Shotgun Party

Shotgun Party

With Leo Rondeau. 9 p.m., Nov. 11. Café Nine, 250 State St. $5. 203-789-8281, cafenine.com.

Start with a western swing trio from Austin, Texas, featuring female vocals, fiddle and upright bass. Draw a line from Bob Wills right through to Hot Club of Cowtown. Now zigzag the line through time and space and touch on Édith Piaf, Nina Simone, Pablo Casals, Django Reinhardt, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Dan Hicks, Björk, Jonny Rodgers, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and The Defibulators.

Holy Needles! It's Shotgun Party!!

Yes, they swing. Your foot will tap and your shoulder will dance. They know early jazz, blues, show-tune style, romantic-classical, various shades of country and rock 'n' roll. But the heart of this Texas band is great songs performed fearlessly. It's the content that counts.

On Mean Old Way, a self-released follow-up to Holy Needles, former Elm City resident Jenny Parrott writes the songs, sings, and strums an archtop guitar. Katy Rose Cox plays violin and sings, while Chris Crepps picks the upright bass and does some of the unique arranging. (Crepps has been replaced by Andrew Austin-Petersen for the current tour.)

Parrott writes beautifully crafted chord progressions and melodies full of hooks. But her lyrics, and the many voices she adopts to sing them, are never repetitive, and refuse to be pigeonholed. They avoid cliché.

"Operatar" opens with a corny spoken intro, old-time radio-style, as Parrott introduces herself to the "operatar" (spelled this way in lush background harmony). The sweet girl voice gradually dissolves into deranged urgency, singing "get me to the ventricle" while lamenting young love lost.

An exercise in late night telephone therapy.

"Paints a Yates," a lilt, introduces us to the natural-as-breathing, two-part harmony of Parrott and Rose Cox. These gals sing like they're attached at the vocal cords. Once again the lyrics cut against the style: "So hard it knocks your socks off/ the tune in your head paints a Yates in your mind/ I'd go around the corner/ spend some dough/ buy a smokin' bottle/ get my man and go."

Say what?

"Run N Hide" features the violin playing of Katy Rose Cox. It's clear that Cox has classical training and a background in gypsy music (including her time in New York City's UncleFucker). But what this track makes obvious is that she has her own voice, and it's courageous, out in the open and in the moment. In that sense her playing is emblematic of Shotgun Party as a whole.

You need to go through all 17 tracks on Mean Old Way to get the full magic of the band. But while you're listening, check out "Draggin' the Bow" to hear Cox put her stamp on traditional Texas fiddle music and "Tanya" for gypsy romanticism at its most romantic. "Mean Old Way," "Lullaby" and "Crynetticut" feature Parrott's melodies and lyrics beautifully. "Star Song" is adventurous expressionism that features the trio's gift for arranging. "Moonlight" gives bassist Crepps the spotlight, and he doesn't waste a note.

Shotgun Party has booked itself a tour of small clubs this November. Heading northward, the tour crests in New Haven on Nov. 11 (with an afternoon show at Hamden Hall School before the Café Nine evening gig) then makes its way back south, stopping in Philadelphia along the way to play at World Café Live with Kinky Friedman — one of their many champions — then home to Austin for Thanksgiving.

Swingin' good music is always a treat. In the hands of artists like these, it's a launch pad. Don't miss out.

James Velvet co-hosts the weekly "Local Bands Show" (thelocalbandsshow.com) on WPLR 99.1 FM, Sundays at 10 p.m., and is a long-time New Haven singer-songwriter. Visit jamesvelvet.com.