Meet Them in St. Louis: Valerie Kirchhoff and Ethan Leinwand

The traditional jazz world pays homage to the blues, but often in a narrow way. There are glimpses of famous streets in fabled cities, tin roofs, and royal gardens. But few musicians in that world now seem to have given themselves wholly to the blues and the music of that often overlooked city, St. Louis. And no one is doing what the singer Valerie Kirchhoff (perhaps known to some readers as “Miss Jubilee”) and her husband, pianist Ethan Leinwand, are doing right now. This musically impassioned pair offers repertoire rarely heard, with joyous playfulness.

Were I to describe them to someone who’d never encountered them, I would speak of serious joy and an exuberance anchored in a long immersion in the music they love. On the bandstand, Valerie is constantly in uncontrived motion, her expressive resonant voice giving life to songs that speak of deep emotion. The first time I saw her, I thought she reminded me of a hybrid of Connee Boswell and the 1932 Bennie Moten band, delicate and powerful at once.

Alongside her, Ethan creates a constantly moving landscape of sound: stabbing right-hand figures against a powerful left hand, the result anything but formulaic, creating a genuinely lowdown groove no matter what the tempo. If they were to perform in a church in bright daylight, their music would invent a small room, a welcoming darkness. One could envision people holding glasses of beer, others smiling and nodding their heads in time, some dancing.

Now, some history. I heard and admired them on disc long before I met them. A friend encouraged me to listen to their CDs: The St. Louis Steady Grinders, Throw Me in the Alley, and Cool it If You Can, and their gritty rocking momentum delighted me. A year later, I talked with Ethan at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia.

But I had to wait until October 2023 to see Valerie and Ethan in person at the Redwood Coast Music Festival with a septet led by their friend T. J. Muller, and as “Miss Jubilee.” They were electrifying, so much so that I went to St. Louis for a week in late June, saw them make music five times in their hometown. Near the end of my stay, we had this leisurely conversation in their house, with their rescue cat, Esther, occasionally complaining that she was being ignored.

I began with an intentionally mundane question, “Where do you come from?” hoping it would lead us down surprising paths.

VALERIE: I am from St, Louis, I grew up here.

ETHAN: I’m from Middletown, Connecticut. I took normal kid piano lessons from eight to thirteen, then I got into writing my own music and teaching myself music theory. I was living in New York City in my mid-twenties when I fell hard for piano blues, boogie-woogie, barrelhouse, obscure St. Louis piano blues. I went on my own obsessive journey, wanting to understand and play everything I could of these early forgotten blues masters. Their barrelhouse music stole my heart.

What’s “barrelhouse”? It’s a two-handed style of piano developed in Black communities in the deep South, in Texas, in lumber camps, in St. Louis clubs. It combines elements of ragtime, boogie-woogie, traditional jazz, but all with a lowdown blues feeling. It’s designed to keep people dancing and generally it has more rhythmic variation than harmonic variation.

VALERIE: The key thing for me is that I come from a really big family. I’m one of seven. Lots of people in a small house.  There was always a lot going on and I think that accelerated me finding my own interests.  My father worked from home as an illustrator and my mother is also an artist. There was also music in the house. We had a piano that my mother liked to play.  Early on, music was the way I took charge of being my own person, going to the library and taking out records, which my older siblings already did. I was ten or eleven, just mimicking them. We could all walk to the library and thumb through records. I was fascinated by the older covers. That music became a way for me to say, “This is what I’m about. This is who I am.”

I found a Bessie Smith record at the library – one of those fold-out double-record sets, and on the cover there’s a drawing of her lounging with pearls. I had already heard early Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson. My dad was into jazz. His era was the early Sixties, but he always played the jazz radio station. I heard something that I liked and he told me it was Louis Armstrong. So I knew this music existed. But when I saw the cover with the lady on it, it was the most fascinating thing. I thought, “She is so cool. I have to hear this.”

I had no idea of the lives of these people. It didn’t even dawn on me that I could have checked out books about them, but I was absorbed in the music. I was listening to songs on the records, and for no reason, writing down all the lyrics. A few years later, I heard a Victoria Spivey CD. The liner notes said that she came to St. Louis to record, and that blew my mind, and it took me down the path of learning what was going on in St. Louis.

Now I wasn’t just picking out what I could find. It was important to me, the second that I heard that this music was connected to St. Louis. That story was not being told at all. I loved singing in school and church choir since I was very young. My idea, way in the back of my head, was that I could maybe sing this material.

ETHAN: There was no reason for me to care about St. Louis music, but the sound of that piano captured my imagination. It was everything I was looking for. It’s not virtuosic music, what Peetie Wheatstraw and those guys played, but it completely enamored me. So while Valerie was writing down lyrics and had her own band, I was in New York, and I was playing solo piano versions of all this old St. Louis stuff. But I couldn’t find anyone else who seemed to care about it.

In a moment of loneliness, I Googled “I love pre-war St. Louis piano blues,” and found that a St. Louisan, Kevin Belford, had written a beautiful book, Devil at the Confluence, and I reached out to him and sent him a few videos of my playing. He put me in touch with Val over Facebook Messenger, and even before saying “Hello,” I sent her Peepin’ At the Rising Sun by Mary Johnson and Henry Brown, a tune that means everything to me. And it turns out, it meant everything to her, too! I couldn’t believe it. Here was a person, a singer, who loved the same music. I thought, “I’ve got to go down there. I’ve got to meet her. We’ve got to make a record.”

VALERIE: I was into St. Louis music when I was 17, but this was more than ten years before I started the band. When I started in 2007, we were doing mostly jump blues and within a few years, we were adding more and more jazz. By the time I talked to Ethan in 2014, I was sprinkling in a St. Louis tune or two to sing with the band. But it didn’t fit with the musicians I had. So when he said, “Hey, do you like this song?” it was like something aligning. “It’s time. It’s time to do St. Louis music.” We joke that we needed each other, but it was perfect timing. I wanted to do St. Louis music and connect it to the town, because there was so much that no one knew about. People living here didn’t even know about it.

ETHAN: I arrived in St. Louis in June 2014, immediately fell in love with the scene, the people, the town, the history. I decided to move here, I bought a one-way ticket, and said, “If this works, I’ll just go and get my stuff, I’ll get rid of my gigs in New York,” and we started collaborating. St. Louis isn’t great at commodifying its musical history. In some ways, that’s a blessing, for it allows it to exist in a grassroots natural way. There are many musicians in this town who love it, who play it, and it’s exciting to be one those voices. There’s a lot of hometown pride, but there’s humility, too.

In six or eight months, Valerie and I fell in love. It was the music that brought us together. Falling in love was terrifying, because we knew what we had musically, and that would have been an easy way to mess it up. A musical partnership requires intimacy, but not romantic intimacy. “If this goes up in flames, how can I stay in St. Louis?” It was meant to be. We got together in the spring of 2015, and we got married only recently, in February 2023. It’s been so much more fun to say, “I’d like to bring up my wife now!” The audience gets a warmer feeling.

VALERIE: The way that we communicated was better than what I’ve ever had with anyone. We understand each other, and we always have.

ETHAN: She’s the only person I can sit and listen to Mary Johnson’s records with. You think that liking the same records is a superficial connection, but when it’s so obscure and you like the same records for the same reasons, it’s a real thing. We got lucky. Outside of music, we also have a lot in common. I’ve learned how to be a real musician because of Val, and she’s gotten a lot more confidence from the support I give her at the piano. What we do, we wouldn’t have been able to do separately.

VALERIE: These little nooks and crannies of old music are being appreciated a lot more on their own terms.

ETHAN: When Val sings, it’s not as if you’re listening to an imitation of Bessie Smith. She doesn’t put on a fake voice, a fake accent, a fake demeanor. It’s her voice, but with that old sound in her ear. It’s her own truth. When I’m playing, the old sounds are in my ear, but I’m channeling my own emotional feeling. We are deep in the traditionalist camp, though. If it’s got a 1940s inflection, that’s wrong to us.

Val could go on stage like a diva, but she doesn’t. She tells a story. “Here’s a song by Merline Johnson, the Yas Yas Girl. Check her out.” (And someone types “Merline Johnson” on their phone.) She thinks, “Who in this room can I win over with this music?” Her appeal isn’t just to one generation. I see older folks and young girls all go crazy for it. And people connect to it because it reads as true. And they don’t see that often, a powerhouse of a singer, dancing—a real entertainer.

VALERIE: You saw that 12-year old girl at brunch asking for “Murder in the Moonlight” and “Jerry the Junker.” She knows the tunes. We have another couple; every time they come, they ask for “Steamboat Man Blues” by Clara Smith. That’s what you can really develop in St. Louis. On some tunes, I’m coming at it like, “I’m going to do the end of the phrase the way Alice Moore would, and the volume of Bessie Smith,” I think of different things I would use to create that song.

But once I feel that I’ve won people over, sometimes I want to do it the way it is on the record, so I can say to someone who liked a particular performance, “Go listen to the record.” I don’t want to be a carbon copy, but I do like using the formula they use. I have a code for myself. When I write out lyrics, I have little markings I make to show inflections (ETHAN stage-whispers, “Torah commentaries!”). I know what they mean, because I want to practice the things the singers did. But I don’t want to copy a record exactly, because there’s no “me” in that. I like to learn it the way they did it, and then back off from it.

ETHAN: We’re pretty lucky, because we get to play the music we love. We have a really dedicated group of music-goers here who support local music. They care about piano music, about blues, about roots music. About pianos, and I have no problem saying this, keyboards have no place in acoustic music. They ruin it. No offense to players who need to play a keyboard to get a gig, I’m sympathetic, but it doesn’t sound good.

I can have 88 perfectly in-tune keyboard notes, and I can play in a virtuosic way, and the only thing the audience is going to feel is, “Oh, that’s a virtuosic player.” In my experience, no true emotion comes through from that keyboard to an audience. So we’re committed to carrying around little 64-key pianos in the van. We’ve worked with a local piano store, Jackson Pianos, to put pianos all over the town, and more pianists can come out and play.

VALERIE: I’m most comfortable when there’s no amplification. For all the years of singing in choir, from 4 to high school, I learned to project. I’d never sung into a microphone until my first gig with a band. I had no idea how to use that thing. Say we’re doing a house concert, and Ethan’s in a corner of the room, and everyone’s just there to listen, to giggle, to have a good time. Those moments are amazing. That’s exactly what this music deserves. And it makes me dance.

I have a story. When my grandmother was still alive, and we were very little, we would go to their house. They had a color television, so it was always fun. We turned on “Sesame Street,” and Cab Calloway was on. I got in front of the fireplace, where there was stone, and I was mimicking his dancing, trying to sing whatever song he was singing. I can’t help dancing.

It’s not that I am acting, “I have an idea of how this music should be performed.” It just happens. You’ll see me trying to be still, and I’m still moving. I like the freedom of moving on stage, it’s my personality. I get asked, maybe every third show, did I teach myself to do that? No. Maybe it goes back to our watching old films at home.

When I perform, I try to create relationships with the audience, even if only for the length of the gig. People are charmed by the music. “Oh, I didn’t know I was going to love this music so much when I was here.” You feel good together, and everyone has a more positive experience. The way we present this music, it’s not exclusive. We’re very sincere about it. It’s not some museum piece. Just because someone’s doing music from an older time, it is current, because they’re doing it right now. The songs, the set you are creating, that’s the story.

ETHAN: We would never say that we play “vintage” music. We don’t want the audience to think “I’m listening to old music.” We want it to come alive and feel honest and of our own time. To accomplish that, while staying true to the original sound, is what it’s all about for us. We have a strong community of musicians and fans around the country. We’re incredibly fortunate to get to play the music we love.

And to me, the greatest success you can have in music is to go your whole life creating it. Goal number one is to live long enough to do that. I want to see more recognition for Val, because I don’t think there’s anyone who’s doing it like she is. I’d like to see this music represented in other places beyond early jazz festivals. I would love for it to be included in the wider folk/roots musical landscape. People are ready to be won over by this music, but it needs to be presented in more than one space.

VALERIE: I would like this music to be taken more seriously in more places. If you’re trying to do a modern jazz approach to singing, that’s accepted, and you’re seen as a contemporary singer. But if you go earlier, all of a sudden you’re seen as “old-timey,” and the music doesn’t relate to the present moment. I wish there were young singers saying, “I want to learn how to do that Bessie Smith thing. How does she do that? Where do I study that?” I want more recognition and respect for this style.

ETHAN: It’s not as if we knew five years ago what the landscape was going to be, what opportunities are going to be. But if you just stay at it, you stay true to yourself, it bears fruit. Sharing a passion and not denying its roots, that’s gratifying. We love the old records and in order to capture that sound we’ve put ourselves in a rather tight box. But we’re not constrained by that box. Quite the opposite. We’re freed by it, and able to express ourselves to the fullest. Our sound is still growing. We’re in a really good place.

You can find out where Valerie and Ethan will be performing at miss-jubilee.com and ethanleinwand.com, and their CDs are also available there. My videos of their performances can be seen at youtube.com/@swingyoucats/videos, and they will be at the Redwood Coast Music Festival, October 3-6, 2024.