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Arts & Entertainment
House band
Music Box Village debuts a new house inspired by innovator Les Paul |
by Will Coviello
MUSIC BOX VILLAGE’S ARCHITECTURAL ART INSTALLATIONS HAVE ALWAYS
BEEN DESIGNED to generate sound — in concept, allowing them to be played like instruments, via percussion, chimes, strings, electronics and more. Its latest house, which will debut with a performance on Saturday, Dec. 3, may produce some of the most conventional music yet via improvised guitars.
The new installation is called the House of Sound, named for Les Paul’s legendary collection of guitars and analog recording equipment. Its two improvised guitars are modeled on a couple of Paul’s guitar experiments. But the house also reflects other aspects of Paul’s life, including his pioneering work creating studio tools.
Les Paul got his start in country music, but later released numerous jazz and blues songs. While he is known for developing the solid-body guitar — immortalized by Gibson — his most lasting contributions may be in recording.
“He invented what we think of as music production,” says Music Box village co-founder and artist Taylor Lee Shepherd. “He developed and invented a lot of what we think of as the modern recording studio: multi-track recording and these large physical reverb chambers, and techniques like speeding stuff up and octave up. These things are all standard now.”
Many of those techniques come together in the new house.
“recreating some of his instruments and his techniques in a house here and digging deeper into his story, we found so many parallels,” Shepherd says.
Before the pandemic started, the Music Box village responded to a request for proposals from the Les Paul Foundation. When the foundation asked how a New orleans art space could help tell the story of Les Paul, the Music Box got to work. Shepherd, who as a musician is a fan of Paul and admirer of his spirit of innovation, thought a new house could incorporate Paul’s experiments with solid-body guitars and recording effects.
“His first experiment with a solid-body guitar was when he was a teenager in Wisconsin,” Shepherd says. “He took a piece of train track and put a string across it, put on a telephone mic, and hooked it up to his parents’ radio — and had made a solid-bodied thing. It had no feedback and had a long sustain. But it was a wildly impractical instrument.”
Shepherd knew a replica of that would suit the Music Box’s Bywater space.
“I was like, I have a piece of train track right here,” he says. “I welded some railroad spikes onto it and a little tuning peg and basically made his thing. I set it up with four strings and a guitar pickup and got the spacing right, and it’s awesome.”
The Music Box also devised an instrument mimicking Paul’s “Log” guitar, which he made years later as a professional musician in New York, when he was still looking for ways to deal with feedback and other limitations.
“He took a piece of four-by-four, a chunk of wood, and then an epiphone hollow-body guitar set up, for pickups, a tremolo bar as neck, and electronics and put it into this four-by-four and started using that for his instrument at live shows,” Shepherd says. “He called it the ‘Log.’ He took a couple of pieces of an epiphone hollow-body and glued it onto the thing, so it looked like a normal guitar.” visitors to the Music Box will be able to play both instruments.
The house also has effects, including a reverb chamber. While the original Music Box on Piety Street was conceptualized as a “shantytown” of musical houses, built largely with reclaimed wood from a collapsed home, the current iteration has more technological features. The houses are wired together via a central soundboard. Sounds from other houses can be run through the reverb chambers of the House of Sound and relayed back to play the effects.
The new house’s shape was inspired by a hotel in Les Paul’s hometown of Waukesha, Wisconsin, that was owned by his father, allegedly acquired as gambling winnings. The Music Box embellished it with victorian moldings, and it has three wings that open, so visitors can better see the instruments and the controls of the electronic effects.
The house debuts with a concert and multimedia show. Shepherd will be the director and run the effects of the house. Performers include Lost Bayou ramblers guitarist Jonny campos, Sabine Mccalla, Max Bien Kahn and Howe Pearson. carlos Grasso will orchestrate a live video montage, drawing on footage of Paul, cams in the village and using three projectors.
“We chose a setlist of six or seven classic Les Paul tracks that we’re going to recreate with the entire town,” Shepherd says. “The percussion will be the percussion that lives in the Music Box. The guitar sounds will be out of the Les Paul house. For bass, we have a couple of bass instruments, one that’s been mothballed since the original Music Box on Piety Street. We’re going to try to take his spirit of innovation and new sound concept into our world and stand on his shoulders and make a motion toward a wild new sound.” For tickets and information, visit musicboxvillage.com.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MUSIC BOX VILLAGE Music Box Village co-founder Taylor Lee Shepherd with a guitar inspired by Les Paul’s ‘Log’ guitar.
Krampus NOLAuf
THE KREWE OF KRAMPUS RETURNS TO BYWATER FOR ITS ALPINE-INSPIRED
PARADE of holiday frights. In some european cultures, Krampus is a figure who arrives to punish naughty children. The parade includes a Krampus as well as St. Nicholas, plus Y’ules, or figures from various northern european and Islandic cultures. The ghastly Sisters of Shh are a New orleans Krampus creation. This year, the parade introduces an accessibility stretch on Independence Street with a quiet zone, a sign language interpreter and an emcee to help vision-impaired spectators. There’s also a toy collection float for paradegoers who wish to donate to the Marine Toys for Tots program. The parade is at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 3. The parade starts at royal and Mazant streets and circles Bywater. visit kreweofkrampus. com for the route and details.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY KREWE OF KRAMPUS
KESHA MCKEY RECENTLY WAS NAMED
ONE OF 30 FELLOWS by Dance/USA. Her company, KM Dance Project, presents “raw Fruit” at the cAc this week. The multidisciplinary dance-based work examines identity, socialization and unity in Black Southern families, often in the context of daily rituals and family celebrations. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, and Saturday, Dec. 3, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, at the contemporary Arts center. Find tickets via cacno.org.
Holiday Parade
THE INAUGURAL HOLIDAY PARADE IS A DAYTIME EVENT WITH FLOATS BY KERN
STUDIOS, large helium balloons, marching bands and costumed characters. The parade travels across the French Quarter to the
