One Hand Clapping RecordsThe Night Owls
A supper-club jazz trio living at the eternal 2 a.m. — the last people in a tradition that doesn't keep regular hours: the saloon song, the swing standard, the ballad you sing when the chairs are already up on the other tables. They pass it between three voices like a bottle around a table, and the music never stops, so nobody ever has to be the one holding it when it does.
Supper-club jazz at the eternal 2 a.m. — saloon songs, swing standards, the torch ballad you sing once the chairs are up, passed between three voices like a bottle around the last occupied table.
The Late Set
One long last call that never quite arrives.
They Take Turns
Vane sings like a man telling you something he just this second decided to tell you; the three of them pass the lead the way you pass the night, so nobody is ever left holding it alone.
Vincent “Vane” Cassady
the storyteller; the saloon song
Augustus “Gus” Remé
the scat-arranger; charts the room
Della Raines
the ache; swing meets gospel
The Room at Two
They take turns, and the taking of turns is the whole thing — the way the passing of a bottle around a table is the whole night and not just a thing that happens during it. They are the last people in a tradition that doesn't keep regular hours anymore: the saloon song, the swing standard, the ballad you sing when the chairs are already up on the other tables. They hold it between the three of them and pass it the way you pass something you don't want to be the one holding when the music stops.
Except here the music does not stop, so nobody ever has to find out what that would feel like. It is always two in the morning at the Night Owls' table, and last call — the one the rest of the world has to answer to — simply never comes. Vane talks to the room between numbers and the room goes quiet, because he sounds like a man deciding, right then, to tell you the truth.
The Extras
The small stubborn objects and the lyric books — some free, some sold out, some lost. Scarcity is part of the record.
The Last Glass
Passed hand to hand around the table, never set down, never quite empty. To set it down would be to end the night, and the Night Owls have made a quiet career of refusing to.
The 2 A.M. Songbook
The standards they keep alive, in the order they tend to surface once the chairs go up. Coffee-ringed, smoke-cured, never reprinted.
Pull a Thread
Every band on the label is one room of the same house. A few doors out of this one:
It's two in the morning here, always. Pull up a chair.