"If Westen Borghesi and his seven-piece band, White Ghost Shivers, had been visiting Central Illinois in 1929, no one would have batted an eye at the group's appearance.

Modeling itself as a relic of a bygone age, White Ghost Shivers pays tribute to a number of antiquated musical styles, doing so fully in character as an over-the-top, hokum-embracing jazz band determined to spread its restless energy around the globe.

On Saturday night, the group makes a stop at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts to kick up some heels.

"Back in the 1920s and 1930s, I imagine we would have been playing in anything from the famous vaudeville houses to the crazy, crowded speakeasies every night," said 7-foot-tall band leader Borghesi, better known to White Ghost Shivers fans as "Shorty Stump." "Today not all that much has changed, because we'll play anything from the sit-down theaters to the punk-rock dive bars."

Borghesi, who towers over all the other members of the band, was drawn to Austin, Texas, from Seattle "with a burning desire to find hot weather and even hotter jazz," according to the group's Web site. Over the next few years, he assembled players of jazz, swing, gypsy and blues music to form an ever-changing White Ghost Shivers roster. Today, "Shorty Stump" is also joined by "Cella Blue," "Smokebreak Slemenda," "Hot Thomas," "Poppiticus," "Duchess Doyle" and "Baby-Faced Finster" in his lighthearted exploits.

As might be expected from some of the band member's stage names, the communal songwriting tends to hew toward humorous songs filled with double entendres and sung in tongue-in-cheek "1920s inflection."

"My personal songwriting is almost always corny stuff," Borghesi said. "All of my inspirations were just these quirky, silly singers. The voices somehow just come naturally. I don't think anyone in the group actually copied a historical way of singing, there's just something about the music that makes it come out that way."

Originally conceived purely as a 1920s-style jazz band in the summer of 1999, White Ghost Shivers has grown by leaps and bounds, releasing a handful of albums, most recently the 2007 EP "Killing Tradition." After a long period of touring and side projects, the group will be ending its recording hiatus with the release of a new album this spring. The prospective title shows just how far the group has come.

"We're thinking of possibly calling it ‘Downright Excruciating,' after a phrase we once saw in a review of our first-ever album," Borghesi said. "Clearly, they didn't care for it. Going back to actually listen to the early days now, we sounded kind of like a junior high band trying to play ragtime music - those old rehearsal tapes are pretty funny to listen to."

Self-deprecating humor may be part of the White Ghost Shivers way, but the group is anything but lacking confidence in its talents. When not on the road, the band has dabbled in a number of other performance styles - notably composing silent film comedy accompaniments for theaters in the Austin area. In Borghesi's words, the evolution has been a wild ride, resulting in a band "both closer and further away from what I originally envisioned."

"I think the songwriting has always been pretty great, considering we were starting out in old-time jazz as a bunch of guys who didn't know what they were doing," he said. "I can't stand hearing these slicked-up sort of bluegrass and roots records today. Ours is a much more raw American music; jug band blues and jazz that is true to itself.

"We are not self-conscious. I'm out there every night dancing like I don't realize that I'm 7 feet tall. We'd like to see all of our audience members doing the same thing."

From the Herald & Review