Lyle Lovett’s isn’t the only large band in Vegas

"It's Not Big It's Large."

Lyle Lovett's 2007 album title tied back to a joke the Texas singer-songwriter has sustained since 1989's "Lyle Lovett and His Large Band." The billing has continued through his years of summer touring, which leads back to The Smith Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday.

If Lovett at 57 has become more like a classic big-band leader— playing more nostalgic favorites from his catalog than present-tense music — the reasons for calling his 12 players a large band hasn't changed. "(W)e don't really play big band music, but we've always had a lot of people in the band," he noted in a promotional video for "It's Not Big."

"It's genius," trumpeter Lon Bronson says of the name. "Kudos to him on that one."

As head of the Lon Bronson All-Star Band in Las Vegas, Bronson knows "that's always the problem. If you say 'big band,' the connotation is that you're playing Glenn Miller, (Tommy) Dorsey or any of the classic big-band libraries."

Yes, Las Vegas has large bands, too.

And since Lovett is interview-shy and plays here only every two years anyway, it seemed more relevant to have a drink with two local bandleaders who think large, not big.

David Perrico's 14-piece Pop Strings Orchestra is drawing late-night crowds at Red Rock Station on Saturday nights. He juggles that one with his 20-piece Pop Evolution big/large band and side projects including "Alice," a monthly cabaret update of "Alice in Wonderland."

Bronson's band will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year, but he hasn't figured out just where and how to do that. The All-Stars play Sunset Station each month, up again Aug. 6. In the '90s, the band was synonymous with the Riviera, where it was a gathering point for showgirls, comedians and visiting musicians such as Chicago the band or Bronson's heroes, Tower of Power.

Last week, Perrico and Bronson sat down before "The Rat Pack Is Back" — which Perrico arranged (for a small band) and for which Bronson plays — to explain why, like Lovett, they've been driven to push the arrangements of large ensembles beyond the conventions of Sinatra standards.

If not, then what?

Pop Evolution can cover Britney Spears' "Circus" and the Rush instrumental "YYZ" in the same set, while Bronson recently rearranged Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country" to include a flute solo played by his daughter.

Perrico: All the big bands, what they were doing in the '30s and '40s was playing the popular music of the day. They were playing the Top 40. With Pop Evolution, it's a big-band template, but I'm just playing today's music to make it accessible.

Bronson: We're not a cover band that just goes out and plays the exact replication of the original song. We've gone in and rearranged and reinvented each song.

When anybody hears five saxes, four trumpets, four (trom)'bones, they go, 'OK, it's Glenn Miller. (Perrico) has forwarded the concept so you don't have to think of it that way.

Perrico: It's just another way of evolving pop music.

Bronson: I think we both realized that as much as we love big band, the genre as it was is pretty much dead.

Perrico: It's gone.

Bronson: There's plenty of guys in town who have their own (traditional) big bands and nobody goes to listen to them, except other musicians. Maybe the charts are from the '60s, but it's still that '40s mentality. ... You've got to think outside the box to reinvent it so that younger people can come and go, 'This is really cool,' not 'In the Mood' or 'Moonlight Sonata.'

Here's what would kill it dead: If the horns were playing the melody instead of the singer. You can't get that past people. You have to have vocals. That could be the big difference between the big bands and us.

The driving force

Heading a big band isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. Bronson calls Perrico "a six-year overnight success."

Bronson: He pounded the pavement, whereas a lot of people might have given up after the first entertainment director said, 'I'm not going to hire 16 pieces!'

Perrico: We're playing the same music, everything you hear on the radio, but we're playing it with a band. ... The thing was to put together a band of virtuoso musicians and to put our spin on what the DJs are doing. I have nothing against DJs. ...

Bronson: Yes, you do.

Perrico: Other than, it's this false sense of — it's not real music. They're creating a vibe. We're playing the vibe. Basically what we're saying is, 'We're doing what DJs are doing but better. And for real.' Growing up (in Youngstown, Ohio), if you had a DJ at your wedding it was embarrassing. It was a shame on your family.

Bronson: I think it's driven by the instrument. The similarity between (our) two bands is the trumpet. If you just had one trumpet and a rhythm section, then it would just be a jazz quintet and you'd be limited to doing that.

You almost have to have other horns with you if you're a trumpet player. There are so many colors and so many options you have when you start adding the other horns, which are all independent voices.

Why it works

Lovett fans can testify the wry singer-songwriter brings the number of musicians he needs — including four horns and a cello — to deliver his specific brand of Americana, accented with country, blues, jazz and Western swing.

Perrico and Bronson work it from the other direction, reinventing familiar songs as they explore the luxuries and possibilities of the large ensembles.

Perrico: I don't approach Pop Evolution basing the horns in a Count Basie style; I'm approaching it as a a pop-rock orchestra. One song, we're doing a heavy jazz kind of number, and the next tune we're doing Van Halen. It's like this hybrid, the range of the band and dynamics what you can do.

Bronson: When we've done something like 'Whipping Post' (by the Allman Brothers Band) or 'Aqualung' (by Jethro Tull), never once has anyone ever come up and said, 'I really liked the song, but why did you add horns to it, because you ruined it?'

They grew up with only rock bands, so suddenly the acoustics of hearing all these guys? Boom.

Perrico: When the band is hitting, like playing full go — no microphones, nothing — the aesthetic of that is like a bomb going off.

Read more from Mike Weatherford at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com.