Little Willies, Featuring Norah Jones, To Play PAC On Saturday

When, more than a decade ago, guitarist Jim Campilongo heard Norah Jones’s name for the first time, he had a gut reaction but didn’t know why.

He soon found out.

“My friend Lee Alexander moved to New York, and I heard he had met this really nice girl named Norah and fell in love,” Mr. Campilongo said last week during a telephone interview. “I remember thinking, ‘Norah Jones—that’s really catchy. I want to meet Norah Jones.’”

What he found was a smoky-voiced Texas gal with a deep love for country music who would soon round out his band, The Little Willies, which plays country classics, lesser-known gems and original hits. In addition to Ms. Jones on vocals and piano, and Mr. Alexander on bass, the group features guitarist and vocalist Richard Julian, and drummer Dan Rieser.

The band will make its Hamptons debut on Saturday, October 29, at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center.

“I hope anybody enjoys our music, regardless of where we play,” Mr. Campilongo said. “I would say it’s a modern take on something classic.”

With one album under its belt and another on the way in 2012, the band’s repertoire is 90 percent covers, including songs by Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton—with a twist, Mr. Campilongo said. “How we play them, it feels original,” he said. “At this point, with all of us, there’s a certain detachment one gets where, whether it’s your own song or another song, it’s still mysterious and intimate, and you’re invested, regardless.”

The band hasn’t yet nailed down its set list for the Westhampton Beach show, but Mr. Campilongo imagines it will include tracks off of their upcoming album, “For the Good Times,” which is slated for release in January. Likening the tracks to his own “children,” the guitarist had a hard time choosing favorites, but settled on “Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves,” “For the Good Times,” and a Mr. Campilongo instrumental original, “Tommy Rockwood,” as standout tunes.

The band’s genre wasn’t decided by coin toss, Mr. Campilongo noted—each band member has deep country roots. The guitarist began playing when he was just a teenager growing up in San Francisco. Mr. Julian started even younger.

“I grew up in Delaware. I’ve been writing songs on my head since I was 5 years old,” he wrote in an e-mail. “My mom is the daughter of a tobacco and cotton farmer in North Carolina, and she always had country music or bluegrass music playing in the house. I probably picked up a lot of it through osmosis.”

When Mr. Julian was 13, he discovered Bob Dylan. “That was a huge revelation,” he wrote. “Also, just MTV and early ’80s pop and New Wave. I also loved anything with a lot of harmonizing.”

He found that in The Little Willies. After sitting in one night during a performance, he never got off stage and took an active role in songwriting in the band.

“I co-wrote a few on our first record—’It’s Not You, It’s Me,’ ‘Easy As The Rain,’ and, most memorably, ‘Lou Reed,’ which I wrote while driving to NYC from Texas with Lee Alexander,” Mr. Julian wrote. “I had to pull over to the side of the road at one point because we were laughing too hard to drive.”

In 2003, what started as an excuse for five friends to spend a night playing together at the Living Room on the Lower East Side has turned into an evolving musical machine, Mr. Campilongo said.

“Sometimes we’ll be playing a song, and we’ll start it, and I think, ‘Wow, we sound pretty good,’” he said. “And then Norah starts to sing, and I think, ‘Wow, we sound great.’ I like that she, despite that she has a country soul, when she’s performing, she has a jazz mentality. So she does the songs differently almost every time.

“That almost forces me to play differently and allows me to really listen,” he continued. “And if one is really listening, and you’re a musician, that’s usually a good sign that good music is happening. She kicks my butt.”

The Little Willies will perform on Saturday, October 29, at 8 p.m. at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $40. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 288-1500, or visit www.whbpac.org.