Photo by Matt Marcincowski
It was about a decade ago that Valerie Kirchhoff, an avid swing dancer, decided that St. Louis needed a group to regularly play the music that moved her. To find that band, though, she had to start it. It was known in its early years as Miss Jubilee & the Humdingers, but since then the name’s been trimmed back to Miss Jubilee, and the sound’s changed some, from jump blues to hot jazz and swing. A duo side project, the St. Louis Steady Grinders, emerged more recently.
Both groups are dedicated to keeping alive the music written, produced and recorded in St. Louis nearly century ago, a goal that for Kirchhoff emerged about a half-decade back. In each act, Kirchhoff’s voice is a key instrument and touchstone. (Here, “voice” means both vocals and mission.)
“I’ve been obsessed since that time,” she says of reviving lost, neglected, and oft-forgotten songs. “What’s the purpose of this thing, this music that I’m doing? How can I make it more connected to now? How can I better dig into this material?”
Earlier this summer, the band started recording with the thought of a 2017 release. The overall goal, though, is to bring new life to some songs that only exist in scratchy, weathered forms. After a few shifts in personnel over the years, including at least one nearly complete rotation of players along the way, Kirchhoff has settled on a core group to execute that album: her longtime drummer, Dan Conner; Ethan Leinwand, with whom she founded The Steady Grinders, on piano; Richard Tralles on bass; guitarist Tyler Stokes; and horn players David Gomez (clarinet and sax) and Ken Cebrian (trumpet). She calls it “the exact band” she’s wanted.
“It’s wonderful to say that it’s a regular band now,” she says. “It was never a choice to not have a regular band; you can’t really learn or arrange material without a regular group.”
Challenging herself as a bandleader along the way, Kirchhoff took up the ukulele, her first instrument, in large part to better convey musical ideas and not have to rely on others to arrange material. Despite her band’s very real desire to keep the traditions of St. Louis early jazz and blues alive, she doesn’t want Miss Jubilee’s live sets to be seen as purely curatorial, archival, or (heaven forbid!) dry. They’re aimed at conveying emotion.
“The charm of this band,” she says, “is that we’re a group of people who want to have fun and provide energy onstage. I don’t want it to seem too serious. I come from the scenes of punk rock and ska, of leaving those shows sweaty and feeling that you’ve really had a night out.”
See Miss Jubilee during Sunday brunch at Evangeline’s and on Wednesday nights at Schlafly Bottleworks.
Photo by Matt Marcincowski
Pick Three
Kirchhoff’s three picks for vernacular St. Louis jazz and blues:
James “Stump” Johnson, “The Duck Yas-Yas-Yas”
“It was so famous and was played by all the bands of its time. He was a piano player, singing along to it.”
The Missourians, “Market Street Stomp”
“One of Cab Calloway’s original bands. He found them and took the whole band away to be one of the top groups inHarlem.”
Peetie Wheatstraw, “Shack Bully Stomp”
“On Document Records, there are about 20 CDs of his stuff, which is a lot for the period. He is that ‘St. Louis sound,’ the driving old blues that is St. Louis.”
