Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to James Martak. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

James, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

In December 2022, we restructured Hot House West to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. After nearly twelve years as an LLC, we decided we wanted to have a greater impact on the music community in Salt Lake City, UT. We started Hot House West back in 2011 as part of the Jazz program at the University of Utah where Nathan Royal and I met as undergraduate music majors. What started as a way to complete a requirement for our degrees became a full-fledged business.

Over the last twelve years of performing, we encountered a lot of pitfalls. From learning how to file taxes and pay royalties, to creating solid contracts and developing processes to streamline how we get things done. Everything we learned was by trial and error. There were no music business classes offered in our program. No one showed us how to be successful. We had to make mistakes and do our best to learn and recover from them.

As we spoke with other musical colleagues, we discovered that many musicians where we are from struggle with the same issues and that the music community doesn’t support new musicians or underrepresented musicians. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and performances shut down for everyone, we started talking about other ways we can support the music community here. Discussions began to happen about how certain musicians in the community had a very cutthroat attitude and were really only looking out for themselves. We decided that Hot House West should try to ignite change in the music community here in Salt Lake City and started fleshing out a plan.

The decision to restructure Hot House West into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization came out of the many conversations we had about this from 2020-2022. We wanted to have an organization that could offer newer musicians an opportunity to perform with some of the best musicians in Utah so they can learn how to be successful in their own projects. Hot House West has since expanded from a 7-piece band to a 14-piece swing orchestra where anyone can come sit in with the band and perform. The aim is to provide performance experience with a high-caliber band where newer or underrepresented musicians can get their foot in the door to network and gain skills for performing at that level. We are trying to build a community that is welcoming, inclusive, and educational for anyone interested.

In the first few months of 2023, we’ve already seen our unconventional band model providing positive experiences for musicians. The feedback we have received has given weight to our mission and reassurance that we should continue to pursue this project.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hot House West began as an ensemble for the University of Utah’s Jazz program in 2011. Inspired by the music of 1930s guitarist Django Reinhardt, the band dedicated their musical careers to studying and performing Gypsy Jazz – a style created by Django Reinhardt in Paris, France. While at the University of Utah, the ensemble won top honors at the Greeley Jazz Festival in 2012, and as our notoriety began to increase, so did the performance offers. By 2014, we had hundreds of performances under our belt and began to play for larger festivals and audiences. Not long after, the band recorded our first full-length album “Django in Orbit” and began performing at festivals outside of Utah including the Crested Butte Jazz Festival, Juan De Fuca Festival in Port Townsend WA, DjangoVegas in Las Vegas, etc.

After finding relative success as a performing ensemble over the last twelve years, the band began to reflect on the local music community in Salt Lake City, UT. We decided that we wanted to use our ensemble as a way for newer musicians to get experience and opportunities to perform. In 2022, the band restructured into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and began recording a new album as a 14-piece swing orchestra. The album is set to be released in 2023 and features over 30 local musicians.

Mission:
Hot House West operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization under the artistic direction of the ensemble’s founding members. Our organization’s mission is to celebrate and promote swing music and affiliated musical genres. We achieve this by presenting engaging performances, cultivating a vibrant music community, and mentoring emerging talent in music.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think the fact that this group has been going strong for over a decade illustrates our resilience! We have gone through our fair share of hurdles and speedbumps along the way. We have had many line-up changes over the years and have lost many great friends/musicians to other major city music scenes like New Orleans and Los Angeles. These setbacks are often a catalyst for the band to quickly adapt and seek out new ways to get the sound we want. We started out as a quartet in 2011 with two guitars, bass, and violin but our violinist soon left to attend medical school in Alaska. Shortly after, we found a trumpet player who was interested in playing with us and so we replaced violin with trumpet. A few years later, after also adding trombone and clarinet to the mix, the horn section left for another project and we were back to square one. In 2017, we found another violinist who moved to SLC from Montana who played all of the major performances with us in 2017-2018. Once again, another opportunity came for him to leave SLC and he moved to North Carolina for violin-making school. In 2018, we discovered a phenomenal clarinetist who we became such good friends with. But alas, New Orleans came calling and he took a gig with the Dukes of Dixieland.

This brings us to 2019-2020… I think we all experienced some major turbulence from the pandemic and we lost all of the gigs we had on our books for 2020. It seemed like we were facing the end of Hot House West. However, we kept chatting about aspirations and where we wanted to take things from here and that eventually led to conversations about starting a nonprofit organization, and here we are today in 2023, stronger than ever!

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Over the years, we have been extremely fortunate to have had a number of great mentors who have helped us with how we have shaped our organization. We learned a lot from Nathan Royal’s mother, Celeste, who is probably the most successful businessperson we have ever met. She taught us about thinking strategically and to always be thinking about growth as a business.

While at the University of Utah, the director of the Jazz program, Russell Schmit, imparted a philosophy that we still utilize every day with the musicians that work for us. Set your people up for success. For us, this means writing arrangements that are clean and easy to read, paying people at the gig, giving them a calendar invite for events they are playing that have all of the information they need, like what to wear, what the pay is, where to park, if there will be food for them, etc. It just makes it easy and stress-free for anyone playing with us so that they can just focus on having fun.  

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hothousewest.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hothousewest_/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hothousewest/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HotHouseWest

Image Credits
Photo Credit: Brandon Cruz Photography