1997 to 1999 - Hot Club of Nottingham

In the totality of the Hot Club's existence, this is still the early period where the band performed as the 'Hot Club Trio', and with the addition of Matt Palmer on clarinet, we called ourselves the 'Hot Club of Nottingham', as we began to do more gigs outside of the Nottingham area, such as the Birmingham Jazz Festival, and regular gigs on the Leicester jazz scene. This period continued to be a mix of duo, trio, and quartet gigs, building a reputation around the Nottingham and East Midlands area.
It was ironic that the rather cumbersome name of the 'Hot Club of Nottingham' was often abbreviated by punters to simply 'Hot Club', regardless of whether it was a trio or quartet, and eventually, the band simply known as (the) Hot Club in the end.

We began build up a lot more private work as well as public performance gigs, and built up a wide ranging repertoire of traditional gypsy music, Bal-Musette style waltz's, as well as the core Gypsy/Jazz which alternated between more traditional sounding tunes, and those which slightly more to the Bop end of Swing which I would play on my Epiphone Emperor electric guitar.
Paul and I built up a strong friendship, and brought more or less equal creative input to the direction of the band. We played to each others strengths, and had some fantastic fun times, as well as making music that we were very serious about performing to as high a standard as we could.
In 1999, we recorded a demo with the quartet incarnation of the band, but the following year there would a change in the line-up as the band parted company with Matt Palmer.