Ed Nicholson describes the music of Outside the Lines as eclectic.
“All of us have been subject to a number of different varied influences, ranging from ’60s and ’70s rock to western swing to gypsy jazz,” says Nicholson, who plays guitar in the group. “But who knows where Emily’s stuff comes from?”
The titles of her tunes speak volumes for the bass player, who relocated to Fayetteville in 1998 after a successful musical career in Austin, Texas. Take “Shallow End of the Gene Pool,” for example:
“My daddy was a man of letters
My mama was a head of state
And when they got their chromosomes together
They gave me all of their recessive traits
I’m an embarrassment to evolution
My disposition is unstable and cruel
My blood’s a catastrophic blend
‘Cause I’m from the shallow end of the gene pool.”
“Emily Kaitz is a jewel of a songwriter who can turn everyday life into extraordinary art,” Ezra Idlet, bass player for Trout Fishing in America, once said of Kaitz.
Playing Kaitz’s original music is “one of the things that makes (Outside the Lines) fun and makes it last,” Nicholson says. But it’s not the whole story.
Nicholson met mandolin player Stan D’Aubin when D’Aubin stopped by his office at Tyson Foods. He’d taken note of the guitar displayed there and thought they might play together.
Nicholson wasn’t terribly excited, he remembers, but he found out D’Aubin “was very, very good.”The two took to jamming at lunch, then partnered with Oklahoma fiddler Jimmy Gyles to form “String Fever.”
“When that group broke up, Stan and I knew we wanted to continue playing together,” Nicholson remembers. Theyfound Jenee Keener, “a high school phenom” fiddler, then met Kaitz, “and when the four of us got together, it was a lot of fun,” he recalls. “Jenee was a very good musician, and Emily had written some great material.”
The quartet became a trio when Keener went off to Nashville, Tenn., but Nicholson says the fun never stopped.
“Everybody likes each other a lot, and we have a great amount of respect for each other,” he says.
“We’re not trying to get a record deal, so we just play together for the pure joy of it. That gives us a lot of freedom to do whatever we want.”
When Outside the Lines performs Nov. 17 at the Arts Center of the Ozarks, Nicholson expects Kaitz’s original material will account for about half the set, with everything from gypsy jazz to western swing to jazz standards making up the rest.
“We’ll have new material worked up for this one,” Nicholson says. “It’s a concert venue where we’ll have a family audience we hope will be very diverse.”
Perhaps even as eclectic as the set list.
Whats Up, Pages 16 on 11/09/2012