SARANAC LAKE – A video by a local band promoting democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has received over 18,000 views on YouTube in just two weeks’ time.

“Mr. Sanders, bring us a dream,” sing Crackin’ Foxy vocalists Sarah Curtis and Redia Spada to a jazzy re-imagining of “Mr. Sandman,” a 1954 song written by Pat Ballard and popularized by The Chordettes. In addition to Curtis and Spada, the video, which can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwKXs28OjuQ, features Mark Hofschneider on ukelele, Alex Marklund and Bobby Davis on guitar, and Russell Mulvoy on bass.

As performed by Crackin’ Foxy, the song is fun and catchy, and listeners may find themselves tapping their toes along to the beat, regardless of their political affiliation. Curtis and Spada harmonize well together, and Davis tears up an instrumental interlude with some Django Reinhardt-inspired noodling while Marklund, Mulvoy and Hofschneider hold it all together.

The sepia-tinted video, shot by Hofschneider’s wife, Adirondack Life Art Director Kelly Hofschneider, on a DSLR camera, features the band lounging around a parlor playing for an audience consisting of a large black dog, who seems to be enjoying the performance. Lyrics such as “We know you’re not on the corporate team,” and “Education should not cost the farm, a kidney, leg, or even an arm,” playfully appear on the bottom of the screen, summarizing some of Sanders’ talking points.

The whole thing looks like it could be a deleted scene from Woody Allen’s 1999 gypsy-jazz masterpiece “Sweet and Lowdown” if Sean Penn’s character, Emmett Ray, was into politics. In short, it fits right in with Crackin’ Foxy’s aesthetic.

“Crackin’ Foxy started about five to six years ago,” Hofschneider said. “I lived in New York City for about 15 years before this, and (then) I moved up here. I used to go see this type of music all the time in New York, and when I moved up here I was really missing it, so I decided to start a band and play it.

“It pulls a lot from traditional, New Orleans-style jazz as well as gypsy jazz, 1920s Hawaiian music, and some vaudevillian music.”

Hofschneider said Curtis came up with the idea for the politically timely version of the song.

“That was all Sarah’s idea,” he said. “We just started playing ‘Mr. Sandman’ a few weeks earlier, and, all of a sudden, she broke into ‘Mr.Sanders,’ and it was kind of like one of those light bulb moments where we all just looked at each other and said, ‘Yes.'”

Hofschneider said he has been pleased with the positive reaction to the video.

“You’re always hopeful that something will be nicely accepted when you put it out there, and we are surprised about the amount of traction it’s getting,” he said. “And the comments? I had no idea people would respond that nicely. Every time I feel a little bit down for the last couple of weeks, I just read some of those comments, and I’m just smiling again in seconds.”

Daily Kos blogger Media Blades featured the video on the Daily Kos site Saturday, and, as Sanders’ campaign continues to pick up steam, there is no telling how many views it might receive.

As for the future, Hofschneider said the band plans to record its first full-length album with Jeff Oehler at Beehive Productions in November.

“We’re going to do some standards and covers,” he said. “We pull a lot of our material from the roots of jazz, 1917-1930, so most of our songs come from that era.”

Most, but not all. Clearly, “Mr. Sanders” had its birth in the ’50s, and Hofschneider said the band has performed jazz arrangements of songs from more recent eras as well, such as New Order’s “Temptation.”

“We took a techno song and we turned it into a swing tune,” he said. “When I presented it to everybody, they looked at me like I was insane because I played the original version and said, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ And then, kind of I started playing it, and people were starting to feel it out, and it’s really worked out nicely for us. It’s a fun song to do.”

Check out the band’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/CrackinFoxySwing.