Bonaventure Quartet: from gypsy jazz to Clermont Lounge and points between

Its new CD, “Songs From Lost and Found at the Clermont Lounge,” is a theatrical bohemian rhapsody based in Reinhardt’s style. But the Atlanta combo’s roots and branches are mingled far and wide in rock, punk, avant-garde, western swing, folk, and popular standards.

“It was Jimi Hendrix for me,” is how Williams, an Atlanta native and longtime guitar teacher and songwriter, described his first inspiration over a beer at Manuel’s Tavern one night.

“When I was 16, I was listening to the radio with headphones, and Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Ezy Rider’ came on. It just blew my mind, and I said, ‘I want to learn how to do that.’ ’’

Williams got a guitar and started teaching himself how to play blues and rock. Later, he decided to major in music, earning a degree in classical guitar from Georgia State, and becoming a founding member of an experimental jam band, the Aquarium Rescue Unit featuring Col. Bruce Hampton.

“At Georgia State, a guy loaned me a Django Reinhardt record,” Williams remembered. “It was the first non-rock thing I ever liked. What caught my ear was a song called ‘Daphne.’ Django uses octaves on that like Hendrix uses on ‘Purple Haze,’ so I recognized that right away.”

The Bonaventure Quartet grew from a guitar duo to a trio with a bass player and a quartet with Pike. Nowadays, though, there might be as many as 10 musicians on stage, with clarinet, violin, viola, accordion, flute, sax, trumpet, trombone and drums powering a swinging mix of sounds and soloists.

Pike and Williams have been playing together for 13 years. They first met when Williams sat in on guitar with Pike’s former Atlanta lounge-swing band, the Lost Continentals. Pike’s musical trip began playing a Casiotone keyboard in a teenage punk outfit called Daughter Damage. She got her start singing in Greasetrap, a gutsy country-folk duo.

“We did a lot of older covers for a long time,” Pike said of the early days of the Bonaventure Quartet, “but we’ve been influenced by a lot of newer things, too, like Madeleine Peyroux, Amy Winehouse, Katzenjammer, Gogol Bordello.”

One thing that stands out as a real blast from the past is the guitar that Williams plays. It’s a reproduction of Reinhardt’s classic 1930s Selmer, crafted in Cognac, France, by famed luthier Maurice Dupont, and shipped to buyers all over the world with a bottle of cognac.

“The original was designed in the days of no sound systems to cut through a band,” Williams said. “Everything about it is different. It’s sort of a collision between a flamenco guitar and a jazz archtop. It’s really fun to play. It has thin strings like an electric guitar, and when you hit a chord, it kind of distorts like that, too. I like classical, I like jazz, I like rock, and it’s got it all.”

Williams lived in a house on Bonaventure Avenue, across from the parking lot of the Clermont Lounge, when the Bonaventure Quartet was born. He would often perch on the front porch, playing music with Pike and other band mates until the wee hours of the morning, observing the goings-on at the Ponce de Leon landmark known for its aging strippers as well as celebrity visitors.

“Songs From Lost and Found at the Clermont Lounge” was inspired by those days. But most of the story of a young woman from Macon who comes to Atlanta with the dream of becoming an artist, but winds up working at the Clermont, is pure imagination. And for Williams, the ultimate goal is to have his songs become part of a musical one day.

“When I write songs, I sort of separate that from my playing,” Williams said. “My thing has always been original music. The challenge is how do you write original music that works with the Django style? That’s been the trick.

“On the new album, I wrote a bunch of stuff that you wouldn’t exactly think would be consistent with that genre, because I wanted songs that would work as a musical. It’s a simple story of a heroic journey. And it takes place in the Clermont. But it’s not about any characters, living or dead. It’s just about a crazy place.”