Hotel Gypsies

Hotel Gypsies – Hobo Folk Acoustic-Calm, melodic & sweetly melancholy, Hotel Gypsies weave their acoustic songs together with a harmony that feels like home. Minimal instrumentation & well-crafted vocal melodies give the folksy duo plenty to work with, featuring original material & carefully chosen covers, equally rootsy & classic.
[source]

Also, a cheeky nod to our genre in the “Aggiefest Edition” of the Hype Weekly’s “Stereoscopes!” (Hotel Gypsies are the only band in the Aggiefest lineup with the word “hobo” in their genre…)

Hobo- With a clean pair of underwear in your front pocket and a can of mustache/guitar peg wax in your back, you’re ready to ride the rail to Aggiefest where you not only have a designated place to busk, but you will also be bewildered to find that you have a sound man and an audience that planned to see  your show. Don’t be alarmed, these people aren’t here to hassle you or chase you out of town with sticks. Their fascination lies in wonderment as to how you can see from under that filthy, drooping felt hat, and how you learned to swill your whiskey and stomp in time.
[source] 

Thank-you, The Hype Weekly! ♥

Members: Justin Trowbridge [Alekzander Mohwinkle] & Chantelle Constable [Blythe Barrister]

Genre: Hobo Folk Noir

Description: Plainsbilly music with Old World influence.

Biography: Hotel Gypsies is a “hobo folk noir” duo composed of Justin Trowbridge and Chantelle Constable, also known by their stage personas of Alekzander Mohwinkle and Blythe Barrister.

The Gypsies first met through the Manhattan-based prog rock band “Lithus.” Discovering a love for “old fashioned” music, down home fun, and a twisted sense of humor in common they decided to form their own side-project in order to explore these aesthetics musically.

Based in Manhattan, KS, Hotel Gypsies are currently developing a program of covers (including jazz standards, 70s folk rock, and spirituals) and touching, toe-tapping originals.

Constable’s impeccable and moving vocal performance is supported by her masterful handling of both piano and guitar (though not at the same time, mind!). Trowbridge manages to frail a five-string banjo and hammer away at on an accordion with a technique that would make most trained players cringe, he’s been known to pick up the alto fiddle (viola) when he thinks no one can hear, and he manages enough rythym to sound like he knows what he’s doing on the drums. Just a warning: watch out when he takes that washboard in hand!

Influences:
Blythe: Jill Tracy, Sarah Slean, Judy Garland, Fistful of Mercy, Jennifer Knapp, Christine Schafer, Nicole Byblow, Mumford & Sons, Gustav Mahler, Kurt Weill, early jazz and blues, French pop and chanson, 20th century art songs, Appalachian folk, ragtime, hymns and spirituals
(film) Arsenic and Old Lace, Alfred Hitchcock, Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich
(literature) A. A. Milne, The Little White Horse, Sherlock Holmes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dashiell Hammett, Jack Kerouac
(life) the circus, vaudeville, Weimar Berlin, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, the French Revolution

Alekz: Mike West, Charlie Parr, Calamity Cubes, Fast Food Junkies, Black-Hearted Step-Fathers, Wildcat Creek, Richard O’Brien, Handsy Step-Grandfathers, G-Dub & Slick Willie, the Homestead Family, Herb Daley, the bayou.

Band Interests: Doctor Who, road trips, Kansas, grave-robbing, cats, baking cookies, guitar-fetching, flowers, whiskey