Monte Warden and The Dangerous Few

Monte Warden and The Dangerous Few play Parker Jazz Club on Thursday, August 20, starting at 7:30 PM. They'll be performing their traditional pop and jazz repertoire, the same material that sits at the center of the project Warden announced back in 2017.

That project, Monte Warden and the Dangerous Few, is a collection of all-original songs in the jazz and traditional pop vein. When the debut album came out in 2020, it picked up first-ballot Grammy nominations in six categories, including Best Americana Album and Album of the Year. The critical reception gave a sense of what Warden was aiming for: Paste called it "The Great Americana Songbook" and noted he'd "created a sound that never before existed," while KUTX summed it up as "Imagine Gene Vincent singing Cole Porter."

If you're not familiar with those names, that's a good place to start. Gene Vincent was a rockabilly pioneer; Cole Porter was one of the great American songwriters of the jazz age. Putting them in the same sentence is a pretty clear way of describing the sound—rockabilly grit meeting the sophisticated songwriting of the Great American Songbook, all held together by a jazz band. It's a specific kind of crossover, and it's what the project has been built around since it first appeared.

There's one more thing to know before you go: all proceeds from the show benefit the Texas Jazz Society, a local nonprofit. Tickets are $15 and $60, and the venue is 21+.