OffBeat Magazine October 2017

Bratz Y’all Mario Abney Just Deauxn’t —New Orleans Musicians Are Watching You

Ponderosa Stomp Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival

Bobby Rush Robert Finley

Gary U.S. Bonds Evie Sands Don Bryant Doug Kershaw Voice of the Wetlands

LeRoux

LOUISIANA MUSIC, FOOD & CULTURE—OCTOBER 2017 Free In Metro New Orleans US $5.99 CAN $6.99 £UK 3.50

King James

The Special Men &

Tales from the Saturn Bar

PHoto: WILLOW HALEY

A Musical Menagerie

BLAST FROM THE PAST “Dinner Music”

by Alex Rawls June 2006

Jimmy Horn spins tales of King James & the Special Men. Page 38 LETTERS

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MOJO MOUTH

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Five Questions with Doug Kershaw; My Music with “Lucky” Lee Hendler; Celebrating 30 Years: “Alex Chilton Lets Them Scream;” The Blackpot Festival; Amanda Shaw’s digital releases and more.

OBITUARY

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For Evie Sands, making music is like breathing.

FESTIVAL FOCUS

IN THE SPIRIT

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Jeff Schwartz at Bakery Bar mixes up Steppin’ Out for Lionel Robinson.

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Jason Jurzak is In the Spot at Nine Roses Cafe and Peter Thriffiley reviews Bratz Y’all.

REVIEWS 26

Bobby Rush celebrates his first Grammy at the Blues & BBQ Festival.

A POP MASTERPIECE

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Mario Abney reaches on a human and intellectual level.

OFFBEAT EATS 18

Musicians catch pieces of the performance that you might miss.

READY FOR MORE

CELEBRATORY MUSIC

From Bourbon Street to Esplanade—LeRoux is back.

Royce Osborn

HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, DICK

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Robert Finley at the Blues & BBQ Festival.

THEY SASHAY BY...

“Washboard Lissa” Driscoll

OBITUARY

FESTIVAL FOCUS

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Lost Bayou Ramblers, Sweet Cecilia, Kathryn Rose Wood, Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield, Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers, Johnny J and the Hipshots, Shake ’Em Up Jazz Band and more.

LISTINGS

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BACKTALK with Gary U.S. Bonds

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“Antoinette K-Doe is helping to pose the statue of her late husband, Ernie K-Doe, at a table at Galatoire’s, but the statue’s arm bumps into the side of the table. A friend unbuttons Ernie’s red shirt, reaches in, then pops the arm out of socket.“ To read more, this issue can be purchased at www.offbeat.com/issues/ june-2006/.

Don Bryant & the Bo-Keys at the Ponderosa Stomp.

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Letters

“So we may see some unintended consequences that the Bourbon Street clubs have to start hiring real bands again to compete with Frenchmen. Wouldn’t that be nice?”—Jill McGaughey, New Orleans, Louisiana

Houston Floods Thanks for your [Jan Ramsey’s] kind words today—it’s been a devastating week with 30 inches of rain. We rode in a boat, dump truck and military transport to the convention center for a night, got fished out by a friend of a friend on Monday, and got to another friend’s on Tuesday where we can stay. Fortunately, our house only took on 6–9 inches of water whereas all of our immediate neighbors took on two feet. As I was going through stuff today, I found many copies of OffBeat which I really want to keep along with many CDs and books. Some things will have to go but I will still look forward to OffBeat each month. Alas, I had to cancel our trip to New Orleans in two weeks—maybe later in the year.

Thanks for all your support but many throughout the Gulf Coast are heading to hell and back like y’all did in 2005. Peace and great music for all.

—Sandy Kuehl, Houston, Texas

Bourbon and Frenchmen The following letters are in response to Jan Ramsey’s blog post, “Learn a musical lesson from Bourbon and Frenchmen” about how Frenchmen Street may turn into Bourbon Street.

I’ve been playing Café Negril, the dive bar of Frenchmen Street, for the past seven years with Soul Project. Having a restaurant license is the main reason most venues can’t charge a cover charge. Making twenty percent of the bar plus one hundred percent of tips and CD sales we usually do okay pay wise. We have played other venues that charge a cover and not even made our standard minimum of $100 (since the days of Jelly Roll Morton). Percentage of the bar works if you have a good time slot otherwise it ain’t right. With all the competition on the street having a cover charge may turn away some folks but can act as a good crowd filter. d.b.a. for example doesn’t charge much at the door.

—Jeremy Habegger, New Orleans, Louisiana Frenchmen Street is siphoning off a lot of dollars from Bourbon Street. The migration pattern is observable almost every night: Get one drink “to go” on Bourbon, walk down the middle

of the street, don’t go in anywhere because: A) it smells disgusting, B) cover bands suck, and C) you have some vague notion that the “authentic” music isn’t there anymore, and then drift over to Frenchmen because you’ve heard that’s where the locals go. So we may see some unintended consequences that the Bourbon Street clubs have to start hiring real bands again to compete with Frenchmen. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But the sad truth is most tourists value the novelty of being able to carry a drink down the sidewalk, a pack mentality and the illicit thrill of peeing in public on our streets more than they value an actual quality immersive music experience.

We messed up by not enforcing the rules on Frenchmen Street, and now the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Which is a damn shame.

—Jill McGaughey, New Orleans, Louisiana People will pay for the music they want to hear and they do. Sure there are a few venues on Frenchmen Street that are free. To classify all of New Orleans as cover free is really misinformed.

Frenchmen is what it is. Bourbon is what it is.

Both are frequented by many locals and tourists alike. Regardless of where they are from they are both packed always so someone is digging it. Are those people complaining they don’t go there anymore going to those other venues instead? I’ll bet they don’t. Maybe you should start thinking of some new suggestions. These antiquated musings about winding back the clock only show how badly out of touch you are.

—Fernando Uribe, Union City, New Jersey

New Hair Color I’m French and used to come once or twice a year to New Orleans for 20 years. I’ve followed you [Jan Ramsey] for years and feel like I’ve known you forever, especially now with the web and Facebook and all the new technologies.

I don’t want to be indiscreet or to sound too familiar but I would like to let you know I really love your new hair color.

Perhaps I’ll see you in October; I’ll be going to Frenchmen Street to listen to some good music.

—Rachel Maucci, La Bâtie-Montgascon, Rhone-Alpes, France

OffBeat welcomes letters from its readers—both comments and criticisms. To be considered for publication, all letters must be signed and contain the current address and phone number of the writer. Letters to the editor are subject to editing for length or content deemed objectionable to OffBeat readers. Please send letters to Editor, OffBeat Publications, 421 Frenchmen St., Suite 200, New Orleans, LA 70116.

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Louisiana Music, Food & Culture

October 2017 Volume 30, Number 11 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jan V. Ramsey, janramsey@offbeat.com Managing Editor Joseph L. Irrera, josephirrera@offbeat.com Consulting Editor John Swenson Food Editor Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Listings Editor Katie Walenter, listings@offbeat.com Contributors Stacey Leigh Bridewell, Frank Etheridge, Robert Fontenot, Elsa Hahne, Jeff Hannusch, Jimmy Horn, Brett Milano, Keith Spera, John Swenson, Peter Thriffiley, Dan Willging, John Wirt, Geraldine Wyckoff Cover Willow Haley Art Director/Food Editor Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Web Editor Amanda Mester, amanda@offbeat.com Copy Editor Theo Schell-Lambert, theo@offbeat.com Advertising Sales/Promotions Coordinator Camille A. Ramsey, camille@offbeat.com Advertising Design PressWorks, 504-944-4300 Business Manager Joseph L. Irrera Interns Emily Carmichael, Gracie Davis, Marine Laval, Elina Tons Distribution Patti Carrigan, Doug Jackson OffBeat (ISSN# 1090-0810) is published monthly in New Orleans by OffBeat, Inc., 421 Frenchmen St., Suite 200, New Orleans, LA 70116 (504) 944-4300 • fax (504) 944-4306 e-mail: offbeat@offbeat.com, web site: www.offbeat.com facebook.com/offbeatmagazine twitter.com/offbeatmagazine Copyright © 2017, OffBeat, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the publisher. OffBeat is a registered trademark of OffBeat, Inc. First class subscriptions to OffBeat in the U.S. are available for $45 per year ($52 Canada, $105 foreign airmail). Back issues are available for $10, except for the May issue for $16 (for foreign delivery add $6, except for the May issue add $4). Submission of photos and articles on Louisiana artists are welcomed, but unfortunately material cannot be returned.

MOJO MOUTH

Sea-change For Festivals?

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he weather will have turned a bit cooler, hopefully, by the time this October issue hits the street.

At least it will officially be fall.

Fall means festival season hereabouts, and this month is loaded with music festivals and events every single weekend, both in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana.

From Festival Acadiens in Lafayette to the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, the Ponderosa Stomp, Art For Art’s Sake, the Oak Street Po-Boy Festival, Gentilly Fest, Oktoberfest, the Krewe of Boo! Parade and Zombie Run, even festivals devoted to mac ‘n’ cheese, cochon de lait and beignets. Every single weekend is packed with what we do best: music and food… and of course,

www.OFFBEAT.com

By Jan Ramsey

there are football games, too (but you can get football any-old-where).

Sometimes I think we New Orleanians get too caught up in the party and the celebration that’s inherent in living in this vibrant city, and less involved in making sure we still have a city to celebrate in coming years.

In the last month we saw incredible devastation in Texas, Florida and many Caribbean islands from hurricanes and tropical storms that, this year, were remarkably strong and violent. Some areas in the Caribbean may never recover.

God help the people in the Virgin Islands, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, and so many more.

New Orleans and our neighbors on the Louisiana Gulf Coast were

lucky again this year. A strong hurricane could just as easily have headed our way. To make matters scarier, New Orleans experienced a severe problem in August with mass flooding in certain areas of the city caused by an antiquated, ineffective and outmoded pumping system.

Without those pumps, a bad rain could put us back in Katrina territory.

While I’m thrilled to be able to be in a city like New Orleans, whenever hurricane season rolls around, I start quaking in my shoes when I hear there’s a new tropical depression. It’s been 12 years since Katrina, but during that period of time, we’ve become complacent yet again, which is made even worse by the rising temperatures on this earth. The changing climate

is not something that is going to go away on its own. I don’t think this city can possibly withstand another catastrophe like Katrina.

We have to think differently and prepare for what I believe is an inevitable event.

I’d suggest that instead of the city priding itself on creating new tech companies that can make a new app to deliver food or electronic publicity, that they encourage entrepreneurs who work in engineering, flood control (call on the Netherlands, for Pete’s sake!) and infrastructure recrafting to save all of our butts for festival seasons in the future.

We can’t afford to hide our heads in the sand and wait for the fury of nature to blast us away.

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Photo: WILLOW HALEY

U2 Electrifies Superdome With The Joshua Tree Tour

MY MUSIC

OffBeat.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUCKY LEE HENDLER

“Lucky” Lee Hendler

SWEET TWEETS

“I

got the nickname when I was working with Lucky Peterson, a blues artist that I started touring with in my twenties, when I went around the Chitlin’ Circuit with a lot of blues artists. I’ve played piano since I was 14, and started playing with bands on Bourbon Street when I was 18. I’m 49 now.

I know 18,000 songs. I was playing at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop in ’98 when an agent came in and asked me if I wanted to go to Norway. From there, I went to Holland and played the largest dueling piano bar in the world, Crazy Pianos, which is still running. We had 22 piano players on staff. I learned the craft of how to do the dueling show—it became part of my trick bag.

I came back to New Orleans and opened Howl at the Moon on Bourbon Street in 2001 and everything was great—until Katrina hit, when I lost my home in Lakeview. Ended up in Vegas, doing the dueling piano show at New York–New York, Harrah’s, all those places in Vegas.

Then I was offered a cruise-ship gig: ‘It’s amazing. You’ll see the world.’

I loved it, spent three years on the cruise-ship circuit. The cruise-ship director told me that I needed to have a different show for all the 50 days people are aboard the ship. So one day I’d learn the Rolling Stones, one day the Beatles, one day country songs, and putting all these charts into an iPad, which had just come out. Then a friend gave me a PDF file with 800 songbooks. I’m stuck on a ship so what else could I be doing?

I went through it all quickly, learning 10 songs a day of top hits by every band. I entered it all into an organized system and 18,000 songs became part of my repertoire.

For the most part, unless it’s something that needs to be extremely charted out, I can play it. If it follows the typical pattern of a country song, or rock song, or reggae, if it follows that pattern—and most hits do—I can listen to it one time and play it. I’ve been playing Lafitte’s since ’93—that gig, with all its tradition, is sacred. Playing it is the highest honor I have.

I’m very blessed, and very grateful, that I’m doing what I love. The only thing that could be better is if I put recordings of my own songs out there. I’ve written about 400 original songs, but haven’t released them. I feel like writing is my greatest gift. A song’s story, its message, has more value to me than the music itself: losing someone you love, coming home from war, dealing with your own issues. That gives me purpose— like a doctor healing someone—and that is everything to me.”

—Frank Etheridge

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@HugeJaffro (Eugenie Hero Jaffe) The 10yr old just discovered vinyl and The Beatles “Let It Be”— “Mom, there is music on both sides!” @AlisonF_NOLA I never thought I would live to be asked do I want to go hang out with Tony Joe White in the parking lot. @GalacticFunk They have to stop giving these hurricanes human names. It’s not fair to the #harvey #irma #katrina out there. @JohnPapaGros A couple songs Allen Toussaint wrote have a certain, uplifting chord at the end. He said, “That offers hope. We could all use some hope.” @BantamFoxes Aw man how long has my fly been down? Was it down during our set?

Crap. @jeffalbert Interestingly, the last time you do something, you usually don’t know it is the last time. @AnnetteSisco That was fast…

www.OFFBEAT.com

CELEBRATING

May 1995

“Alex Chilton Lets Them Scream”

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ffBeat Magazine is celebrating 30 years and will reach that milestone with our November 2017 edition.

To mark the anniversary, over the next 12 months OffBeat will re-publish excerpts from features and interviews from the past 30 years.

From our May 1995 edition, Keith Spera, then OffBeat editor, interviews local resident and singer-songwriter Alex Chilton:

TO LEGIONS OF POP GUITAR BANDS, ALEX CHILTON IS INDEED A KIND OF FIRST MAN. He initially gained notoriety as the 16-year-old raspy-voiced singer of the Box Tops, the blue-eyed Memphis soul band that scored a national hit with “The Letter.” After the original Big Star dissolved in 1975, Chilton’s career became erratic. He went through long periods of inactivity, hampered by bouts with alcohol and drugs. When he first came to New Orleans 13 years ago, he worked at menial jobs to support himself.

What first drew you to New Orleans?

I came down and stayed with a friend of mine in ’81 for a while, then came down for Mardi Gras in ’82. When I went back to Memphis that year, it was so damn cold and horrible I just said, ‘This is insane. I’m going back there.’ I’ve been here ever since… don’t really live here, but I stay here a lot.

What have you gotten musically out of being here? Have you picked up anything stylistically?

I guess. There are a lot of really good musicians around this town, and I’ve gotten to know a few of them. I learned a bit about more sophisticated kinds of music. I was a little better than most rock players all along, I think, but since I’ve been down here… I don’t know.

You’ve been digging up a lot of old material to play onstage, such as Otis Rush’s “Homework.” Is that for your own satisfaction?

Do you feel your approach adds something to the songs?

I do things that I feel comfortable doing, that feel natural for me. I try to do something that a lot of people haven’t heard a whole lot yet, although I’m no scholar of rare music at all. Something like ‘Homework’ is not really a rare tune; nevertheless a lot of young people—and a lot of older people—have never really heard it. So it’s not exactly the biggest cliché in the world to do. Although in certain circles it is.

Read more at www.offbeat.com/articles/alex-chilton-lets-them-scream/.

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FRESH

SOUNDCHECK

BLACKPOT FESTIVAL

Five Questions with Doug Kershaw

Building Community

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hat does it take to be a good fiddle player?

Well, talent doesn’t hurt. I come from a fiddle-playing family—I started at five years old. At seven my dad died and I had to start helping my mother make a living. By nine I was playing fiddle professionally.

So I just learned. But, to be honest with you, it’s hard for me to say how to become successful at it. I just did it because I was hungry. Hungry to learn, you know? You have to have that burning desire to succeed at anything. I had that. Growing up with four brothers, we were always in competition with each other. I learned a lot from my family by just playing.

Do you mind being known the world over as the “Ragin’ Cajun”?

No, no–that’s good. I chose to do that. Because it seems like everybody back then had a second name to remember. Not only my records and my music, but television helped a whole lot—as Doug Kershaw or the Ragin’ Cajun or the Louisiana Man or something. And I feel good about that.

When people talk about your Doug Kershaw music, they try to put you in Ponderosa Stomp categories varying from country to Friday, October 6 Cajun to folk to psychedelic rock. Do you see any difference in those labels as far as your music?

I never wanted to be labeled, and here’s why: I learned how to play music, I learned how to write music, and I sing music. I do music. I don’t do country, I don’t do rock, I don’t do folk. I allow the people—not the record label, but the people—to tell me what they like. And, first of all, Cajun music was the French Cajun, which I helped bring along. But if I chose to just do that, I wouldn’t have gotten 60 miles outside of Jennings.

Everything about “Louisiana Man” is the same thing we do at home, except it’s done in the English language. And that song happens to be the first song ever to be broadcast from space—it was transmitted from the moon by Apollo 12 astronauts back to Earth. That’s heavy.

You’re an engaging live performer, but you’ve also been called a “master recording artist.” Do you have a preference, stage or studio?

My preference is, of course, the stage. In the studio, it becomes business. I try to picture people, but I look and I see producers and musicians and that’s not exciting. I feed off of people. I feel what they want and I send it back.

How does it feel to play at the Ponderosa Stomp?

Incredible! The first records I did was myself and my brother, Rusty and Doug. All that stuff is considered rockabilly but, back then, we had no name for it. But now they think I’m rockabilly. And you know what? I guess I am.

—Frank Etheridge

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www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: LEE CELANO

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ne of South Louisiana’s most distinct festivals, Blackpot Festival & Cookoff returns to Lafayette’s Historic Vermillion Village this month. Besides the music, featuring Barbara Lynn, the Pine Leaf Boys, the Revelers, Quintron and Miss Pussycat and many others, there’s also a cookoff where culinary-minded contestants can compete in various categories such as gravy, gumbo, cracklin’, jambalaya and dessert.

Ironically, the Blackpot would never have been conceived if folk musician Jay Ungar hadn’t dared drummer Glenn Fields and guitarist Chas Justus of the Revelers. Fields and Justus were at a festival on the road bemoaning the fact that they were bypassed to headline a particular festival. “Jay said ‘Well you know the best way to headline a festival is to start your own,’” Fields recalls him saying. “We were like what? That’s a great idea. And then Jay said ‘Well, I dare you to do it.’ Basically Chas and I took the bull by the horns and eventually made it happen.” Lafayette weatherman Bob Moreau offered the use of a venue and the inaugural Blackpot was off and running, making its debut on Veteran’s Day weekend 2006.

Blackpot Festival What distinguishes Blackpot from & Cookoff other festivals is the inclusion of camping October 27-28 that’s available at nearby Beaver Park.

“After they stop playing music on the stages, everybody can go back to the campground and play music with each other, cook, share recipes, trade tunes and get to know each other,” Fields explains. “Last year we had a really cool impromptu square dance out at the camp ground, which was really fun.”

As Blackpot’s notoriety grew, pre-festival dance events were added to accommodate the growing legion of out-of-state attendees arriving early. Justus, noticing how interest and energy increased every year, decided to leverage the talents of his visiting musicians and launched the Blackpot Camp in 2012. “The camp is partly to value what they know too,” Justus says. “We don’t want to just say hey, you do all this stuff but you are just here to be immersed in Cajun music. So let’s do a workshop on Appalachian clogging, swing fiddle or Irish music so whenever these people are down, you feature what they have to offer.”

Justus describes the camp as having a community atmosphere where participants help prepare meals and wash dishes, hence growing together. “It’s our opportunity to create a little utopia for a week” he says about the communal experience.

“It’s not just the performance, the band and the music,” Justus continues. “It’s an entire context. With our band the Revelers, a lot of it is finding and creating a context that you work best in and something like the Blackpot, we create our own context for everything.”

—Dan Willging

FRESH

ONE TRACK AT A TIME

Amanda Shaw’s digital releases

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www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: GOLDEN G. RICHARD, III

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n the age of digital media, everybody talks about going outside the traditional album-release model and releasing new music online. Cajun rocker Amanda Shaw will be doing just that for her forthcoming album: Beginning this month she’s rolling it out one track at a time, supporting the releases with acoustic listening-room shows (including one in town at St. Roch Market on September 30).

Though it’s being released over months the album was actually recorded in a week, over the summer at Esplanade Studios. “I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to music—I love records, I love songs,” she explains. “I joke sometimes that putting out music is like the wild wild west—once it goes out on the internet it’s got a life of its own. And I was super-proud of these songs and wanted to give them a chance to live. So I’m not releasing the full album at once because I didn’t want to waste it.”

The first released track, “Soulful Dress” is the album’s only cover: First cut by Sugar Pie DeSanto in the ’60s, it was also famously done

by Marcia Ball; Shaw’s treatment is decidedly funkier and upto-date. “It’s such a cool song—when she sings about the slit sides and the V-neck, you can imagine that it was the ’60s and she was pushing the boundaries a little bit. It just celebrates being a young woman, and that’s something I can relate to. It makes me think of being in the green room and making up before a show, and how those things help me express who I am inside.”

Shaw’s albums have always been diverse, with Cajun tunes alongside classic-rock covers, and though she wrote it all this time, the new one (whose title she’s keeping secret for now) should be no exception.

“There’s still fiddle on everything and it still sounds like me, but it’s got some of the edgier rock sounds that I like. We’ve got ‘Naked to the World,’ which is a power ballad. And a really fun country song called ‘Dirty Blonde.’ I’ve always cited Dolly Parton as one of my influences, and lately I’ve been spending a lot of time on YouTube watching the old Porter Wagoner shows. So that one’s a throwback.”

This is also Shaw’s first music since moving from the North Shore to New Orleans two years ago. “I live in the Bywater so I didn’t just move into town—I moved into the funky, hip part of town. Every week there’s a new coffeehouse or a pop-up art studio. So that goes into the music, being surrounded by all this young, fun energy.”

—Brett Milano

IN MEMORIAM

“Washboard Lissa” Driscoll (1963 – 2017)

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hen I rolled into town twenty-some odd years ago as a teenager with nothing but a busted-up old saxophone and a blown gasket in my hatchback “apartment,” I was as alone as I’d ever been in my short life. After spending my first week or so in New Orleans hungry, getting lost in the Quarter and pushing my dead car/home around corners to avoid getting towed, I met “Washboard Lissa” Driscoll, a.k.a.

“Ragtime Annie,” and my fortune changed in an instant. She fed me until I was full and introduced me to my peers and musical elders within the community. She got me up to speed on the history of music in America and showed me how to feed myself by playing to a crowd. She called me out on any and all bullshit (constantly), I mean just walk right up and punch me in the arm to give me the whatfor in front of whomever, but she also let me know when I made her proud. Hell, she even bailed me out of jail one time. I showed up here a complete stranger, green as grass, and she not only took the time to get me started, but she bent over backwards to make me feel like a welcome member of her family. And that’s just it: My story is anything but unique. I could introduce you to at least a hundred members of that family right now with stories similar to mine, and

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that would only be scratching the surface. She touched a lot of people over the years. Real, honest and lasting friendships with people all over. They loved her like they loved the town. Her music was of course amazing and she was a natural born performer, but her humanity was always the thing that stood out for me.

She left home at the age of 13, you see, and in surviving this, she ended up an expert in the art of survival with a deeply developed sense of compassion for lost and wayward souls, for the broken and imperfect. As much as she surely suffered in her life, Lissa just brought that much more joy to everyone else. She embodied this whole damn city with her salty attitude, her nurturing spirit, and her ability to throw down. New Orleans won’t be the same without her! She will be sorely missed and my heart goes out to everyone whose life was made better with Lissa in it. Let’s all honor her spirit by living every day to the fullest, speaking our damn minds and taking good care of each other come what may.

“Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living is only a type of what is dead—and a very rare type.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science —Jimmy Horn www.OFFBEAT.com

IN MEMORIAM

Royce Osborn (1958 – 2017)

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his is the story of New Orleans’ black Mardi Gras,” says filmmaker Royce Osborn at the beginning of his award-winning 2003 documentary, All on a Mardi Gras Day. Focusing on the traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians, skeletons, baby dolls and street parades, Osborn, a New Orleans native, opened up the eyes of the world and even many New Orleans residents to the colorful, primarily African-influenced way that Carnival was and is celebrated in black neighborhoods across the city.

Osborn, who grew up in the 7th Ward, died on September 14, 2017 at the age of 58. The hour-long film will long stand as his legacy and gift to the culture he loved.

A graduate of the American Film Institute and a U.S. Navy veteran, Osborn worked for 20 years as a writer and producer for the NAACP Image Awards. He himself won two such awards—in 2005 and 2009—that honor African Americans for their contributions to the arts. He was also recognized by the New Orleans Film Festival and received a Louisiana Filmmaker Award for All On a Mardi Gras Day, which first aired on WYES-TV and then nationally on PBS stations.

Osborn returned to his hometown of New Orleans in 1997 and soon began research on what would become the landmark documentary. That put him in touch with Al Morris, the legendary www.OFFBEAT.com

chief of the North Side Skull and Bone gang. In 2003, Osborn and his brother, Alton Osborn, both joined the skeleton gang under the chief’s wise and watchful eye.

They continued to don their bones and skulls until Chief Al retired from the streets in 2006.

“Al was quite an influence on the importance of tradition and how things had to be done a certain way,” Alton remembers, adding that he and his brother both felt, “This is ours.” “Royce believed the story needed to be told.”

“Royce liked being the first on the street,” says Dama, his wife of 17 years about his involvement with the North Side. “He enjoyed the African concept of celebrating death.”

Beyond his filmmaking that included his work on If Those Bricks Could Talk, which focused on the human side of the destruction of the Lafitte Projects, Osborn was perhaps best known for his love of reggae music and the Jamaican culture.

“I know the music moved him,” says Royce as he recalls his older brother telling him: “Listen more to message music and listen more about the importance of social injustice.”

In August, Osborn attended the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame Ceremony where he was honored with the Capturing the Spirit Award for All on a Mardi Gras Day. His spirit lives on as he was one with the culture and its people.

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JUST DEAUXN’T

Here’s Looking At You, Dick illustration: papercutle

Musicians catch pieces of the performance that you might miss.

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story starts in Starkville, Mississippi, in an ordinary lunch café. I’m having meatloaf, I think, when a woman walks through the door—a woman who looks strangely like the bouzouki-wielding, fasttalking Beth Patterson in New Orleans. (Side note: There are no live music clubs in Starkville, Mississippi.) I stare at her, but she doesn’t stare back. She sits down with other meatloaf consumers, and there’s gentle talk that I’m straining to overhear about the weather and domesticated animals. After a while, I decide

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to corner this Beth lookalike.

Of course, she turns out to be “my” Beth after all, and the next day over coffee in downtown Starkville I learn she’s left New Orleans and is staying in her grandmother’s house on the outskirts of town.

“I don’t think there’s any going back to New Orleans for me,” she says. “I had to leave when I realized the idea of playing music gave me a knot in my stomach.

I started associating playing live music with getting abused.”

This led to a conversation about good and bad audience

By Elsa Hahne

participation and the particular challenges live-music performers face in small clubs; especially solo artists, women, and pretty much all musicians who play on a regular basis in the French Quarter and on Frenchmen Street.

I couldn’t believe some of the things Beth Patterson was telling me. Stalking, bullying, a drunk bar patron who “didn’t mean to” hit her in the face as he was actually just trying to “grab her pussy.” It didn’t take long for her to share other musicians’ stories along with her own, and I realized that as a live-music audience member, I’d

failed on many occasions to catch the entirety of a performance. I might have heard the songs, sure, but I never had to face the music like Beth Patterson and so many other artists do on a regular basis.

These are their stories.

Josh Paxton, pianist: “Many people want to start a conversation with you in the middle of a song, and that’s not something you can do, since you kind of have to pay attention to what you’re playing. You can’t hold that against them, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. Also, www.OFFBEAT.com

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“This is usually a dude that wants to touch me a little while he says it.

He could just say ‘Banana, banana, banana...’

What he says doesn’t really matter.”

—Alexandra Scott

people come by and pat you on the shoulder in the middle of a song. The intention is good, but if you’re not expecting it, it can startle you and you lose your place. So, a public-service message for people who, with only the best intentions, pat musicians on the shoulder (or back, leg, head, etc.) while we’re playing…

“GAAHHH WHAT THE FUCK IS SUDDENLY TOUCHING ME ON THE SHOULDER …?!?!?”

Josh Paxton

Here’s what you seem to be thinking at that moment: ‘Say, that fellow is pretty good! I’ll let him know I think so with a friendly pat on the shoulder as I walk by, which he’ll surely appreciate as an amicable gesture of approval.’ Here’s what you seem to think we’re thinking: ‘Why look, an affable-looking member of the audience is approaching. Hey, they’re giving me a reassuring pat on the shoulder! That must mean they like what I’m playing and are conveying it through the kindness of human touch! Thank you, good sir or madam, for making me feel appreciated with that thoughtful gesture!’ Here’s what we’re probably actually thinking: ‘All right, this song is going well and the band is all together and paying attention to each other and the singer just cued a new section and the drummer is setting up this rhythm and the guitarist played this particular chord so that means I should GAAHHH WHAT THE FUCK IS SUDDENLY TOUCHING ME ON

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THE SHOULDER…?!?!? Oh! It’s just a person who doesn’t know any better. FUUUCK!! Okay, okay, shake it off, back in the game.

Where are we? Which section is this? What was that idea I was starting to develop? Forget it, it’s gone. Just keep going and try not to suck too badly until you get reoriented…’

Men run into different problems than women do. I was on a gig with Debbie [Davis] at Three Muses and she was out in the audience passing the tip jar and she came back flustered.

On our break, I asked what had happened, and I’m not a violent person, but if that guy had still been there, I’m not sure I would have been able to restrain myself from beating the shit out of him.

He didn’t physically assault her, but he took out three dollars, and said something like, ‘Here’s one for the bass player, one for the guitar player, and one for the piano player—and I’ll have a special tip for you later.’ This is not a unique story; I hear stuff like this all the time from women I work with. What I deal with is more your basic drunken douchebaggery, the utterly nonself-aware people that everybody hates. I can get away with saying something snippy back because I’m not the front man—if I had a microphone, it might endanger my future employment...

The most bizarre career suggestion I ever got was from another musician, an older tradjazz guy, on one of the riverboats, and it was my first time playing with this guy. He said, ‘You should learn all of these old tunes and learn them on the banjo.’

Let me see—you’re suggesting that I switch both instrument and genres entirely? Like, ‘You do pretty good playing R&B on the

piano, but I’d really like to see you play trad jazz on the banjo.’”

Alexandra Scott, singer: “I’ve been playing my instrument for 33 years. Still, there’s always some guy who wants to tell me that he used to play the guitar and tell me all about it.

People might say, ‘Oh, you’re a girl with a guitar, you should sing a Jewel song!’ Meanwhile, I like The Replacements and Emmylou Harris. Just listen to me for a hot second before you tell me what to do. By and large, I’ve had more great audience participation than bad. I do a lot of unplanned audience participation at my shows, where I’ll do a singalong, like a musical flash mob with singers planted in the audience.

It’s so beautiful how live theater brings people together, and people often come up afterward and want to talk.

I actively do a shielding practice every time before I go on stage, where I imagine a safe space for myself. This doesn’t mean I don’t get grabbed or have to enlist the guys in my band to come stand next to me; ‘There’s a close talker here!’ I remember saying after French Quarter Fest when I only got grabbed twice, and how that was a good thing.

The worst thing that happened to me in recent memory was a house concert I did where the guy who hosted took all the money I’d made, said ‘I’m going to keep this for you until the morning,’ and then came to give me a kiss goodnight and stuck his tongue between my lips. All the while his family was there—his kids, his wife. I guess he figured I was polite enough that I wasn’t going to make a fuss in his house, as he’d just hosted this

house concert for me. If I’d said something, I’d probably hear, ‘But he just did all this stuff for you, you ungrateful wench.’”

Arsène DeLay, singer: “What I can’t stand is when someone comes in and makes the choice to not be aware. You can’t come in and scream-talk about your vacation while everyone else is listening. Recently, we had a nice, lovely Saturday afternoon at the Spotted Cat with our local and out-of-town regulars and this group of guys comes in, letting the entire bar know what they did on a boat. They were getting the side-eye and when a woman finally said ‘Do you mind?!,’ they started mocking her. That’s when I had to say something.

“That’s when I took it and threw it across the room.

She stared at me with her mouth open. It was like Sir Mix-a-Lot: ‘Oh, my God—Becky—look at her butt.’”

Arsène DeLay

We have a bad infestation on Frenchmen Street of bachelorette parties that have no manners whatsoever. I call them the Darth Becky type. I was performing at 30/90 recently, and normally I don’t pay them no mind—and try not to automatically roll my eyes—but these women were harassing the bartenders and just being obnoxious. They had these fans and decided to come dance www.OFFBEAT.com

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up close by the stage, waving their fans in front of us, being invasive. One woman was trying to jam her fan in between the floorboards to make it stand up so she could take a picture of it, and it didn’t work so she stuck her fan in our tip bucket. That’s when I took it and threw it across the room. She stared at me with her mouth open. It was like Sir Mix-a-Lot: ‘Oh, my God—Becky— look at her butt.’ They were all giving me the evil eye. But, baby, if it goes in the tip bucket and it’s not cash—it’s trash.

Don’t be a Darth Becky, the epitome of the worst kind of white girl there is, incredibly entitled, and then aggravated when someone says something.

Darth Becky and Darth Brad, they don’t tip the band, they don’t buy drinks, but they want to be the first to jump on stage and grab the microphone from you. You have to nip that in the bud. I’ve watched people throw acorns in the tip bucket at the [Spotted] Cat, and if you don’t lay down the law in the beginning, people keep going. This is not childcare!

And who wants to fish acorns out of their tip jar at the end of the night?”

Antoine Diel, singer and bandleader of the Misfit Power: “My experience has almost always been a positive one, but I’m fairly welcoming and try to treat the audience the way I want to be treated. Because performing is such an intimate thing, audience members can sometimes overreact. They want to connect—sometimes in a good way and sometimes in not such a good way.

Because I look and sound like I do, people assume I should

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“Sometimes we forget that what we do makes a connection to them and when they try to connect back to us, we should honor that. Whether they do it eloquently or not.”

Antoine Diel

sing this kind of song or know this kind of experience. They ask, ‘Where are you from?’ which is code for ‘What are you?’ Sometimes I’ll be coy and say I’m from Los Angeles, but I know where they’re headed.

The next question is, ‘Where’s your family from?’ People assume I’m Hawaiian or Filipino or Indian, but what does that matter? Are you liking the music? I try to understand that they’re just trying to connect with me somehow, and asking

where I’m from is sometimes all they know to ask. Explain, excuse, whatever... Sometimes we forget that what we do makes a connection to them and when they try to connect back to us, we should honor that. Whether they do it eloquently or not.

I have a gig at Buffa’s that’s pretty intimate, and I’ll announce to the audience that I entertain requests. There are certain songs that I do not sing because they don’t touch me, or because the lyrics don’t mean anything to me.

But I’m open to any song—I’ll sing Louis Armstrong, Ed Sheeran, Buena Vista Social Club, Sam Cooke—but it must be my expression.

Because I look Hawaiian, maybe, I got a request for ‘Over the Rainbow’—you might have heard it, the Hawaiian version [by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole]. I like the Judy Garland version, so I said ‘Sure’ and sang it my way, but I could see in their faces that that’s not the version they were expecting. After that, people asked, ‘Do you do any Hawaiian music?’ There’s a dissonance in their head as to what my music is supposed to be, like a mental

jukebox where they assume I like a certain artist because that’s who they associate me with, or because that’s what they want to hear.”

Darcy Malone, singer and bandleader of Darcy Malone & The Tangle: “I’ve always gotten interesting messages from random Rads fans, asking about my dad [Dave Malone, guitarist in the Radiators] or telling me they remember me as a child—but nothing really personal, until lately. Since last year, I’ve lost over 60 pounds.

At the same time, the band has gotten more successful. And all of a sudden I’ve started getting either really inspiring comments and people asking for advice, which is great—but also negative posts on social media from what seem like ghost profiles. On our band page, someone said, ‘Not only can you not sing, but a microphone doesn’t replace a Twinkie—you should have stuck with the Twinkies.’ And someone, one of my own friends and family—since they got it from my personal page—took a screenshot of me and said, ‘Not only are you a fat-ass, you’re a big fat liar.’ www.OFFBEAT.com

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And this is someone close to me who went through the trouble of creating a fake profile just to say this. It kind of breaks your soul for a second.

“Women love to tell me what I should wear on stage, what would look good on me for my body type, how I should move and dance.

The guys tell me I should make myself less available, that I shouldn’t go out into the audience after a gig and just hug everyone, but I don’t want to change who I am for anyone.”

Darcy Malone

It’s weird being in a band with five guys where this never happens to them; it only happens to me. The guys get comments like, ‘Hey Chris, your guitar playing is really cool’ or ‘Nice drum kit.’ I get creepy messages, sexual stuff; people talking about my body. Sometimes advice.

Women love to tell me what I should wear on stage, what would look good on me for my body type, how I should move and dance. The guys tell me I should make myself less available, that I shouldn’t go out into the audience after a gig and just hug everyone, but I don’t want to change who I am for anyone. www.OFFBEAT.com

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My band is not a cover band.

We play original music that we create. Something that really peeves me off is that every time I get off stage I have at least five people come up to me—including people close to me—and say, ‘You really need to do more Tina Turner stuff’ or ‘more Janis Joplin.’ They don’t realize that when they tell me that I need to do more other people’s music—not my music—it’s insulting.”

Jeff Greenberg, pianist and bandleader of Snake and the Charmers: “Every performer has some song that drives them crazy, and for me, it’s ‘Piano Man.’ People think they’re so clever— like they’re the first person who ever thought of requesting that song. This guy came up to me, squeezing a dollar bill so tightly, I swear I could hear George Washington scream. ‘Play ‘Piano Man.’’ I told him I didn’t know it, so he quickly pulled his hand back, with the dollar bill.

It’s almost funny when people make requests that aren’t anywhere close to what you play. I play old New Orleans blues and boogie-woogie and someone will walk up to me and ask for Prince, Madonna.

It’s hard to be a piano player in clubs in New Orleans because

“I play old New Orleans blues and boogie-woogie and someone will walk up to me and ask for Prince, Madonna.”

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the piano is often shoved up against the wall, so you’re playing to the wall, and even if you’re talking to the audience, you don’t know if they’re responding unless you turn around. I’ve thought of putting up motorcycle mirrors on the piano, just so I can see.

Sometimes you’re playing in a bar and they’ve got 17 TVs all tuned to different games and the only time you hear applause is when the teams score.”

Meschiya Lake, singer and bandleader of Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns: “Usually people are enthusiastic and extremely kind, but some people think they’re buying a piece of you for the dollar they put in the tip bucket. They’ll behave towards a performer in a way they’d never do with a man or woman on the street. Meanwhile, you’re at work and you’ve got your game face on and you’re more apt to smile and move on rather than say something. There was this lady, we’d just finished a gig in Montreal and she had given me this dress, this very ill-fitting dress, and she started following me and the band around, from gig to gig, and after. We finally had to tell her she couldn’t come with us to where we were going and she got so mad. People construct this idea of you, of who you are, and when their idea doesn’t match reality, they get mad at you! She was so mad at me.

Then there was this guy who brought me costume jewelry and had helicopters. He wanted to take me out on a helicopter to a nice dinner, and I tried to brush him off, but he kept coming, staring from the back of the room. He didn’t get super angry, thankfully.

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“I guess it’s idolatry—they see you perform and go, ‘I’m in love!’

That’s the other side of the coin, but it’s still the same coin.”

—Meschiya Lake

I guess it’s idolatry—they see you perform and go, ‘I’m in love!'

That’s the other side of the coin, but it’s still the same coin.

My first gig back after I had my baby—six weeks after—I was just coming off stage at the [Spotted] Cat and an overweight middleaged man goes, ‘Great show.

You’re a bit heavy, but you’ll lose that.’ What? Some people actually think they’re trying to help: ‘If you’d wear sexier clothes, you’d be more successful.’ Huh? They’re so sure they’re entitled to say something like that. If you don’t respond the way they want, they’ll go, ‘Who do you think you are? I was just trying to help you!’ And then there’s that great word—‘Diva.’”

Robby Hecht, singersongwriter: “I had this guy, and he might have been 85, suggest I do an entire show of James Taylor covers. He thought I sounded like James Taylor—‘this is what you need to do.’ It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Really, the last person you want to cover is the person you sound like—then you’re a tribute band, basically. Maybe he just thought it would be easy for me, and I think he meant it as a compliment, but what I heard was, ‘I’d rather hear someone else’s songs coming out of you.’

Basically, he was telling me that I wasn’t good enough. Of course, if I did the James Taylor cover show, the guy would say, ‘That was my idea.’ People want to inject themselves into your story and be part of your journey. They like your show, but feel that it could be improved. ‘I have this idea for you; this is how you should change.’ ‘You should talk more about the origin of the

songs you play,’ or, ‘You talk too much, you should just play your songs.’

“Often, people decide that I’ve been heavily influenced by someone they think I sound like.”

Robby Hecht

Playing folk music is tough when people start drinking, especially in New Orleans. Some decide they’ll be the performer and you’ll be their straight man— you’re the serious person who makes their jokes funny. Often, people decide that I’ve been heavily influenced by someone they think I sound like. ‘You’ve been heavily influenced by José González.’ Huh...?”

Beth Patterson, singer and instrumentalist: “The first time I was ever groped on a gig I was 17 years old and a senior in high school.

It was in Lafayette and it was a band I was in with my mom and this man, after a gig, gave me a hug and then he reached under and cupped my butt, grabbed it and gave me a good slap. ‘I like butts’—that was his justification.

There was no particular event that made me leave New Orleans in 2013. The year before I left the Quarter, I was setting up for a gig and someone left a cup of pee next to my tip jar. I’ve been swung at; I’ve had people jump up on stage trying to grab the microphone out of my hands; I’ve had people try to pull my instrument out of my hands while I’ve been playing; I’ve had things thrown at me and been followed

out to my car; I’ve had people scream threats at me from the audience—things they’re going to do to me, sexually, without my consent. A lot of this I’ve had to handle on my own.

A guy can say ‘Shut the fuck up, man!’ and stand up for himself. When a woman is half that aggressive, she’s a ‘diva.’

So I have to make it passiveaggressive. Smile right at them: ‘Hey, I thought I’d told you to wait in the truck!’ or something like that. For a long time I didn’t drink on stage because I had to stay alert, and be ready.

I have my own psychological survival methods and one I strongly recommend is to keep a warm and fuzzy file; whenever you get a nice note on Facebook or passed up to you on stage, or a nice e-mail, keep it all in a file and when you have one of those days, it really helps.

Playing Irish music, I also get the people who are Irisher-thanthou. It’s funny, I was playing a St. Patrick’s Day gig, and had just finished singing this song in Gaelic and immediately after, this woman came up and said, ‘Do you play any traditional songs, like ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling?’—which isn’t traditional; it’s an American parlor song. You sort of have to go, ‘Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.’”

Later on, Beth Patterson adds two new entries to the dictionary.

They are: Prodoucher: that guy who tells you how you should have mixed your record (and suggests that you go back and redo it with your copious disposable income). Not to be confused with Geekqualizer: that stranger who runs up to the stage and keeps trying to fix your mix (sometimes www.OFFBEAT.com

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“For a long time I didn’t drink on stage because I had to stay alert, and be ready.”

—Beth Patterson

even suggesting that you use state-of-the-art condenser mics on your dive-bar gig).

P.H. Fred, singer-songwriter and educator: “I had this person bullying me, saying stuff like, ‘I hear you won’t play in New Orleans anymore— good riddance,’ or, ‘You sound like a goat being sodomized.’ Which is funny: How does he know what a sodomized goat sounds like? Did he sodomize a goat?

I’ve received anonymous messages asking me to kill myself. I really don’t need people to tell me I suck. I can tell myself that! This guy said, ‘Don’t come back to Banks Street Bar!’ He

www.OFFBEAT.com

told me I was banned from the bar where he works—and he’s a bar back. Meanwhile, I’m getting called to work with Marianne Faithfull; I’m getting called internationally to write with Mick Jagger’s girlfriend.

I was a standup comedian for years and years, but losing my mom and my house in Katrina, I didn’t feel funny anymore. The best experience I ever had with an audience was a year after Katrina, at the Manship Theatre [in Baton Rouge]. We called it New Orleans North and the show was ‘The Adventures of Blue Tarp and Black Mold.’ This woman in the audience had not smiled or laughed in a year, and we were

“My last suicide attempt was in 2009. I overdosed and literally woke up dead in a hospital [...] Now, when someone tells me, ‘You should kill yourself,’ I say, ‘I’ve done that before, and I’m back.’”

P.H. Fred

able to help her with that. Also, there was this woman who must

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be in her mid-twenties now who tracked me down—I’d taught her back in 2003—and she wanted to thank me. Said I’d saved her life because she was overweight and bullied and I’d said that it was okay to be weird, okay to be goofy and funny. When you hear something like that, it eclipses all the bullshit.

There’s a lot of non-douches out there, if you know what I mean.

My last suicide attempt was in 2009. I overdosed and literally woke up dead in a hospital. My suicide note was a song; it became my closing song, and I get a lot of response when I play it. Now, when someone tells me, ‘You should kill yourself,’ I say, ‘I’ve done that before, and I’m back.’”

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BOBBY RUSH

Ready for More Bobby Rush celebrates his first Grammy at the Blues & BBQ Festival.

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PHoto: demian roberts

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luesman Bobby Rush is living high off the hog, or at least that’s how the down home, Louisiana native might describe it. “We talk about chickens, donkeys, monkeys and alligators—anything that moves on the ground,” Rush once laughingly proclaimed.

At age 83, the guitarist, vocalist, harmonica player and composer, whose first gold record was 1971’s “Chicken Heads,” is celebrating having been honored with his first Grammy for his deeply soulful, often funky and funny and always straight-up honest 2016 Rounder Records release Porcupine Meat.

“Call me homeboy!” Rush has repeatedly requested from his fellow Louisianans and why he’s so excited to perform in New Orleans for the first time since winning the Grammy. “I’m bringing it back home!” he proudly declares.

The Bobby Rush Band, an octet complete with his amazing, wellendowed dancing “girls,” headlines on Sunday, October 15 at the 12th annual Blues and BBQ Festival.

Born in Homer, Louisiana, Rush moved to Arkansas in 1947 and several years later headed to Chicago where he spent some 30 years developing and honing his musical craft. He got a bit closer to his home state when he set up shop in Jackson, Mississippi in 1980. Though Rush, who has been the recipient of numerous awards through the decades, hasn’t lived in Louisiana since childhood, he delights in his roots here. In 2014 his album Down in Louisiana received a Grammy nomination, and his Grammy winning Porcupine Meat boasts an all-star New Orleans band with keyboardist David Torkanowsky, bassist Cornell Williams, drummer Jeffery “Jellybean” Alexander, sousaphonist

Kirk Joseph, saxophonists Roger Lewis and Khari Allen Lee and background vocalist Charles “Chucky C” Elam III. Only guitarist and longtime Rush music mate, Mississippian Vasti Jackson, who acted as the CD’s music director, hails from outside of Louisiana.

The always enthusiastic and energized Bobby Rush returns “home” with trophy in hand and a smile on his face. It may have been a long time comin’ but that’s no matter to him. He’s ready for more.

of people. I’ve been known as the “King of the Chitlin’ Circuit” so I’ve advanced out of that now to a B.B. King audience or an Elton John audience. I haven’t changed anything. I’m playing at festivals I haven’t worked in a long time and some of them I haven’t ever worked at all. I think it put me in another category, which is all good. I don’t think I bring more to the table having a Grammy but people know more about me from the Grammy. I have something to live up to, that’s for sure.

Blues & BBQ Festival Sunday, October 15 7-8:30 p.m.

How about your earning power? Can you demand more money for your performances?

I want to let people know that I want to get my price up but I don’t want to price out performing for people who have been with me all their lives and all my life. I just want to make money with what I’m doing but I also want to keep my fans and I want to gain new fans to help launch my career to a better place than it was.

Has your life and/or career changed since you won the Grammy for Porcupine Meat?

I would think so. People now call me that didn’t know me before. I guess people respect me from a different perspective now because of the Grammy. It brings about more work. I’m picking up another audience—another class

By Geraldine Wyckoff

Do you think Porcupine Meat being released on the Rounder label was helpful?

Oh, God, yes. The label helped me but all of the people at the label who had so much faith in me, my producer Scott Billington and his lovely wife [Johnette Downing, who along with Rush and Scott composed “Snake in the Grass”] who’s written some good songs, really wrapped their arms around me. I was just hurt because record sales are so down league now that you don’t sell records like you used to because of downloading and that hurt the record company.

I’m sad about that but I’m happy about what they did for me. They really put me on the map and put me in places I’d never been before.

I just feel so bad that I can’t sell a lot of records for the company because it’s such a good label with such good people and they worked so hard. They did so many good things and they did so many right things. I’m just in tears it didn’t do the numbers that I thought it should have done. www.OFFBEAT.com

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Have you ever played live with the New Orleans musicians who are on Porcupine Meat?

No, I haven’t—other than Vasti Johnson. I would love to—we talked about that one time. I would just melt in my shoes if that ever happened. Those guys [from the album] could make a fly dance on the wall.

We do so much more than just do the album. I have 374 records—some of them have been hit records, some of them were gold records. You’ve also got to know this ain’t the only record that I have. You know what, I’m so excited that out of 374 records [released] this is the first I ever cut in my home state and won a Grammy on it and everybody except Vasti [and several guest artists] is from Louisiana.

You’ve played in New Orleans at Jazz Fest for a number of years, at Voodoo Fest, twice at OffBeat’s Best of the Beat awards and also at the Blues and BBQ Fest several times. Is there anything you particularly like about the Blues Fest?

I like the rudeness of it—the grit of the festival. Scott [producer Scott Aiges] reaches back and gives people shots who don’t have a shot. He’s always trying to motivate people and get people to know musicians who are unknown. Just because you’re unknown, don’t mean you’re not a good musician. He always puts on the dog. So now, I’m an upper dog so I’m trying to make sure that I help all of the people who came my way get the shot that I got. I came up through the ranks baby. I’m so proud that I was able to work and came up through those ranks and here we are now working as headliners around the country.

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“A lot of time my race seems ashamed of the blues.

I tell everyone that the blues is the root of all music, the mother of all music.”

You left Louisiana when you were young, though a lot of your sound—well it’s a combination— still has the Louisiana flavor in there. That’s particularly true on the tune “Catfish Stew.”

So I love Muddy Waters, love Johnnie Taylor, I liked Ray Charles, T-Bone Walker, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Jimmy Reed, Fats Domino, Louis Jordan... You can hear a little bit of this and a little of that in my songwriting and in my voice. You put it all in a big bowl and you stir it up and you got a Bobby Rush.

Although I’m playing the blues, you can hear a little bit of that zydeco thing back in my voice [on ‘Catfish’].

Oh, Louis Jordan was probably my biggest influence. He talked about things I could relate to: chickens, dogs, cows, fish fries and the whole bit. He was particularly my number one when I was coming up.

The writing on Porcupine Meat as well as other tunes you’ve composed through the decades is just great. The lyrics of “I Don’t Want Nobody Hanging Around,” are just hilarious. Do you write all of the time?

My best writing comes—all of my writing comes—when I don’t have a pencil. It’s when I’m driving.

In the past, a lot of times something would come to me when my tape recorder was in the trunk and I have to pull over. Sometimes it’s there then sometimes it’s not. I’m writing now because I’m getting ready to do this other CD. In probably another 90 days I’ll have it in the direction I’m going with.

Have you ever eaten porcupine meat?

Not that I know of. [Laughs] Here’s what I was talkin’ about when I was writing this song. I was talking about I’m in love with this woman that I know she don’t mean me no

good but I love what she do to me.

I know all the time she probably has someone else. I don’t want to leave her because then I won’t have any parts of her at all. That’s porcupine meat—“too fat to eat and too lean to throw away.” I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. You want it, you know it ain’t no good for you but it sure is good to you.

Your energy level onstage as a musician, singer and totally entertaining performer is just outrageous. That holds true offstage as well. What’s your secret?

I don’t know. I didn’t notice I had energy until people told me about it. It was just part of life for me, I’m just that kind of person. It’s part of my makeup to be active—I’m a workaholic. I feel pretty good, I don’t feel as good all the time as I used to feel but even if I don’t I just try to go on anyway. That’s my attitude in life. I think about what it could have been so that I’d be just so thankful for what it is. I just try to mold myself in a way so I can sustain the day. I don’t eat much red meat—if they fly or swim, I eat ’em.

Do you still have your record label, Deep Rush? Will the next album you mentioned be on that or Rounder?

I hope we can work something out—let it unfold. I want to give Rounder every shot I can give them because they were so wonderful for me. I’ve put out 12 recordings on Deep Rush—everything is available except maybe one that is hard to get.

I have control of most of the things I’ve done throughout my history.

In a 2014 interview with OffBeat you said, “I perform my blackness,” when talking about the notoriously wonderful “girls” who dance

as part of your show. Can you elaborate?

I’m a black man who is proud of what I do; proud of who I am.

I always talk about being a blues singer; I’m not just a blues singer, I’m a black blues singer. I don’t hide that. People embrace me for who I am, for what I do. I appreciate that. One thing for sure, when you see me doing what I’m doing, you know that I’m a black man doing what I’m doing. There’s no if, and or but about who I am.

I said that because so many times we’d have black guys who say I’m going to do this because I think this is what white people like or I’m going to do this because I think this is what black people like. I do what I feel that I hope everyone likes. It’s not a black or white issue with me. It’s about the love of the music.

Dance is part of the heritage of what black people do. When I first came out with the girls everybody thought... well, I don’t know what they thought but I could hear the mumbling in the back.

Nevertheless, people accept it now better than they did then. Even if they don’t, I have to do what I have to do and I do it out of love. I was doing it in the black neighborhoods all the time and there were no problems there because they understood. But when I started crossing over to the white audience then I had a little flack even from the black people because I guess they were ashamed of what I was doing because I was a black man doin’ this. The girls have changed up through the years but the show won’t change. It’s the Bobby Rush Band, the Bobby Rush entourage.

A lot of time my race seems ashamed of the blues. I tell everyone that the blues is the root of all music, the mother of all music.

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EVIE SANDS

A Pop Masterpiece For Evie Sands, making music is like breathing.

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s any Ponderosa Stompgoer knows, there are certain records that you need enlightened ears to appreciate. Evie Sands’ 1965 nearhit, “Take Me for a Little While,” isn’t one of those. No, this is one of the great romantic outpourings, a performance up there with most of the ’60s pop/soul landmarks you could name.

Ponderosa Stomp Saturday, October 7 Orpheum Theater

It’s not the only magical record that Sands made—the Northern soul gem “Picture Me Gone” comes to mind, as does her 1970 version of the country-pop standard “But You Know I Love You;” she’s also got a new EP, Shine For Me, that finds her powers intact. Nor was “Take Me for a Little While” the only time she narrowly missed becoming a household name.

But in her view, becoming one was never the point anyway.

“That’s the lingering myth that I want to dispel, that I’m the most unlucky artist in the world. It’s not really fun, and it’s untrue,” she says from her Los Angeles home. “Making music to me is like breathing, and the idea of not doing it would literally be like dying; that’s how much a part of my life it is. So I always found a way to do it—some of it was high-profile, some of it was less in the spotlight.

I like to think that I’m in the Alex Chilton world. There’s somebody I really admired, though I never got to meet him. The way he lived his life for the music, he never did it for the superficial reasons, to be popular or meet girls or get famous. He’d get onstage and even turn his back sometimes, but he was there because he loved playing. I like to think I’m the same way.”

She’s also loath to identify as a ’60s act, which is why she’s

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Evie Sands with June Carter and Johnny Cash in 1961

By Brett Milano

turned down the Ponderosa Stomp a couple of times. She’s since recognized music obsessive Dr. Ike Padnos as a kindred spirit, so her set will have a few vintage tracks—probably including the above-mentioned singles—that she wouldn’t normally dig up.

Sands came into music as a particularly determined Brooklyn pre-teen, entering a talent contest that she heard about on a New York radio station. “I came out as a finalist, and what I remember was that Sid Bernstein was there—the man who later brought the Beatles over. I’m not sure if he was a judge, but I remember him taking me aside and saying, ‘Don’t let it get you down that you didn’t win this thing.’

To me what he meant was, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and just go for it.” After a couple of obscure singles—including a version of “Danny Boy” done in early-’60s girl-group style—she wound up at Leiber & Stoller’s Red Bird/Blue Cat label, home of the Shangri-Las and the Dixie Cups.

“Everybody knows about the Brill Building, but 1650 Broadway was where the young, current stuff was really happening. That was where Carole King and that group of writers, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were. They had the pianos in their offices, all working on a follow-up to their last hit.

And it’s where you could walk in and maybe get someone to listen to your song.” There she met musician Al Gorgoni and songwriter Chip Taylor, who’d be longtime career associates. But there was one notable figure she managed to avoid: “I never met Phil Spector, which I suppose is a good thing. I did have friends who worked with him—let’s say he was definitely an interesting guy.”

“Take Me for a Little While” was her Blue Cat debut. “When I www.OFFBEAT.com

EVIE SANDS heard it I said ‘Mmm, I love this,’ and we knew it was the one to record.” But just when it looked to be hit-bound, the Chess label rushed out a competing version

by Jackie Ross; as a result neither version really hit. There were similar mishaps with two further, equally fine singles: “I Can’t Let Go” (covered by the Hollies) and “Angel of the Morning” (done more famously by Merrilee Rush). “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t say it was a frustrating, disheartening experience. It’s like a football game where the receiver is about to catch this beautifully thrown pass, then the quarterback knocks the ball out. It wasn’t fun but I let that go, I’ve moved on and done a zillion things.”

She did ultimately have a hit of her own, 1969’s “Any Way That You Want Me”—search YouTube and you can find a beautiful period video that was shot in a French Quarter courtyard. But for Sands, the missed hits served as a cue to get into other corners of the music world. She did some productions, including an album for folksinger Holly Near, and turned to songwriting in earnest.

One of her songs made it to a Barbra Streisand album in 1974 and another wound up, in all places, on the one album that Gregg Allman made with then-wife Cher.

Her own albums were less frequent—only two more in the ’70s and none in the ’80s—but worth hunting down: 1979’s Suspended Animation on RCA included a backing vocal from Dusty Springfield, the only time the two ever sang together. “Sadly it was. She instantly became one of my favorites the first time I heard ‘I Only Want to Be With You.’ When I found out at a certain point that she liked my work—that was just the best. We had so much fun doing that recording, and I seriously wish we had done more.”

Another part of the RCA experience proved less positive. “I produced that album myself, but if you look at the credits you’ll see there’s a co-producer listed. That’s because my attorney at the time told me it would never fly unless there was a guy involved—and when the label came to see me, www.OFFBEAT.com

they’d look past me and direct everything at the guy. It was like I was invisible.” Not coincidentally, this was her last go-round in the major-label world. “I would like my output to have been a million times more. But the opportunities that were presented to me were all ‘My way or the highway’. Or, ‘Yeah, we know you’ve had this success but we want you to work with this or that producer.’ It really seemed like Mad Men, the way

the suits would hesitate to have a female at the helm of a recording session. So I went to some of the other things that I love, like writing and doing session work— and playing fewer shows than I would have liked, since there wasn’t any tour support.”

She returned to recording with the 1999 album Women in Prison, including a duet with another admirer, Lucinda Williams. The new EP will be

followed by a full album next year, and the new songs keep coming. She’s also back on the road, playing East Coast dates for the first time in a while. “I’ve always set a really high standard for myself and if I can maintain that, great. It can be 10 people or 10,000 people in the audience; one way or another, we keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m thrilled and excited as always.”

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PHoto: matt white

PONDEROSA STOMP

Don Bryant & the Bo-Keys Ponderosa Stomp Saturday, October 7

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on Bryant, one of the architects of the classic Memphis soul sound of Hi Records, made a spectacular comeback album, Don’t Give Up On Love, just in time to be a featured performer at this year’s Ponderosa Stomp. The record sounds astonishingly similar to a vintage Hi production thanks to a close relationship between Bryant and longtime Stomp participant Scott Bomar of the Bo-Keys, who co-wrote material with Bryant and co-produced the album.

Bryant was Willie Mitchell’s right-hand man, the vocalist in his band before Hi and a key member of the studio team as a writer, producer and performer.

Ann Peebles was his project and became his wife. He wrote “Part Time Love” and “99 Lbs” for her and they co-wrote her 1973 classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”

Bryant started out singing gospel at age five and eventually stopped making secular music and returned to the world of gospel.

“I never stopped singing,” he says. “I had still been writing all along and singing gospel. Scott Bomar asked me if I wanted to do a few shows with the Bo-Keys.

I agreed and had a really good time, the shows were going real nice and the audiences liked it.

Then he asked me if I wanted to do an album.”

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Bryant put together new material and revisited old favorites like “I Got To Know,” written in 1960 for the “5” Royales.

“I’ve been knowing Scott for a long time,” says Bryant. “I put all the lyrics together and had an idea of how the melody would go but basically we wrote it together. He would play some lines on the bass and I would do my part.”

Bryant felt like he was back working with Willie Mitchell at Hi Records.

“There really wasn’t a whole lot of difference,” he says, “because we had a whole lot of Hi musicians on the session—Howard Grimes on drums, Charles Hodges on organ, Archie Turner on keyboards. They recorded with me and Ann back in the day so I’ve been around them a long time. We all knew each other and I thought we got a good feel on the session. I knew something good was gonna come out of it.

The musicians got together and put down some tracks. Then I came in and did my overdubs.

“I was really glad to get back into the studio after such a long time. I kept getting that spiritual knowledge, so songs would come to me and I wrote ’em down. A lot of things that go through my mind I couldn’t tell you, but I could write them in a song and sing it and you’d know what I was talking about.”

—John Swenson www.OFFBEAT.com

PHoto: aaron greenhood

BLUES & BBQ FESTIVAL

Robert Finley Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival Sunday, October 15, 4:30 p.m.

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or decades, blues, soul and gospel singer-guitarist Robert Finley stayed in north Louisiana. A resident of the small town of Bernice, he backed gospel quartets, played music for local TV programs and performed solo at a restaurant.

In 2016, Finley released his debut album, Age Don’t Mean a Thing. In August, Z2 Comics released New Orleans writer Gabe Soria’s graphic novel, Murder Ballads. Finley sings the novel’s five-song soundtrack, a companion project produced by Soria’s friend, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.

After Murder Ballads, Finley and Auerbach collaborated again to record Finley’s second album.

Nonesuch Records is expected to release Going Platinum later this year.

“A lot of my friends say I’m taking it too easy,” Finley says of his latecareer breakthroughs. “I do realize how serious it is, but at the same time I’m trying to stay focused.”

Finley, who’s playing the Crescent City Blues and BBQ Festival on October 15, doesn’t want to get his hopes too high. “I would rather be surprised than disappointed,” he said. “I would rather go beyond what I expected than hope too much and not make it.”

With that in mind, Finley gives everything he’s got to every performance he plays. “I focus on delivering the songs and keeping the audience captivated while we’re performing them,” he said. www.OFFBEAT.com

To captivate his audience, Finley knows that he, too, must be captivated. “The goal is for people to love what I do,” he said. “Of course, I’ve got to love it first.”

The forthcoming Going Platinum album is a departure from the vintage soul–oriented Age Don’t Mean a Thing. “It’s a musical gumbo because you got soul, rock ‘n’ roll, a touch of jazz, country and western,” Finley said.

Unlike Age Don’t Mean a Thing, Finley didn’t write any of the songs on Murder Ballads or Going Platinum. Auerbach composed and arranged both projects. “He gave me the idea of what he was trying to say, and what the song was about,” Finley said. “But he wasn’t bound to one thing. He gave me freedom to express it in my own way.”

Auerbach would later tell Rolling Stone magazine that Finley is “the greatest living soul singer, as far as I’m concerned.”

“The Music Maker Relief Foundation, they really started the ball rolling,” Finley said of the organization that supports American roots musicians. “I’ll be forever appreciative for them.

They turned the light on and gave me a chance to shine. I’m just along for the ride, but I’m taking it seriously because it’s an opportunity that any musician, young or old, would love to have.”

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MARIO ABNEY

Celebratory Music

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n New Orleans, you can live after a jam session if you didn’t have a good night,” Mario Abney says with a laugh when comparing the jazz scene in his previous home base of Chicago with the Crescent City’s. The trumpeter and composer, who moved to New Orleans in 2008 and just released his distinctive sophomore disc, The Abney Effect Vol. 1—Instant Grits, brings a bit of both of these major jazz cities to his sound.

“The musicians in Chicago are pressing for a certain type of expressive aggression,” he continues. “In New Orleans music is part of the lifestyle.

They both balance out. The level of music still rises up. Music works itself out that way.”

Abney, who began playing drums in church in his hometown of Harvey, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, embraces his musical influences and experiences and totally incorporates them on the album.

He was encouraged in the music by his piano-playing uncle and was exposed to blues through his grandmother who dug the likes of legendary guitarist/ vocalist Howlin’ Wolf. When he was still in high school, his mother would take him to jam sessions at notorious Chicago clubs such as Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge. He got hip to New Orleans brass band music when the Hot 8 played a festival in Ohio where the trumpeter attended college and then taught school.

The links between the musical styles of Chicago and New Orleans have continually filtered through his consciousness and life. “A lot of people in Chicago are from the South so you had

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a lot of Mississippi roots in the church, a lot of Louisiana, a lot of Alabama roots in the church I grew up in,” he explains, mentioning that there was a big, heavy gospel sound akin to that of the Southern Baptist Church.

“The church had that back beat—the two and four,” Abney offers. “That was like a calling for me.” Abney began playing trumpet in high school.

“I got a late start at 16, and I had to do some research on players like Louis [Armstrong], Dizzy [Gillespie] and Miles [Davis],” says Abney, who then began hearing the connection between jazz and the blues and gospel music that had long been part of his life. “My identity started to develop, and a new circle of friends. I noticed how in hip-hop they used to sample James Brown. I heard a lot of James Brown when I was growing up. My grandmother would listen to James Brown and Ray Charles and a lot of stuff with heavy, greasy hollerin’ and yellin’ in it too—like preachers.

So while in the north, Abney was devouring these

By Geraldine Wyckoff

various styles including his latest discovery, the brass band music of the Hot 8. It wasn’t too long before he, drummer Julian Addison and saxophonist Clarence Slaughter, who were also on Abney’s first release, Spiritual Perception, jumped in his truck and headed to the Crescent City. The trumpeter was well prepared for the diversity of music he found here.

“In 2005, New Orleans started speaking to me,” he says. “My heart got turned on to the city by Katrina. I always wanted to go but I said, ‘Damn, that’s the birthplace of the music.’” Following a visit that included playing on Frenchmen Street, Abney’s big move came in 2008.

The interest and energy of The Abney Effect Vol. 1—Instant Grits stem from the trumpeter’s delight in diversity and insightful use of some very talented musicians, most of whom are based in New Orleans. That is immediately apparent from the first cut, “Rollin’”—a get-up tune that swings and street beats with in-the-know cats like drummer Simon Lott and

keyboardist Yoshitaka “Z2” Tsuji.

The wonderful performance by longtime Abney friend and fellow Chicagoan, Kaliq Woods, declares the clarinet alive and well in the modern jazz setting.

On several tunes, including “One,” which includes the steel pan of Joseph Glenn, Woods moves to the timbales to join the rhythm section with Usauf Gaye on djembe.

“My philosophy is to bring young vibrant cats together who are looking to create a big ensemble sound and create a mental picture that makes the music celebratory,” Abney declares. “I want to reach the crowd on a human level and on an intellectual level—dance and listen.”

The street-wise title cut, “Instant Grits,” references Abney’s brass band experiences.

He presently plays weekly with the Treme Brass Band and has been a member of the Lagniappe and Young Fellaz ensembles.

He acknowledges that his tone differs from that of New Orleans brass band trumpeters.

“I’m still coming from Chicago, straight-ahead, small combo jazz,” Abney says, adding that he maintains the style’s core elements by primarily copying riffs from trombone players.

The exciting final cut, “Can You Feel Music,” which was recorded live at Neo Jazz School of Music studios, opens with a “drum conversation” based on the rhythms Abney heard while performing in Ecuador. The song’s strong, repeated melody is at once inviting and hypnotic.

At the end, Abney’s trumpet fades out as if expressing a long goodbye or at least farewell to a satisfying session.

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PHOTo courtesy of mario abney

Mario Abney reaches on a human and intellectual level.

LEROUX

They Sashay By...

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n the ’70s and ’80s, Louisiana’s LeRoux released five major-label albums.

The band’s biggest hit, “Nobody Said It Was Easy,” reached the national Top 20. Two other songs, “Addicted” and “Carrie’s Gone,” received radio play and MTV exposure.

But “New Orleans Ladies,” LeRoux’s most famous song in Louisiana, never reached the Top 40. Lack of national success didn’t stop the bittersweet ballad, written by LeRoux bassist Leon Medica and Bogalusa songwriter Hoyt Garrick, from becoming a ubiquitous slow-dance classic in the Southeast.

40 years after “New Orleans Ladies” appeared on LeRoux’s debut album, the band feels renewed by its mix of new and classic membership. It’s even recording a new album.

The roots of LeRoux date to 1975, when its precursor, the Jeff Pollard Band, was a popular Baton Rouge group. In 1977, the Pollard Band toured the U.S. and Africa as backup for the eclectic roots-music star Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. The group subsequently signed with Capitol Records and changed its name to LeRoux. In 1978, Capitol released the Louisiana’s LeRoux album.

The regional popularity of “New Orleans Ladies” helped LeRoux secure opening act gigs with Kansas, Chicago, ZZ Top, Ozzy Osbourne, the Beach Boys, Foreigner, .38 Special, REO Speedwagon, the Doobie Brothers, Bob Seger, Journey and Loverboy.

“We were out with just about anybody you can think of,” founding guitarist and songwriter Tony Haselden said. “That was fun. It always felt like we were on

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the cusp of jumping to the next level, but we’re not disappointed with the success that we had.

We all survived and still have active brain cells left.”

Pianist Rod Roddy remembers LeRoux’s five years of nearly major stardom as an awesome era. Despite their non-headliner status, he and his bandmates lived a surreal life, Roddy said.

“Being on the road for that long, you lose your sense of reality,” he said. “We weren’t even that big, so I can’t imagine what it was like for those megastars. We felt like we were working an hour a day.”

Voice of the Wetlands Festival, Sunday, October 15, 8:45 p.m.

Guitarist and songwriter Jim Odom joined LeRoux in 1981, following the departure of lead singer Pollard. His early days with the band were daunting and exhilarating. “We had a lot of fun writing music for the fifth album (So Fired Up), but there was a lot of pressure to release a record people wanted to buy,” he said. “Some of the most

By John Wirt

intimidating things were the first concerts that I did with LeRoux.

The stages were huge and the arenas were packed.”

Lead singers have always been LeRoux’s most changeable element. Pollard left for religious reasons. “Back in the day,” Roddy said, “most concerts were sponsored by cigarette manufacturers or brewers. Miller Lite, Budweiser, Marlboro. That made it difficult for Jeff. He’d say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to be involved in that.’”

Creative differences arose during production for LeRoux’s first RCA album, 1981’s Last Safe Place. “Doing that record was really uncomfortable for Jeff and the band,” Roddy said. “We’d started out more Louisiana, more funky. We were doing Jeff’s material, stuff that he had written, and we just played the way we played. But then we started touring with bands like Foreigner and Cheap Trick and Kansas. When I started writing, it was natural for me to write along those lines.”

The cohesion Odom initially saw in the band began evaporating.

“We were trying to decide what to do next,” he remembered.

“Jeff had left. He’d been the cornerstone of the band as a singer and a writer. There were differences of opinion. Each of the guys wanted to try something new.”

Dennis “Fergie” Frederiksen replaced Pollard on the road and in the studio for LeRoux’s most rock-oriented album, 1982’s So Fired Up. The group disbanded in 1983 but briefly reunited in 1984 with Randy Knaps as lead vocalist.

Frederiksen became the singer in Toto. The band’s other members moved to various pursuits, musical and otherwise.

In 1996, the release of a greatest hits album, Bayou Degradable: The Best of Louisiana’s LeRoux, led to reunion shows in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette. After a decade apart, Roddy said, “we met at the House of Blues and rehearsed. Chill bumps. All the stuff that accumulated while we loved and hated each other on the road was gone. It was just like a gig when we were 20 years old.

We were happy to play.”

Since the 1996 reunion, LeRoux has continued performing, especially festival dates in Louisiana. The 2017 edition of the band, featuring lead vocalist Terry Brock, feels revitalized on stage and, with no major-label pressures to release hit singles, free to be itself in the studio.

“When we had a major-label deal, we were always trying to fashion ourselves to a format,” Haselden said. “But this new album is just fun. The palette will be broader. The common thread will be all of us and our musicianship. We’re excited about it. You can’t outgrow music.” O www.OFFBEAT.com

PHoto: scott clause

From Bourbon Street to Esplanade—LeRoux is back.

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A Musical Menagerie Jimmy Horn spins tales of King James & the Special Men.

By John Swenson

Photography by Willow Haley

“Come and get me!”—Jimmy Cagney in White Heat “I’m gonna bury everybody...”—Jimmy Horn in “Special Men Boogie”

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immy Horn is the kind of character you only find in New Orleans. America used to turn them out everywhere, but the country has been culturally homogenized to the point where everyone is wearing some kind of uniform all the time, even if it’s the uniform of the nonconformist. But somehow New Orleans still allows the cantankerous individual to cut his or her own swath through society.

Horn is a bright guy with an aggressive style and an uncanny sense for self-promotion, even in his most confrontational moments. He relishes conflict and has trolled the universe with some of the most provocative online strings I’ve ever encountered. His battle with the Krewe of Chewbaccus over the nature of second lining reads like an epistolary novel.

Some find him difficult but everybody I know has gone to see his band King James and the Special Men at least once. The band is a musical menagerie, a hallucinatory glimpse into the world of ’50s/’60s New Orleans R&B that completely avoids the kind of period homage that so much neo-retro New Orleans music suffers from. His horn section, which is singular in the originality of its arrangements, contains some of the top players in the city. These guys also play in some of the more neo-retro bands as well, but in those contexts they tend to stick closer to the stock arrangements that period music thrives on.

Horn understands that the appeal of the classic New Orleans R&B came partly from the sheer wildness of frontmen like Ernie K-Doe and Jessie Hill. You might see him fronting the band looking like a Bowery Boy ready for action, then the next time like a high pink pimp in full regalia or a virtually naked superfreak in a barely opaque shroud. Or, as a California reviewer put it in writing about a rare out-of-town Special Men performance, “a plumber.”

Horn has so far deliberately chosen to play away from the tourist centers, following a long run at BJ’s deep in the Bywater with a short stint at Sidney’s on St. Bernard before settling on what seems to be the perfect venue for another Monday date, the Saturn Bar. Along the way he turned BJ’s into a tourist center by attracting the Treme video team to that deep Bywater outpost along with out-of-towners like Elvis Costello and Robert Plant.

People who haven’t been listening closely enough have referred to this outfit as a cover band, but Horn has dealt a fatal blow to such criticism by dropping a pre-apocalyptic bomb of a recording, Act Like You Know, on his own Special Man Industries label. It combines the ancient tropes of Caribbean music, New Orleans blues and R&B with Horn’s own brand of mythologizing. Special Man Industries is set to release a series of O CTO BER 2 017

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vinyl and digital releases over the next few months, new recordings with the Special Men as the house band

by Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra, Leyla McCalla, the Young Seminole Hunters Mardi Gras Indian gang and Louis Michot from the Lost Bayou Ramblers.

Onstage Horn can be as intense as Cagney, but in his everyday guise he is a good listener and a better storyteller. He walked into Bud Rip’s on a scorching late summer afternoon, sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The sun streamed through the side door looking out onto Burgundy Street, but inside the darkened bar the air was still and cool. The beer glasses sweated and reflected the images of the few people day drinking to avoid the heat outside. Across Piety Street the original Schwegmann’s from 1985 sat shuttered, broken and cursed since Katrina. An old bottle of Schwegmann’s bourbon used to sit behind the bar; now there were craft whiskeys on the shelves and microbrews on tap. But there was still the sense of a ghost world at hand, and as he put down his glass Horn began a story that could only come from the dusty annals of a romantic and eccentric youth.

“I was born in Utah. I left when I was five. It was a farm. Our crops were mainly feed for the animals. Utah is very arid, so a lot of water was what my grandfather described as jerkwater. A lot of it was runoff, so we used to go out there with shovels and change the ditches for the runoff a couple of times a day. Outhouse. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens. I loved it. I didn’t know anything different. I had a very rich childhood. Surrounded by petroglyphs. The state of Utah is basically a rectangle with the corner cut out. 98 percent of the population lived in two major metropolitan areas at the extreme northern and southern corners of the state. The entire rest of the state is sheep. The northern half of the state is white, chalk-like talc white dirt. The southern half of the state is red—red rocks, red clay. Where I come from in the state you can walk to a spot where the white and the red form a line that just bump into each other. That, and the petroglyphs, and the stars, the animals—I was very happy as a kid.

“Not only was I living in this eighteenth-century landscape, but my father was a textbook audiophile. Hi-fi to the ceiling, the record collection... So we had an outhouse and a Bosendorfer turntable.

So I started with my dad’s records. One day, Jimi Hendrix. The next, Little Richard. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix when I was five years old.

My father got shipped to Illinois, where I went to school and went back to the farm for the summer. Then my mother took me and my brother back to Utah, where I did fifth grade, then she took us to the outskirts of Seattle, where I did sixth and seventh grade. Then my mother and I split up for a while, and my father had been transferred to Susquehanna Township, Pennsylvania. That’s where I discovered punk rock. I was not interested in sports. I was interested in punk rock

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and skipping school. That was my main focus in Pennsylvania, was skipping school and playing punk rock. I really loved the energy. Years later I realized Little Richard was as punk as all get out. Fats Domino bumping his piano across the stage, that’s punk as hell. Guitar Slim dying his hair all crazy. Jimi Hendrix got that from Guitar Slim.

“I got here in ’93. Completely on a whim. Playing on the streets.

Washboard Lissa Driscoll introduced me to the entire city of New Orleans.

When I got here I was green, a wide-eyed kid. She was the one who showed me patience. She introduced me to Sheik Rasheed. He had played with Sun Ra. We had a good band for a while. I knew about Sun Ra and we figured it out from there. I played saxophone. We had some people from Sun Ra’s band who came through town to play with us, we had Kidd Jordan play with us, I didn’t even know who he was then. It was amazing. To meet him while he was taking a 20-minute solo on a piece of music I wrote, it was transformative. He shared some notation with me and Rasheed. They weren’t scales, they were exercises where you’d run up and down these different intervals on an octave and your way up and your way down was different every single time. They weren’t modes, they weren’t scales. It was an ear exercise. You sit there and read ’em off the paper and just keep putting different notes together and what you’re doing is forcing yourself to slowly hear different intervals. That’s the most I really learned about music was during those years. Sun Ra changed my life. Those are the people who inspired me. They might not make the same kind of music but it’s music, the craft of making music, and recording it, is a medium on to itself. So people like Sun Ra and Dave Bartholomew influenced me in very similar ways. It doesn’t matter that they don’t play the same music, because if you boil it down they do, they play American music, which, you know, is largely African.

“It’s all American music. When you strip away a lot of the pretense and artifice of what is popular music now you’re gonna find the exact same elements in play. You’re gonna need a good rhythm section, you’re gonna need a good melody and song forms that say what they’ve always said. Nothing has changed. The same chord changes you hear on a Rihanna record you can hear on an old record from the ’20s if you look at it. It’s a living, breathing tradition. www.OFFBEAT.com

“Jessie Mae helped me a lot in that regard.

Giving me the confidence: ‘Call yourself King James.’

I thought it was kind of arrogant and she said ‘You’ll grow into it.’”

“A lot of the time I was just playing on the streets or helping out artsy types down here in the Ninth Ward: ‘We’re having a party at Quintron’s. We’ve got this crazy idea for decorations, I’ve got this idea for costumes.’ I was very serious and wanted to do all this intellectual space jazz, Sun Ra, Coltrane. But I would play rock ‘n’ roll too. When Quintron called me up back in the day I would show up and do anything. ‘Hey we’ve got somebody dressed up like a woman and we need you to make noise.’ Back then my mortgage to live in a 250-year-old Greek Revival with a double veranda was $80 a month.

I was delivering food on a bicycle in the early ’90s making well over 100 dollars a day. I was making recordings that I would play at parties.

I hoarded the stuff. It was for my own personal enjoyment. I wish I had all those tapes now. Business was the last thing on my mind.

I just wanted to have fun. I’ve never been one to live a certain way with hopes of having fun in my eighties when I retire. I’m trying to get everything I can out of life now.

“I met Ernie K-Doe through Quintron. Quintron had met Ernie and brought him to his club/house, the Spellcaster, which was 20 years ago, I guess. Ernie came to the Spellcaster and did a show where Ernie sang over his own CDs. I immediately thought to myself. Wow. Wow, wow, wow... Wow... Wow. After the initial shock and awe of the show wore off I thought ‘This guy needs a band.’ It was a freak show.

It was definitely a spectacle, yet he sang very well. That was really the beginning of the Special Men, seeing K-Doe at the Spellcaster and thinking ‘Wow this guy needs a band.’ After that I was intrigued and I went to the Mother-in-Law on my own. It was Ernie, Antoinette and Rico Watts there, no one else. Ernie and Antoinette were having a chat and Rico was off to the side, playing his keyboard. I was maybe 21. I walked in, I sat at the bar. Ernie was on my side of the bar, speaking through an air horn and Antoinette was on her side of the bar speaking through a microphone attached to the PA system. Antoinette got the last word in, put her hand on the bar, leaned in to me, and with the most gracious voice, and a face to match it, asked me if there was anything she could get me. I became a regular fixture at the bar and Antoinette took me under her wing. She introduced me to Earl King as her son. She told Rico one day that God must have mixed up with us because he was the whitest black man she’d ever seen and I was the blackest white man she’d ever seen and maybe we’d got mixed up. She told Ernie that I was her illegitimate son she’d had with Elvis. There’s a lot of time I could have been doing this music business stuff but I was spending my time hanging out at the Mother-in-Law with Antoinette and Ernie, then up in Mississippi with Jessie Mae Hemphill.

“We started the band at K-Doe’s right around 2000, and we were at the Matador. We played Mondays and Wednesdays at K-Doe’s and Fridays at the Matador for happy hour. That might have been for two years and that’s when I started spending time out of town. I moved to Alabama briefly, and then the band stopped. I’ve explained this before, but when we first started it was all about learning the material and immersing ourselves in it. There was no point to it beyond that, it was just ‘We love this, we want more of this. Let’s just push this as hard as we can.’ Me and Chris Davis had books and books and sheets www.OFFBEAT.com

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and sheets of music and lyrics and we worked like crazy people. I was playing piano. I’m a terrible pianist but I can play ‘Walking to New Orleans.’ So that’s how it started, with Fats. Then I started spending time with Jessie Mae Hemphill, going back between Jessie Mae and Antoinette. I moved to Alabama but I was driving over here once a week, playing at the Dragon’s Den solo or with Chris Davis on drums.

Doing a country blues thing because that’s what I did when I didn’t have a band, played slide guitar on some country stuff. When I was with Rasheed I played tenor saxophone. I also played upright bass in a trio with him.

“What did I learn from K-Doe? K-Doe would drop pearls of wisdom on me like ‘Why run around in circles trying to prove yourself while the truth is standing pat?’ That was the kind of shit he’d say.

“Antoinette would be giving me little pointers on how to be an entertainer. It was really just like egging me on. Back in the day at the Mother-in-Law it was like the clubhouse. You’d be sitting there talking to some old timer for two or three hours drinking High Life and Antoinette would say ‘Oh he’s one of the original Ink Spots.’

We’d be playing there, Walter [‘Wolfman’ Washington] would come in and take Pork Chop’s [John Rodli] guitar and start playing with us, and he wouldn’t give that guitar back for an hour. They’d come to see Antoinette and she’d say ‘Check out my little white boys.’ She told me ‘I’m your manager. Call me Mama.’ When she met my mother, first thing out of her mouth she said ‘Baby I got you.’ Remember Brown Sugar, the DJ? She had us play her family reunion.

“I owe a lot to the Special Men. Clint Maedgen was our original saxophone player. The first version was like school. Surrounded by elders, egging us on. Over the next ten years I came a long way as a songwriter. Jessie Mae helped me a lot in that regard. Giving me the confidence: ‘Call yourself King James.’ I thought it was kind of arrogant and she said ‘You’ll grow into it.’ It’s all about being yourself.

I’m not gonna be out there singing like Son House, but singing about cell phones. So I was listening to punk and Trouble Funk and rap music, and putting all that into it. My tastes are very wide. It’s not about I’m gonna do this project and I’m gonna do this project.

It’s about why are you doing this at all? How do you do it to make yourself happy in all the different ways and still hope to be able to connect with the people outside your inner circle? It wasn’t a new thing, it wasn’t a decision to go in this direction, it was just playing rock ‘n’ roll like you always have.

“I’m not a big fan of phone voice: ‘Hi! What can I do for you?

Thanks for coming out tonight.’ I like to be a little more... myself. I’ve reeled it in a bunch. I’ve been called abrasive. I try to be fair. But at the end of the day a lot of that stuff is just opinions. We all have ’em. As far as being the voice of the band, yeah, I think it would be really easy for me to dress up in a costume as if I was born sometime I wasn’t and try to relive something that’s been buried for decades. But I’m just doin’ me, what comes naturally.

“Everything I’ve always needed was here, I just was ignorant to it.

Whether I wanted to jam out on some Sun Ra or some Lee Scratch Perry or some Junior Kimbrough... I want people to come see us and take away their troubles and lose their ambition even if it’s just for two hours.

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“How did I find the band? They were already there man. They were waiting for me. First there was Chris Davis. Like I said we were doing all this intellectual jazz with Rasheed.

But I was in my 20s and I wanted to party. So Chris and I decided to start another project where we could drink cheap beer and party. We borrowed a piano—I didn’t even really know how to play it—and we got this guy Punchy, a bass player who worked at the gazebo, he used to play Earl King and all that kind of shit, he was our first bass player. There’s Dominick.”

As if on cue, Special Men baritone saxophonist Dominick Grillo ambled into the bar. Small talk ensued, more drinks were poured and Horn continued his story.

“Once I had the band up and running again I realized ‘Man I’m a terrible singer.’ I sing ’cause I have to and I do enjoy it but I’m terrible at it. I’m very self-aware of my capabilities and my limitations. When I write I’m limiting these words so that they fit within my own capacity as a singer. So then I decided to write songs for other people. As soon as I started imagining I could write a song for a female singer it worked and I got Alynda Lee Segarra to sing it. Dave Bartholomew man, Tom Dowd, Sun Ra, they didn’t just write a few songs. I learned a long time ago to stop idolizing people... Kings and queens and the pope and whoever, Fats Domino, they’re all just human beings. I used to idolize people. Jessie Mae helped me with that. She said ‘They’re just people like you are. Don’t let it die with them. Be like them. Do it.’ Music isn’t creative, music is just heard. I don’t create music, I hear it and I come through with it. I’m the instrument. Good music writes itself. The music tells you what comes next.

“I wrote a song for Alynda, she would come see us on Monday night at BJ’s and I thought she’d go for it and she did. I wrote the song for my own vision but imagining I had her capacity as a singer. Once I had that song for Alynda I was hot to trot. The brain was kicking all those rewards at me. I had Louis Michot come in. We had a working agreement, Goat and I, I would bring in music and he was gonna record it. Andrew Goat Gilchrist, he worked with Maceo Parker, he worked with the Nevilles and the Meters for years and years. So we decided to put out a series of singles with other artists. So I had Louis translate one of my songs into Cajun French and we recorded it. Then Leyla McCalla came in and did a song. I made an alliance with a Mardi Gras Indian gang, the Young Seminole Hunters. They needed my help as much as I wanted to be a part of what they were doing. We started making a full-length album. That’s for spring. We’re talking to Corey Ledet about a full-length album. Just looking for more and more of this kind of thing. We have a record plant right here in the Ninth Ward. Act Like You Know is the first record pressed there. Vinyl and downloads.

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We’ve been compiling live recordings for a long time. I’ve got stacks of them. We will release something live but not right away. Right now I’m mainly concerned with establishing the identity of the label which is the Caribbean to Lafayette, with New Orleans at the center. It helps me to understand my birthright, American music, which is largely African, with a little bit of European form and songwriting mixed in. I have a goal to put Derrick Tabb in the same room with some Haitian drummers and start talking about Congolese sticking patterns.

“What do I think about gentrification? Change is the only thing that stays the same. You can’t fight it, as much as I’d like to. The town has always been full of transients. I came here from somewhere else too.

It’s about assimilation. It’s also about upward mobility. Until I set foot here I never once thought about New Orleans. It never entered my consciousness as part of America. I think a lot of people never thought about New Orleans until Katrina was all over the news. This town has been what it was. Our water pipes, our electrical grid, it’s all crazy.

Louisiana politics is insane. All of a sudden it goes from being a place where you could live in a 250-year-old Greek Revival with a double veranda for $80 a month to a place filled with a lot of young people who because of their economic status don’t have to assimilate in order to gain a foothold. What are you gonna do, hate people for being better off? Every day on this side of the dirt is a good day. You’ve got Syrian refugees, and here people are worrying about how bad Cox cable service is. ‘I had to use my cell phone to go on Facebook.’ I miss old New Orleans. Am I gonna leave? No. You’ve got people who were born here who can’t afford to rent an apartment. That’s what I’m talking about. All the cultural stuff, and the little white kids in the neighborhood with their artisanal cheeses... I like artisanal cheese. I don’t want to have to go to France just to get real cheese. I make red beans. I don’t want to live in a New Orleans where people can’t make gumbo or fried chicken. You can’t change everything. You can go out and complain, or you can just be out there every day trying to do your part to make sure your city doesn’t die on you.”

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photos: Elsa Hahne

Jeff Schwartz/Bakery Bar

“I

worked at Twelve Mile Limit and Coquette, and this is a very different clientele [here at Bakery Bar]. We get a lot of women between 30 and 50.

We’re not the mustache-twirliest bar in town. I try my best not to cover the cocktail menu in Italian words that no one’s heard before. Even as a professional I can sometimes order a drink off a menu and say, ‘I think I know what that’s going to taste like,’ but then I get surprised. And if I get surprised—what’s going to happen to people who don’t even know what those words mean? So we try and be approachable. We’re not using black sea salt here, and we don’t pour amaros into everything.

We serve doberge cake here, a traditional New Orleans birthday cake. All of them are by Debbie Does Doberge, which has been around for years, but they never had a storefront until now. Since we’re a cake bar, we get a lot of birthday

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parties and engagements. We’re here for celebrations, but also if you want to come have just a drink or dessert after dinner. You know how you have dinner at a place and then just really need to go? Maybe you want dessert, but you just don’t want to sit anymore. So you get up, stretch your legs and come here.

You could go to an ice cream bar, of course—but if you want an adult beverage, this is the place.

Lionel Robinson—I basically just discovered this song because I picked up a New Orleans soul collection

by Soul Jazz Records and it had this whole history in it about the New Orleans recording industry at the time, about Cosimo Matassa’s studio, stuff like that. Basically, Lionel Robinson recorded just this song and an instrumental version. And that’s about it. But listening to it—this is like the catchiest song in the world!

It describes a moment that a lot of people have in New Orleans when

By Elsa Hahne

you’re getting ready to go out for a big night or Mardi Gras or whatever and you get dressed, get your costume on and you’re like, ‘Alright! I’m feeling it. Let’s go!’ It really captures that kind of mental swagger you can have sometimes.

‘My costume looks great. I feel great. Let’s get nuts.’

It also reminds me a lot of my favorite Ernie K-Doe song, ‘Here Come the Girls.’ To me, it doesn’t sound like something that’s 60 or 70 years old. This sounds modern— Bruno Mars could sing this song, and it has innocence to it too. It’s about a guy who’s really feeling himself as he’s going out to party.

Mirroring that purpose, this cocktail matches coffee with bourbon for a drink that should pep you up for the start of a big night. This is a drink that’s going to make you feel more energized.

In my mind, this is the drink Lionel Robinson has in his hand.”

Steppin’ Out 1 1/2 ounces bourbon 1 1/2 ounces cold brew coffee 1/2 ounce chicory syrup (see below) Shake with ice and then strain into a chilled coupe, making sure to retain coffee crema. For chicory syrup, Jeff Schwartz orders dried chicory grounds online and steeps 2 ounces in 30 ounces hot water for 5 minutes— after straining out the grounds, he adds 30 ounces white sugar. www.OFFBEAT.com

FRENCH Café Degas: 3127 Esplanade Ave., 945-5635 La Crepe Nanou: 1410 Robert St., 899-2670

GERMAN Bratz Y'all: 617-B Piety St., 301-3222

ICE CREAM/CAKE/CANDY Aunt Sally’s Praline Shop’s: 2831 Chartres St., 944-6090 Bittersweet Confections: 725 Magazine St., 523-2626 La Divina Cafe e Gelateria: 621 St. Peter St., 302-2692 Sucré: 3025 Magazine St.,520-8311 Tee-Eva’s Praline Shop: 4430 Magazine St., 899-8350

INDIAN Nirvana: 4308 Magazine St., 894-9797

AFRICAN Bennachin: 1212 Royal St., 522-1230.

AMERICAN Barcadia: 601 Tchoupitoulas St., 335-1740 Brown Butter Southern Kitchen: 231 N Carrollton Ave., 609-3871 Poppy’s Time Out Sports Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St., 247-9265 Port of Call: 838 Esplanade Ave., 523-0120 Primitivo: 1800 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 881-1775

BARBECUE The Joint: 701 Mazant St., 949-3232

COFFEE HOUSE Café du Monde: 800 Decatur St., 525-4544 Morning Call Coffee Stand: 56 Dreyfous Dr., (504) 300-1157, 3325 Severn Ave., Metairie, 885-4068

CREOLE/CAJUN Cochon: 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 588-2123 Cornet: 700 Bourbon St., 523-1485 Galatoire’s: 209 Bourbon St., 525-2021 Gumbo Shop: 630 St. Peter St., 525-1486 K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen: 416 Chartres St., 524-7394 Mulate’s: 201 Julia St., 522-1492 New Orleans Creole Cookery: 508 Toulouse St., 524-9632 Restaurant Rebirth: 857 Fulton St., 522-6863

DELI Stein’s Market and Deli: 2207 Magazine St., 527-0771

FINE DINING Bombay Club: 830 Conti St., 586-0972 Broussard’s: 819 Conti St., 581-3866 Commander’s Palace: 1403 Washington Ave., 899-8221

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ITALIAN Adolfo’s: 611 Frenchmen St., 948-3800 Little Vic’s: 719 Toulouse St., 304-1238

NEIGHBORHOOD JOINTS Biscuits and Buns on Banks: 4337 Banks St., 273-4600 Cake Café: 2440 Chartres St., 943-0010 City Diner: 3116 S I-10 Service Rd E, 8311030; 5708 Citrus Blvd., 309-7614 Cowbell: 8801 Oak St., 298-8689 Dat Dog: 601 Frenchmen St., 309-3362; 5030 Freret St., 899-6883; 3336 Magazine St., 324-2226 Live Oak Cafe: 8140 Oak St., 265-0050 Parkway Bakery and Tavern: 538 Hagan Ave., 482-3047 Sammy’s Food Services: 3000 Elysian Fields Ave., 948-7361 Tracey’s: 2604 Magazine St., 897-5413

JAPANESE/KOREAN/SUSHI/THAI Chiba: 8312 Oak St., 826-9119 Mikimoto: 3301 S. Carrollton Ave., 488-1881 Seoul Shack: 435 Esplanade Ave., 417-6206 Sukho Thai: 4519 Magazine St., 373-6471; 2200 Royal St., 948-9309 Wasabi: 900 Frenchmen St., 943-9433

Fulton Alley: 600 Fulton St., 208-5593 Mondo: 900 Harrison Ave., 224-2633 Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934

MEDITERRANEAN Byblos: 3218 Magazine St., 894-1233 Mona’s Café: 504 Frenchmen St., 949-4115

Banks Street Bar & Grill: 4401 Banks St., 486-0258 B.B. King’s Blues Club: 1104 Decatur St., 934-5464 Buffa’s: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038 Chickie Wah Wah: 2828 Canal St., 304-4714 Dmac’s Bar & Grill: 542 S Jefferson Davis Pkwy, 304-5757 Gattuso’s: 435 Huey P Long Ave., Gretna, 368-1114 Hard Rock Café: 125 Bourbon St., 529-5617 House of Blues: 225 Decatur St., 412-8068

Midway Pizza: 4725 Freret St., 322-2815 Pizza Delicious: 617 Piety St., 676-8482 Slice Pizzeria: 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525-7437 Theo’s Pizza: 4218 Magazine St., 894-8554; 4024 Canal St., 302-1133; 1212 S Clearview, 733-3803

SEAFOOD Basin Seafood and Spirits: 3222 Magazine St., 302-7391 Crazy Lobster Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St. 569-3380 Deanie’s Seafood: 841 Iberville St., 581-1316; 1713 Lake Ave. Metairie, 834-1225 Pier 424 Seafood Market: 424 Bourbon St., 309-1574 Royal House Oyster Bar: 441 Royal St., 528-2601

SOUL Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934

STEAKHOUSE La Boca: 870 Tchoupitoulas St., 525-8205

VIETNAMESE Namese: 4077 Tulane Ave., 483-8899

WEE HOURS Buffa’s Restaurant & Lounge: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038 Mimi’s in the Marigny: 2601 Royal St., 872-9868

Spot

What do you eat at Nine Roses Cafe?

I order [over the phone] all the time and say, “Can I have all broccoli?”

And the lady on the phone goes, “All broccoli... Mr. Jason!” You got me. Instead of the mixed vegetable, I just get all broccoli, and I’m the only one maybe who does that. Tiny trees...

Does broccoli make you feel like a giant?

That’s what I’ve been thinking since I was maybe four or five years old!

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MUSIC ON THE MENU

PIZZA

Jason Jurzak hits the

LOUISIANA / SOUTHERN

Barú Bistro & Tapas: 3700 Magazine St., 895-2225 Juan’s Flying Burrito: 2018 Magazine St., 569-0000 El Gato Negro: 81 French Market Place, 525-9846

Ye Olde College Inn: 3000 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-3683 Warehouse Grille: 869 Magazine St., 322-2188

Brown rice, I see. You eat healthy?

I try, but you can eat whatever you want if you have a four-hour gig. Jazz musicians who work in the Quarter at night, they’re all like a certain breed.

They all seem to carry guns, and they all know where to park, and they drive slow. It’s like, “We play these tunes, we sing these words, and we carry this kind of gun.” But they eat garbage. Garbage food. They don’t look good.

Not the broccoli types?

No. —Elsa Hahne

Nine Roses Cafe 620 Conti St. (French Quarter) 504-324-9450

www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

Kingfish: 337 Chartres St., 598-5005 Mr. B’s Bistro: 201 Royal St. 523-2078 Restaurant R’evolution: 777 Bienville St., 553-2277

Howlin’ Wolf’s Wolf Den: 907 S. Peters St., 529-5844 Le Bon Temps Roule: 4801 Magazine St., 895-8117 Little Gem Saloon: 445 S. Rampart St., 267-4863 Maison: 508 Frenchmen St., 289-5648 Mid City Lanes Rock ‘N’ Bowl: 4133 S. Carrollton Ave., 482-3133 NOSH: 752 Tchouptoulas St., 581-7101 Palm Court: 1204 Decatur St., 525-0200 Rivershack Tavern: 3449 River Rd., 834-4938 Southport Hall: 200 Monticello Ave., 835-2903 Snug Harbor: 626 Frenchmen St., 949-0696 Three Muses: 536 Frenchmen St., 298-8746 Three Muses Uptown: 7537 Maple St., 510-2749

DINING OUT

Bratz Y’all For over a decade, a local taste of German food and culture was a fleeting experience found only on weekends in October at the Deutsches Haus. Although no one can deny the timelessness of the Chicken Dance, native Berliner Sven Vorkauf set out five years ago to offer a taste of his home country without the musical flair, serving up sausages at festivals around town under the name Bratz Y’all—an apt title connoting both his passion for his indigenous cuisine and his affinity for his adopted home. After garnering a strong following and collecting multiple awards at the annual Oak Street Po-Boy Festival, Vorkauf set down roots this spring with the opening of a brick-and-mortar location in the Bywater.

Tucked behind Pizza Delicious just a stone’s throw from the Piety Street bridge to Crescent Park, the short walk up the gravel driveway leads to a biergarten oasis of wooden picnic tables shaded by parasols.

www.OFFBEAT.com

Patrons congregate over massive glass steins filled from the German-only beer list, excusing themselves from their tables only to order another round from the window conveniently cut out from the side of the building.

Inside, half a dozen high-top tables overlook the massive open kitchen, which churns an extensive menu of German fare.

The bakery side of the operation delivers freshly baked pretzels, whose golden brown crust sprinkled with crunchy salt crystals gives way to a soft, bready interior. These biergarten staples are best eaten either in a dip of warm beer cheese or with a smear of Bavarian caraway-brie spread tinged pink with paprika.

The pretzel is also employed for the Nürnberger, a Ron Jeremy-sized pork sausage extending well beyond both ends of its pretzel bun and topped with caramelized onions and sauerkraut made from a traditional recipe slow cooked with ham hocks, champagne vinegar and a judicious amount of caraway seeds that results in a mild sweetness. Other sausage delicacies include the Berliner, a smoked pork currywurst slathered with apple-curry ketchup and topped with curry

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powder and crispy fried onions, and the King Brat, an indulgent pork sausage stuffed with white cheddar and wrapped in bacon.

Aside from the sausage fest, the specialties of the house include a schnitzel, a slowroasted pork shoulder and the Sunday-only schweinshaxe, a Flintstone-sized pork shank.

Take heed that the convivial nature of the biergarten often leads to another round of beer and food, and Bratz Y’all is no exception.

—Peter Thriffiley 617-B Piety Street; Wed-Thur 11a–10p, FriSat 11a–11p, Sun 11a–10p; (504) 301-3222; bratzyall.com

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REVIEWS

Reviews When submitting CDs for consideration, please send two copies to OffBeat Reviews, 421 Frenchmen Street, Suite 200, New Orleans, LA 70116

CDs reviewed are available now at 421 Frenchmen Street in the Marigny 504-586-1094 or online at LouisianaMusicFactory.com

Psychedelicized Louisiana Traditions

Lost Bayou Ramblers Kalenda (Rice Pump) When Cajun music gets progressive—and we’re thinking of a couple landmark albums that the Bluerunners and Steve Riley made in the late ’90s—that usually means adding some rock influence and allowing for studio possibilities. By that standard, the Lost Bayou Ramblers’ latest is clear off the charts: Not since Dr. John’s storied debut—which coincidentally also included a piece based on the Kalenda legend—have Louisiana traditions been so thoroughly psychedelicized.

The Ramblers’ wildest experiments here are still grounded in tradition. The title track, for instance, has a few precedents: The Kalenda was once an outlawed dance done by slaves on Congo Square; later it became a well-known Cajun tune about a flirtatious woman. Here it’s turned into a dreamscape that evokes both: Cajun fiddles drift in and out of African percussion as a looped vocal turns the original lyric into a mantra; the overdubbed heartbeat and spoken old-man voice add to the sense of deep memory.

That’s followed by “Aloha Golden Meadow,” a Hawaiian guitar

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piece that’s made spectral by the echoes and overdubbed synths; it’s the sound of all those memories drifting off into the ether.

The rest of the album isn’t quite that radical, but the soundscapes surprise even when the band is playing it relatively straight. “Sabine Turnaround” opens the album with accordion and triangle, and the rock elements are introduced gradually until it gets fully electric. On “Rice Pump” a fiddle tune is driven along by wild punkish drumming and a deep fuzz bassline played on a synth; it’s still a dance tune but a far more raucous one.

There are also two waltzes, one (“Cote Clair Waltz”) done fairly traditionally, the other (“La Valse de Balfa”) turned—via amplified fiddle, gritty slide guitar and an aggressive bridge section—into something approaching arena rock. Not every experiment here works—to these ears, “Freetown Crawl/Fightin’ville Brawl” tries a little too hard to invent Cajun electronica—but small missteps are inevitable when you’re opening up so much new territory.

—Brett Milano

Sweet Cecilia Sing Me a Story (Independent) Sophomore slump? Not hardly with Sweet Cecilia. Sisters Laura Huval and Maegan Berard and first cousin Callie Guidry went gangbusters here, enlisting sixtime Grammy award-winning producer Tony Daigle and recording these seven originals at Dockside Studio. With such

wheel tight when the chorus hits.

It’s explosive, powerful and scary with the spooky guitar tones and bombastic beats making you as if you’re passing through the eye of Armageddon.

—Dan Willging

guests as pianist/organist Eric Adcock, cellist Caleb Elliott and even guitarist Sonny Landreth (one track), several tunes could contend for national country/Americana airplay given their quality production. Yet it’s Sweet Cecilia’s collective, often breathtaking vocals that are really what’s on tap, sometimes with wall-pinning harmonies and other times with swirling, lush background vocals that submerge you into momentary oblivion.

The songs are rife with cerebral and emotional content. “Red Bird Flies,” the album’s centerpiece, poignantly recalls the dearly departed late Al Berard, father of Laura and Maegan and uncle to Callie, and the victims of the 2015 Lafayette theater shooting. The title song is a touching motherly ode imaginatively sung by her children about their lives together.

Two tracks bust out of the Americana/country mode in headturning fashion. The Motownstyled “Love Is Easy” is replete with horns and a sassy swagger, while the French-sung “Les Frѐres Guidry” is practically epic.

Based on a catchy, pencil-tapping rhythm, Sweet Cecilia chants the names of its ancestors, then sings about how they fought, smoked and drank. But if you’re driving while listening to this, do grab the

Kathryn Rose Wood In the Ashes (Independent) How do you cope with the monumental grief of losing a loved one? Some unfortunately escape into destructive habits, isolation, depression, or worse.

Others, the lucky ones, find a way to create from the loss. This is the case with Kathryn Rose Wood’s elegiac debut album In The Ashes. Following the suicide of her nineteen-year-old brother, Kathryn wrote these songs as a way to reach out to those struggling with suicidal thoughts.

This album could easily have become bogged down with the weight of its subject matter, but it doesn’t. It begins with flickering chromatic guitar chords, Kathryn’s ornamented vocals, and plaintive steel guitar on “Lullabye (to Preston).”

From there the album seems to float upward, harmonically wandering, restless but hopeful. www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS “Big Steel Wings” is the CDs standout single, with a catchy chorus and a Neil Young–esque rhythmic break that keeps things interesting. Ben Lorio of Music Shed Studios produced the album, which is evident in its rich texture. Its personnel are wellseasoned professionals who’ve

played with acts such as Sturgill Simpson, Sweet Crude, Coyotes and Solange.

All together it is a wellpackaged collection of songs that is captivating to listen to and will hopefully bring solace to those in despair.

—Stacey Leigh Bridewell

A 20th Anniversary Celebration Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield A Beautiful World (Basin Street Records) In celebration of Basin Street Records’ 20th anniversary, label mates and trumpeters Kermit Ruffins and Irvin Mayfield join forces on A Beautiful World. These two mock adversaries, who used to hilariously battle it out musically at local clubs, stand as Basin Street’s most recorded artists and helped put the local label on the national map.

They share composing credits for the albums’ first cut, “Well, Alright,” which, not surprisingly, swings like crazy and is made complete with hand clapping, singing and Ruffins cheerleading— “Follow the umbrella!” It’s a big band number filled with saxophone, trombone and trumpet sections. The trumpeters kick things off with tenor saxophonist Ed “Sweetbread” Petersen soon standing up for an inspired solo and Trevarri Huff-Boone blowing some fine bari.

Well, alright, there are some 60, primarily very well-known New Orleans musicians on this album that boasts 26 cuts. Granted, there are several very short, spoken word interludes with several amusingly orated by actor Wendell Pierce. Nonetheless, that leaves room for a lot of music that varies greatly stylistically including the traditional sounds of the Ruffins and Mayfield penned “Just Playin’” that includes trumpeters Wendell Brunious, Leroy Jones, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown and Andrew Baham. Here, Shannon Powell takes over on drums that are often occupied by Adonis Rose.

There is even a string septet on three numbers, including the title cut, “Beautiful World,” the name of which was an inspired way to pay tribute to trumpeter Louis Armstrong by referencing his hit “What a Wonderful World.”

Haley Reinhart, perhaps best recognized as a finalist on American Idol, sings with passion the song written by Mayfield and arranged by trombonist Emily Fredrickson, who also adds some fine tonal accents. Cyril Neville, who is prominent on many of the album’s selections, contributes his voice in harmony.

Neville takes the lead on a highlight of the disc, “Allen Toussaint,” a jaunty number he co-wrote with Ruffins and Mayfield. It embraces all of what might be described as Toussaint-isms—the prominent rollicking piano here provided by Ronald Markham, the distinctive horn arrangements, that certain lilting rhythm and humor. After recalling his first time spotting Toussaint, Neville exclaims, “All I can say, when I saw that, is man, when I grow up I wanna be like that!” The song ingeniously heads out quoting the master’s lyrics from “Working in the Coal Mine,” “Workin’, goin’, workin’, goin’...”

Just as Basin Street Records has done for 20 years, A Beautiful World celebrates New Orleans and its rich community of musicians.

—Geraldine Wyckoff www.OFFBEAT.com

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Spyanage J.F.T.F.O.I. 4: The Sneak Attack 20 Yrs in the Makin’ (Independent) “Just For the Fuck of It” may be his crew, his mixtape blueprint, and his motto, but local rapper Spyanage (that’s pronounced Espionage to you) has built four

solid albums around that work ethic, real hardcore shit, since we’re talking loosely, that walks a fine line between reprimanding the hood for eating its young and calling out the record industry for exploiting those select few that make it through. But on part four, it sounds for the first time like his bounce-y, R&B-inflected trap has started to be compromised by more immediate concerns.

Personal concerns.

After starting off strong with “The Declaration,” Spyanage mostly turns to the subject of what it means to find somebody down—which not only means a lot of sex raps about “hittin’ it like UFC” but also a lot of reflection on what devotion means in the inner city. There’s nothing wrong

Eating Sugar Shake ’Em Up Jazz Band Le Donne Mangiano Zucchero (Independent) The new kids on the block, Shake ’Em Up Jazz Band have actually been around for quite some time and it shows in their debut album, Le Donne Mangiano Zucchero (translated to “women eat sugar”). This allfemale Frenchmen trad supergroup includes members of several established bands. Listeners to the album will recognize the commanding voice of Marla Dixon from Shotgun Jazz Band, the driving guitar of Molly Reeves from the New Orleans Jazz Vipers, the steady bass of Julie Schexnayder from the Loose Marbles as well as clarinet darling Chloe Feoranzo of Postmodern Jukebox, gutbucket trombonist Haruka Kikuchi, and washboard wiz Defne “Dizzy” Incirlioglu.

“Washboard Wiggles” opens the album and sets the pace with a tight, driving rhythm that feels beautifully relaxed at the same time.

Molly Reeves’ vocals on “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor” lend the song a conversational intimacy. Next is the calypso classic “Shame & Scandal in the Family,” followed by a lilting interpretation of “My Silent Love.” “Les Oignons,” “Root, Hog, or Die” and “Shake ’Em Up” will be the dancer favorites, featuring energetic solos from the front line and rhythmic breaks that are great for swinging out. Chloe’s vocals on “Empty Bed Blues” are surprisingly powerful and saucy.

Haruka makes memorable purring glissandos on the Hot 5’s classic “Savoy Blues.” The album closes with a wistful Western swing version of Tex Ritter’s “There’s a New Moon Over My Shoulder.” A special shout out goes to Molly Reeves for recording and mixing the album at Bunny Friend Studio. Let’s hope that this will be the first of many for these ladies.

—Stacey Leigh Bridewell

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REVIEWS with that—not in a world where even Jay-Z just dropped a brilliant album about being a better husband—but in a city that’s literally drowning, Spyanage’s flow is becoming depressively utilitarian. It’s hard to pull off the self-righteousness of an anthem like “Babylon Beware” when you spend most of the rest of your time testing your country/wodie delivery on trying to get paid and laid. He didn’t invent that conundrum—but he’s not really addressing it, either.

—Robert Fontenot

Johnny J and the Hipshots Below the Bible Belt (Tall Tail) On Johnny J’s previous effort, in the review this scribe posted, I recommended he immediately take a lengthy trip to the county farm, get periodic electric shock treatments and extensive psychiatric therapy. I still stand by that recommendation. J’s somewhat the local equivalent of Hasil Adkins. On his current CD, J broaches such subjects as motherin-law romance, vermin, drug addiction, infidelity, Mini Coopers, store-bought fashion and the grisly contents of hot dogs. But hey, it’s all good. “The Promised Land” gets the ball rolling and it’s a high-energy, guitar-driven tale of guns and romantic promise.

“She Don’t Want Me Drinkin’ With Her Mama” is taken at a similar pace and, I’m sure just from the title, most listeners can guess where this one’s headed.

“Saddie Next Door”—well you can see where that story begins and ends too. “I Let Out A Rat”—well, I’m not sure where that one’s going. Actually, the best tune here is the change-up “I Wandered Down The Road,” which is saved for last. The songs are “peculiar” in J’s own way and often are quite humorous and clever—but not all of them. The tempos and structure here get samey. This often works on the bandstand if you had a couple Molsons, but not always over the course of an entire CD playing www.OFFBEAT.com

in the Honda. As on the brilliant Nuclear Hayride—produced by Alex Chilton—J might well benefit if someone else in the studio made a few suggestions. So too would some well-chosen covers rather than marginal originals that dwell on rodents and tube steaks.

—Jeff Hannusch

Jenna Guidry Back to Me (Independent) Jenna Guidry was 11 when she released “Cajun Angel,” her first song to make a local impression.

At the time she already had a voice that sounded a good decade older, and a knack for saying something emotional (the song was about her late greatgrandmother) without overdoing the sentiment. She also knew how to write chorus hooks that sound great on the radio (or at least on YouTube), something many older songwriters never learn.

Now a ripe old 18, Guidry’s released her first EP with producer Paul Sanchez and a handful of notable players (including drummer Eric Bolivar, Breton Sound guitarist Jonathan Pretus and Indigo Girls bassist Ben Williams) and the same strengths are there, just a lot more polished. Her voice has now matured into an appealing, languid drawl—comparisons to Kristin Diable and Shannon McNally wouldn’t be far off. And she’s still writing commercial songs with emotional substance; while all four songs here are about relationships on the rocks, none look at the affair from the O CTO BER 2 017

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same angle. The title song has the jauntiest tune but the most vulnerable lyric; “Precious” has an easy-rolling Dire Straits feel that undercuts its tough lyric (in which an ex-partner is assured that he’ll regret leaving). And “Call My Bluff,” done solo with piano, is a real heartbreaker: The singer is an older woman looking back at the love she never got over. Time will tell if Guidry’s higher-profile career will be recording her own songs or pitching to other artists, but it seems a good bet that she’ll have one.

—Brett Milano

Various Artists New Orleans 1961–1964 (504 Records) The dozen selections on New Orleans 1961–1964 by some of New Orleans finest musicians and ensembles were originally released as two LPs on the 77 label. Informative liner notes on the disc, which was produced by the knowledgeable Tom Stagg headed by such illustrious, traditional jazz leaders as trumpeters Kid Howard, Kid Sheik Cola, Kid Thomas and Peter Bocage, clarinetist Emile Barnes and more. Many of their “sidemen” also boast legendary names.

Hot numbers like Kid Howard’s rendition of the classic “Panama” fill the disc.

It’s interesting to note the prominence of the banjo here as well, as on several cuts with banjoist George Guesnon turning up not only with Howard (and singing on “Slow and Easy Blues” too) but also with the Mighty Four, which jumps “I

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Can’t Escape From You” with trumpeter Lionel Ferbos paired with alto saxophonist Harold Dejan plus Alex Bigard on drums.

The pace slows on the simply titled “Original Blues,” performed by clarinetist Emile Barnes’ New Orleans Four, on which trumpeter Eddie Richardson takes on vocal duties.

Piano triplets are favored here as offered by Joe James.

Trumpeter and violinist (don’t see many of those) Peter Bocage heads for the popular numbers by combining “Sentimental Journey” and “Paper Moon” to create a medley. Bocage’s Creole Serenaders are talentpacked with such noted names as trombonist Homer Eugene, clarinetist/saxophonist Louis Cottrell, pianist Joe Robichaux, guitarist Emanuel Sayles (who is perhaps even better known on banjo) and more.

The music flies off with trumpeter De De Pierce’s New Orleans Band rhythmically piloted by the drums (and cowbell) of Josiah “Cie” Frazier. “Hey, yeah,” someone enthusiastically yells in the excitement of the moment.

The music on New Orleans 1961–1964 was in mighty good hands as most of it was lovingly recorded by the brilliant Jim Russell and Dick Allen.

—Geraldine Wyckoff

The Tomb of Nick Cage The Pharaoh of New Orleans (Independent) In a city known for its meticulously preserved examples of classic architecture, the tomb

of Nicolas Cage sticks out like a bizarre angry sore thumb in the middle of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1; a modernist pyramid erected by the still alive and kicking Hollywood actor and purposely positioned close to Marie Laveau’s grave, supposedly in order to bring him luck in his acting career, and also, one supposes, immortality.

It’s a good jumping-off point for goth-rock outfit The Tomb of Nick Cage, who despite the handle don’t construct any major multi-universe Coheed and Cambria–like interlocking conspiracy theory about Cage’s edifice. But they do utilize the silliness of the whole thing for their own post-punk irony, and while there are songs called

“Wickerman” and “Vampire’s Kiss,” Tomb of Nick Cage basically embrace everything both cult and occult about Hollywood, celebrating the movie universes constructed by cosmic horror classics like Nightbreed, Aliens and They Live.

Lead singer Kym Trailz cannily synthesizes every “rock chick” who’s ever worn black

The Peak of Zydeco Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers Top of the Mountain (Crew Records) Dwayne Dopsie is always stylin’ whether he’s kicking in on a hot, uptempo two-step, showing his roots as an accordionist and vocalist on a more traditional tune or swaying an old-school rhythm and blues groove. He does all of that and more on his latest release, Top of the Mountain, an album on which the son of the late, great Alton “Rockin’ Dopsie” Rubin challenges the (ridiculous) notion that most zydeco sounds the same.

He also again proves himself to be a talented composer and delivers his tunes with tons of personality and dynamics.

As Dwayne does at his live shows, he pushes every tune to the max and starts out that way on the quick-paced “Roseliee.” There are some real aces on this disc including the absolutely compelling “Gotcha Baby on My Mind,” the rhythm of which almost suggests a reggae beat. He’s backed by his full band on this one—rubboard, bass, saxophone, guitar and drums.

The always immediately identifiable leader takes a detour into the straightup blues on “Just a Man.” It’s a very successful journey that can proudly stand next to the works of noted bluesmen of the past and present.

The rhythm and blues that the King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier brought to zydeco music is represented here on “Everybody’s Talking,” the lyrics of which Dwayne sings in both English and French patois.

He’s all over the accordion on this one. Then on “Voodoo Child” Dwayne funks up the session, leaning toward the Jimi Hendrix era.

Top of the Mountain musically expresses just why Dwayne Dopsie stands at the peak of zydeco today.

—Geraldine Wyckoff www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS fishnets—a yawp that stretches from Exene Cervenka to Debora Iyall to Johnette Napolitano to Donita Sparks—but what really sets these guys apart are the groove metal pedigrees of guitarists Aaron Maguire (from Convert) and Taylor Suarez.

When they slow things down, the darkness gets heavy and vice versa, a nice touch of NOLA metal that puts real bite in the kitsch. Plus it allows them to freely quote Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

—Robert Fontenot

Various Artists Bluesin’ by the Bayou Ain’t Broke, Ain’t Hungry (Ace Records) This CD marks at least a dozen releases in Ace’s “by the Bayou” series. This time there’s more blues in the swamplands and East Texas.

These releases all have a common theme. The music is both rare and quite often awesome. Some of the artists here are household names—at least in my household—but just as often they are totally unknown (in fact the final song on this 28-track set is credited to “Unknown.” Another common aspect of these compilations is that a great deal of material was found in the Crowley vault of producer J.D. Miller. However, the opening track—Mercy Baby’s “Pleadin’”—is rather the lone raisin in a bowl of tapioca. While the track is a burner (Mercy never made a bad record) and was the first ever release on New Orleans’ legendary Ric label, Mercy Baby recorded in Dallas (with Frankie Lee Sims) and the track was “loaned” to Ric

by Ace. A popular Miller artist with constant woman problems, when Lightnin’ Slim wasn’t worried about rats and roaches, he returned to his unending domestic woes. All four of his tracks address these woes, the best of the lot being the outtake of “Hoodoo Man” where Lightnin’ sounds absolutely www.OFFBEAT.com

miserable. Another Miller find, Slim Harpo’s “Cigarettes,” is a demo and while very good, doesn’t have the polished sound of a finished track. The second and last Boozoo Chavis Goldband single is found here and includes the truly bizarre “Hamburgers & Popcorn,” a song you’d definitely never hear a cover of. The title track has a local flavor as it was recorded by good old Polka Dot Slim, and along with “A Thing You Gotta Face,” first appeared on Camp Street’s Instant label. It was one of the greatest New Orleans blues two-siders ever. Barbara Lynn contributes a lively version of Lazy Lester’s “Sugar Coated Love” and speaking of Lester, his signature ‘’I’m a Lover Not a Fighter” is included and he’s also heard backing several of the other artists on this set. A Jimmy Reed disciple—nothing wrong with that—Jimmy Anderson’s “Angel Please” will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Other highlights include Ramblin’ Hi Harris two tracks. Joe Richard’s “Dreaming, Dreaming” sounds like a Slim Harpo outtake, as does T.B. Fisher’s “Don’t Change Your Mind.” Clarence Garlow meanwhile shakes the shack with “Make Me Cry.” Al Smith’s Goldband side “If I Don’t See You” is eerily similar to Larry Davis’ classic “Texas Flood.” A-1 package again from Ace—label scans, rare photos and info you can’t find anywhere else. Great stuff.

You have to get this one if you consider yourself a blues fan.

—Jeff Hannusch O CTO BER 2 017

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These listings are abbreviated. For complete daily listings, go to offbeat.com. These listings were verified at the time of publication, but are of course subject to change. To get your event listed, go to offbeat.com/add-new-listings or send an email to listings@offbeat.com.

AF African AM Americana BL Blues BU Bluegrass BO Bounce BB Brass Band BQ Burlesque KJ Cajun CL Classical CR Classic Rock CO Comedy CW Country CB Cover Band DN Dance DX Dixieland DB Dubstep EL Electro FO Folk FK Funk GS Gospel GY Gypsy HH Hip-Hop HS House IN Indian Classical ID Indie Rock IL Industrial IR Irish JB Jam Band

MJ Jazz

Contemporary TJ Jazz Traditional JV Jazz Variety KR Karaoke KZ Klezmer LT Latin MG Mardi Gras

Indian ME Metal RB Modern R&B PO Pop PK Punk RE Reggae RC Rockabilly RK Rock RR Roots Rock SS Singer/

Songwriter SK Ska PI Solo Piano SO Soul SW Spoken Word SP Swamp Pop SI Swing VR Variety ZY Zydeco

SUNDAY OCTOBER 1

Bombay Club: Tim Laughlin Trio (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Heather Holloway and the Heebie Jeebies (JV) 4, Gerald French Trio (RB) 7p Crazy Lobster: the Gator Bites (VR) 11a, the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Sam Price and the True Believers (SI) 10p Dragon’s Den: Open Jazz Jam with Tristan Gianola Trio (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: the Stone Foxes, Them Ol’ Ghosts (RK) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Cameron Esposito, Rhea Butcher (SS) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8p Little Gem Saloon: Little Freddie King Brunch (BL) 11a, Luther Dickinson and Johnny Vidacovich and guests (VR) 7:30p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, Shake ‘Em Up Jazz Band (SI) 10a, Nickel-A-Dance feat. Herlin Riley and the Flat Foot Five, Meghan Stewart (JV) 4p, Higher Heights (RE) 10p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (RB) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Kitten and Lou: Holier Than Thou (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 8p

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Preservation Hall: Salon Series: Rickie Monie presents the Music of Sweet Emma Barrett (TJ) 3p, Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Siberia: Alexandra Scott, Julie Odell, Lauren Oglesby (FO) 8p Snug Harbor: Courtney Bryan Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and the Inner Wild (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Organized Crime, Sopko/ Long (FK) 9p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Trinity Episcopal Church: John Denver Tribute feat. Cathy Gianfala (FO) 5p

MONDAY OCTOBER 2

Bombay Club: David Boeddinghaus (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Justin Molaison (VR) 5:30p, Alex McMurray and Tommy Malone (SS) 8p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p, Funk Monkey (FK) 10p Dragon’s Den: Monday Night Swing feat.

Shake ‘Em Up Jazz Band (GY) 8p, Hangover Monday with DJ Ill Medina (VR) 11p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (MJ) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French Trio (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, RnR Music Group (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. Trio (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Cypress Knee (VR) 10p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 5p, Preservation AllStars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: West Coast Swing Night (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Muses: Bart Ramsey (JV) 5p, Washboard Rodeo (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Cajun Drifters (KJ) 7p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 3

Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Carver Theater: Whose Streets? Film Screening with Big 6 Brass Band (VR) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Chip Wilson and Marcello Benetti (VR) 5:30p, Jon Cleary (FK) 8p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 10:30p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: the All-Star Covered-Dish Country Jamboree feat. Damn Gina, Chris and the Growing Boys, Todd Day Wait’s Pigpen (CW) 9p Ellis Marsalis Center for Music: Kyle Roussell and Tom McDermoot (JV) 6p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Thee Commons, Kuwaisiana (PK) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): the Dig (ID) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Beast (CO) 8:30p

Jazz Playhouse: James Martin (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Cecile Savage Trio (JV) 7p Maison: Kala Chandra Quartet, Gregory Agid Quartet, Y’marii (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 10p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 5p, Preservation AllStars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Latin Night (LT) 7p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Selectors, Hyena (VR) 8p Three Muses: Sam Cammarata (JV) 5p, Messy Cookers (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Wild Card (RK) 5p, Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 9p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4

Bombay Club: Josh Paxton (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Ivor Simpson-Kennedy (VR) 5:30p, Evan Christopher and Tom McDermott (JV) 8p, Mike Doussan Band (VR) 10:30p Circle Bar: the Iguanas (RK) 7p, the Cowboys, Trampoline Team, the Planchettes, DJ Matty (RK) 9:30p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (BL) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Groove Therapy (HH) 9p, Reggae Night (RE) 10p Gasa Gasa: Widowspeak, Clearance, Rudy Stone (PO) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Progression Music Series (VR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Unfortunate Side Effect, Green Gasoline, Gools (RK) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Glen David Andrews (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Ethan Bortnick (SS) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Roy Gele (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Zakk Garner Duo (JV) 7p Maple Leaf: Fuel feat. Daryl Johnson (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Joe Krown (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat. Ellis Marsalis (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Helen Gillet plus 1 (MJ) 9p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Joseph, Liza Anne (VR) 8:30p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 5

Bombay Club: Don Vappie Duo (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Gumbo Cabaret (VR) 5p, Tom McDermott and James Evans (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, John “Papa” Gros Band (VR) 8p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series feat. Louis Prima Jr. and the Witnesses (JV) 5p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Jon Cleary (PI) 7p, Ponderosa Stomp’s Hip Drop (VR) 10p

Dragon’s Den: Crescent Fresh Stand-Up (CO) 7p, Disco Thursday feat. DJ Randall Smooth (VR) 10p; Upstairs: SmokeGang Thursday feat. J. Hurst (HH) 10p Hi-Ho Lounge: Chapter:Soul’s Mixtape: A ‘90s Into ‘00s Throwback Dance Party feat. Ceven (VR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, BrassA-Holics (BB) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Vincent Marini (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (FK) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Reid Poole Duo (JV) 7p Maison: Good for Nothin’ Band, Sweet Substitute, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Johnny Vidacovich Trio (FK) 10p NOSH: WAGS, Alexey Marti (JV) 7p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Ogden After Hours feat. Eric Lindell (BL) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Leroy Jones and Katja Toivola with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Rusty Metoyer and the Zydeco Krush (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Joe Krown Organ Trio feat. Walter “Wolfman” Washington (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Mia Borders (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Elliot Root (VR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p Vaughan’s Lounge: DJ Black Pearl (VR) 9p, Corey Henry and Treme Funket (FK) 10:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 6

Bombay Club: Mark Brooks (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Pfister Sisters (VR) 5p, Keith Burnstein (VR) 9p Carver Theater: Stand Up, Speak Out! Social Justice Event feat. Cha Wa, Main Line Brass Band (VR) 8p Castillo Blanco: Krewe du Vieux’s Swamp Ass Soiree feat. Lost Bayou Ramblers (KJ) 7:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Sunpie Barnes and the Louisiana Sunspots (ZY) 8p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Soul Rebels (FK) 10p Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall: Morning Star Gospel Choir (GS) 6p, St. Rose de Lima Men’s Ensemble (GS) 7:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): the Sextones (FK) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Joe Krown (PI) 4p, James Rivers Movement (BL) 7:30p, Trixie Minx’s Burlesque Ballroom feat. Romy Kaye and the Mercy Buckets (BQ) 11p Joy Theater: Joy Theater honors Big Chief Monk Boudreaux featuring a screening of “Bury the Hatchet” and performances by Johnny Vidacovich and Johnny Sansone (FK) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, Roux the Day (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Dr. Michael White (JV) 7p Mahalia Jackson Theater: New Orleans Opera Association presents Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (CL) 8p Maison: Gentilly Stompers, Swinging Gypsies (JV) 1p, Shotgun Jazz Band, Ricio and Reece’s Pieces (VR) 7p, Gumbo Funk (FK) 11:59p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Maple Leaf: New Orleans Suspects (FK) 10p NOSH: DJ Abibas, Khris Royal, Andy Daniels (VR) 8p Old U.S. Mint: Deacon John and the Ivories (RB) 7p One Eyed Jacks: VNV Nation, iVardensphere (VR) 7p Orpheum Theater: Ponderosa Stomp (VR) 7:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lucien Barbarin and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p Republic: Space Jesus, Esseks, Digital Ethos (EL) 10p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Karma (VR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): the Essentials (SO) 10p Three Muses: Royal Roses (JV) 5:30p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Thundercat (VR) 10p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 7

Bombay Club: Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Meryl Zimmerman (JV) 6p, James Evans Trio (JV) 9p Carver Theater: Stand Up, Speak Out! Support the Youth Day feat. Mia X, Shamarr Allen, Jason Neville, Charmaine Neville (VR) 11a, Stand Up, Speak Out! Social Justice Event feat. Big Chief Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias, TBC Brass Band (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Shinyribs (VR) 9p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a, Poppy’s Poppin’ Saturday Review (VR) 4p Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: Tuba Skinny (JV) 7p, Little Freddie King (BL) 11p Dragon’s Den: Samba Soul Saturday feat.

Brazilian Pineapple Fashion Show (LT) 7p, Primetime feat. DJ Legatron Prime (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 8p, Sexy Back with DJ Dizzi (VR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Vagabon, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Softie (HH) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Close Me Out (CO) 8p, Pink Room Project (HH) 11p House of Blues: Bustout Burlesque and the Bustout Jazz Band (BW) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Chris Zeunges (JV) 5p, Joe Krown (PI) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Neisha Ruffins (JV) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Van Hudson (FO) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (FO) 9p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Tim Laughlin Quartet (JV) 7p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Leah Rucker, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 4p, RnR Music Group (FK) 11:59p Maple Leaf: Cyril Neville’s Birthday Bash (FK) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a NOSH: DJ Abibas, Khris Royal, Andy Daniels (VR) 8p Orpheum Theater: Ponderosa Stomp (VR) 7:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat.

Leroy Jones (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Lagniappe Brass Band, the Iguanas (VR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: the Hazelnuts (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Antoine Diel and Arsene DeLay (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p, Debbie Davis (JV) 6p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Bonerama CD-release party, Darcy Malone and the Tangle (VR) 10p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 8

Bombay Club: Tim Laughlin Trio (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Full Steam Jazz Band: A Benefit for the New Orleans

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Musicians Clinic (JV) 4p, Steve Pistorius, Orange Kellin and Benny Amon (JV) 7p Crazy Lobster: the Gator Bites (VR) 11a, the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Sunday Swampede with Feufollet and Cedric Watson (KJ) 5p, CC Adcock and the Lafayette Marquis (VR) 9p Dragon’s Den: Open Jazz Jam with Tristan Gianola Trio (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: Mikayla Braun and Kathryn Rose Wood Albums-Release Party (SS) 8p House of Blues: Judah and the Lion (FO) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Joy Theater: MattyB feat. the Haschak Sisters (PO) 4p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p Little Gem Saloon: Little Freddie King Brunch (BL) 11a, Evan Christopher (JV) 7p Mahalia Jackson Theater: New Orleans Opera Association presents Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (CL) 2:30p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, the Function (JV) 10a, Nickel-ADance featuring Don Vappie Creole Jazz Sextet, Tuba Skinny (JV) 4p, Higher Heights (RE) 10p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (RB) 10p Marigny Opera House: Marigny Opera Ballet presents Book of Saints (DN) 7p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Palm Court Jazz Café: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Salon Series: the Ella Fitzgerald Songbook with Quiana Lynell and the Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 3p, Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Shannon Powell Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: Dark Tranquility, Striker, Warbringer (VR) 6:30p, Deck Room: Motograter, Lucy Fears Goats (VR) 7p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and the Inner Wild (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Superior Seafood: Superior Jazz Trio (JV) 12:30p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Ponderosa Stomp Gospel Brunch feat. the Electrifying Crown Seekers and the Mighty Rocks of Harmony (SO) 12p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p

MONDAY OCTOBER 9

Bombay Club: David Boeddinghaus (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Justin Molaison (VR) 5:30p, Alex McMurray and Cary Hudson (SS) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p, Guitar Slim Jr. (VR) 10p Dragon’s Den: Monday Night Swing feat. Tom Saunder’s Hot Cats (GY) 8p, Hangover Monday with DJ Ill Medina (VR) 11p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (MJ) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): the Native Howl (BU) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French Trio (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Two Sheets to the Wind (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. Trio (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Cypress Knee (VR) 10p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat.

Leroy Jones (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: West Coast Swing Night (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p SEPTEMBER 2017

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Family Affair, Grown Man (HH) 9p Three Muses: Monty Banks (JV) 5p Tipitina’s: Black Uhuru, Onesty (VR) 8p Tropical Isle Original: Graham Robinson Band (RK) 5:15p, Trop Rock Express (RK) 9:15p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 10

Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Chip Wilson and Marcello Benetti (VR) 5:30p, Jon Cleary (FK) 8p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 10:30p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: the All-Star Covered-Dish Country Jamboree feat. the Chevrettes, Max and the Martians, Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts (CW) 9p Gasa Gasa: Nick Hakim, Sam Evian (RB) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Jasen Weaver’s Outlier, Michael Watson’s the Alchemy (MJ) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Beast (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Carol Deminski and the Little Jazz Birds (JV) 7p Maison: Heather Holloway and the Heebie Jeebies, Gregory Agid, CoolNasty (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 10p One Eyed Jacks: Parker Milsap, Devon Gilfillian (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Will Smith (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Davell Crawford Solo (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Selectors (VR) 8p Three Muses: Sam Friend (JV) 5p, Josh Gouzy (JV) 8p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 11 Bombay Club: Josh Paxton (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Ivor Simpson-Kennedy (VR) 5:30p, Russell Welch Gypsy Jazz Band (GY) 8p, Mike Doussan Band (VR) 10:30p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Groove Therapy (HH) 9p, Reggae Night (RE) 10p Gasa Gasa: Alex G., Hovvdy, Crumb (ID) 9p House of Blues: LeCrae (HH) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Backup Planet (RK) 9p Jazz National Historical Park: ARPA feat. Alexis Guevara and Edwin Gonzalez (LT) 2p Jazz Playhouse: Glen David Andrews (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Zakk Garner Duo (JV) 7p Maison: Dinosaurchestra, Jazz Vipers, Steve Lands Kota Band (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Fuel feat. Daryl Johnson (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: the Creole Stringbeans (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat.

Germaine Bazzle (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p

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Three Keys (Ace Hotel): the Shape of Jazz to Come (JV) 9p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 8p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 12

Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Evan Christopher (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Gumbo Cabaret (VR) 5p, Tom McDermott and Chloe Feoranzo (JV) 8p Bullet’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 6p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, Sarah Quintana and the Miss River Band (VR) 8p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series feat. the Yat Pack (VR) 5p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Alexis and the Samurai (ID) 7p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Wand, Darto, Gland, Babes (RK) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): New Years Day, Wild Fire, Twinspan (RK) 8p House of Blues: KMFDM, OhGr, Lord of the Lost (IL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, BrassA-Holics (BB) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Foot and friends (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (FK) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Lilli Lewis Duo (JV) 7p Maison: Good for Nothin’ Band, James Williams, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Johnny Vidacovich Trio (FK) 10p Mardi Gras World: Glass Animals, Rufus du Sol, Amber Mark (VR) 7p NOSH: Dino Crawl and guest (JV) 7p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Ogden After Hours feat. Cedric Burnside (BL) 6p One Eyed Jacks: Greta Van Fleet, Welles (VR) 7p, Fast Times ‘80s and ‘90s Night (VR) 10p Orpheum Theater: Champions of Magic (VR) 7:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Tim Laughlin and Clive Wilson with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation All-Stars feat.

Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Leroy Thomas and the Zydeco RoadRunners (ZY) 8:30p Scandinavian Jazz Church: N.O. Quarter Shantey Krewe (FO) 7p Siberia: Eastern Bloc Party feat. the Salt Wives (GY) 9p Snug Harbor: Adonis Rose and NOJO Jam (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Smoke N Bones feat.

Mykia Jovan (FK) 9p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Mia Borders (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Homegrown Night Concert Series feat. Black Laurel, Ruby and the Rogues, Fighting for Frequency (VR) 8:30p Vaughan’s Lounge: DJ Black Pearl (VR) 9p, Corey Henry and Treme Funket (FK) 10:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 13

Bombay Club: Larry Scala Quartet (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Julian Rusk (VR) 4p, Freddie Blue and the Friendship Circle (VR) 6p, Margie Perez (SO) 9p Carver Theater: Acrobats of China (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars (JV) 8p Circle Bar: Rik Slave’s Country Combo (CW) 7p, Beyond the Darkness XVIII feat. Creeper (VR) 9:30p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tuba Skinny (JV) 6p, Happy Talk Band, Esther Rose (SS) 10p House of Blues: Breaking Benjamin Unplugged (RK) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Atlas Road Crew (RK) 10p

Jazz National Historical Park: Paky Saavedra Trio with Julio Herrera (LT) 2p Jazz Playhouse: Chris Zeunges (JV) 4p, Nayo Jones Experience (JV) 7:30p, Trixie Minx’s Burlesque Ballroom feat. Romy Kaye and the Mercy Buckets (BQ) 11p Joy Theater: Run the Jewels, Denzel Curry, Cuz Lightyear (VR) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Johnny O’Brien (FO) 5p, Paintbox with Dave James and Tim Robertson (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Leroy Jones Quintet (JV) 7p Maison: Jeanne-Marie Harris, Swinging Gypsies, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 1p, Groove Faction, Musical Expression (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Dave Jordan and the NIA (RR) 10p NOSH: DJ Abibas, Khris Royal, Andy Daniels (VR) 8p One Eyed Jacks: DJ Soul Sister presents Soulful Takeover (VR) 10p Orpheum Theater: In This Moment (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Norbert Suesimihl and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 5p, Preservation Brass Band feat. Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: the Topcats (VR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10 Southport Hall: Puddle of Mudd, Akadia, Remedy (VR) 8p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Messy Cookers (JV) 5:30p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Songhoy Blues (VR) 10p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 14

Apple Barrel: Big Al and the Heavyweights (BL) 10:30p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Evan Christopher (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Ukulele Summit (VR) 4p, Carolyn Broussard with Gentilly Lace (VR) 6p, Royal and Dumaine Hawaiians (VR) 9p Carver Theater: Acrobats of China (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Buenos Diaz (VR) 9p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a, Poppy’s Poppin’ Saturday Review (VR) 4p Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 7p, Cedric Burnside Project, R.L. Boyce (BL) 11p Dragon’s Den: Samba Soul Saturday feat.

Brazilian Pineapple Fashion Show (LT) 7p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 8p, Sexy Back with DJ Dizzi (VR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p House of Blues: Between the Buried and Me, the Contortionist, Polyphia, Toothgrinder (ME) 7p Jazz Playhouse: Sam Kuslan (JV) 5p, Ricardo Pascal’s New Orleans Wildlife Band (JV) 8p Joy Theater: the Growlers (VR) 9:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Mike Kerwin and Geoff Coats (FO) 5p, Mark Hessler (FO) 9p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: New Soul Finders and guests (RB) 8:30p; Ramp Room: King James and the Special Men (RB) 8:30p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Luneta Jazz Band, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 1p, the Wahala Boys, Big Easy Brawlers (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Sam Price and the True Believers (RR) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a NOSH: WAGS and guest (VR) 8p One Eyed Jacks: Alvvays, Nap Eyes (VR) 9p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 6p, Preservation AllStars (TJ) 8p, Salon Series feat. Mia X and the Pinettes Brass Band (HH) 11:30p

Rock ‘n’ Bowl: John “Papa” Gros Band, Soul Rebels (FK) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Phillip Manuel Ensemble (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Jazz Band Ballers (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Nikki Hill (RK) 9p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Interstellar Boys, Big Chief Juan Pardo and Golden Comanches feat. Todd Nance, Daniel Hutchens, Jerry Joseph, Sam Holt, John Neff, Jon Mills (MG) 9p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 15

Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Duke Heitger (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Spike Perkins (JV) 4p, Gerald French Trio (RB) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Johnny Sansone Band (VR) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Gator Bites (VR) 11a, the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Egg Yolk Jubilee (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: Open Jazz Jam with Tristan Gianola Trio (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult (RK) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8p Mahalia Jackson Theater: John Mulaney (CO) 7 & 10p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs (SI) 10a, Leah Rucker, NickelA-Dance feat. Roderick Paulin and the Traditional All-Stars, Royal Street Winding Boys (VR) 1p, Higher Heights (RE) 10p Maple Leaf: Chris Mule Trio (RR) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Peelander-Z (VR) 8p Orpheum Theater: Herbie Hancock (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: James Singleton Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and the Inner Wild (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): AfriKando with Laylo and DJ RQ Away (AF) 8p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, Matt Johnson (JV) 8p UNO Lakefront Arena: Justin Moore (CW) 7:30p

MONDAY OCTOBER 16

Bombay Club: David Boeddinghaus (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Justin Molaison (VR) 5:30p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p, Funk Monkey (FK) 10p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: Dance with the Dead, Gost, Glitch Black (EL) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (MJ) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French Trio (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Josh Kagler and the Meter Maids (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. Trio (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: West Coast Swing Night (SI) 7p Siberia: Comic Strip presented by Chris Lane, Corey Mack, Roxie Le Rouge and Oops the Clown (CO) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): the Monday Get Right with Chinua (VR) 4p Three Muses: Bart Ramsey (JV) 5p, Esther Rose (JV) 8p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 17

Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Chip Wilson and Marcello Benetti (VR) 5:30p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 10:30p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: the All-Star Covered-Dish Country Jamboree feat. Kisme, the Waste Lives, the Modern Eldorados (CW) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): Tricky (EL) 8p House of Blues: Spoon, Mondo Cozmo (ID) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Rougarou (RK) 9p Jazz Playhouse: James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Roadcase Royale feat. Nancy Wilson and Liv Warfield (VR) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Cyril Neville performs the Louis Armstrong songbook (JV) 7p Maison: Eight Dice Cloth, Gregory Agid, Max Bronstein Music (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 10p Mardi Gras World: Kid Cudi (HH) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: John Wooton Caribbean Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Selectors (VR) 8p Three Muses: Sam Cammarata (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Azealia Banks (VR) 9p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 18 Bombay Club: John Royen (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Ivor Simpson-Kennedy (VR) 5:30p, Meschiya Lake and Tom McDermott (JV) 8p, Mike Doussan Band (VR) 10:30p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Consider the Source, the Iceman Special (VR) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): White Reaper (RK) 7:30p House of Blues: MadeinTYO, K. Swisha (HH) 8p Jazz Playhouse: Glen David Andrews (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Cyril Neville performs the Louis Armstrong songbook (JV) 7p Maison: Jazz Vipers, Juán Tigre (VR) 6:30p Maple Leaf: Fuel feat. Daryl Johnson (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat.

Joe Lastie (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Jerry Embree (SI) 8p

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Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat. John Wooton (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: Gemini Syndrome, Deadset Society, First Fracture, Spoken (VR) 6:30p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Ivan Neville and friends (FK) 9p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Schatzy (JV) 8p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 19

Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Rex Gregory (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Banu Gibson (VR) 5p, Ce Beguine with Charlie Halloran (JV) 8p Bullet’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 6p Champions Square: the XX, Perfume Genius (VR) 7:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, John “Papa” Gros Band (VR) 8p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series feat. Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. (ZY) 5p d.b.a.: MainLine (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: Crescent Fresh Stand-Up (CO) 7p; Upstairs: Soundclash 19th Anniversary Party (HH) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Trevor Sensor, Peter Oren (RK) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bianca Love, Noelle Tannen and McKenna Alicia (RB) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): Future Leaders of the World (RK) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, BrassA-Holics (BB) 8:30p Joy Theater: Lil Yachty (HH) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Vincent Marini (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Cyril Neville performs the Louis Armstrong songbook (JV) 7p Maison: Good for Nothin’ Band, Roamin’ Jasmine, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Johnny Vidacovich Trio (FK) 10p NOSH: Coyote Medicine and guest (JV) 7p Nunemaker Auditorium (Loyola University): Jazz Underground Series presents Trumpet Royalty feat. Leroy Jones, Wendell Brunious and Jamil Sharif (JV) 7:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Tim Laughlin and Duke Heitger with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Horace Trahan (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Gene Bertoncini and Bill Grimes with Steve Masakowski (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Lil Debbie and friends (HH) 10p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Arsene DeLay (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Wild Card (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Vaughan’s Lounge: DJ Black Pearl (VR) 9p, Corey Henry and Treme Funket (FK) 10:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 20

Bombay Club: Banu Gibson (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Phil Degruy and Emily Robertson (JV) 5p, Kris Tokarski Trio (JV) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Colin Lake (BL) 8p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 6p, Marc Stone Band (BL) 10p Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall: Chris Thomas King with Henry Gray (BL) 6:30p SEPTEMBER 2017

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Dragon’s Den: Zoe K. (RB) 7p, the Tipping Point with DJ RQ Away (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Comedy Fuck Yeah (CO) 8p, Latin Night (LT) 11p Historic New Orleans Collection: Robin Barnes (RB) 6p House of Blues (the Parish): Atlas Genius, Magic Giant, Half the Animal (RK) 8p Jazz Playhouse: Trixie Minx’s Burlesque Ballroom feat.

Romy Kaye and the Mercy Buckets (BQ) 11p Jazz Playhouse: Joe Krown (PI) 4p, Ricardo Pascal’s New Orleans Wildlife Band (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 5p, Beth Patterson (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Cyril Neville performs the Louis Armstrong songbook (JV) 7p Maison: Jazmarae Beebe Trio, Swinging Gypsies, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 1p, Soul Project, New Creation Brass Band (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Cha Wa (MG) 10p NOSH: Dino Crawl and guest (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Kevin Louis and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 5p, Preservation Brass feat. Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Supercharger (VR) 9:30p Saturn Bar: Valparaiso Men’s Chorus (FO) 11p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Debauche (GY) 10p Three Muses: Royal Roses (JV) 5p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: the Crystal Method, Unicorn Fukr, Kidd Love (EL) 10p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 21

Abita Springs Town Hall: Abita Springs Opry feat. Chris Talley Band, the Trustys from Davo Crossing, Ric Robertson Band, the Gentilly Stompers (VR) 7p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Red Organ Trio (JV) 4p, Jasen Weaver Band (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas: Kala Chandra, G and her Swinging 3, Johnny Mastro, Johnny Mastro (VR) 11a Bombay Club: Leroy Jones (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay and friends (VR) 6p, the Royal Rounders (VR) 9p Carver Theater: Benji Brown, Howard Hall, Square Tite Mike, Leslie Brown, Blowfish (CO) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Honey Island Swamp Band (RR) 9p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a, Poppy’s Poppin’ Saturday Review (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 7p, Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 11p Dragon’s Den: Samba Soul Saturday feat.

Brazilian Pineapple Fashion Show (LT) 7p, Primetime feat. DJ Legatron Prime (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 8p, Sexy Back with DJ Dizzi (VR) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Daniel Meinecke (JV) 5p, Michael Watson (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Gogol Bordello, Lucky Chops (VR) 9p; Hell’s Gala Official After-party feat.

Liquid Stranger, Manic Focus, Freddy Todd (VR) 2a Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, Jamie Lynn Vessels (FO) 9p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Bailey (PO) 9p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires (SI) 1p, Cajun/Zydeco Fais Do Do (KJ) 4p, Smoking Time Jazz Club, Big Easy Brawlers, Groove Faction (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Space and Harmony (FK) 10p Mardi Gras World: Hell’s Gala feat. Excision, Kayzo, Trippy Turtle (VR) 9p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a NOSH: DJ OTTO, Alexey Marti (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Charlie Fardella and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p

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Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 5p, Preservation AllStars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Soul Rebels (FK) 10p Smoothie King Center: Bruno Mars (SS) 8p Snug Harbor: Herlin Riley Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Russell Welch’s Mississippi Gypsy (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 10p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p, Meschiya Lake (JV) 6p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Lagniappe feat. DJ RQ Away and the Great Glaspy Experience (HH) 11p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 22

Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Dan Levinson (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Ben Fox Trio (JV) 4p, Steve Pistorius, Orange Kellin and Benny Amon (JV) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns Quartet (JV) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Gator Bites (VR) 11a, the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Jamaican Me Breakfast Club (VR) 4p, Bon Bon Vivant (JV) 10p Dragon’s Den: Open Jazz Jam with Tristan Gianola Trio (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: Skylar Spence, Jonah Baseball (VR) 9p House of Blues: Tee Grizzley, Lud Foe (HH) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Mikayla Braun and Jackie Venison (SS) 7p, Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Irish Session (FO) 5p, Will Dickerson (FO) 8p Little Gem Saloon: Little Freddie King Brunch (BL) 11a Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs (SI) 10a, Roamin’ Jasmine (JV) 1p, Nickel-A-Dance feat. Gerald French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, Leah Rucker (JV) 4p, Higher Heights (RE) 10p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (RB) 10p Maple Leaf: 11th Annual Po-Boy Festival (VR) 11a Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a One Eyed Jacks: J.D. McPherson (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Gerald French and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Salon Series: Screening of Bayou Maharajah and conversation with director Lily Keber with Musical Tribute to James Booker feat. David Torkanowsky (VR) 1p, Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Anais St. John Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Gouzy Band (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and the Inner Wild (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): the Second Line Show (CO) 6p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

MONDAY OCTOBER 23

Bombay Club: David Boeddinghaus (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Justin Molaison (VR) 5:30p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p

d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p, Esther Rose CDrelease party, Lonesome Doves (SS) 10p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (MJ) 10p House of Blues: the Magpie Salute (RK) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Stolen Rhodes, Debris (RK) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French Trio (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Mahalia Jackson Theater: Evanescence: Synthesis Live with Orchestra (VR) 7:30p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. Trio (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Cypress Knee (VR) 10p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 5p, Preservation AllStars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: West Coast Swing Night (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): L.A. Witch (RK) 9p Three Muses: Monty Banks (JV) 5p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Cajun Drifters (KJ) 7p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 24

Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Chip Wilson and Marcello Benetti (VR) 5:30p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 10:30p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: the All-Star Covered-Dish Country Jamboree feat. Hoot n Holler, the Wasted Lives, Miss Tess and the Talkbacks (CW) 9p Ellis Marsalis Center for Music: EMCM Jazz Orchestra performs the Silverbook Series by Harold R. Battiste Jr. (JV) 6p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: New Orleans Guitar Night (VR) 9p Jazz Playhouse: James Martin (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Gem Saloon: NOLA Dukes Showcase (JV) 7p Maison: McKenna Alicia, Gregory Agid, Ashton Hines and friends (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 10p New Orleans Jazz Market: Jazz Night in America feat. Christian Scott atunde Adjuah (JV) 6p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Latin Night (LT) 7p Snug Harbor: Alex Bosworth and Hank Mackie (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Selectors (VR) 8p Three Muses: Sam Friend (JV) 5p, Josh Gouzy (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, F.A.S.T. (RK) 9:15p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25 Bombay Club: Josh Paxton (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Ivor Simpson-Kennedy (VR) 5:30p, Meschiya Lake and Tom McDermott (JV) 8p, Mike Doussan Band (VR) 10:30p Circle Bar: the Iguanas (RK) 7p, McGregor, Adam Ostrar, Ghost Coast (ID) 9:30p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p

d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Groove Therapy (HH) 9p, Reggae Night (RE) 10p House of Blues: Theory of a Deadman (RK) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Sam Burchfield and the Scoundrels (RK) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Glen David Andrews (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Tim Robertson (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Irvin Mayfield with Kermit Ruffins (JV) 7p Maison: the Function, Jazz Vipers, Danny Abel and friends (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Fuel feat. Daryl Johnson (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Rocky’s Hot Fox Trot Orchestra (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat.

Andrew Baham (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Terrence Taplin (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Klyph, Sea Battle (RK) 9p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 26

Apple Barrel: Big Al and the Heavyweights (BL) 10:30p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Meryl Zimmerman (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Gumbo Cabaret (VR) 5p, Tom McDermott and Doyle Cooper (JV) 8p Champions Square: Jason Aldean, Chris Young, Kane Brown, Deejay Silver (CO) 7:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, Sarah Quintana and Kid KaBoom (VR) 8p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series feat. Four Unplugged (VR) 5p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Jon Cleary (PI) 7p, Little Freddie King (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Crescent Fresh Stand-Up (CO) 7p, Bombon (LT) 9p, Soundclash presents Throwback Thursday (HH) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: Ciel Rouge (HH) 9p House of Blues: Ghostland Observatory (EL) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, BrassA-Holics (BB) 8:30p Joy Theater: Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass, Billy Iuso and Restless Natives (RR) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (FK) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Irvin Mayfield with Kermit Ruffins (JV) 7p Maison: Tuba Skinny, Good for Nothin’ Band, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Johnny Vidacovich Trio (FK) 10p NOSH: WAGS, Alexey Marti (JV) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Queen vs. Bowie (VR) 8p, Fast Times ‘80s and ‘90s Night (VR) 10p Palm Court Jazz Café: Tim Laughlin and Clive Wilson with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Republic: Emo Night feat. Derek Sanders (VR) 10p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Geno Delafose (ZY) 8:30p Siberia: Eastern Bloc Party feat. Blato Zato (GY) 9p Snug Harbor: Christien Bold and SoulSwinger (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Soundbytes with PJ Morton and friends (RB) 9p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (JV) 5p, Arsene DeLay (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p Vaughan’s Lounge: DJ Black Pearl (VR) 9p, Corey Henry and Treme Funket (FK) 10:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 27

Bombay Club: Scott Myers (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 5p, Alexandra Scott and her Magical Band (SS) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Will Kimbrough and friends (VR) 8p Circle Bar: Rik Slave’s Country Combo (CW) 7p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: George Porter Jr. and his Runnin’ Pardners (FK) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Daniel Meinecke (JV) 4p, Nayo Jones Experience (JV) 7p, Trixie Minx’s Burlesque Ballroom feat. Romy Kaye and the Mercy Buckets (BQ) 11p Kerry Irish Pub: Roy Gele (FO) 5p, Crossing Canal with Patrick Cooper and Ruby Ross (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Irvin Mayfield with Kermit Ruffins (JV) 7:30p Little Tropical Isle: Reed Lightfoot (RK) 5p, Johnny Rodriguez (RK) 9p Maison: the 8th Annual Baller’s Ball with the Big Tymers feat. Mannie Fresh, Birdman aka Baby (HH) 10p Maison: Kala Chandra Quartet (JV) 1p, Swinging Gypsies, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: Eric Struthers and friends feat.

Roland Guerin, Joe Ashlar, Khris Royal, Terry Scott Jr. (VR) 10p NOSH: DJ Abibas, Khris Royal, Andy Daniels (VR) 8p

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Old U.S. Mint: Walter “Wolfman” Washington (BL) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Khruangbin, the Shacks (VR) 9p Palm Court Jazz Café: Kevin Louis and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation Brass feat. Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p, Salon Series: A Preservation HALLoween with Boyfriend (VR) 11:59p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Mixed Nuts (VR) 9:30p Siberia: United Bakers Records presents Tumbling Wheels, Duke Aeroplane, TV Pole Shine (FO) 10p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Matt Johnson (JV) 5:30p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 28

Bombay Club: Riverside Jazz Collective (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Davis Rogan (VR) 6p, Dr. Sick (VR) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Red, Gold, Green and Blues with Jamaican Me Breakfast, the Fortifiers (VR) 9p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a, Poppy’s Poppin’ Saturday Review (VR) 4p Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 7p House of Blues: Endless Night: New Orleans Vampire Ball feat. the Cruxshadows (VR) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Tom Hook (JV) 5p, Michael Watson (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Neisha Ruffins (JV) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (FO) 9p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p

Little Gem Saloon: Irvin Mayfield with Kermit Ruffins (JV) 7:30p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Luneta Jazz Band, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 1p, Brass-A-Holics, Gene’s Music Machine (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Honey Island Swamp Band (RR) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a NOSH: DJ Abibas, Khris Royal, Andy Daniels (VR) 8p One Eyed Jacks: the Nth Power, Ghost-Note, MonoNeon (VR) 9p Palm Court Jazz Café: Tom Fischer and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 5p, Preservation AllStars (TJ) 8p, Salon Series: A Preservation HALLoween with Boyfriend (VR) 11:59p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Karma (VR) 9:30p Santos Bar: Me and Adam, Sexy Dex and the Fresh (EL) 11:59p Snug Harbor: Terence Blanchard E-Collective (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Jazz Band Ballers (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): the Big Easy Playboys (VR) 6p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p, Debbie Davis (JV) 6p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Galactic (FK) 11p Vaughan’s Lounge: Greasy Alice, Malevitus, Rough 7 (VR) 9p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 29

Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski with Tim Laughlin (JV) 8p

Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Nattie’s Songwriters Circle (SS) 4p, Steve Pistorius, Orange Kellin and Benny Amon (JV) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns Quartet (JV) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Gator Bites (VR) 11a, the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Pink Slip Halloween Bash (RK) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs (SI) 10a, Roamin Jasmine, NickelA-Dance feat. Louis Ford and the New Orleans Flairs (JV) 1p, Brad Walker, Higher Heights (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Walter “Wolfman” Washington Trio (RB) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Old Point Bar: Luna Mora (LT) 3:30p One Eyed Jacks: LoveBomb GoGo Marching Band (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: D Play (VR) 5:30p Snug Harbor: Quiana Lynell (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Monty Banks (JV) 12p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and the Inner Wild (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): La Noche Caliente with Muevelo (LT) 8p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p

Tipitina’s: Here Come the Mummies, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes (RK) 9p

MONDAY OCTOBER 30

TUESDAY OCTOBER 31

Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Golden State/Lone Star Revue feat. Mark Hummel and Anson Funderburgh (FO) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Justin Molaison (VR) 5:30p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p, Cyril Neville and Swamp Funk, the Fuel (FK) 10p Dos Jefes: John Fohl (BL) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (MJ) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French Trio (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Joyce Manor, Wavves, Culture Abuse (VR) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, RnR Music Group (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. Trio (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Bounce Night with Sissy Nobby, Rusty Lazer and others (BO) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 6p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: West Coast Swing Night (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p

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Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (PI) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Chip Wilson and Marcello Benetti (VR) 5:30p, Jon Cleary (FK) 8p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 10:30p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Treme Brass Band (JV) 7p, Morning 40 Federation (RK) 11p House of Blues (the Parish): Spafford, Southern Avenue (FK) 8p Jazz Playhouse: James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop: Lucky Lee (SS) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Mark Pentone (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Evan Oberla and the Tasty Sapiens, Gregory Agid, Raw Deal (VR) 4p, Big Easy Brawlers (FK) 11:59p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 10p One Eyed Jacks: Quintron and Miss Pussycat (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Latin Night (LT) 7p Snug Harbor: Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Selectors (VR) 8p Three Muses: Loose Marbles (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Toadies, Local H (RK) 9p

FESTIVALS September 29-October 1 Gretna Heritage Festival features food vendors, carnival rides, and live music including KISS, Huey Lewis and the News and the B-52s. GretnaFest.com October 11-19 The annual New Orleans Film Festival includes screenings, panels and parties.

NewOrleansFilmSociety.org/Festival October 12-15 Festival Acadiens et Creoles in Lafayette includes five stages of music, regional cuisine, cooking demos, and arts and crafts.

FestivalsAcadiens.com October 13-15 The annual Andouille Festival in St. John the Baptist Parish includes live music, arts and crafts and food vendors.

AndouilleFestival.com October 13-15 The Crescent City Blues and Barbecue Festival takes place in Lafayette Square.

JazzAndHeritage.org/Blues-Fest/ October 13-15 The Voice of the Wetlands Festival in Houma showcases Cajun cuisine and Louisiana crafts, music and art. VoiceofTheWetlands.org October 22 The Oak Street Po-Boy Festival showcases unique variations on the classic sandwich from area restaurants, live music and an art market.

PoboyFest.com

October 27-29 The Louisiana Seafood Festival features cooking demonstrations, seafood vendors, an art village and live music at Woldenberg Park.

LouisianaSeafoodFestival2017.com October 27-29 The Voodoo Music + Arts Experience in City Park includes live music, installations, food vendors and an art market.

VoodooFestival.com October 28 The Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge features author panels, readings and a book market.

LouisianaBookFestival.org SPECIAL EVENTS October 7 The CAC presents Art for Art’s Sake in the Warehouse Arts District galleries and institutions.

CACNO.org October 13-15 The CAC presents performances of Trisha Brown Dance Company’s Trisha Brown, In Plain Site.

CACNO.org October 21 The French Market presents the annual Boo Carre with treat-or-treating for kids.

FrenchMarket.org October 21 New Orleans’ official Krewe of Boo parade takes place in the French Quarter.

KreweOfBoo.com

www.OFFBEAT.com

BACKTALK

Gary U.S. Bonds

talks back

W

hen Gary U.S. Bonds recorded “New Orleans,” his breakout hit from 1960, he’d never been to New Orleans. Nonetheless, the young singer from Norfolk, Virginia, reshaped “New Orleans,” a song originally written in a country and western vein, into a heartpounding rock ‘n’ roll classic.

Born Gary Anderson in Jacksonville, Florida, Bonds moved to Norfolk with his mother and grandmother when he was 3. Although his music-teacher mom taught classical piano, she loved twentieth-century rhythm and blues artists Bull Moose Jackson, Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. When R&B acts played around the Norfolk area she brought Gary along to the shows.

Bonds was a teenager singing doo-wop hits with his friends on a street corner when he met aspiring record producer Frank Guida.

The owner of the Frankie’s Got It record shop, Guida told the teens that he planned to build a recording studio and form a record company. But it would be a few years before his plans became reality, Guida added. When Guida finally returned to invite the singers to record, Bonds was the only one still in the neighborhood.

Radio stations initially rejected “New Orleans,” Bonds’ first release for Guida’s Legrand Records.

That changed when Dick Clark, host of American Bandstand in Philadelphia, played “New Orleans” on his TV dance show. Every DJ in the country wanted it then.

Bonds’ run of made-for-a-party hits in the early ’60s continued with “Quarter to Three,” “School Is Out,” “School Is In,” “Dear Lady Twist,” “Twist, Twist Señora” and “Seven Day Weekend.” His national and international performances included a 1963 European tour featuring the Beatles as opening act.

In the 1970s, Bonds grew disillusioned with the musical direction Legrand Records insisted he follow. Unable to move to a new label because he was under contract to Legrand, he stopped recording.

Bonds staged a grand return after Bruce Springsteen, a fan, invited him to a recording session. Two albums, 1981’s Dedication and 1982’s On the Line, both co-produced by Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt and featuring the E Street Band, resurrected Bonds’ career. www.OFFBEAT.com

Bonds loves New Orleans, especially the city’s cuisine. He made sure that his contract to perform at the Ponderosa Stomp, October 7 at the Orpheum Theater, includes dinner at his favorite local restaurant.

Ponderosa Stomp Saturday, October 7 Orpheum Theater

How did “New Orleans” come to be your first hit?

That song was written by my old buddy, Joe Royster. He was the engineer at the studio we were in. Norfolk Recording. We laughingly referred

By John Wirt

to it as a studio. Joe was a real country and western guy. He wrote ‘New Orleans’ as a country and western song. I mean it was real country.

You weren’t a country singer. What did you think of the song?

They gave it to me and said, ‘We want you do to this song.’ I said, ‘I don’t think I can do it the way you wrote it.’ They said, ‘Well, see what you can do with it.’ I took it home. I had a piano out on the back porch. It was out of tune, deteriorating from all the weather, but I could still pluck out of tune on it.

So, I remembered my mom used to like Cab Calloway. I remembered he had a song called ‘The O CTO BER 2 017

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“He [Bruce Springsteen] came over to my house a few days later and sat down at the piano there and wrote ‘This Little Girl.’”

Hi-De-Ho Man.’ That’s where I got the idea to put, ‘Hey, hey, hey, yeah’ on the front of ‘New Orleans.’

Hey, it worked.

It worked for me. It changed the song from country to rock ‘n’ roll, especially with the drum beat.

How long did it take for “New Orleans” to catch on?

We recorded it in the early part of ’59.

It didn’t become a hit until way into 1960.

The DJs around the country said it had an inferior sound, so they wouldn’t put it on the radio. We finally got it to Dick Clark. He said, ‘OK, I like this. Let me play this on American Bandstand.’ It was an instant hit. Every DJ in the country wanted to play it because it was on American Bandstand. I always give Dick Clark credit for breaking it.

You turned 21 the year “New Orleans” became a hit. What was it like to be young and famous in the early 1960s?

It was fantastic. C’mon. You couldn’t ask for anything else. That was what I was hoping for all those years.

Johnny Vincent’s Ace Records in Jackson, Mississippi, quickly released a cover version of “New Orleans.” New Orleans singer Edgar “Big Boy” Myles sang it. Are you familiar with that version of “New Orleans”? It was a local hit.

Wow. I have to look that up. I haven’t heard it in all these years. It probably never got out of the bayou. It just stayed right there, fermenting. Anything to not pay somebody else.

Did you perform in New Orleans soon after “New Orleans” became a hit?

After we recorded ‘New Orleans’ I never got to New Orleans. I went, ‘Wow, that’s weird. “New Orleans” is a big hit for me, but nobody is booking me down there.’ And I had no idea why. I used to always ask, ‘How come we’re not playing New Orleans?’ We’d play all these other little places I’d never even thought of, but never New Orleans. Maybe they were ticked off because I did ‘New Orleans’ but I’d never been there. Maybe they thought,

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‘How can he know about New Orleans?’ But I knew all the music that came out of there and enjoyed it. Loved Fats Domino.

When you finally played New Orleans, a few years after the song was a national hit, what sort of reaction did you get?

They’ve always been very happy to have me around. And I did some gigs there with the Dixie Cups and Frankie Ford. Frankie and I did a lot of things together. He was a funny dude.

There’s another Louisiana-linked song in your repertoire, “Jole Blon.” You recorded it as a duet with Bruce Springsteen for your 1981 album, Dedication, which Springsteen produced.

Yeah, I’d never even heard that song, but when Springsteen sprung it on me, I said, ‘Okay. I can get into that.’ And Bruce told me the whole story on it and who had recorded it. At first, I thought he had written it. He said, ‘No. A Cajun guy down there did it years and years and years ago.’ I enjoy doing that song.

Is “Jole Blon” in your show now?

A lot of the shows, I will start with that.

Wherever I am, I usually start with ‘Jole Blon’ or ‘New Orleans.’ They get things moving right away.

In 1976, you were performing at the Hangar, a club in Hazlet, New Jersey.

Bruce Springsteen dropped by. He wanted to sing with you on stage, but you weren’t familiar with him then?

I didn’t know who he was, but he was cool. He based all of this thing around what we had done (in the early ’60s). Clarence (Clemons, the late E Street Band saxophonist) was from Chesapeake, which is right there

by Norfolk. Bruce wanted a horn player, like I had. He got Clarence and that’s how he got all that stuff together.

How did production for the Dedication album begin?

Bruce had already started recording it himself. And then he called me and said, ‘Man, I have a song that sounds like you.

Why don’t you come down here and see if you might want to do it?’ I went down there and said, ‘Oh, yeah, that sounds cool.’

That’s how that whole Dedication album started.

After that first song, “Dedication,” the song Springsteen said sounded like you, he wanted you to do more recordings with him?

After Bruce heard me sing ‘Dedication,’ he said, ‘You got to do some more of these.’ He came over to my house a few days later and sat down at the piano there and wrote ‘This Little Girl.’ We went to the studio the next day and recorded that.

What impact did working with Springsteen have on your career?

It rejuvenated my career, it bought it back to life again.

There are obvious parallels between your music and Springsteen’s music.

Your house band at Legrand Records was the Church Street Five, featuring saxophonist Gene “Daddy G” Barge.

Springsteen formed the E Street Band, featuring saxophonist Clarence Clemons.

Also, the exuberance in your hits influenced Springsteen’s songwriting and performing. But what did it mean to you when Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt told you how much you influenced them?

They talked about it all the time. They still talk about it. Every time I see Bruce with his kids, he’ll say, ‘See that guy there? That’s the guy that got me started.’ He gives me a lot of credit. It’s very nice of him. It’s a compliment from a guy who’s doing fabulously well. And he not only tells me, he tells thousands of people from the stage. It’s a great feeling. To mean something to somebody of that importance, I feel like I’ve done something with myself in life.

Your mother, unlike many parents, encouraged you to pursue music. Did those touring R&B revues she took you to see when you were a child inspire you?

She took me to all the shows that she liked.

It was cool, because I liked it, too. I got a chance to see all the guys in their pretty, shiny suits. All the lights and the girls yelling and screaming. Yeah, that’s what I wanted to be.

And that’s what I got.

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