THE SCENE
This week in local music: Johnny Hott's Piedmont Souprize
 
 Kate Bredimus
Richmond.com
Thursday August 21, 2003

If you ever start to feel that the Richmond music scene is sliding into the doldrums, that no one "good" comes through here, and if they do, then no one comes out to see them, take solace in the weekly institutions that give this city its unique musical pastiche. There's always something going on. Monday nights Devil's Workshop's 17 players dole out the brass sass at Bogart's. On Tuesday poets and musicians come out in droves for soul, funk, and jazz at Tropical Soul Café in Jackson Ward. Omar Faison spins down-tempo house in Europa's candlelit lounge downstairs on Wednesdays. Every Thursday Chez Roue packs the house with their rootsy swing at Southern Culture. The Caribbean Pot in Midlothian stirs it up with live reggae every Friday, and every other Saturday you can hear George Winn and the Bluegrass Partners play that high lonesome sound at Poe's Pub.

Which brings us to Sunday nights at Southern Culture, where Johnny Hott's Piedmont Souprize are kings (and queen). These nights are not clandestine events by any means, but when you walk in the door you get the sense that you've stumbled into some secret pocket of the cityscape where age, color, and upbringing have no bearing and music is truly making the people come together. Old regulars sit up at the bar tapping their heels, urbane 20-somethings mill about with cocktails, kids try to make their way over to the band to get a closer look at the instruments. The atmosphere is lively and intimate with people dining and dancing under the restaurant's red lights. Tonight there are some big laughs as bass player Stephen McCarthy's toddler son grabs a drumstick and joins Johnny Hott for some avant-garde percussion.

Funny and weird things tend to happen at these shows. Try and find another band that will stop in the middle of their set to enact scenes from "12 Angry Men" and "The Crucible." Or stroll out of the building, still playing their instruments, and across the street into Sticky Rice to surprise its patrons.

"We've been doing this so long we have to do different things to entertain ourselves," explains guitarist Charles Arthur.

The Piedmont Souprize specializes in vintage jazz and swing, rockabilly, country western, rock -- ah hell, they specialize in a little bit of everything. At one point in the evening a stellar cover of "Fools Rush In" gives way to an improvised snippet of Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused."

"Those tunes will just come up," Arthur says. "We just let it happen."

Johnny Hott's Piedmont Souprize has been letting it happen at Southern Culture for about five or six years now. Hott, a drummer par excellence who's been a member of such seminal Richmond bands as House of Freaks, Cracker, Sparklehorse, and Gutterball, was casually playing "old-timey blues stuff like Jimmy Rogers" with Arthur, McCarthy, and saxophone player Roger Carroll. At the time Hott, Carroll, and Arthur were already playing together in the wildly popular Chez Roue at Southern Culture on Thursday nights. As is the story with most virtuosos, most of the members of the Piedmont Souprize split their time between several bands. On top of Chez Roue and the Piedmont Souprize, Arthur lends his chops to Page Wilson and Reckless Abandon and his own group, Charles Arthur and the Spacious Guys. McCarthy, who played with Hott in Gutterball, is also the guitarist for the Jayhawks.

The Piedmont Souprize debuted at the erstwhile Lucy's in Carytown on Tuesday nights before moving over to Southern Culture. "We made $17 a piece the first night we played, just passing the hat," Hott remembers. Eventually Arthur's wife, Sara, came aboard as singer, adding her honeyed voice to the lineup and giving the music a new direction.

"We're really different now than when we first started," Hott says. "We're more eclectic. The music's always changing." He uses the band's name to emphasize this point. The Piedmont Souprize is a "soup" of sound with a "prize" at the end. "At first when we were naming the band the "Sou" represented the South," Hott explains. "Meaning 'prize of the South."

No one's gonna argue with that.