SwingDJs

Couldn't find a discussion of this before but happy to be redirected:

What are your thoughts about dancing to western swing or as a music style to DJ at swing events? I know I don't like to lindy hop to it but would like some way of describing the reasons why.

[this prompted by experience over the last weekend. There is a major folk festival held here in my home town of Canberra Australia which runs over 5 days and having around 50,000 people in attendance over that time. It has a strong dance component so we go along and do displays and teach a workshop. Always attracts a lot of interest as we don't quite fit in with the normal "folk" definition. The festival artistic director always think that us and western swing are a good fit so schedules us as support dancers for a western swing dance. The band is question had "swing" songs in its setlist - including C Jam Blues and Jumpin at the Woodside - but with a western swing style.
ps on a sidenote there was a great band the Duhks from Winnipeg at the festival - my favourite for the weekend.]

I actually dig western swing music even though I usually despise country music. I've never played it at a dance because it just never really fit in for a Lindy Hop/swing dance crowd. The music works better for dancing 1wo-step. I'd probably play it if I knew there were a bunch of country dancers in the audience.

Alex Pangman has a few western swing-ish tunes on one of her CD's, Terra Hazleton also has that sound on some tracks on her CD as well as the Hogtown Syncopators CD.

Check out the Lucky Stars - http://www.theluckystars.com/
I think they are the best Western Swing band anywhere - because they really swing.