something outside the country scene, and swing is never a bad way to go. "We get a big crowd of swing dancers," he says James and his crew are looking to move out of Music City and Carbondale will be their northernmost stop. "I'd like to do a lot more colleges, spread it out a bit. We've been playing our hometown for three years now. I'm ready to spread my wings a little bit. I'd love to go to Vegas and play," says James. "[Our style] fits the whole lounge thing, kind of like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. It's not like they're living in the past, but they like it. It's not like that grunge thing. Everybody gets dressed up instead of dressed down. It's a big party." Though they promote themselves as a swing band, Patton James and the Synchromatics aren't exactly straight swing along the lines of quirky folk such as the Cherry Poppin' Daddies or reformed eighties guitarists such as Brian Setzer. "We started out playing blues...and we played at Henry's coffeeshop, just for free coffee and tips. Everybody got caffeined up and the music got much faster," James explains. This led to a heavily tinged swing/jump blues style. Jump blues was pioneered by T-Bone Walker, who began as a rural, acoustic blues player in the thirties but by the mid-forties had created a faster, jazzier version of the blues. Walker, playing in a large jazz orchestra, gave traditional Delta blues an upbeat twist. He also switched to an electric guitar and extended a profound influence on electric guitar favorites such as B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and Buddy Guy. James, who writes all of the band's original material, also tries to infuse stronger lyrics into his band's swing. "Lyrically, I like to try to do something besides just 'Jump, Jive and Wail," he says. "We have one song, 'Put the Money in the Meter,' but that's our only song that is basically just an alliteration." James and the Synchromatics have landed bigger and better gigs of late, including a night of entertaining Tennessee bigwigs. "We played the governor's Christmas party last year at the Governor's Mansion. I got my picture taken with [Gov.] Don Sundquist. It's kind of like the picture of Elvis and Nixon." James may have come away from the Tennessee Governor's mansion with plenty of silver, but his array of political table settings doesn't even come close to paralleling his massive stash of bowling shirts. "I have a collection of over 250 bowling shirts, probably the largest bowling shirt collection in the state of Tennessee." This, of course, brings up the obvious question: why bowling shirts? "Why not bowling shirts?" James asks back rhetorically, as if he can't even comprehend the question. "You gotta collect something so it might as well be bowling shirts. They're cool. They've got somebody else's name on the front, some cool stitching on the back..."
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