OffBeat Magazine June 2011

NICHOLAS PAYTON NEW ATLANTIS AFO SEAN YSEULT MITCH LANDRIEU WENDELL PIERCE

All That Chaz Six bands and counting

LOUISIANA MUSIC, FOOD & C U LT U R E — J U N E 2 0 1 1 Free In Metro New Orleans US $5.99 CAN $6.99 £UK 3.50

JAZZ FEST WRAP-UP WHAT YOU MISSED

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Letters

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Mojo Mouth

10 Photo Op with Kim Welsh

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Breaking the Silence

In New Atlantis, John Swenson shows how the 2007 March Against Violence changed musical lives.

All for Fifty

David Kunian reviews the 50-year history of AFO Records.

Fresh

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A Dance Out of Time

Travis Andrews goes to the Mod Dance Party.

His Song

Nicholas Payton’s going to sing his songs, regardless of what his label wants.

26 Man of a Thousand Bands

John Swenson profiles man-in-demand Washboard Chaz.

Last Call

OffBeat looks back at the Jazz Fest that was.

In the Kitchen with Sean Yseult The hard rock bassist shows Elsa Hahne how dance shows up in her food.

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Reviews

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Listings, Guitar Wolf is Plan A

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Debbie’s Not Debbie

Rachel Arons goes inside Debbie Does Doberge.

OffBeat Eats

Big Freedia is in The Spot at Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro, and Rene Louapre and Peter Thriffiley review Cyrus Restaurant.

BLAST FROM THE PAST “And The Beat Goes On: The Legacy and Future of AFO Records” by Roger Hahn, October 1998

with 61 Backtalk Mayor Mitch Landrieu

Backtalk with Wendell Pierce

The Treme star tells Alex Rawls about his work on Pontchartrain Park: “If you’re going to use any sort of celebrity or notoriety, that’s the best way to use it.”

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The Mayor discusses cultural economy issues with Alex Rawls: “The fundamental question is—do you have to have complete anarchy on the streets of the city in order for an indigenous art form to manifest itself?”

In this issue, David Kunian reviews the history of AFO (All For One) Records on the occasion of the label’s 50th anniversary. In 1998, founder Harold Battiste had recently revived AFO after a 30-year hiatus. As the first New Orleans record label owned by African-Americans, its legacy was finally being celebrated, resulting in a lengthy profile in this October cover story.

To read this article and more from this issue online, go to offbeat.com/1998/10.

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Letters

“As a musician in the city, I can tell you the number one gripe about French Quarter Festival is the parking.”—Rex Gregory, New Orleans, LA

Louisiana Music & Culture

June 2011 Volume 24, Number 6 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jan V. Ramsey, janramsey@offbeat.com

CULTURE ON A PEDESTAL I am a native Louisianan who grew up in Baton Rouge and Hammond and I’m an avid music lover (especially any music with roots in Louisiana). After moving to Atlanta to attend college, I moved to Washington, D.C. to begin working at the U.S. Department of Labor. I recently returned home for a family wedding and an early Mother’s Day Music Extravaganza.

While I was home, my mother had the March issue of OffBeat, and I read your Mojo Mouth piece called “Culture on a Pedestal.”

Not to be overly dramatic, but while reading it, it was like you were writing to my soul. I left Louisiana with a deep love and sincere appreciation for the state, and, since moving, this love and appreciation for Louisiana, especially its history and culture, has grown. These feelings can only be matched by my concern for the future of the state and the sustained life of Louisiana culture and history. Although I am a Louisiana ex-pat like many of the young people you write about in your piece, I was never truly encouraged to leave Louisiana.

In fact, many members of my family could not (and still don’t) understand how I could ever leave. I have always known that I am taking this journey to gain knowledge and skills so that when I do return home, I can do my very best to improve the state.

—Maria Town, Washington, D.C.

CANCELLED I am a long time fan of New Orleans and its music, so when contemplating where to celebrate my 40th birthday and fifth wedding anniversary, my wife and I made the easy decision to travel to New Orleans for a long weekend. We spent many hours in preparation, mostly deciding where to eat and who to see. Here’s how the weekend went down: we took extra time off work to fly down Thursday (April 14) to catch Kermit Ruffins at Vaughan’s. He cancelled. Friday we were excited to see the Cotton Mouth Kings at Spotted Cat since most of the guys

played our wedding in their prior incarnation with the Jazz Vipers. They cancelled too. No problem—John Boutte was slated to play d.b.a. on Saturday—also cancelled. Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns later that night at Spotted Cat—also cancelled. Wow—did someone call a musicians strike for the weekend and forget to tell us? This being New Orleans, we were able to find solid alternate options which included seeing Steve Earle filming an episode of Treme on Frenchmen Street and having a magical conversation with Tom McDermott at Three Muses. But I’ve got to be honest—the rampant cancellations left a bitter taste. Is this a trend, or did we just hit a patch of bad luck?

—Brent Ewig, Silver Spring, MD

PARKING WOES I’ve worked for many bands throughout the years that play the big stage at French Quarter Festival, and once you actually get past a half dozen part-time “security” people and other weekend-warrior pseudo-officials who can only say, “No, you can’t come through here”—even when you have the right credentials—to the floodwall to unload gear, you have to make several trips carrying gear through the crowd to the stage.

Then the vehicle has to be moved away— they don’t care where; you just have to get it out of there. Have you ever tried to park in the Quarter during French Quarter Festival? Or tried doing it when you had to park to get back to the stage to set up the gear for a show? I wonder how the more elderly musicians are able to do it while carrying their own gear.

French Quarter Festival should pay for space in a nearby lot for musician parking, and have a shuttle to help get band members and gear to the stage.

—M. Fisher, Slidell, LA

MORE PARKING WOES It would be great for the city to step up and show a little goodwill towards its musicians who make their cash cows even possible in the first place. I’m not holding my breath, though.

Maybe some personal supplications to our mayor would move him to make good on his

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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Managing Editor Joseph L. Irrera, josephirrera@offbeat.com Associate Editor Alex Rawls, alexrawls@offbeat.com Consulting Editor John Swenson Listings Editor Katie Walenter, listings@offbeat.com Online Editor Ben Berman, benberman@offbeat.com Contributors Travis Andrews, Rachel Arons, Brian Boyles, Rory Callais, Alex V. Cook, Barbie Cure, Chloe Curran, Herman Fuselier, Elsa Hahne, Jeff Hannusch, Geoffrey Himes, David Kunian, Aaron LaFont, Jacob Leland, Sam Levine, Rene Louapre, Stephen Maloney, Caitlyn Ridenour, John Swenson, Peter Thriffiley, Kim Welsh, Dan Willging, Zachary Young, Cover Elsa Hahne Design/Art Direction Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Advertising Sales Caroline Kappelman, carolinekappelman@offbeat.com Aaron Lafont, aaronlafont@offbeat.com Advertising Design PressWorks, 504-944-4300 Business Manager Joseph L. Irrera Interns Barbie Cure, Chloe Curran, Suzette Lake, Cooper O’Bryan, Hannah Romig, Caitlin Ridenhour, Kate Russell 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 Copyright © 2011, 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 at $39 per year ($45 Canada, $90 foreign airmail). Back issues available for $6, except the May issue for $10 (for foreign delivery add $2). Submission of photos and articles on Louisiana artists are welcome, but unfortunately material cannot be returned.

LETTERS promise of nourishing the cultural economy here. Unfortunately, our city attacks the cultural economy rather than nourishes it (as the recent closing of Donna’s, the shutting down of brass bands, and the shutdown of the Frenchmen art market will all tell you).

However, there are things that FQFI can do to gesture goodwill towards musicians. Their sponsorships are growing, they’re getting more vendors, etc., and I think it’s high tide to pay a debt of gratitude to the people who made it possible that I don’t think would break the bank.

As a musician in the city, I can tell you the number one gripe about French Quarter Festival is the parking. If there was a shuttle service, say, from the open lot across from the Convention Center that ran all the way down Decatur Street, it would greatly help and would show goodwill on the part of the festival organizers. As it stands now, you

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have musicians walking up to 20 blocks with instruments in the heat, oftentimes coming back to parking tickets or exorbitant parking rates.

—Rex Gregory, New Orleans, LA

EVEN MORE WOES How bands get paid for the French Quarter Festival has been a hot topic of conversation for years now, and I’ve always found it funny that virtually no one who attends the festival had any idea that the bands weren’t paid for their performances.

It seems as though there are plenty of businesses who would be willing to pony up a bit of cash to get advertising and their name attached to a local band or musician. The question really is: how do we connect with them? I think it would be an interesting idea to create some sort of online hook-up for bands seeking sponsors and people willing to sponsor, and even have

someone at FQF help to foster the connections.

We had a huge headache getting the upright bass and all the CDs to our stage this year.

We had to park by Sound Cafe in the Marigny! It’s one thing if you play the trumpet or guitar which you can pretty easily carry on a bike or when walking, but if you have more stuff to cart around, it can be very tricky with more and more people coming to the fest each year. Where do you park? If French Quarter Festival had a shuttle and a parking lot for musicians only, it would really make a big difference.

—Vanessa Niemann, Gal Holiday & her Honky Tonk Review, New Orleans, LA

DRAWING THE LINE Thank you to Andrew Hamlin for exploring the subject of abuse in his review of Louisiana Red’s Sweet Blood Call (April 2011).

As he points out: drawing the line can be complex—and hey,

“sticking a gun in a woman’s mouth and threatening to pull the trigger” might be one of the easier calls to make. But the stand up thing to do is to bring the discussion to the table and he did.

I have a radio show and there are times when I simply can’t play a song I love when the violence crosses some mysterious line. I struggled with Dr. John’s “How Come my Dog Don’t Bark When you Come Around.” I love this song. How does its humor and satire affect your decision when lyrics like, “I’m gon’ fire that hound, shoot that dog down. Then I’m gonna get busy mutilatin, strangulatin’, operatin’, an’ crematin’ my ol’ lady down at the cremation station” crop up? I know it wouldn’t rattle me so much if there was less “mutilatin” going on for real.

Thanks for opening up a discussion that at times seems untouchable.

—Susan Shaw, Roxbury, NY

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MOJO MOUTH

Missing the Music Boat… ...with Some Potential Lifesavers

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aving been in the business of promoting New Orleans and Louisiana music for over 25 years, I’ve seen its acceptance in the mainstream ebb and flow.

Having tourism officials recognize the value of using our music to attract visitors has been up-and-down. The last big push we had for music statewide ended when Mitch Landrieu stepped down as Lieutenant Governor to become mayor of New Orleans.

Too bad. Our indigenous music, which defines our culture statewide and particularly in New Orleans and in southwest Louisiana, is just another part of the “rich gumbo” (God, am I tired of that cliché!) that defines our mix of cultures throughout the state. Music is not the focus, and that’s really too bad.

Last weekend I was driving to Pass Christian, Mississippi, to attend a wedding. Whenever you ride into a new state, there’s always a welcome sign. All of Mississippi’s welcome signs now state “Birthplace of America’s Music.”

Mississippi was the birthplace of the blues, certainly not all of American music. Just like Austin is the “Live Music Capital of the World.” If you convey a message to an audience often enough, it becomes embedded in their consciousness—even on a sign.

Pushing for change is no easy task. OffBeat has worked with New Orleans and state officials, encouraging them to use music as a marketing tool to attract people to the state. In New Orleans, it’s a no-brainer. In western Louisiana (Cajun/zydeco country), it’s pretty obvious too. Baton Rouge is all about blues, and the northern part of the state is inextricably tied to rockabilly, the birth of rock ‘n’

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roll and country music. But it still hasn’t sunk in that Louisiana is way more of a musical birthplace than Mississippi, and unless you convey that message, the concept does not exist.

So why aren’t we telling potential visitors this constantly, consistently and clearly?

I hate to say this because Louisianans tend to think that they are superior to their Mississippi neighbors, but it appears that Mississippi has had the foresight to do some pretty interesting

to satisfy this burning passion in “Sportsman’s Paradise” (a previous marketing slogan for the state)?

“Pick Your Passion” sounds sophisticated, but it’s way too broad. It’s like advertising Las Vegas with the phrase, “What Happens Here Is Great.” Compare that with “What Happens Here Stays Here.” Which slogan connotes a party town?

The key word in 21st-Century marketing is “niche.” You certainly can’t please all your

Mississippi’s strategy makes Louisiana look ridiculous.

Our state’s new slogan is “Pick Your Passion.” Huh? Are there really hundreds of thousands of people who are passionate about hunting quail who will “flock” to “Sportsman’s Paradise”? niche marketing. There are some in the state who don’t like the fact that their state’s new tourism message is now entrenched in promoting their state as an historic center of American music.

I think the campaign’s pretty smart, considering that Mississippi certainly doesn’t have as much to offer, tourism-wise, as Louisiana, and especially New Orleans (sorry, friends throughout the rest of the state—it’s just the way it is).

Mississippi’s strategy makes Louisiana look ridiculous. Our state’s new slogan is “Pick Your Passion.” Huh? Are there really hundreds of thousands of people who are passionate about hunting quail who will “flock” to Louisiana

By Jan Ramsey

constituents at one time, but if you use the right marketing and advertising tools, you can increase visitors/tourism as a whole. Then, everyone wins big-time.

On the up side, New Orleans has another window of opportunity nationwide, with the success of Treme. Not only does this show depict the city’s culture in as authentic a way as it’s ever been shown, but our music is the linchpin of the storyline. More people than ever will be able to have a glimpse of what makes New Orleans unlike any other city in the world, and be able to hear our music, see it being created, and to the performances of musicians

they might never get to see unless they visited the city. It’s surprising, though, that the public sector tourism people haven’t picked up on this thread. Is it because Treme’s action centers on the day-to-day life and music of musicians and, for the most part, the types of people tourists aren’t supposed to see?

The lives of musicians and the world they inhabit are hardscrabble, and they have to hustle from day to day to make ends meet. The life of any artist is pretty much the same, except for the very, very few who become popular and affluent enough to actually get wealthy making their art. I continue to applaud Treme and its creators for having the guts to show it like it is and to expose our art, music and culture to an international audience.

The show’s been green-lighted for a third season, and I’m thrilled.

Over the two decades I’ve been in this business, there also seems to be a lot more interest in jazz from (thank God!) the younger generation. Jazz is sometimes perceived as old folks’ music, and it is so far from that. There are many young bands and entrepreneurs who are exploring and interpreting jazz in a new, fresh way (I think of bands like Meschiya Lake, the New Orleans Moonshiners, Irvin Mayfield, Trombone Shorty, Big Sam, and many, many more). I haven’t seen that in a long time, and it’s about time. We have hotels that are offering real jazz in clubs on a regular basis (Jeremy Davenport at the Ritz-Carlton; Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse at the Royal Sonesta, and the I Club that will open soon at the J. W. Marriott hotel on Canal Street). Bravo to these new torch-bearers who are carrying on the New Orleans jazz torch! We need more of you. O www.OFFBEAT.com

FRESH

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ome Blow Your Horn

“It is sort of a fantasy jazz camp,” Banu Gibson says. “Our

campers are people who are investment bankers whose parents told them, ‘No, you can’t be a musician for a living.’ Now they are going back and saying, ‘I’m going to do what I wanted to do.’ We get a lot of people who were players when they were younger and want to get back to it.”

Gibson’s referring to the New Orleans Traditional Jazz Camp, which brings novice, semi-professional, and professional traditional jazz musicians together for a one-week musical journey through the birthplace of jazz.

She founded it with jazz drummer Nita Hemeter and music education director Leslie Cooper. The NOTJC attracted an international roster of students for its debut in 2010, and has attracted students from as far away as Argentina for this year’s camp, which will run June 5-11.

Faculty members include Gibson, Matt Perrine, David Sager, Otis Bazoon, David Boeddinghaus, Carl LeBlanc, Connie Jones, Gerald French, Leah Chase, and Kerry Lewis. Classically trained pianist Ed Clute will serve as an adjunct faculty member, and John McKusker, Bruce Raeburn, and David Sager will be guest lecturers.

Participants will begin each day with a 30-minute lecture from a traditional jazz musician before breaking into groups and working on technique, learning new songs, and polishing up on old ones. In the evening, campers will sit in at jazz clubs across New Orleans, culminating in a performance at Preservation Hall on Friday, June 10.

“New Orleans is a big draw,” Gibson says. “It’s the mecca for all of these musicians, especially for the ones from overseas.”

For more information, visit NewOrleansTradJazzCamp.com.

—Stephen Maloney

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he Top Ten

Top 10 sellers during Jazz Fest at the Louisiana Music Factory:

1. Tab Benoit: Medicine (Telarc) 2. Galactic: The Other Side of Midnight: Live in New Orleans (Anti-) 7. Rebirth Brass Band: Rebirth of New Orleans (Basin Street) 3. Johnny Sansone: The Lord is Waiting and the Devil is Too (ShortStack) 8. Trombone Shorty: Backatown (Verve Forecast) 4. Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars: Box of Pictures (Independent) 9. Eric Lindell: Cazadero (Sparco) 5. Kermit Ruffins: Happy Talk (Basin Street) 10. Various Artists: Treme: Music from the HBO Original Series, 6. Marcia Ball: Roadside Attractions (Alligator) Season 1 (Geffen)

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FRESH

Amede’ Ardoin has been

hailed as the father of zydeco and Cajun music, but his final record is a meager index card that lists him as Case No. 13387. Name: Amede Ardoin. Age: 43. Civil Condition: M. Race: C. Admitted: 9-26-42. Parish: St. Landry. Residence: Eunice, La. Birthplace: La. Discharged: (blank).

Previous Att’ks: None. Heredity History: None.

Religion: Catholic. Correspondent: None given.

Died: 11-3-42. Disposition of Body: Buried here.

“Here” is the common grave at Central Louisiana State Hospital, the mental health facility in Pineville.

Warren Perrin, a Lafayette attorney and cultural advocate, has had a copy of this card since 1991, but many are just finding out about its existence since the renewed interest in Ardoin because of a new CD, Mama, I’ll Be Long Gone: The Complete Recordings of Amede Ardoin, 1929-1934. Released

by Tompkins Square Records of New York City, the CD marks the first time that Ardoin’s seminal recordings have been available on one source.

The disc is also a reminder of the scarce details known about this extraordinary musician, whose presence is still felt in Cajun music and zydeco.

Ardoin’s birth date, March 11, 1898, was unknown until almost 100 years later, when author Michael Tisserand was doing research for his book, Kingdom of Zydeco. Tisserand uncovered Ardoin’s 1929 draft registration card, simply signed with an “X.” The cover of Mama, I’ll Be Long Gone contains the lone picture known to exist of Ardoin. He’s dressed in coat and hat and holding his Catholic Confirmation candle and Rosary. The liner notes retell the familiar tale of the brutal beating Ardoin suffered for using a white woman’s handkerchief at a dance. Ardoin never recovered from the beating and was eventually committed to the Pineville asylum.

The CD reinforced the long-held belief that there was no record of Ardoin’s time there or his death. But that changed with attorney Perrin in 1991, who shares a birthday with his son Andy and Ardoin: March 11. “[Professor] Barry Ancelet was at my duck blind one time and we got to talking about that,” says Perrin. “He told me there was a mystery around that [date of death]. We belong to the Krewe of Bacchus and one of the members who rode on our float every year was [Rapides Parish] district attorney [Charles Wagner]. I knew he represented Pineville and I asked him to help us get some information. Every time Barry tried to get through to those people, they’d ignore him. But a district attorney can get documents.”

Wagner was able to obtain the Master Index Card listing Ardoin’s brief hospitalization and death at the facility. Barbara Brossette, the medical records director, wrote in her letter to Wagner that “all records during this time were destroyed.”

Perrin has placed a copy of the card on file at the Acadian Museum in Erath, and believes other details about Ardoin may still be lurking. “This might spark somebody else to come up with something,” says Perrin. “This man has had so much influence on the music and we know so little about him.”

—Herman Fuselier

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ffBeat in Red

OffBeat will be among the honorees at

this year’ “Ladies in Red” gala. The Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans use the event each year to celebrate those who have worked to keep the city’s jazz heritage alive. Musicians Maynard Chatters, Thais Clark, Wendell Eugene and Daniel Farrow will be honored, and for the first time, so will institutions: OffBeat and publisher Jan Ramsey, Preservation Hall, and Snug Harbor.

The event takes place Friday, June 10 at Generations Hall, where the George French Band will perform with the Brass-a-holics. For tickets to the gala and the patrons party, call (504) 581-7032 or go to prcno.org.

—Alex Rawls

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ads TV

If you weren’t one of the lucky few to

score tickets to the Radiators’ three night “Last Round Up Farewell Tour: The Last Watusi,” a sliver of hope remains. All three shows sold out in 20 minutes, but the performances at Tipitina’s June 9-11 will be recorded and available on pay-per-view through iClips.net.

“We wanted to have our final shows in the most home-like venue, and Tipitina’s is our favorite club on earth,” says guitarist Dave Malone.

Unfortunately it has a capacity of 800 people, so many Rads fans from around the world were shut out. “There were people all over the place asking us to make it pay-perview.” Since the plans already called for studio quality sound, it wasn’t too difficult for the band to arrange a multi-camera shoot all three nights.

For Malone, knowing the Radiators final performance is coming has brought a mixture of feelings. “When Dave Malone people tell you over the years how much our music means to them, you think it’s a nice thing to say, but they don’t really mean it that way. But they really do. I’m overcome with really good emotion, one of those cry-because-you’reso-happy kinds of things. But on the other hand it’s like you know you’re going to die next Thursday and you’re waiting for Thursday to come. So how do I feel? Weird.”

To see “The Last Watusi” online pay-per-view, go to iClips. net/watch/the-radiators-last-watusi.—Chloe Curran

Photo: Adrienne battistella

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r. Ardoin, He Dead

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Photographer: KIM WELSH

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azzled by Herman Leonard’s masterful, visionary smoky images, I was compelled to attend the celebration of his life on November 6, 2010. As the Hot 8 Brass Band kicked up, the Sudan Social Aid and Pleasure Club swaggered, and the Pussyfooters pussyfooted, I remembered his words—“Above all, enjoy the music”—and rushed out to join the second line.

—Kim Welsh

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MOD DANCE PARTY

A Dance Out of Time ush aside the heavy plastic flaps acting as a door to Saturn Bar (think entrance to a meat locker) on the right Saturday every month, and you’ll find a gaggle of what looks like Mad Men’s beatniks, old man rhythm in everyone’s shoes. In a monthly 11 p.m. to 5 or 6 a.m. blur, the Saturn Bar explodes into one of the more popular places in the city. So popular, the bouncer starts refusing to check IDs: “Fuck that, man. Suddenly everyone just goes to Saturn Bar.” The night is a veritable firestorm of drunken dancing. “It gets chaotic,” says DJ Matty. “But that’s what they’re there for. It’s a war, and [sometimes] there are casualties of war.”

Welcome to Mod Dance Party, the free monthly dance party full of ’60s nostalgia, from the music played to the medium played on to the floral pattern dresses and fitted jeans that abound.

The ironic part is the 70 or so people mulling about outside the door, sharing cigarettes and drinking Miller High Life, and most of the few hundred more inside didn’t start breathing until the ’80s, the ’70s at best. Few if any were alive when their wardrobes were first in style, yet the nostalgia for a time never seen is palpable as DJ Kristen and DJ Matty—real names: Kristen Zoller, barista/student by day, and Jonathan Uhlman, New Orleans Opera prop master by day—spin actual records in a quest for authenticity.

It’s this love not only of all things vintage but of all things authentic that bring people to Mod Dance Party and keep the DJs spinning.

They refuse to use anything but vinyl records because “there’s something really warm about the way a record sounds,” Zoller says.

They’ve played some scratched records for so long that long-time fans are often surprised when they hear the music played elsewhere without the skips.

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Photos: DJ MATTY AND DJ kristen

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The Mod Dance Party and its followers celebrate the yesteryear they missed.

This quest for authenticity isn’t limited to music. Much of the clothing found at Mod Dance Party and comparable nights such as DJ Soul Sister’s Saturday nights of funk music at Mimi’s in the Marigny is vintage and dates back to the ’60s.

“People these days really admire the style of the ’60s,” Funky Monkey owner Mike Mayfield says. Lili Vintage Boutique’s owner Laura Hourguettes agrees, and thinks quality plays into the look’s appeal as well. “People with their own sense of style as well as people looking for quality [appreciate it],” she says.

The decade, Mayfield and Hourguettes agree, is a more sustainable period than its neighboring decades, and creates the perfect fit for nostalgic dancing shoes. The clothing remains in fashion, and “people embrace the fact that they are different,” Mayfield says. It ties in with the music as well. Zoller says she once visited Funky Monkey and found a dress labeled “for

By Travis Andrews

Mod Dance Party,” leaving her astounded. “I didn’t know I was a fashion subculture,” and she genuinely seems shocked.

Trends come in waves, Mayfield says. He sees ’60s clothing as more stylish and not as ironic as that of the ’70s and ’80s, but this could be because the remnants from decades actually lived easily become kitchy with age. J.R. Fields, co-owner of the vintage store Truck Stop, thinks the appeal has more to do with curiosity for a time never experienced. As a child of the ’90s, he grew up with much older siblings

who were raised in the ’70s, and he was always drawn to a culture he saw through others’ eyes. “There’s always a sense of nostalgia for what you missed [out] on,” Fields says.

The Mod Dance Party has been around long enough to inspire some nostalgia of its own. It began at Circle Bar 10 years ago, but Zoller says soon enough, “we had outgrown the place.” The frequency and the night remain consistent, but its weekend is not. Zoller and Uhlman tend to decide at the last minute which Saturday to play each month, then post it via Facebook and let word-of-mouth advertising do the rest. And it works, probably because the two truly love what they do. “I’m less of a collector and more of a user,” Zoller says. “My records are bought to be played for people.” Uhlman quickly agrees.

Inside the Saturn Bar, the night bleeds late as a group of people who grew up with the Internet bask in sweat and memories of a time they never knew, twisting the night away.

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NEW ATLANTIS

Breaking the Silence The 2007 march against violence started two New Orleans musicians in new directions.

This month, Consulting Editor John Swenson’s new book New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans examines the role musicians played in the city’s recovery. In this excerpt, he writes about the violence of 2006 and how it gave two musicians new artistic purpose.

holidays because it was right after New Year’s Day. Somebody said, ‘Did you hear about that terrible shooting on Rampart Street?’ which unfortunately was not an unusual enough thing for me to jump up right away. Then I heard somebody else say, ‘It’s so sad. She had a baby,’ and then somebody said the word ‘Helen,’ and I thought, ‘There aren’t too many Helens.’ It’s an old-school name. I had to ask, ‘Who’s the father?’ and the father’s named Paul. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was like your whole world has crumbled.”

Instead of falling apart with grief, Gillet was seized with a passion to do something about these tragedies. “I just became somebody else,” she said:

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len David Andrews says he was one of the last people to see his friend Dinneral Shavers alive. “I talked to him five minutes before he was killed,” said Andrews. “He said, ‘I’m working on my house over in the Musicians’ Village. When are you coming to help me?’ I told him I’d be there Saturday. I got a gig that day, and I’ma come a little early. He pulled off, drove three blocks, and the next thing I saw was his car running into a pole.”

“Dinneral was my first drummer in my own band,” Andrews said.

“When Dinneral was killed, it was so bad because it was just getting to the point where it seemed like musicians was being slaughtered.

Dinneral wasn’t a drug addict. He wasn’t a bad person. He had never been to jail. He was a beautiful, honest, young black male trying to make things happen.”

Andrews had been part of a music-education program at Sound Café, and the coffeehouse owner, Baty Landis, asked Andrews to participate in a march on City Hall to protest Shavers’ killing and the culture of street violence that caused it. However, even as a formal protest of the murderous atmosphere that resulted in Shavers’ death was coalescing, the killings continued.

On January 4, 2007, one week later, another regular Sound Café patron, filmmaker Helen Hill, was killed. Hill was in the backyard of her home on North Rampart Street at 5:30 a.m. feeding her pet pig, Rosie, when she

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was surprised by an intruder, who shot her in the neck. Hill’s murder was one of six in a 24-hour period.

Helen Gillet was a friend of both Shavers and Hill. She had taken care of Hill’s pig when her family was out of town and had gone to numerous social events at her house. “I definitely knew her from my first year in New Orleans,” said Gillet: “At one point I lived pretty close to where she lived. I was in charge of babysitting Rosie, their pig, when they were out of town.

By John Swenson

I remember Helen putting me through the ropes of how to feed her. I had a fear of pigs, so I was sort of afraid of the whole ordeal, but Helen was so great, her personality is really upbeat—very creative and reassuring at the same time. She was one of the women who really inspired me to do a lot artistic-wise.”

Gillet will never forget the day she found out about Hill’s death: “I was at the Sound Café, [and] my brother was in town for the

“I felt a lot of anger. I also felt a sense of urgency because so much had to be taken care of after the storm. You could become obsessed about copper plumbing; you could expend all your energy on one aspect of what the city needed and go there for years.

For me it was safety. They say you don’t kick into high gear until somebody you know is affected.

I would be a hypocrite to say that that wasn’t true.”

Gillet joined Baty Landis and writer Ken Foster to form a group called Silence Is Violence, based out of the Sound Café, and organized a march on City Hall. “A lot of us got together,” Gillet recalled: “Baty is an amazing part of this. She organized this march, and I MC’ed the event. As the performer of the bunch I was able to envision what the flow of the speakers at city hall was gonna go like. I got to know Glen David Andrews and the Hot 8 a lot more through that event. www.OFFBEAT.com

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People were coming out onto the street out of the workplace, and you had the sense that the whole city was involved.

The closest thing I’d ever done to political involvement was before I moved here. I worked with the Wisconsin Alliance for Arts Education, lobbying and stuff like that. Coming from playing music full-time and being involved in politics for three months, it was super stressful for me. We shared all the duties, but I took a fair amount of TV and radio interviews.”

The Sound Café’s protest mushroomed into a mass march on City Hall on January 11, 2007, where 5,000 people chanted demands for the ouster of Mayor Nagin and the district attorney, Eddie Jordan. The Hot 8 Brass Band led the march under a banner that read “March for Survival, Walk with Us.” Glen David Andrews marched alongside with a determined gait.

Others held placards emblazoned with the slogan of the march: “Silence Is Violence.” Some held posters lamenting the deaths of Shavers and Hill. One sign had a picture of a child with the slogan: “Born in New Orleans . . .

Murdered in N.O.” “That march, it was just unbelievable working with and meeting all these beautiful people,” said Gillet: “It really helped me to meet all these active and amazing minds that were way more experienced in politics. I was just maybe a little bit of a facilitator and MC and somebody to take in all this energy. People were looking toward me all of a sudden, and I had to keep reminding myself that you don’t have all the answers.

We had three starting points, one from Mid-City, one from Central City, and then the Ninth Ward contingent. We all came from different spots, and by the time we got to City Hall it was www.OFFBEAT.com

clear that there were thousands and thousands of people that came out. People were coming out onto the street out of the workplace, and you had the sense that the whole city was involved.

The most remarkable thing about the crowd was that it included people of all colors.

In a city with a long history of racial polarization, the crowd composition recalled the makeup of the interracial protest marches at the height of the 1960s’ civil rights movement.”

Gillet’s crucial moment arrived when the crowd gathered in front of the City Hall steps and spilled across the street into the park. The podium was only about a foot off the ground, and Gillet was surrounded by people pushing and yelling at her, demanding to address the crowd. Mayor Nagin was only a few feet away from Gillet, and though his aides demanded a forum, he was never allowed to speak. “I had Mayor Nagin’s people poking me to get up on that podium,” Gillet recalled.

“I had to politely keep saying no to all these people who wanted to speak because we had a roster of speakers, and it was my job to make sure they got to speak.”

Clad in a black sweater with a giant red paper heart pinned to her chest, Gillet determinedly kept the speakers to a predetermined program of appearances, summoning up a strength she didn’t realize she possessed before that moment. “I wore a heart,” she explained. “Helen liked to do these little animations, and she would cut out hearts, little hearts, so I cut out a red heart, and I pinned it on my chest to remind me of my humanity. I don’t know if this is a normal thing. When you’re dealing with politicians, you tend to think, ‘Oh, my god, am I

still human?’ At this point I was just so freaked.”

Speaker after speaker railed against the violence that was tearing New Orleans apart and the lack of effective response from city officials. “We have come to declare that a city that could not be drowned in the waters of a storm will not be drowned in the blood of its citizens,” bellowed the Rev. John Raphael, Jr., reflecting the sentiment of the crowd but also avoiding the overriding issue that those citizens were killing each other.

It took a musician to speak the naked truth. “Young people, shame on you,” Glen David Andrews charged, aiming his anger at the killers and the endless cycle of violence they created.

“You know better!” Andrews’ speech was an act of courage and leadership, but most of all it was a sign that the violence in his city had spurred him to rethink his own choices in life. Before the storm he had been thick with the bad-boy crowd and had written “Knock with Me, Rock with Me,” which coined the popular drug deal chant “Gimme a dime …

I only got 8.” He had been an integral part of the ongoing crosspollination of the city’s brass-band and second-line rhythms with hiphop MCs, who borrowed freely from those genres. Nonetheless, in the wake of the flood, Glen David Andrews struggled to recast those musical values in a more positive way, his personal tribute to what he understood was a precious gift from his ancestors.

Andrews did not spare the other targets of his ire. He spoke eloquently about his fear of a police force whose members routinely harassed black musicians. He expressed particular anger at the mayor. “Mayor Nagin,” he shouted, close

enough to Nagin for him to take it personally, “Get on your job!”

When I interviewed her years later, Gillet looked back on the day of the rally with wonder and realizes that those events at the beginning of 2007 became a turning point in her life and her direction as a musician. It was the kind of transformation that a lot of people in New Orleans were undergoing at the same time.

“I was on this adrenalin rush,” she said: “I hadn’t cried since I heard the news about Helen. It had been a week. We pulled all of this together in a week. Baty and Ken are geniuses, but they knew I was much better at crowd management, and they were nervous about that part of it. I don’t think it was until after the speaking was done and we had our moment of silence that I was able to relax.

I was in a daze, walking by myself back to my car, and my friend Ben Schenck came and gave me a hug, and I remember just losing it at that point. I cried and cried and cried in his arms. I let it all out. I was finally able to begin my own individual mourning process, and it was three months later when I finally realized I had to let go of this. I had to go back to concentrating on my music. I wasn’t sleeping very much.

I became this impossibly obsessed person. I definitely wasn’t taking care of myself. I gave it my all while I was in there, but I realized I have to be a musician, and I have to focus in on that. I was just talking to a couple of improvisers about this, and I think it did influence my music quite a bit, this whole period.”

New Atlantis was published

by Oxford University Press. This excerpt has been edited with the permission of the author.

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NICHOLAS PAYTON

His Song Nicholas Payton is going to sing, no matter what his label says.

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Photo: skip bolen

“I

want to embark on another journey that will include the music of my own generation,” Nicholas Payton said over coffee at Café Luna on Magazine Street in 2009. “I want my music to reflect all the records I listen to, not just the jazz records.

When I went to the stereo as a kid, I put on records by Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire and Run-DMC. That’s who I am, and I want my music to reflect who I am.”

The trumpet star was wearing a black-and-gold Reggie Bush football jersey but allowed his glasses to slide down his nose towards his pencil mustache as if he were a soft-spoken scholar at Tulane. He never spoke in strident tones about his quest to take his music in a new direction; he described it calmly, as if it were an inevitable natural process. At the time, controversy was swirling around his then-new sound, and the storm would only grow fiercer in the years to come.

Sonic Trance (2003) and Into the Blue (2008) had been attacked in some quarters for their funk grooves and electric keyboards. His next album, Bitches, emphasized dance grooves and amplification even more, and it featured more of Payton’s vocals than his trumpetplaying. It was slated to be released

by Concord in 2010, but the label decided not to put it out.

“The A&R guy I was working with at Concord thought it was brilliant,” Payton claims today. “He said it was a flagship project for the label’s move away from the traditional idea of jazz because this music wasn’t just R&B or just jazz. Several release dates were set and pushed back. Then they decided they weren’t going to release it at all. No formal reason was ever given.

“For now it’s sitting on the shelf.

It’s been leaked on the Internet,

though, and has taken on a life of its own. I think it’s unfortunate that they decided to deep-six it because people really love it. It has been suggested that I could buy it back and put it out myself, but just on principle, I refuse to pay a penny for it when their A&R guy sanctioned it every step of the way.”

Payton never raises his voice, but an edginess creeps in that hints at how angry he really is.

He’s determined to keep pushing forward. In March, he debuted his new 21-musician ensemble, the Nicholas Payton Television Studio Orchestra, in six shows for Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. It’s an unusual big band because Payton’s arrangements forego the usual wallof-sound and steamroller swing in favor of more transparent music emphasizing a large ensemble’s wide spectrum of colors.

“I want to use the big band’s range and flexibility,” he says, “but I also want to retain a small group’s

By Geoffrey Himes

sense of spontaneity and solos. I don’t want the drummer to have to respond to every trumpet accent. I want it to sound like a lot of small combos in the same place that you can switch back and forth between.

I try to give each person a melody that can stand on its own.”

Five members of the NPTSO (Payton, vocalist Johnaye Kendrick, keyboardist Lawrence Fields, bassist Robert Hurst and percussionist Rolando Guerro) joined drummer Karriem Riggins when they performed at Jazz Fest as the new Nicholas Payton SeXXXtet, and both bands are performing tunes from Payton’s controversial recent albums.

Payton and Kendrick not only sing the vocals from the unreleased album but also the original lyrics for several tunes that were released as instrumentals on Into the Blue.

“Vocals are something I had been working towards for years,” Payton says. “I started writing tunes with lyrics in the late ‘90s

when I was working with some New Orleans cats in my band, Time Machine. It was me, Chris Severn on bass, Adonis Rose on drums, Steve Masakowski on guitar, Peter Martin on keys, Kenyatta Simon on percussion, and Philip Manuel on vocals. None of those songs has ever been released, though one of them, ‘Freesia,’ was included on Bitches.

“Everyone acts as if songs are so different from instrumental tracks, but the only real difference is that there are words.”

Payton looks a bit like Louis Armstrong and can sound a whole lot like him when he chooses.

Though they were born 72 years apart—Armstrong in 1901 and Payton in 1973—the two trumpeters are both New Orleans natives rooted in the city’s earliest jazz traditions. So it was inevitable that Payton would one day record an Armstrong tribute album. www.OFFBEAT.com

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I’d never gotten criticized like that before. It was almost personal, as if I’d done something to them.

When that project, Dear Louis, was released in 2001, it was such a critical and commercial success that Payton received a lot of advice, even pressure, to do more in the same vein. Instead he made Sonic Trance, a jazz album full of synths, samplers and other electronic instruments.

“Everybody said, ‘Oh, he’s selling out, doing this electronic music,’” Payton said in 2009. “But the truth is I could have made significantly more money with another Dear Louis.

But after I completed that album, I knew I didn’t want to play from the perspective of my predecessors anymore. I felt I had done that. Sonic Trance was me breaking away from any idea of what people thought I should do—even what I thought I should do. When Kevin (Hays) started doubling on Fender Rhodes, we had the sound I wanted.”

The electric piano proved a key element, for its chiming, reverberating notes with their long decay were a key signature of ‘70s black music, the decade of Payton’s childhood, not just in jazz-rock fusion but also in R&B. “I think the Fender Rhodes sounds beautiful,” he says firmly. “It’s a very warm instrument and it’s electric. I like electricity. Electricity was essential to a lot of records I loved in the ‘70s: Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay, Milt Jackson’s Sunflower, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.

That was the keyboard of the day.”

Sonic Trance proved divisive.

While some reviews admired its echoes of the electric Davis, others responded as if Payton were committing treason to the Young Lions jazz orthodoxy of the ‘90s.

Even those who admired the disc’s mesmerizing vibe were disappointed by its lack of memorable themes and emotional disclosure. The sales were respectable, but Payton lost his label when Warner Bros. shut down its jazz division.

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“People either loved it or hated it,” Payton acknowledged. “There wasn’t much middle ground. I’d never gotten criticized like that before. It was almost personal, as if I’d done something to them.

It was difficult because I’d never had my work received that way.

Of course, some people didn’t like the earlier records because they thought they were too traditional, and then when I went the other way….” His voice trailed off. “I learned that you can’t please all the people all the time. You have to do what you want to do.”

For his next album, Into the Blue, Payton employed a similar process, leaning once again on electric keyboards, extra percussion and improvisations over vamps and grooves. But this time the vamps featured more catchy tunes.

A key track was “The Crimson Touch,” an R&B-flavored number that brimmed with shimmery seduction. Payton had written lyrics for the piece, and even though he didn’t use them on the album’s instrumental version, he clearly had the words in mind when he picked up his horn. His trumpet seemed to be singing them in punctuated phrases as if promising pleasure to a lover. When Payton played 2009’s Jazz Fest, vocalist Kendrick took the Jazz Tent stage with a sheer black wrap covering a green mini-dress and sang the lyrics he wrote for “The Crimson Touch,” releasing her rounded, ripened vowels as if she were a human flugelhorn.

A few days later at Snug Harbor, Payton himself sang. Though he is not nearly the virtuoso on tenor voice that he is on trumpet—his vocal timbre is often less full and his intonation less precise—he is clearly committed to incorporating vocals into his music. The human voice, after all, is the most emotional of all instruments and was crucial to the

music Payton grew up with. And, it’s a necessary vehicle for his growing interest in lyrics.

“Writing poetry is something that appeals to me,” he said. “The more I write poetry, the more I feel compelled to sing it. I understand the sensibility of the piece, so I feel compelled to express myself in that way. Why not? I’ve been singing longer than I’ve been playing trumpet. I can express myself through a lot of instruments: voice, keys, drums and the bass. Who knows? I might get interested in painting or acting in the future. I stay open to creativity however it manifests itself.”

When Payton prepared his compositions for Into the Blue, he recorded a demo of each tune, playing all the instruments himself—like Stevie Wonder or Prince. He was so pleased with the results that he used those actual demos as the basis for Bitches.

He plays every instrument on the album including the Fender Rhodes, and sings every vocal except for six guest vocals, most notably one by Cassandra Wilson on “You Take Me Places I’ve Never Been Before” and by Esperanza Spalding on “Freesia.”

“I like the writing on his records so much,” Spalding said in 2009, “because it’s new music.

It’s through-composed. Even the bass line, which plays this melodic counterpoint to the trumpet melody, is notated from beginning to end. The motifs are all singable, but they don’t repeat the way they would in a pop song. Meanwhile the drums are playing a shuffle.

“When you hear all those elements put together, it’s not like anything you’ve ever heard. It’s wild. Nicholas has got great ears with a great tone. What more can you ask for from any instrument?

His tone is so perfect that he can

go anywhere and turn on a dime.

And the same freedom he brings to playing his horn is the way he wants us to play.”

His father, the late Walter Payton, gave his son a pocket trumpet at age four and turned him over to a trumpet teacher, Xavier University’s Diane Lyle, at age eight. But it wasn’t until age 11, when James Andrews invited Nicholas to join the All-Star Brass Band, one of the ensembles popping up like mushrooms all over the city in response to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, that the youngster got excited about music.

“I was used to the Young Tuxedo Brass Band playing in the traditional style,” the son remembers. “When I heard the Dirty Dozen I went, ‘Wow. This stuff can be really hot.’ It sounded like what I was hearing on the radio. Their horn lines were funky like Earth, Wind & Fire but combined with that New Orleans thing. But unlike a lot of bands that imitated them, they also had that bebop and free jazz.”

That combination of traditional jazz, new wave brass bands, funk and modern jazz has always propelled Payton, and even as he ventured into the fusion experiments of Sonic Trance, Into the Blue and Bitches, he never abandoned his traditional New Orleans roots.

“Even if they use electronic instruments, they’ve got that spirit,” his father insisted in 2009. “The new music has a place too, because the old music left a gap for it to walk into. The old music created a desire for music; it created people whose ears are opened and now say, ‘Okay, let’s see what else is out there.’ New Orleans can afford to have both kinds of music. It’s that kind of city. It looks forward and looks backward at the same time. We look both ways and make up our own mind.” O www.OFFBEAT.com

AFO

All for Fifty A half-century later, AFO is still ahead of its time.

Harold Battiste www.OFFBEAT.com

By David Kunian

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n 2011, African-Americanowned record labels are not news. Motown is the bestknown example, and New Orleans has had No Limit and Cash Money Records. In 1961, the notion of African-Americans owning a record label was a radical one, but it was Harold Battiste’s vision. AFO (All For One) Records was not only Blackowned but a collective—more unusual still—and it celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

In person today, Battiste’s gentle temperament makes him seem like an unlikely radical. Health concerns have slowed him some, but his autobiography Unfinished Blues and interviews he has given throughout his career show him to be a humble man, self-effacing about his accomplishments. Reflecting on 50 years of AFO, he says, “I’m impressed now that it has existed for 50 years. I think that that is success for what we started out as, to last as long as we have in this environment.

To look at it in retrospect, there were no black companies at all. The record companies that were around, like Minit and Instant, about four or five back then, they’re not here now.”

Battiste took the first step toward the creation of AFO in 1960 on a train from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

He’d been working in both cities as an A&R man for Art Rupe’s Specialty Records, but had become frustrated with the music business. As he says in Unfinished Blues, “I had begun to formulate the concept of a musicians’ cooperative to start a record company.

When the train stopped in El Paso, Texas, who should board but Earl King? He would become the first person to hear my idea.”

The idea had been germinating for several years. Battiste had produced such sessions as Art Neville’s “ChaDooky Doo,” Jerry Byrne’s “Lights Out,” and Larry Williams “Bad Boy” for Specialty. He had been a producer

AFO

The idea of a Black-owned record label was so new that the city licensing agencies kept thinking they were starting a retail record store. and talent scout talent for $150/ week and a quarter percent royalty on everything that was produced.

He had also become a member of the Nation of Islam and was aware of how little money the Black musicians who played on records made, even when such records sold huge quantities. Battiste writes in Unfinished Blues, “I’d been listening to speeches from the eligible Elijah Muhammad, messages that often spoke to the need for our people to create wealth through ownership. It seemed that every ethnic group was identified with a product or service that they owned and controlled, and it seemed that the product generally attributed to us was music: jazz, blues, R&B, gospel.”

Once back in New Orleans, Batiste found several like-minded musicians to round out the collective. He approached trumpeter Melvin Lastie, who was the union rep for Local 496. They found drummer John Boudreaux, bassist Peter “Chuck” Badie, guitarist Roy Montrell, pianist Allen Toussaint, and tenor saxophonist Alvin “Red” Tyler, who had been a part of the J&M Studio band that had played on the hits of Little Richard, Fats Domino, Shirley and Lee, and many more.

Due to contractual obligations, Toussaint had to bow out, but the rest of the musicians became AFO Records Inc. in May 1961. The idea of a Black-owned record label was so new that the city licensing agencies kept thinking they were starting a retail record store.

After incorporating, things started to fall into place for AFO. Juggy Murray, owner of Sue Records in New York, had called up Battiste looking for an A&R man in New Orleans. When Murray found out what AFO was, he caught a plane to New Orleans and agreed to finance the production and distribution of AFO’s records nationally. Battiste was surprised to

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find out Murray was a black man when he met him, but that fit well into his overall philosophy.

Lastie and Battiste auditioned artists. Jessie Hill, Lastie’s nephew, brought a 19-year-old singer named Barbara George and a guitar player named Prince La La to audition.

Prince La La, a.k.a. Lawrence Nelson, was the younger brother of Walter “Papoose” Nelson, a well-known

things started to unravel. George wanted to buy out her contract with AFO because she and Juggy Murray had started a relationship.

Murray had bought her a Cadillac and a mink coat, “using her royalty money to do it,” said Battiste in an interview with Charles Gillet. Battiste and Lastie tried to convince her to stay with them, but to no avail.

George left, and her first hit became

guitarist who had played with Professor Longhair and Fats Domino.

George couldn’t get the hang of the rhythm of Nelson’s “She Put the Hurt on Me,” so they let Nelson record that and combined lyrics she had written to the chords of the gospel tune “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” and came up with “I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More).”

“I Know” was a monster hit. It reached number one on the R&B charts and number three on the pop charts. Melvin Lastie’s cornet solo, written out by Battiste, became as famous as the song, and started a new trend of trumpet or cornet solos. Chuck Badie says, “That solo that Harold wrote for Melvin? I was told that Miles Davis heard it and said, ‘Who the fuck is that?’”

When Barbara George traveled to New York to play at the Apollo,

her last. Murray was never able to get anything else going with her.

In his autobiography, Battiste writes, “I had entrusted my dream to a man who had a Black face on face value alone. That experience in no way dimmed my vision of my people nor the principles upon which my hopes were founded. It did, however, teach me the fallacy in judging a book by its cover.” AFO persevered and got back to making music. The people and songs that they recorded all had great appeal, but none of the songs had the legs nor distribution to become anything more than local hits. Such tracks as the AFO Executives’ “Olde Wyne,” Willie Tee’s “Always Accused,” Tami Lynn’s “Mojo Hannah,” and Johnny Adams’ “A Losing Battle” have become New Orleans classics, but were little heard beyond Louisiana.

AFO also recorded several jazz sessions that were some of the first non-traditional jazz recordings in New Orleans and some of the only New Orleans non-traditional jazz recordings from the 1960s. These include the American Jazz Quintet’s In the Beginning, the AFO Executives with Tami Lynn’s Compendium, and Ellis Marsalis Quartet’s Monkey Puzzle. All of these recordings have a New Orleans flavor, but they also are of the time in the same way that records released by more famous jazz labels such as Blue Note, Impulse, and Prestige were. Of these, only Monkey Puzzle and Compendium were released then. Battiste recalls, “I wanted to record some of the cats who were playing jazz, who would never be widely known and might lose that thing they had .... I didn’t care if those records sold, but they should be recorded for posterity.”

AFO continued in New Orleans until the summer of 1963. Battiste thought that moving to a major metropolis would help the company, so he and the other AFO members returned to Los Angeles in hope of finding success as a label and a band.

Once there, Battiste renewed his association with Sam Cooke. Battiste had worked with Cooke several years before, providing additional lyrics and the arrangement for Cooke’s first crossover hit, “You Send Me.” Cooke helped fund the creation of a small rehearsal studio called Soul Station No. 1 where artists on Cooke’s SAR label could prepare for sessions and AFO could audition talent. However, Cooke’s untimely death in 1964 put the brakes on Soul Station No. 1. It was also difficult for the musicians to find work due to the Los Angeles Musicians Union restrictions that mandated that new members could not accept steady gigs during the first six months that they joined the union. Chuck Badie remembers, “I got taken off a bandstand. I was playing with Erskine www.OFFBEAT.com

Hawkins and a short, white fellow walked in. He said, ‘Who’s the bass player? He sounds good, but he’s got to come down from there.’ I put the cover on my bass and came down.

The band couldn’t hang around for the six months to end.”

Badie, Lastie, Lynn, and Tyler left soon after, but Battiste stayed in Los Angeles and started working with Sonny and Cher. He arranged their hit “I Got You Babe,” and that led to other arranging, producing and movie scoring.

Battiste went on to conceptualize Dr. John with Mac Rebennack and produce his first two albums, as well as being Sonny and Cher’s music director. Lastie worked with Aretha Franklin and Willie Bobo in New York. Badie went on the road with various jazz bands, including Lionel Hampton. Tyler became a liquor salesman by day and tenor player by night. Drummer John Boudreaux stayed in Los Angeles doing sessions and touring with Dr. John. Lynn did sessions for Dr. John and the Rolling Stones

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and had a hit in Britain with “I’m Gonna Run Away.”

With all that activity, AFO Records took an extended hiatus. In the next decades, Battiste put out records in the AFO vein, including a duo record with Melvin Lastie and the jazz recordings of the American Jazz Quintet, Ellis Marsalis Quintet, and the AFO Executives with Tami Lynn in 1976. Other gigs and sessions followed, including work with the Fifth Dimension, concerts with New Orleans expatriate musicians in Los Angeles’ Club Lingerie in 1984, and occasional trips back to New Orleans.

When UNO decided to start a jazz studies program in 1989 with Ellis Marsalis at the head, Battiste came back to New Orleans permanently.

AFO never left his thoughts, and in 1991, he found the time ripe for restarting it. As he says in his autobiography, “I believed now more than ever a record company with a commitment to and concern for music and musicians was needed in New Orleans.” With the help

of writer and producer Kalamu Ya Salaam, Battiste reissued Monkey Puzzle and leased much of the AFO catalog to Ace Records in the United Kingdom, who put them out as Gumbo Stew, More Gumbo Stew, and Still Spicy Gumbo Stew.

Then he released new recordings of Germaine Bazzle, Philip Manuel, and David Morgan. In an effort to record younger New Orleans jazz musicians and some of the great compositions of Alvin Battiste, Ellis Marsalis, James Black, and others, he released two CDs of “Harold Battiste presents the Next Generation,” which have featured such great musicians as John Ellis, Nicholas Payton, Brice Winston, Derek Douget and Jesse McBride.

AFO Records has a substantial legacy. “I Know” is still played and sung across the planet, and several of the other AFO R&B singles have become favorites of Northern Soul and Deep Soul fans. Jazz compositions such as “Nevermore,” and “Nigeria,” James Black’s tunes “Magnolia Triangle,” “Monkey Puzzle,” “Dee Wee,” and Ellis

AFO

Marsalis’ “Swinging at the Haven” and “12’s It” have become New Orleans’ jazz standards.

AFO’s latest release is a compilation of Batiste’s performances over the years called The Sound of Harold’s Horn. It’s a sound we hear little these days because health issues limit Battiste’s playing. It presents his musical voice, just as Unfinished Blues tells the story of a sensitive, hard-working musician who is responsible for several careers that were established at expense of his own.

“I read a proof of the book and said, ‘Damn, I didn’t realize that I had done all this stuff,’ Battiste says.”But I didn’t go looking for it. It all found me.”

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WASHBOARD CHAZ

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Man f a Th usand Bands

ashboard Chaz is a lucky guy. difficult to play with, like Helen Are you in a group with Not everybody gets a festival Gillet’s Other Instruments. Helen’s named after them, but Chaz a genius the way she puts things Washboard Chaz? has become the iconic figurehead of one of together.” the most interesting musical events to develop McMurray and his wife If not, just wait. in New Orleans since the 2005 flood, the Kourtney Keller live at the Truck He plays well with others.

Bywater celebration called Chaz Fest. For a Farm, a group of houses just past musician whose only equipment is a trickedthe tracks on the river side of out washboard and the finger thimbles he St. Claude Avenue. The houses

By John Swenson Photography by Elsa Hahne plays it with, that’s quite an accomplishment. have an enormous common Or maybe I should call him the festival’s ironic garden which was once a small figurehead. Chaz Fest was named after him even before it existed, the farmyard. When they were considering a site for their alternative byproduct of the endless punning that takes place between Chaz and festival, it suddenly dawned on McMurray that they could use their his bandmates in the Tin Men, Alex McMurray and Matt Perrine. own backyard.

“The name was part of the Tin Men shtick,” McMurray explains.

“We were sitting around in the back garden here trying to figure “The word ‘Chaz Fest’ had been floating around forever with the Tin out where we were going to hold Chaz Fest,” says McMurray. “We Men. When we used to play at the Matador, part of our shtick was to thought of doing it outside the Fair Grounds and then we thought beg for tips by telling the audience ‘You’ve all heard of Jazz Fest, but ‘Fuck, let’s do it here’.” we have Chaz Fest, and if you put five dollars in the bucket you can get The setting has proven to be idyllic. Over the years, Keller has one of Chaz’s thimbles. Put in a 20 dollar bill and win a dream date with developed the site from outright ruins into an English Romantic Chaz.’ So we had Chaz Fest as a term before we had the fest.” garden, a Tolkien landscape that should definitely be considered for Chaz Leary is well aware of the irony, which extends to the fact that a spread in some alternative version of Southern Living. A walkway his main duty at the festival is to play at least one song with every act down the side of the first house in the complex leads into an area of on the bill. makeshift food and crafts booths. This year, Eve Abrams, who also “The only reason the festival is named after me is that my name rhymes lives at the Truck Farm with her husband, accordionist/songwriter Greg with ‘jazz’ and we were trying to offer an alternative to Jazz Fest,” Chaz “Schatzy” Schatz, ran a booth selling lemonade, crawfish bread and explains. “It could have just as easily been called ‘Alex Fest.’ We were back copies of her new book about Preservation Hall. after the flood and wanted to have a festival for some of the bands that Past the food stalls further into the garden was an open space filled weren’t invited to play Jazz Fest in 2006. It was born out of frustration with festgoers who brought their own portable furniture and set it up and it’s mushroomed into what it was now. I never thought it would casually in front of the main stage. A clump of enormous palm trees become a destination festival in between Jazz Fest weekends. provided shade at the back of this area, while spruce and cypress trees offered deep shade along the corners. Facing the main stage were two large booths: drinks from the nearby Saturn Bar and barbecue t was my idea to try to play with everyone from the very from The Joint down on Poland Avenue. Photographer Zack Smith beginning. I had already played with the brass bands, had a makeshift outdoor studio to the left of the main stage and took and it was easy to play with the rock bands. One of my photographs of anyone walking past who wanted to pose for a shot. favorites was playing with Supagroup. You just have to play loud and In the furthest reaches of the garden were labyrinthine paths where aggressive and rock on out. The more nuanced bands are the most

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“Who needs a bass,” Gillet laughs impishly, “when you’ve got a cello?”

Someone in the crowd adds: “Who needs drums when you have Chaz?” festgoers could wander around listening to the music while completely disengaged from the crowd.

The second stage is nestled into a corner of the yard obscured by trees and bushes. The small stage juts out from a crumbling threesided barn structure with a makeshift blue tarp for a roof, a Katrina relic made to seem even more dreamlike by the strings of fairy lights draped across the roof beams. It’s a great little secret garden for the audience, shaded by trees, with an audience of adults and children looking like so many hobbits as they sit barefoot on the grass in front of the stage and peer out from behind clumps of bushes and a screen of trees. Next to the stage is a tiny pink Barbie piano that actually works, allowing children to accompany the band as they see fit.

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t’s mid-afternoon at Chaz Fest 2011 and Helen Gillet’s Other Instruments are about to play. Earlier in the day, Chaz performed with the New Dopey Singers, War Amps, Mas Mamones, Sarah Quintana, and Rory Danger and the Danger Dangers.

With Gillet’s cello and James Westfall’s vibraphones taking up much of the tiny stage, there’s only room for Carl LeBlanc and his banjo, so Chaz slumps down offstage against the wooden wall, seated on an amplifier. He’s dressed even more casually than usual, in a frayed green WWOZ baseball cap, a grey Treme T-shirt, black jeans and sneakers.

Percussionist Michael Skinkus places a wooden box opposite Chaz which will double as an instrument and a seat.

“We are the Other Instruments,” Gillet announces. “Every year OffBeat magazine, our local music publication, has an awards show.

Different instruments—trumpet, guitar, bass, drums—have their own categories, and then there’s a category for all the instruments that don’t get their own category. They are all lumped into the Other Instruments category. Last year I was nominated for cello along with people who were nominated for playing the banjo, theremin, and a washboard. Guess who won?”

Gillet exchanges a broad smile with Chaz, whose “Aw shucks” look cannot conceal his delight at winning the award.

“We’ve never played together,” she says, gesturing with her bow.

“But when you’re all in the same category, it’s no problem.”

Gillet begins playing a Belgian waltz, singing in French, and Chaz weaves a beautifully articulated rhythmic accompaniment with Skinkus while banjo, cello and vibes combine to play the dreamlike theme.

As the afternoon sun casts long fingers of light onto the players, the moment is totally hypnotic, sheer pastoral magic, casting a spell over the audience that holds everyone, especially the kids, in rapt, spellbound attention. The music is a combination of free jazz and rustic folk song, clearly improvised on the spot. Gillet proceeds to loop an entire chorus of vocals behind her. Chaz gathers it all together with a few judicious swipes and thimble gestures across his washboard.

When the band finishes, the garden erupts with squeals of delight and applause.

“Who needs a bass,” Gillet laughs impishly, “when you’ve got a cello?”

Someone in the crowd adds: “Who needs drums when you have Chaz?”

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ho needs drums?” sums up the genius of Washboard Chaz. If you listen carefully, Chaz does indeed play washboard like a full drum kit. His wood-framed washboard is outfitted with a wood block and a hotel call bell. He ratchets his thimbles over the ridges of the corrugated metal as if it were a snare drum, and uses the block, bell and wooden frame for rhythmic accents. Chaz plays blues, jazz, swing, country and whatever else you might care to hear on his instrument. He prides himself with being able to play with anyone.

“Some people play just one style, but I like to play everything,” he says.

Leary grew up in New York, where he developed his fascinating approach to washboard playing by listening to jazz records.

“I’m basically a bop player. I listened to all the great drummers,” he says, “Roy Haynes, Kenny Clarke, I would play along with all of them.

You know the record Jazz at Massey Hall? The drum solo Max Roach does on ‘Salt Peanuts’? I used to be able to play that note for note. I think that’s how a lot of people start out; they’re interested in something and they play along to the record. I moved to Colorado in ’75, played country mostly. I didn’t get a chance to play much bebop out there, although I did have a bebop band called Rudy and the Remarkables.

Leary immediately put his talent for fitting into any music scenario to the test upon his arrival in New Orleans on December 3, 2000.

“I played here before and had lots of friends; they showed me around and got me set up,” Chaz says. “But the main thing I did when I got here was play with Tuba Fats in Jackson Square. I was on the square for about a year and a half. That’s how I got to know all of the brass band cats. The guys in the Jazz Vipers played out there, too.

So I got into that brass band/trad jazz thing there. It was good work.

I’d get down there about eleven o’clock, play to six, you’d make about 100 dollars a day especially before nine-one-one. Then I’d play gigs at night, sit in with various bands. I still go down and say hi to the fellas.

It’s been great watching some of them grow over the years into the bad asses they are today. I always say I’m glad Trombone Shorty didn’t pick up the washboard or I’d be out of work.”

When he was through at Jackson Square, Chaz would go all over town listening to other players and asking to sit in. “I used to go up to see John Rankin at the Columns Hotel, then I’d go see Royal Fingerbowl at the Matador. I got to sit in and play some with the Nightcrawlers.”

Royal Fingerbowl frontman Alex McMurray took a liking to Chaz.

“In the waning days of the Fingerbowl, Chaz started coming around,” McMurray recalls. “He was just trying to sit in with as many people as he could. We thought he was kind of a weird guy for a second. But he slipped right in there, and he sounded great right off the bat. I left the Fingerbowl in November of 2001. I’d been playing at the Circle Bar solo, Matt would come down and sit in with me, and because Chaz was new to town he’d come and sit in. We all got along so we formed a band and decided to call ourselves the Tin Men because we all had metal in our instruments.”

Meanwhile, Chaz formed his own group, the Washboard Chaz Blues Trio.

“I started that band in 2001,” says Leary. “We started getting a weekly gig at the Spotted Cat in 2002, and we’ve been working there www.OFFBEAT.com

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I’d go to see him all the time, and I always picked up stuff from them cats.”

As much as Leary learned from some, he influenced others.

“When I got here, there was Washboard Annie (Lissa Driscoll). She’d been around forever,” says Leary, “but aside from that, everybody was playing the frattoir. Now there’s 9 or 10 washboard players and some of them are pretty good. There’s no right or wrong way to play it. I play it pretty aggressively. I never got involved in endorsements, but about a year ago I got a call from a company and they asked, ‘What kind of washboard do you use?’ Because they were getting callers saying, ‘I want to get the washboard Washboard Chaz uses’.”

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ever since. Those were the early days of the renaissance of Frenchmen Street. I’ve seen it grow over the last 10 years to the point where now it’s a destination scene for the music of New Orleans.”

Chaz subsequently joined the swing band Palmetto Bug Stompers, the Tin Men offshoot the Valparaiso Men’s Chorus, and a trio with McMurray and Jonathan Freilich called the Mirlitones. Last year, Chaz released the first record by his western swing outfit Washboard Rodeo.

All the while, Leary never stopped listening and learning.

“There are a lot of great drummers here in town,” Chaz says.

“Herlin Riley was my favorite. Shannon Powell was right behind him.

Johnny Vidacovich used to play across the street from me at d.b.a. so

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ashboard Chaz is one of the more ubiquitous presences on the incestuous Frenchmen Street scene. His latest Blues Trio album, with guitarist St. Louis Slim and harmonica whiz Andy J. Forest, is called On the Street, a tribute to New Orleans’ hippest music strip. One of the reasons Chaz can play with anybody is that he gets along with everybody.

“He’s very versatile,” says Forest, “but as years go by, it’s important to realize how important a good personality can be. There are people who play well but don’t get along with other people, like Benny Goodman, but Chaz is a good guy and he’s diplomatic. He’s got ideas, but he’s open to different things.”

Two days after Jazz Fest—which he also played—Chaz enjoys a day off by attending Forest’s birthday party at his Bywater home. “It’s fun to play music, and I’m very lucky to be able to make a living doing it,” Chaz says between sips of a cold drink while sitting on Forest’s back porch watching a group led by St. Louis Slim play the kind of altered American acoustic music Chaz and his cohorts are known for. “There’s a lot of musicians living in the Bywater. It’s a cool scene. The Chaz Fest people are Bywater people.

“Frenchmen Street isn’t as much fun as it used to be. I make more money, but I don’t have as good a time playing to mostly outof-towners. So the locals are finding other places to go. St. Claude Avenue is starting to pick up. The All Ways Lounge. The Hi Ho. The Saturn Bar is a great room. We do the Valparaiso Men’s Chorus there.

Right now I’m doing fine being one of the many kings of Frenchmen Street. This year I’m going to try to play a little more in Bywater at Sugar Park. I’m looking around for things to do.”

No kidding.

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Last Call

Jazz Fest is over; all that’s left are the memories and the commentary.

By Travis Andrews, Brian Boyles, Rory Callais, Barbie Cure, Geoffrey Himes, Joseph Irrera, David Kunian, Jacob Leland, Rene Louapre and Alex Rawls

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azz Fest is over, and people in the Jazz Tent when Christian Scott proposed to his nowfiancée will remember that.

I’ll remember wondering if the Arcade Fire will ever seem this enthusiastic again (a fear alleviated when a friend reminded me that they were this enthusiastic when they toured behind Funeral in 2005). Everybody’s got something; here are some of our contributors’ memorable moments, including one opportunity to step to center stage. Contributors: Travis Andrews (TA), Brian Boyles (BB), Rory Callais (RC), Barbie Cure (BC), Geoffrey Himes (GH), Joseph Irrera (JI) David Kunian, (DK), Jacob Leland (JL), Rene Louapre (RL), Alex Rawls (AR) There is not much one can add to the discussion of Robert Plant’s career or his fantastic set closing out the Acura Stage. However, when he dove into Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop,” the wide smiles of his bandmates let the audience know how special this was. It was as if each one of them were relishing the fact that, after playing this song in countless bar bands and empty dives, they were finally grooving on it with the man who sang it and wrote it. (DK)

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Which was weirder: Wyclef Jean finishing his show with a DJ set that included Motown and Nirvana, or Plant seemingly shouting-out to Billy Joel by telling the audience, “Don’t go changin’” as he left the stage? (AR) Wyclef Jean has made a career of collaboration with a wildly eclectic list of artists, but instead of collaborating with someone at Jazz Fest (Trombone Shorty was everywhere), he turned the set over to his DJ, who played studio recordings of “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Guantanamera,” Wyclef’s duets with, respectively, Shakira and Celia Cruz. He didn’t even sing his own parts, choosing instead to tell the crowd how to clap (really!) while the band he had brought with him stood around. Wyclef is such a magnetic performer that this sustained him for awhile, but after I voted against it with my feet, the crowd that remained voted with full-throated boos when his DJ perplexingly switched to playing, among others, “I Want You Back” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Wyclef can get away with a lot, but that doesn’t mean that he should. (JL)

Heard what I thought was a brass band second line into the Haiti Pavilion, only to walk inside and find RAM with a feverish crowd circling to the beat of our Caribbean bond. People filled in the spaces between tables, many of them chanting along in Creole.

For a minute there, we were in some fantastic Glass House relocated to an intergalactic, restored Port-Au-Prince. As long as they need us, Haiti should have a featured place at Jazz Fest. (BB) Jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris went through an elaborate introduction to “Langston’s Lullaby,” a quiet bedtime song for his young son. When he raised his mallets to begin the tune, the roar from Wilco’s set at the Fess Stage washed through the Jazz Tent. Harris told his band that they would do an uptempo improvisation instead. (GH) My generation doesn’t have a Dylan, Cash, or Orbison. Instead we get Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who combines the songwriting, attitude and dress, and operatic tones of all three, respectively. But how much distortion can one take in a given set? For me, five songs. (RL) www.OFFBEAT.com

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JAZZ FEST WRAP-UP

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The combined star power of John Legend and Mos Def was too much for some women.

When they came out together and started Legend’s “Used to Love You,” two women near me were so overcome that they went weak-kneed and fell. (AR) Sonny Rollins is about as humble as you’d ever ask a legend to be, but it was refreshing to hear him clear up, in his interview with Kalamu ya Salaam, the real force that propelled, and continues to propel, his career. Instead of telling the audience about hard work and practice and perseverance, Rollins simply said, “I was given a gift. We all practice every day. I was gifted.”

(JL) Quint Davis introduced the Jazz Tent set by Fleur Debris (bassist George Porter, drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, keyboardist David Torkanowsky and saxophonist Aaron Fletcher) by proclaiming New Orleans a city where the

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Lauryn Hill

usual musical boundaries don’t apply, where musicians like these were as likely to play jazz and rock ‘n’ roll as R&B. Well, some boundaries are harder to cross than others.

Torkanowsky (who entered wearing Professor Longhair’s old Civil Defense helmet) explained that this was the first-ever Jazz Tent appearance by Porter and Modeliste. For the first 41 years of Jazz Fest, the best electric bassist New Orleans has ever produced and one of the halfdozen best drummers the city has given us never played inside that tent.

They quickly proved that they belonged there with subtle improvisations on McCoy Tyner’s “Atlantis” and John Coltrane’s “Equinox.” Porter didn’t so much walk the bass as dart here and there around it, and Modeliste played patterns within patterns.

The show lost its momentum when it turned to Patrice Rushen’s bland ballad, “When I Found You,” but revived when Nicholas Payton stepped out www.OFFBEAT.com

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to join the quintet on another ballad. (GH)

In the Allison Miner Music Heritage Tent, the Radiators remembered the great New Orleans R&B musicians they’d met and performed with. “I spent a week with Ernie K-Doe one afternoon,” said Dave Malone.

(DK)

Irvin Mayfield

Old R&B fans have lamented in the past years that almost no one has been playing the hits from New Orleans that changed the world. This Jazz Fest (on and off

the Fair Grounds), Brint Anderson’s “Cosimo Experience” and King James and the Special Men joined the Creole String Beans, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Deacon

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No disrespect to the rich collection of talent onstage for the Clyde Kerr tribute, but none of them could match Kidd Jordan’s tone. As he did at Kerr’s funeral a few months back, Kidd called to the god of Coltrane to walk his friend on home. The man deserves a closing spot if we’re going to continue to call that tent “Jazz.” (BB)

John, and Davis Rogan in making sure that these song treasures and the aesthetic that spawned them will not be lost to history or neglect. (DK)

The Double Dutch Jumpers at the Chouest Family Kids tent proved once and for all that white men can jump. Giant beards help.

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Charmaine Neville’s set in the Blues Tent went on a quick exploration of 20th-Century music, which began with Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train,” then slithered into “Saturday Night Fish Fry” before a stompinducing “Come Together.” All the while, just off stage right a group of schoolchildren marched through the empty space in time.

It began with two or three young kids and grew until nearly the whole class, teachers included, were marching to whatever beat they could find. It ended when a lady in a fedora and long whirling skirt traipsed into their scene, attempted to join their party, and killed it. (RL)

stage (and their families in the audience), Allen ended his set with an edited version of Cee-Lo Green’s “F*** You,” which was somehow even more awkward without the curse words. (RC)

Shamarr Allen and the Underdawgs’ brass/hip-hop hybrid energized the crowd as the day was heating up. The band took a break to allow Upset, a young band whose oldest member is 15, to give a brassy rendition of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” With the youngsters looking on from the side of the

At the tribute to James Booker in the Blues Tent, Tom McDermott emulated Booker’s approach instead of visiting his songbook, and allowed his musicianship and imagination to flow over changes that eventually revealed themselves to be the Beach Boys’ “Fun, Fun, Fun” and the Beatles’ “Ticket

I admired Galactic for cutting a live album and then not playing it live. After recording The Other Side of Midnight with Cyril Neville as the principal vocalist, they brought out Living Colour’s Corey Glover as singer du jour.

His intensity was perfectly suited to their wrecking ball version of Swamp Dogg’s “Total Destruction to Your Mind,” which gave me my best five minutes of the festival that day. (AR)

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Frankie Ford

to Ride” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Not only was the approach intelligent, but he made the moment about Booker about him too, McDermott being a big Beatles fan. (AR) If you had any doubts about the studio recording of Sanchez’s Nine Lives, this live performance certainly clears things up.

Sanchez and company, including Michael Cerveris, Craig Klein, Debbie Davis, Alex McMurray, Matt Perrine, Larry Sieberth, Shamarr Allen and many more gave a powerful and energetic performance of several tunes from the play. Sanchez’s set also included what has become an iconic New Orleans song, “At the Foot of Canal Street,” sung by Cerveris to a crowd that all stood up and sang along. (JI) Those scouring for answers to “Who’s next in New Orleans music” should start their list with Dee-1, a one-man army of

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positive hustle who killed it with a live band on the Congo Square Stage early the final Sunday. List makers could then walk 25 yards to hear the Lost Bayou Ramblers and reaffirm: the kids are alright.

(BB) There were at least 12 police officers watching Sissy Nobby dance in front of the Congo Square Stage. If somebody had opened a bank in the photo pit, it would have had the safest money in town. (AR) Mystikal just yells until you submit, but if he’s good enough for Jonathan Vilma (who watched the whole performance from

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sidestage), he’s good enough for me. (RL) The Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby and Katey Red performance showed one post-K direction for bounce, speeding it up, emphasizing the clatter and moving it toward electronic dance music. The next day, Partners-N-Crime were backed by a live band, and it was just as effective in its own way. The highlight was the set-closing “Footwork”, a go-go version of a second-line beat. The combination was a spacious, compelling groove played by the young, predominantly white band behind PNC—a reminder that for a generation of young white New Orleanians, bounce was the underground music they grew up with, the music that sharpened their sense of being subversive and rebellious. (AR)

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Cajun crowd surfing during the Lost Bayou Ramblers’ set

Overheard: “If you’re torn between seeing the Arcade Fire and Willie Nelson, remember that the combined ages of the Arcade Fire aren’t as much as Willie Nelson’s age. Take that into account.” (DK) I’ve liked but not loved anything by the Arcade Fire so far, so I wasn’t prepared for how much I enjoyed their show. Part of it was the anarchic energy and the subtly smart wall of sound.

They were aware of the difference between a big sound and racket, and constantly switched instruments to reconstitute the exactly right elements necessary to rebuild it for each song, even adding a hurdy-gurdy for “Keep the Car Running.”

There are so many members in the band that songs often feel like a community speaking (or singing, often with four or www.OFFBEAT.com

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Big Freedia more people on mic), with the uplifting feel that accompanies a large group speaking as one. The energy and excitement onstage is such that the Arcade Fire are a community you’d like to join, and didn’t take any prompting to get everyone around me and behind me to sing “Lies, lies” in “Rebellion (Lies)” or the wordless chorus of “Wake Up” at the end of the set. (AR)

andouille, pheasant, and quail gumbo and chicken and tasso over rice approachable. That gumbo was simply rich, decadent, and delicious and would have been at home in any restaurant.

Dibbi and poulet fricasse with a shot of hot sauce continue to be my favorite snacks at Jazz Fest.

Finally sampled the Rose Mint tea, which is incredible with snuck-in rum. (RL)

The coolish weather finally made such dishes as the

Most of the Congo Square crowd had been waiting at least

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a decade to see Ms. Lauryn Hill perform, either again or for the first time, so it was nice that she wasn’t promoting new material.

With a full band and the Hot 8 Brass Band as her horn section, Ms. Hill tore through material from her solo release The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, from the Fugees’ The Score (where she performed all three parts, in sharp contrast to her erstwhile bandmate Wyclef Jean), and a few Bob Marley covers. There was a kind of rapturous joy to

the crowd when she took the stage, and it only intensified as she built the set (at the breakneck pace of someone so happy to be performing that she wants to play as many songs as possible) to its natural conclusion: “Doo Wop (That Thing).” (JL) Ms. Lauryn Hill looked great, but her summer dress over pants with a stylish gray blazer seemed ill-suited to the Congo Square Stage, where the final performers face a merciless afternoon sun www.OFFBEAT.com

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that’s in their faces. The Cult of Hill is still strong as the crowd on the track took over the lane reserved for staff golf carts, and her performance validated their love. It also validated those who think she’s a head case as she continued to fret over the monitors more than an hour into the set. (AR) The drum solo is often when I head to the bathroom. But during the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars, Stanton Moore and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux were both using a tambourine to keep the beat. Moore beat the tambourine like a child just escorted home

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by the cops. Boudreaux tapped it lightly, as if he were waking his son to go fishing without waking his daughter sleeping on the top bunk. (RL) Bobby Cure has been fronting the Summertime Blues for 40 years now, and he first played Jazz Fest 25 years ago (my older sister was a baby at the time; Aaron Neville had to hold her while Dad sang). He’ll tell you luck had nothing and everything to do with it. Like any musician playing Jazz Fest, this is what he loves.

Towards the end of his set, Dad said into the microphone, “Come on, Barbie, you wanna sing one?”

Like I was going to say no to that!

(BC) Dr. John’s Jazz Fest sets have sometimes seemed a little reserved, but his show this year was a joy. With Dave Bartholomew onstage and doing some of the best playing

I heard from him in recent years, Dr. John said, “Right now, we’re going to play a Dave Bartholomew song that says a lot.” Then, the band launched into an almost unrecognizable rewrite of “The Monkey Speaks Its Mind” as swampy funk.

Bartholomew’s trumpet rode on top of the groove like a sampled jazz part on a DJ’s trip-hop track, connected and disconnected at turns and more engaging for it.

(AR) Jazz Fest has always had a good reputation for containing sound leakage from one stage to another, but this year that reputation got soiled. Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, for example, stood on the Fais DoDo Stage and pondered aloud on what song he might sing that would fit the thumping hip-hop beat coming from John Legend and the Roots at the nearby Congo Square. Later in the show, however, the problem was not

the funky drumming of ?uestlove but the Welsh belting of Tom Jones over on the Gentilly Stage.

(GH) Colin Meloy seemed to enjoy the relative intimacy of the Fais Do-Do Stage. A gregarious performer by nature, he applauded festgoers’ choices of headgear, wondered about the appropriateness of the setlist, explained the ins and outs of tuning patter and mocked drummer John Moen when he pushed a floor tom too close to the lip of the stage and it fell to the ground. “I like a drummer who understands gravity,” he quipped. He orchestrated a sing-along, at one point asking people to be so quiet “we can listen to the Roots.” But the set, like the recent album The King is Dead, never became about Meloy’s wit or cleverness, so as enjoyable as his banter was, it wasn’t better than the music.

(AR)

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You can’t blame Aaron Neville for wanting to cash in on his oncein-a-generation voice, but we hear him at his best when he takes on a project that has nothing to do with chart success. That’s why the 1993 album Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas is one of the best holiday albums ever made, and it’s why his annual visit to the Gospel Tent during Jazz Fest is such a treat.

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This year, Aaron was joined by his brother Charles and a compact rhythm section that reduced (but did not eliminate) the opportunities for bombast. He overdid the melisma on “Jesus Loves Me” and relied on synthesized strings too often, but he grew increasingly understated as the set went on. He gave the Civil Rights anthem “Oh, Freedom” a wonderfully restrained reading, filling

the line, “Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave,” with an unshakable confidence that didn’t require big gestures.

On “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Aaron didn’t feel he had to twist the melody into knots to put the song over. When he dedicated Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” to the recently deceased Herman Ernest, Sam Henry and Sherman www.OFFBEAT.com

JAZZ FEST WRAP-UP Washington, the singer closed his eyes and seemed to squeeze out the high-pitched melody as if trying to find the strength to go on in the face of so much loss. (GH) Kevin Thompson and the Sensational Six had a packed crowd in the Gospel Tent rocking through the ecstatic performance of Thompson, but was the audience hearing what he wanted them to hear? When he was praising God, how many were simply responding to the passion and energy, untouched by or uninterested in the content? Is there anything wrong with that? Where’s the line between celebrating traditional American folk expressions and cultural voyeurism? (AR) The Mt. Hermon Baptist Church Mass Choir took Foreigner to church with a reverential version of “I Want to Know What Love Is.” (BB) When a beach ball ended up on stage, the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas picked it up, embraced it, and walked around the stage with it. “That’s as close as he’s been to a beach,” one wise guy said. The Strokes are the one band in this year’s line-up that was tough to fit under even the most forgiving Jazz Fest aesthetic rubric, and Casablancas seemed to know it too, ironically asking the audience how their “festival of jazz” was going, and remembering giving up on jazz in the 1940s--two or three decades before he was born. (AR) Trombone Shorty announced that he was a force to reckon with on the Gentilly Stage last year, and his set this year showed what good a year of touring will do for a band. A year of singing has made him a more effective and confident singer, and he marshaled his efforts as a front man more judiciously. A year of playing songs from Backatown has also led to subtle changes in the arrangements that add space and grooves. Who wants to bet against Shorty moving in to the Sunday Gentilly slot that the Radiators just abandoned? (AR) O For more, go to offbeat.com. www.OFFBEAT.com

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EATS

Debbie’s Not Debbie A

sk a New Orleanian about doberge cakes, and you’ll probably hear something like, “A doberge is the only way to celebrate a birthday!”

Or, “I ship one to my daughter in Houston every year!” Or, if you’re a doberge beginner, a constructive “It’s pronounced ‘dobash!” Like so many New Orleans foods, the doberge is a product of locals’ fierce loyalties and quirky traditions.

It’s no surprise, then, that the doberge has remained largely unchanged since New Orleans baker Beulah Ledner invented the pudding layer cake—a modified version of the Hungarian-Austrian dobos torta—back during the Great Depression. Maurice French Pastries and Gambino’s both own the rights to Ledner’s original recipes, and their chocolate and half chocolate/half lemon doberges continue to be staples at New Orleans birthday and holiday celebrations today.

But recently, at least one local baker has been giving the doberge a serious makeover. Her name is Debbie Does Doberge, a.k.a. Charlotte McGehee, and her fledgling doberge business is putting a uniquely modern twist on the 80-year-old dessert.

McGehee, 28, first learned to make traditional doberge as a teenager working in bakeries in her hometown of Baton Rouge.

While orders for the notoriously labor-intensive cakes elicited groans in some of her coworkers, McGehee welcomed doberge duty. “I’m a little OCD, so I became the go-to girl,” she says.

It was only years later after moving to New Orleans that McGehee began making her own doberge. She hatched the idea after a boozy night of brainstorming with a friend and coworker from her old job at Wine

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Institute of New Orleans, and starting selling her cakes out of the wine store in early 2009.

In keeping with her alliterative business name, a spin on the 1970s porno flick Debbie Does Dallas, McGehee’s original concept was for “erotic doberge.” Since then, the name has stuck, the concept not so much. The most risqué product Debbie Does Doberge puts out is the “naked doberge,” a shell-less version that leaves the cake and pudding layers exposed.

But McGehee’s tagline—“Not Your Grandmother’s Cupcakes”—applies even to her G-rated business.

First, there are the flavors.

Other local bakeries do strawberry, caramel, vanilla, even praline doberge; Debbie’s flavors make

By Rachel Arons

Willy Wonka look unimaginative by comparison. There’s watermelon, blackberry cobbler, PB&J (with your choice of jelly pudding), root beer float, pistachio, chocolate-dipped banana, and “breakfast doberge” made with blueberry pudding, a coffee maple shell, and garnished with candied bacon.

Even more unusual, McGehee’s doberges are not cakes but “cupcakes,” made by stacking eight thin layers of cake in decreasing sizes to form a softball-sized pyramid.

They’re a bit too big to hold in your hand and bite into, but for that there are “dobites”—smaller, bona fide finger-food cake-lettes that are almost too cute to eat. Almost.

In yet another über-modern touch, Debbie has plans to operate

a refurbished VW food truck. That means New Orleanians will soon see their favorite birthday cake reincarnated as bite-size street food.

Grandmother would probably find this all very confusing.

Since last fall, Debbie Does Doberge has been operating out of the kitchen at Twelve Mile Limit, former Coquette bartender Cole Newton’s Mid-City dive/cocktail bar specializing in cheap-but-quality drinks and barbecue. During the day, the bar’s kitchen is occupied by sides of brisket and tubs of mac and cheese, so McGehee and her boyfriend/business partner Charles Mary do their doberge duty at night, baking between the hours of 10 p.m. and 10 a.m. “We don’t get much sleep,” says McGehee.

It’s easy to see that Debbie Does Doberge has embraced the trendier side of New Orleans food culture, but while many of today’s other trendy food businesses—and there are quite a few in New Orleans these days—are evolving separately from the city’s traditional cuisine (think pop-up burger joints, popsicles, or Neapolitan pizza), Debbie Does Doberge draws upon an established New Orleans food tradition and adapts it to today’s foodie sensibilities. The result is an example of old and new food cultures brought together, fused into one fondant-frosted package.

Of course, many of Debbie’s customers are still hard-line traditionalists who want to enjoy doberge as they’ve known it all their lives, and McGehee can play it straight with traditional sizes and flavors when asked to. “People are always going to insist on chocolate,” she says. “Always.”

Debbie Does Doberge’s cakes are available at W.I.N.O., Twelve Mile Limit, and by special order at DebbieDoesDoberge.com (504383-DEBB). www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ANDY COOK

And her cakes are not the doberges you’ve known all your life.

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Y AV GR

In the Kitchen with Sean

“T

his is my dad’s skillet, and the only thing he left me in his will.

He was an English professor, so he didn’t have a lot to leave any of us. I guess he felt that I’d been self-sufficient in life.

When I toured with White Zombie I was a vegetarian. I became a vegetarian in high school because I got a scholarship for ballet and I lived on campus and I didn’t trust the food. I wasn’t strict, I’d eat a can of tuna sometimes, but I didn’t have money to eat in restaurants. Then I go to New York. We lived on the Lower East Side, and there were so many places you could eat for 75 cents. You’d get a falafel, a slice of pizza, or a cream cheese bagel, lots of coffee, that kind of vegetarian.

Just street food.

When I moved here 14 years ago, I started making jambalaya right away. I was obsessed with it, and I’ve always made it with brown rice. Nobody’s complained.

Locals, believe me, they’re like, ‘No way that’s brown rice!’

[To quail:] That looks crowded enough. They’re having a little party in there. Next time I’m going to lay them with all their feet the same way so it’ll be like Busby Berkeley; a formation dance.

I always read the food section of The Times-Picayune, read the recipes and clip a few and try things out. I do the shopping and when I go to the store, every single thing I buy is for something, and then I see Chris [Lee, from Supagroup] pulling out the asparagus: ‘No, no, put that back! I need that!’ So I get possessive over just about anything.

He gets possessive about meat.

We make a serious breakfast. I roast asparagus and then I crack an egg on top and grate some cheese on top of that, put it back in the oven and let the egg bake. I do a lot of eggs and vegetables in the morning

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and for Chris’ and I’s wedding, we got some amazing Italian cookbooks.

Now, where did the thyme go?”

Sean’s Reindeer Gumbo (with choreographed quail) Sean Yseult and Chris Lee get reindeer sausage by mail from his parents in Anchorage, Alaska.

Spice mix: 1 tablespoon salt 2 tablespoons dried basil 2 teaspoons paprika 1/2 tablespoon dried mustard 1/2 tablespoon chili powder 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon cayenne 1 teaspoon cumin 1 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 teaspoon white pepper 1/2 teaspoon thyme 3 pounds semi-deboned quail 1 1/4 cup flour 4 + 4 tablespoons olive oil 1 large onion, chopped 1 large green bell pepper, chopped 1 red bell pepper, chopped 2-3 stalks celery, chopped 7 cups chicken broth 1 pound reindeer sausage/andouille 4 cloves garlic

and if Chris is in charge there’ll usually be some bacon or sausage also.

I make a beef orange stew, but you have to make it three days in advance. You keep taking it out and heating it up and adding stuff and refrigerating it overnight. It’s French; I like French cooking. I make a roasted chicken with 40 cloves of garlic where you blanch the garlic; keep the skin on and boil it in water for 10 minutes. Fry the chicken up in some olive oil, a little thyme, then add all that garlic all around it, put a lid on it and cook it for 40 minutes. Take the chicken and garlic out and deglaze

By Elsa Hahne

the pan with a little white wine and butter and you have a sauce.

My dad was quite the cook. He taught me how to make marinara sauce, and before he passed away he got really into bolognese. That I’ve tried, and really mastered. I’m really proud of my bolognese sauce. I used to think it was just a meat sauce, but there are all these steps where you let it absorb different liquids, almost like risotto. One time is white wine, one time is milk, and it takes hours, but it’s worth it as long as you have a lot of people coming over to appreciate it. I watched my dad make bolognese

Rub spice mix onto quail. Pour leftover spice mix into flour, mixing well. Lightly flour quail and fry in 4 tablespoons oil, browning both sides.

Remove from skillet and set aside.

Add remaining oil and flour into skillet. Make a 4-minute roux over high heat. Roux will look a yellowish brown from the start because of the spices, but try to make it a bit darker. Add onion, bell peppers and celery, lower heat, and stir for 5 minutes. Heat broth separately, then add vegetables to broth along with sausage and garlic. Simmer for 45 minutes. Cut each quail into four or eight pieces, add to pot. Simmer for 15 minutes. Serve over brown rice. www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

Sean Yseult learned to cook in New Orleans.

EATS

AMERICAN O’Henry’s Food & Spirits: 634 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-9741; 8859 Veterans Blvd., 461-9840; 710 Terry Pkwy., 433-4111 Poppy’s Time Out Sports Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St., 247-9265 Port of Call: 838 Esplanade Ave., 523-0120 BARBECUE The Joint: 801 Poland Ave., 949-3232 Squeal Bar-B-Q: 8400 Oak St., 302-7370 Voodoo BBQ: 1501 St Charles Ave., 522-4647 BREAKFAST Daisy Dukes: 121 Chartres St., 561-5171 Lil’ Dizzy’s Café: 1500 Esplanade Ave., 569-8997 New Orleans Cake Cafe & Bakery: 2440 Chartres St., 943-0010 COFFEE HOUSE Café du Monde: 800 Decatur St., 525-4544 Café Rose Nicaud: 632 Frenchmen St., 949-3300 CREOLE/CAJUN Le Citron Bistro: 601 Orange St., 566-9051 Clancy’s: 6100 Annunciation, 895-1111 Cochon: 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 588-2123 Dick & Jenny’s: 4501 Tchoupitoulas, 894-9880 Fiorella’s: 1136 Decatur St., 553-2155 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 Olivier’s Creole Restaurant: 204 Decatur St., 525-7734.

DELI Mardi Gras Zone: 2706 Royal St., 947-8787 St. James Cheese Company: 5004 Prytania St., 899-4737 Stein’s Market and Deli: 2207 Magazine St., 527-0771 FINE DINING Antoine’s: 701 St. Louis St., 581-4422 Arnaud’s Remoulade: 309 Bourbon St., 523-0377 Besh Steakhouse: 8 Canal St., 533-6111 Bistreaux at Maison Dupuy: 1001 Toulouse St., 586-8000 Café Adelaide: 300 Poydras St., 595-3305 Commander’s Palace: 1403 Washington Ave., 899-8221 Dish on Hayne: 9734 Hayne Blvd., 301-0356 Emeril’s: 800 Tchoupitoulas, 528-9393 Galvez Restaurant: 914 N Peters St., 595-3400

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Iris Restaurant: 321 N Peters St., 299-3944 Lüke: 333 St. Charles Ave., 378-2840 Mat and Naddie’s: 937 Leonidas St., 861-9600 Mr. B’s Bistro: 201 Royal St. 523-2078 7 on Fulton: 701 Convention Center Blvd., 525-7555 Stella!: 1032 Chartres St., 587-0091 FRENCH Café Degas: 3127 Esplanade Ave., 945-5635 La Crepe Nanou: 1410 Robert St., 899-2670 Crepes à la Cart: 1039 Broadway St., 866-2362 Martinique Bistro: 5908 Magazine St., 891-8495 GREEN EATS Eco Café & Bistro: 3903 Canal St., 561-6585 Green Goddess: 307 Exchange Pl., 301-3347 ICE CREAM/GELATO/CANDY Creole Creamery: 4924 Prytania St., 894-8680 La Divina Gelateria: 3005 Magazine St., 342-2634; 621 St. Peter St., 302-2692 Sucré: 3025 Magazine St., 520-8311 Southern Candymakers: 334 Decatur St., 523-5544 Tee-Eva’s Praline Shop: 4430 Magazine St., 899-8350 INDIAN Nirvana: 4308 Magazine St., 894-9797 ITALIAN Andrea’s Restaurant & Capri Blu: 3100 19th St., Metairie, 834-8583 Domenica: 123 Baronne St., 648-1200 Eleven 79: 1179 Annunciation St., 299-1179 Irene’s Cuisine: 539 St. Philip St., 529-8811 Tommy’s: 746 Tchoupitoulas St., 581-1103 JAPANESE/KOREAN/SUSHI Kyoto: 4920 Prytania St., 891-3644 Mikimoto: 3301 S. Carrollton Ave., 488-1881 Miyako Japanese Seafood & Steak House: 1403 St. Charles Ave., 410-9997 Wasabi: 900 Frenchmen St., 943-9433 MEDITERRANEAN Byblos: 3218 Magazine St., 894-1233 Jamila’s Café: 7808 Maple St., 866-4366 Mona’s Café: 504 Frenchmen St., 949-4115 MEXICAN/CARIBBEAN/SPANISH Juan’s Flying Burrito: 2018 Magazine St., 569-0000 El Gato Negro: 81 French Market Place, 525-9846 Mojitos Rum Bar & Grill: 437 Esplanade Ave., 252-4800 Nacho Mama: 3240 Magazine St., 899-0031; 6325 Elysian Fields, 286-1805; 1000 S. Clearview Pkwy, Harahan, 736-1188

NEIGHBORHOOD JOINTS Buffa’s Restaurant & Lounge: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038.

Café Reconcile: 1631 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 568-1157 CG’s Café at the Nail: 1100 Constance St., 525-5515 Parkway Bakery and Tavern: 538 Hagan Ave., 482-3047 Sammy’s Food Services: 3000 Elysian Fields Ave., 948-7361

PIZZA Slice Pizzeria: 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525-7437 Turtle Bay: 1119 Decatur St., 586-0563 SEAFOOD Acme Oyster & Seafood House: 724 Iberville, 522-5973 Crazy Lobster Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St. 569-3380 Drago’s Restaurant: 2 Poydras St. (Hilton Hotel), 584-3911; 3232 N. Arnoult St., Metairie, 888-9254 Felix’s Restaurant & Oyster Bar: 739 Iberville St. 522-4440 SOUL Dunbar’s: 501 Pine St., 861-5451 Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934 Willie Mae’s Scotch House: 2401 St. Ann St., 822-9503 WEE HOURS Clover Grill: 900 Bourbon St., 523-0904 Mimi’s in the Marigny: 2601 Royal St., 872-9868.

WINE BAR & BISTRO Orleans Grapevine: 720 Orleans Ave., 523-1930

Big Freedia hits the How often do you come here?

Every chance I get. I’m actually always busy, or on the road, so I actually have to force myself to come as much as I used to come.

Photo: CAITLYN RIDENOUR

AFRICAN Bennachin: 1212 Royal St., 522-1230

MUSIC ON THE MENU Carrollton Station Bar and Grill: 140 Willow St., 865-9190 Chickie Wah Wah: 2828 Canal St., 304-4714 House of Blues: 225 Decatur St., 412-8068 Howlin’ Wolf’s Wolf Den: 907 S. Peters St., 529-5844 Le Bon Temps Roule: 4801 Magazine St., 895-8117 Maison: 508 Frenchmen St., 289-5648.

Mid City Lanes Rock ‘N’ Bowl: 4133 S. Carrollton Ave., 482-3133 Palm Court Jazz Café: 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

Sports Vue: 1400 Esplanade Ave., 940-1111 Ye Olde College Inn: 3000 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-3683 Wit’s Inn: 141 N Carrollton Ave., 486-1600

What do you usually order?

The crawfish ravioli and strawberry cheesecake. Sometimes I just come for the cheesecake.

What do you like about Copeland’s?

I like to be in a creative atmosphere while I’m eating.

I like the seating arrangements and the lighting; it’s all very creative to me. I like to look at things to get ideas to incorporate into mine.

Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro 2001 St. Charles Ave. (504) 593-9955

OffBeat

RioMar: 800 S. Peters St., 525-3474 Taqueros Coyoacan: 1432 Saint Charles Ave., 267-3028

Have you ever been to any of the other Copeland’s restaurants?

I’ve been to Sweet Fire and Ice. The atmosphere is very elegant and the food is delicious.

—Caitlyn Ridenour www.OFFBEAT.com

DINING OUT Cyrus Restaurant When dining at Cyrus, two questions immediately come to mind: a) Where exactly is Persia? B) What exactly defines Persian food?

Geography majors we are not, but we are fairly certain that Persia is somewhere over there. As for the second question, we consider Persian food to be a unique blend of Indian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern fare—a “creole” cuisine if you will. (Note: If you wrote a senior thesis on Persian geography/food and have a quibble with our definition, please recall that we only have a 400-word budget.)

Meals at Cyrus begin with an assortment of Middle Eastern dips familiar in description and appearance but unique in flavor. The hummus has a less pronounced lemon and tahini flavor than you may be used to, plus a sprinkle of house ground spices on top. The two eggplant dips reach beyond typical baba ghanoush, especially the Mirza Ghasemi, a creamy, smoky blend of roasted eggplants, garlic, onions, tomato and egg. Dips are ferried to your mouth on the

www.OFFBEAT.com

housemade pita.

Halfway between a cracker and a pizza dough, Persian bread is a damn fine specimen of the chemistry between flour and water.

Entrees are dominated by skewers of grilled meats, and the combination platters offer a table the opportunity to taste them all.

Morsels of ground beef, marinated tenderloin, and crusty lamb lollipops are grilled to juicy perfection and served over the aforementioned pita, which acts as a delicious sponge soaking up all those delectable drippings. Grilled tomatoes and red peppers serve as vegetation, with a fragrant combination of white and saffron rice rounding out the platter. Chicken breast tenders are marinated in citrus, yogurt, and seasonings, then chargrilled to a sunburst yellow color. The result is a sultry, tender piece of chicken which is perfect atop a crisp, cool salad.

Photo: CAITLYN RIDENOUR

EATS

Service includes white table cloths and fine stemware, but the prices are quite affordable.

The lunch and dinner menus are identical except in cost, with the evening meal prices running 25 percent higher than those in the daytime. While the location will be long known as the former home of the Fun Arcade at one end of Veterans Memorial Boulevard, we predict that Cyrus will soon become a destination for pleasures of the culinary variety. 612 Veterans Memorial Blvd.

309-2477. Lunch: Tues-Sun 11a-3p. Dinner: Tues-Thur 5:30p-9p; Fri-Sat till 10p.

—Rene Louapre and Peter Thriffiley

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REVIEWS

Reviews

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

CDs reviewed are available now at In the French Quarter 210 Decatur Street 504-586-1094 or online at LouisianaMusicFactory.com

Mr. Big Stuff

James Andrews The Big Time Stuff (James Andrews Music) Over Jazz Fest, I got to thinking about the increased prevalence of adrenaline in contemporary New Orleans music, particularly the brass department. Bullish young bands, trombonist dynamos, trumpeters who rap—they crackle in rhythm with the new generation’s manic attention span. Every era deserves its own sound but, I wondered, where’s that lowdown growl and shuffle, the Big Easy sweetness and the strut? On his latest release, James Andrews reminds us where we’ve got our shoes.

Beginning with the third track, “Take a Little Trip,” the stellar horn section (the album boasts Keith “Wolf” Anderson, Craig Klein, Morgan Price and a host of true pros) parades behind Andrews’ trumpet and vocals across the ever fertile ground between trad and funk. “Night Life” takes us into Curtis Mayfield territory. Anyone who stays out late knows Andrews speaks from experience, and the song’s Cuban accents make it the album’s standout.

Impressive as the instrumentation is, the lyrics could be stronger. In that energy drink world, words are usually manifestations of “Somebody scream!” Atop The Big

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Time Stuff’s layers of brass, Andrews keeps it simple to varying degrees of success. Cash cow though it would be, a Jazz Fest anthem will never work because, for the most part, music about music is much duller than the original experience.

Still, the band is the thing. “Bet You a Dollar” lays out the Canal Street hustler jokes we all know, but the blues are so thick, the cymbals so crunk, that the punch lines sound cocky but not cliché.

On “Mr. Boss Man,” svelte horn arrangement shows how precision and planning can move just as many asses as chaos.

Monk Boudreaux leads us out on the final track, a sun-baked second line that disappears around the corner. Though we’ve sped up considerably as a city these last five-plus years, Andrews plays to our internal clock, which wakes us up late, deposits us in sluggish afternoons and ticks on into the wee-hours, when anything can happen if you have time to listen.

—Brian Boyles

Big Freedia Scion A/V Presents Big Freedia (Scion A/V) For those who have been asleep—or maybe just living outside of New Orleans—Big Freedia is a transsexual rapper of “bounce,” a New Orleans-style party music wherein the MC exists almost entirely to tell you exactly how to shake your ass. Freedia’s transexuality matters little outside of the fact that she dresses better than any rapper, and her shows attract a mixture of all types of people, black and white, open and non-judgmental, all obviously energized by the mere existence of fun, hardcore hip-hop dance music

that lacks misogyny (Freedia’s most used pronouns are certainly “her” and “she”), gun talk, and of course, homophobia.

There exist almost too many angles from which to evaluate Big Freedia’s new EP Scion A/V Presents: Big Freedia (released by the car company Scion’s lifestyle marketing division). Bounce is slagged for being repetitive and simplistic, but Freedia’s producers are stretching the genre’s sonic palette nicely. While triggerman remains the default beat throughout this five-song EP “Almost Famous” layers in icy techno keyboards and rhythms rarely heard in bounce, and Freedia raps actual verses about her recent fame, between obligatory chants to “drop it,” etc. The result is surprisingly listenable, even on the couch. “Excuse” and “It’s a Shame (Crazy Big Dunkey)” are more straightforward bounce tracks that nonetheless feature subtle headphone details that don’t draw attention away from Freedia’s barked instructions.

Unfortunately, Freedia’s last and most interesting track, “Let it Go Nah”—an old school roller-skating jam lacking the triggerman but replete with ultra-choppy bounce vocals—doesn’t work very well, mostly because of the vocoder on Freedia’s voice. No one should ever use vocoder until it too is oldschool. And even then….

But from the angle of bounce music growing to a national audience, Big Freedia’s new EP is definitely her best foot forward, as well as the best the genre could hope for in terms of worldwide representation. If Freedia remains ambitious and keeps experimenting—even when it doesn’t work—she may take

bounce to the mainstream without any of the genre’s former baggage.

Download the EP at soundcloud.com/scionav/sets/ scion-a-v-presents-big/ —Sam Levine

Tommy Sancton/ Lars Edegran New Orleans Legacy Band City of a Million Dreams (GHB) Tommy Sancton’s notes to City of a Million Dreams include a photo taken during a performance at Preservation Hall in 1965.

Sancton sits alongside his mentor and idol, clarinetist George Lewis.

Clive Wilson holds up his trumpet alongside De De Pierce, while Lars Edegran faces his piano in the rear.

A host of famous old traditional jazz musicians surround the three youngsters. When Sancton and Co. first picked up their instruments back in the ’60s, the future of this music was very much in doubt. An older generation of jazzmen was disappearing and scant few kids were stepping in to replace them.

How things have changed! City of a Million Dreams is a rousing affirmation of the music’s vitality in modern-day New Orleans.

Sancton, Edegran, and Wilson are joined by three members of the musical generation that came www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS

Morella and the Wheels of If

“Vincent” also shows off Eric Laws’ piano playing, which provides the heart, soul and spine of the entire record. On “Things,” Laws takes a turn at sleepy singing between 3/4 instrumental passages featuring impressive but not gratuitous classical flourishes.

The production, it must also be said, is flawless. But the style never really fluctuates, so if you don’t like dramatic, gothic tales of madness and intrigue set to carnival waltzes (not of the Mardi Gras variety) all fueled by operatic female vocals and great piano playing, then move along. But if you do, then step right up to The Wheels of If! —Sam Levine

Shipwrecked (Independent)

Zigaboo Modeliste

to prominence in the ’80s and ’90s: drummer Jason Marsalis, trombonist Ronell Johnson, and bassist Kerry Lewis. These are six exceptional musicians from two generations fluent in the language of New Orleans jazz and speaking it with energy, clarity and wit. The repertoire is quite traditional but mines a few lesser-known songs.

The title track is a playful tune by New Orleans clarinetist Raymond Burke (1904-86), and the tango “Un Hombre Fiel,” co-written by Sancton’s son Julian, is nice surprise.

—Zachary Young

Morella and the Wheels of If are a musical period piece. Their first album, Shipwrecked, recreates a spooky place and time not sepiatoned, but certainly black and white. A period of antique lace, dramatic choral voices and absinthe (which was served every weekend at the group’s longtime Circle Bar residency).

Shipwrecked opens with “Carnival Ride,” the type of ghostly waltz music that finds its way into all of the rest of the album’s songs.

The downtown New Orleans “gypsy” rhythm—oom-pa-pa, oompa-pa, oom-pa-pa—is employed often throughout the record, but with a decidedly more gothic sheen and classical bent than our city’s musical “traveling people.” On “Carnival Ride,” the ethereal vocals of Anastacia Ternasky and Laura Laws wash away on a sea of reverb that seamlessly transforms into airy pipe organ. “Staircase,” with its breathy refrain of “Am I going crazy?” reminds one of olde tyme mental institutions at which rests are permanent. You almost expect to read Jack the Ripper thanked in the liner notes for “Mr. Murder,” while “Vincent” is an ode to the beautiful madness of the painter Van Gogh, whose ear sometimes makes a physical appearance, wrapped in a napkin, at Morella’s dramatic but lighthearted live shows. www.OFFBEAT.com

New Life (Independent) Drummers have the most difficult time going from being sidemen to leaders. Whether you were the propulsive force of your previous band or the featured soloist, the transition to front man from behind the kit is almost always problematic.

Zigaboo Modeliste, the high performance engine behind the funk limousine of the Meters, has tinkered with his identity as a leader, but appears to have arrived at a perfect medium for his solo persona with New Life.

Zig gives his fans exactly what they want from him: Meters-style grooves and songs with New Orleans-related themes. The instrumental “Ate Ball Waltz” is a great piece of Metersiana built on a catchy, climb-up riff perfectly articulated by Zig and bassist Marc Pero with percussionist Bill Summers adding that soulful clave touch.

“New Life,” another Meters-style syncopation, gets even more pop from Pero and Summers, who also deliver the goods on the topical “Human Race,” a sentiment especially salient in the wake of the racist pushback organized by the Republican Party against President Barack Obama. “Holiday Kiss” is a gorgeous R&B ballad sweetened by great keyboard parts from Joe Krown and Larry Sieberth, a trio of background singers and Wardell JUN E 2011

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REVIEWS Quezerque’s deftly arranged string section. Getting just the right touch to keep the strings from sounding saccharine is one of Quezerque’s specialties and a key reason why this song is so memorable.

The real paydirt here is the reunion of the Meters rhythm section on the intense “Keep on Groovin.” It’s not reminiscent of the Meters, but it’s Zig with George Porter, Jr. pounding away on this punchy piece of New Millennium funk. This tune is Zig’s most complete realization of an updated sound with guitarist Shane Theriot adding a searing break, Summers popping the groove, and a horn section adding terse accents. It’s the perfect touch to grace a satisfying album from one of the greatest drummers New Orleans has ever produced.

—John Swenson

Dickie Landry Fifteen Saxophones (Unseen Worlds) Sax player Dickie Landry left south Louisiana in 1969 to push music farther than he could back home as a member of the horn section for the Swing Kings. A couple key connections landed him at the apartment of Philip Glass, who was still working on the foundations of the clumsily named “minimalism” that would shake the foundation of classical music in the ’70s and narrow the gap between it and popular culture. Landry joined the original Philip Glass Ensemble and performed on Glass’ landmark opera Einstein at the Beach at the Met, which cemented Glass’ reputation in the music world.

Landry was pushing his own musical boundaries at the time, studying flute with Arthur Lora, hobnobbing with Ornette Coleman and Laurie Anderson, and performing his groundbreaking tape delay pieces at avant-garde hotspots like The Kitchen. The three pieces appearing on his long out-of-print 1977 album Fifteen Saxophones (recently reissued

by Unseen Worlds) demonstrate the delicate yet dramatic touch

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Landry brings to the table. “Fifteen Saxophones” takes the form of a locust swarm, small arpeggios emerging out of a synergistic hum, growing and receding with ominous mass as it proceeds. It is one man and a horn becoming a choir, resembling both Gabrieli’s antiphonal music and Ligeti’s portentous choral pieces that lent 2001: A Space Odyssey its existential anxiety.

“Alto Flute Quad Delay” bares Landry’s processes a little, but has no less an impact. Landry plays against himself through a Revox tape delay; at times it resembles the slow-cloud soundscapes of Brian Eno’s ambient work (which this album predates) while retaining the angelic cathedral paeans. One can picture Landry going from microphone to microphone around the room to create these layers as a modern music version of visiting the Stations of the Cross.

It is in the extended “Kitchen Solos” where this album finds its stride. The literally and metaphorically self-reflective environment of the delay system gives Landry a live pedestal on which to sculpt a three-dimensional portrait of the times. Drones interact with the ecstatic lyricism of Coltrane and Parker, occasionally bending toward the fiery cries of free jazz happening in New York City lofts around that time, and then receding into the architectural music of the minimalists, where the true nature of a sound is revealed through repetition.

Landry lives now on his farm in Cecilia and has since reembraced his Louisiana roots, playing sax in the swamp pop supergroup Lil’ Band o’ Gold while exhibiting his artwork in New York and collaborating with famed choreographer Robert Wilson, (Landry worked on Wilson’s massive “1433” in Taipei last year) continually demonstrating like he does on Fifteen Saxophones that a person’s art is not dictated by a style or a place or a time period, but rather is a result of how far and in what direction that person is willing to push it.

—Alex V. Cook www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS

The Help Keep the Beat (The Help) What much of 1980s nostalgia fails to acknowledge is that there was more to new wave than funny clothes and synthesizers. New wave was, in ways, a means of creating rock stars out of ourselves, a means for misfits to meet pop music and punk rock halfway. The Cold was

New Orleans’ embodiment of that aesthetic with frontwoman Barbara Menedez a whirlwind of blond hair and lust for life. Three decades later, her new band the Help picks up that frayed thread on their debut Keep the Beat. The title track busts out of the speakers like a sudden swarm of skateboarders invading a mall food court, rebelliously playful, not wanting to seduce you but “knock you into my arms.”

Throughout the album, the Help mines the full spectrum the great music of the era had to offer. “I’m Gonna Make You Mine” is a dead ringer for the (English) Beat’s intricate post-calypso hormonal framework.

“I’m Not Listening” could be an outtake from Blondie’s first record before Debbie Harry realized her vision of becoming a pop ingénue, when she came off as the cool girl in the gang. “I’ve Fallen” is an organ-

Me and Dennis McGee Dennis McGee Himself (Valcour) Dennis McGee (1893-1989) is perhaps Cajun music’s most influential fiddler, an early recording pioneer who contributed a sizable repertoire that illustrated what pre-20thCentury Cajun music was like prior to the advent of the accordion. Between 1929 and 1934, he recorded what would become standards, most notably with legendary Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin and longtime fellow fiddler Sady Courville.

Later in life, a number of folklorists and musicians visited him where he was often “recorded” but not quite at the quality of this field recording made by French folklorist Gérard Dôle in 1975.

Over the course of 33 tracks and 41 minutes, McGee plays sans accompaniment and converses only in French. The session mostly focuses on the oldest dance tunes that McGee could remember, 19th-Century ballroom dances that were prevalent in both Europe and the United States, which have long been extinct in Louisiana. McGee gladly complies, fiddling an impassioned host of reels, waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, contredanses and others, dispelling any notion that Cajun dancing has always consisted solely of two-steps and waltzes. One dance, a ‘galop,’ emanated from the cotillion and resembles a jig, while another, “Ballot,” where everyone waddled, must have been fun. Though the liner notes are fairly academic, Dôle does a beautiful job of linking the common dances between the continents, explaining their origins and evolution. No doubt this will give budding fiddlers another source to devour McGee tunes in the years to come and possibly assist in the revival efforts of their respective dances. For a translated transcription of the interview, visit ValcourRecords.com.

—Dan Willging www.OFFBEAT.com

infused vamp where Menendez regales the small-scale drama of a bar scrap: “You slam that drinking glass / You said I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Menendez and crew have all the new wave strategies down, rocking up a reggae tune (the Slickers’ “Johnny Too Bad” from The Harder They Come with DC Harbold taking the vocals) or, like on “Carnivore’s Kiss” (the album’s most idiosyncratic track and its finest moment), filling the corners of a song with washes of spindly noise, maintaining that tension that gives a new wave song its strength. “True Love” raves up like X or the Buzzcocks and the closing number “Not Enough” is positively pogo-ready. Like the rest of the songs on Keep the Beat, they’re less a rehash of nostalgia clichés than a rallying cry for those that were there the first time around and new converts, synthesizers and popped collars at the ready.

—Alex V. Cook

suits him well. He gets guest spots from Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Susan Cowsill, but they fit seamlessly into his songs, perhaps because they’re pop purists too.

—Alex Rawls

Albert King The Definitive Albert King on Stax (Stax)

The very first blues album I ever purchased was Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign. Forty-two-years later, I still have it and play it. It’s been through three years at a distant college, a move here from Canada, a divorce and Katrina. That album is on the same podium with Bobby “Blue” Bland’s Two Steps from the Blues and The Best of Muddy Waters. This two-CD reissue contains several tracks from that album and so much more.

The album opens with a ringer, “Don’t Throw Your Love on Me So Strong,” a song that predates King’s Stax tenure, but was his first hit from 1961. Most of the best tracks Joe Adragna from Born Under a Bad Sign (the Fall Back first Stax album) are represented, (Greenleaves Sound) including the brilliant “Laundromat Joe Adragna’s a pop purist. As the Blues,” “Crosscut Saw” and the title track. On these recordings, King was Junior League, he embraced pop’s capably backed by Booker T. and the exuberance as well as the craft that MGs and the Memphis Horns, but makes great songs. On Fall Back, the energy’s dialed down and the mood’s what made these recordings stand a little autumnal, but his affection for out was King’s unconventional guitar a beautiful song is clear, as is his desire playing—he played a right-handed guitar left-handed—and he always to make pop that stays with you for sounded pissed off. While the 1970s more than the three minutes most brought about drastic changes in of his songs take to say their piece. music, King stuck with what worked Sometimes it’s a chorus that catches for him. you—the Byrds-like “You’re Gonna There are several covers here on Die Alone,” which doesn’t celebrate disc but they’re done King’s way, that knowledge—a melody you’d like to move into (“Ladders”) or a line and the album includes his Stax that draws you into the song (“I don’t Christmas classic “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’,” which was recently mind drinking until I’m hollow,” for covered on an episode of Treme. If example, in “Far Away”). you want to hear some of the best Beyond his craft, Adragna’s blues from the 1960s and 1970s, be strength is his voice. He doesn’t on the lookout for this one. show a lot of range on Fall Back, —Jeff Hannusch but he doesn’t need to. The warm naturalness of his voice makes his songs sound personal—less like Les Amies Louisianaises performances and more like things Le P’tit Chevrolet he was thinking about set to four(Musique Acadienne) four time. He plays most of the instruments and would benefit from The debate over of what is and a more agile rhythm section, but is not traditional Cajun music will being a one-man band generally likely rage on until judgment day, JUN E 2011

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REVIEWS

The Book of Dave Various Artists The Big Beat: The Dave Bartholomew Songbook (Ace) Initially, this one blew me away, but this could have been so much better. There’s no way to understate Dave Bartholomew’s contribution to popular music, so many musicians are included to demonstrate the breadth of his influence. Local favorites are naturally included. Smiley, Fats, Bobby Mitchell, Roy Brown, the Pelicans, as well as Shirley and Lee are in the mix. Dave’s original version of “My Ding-A-Ling” and the still mind-boggling “The Monkey,” are included.

Of the “outsiders,” Buddy Holly’s version of “Valley of Tears” is actually better than Fats’ original, and Johnny Burnette tears up “All By Myself.” Elvis’ treatment of “Witchcraft” is over-the-top and the Upsetters’ (actually Little Richard’s) version of “Every Night About This Time” is stunning. Even Brenda Lee doing “Walking to New Orleans” is a head-turner.

Being a UK release, this album’s got a British slant to it. Unfortunately, there are some simply dreadful tracks included by Englishmen, the exception being Dave Edmunds’ 1970 romp with “I Hear You Knockin’,” which still rocks the house. But sub-par tracks at the expense of, say, Billy Tate’s “Single Life,” “Certain Door” (by Smiley or Snooks) or Al Robinson’s “They Said It Couldn’t be Done,” makes no sense at all.

Oddly, at least four songs here weren’t written at all by Bartholomew, further muting the celebration. Still, there’s a lot to like here, and this is a fine tribute to the most important New Orleans musician/writer/producer ever.

—Jeff Hannusch but credit Les Amies Louisianaises for putting a fresh spin on things.

Unlike most groups that revolve around the accordion-fiddle axis, the Lake Charles-based women’s group is instead a quartet of vocalists who’ve perfected a signature style of tight harmonies. Since they are an outcropping of a church choir, their initial focus was a sacred one that makes for an interesting contrast given its recent foray into the secular world of dancehall Cajun.

With a crack studio squadron led by multi-instrumentalist/producer Chris Miller, Les Amies Louisianaises achieves a delicate blend of resounding, breathtaking vocals with rock-solid dancehall arrangements.

The intro to “La Porte D’en Arrière” is particularly inventive; the first verse is rendered a cappella before the band kicks in on the second. Also featured are several originals, including Janet Aguillard’s “Combien de Temps, Seigneur?” a spiritual that’s shrouded in sorrow. Jeannette Aguillard’s

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“Espère-Moi, Je Vas Revenir” concludes with an unexpected twist, hence an indication of budding songwriting. A refreshing alternative to a folk genre that has historically been rigid in definition.

—Dan Willging

Alexis Marceaux Orange Moon (Independent) With Orange Moon, Alexis Marceaux takes an ambitious leap as a solo artist: stepping out of the prosaic, singer-songwriter nest of her capable 2009 debut, Dandelion, into the daring, cinematic skies of indie folk. The album, which she dedicates to the memory of a friend lost to cancer, is a lush, emotionally charged, suite with a distinct New Orleans imprint.

“So strong, like the nightlife, like the moonlight, like the moon, rise, so bright,” she cries in opener “Leila and the Orange Moon,” as the

vulnerable, string-swathed lament is swept up into an arresting, brass band vigil. Marceaux and bandmate Sam Craft (Glasgow) share the disc’s production duties, which involve wrangling over two-dozen New Orleans-based musicians, including Susan Cowsill, Big Sam, the New Orleans Bingo! Show’s Clint Maedgen, and indie rockers Sun Hotel.

Credit engineer Rick G. Nelson’s (The Polyphonic Spree) savvy mixes for shading Orange Moon’s intricate layers, especially on the wistful “Stars” and the quizzical “Brains.” Credit Marceaux and Craft for clinging to their strengths without caving to their eccentricities.

Marceaux’s imaginative lyrics and bewitching personality color the album’s brightest moments, so right when the lounging bossa-pop of “Only One Basket” gets a bit too cozy she quips, “Don’t get all Carole King on me!” On the snarky closer, “Wishing Well,” a condemnation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill told from the perspective of a bird, she chirps atop a rising, Arcade Fire-esque chorus, “The wind is at my back,” only to snicker, “and you suckers will be lucky if I ever come back.” If Orange Moon is a sign of what’s on the horizon, there’s no telling how far this adventurous young songbird will fly.

—Aaron LaFont

Conun Pappas, Jr. The Other Side of Me (Independent) Pianist Conun Pappas, Jr.’s second album, The Other Side of Me, is filled with loneliness, despair, isolation, and Auto-Tune—lots of Auto-Tune—and just about every other lo-fi, processed effect imaginable. It’s also about as far removed from the elegant jazz found on his 2010 debut, Oh, What a Feeling, as imaginable. Here, over the course of a dozen tunes, Pappas spills his broken (Auto-Tuned) heart across layers of detached atmospherics and soulless (modern) R&B clichés. In many ways, Pappas’ latest bears similarities to Kanye West’s musical meltdown 808s & Heartbreaks—except that Pappas’ misery wasn’t brought on by the trappings of his own fame.

As bleak as it is bold, as fragile as it is fearless, and as pitiful as it is profound, a bitter believability arises out of Pappas’ melancholy loathing. His pained confessions reveal a struggle to sever ties with an ex he just can’t seem to let go of. In the twisted club jam “Typical Radio Song,” he appears to have it all figured out, but he slips up again in the slinky lounge jazz of “Do Yo Dance.”

Backed by drummer Joe Dyson and bassist Max Moran (Pappas’ partners in the Bridge Trio) as well as guitarist Cliff Hines, the music on The Other Side of Me shades the disc’s sonic and emotional palette, giving depth to its despondent underpinnings. Still, despite moving passages, intriguing textures, and incendiary solos, other cuts bog down in their laboriousness.

Written, produced, mixed, and mastered by Pappas himself, The Other Side of Me is, if flawed, a fascinating 12-step program.

—Aaron LaFont

Lil Pookie & the Zydeco Sensations Just Want to be Me (Maison de Soul) Lil Pookie’s first release in more than a decade not only represents the comeback of a former child prodigy but a renewed sense of vigor for a talented front man. Pookie essentially is the Sensations—he wrote all 15 songs, tracked all vocals and played all instruments while temporarily living in the Bay Area. The only other contributor is producer Andre Thierry, a West Coast zydeco monster in his own right, who knocked out the searing guitar licks. The result is a tight, modern zydeco record that’s 100 percent dance-oriented without straying into rap, hip-hop or contemporary R&B. Those sounds do influence Pookie, though. He references “the club” (“Teddy’s Club”) and includes DJ voiceovers, and he’s attentive to the textural and sonic densities of the tracks. The pace is consistently aggressive, but the music varies texturally when he alternates punchy, single-row and gliding triple-row accordions. A fashionable comeback to say the least.

—Dan Willging www.OFFBEAT.com

When you’re out, text the word ‘offbeat’ to 33669 for daily listings. For complete listings, go to www.offbeat.com

Listings

EXPRESS

Here are OffBeat’s highlights of music and entertainment in New Orleans and the surrounding area for the current month. Each day’s events are listed in alphabetical order by club or venue. Listings are compiled based on information provided by clubs, bands and promoters up to our deadlines. Unfortunately, some information was not available at press time and listings are subject to change.

Special events, concerts, festivals and theater listings follow the daily listings. For up-to-theminute, complete music listings, check OffBeat’s web page at www.offbeat.com. For more details on a show, call the club directly. Phone numbers of clubs are shown in this section and/or at www.offbeat.com.

To include your date or event, please email information to our listings editor, Craig Guillot at craigguillot@offbeat.com or call 504-944-4300.

Mr. Guillot can also provide listing deadlines for upcoming issues.

AC AU BL BU BB SH KJ KS CL CO CW DN DX FE FK GS IR IN MJ TJ JV KO LT ME PK PP PU RG RH RB RR RY RO SI SW TC VO ZY

A Cappella Acoustic Blues Bluegrass Brass Band Cabaret/Show Cajun Christian Classical Comedy Country Dance Dixieland Folk Funk Gospel Indie Rock International/World Jazz, Contemporary Jazz, Trad Jazz, Variety Karaoke Latin Metal Piano/Keyboards Pop/Top 40/Covers Punk Reggae Rap/Hip Hop Rhythm & Blues Rock Rockabilly Roots Rock Swing/Gypsy Spoken Word Techno/Dance/Electronica Vocals Zydeco

SMOKE-FREE SHOW

WEDNESDAY JUNE 1

AllWays Lounge: Jason Webley (IR) 10p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Dave Gregg and the Odd Man Band (BL) 8p, Mike Darby and the House of Cards (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: United Postal Project (JV) 8p, Gravity A with guests (FK) 11p BMC: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Blues4Sale (BL) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: call club (RR) 8p

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d.b.a.: Tin Men (RR) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf: Front Line Assembly, Die Krupps, Cyanotic, DJ Acucrack (TC) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Sasha Masakowski (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FE) 9p Lafayette Square: Wednesday at the Square feat. Eric Lindell, the Revivalists (RR) 5p Maison: Raekwon (RH) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Jeff “Guitar” Nelson (BL) 10p Margaritaville: Lisa Lynn (OR) 3p, Joe Bennett (RR) 6p, Andy J Forest (BL) 9p Mojitos: Monica McIntyre (OR) 6p, 19th Street Red (OR) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Palm Court Jazz Band with Tom Sancton (JV) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Johnny J and the Hitmen (RR) 8:30p Rusty Nail: Jenn Howard’s Jazz Set (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Loose Marbles (JV) 7p Tropical Isle: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY JUNE 2

AllWays Lounge: Defibulators (IR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, John William (BL) 8p, Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy’s Bayou International (RG) 10p BMC: Ramblin’ Letters (OR) 6p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Social Dance with Smoking Time Jazz Club (SI JV) 8p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Roman Skakun (JV) 5p, Shamarr Allen (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Dave James and Tim Robertson (FE) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: the Trio with Johnny Vidacovich (JV) 10p Margaritaville: Beth Patterson (FE) 3p, Colin Lake (BL) 6p, Captain Leo (RR) 9p Mojitos: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (BL) 9:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: After Hours feat. Renard Poché Band (FK) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Crescent City Joymakers (JV) 7p Rivershack Tavern: Mike Rinner (OR) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Geno Delafose (ZY) 8:30p Rusty Nail: John Boutte (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Spencer Bohren (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Jayna Morgan (JV) 7:30p Tropical Isle: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 9p Vaughan’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 8:30p

FRIDAY JUNE 3

AllWays Lounge: Books for Prisoners Fundraiser feat. Meschiya Lake (JV) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Bobby Ellis (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Rick Westin (BL) 8p, Mike Hood (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mykia Jovan and Jason Butler (JV) 8p, Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 11p; Balcony Room: DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 12a BMC: Moonshine and Caroline (OR) 7p, Soul Project (FK) 10p, One Mind Brass Band (BB) 12:30a Chickie Wah Wah: Paul Sanchez (FE) 8p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Lil’ Buck Sinegal (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Professor Piano Series feat.Tom McDermott (JV) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat.Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (FE) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (FE) 9p Maison: Some Like It Hot! (JV) 7p, Corporate America (OR) 10p, Yojimbo (JV) 12a

Maple Leaf Bar: Jake Eckert (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (BL) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 9p Mojitos: Jerry Jumonville (OR) 4p, Alex Bosworth (JV) 7p, Fredy Omar con su Banda (LT) 10:30p New Orleans Museum of Art: Where Y’Art feat. DJ Minor Strachan (TJ RR) 5:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Clive Wilson and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Rivershack Tavern: Refried Confusion (OR) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Mike Zito (BL RR) 9:30p Rusty Nail: Jenn Howard and Crazy McGee (JV) 10p Snug Harbor: Astral Project (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Raphael Bas (JV) 7p, Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Twilight Singers, Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s (RR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p UNO Lakefront Arena: R. Kelly (RB) 8p

SATURDAY JUNE 4

Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 8p Apple Barrel: Maxwell Eaton (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar and the Hipshakers (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p; Balcony Room: DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 1a BMC: New Orleans Jazz Series (JV) 3p, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 6:30p, Lynn Drury Band (FE) 9:30p, Ashton and the Big Easy Brawlers Brass Band (BB) 12:30a Buffa’s Lounge: Tim Paco and Company (JV) 8p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Lightnin’ Malcolm feat. Cameron Kimbrough (BL) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 1p, Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p House of Blues: Toots and the Maytals (RG) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Terranova (RR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Carl LeBlanc (JV) 8p, Kinfolk Brass Band (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule (FE) 5p, Rites of Passage (FE) 9p Maison: Kelcy Mae (AU) 5p, Ingrid Lucia (JV) 7p, DJ Jubilee (RH) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Col. Bruce Hampton (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 9p Mojitos: the Mumbles (OR) 12:30p, Kristina Morales (OR) 4p, Norbert Slama (OR) 7p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 10:30p One Eyed Jacks: Earthlings?, Masters of Reality (RR) 10p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lionel Ferbos and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Storyville String Band feat. Seva Venet (TJ) 8p Rivershack Tavern: Rock-Soul (RR) 10p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: the Wise Guys (KJ) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Chris Thomas King (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Steven Walker (JV) 7p, Frenchmen St. Jug Band (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Koan’s CD-release party, DJ Skratchmo and Sean C, Billsbury Flow (RH) 10p Tropical Isle: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 1p, T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Jimmy Thibodeaux (OR) 9p

SUNDAY JUNE 5

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne and Blood from a Stone (BL) 8p, Johnny J and Benny Maygarden (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mainline (BB) 10p BMC: Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 1p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 7p, Andy J Forest (OR) 10p Buffa’s Lounge: Some Like It Hot! (JV) 11a, Treme Screening Party feat. Tom McDermott (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Mas Mamones (LT JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (JV) 7p Maison: Dave Easley (JV) 6p, Low-Stress Quintet (JV) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Joe Krown Trio with Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (JV BL) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 3p, Cindy Chen (RR RB) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Mojitos: Tom McDermott and Kevin Clark (JV) 11a, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 5p, Javier Olondo and Asheson (LT) 8p

Rock ‘n’ Bowl: American Cancer Fundraiser feat. Bucktown All-Stars (RR) 2p Snug Harbor: Don Vappie Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Rights of Swing (JV) 3p, Kristina Morales (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Sarah Quintana (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

MONDAY JUNE 6

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Sam Camaratta (BL) 8p, Shotgun House (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Big Pearl and the Fugitives of Funk (FK) 9p BMC: Fun in the Pocket feat. Mayumi Shara (OR) 5p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (BL) 9:30p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Pat Catania (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 4:30p, Jason Bishop (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Truman Holland (FE) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Rivershack Tavern: Dave Jordan (BL) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 9p

TUESDAY JUNE 7

Apple Barrel: Darell at the Barrel (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne and Blood from a Stone (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz and Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Balcony Room: Helen Gillet CD-release party (JV) 10p BMC: Willie C. Stebon (OR) 6p, Royal Rounders (JV) 8:30p, Lagniappe Brass Band (BB) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Grayson Capps (RR) 8p d.b.a.: Young Pinstripe Brass Band (BB) 10p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Jason Marsalis (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic with Jason Bishop (FE) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Truman Holland (FE) 9p Mojitos: Dr. Bone and the Hepcats (OR) 6p, Eudora Evans and Deep Soul (OR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: UNO Jazz Ambassadors (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Smokin’ Time Jazz Club (JV) 6p, Davis Rogan Band (JV TJ) 10p Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Two Fools on Stools (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Jay B. Elston Band (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY JUNE 8

Apple Barrel: call club 4p, Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, John William (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: United Postal Project (JV) 8p, Gravity A with guests (FK) 11p BMC: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Blues4Sale (BL) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Tom McDermott (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 6p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p House of Blues: Matt and Kim, the Thermals, Autobot from Flosstradamus (PP RR) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Sasha Masakowski (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FE) 9p Lafayette Square: Wednesday at the Square feat. Galactic, Marc Stone (FK) 5p Little Tropical Isle: call club (OR) 4:30 & 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Jeff “Guitar” Nelson (BL) 10p Margaritaville: Lisa Lynn (OR) 3p, Joe Bennett (RR) 6p, Andy J Forest (BL) 9p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Mojitos: Maryflynn and the Prohibition Blues (BL) 6p, 19th Street Red (OR) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Palm Court Jazz Band with Tom Sancton (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall’s 50th Anniversary feat.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band and special guests (TJ) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Johnny Angel (RR) 8:30p Rusty Nail: Jenn Howard’s Jazz Set (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Schatzy (JV) 7p Tropical Isle: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY JUNE 9

AllWays Lounge: Craig Paddock (RR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, John William (BL) 8p, Andre Bouvier and the Bohemians (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy’s Bayou International (RG) 10p BMC: Ramblin’ Letters (OR) 6p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Social Dance with Smoking Time Jazz Club (SI JV) 8p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Roman Skakun (JV) 5p, Shamarr Allen (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Fidgety Rabbit with Beth Patterson (FE) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: the Trio with Johnny Vidacovich (JV) 10p Margaritaville: Beth Patterson (FE) 3p, Colin Lake (BL) 6p, Captain Leo (RR) 9p Mojitos: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (BL) 9:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: After Hours feat. Sarah Quintana (JV) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Leroy Jones and Katja Toivola with Crescent City Joymakers (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Survivors Brass Band feat. Jeffrey Hills (BB) 8p Republic New Orleans: Bounce VI feat. Big Freedia, Sissy Nobby, DJ Jubilee, Ricky B, Katey Red, Rusty Lazer, FlyBoy Keno, Nicky Da B (RH) 10p Rivershack Tavern: Johnny T. and Claire Aubrey (OR) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Leon Chavis (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Ottorino Galli (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7:30p Tipitina’s: Radiators Last Round-Up Farewell Tour (RR) 11p Tropical Isle: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

FRIDAY JUNE 10

AllWays Lounge: Sun Hotel (IR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Bobby Ellis (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Rick Westin (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar and the Hipshakers (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mykia Jovan and Jason Butler (JV) 8p, Brass-A-Holics with Dr. Gonzeaux (BB) 10p; Balcony Room: Subliminal Holistics (RG) 10p, DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 12a BMC: Moonshine and Caroline (OR) 7p, Soul Project (FK) 10p, One Mind Brass Band (BB) 12:30a Chickie Wah Wah: Creole String Beans (RB) 8p d.b.a.: call club 6p, Lost Bayou Ramblers (KJ) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf: the Sky Walkas, Gus, Southern Hard Hittaz, Nectune Ins. (RH) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Professor Piano Series feat. Joe Krown (JV) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat.Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Foot and Friends (FE) 5p, call club 9p Little Tropical Isle: Dwight Breland (OR) 4:30p, call club (OR) 9p Maison: Pinettes Brass Band (BB) 10p, Doombalaya (OR) 12a Maple Leaf Bar: Bacon and Ramblin’ Letters (BU) 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (BL) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6 & 9p Mojitos: Jerry Jumonville (OR) 4p, Alex Bosworth (JV) 7p, Fredy Omar con su Banda (LT) 10:30p New Orleans Museum of Art: Where Y’Art feat. Five Kings Music (RH) 5:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Clive Wilson and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 8p Ritz-Carlton (Davenport Lounge): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 9p Rivershack Tavern: Refried Confusion (OR) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue (CW) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Mose Allison with Johnny Vidacovich and James Singleton (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 6:30p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Cristina Perez (JV) 7p, Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Radiators Last Round-Up Farewell Tour (RR) 11p Tropical Isle: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Jay B. Elston Band (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 1p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 5p, Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 9p

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Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY JUNE 11

AllWays Lounge: Madeline, the Lovey Dovies (RR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 8p Apple Barrel: Maxwell Eaton (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar and the Hipshakers (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p, Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p; Balcony Room: DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 1a BMC: New Orleans Jazz Series (JV) 3p, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 6:30p, the Revealers (OR) 9:30p, Ashton and the Big Easy Brawlers Brass Band (OR) 12:30a Buffa’s Lounge: Tim Paco and Company (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Roddie Romero and the Hub City All-Stars (KJ ZY) 10p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Little Freddie King (BL) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 1p, Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Jaz Sawyer and the Crescent All-Stars (JV) 8p, Brass-A-Holics (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury (FE) 5p, Speed the Mule (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (OR) 4:30p, call club (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes (RR FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6 & 9p Mojitos: the Mumbles (OR) 12:30p, Kristina Morales (OR) 4p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 7p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 10:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lionel Ferbos and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Pontchartrain Vineyards: Javier Guttierez and Vivaz (LT JV) 6:30p Rivershack Tavern: the Refugeze (OR) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Deacon John and the Ivories (RB BL) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Mose Allison with Johnny Vidacovich and James Singleton (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses:Young Spodie (JV) 7p, Frenchmen St. Jug Band (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Radiators Last Round-Up Farewell Tour (RR) 11p Tropical Isle: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 1p, Jimmy Thibodeaux (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

SUNDAY JUNE 12

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne and Blood from a Stone (BL) 8p, Dave Gregg and the Odd Man Band (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mainline (BB) 10p; Balcony Room: Voices of New Orleans Songwriters Night and Open Mic (SS) 7p BMC: Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 1p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 7p, Andy J Forest (OR) 9:30p Buffa’s Lounge: Some Like It Hot! (JV) 11a, Treme Screening Party feat. musicians from show (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Louisiana Hellbenders (FE RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: call club 8p, Traditional Irish Session (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (OR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (OR) 9p Maison: Cristina Perez (JV) 7p, Refried Confuzion (FK) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Joe Krown Trio with Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (JV BL) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 3p, Cindy Chen (RR RB) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Mojitos: Tom McDermott and Kevin Clark (JV) 11a, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 5p, Javier Olondo and Asheson (LT) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lucien Barbarin and Sunday Night Swingsters (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: James Singleton and the Illuminasti Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

MONDAY JUNE 13

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Sam Camaratta (BL) 8p, 19th Street Red (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Big Pearl and the Fugitives of Funk (FK) 9p BMC: Fun in the Pocket feat. Mayumi Shara (OR) 5p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Jon Cleary (FK) 8p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Schatzy and friends (FE) 8p Maple Leaf Bar: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Truman Holland (FE) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p One Eyed Jacks: Noah and the Whale, Bahamas (RR) 10p

Preservation Hall: St. Peter Street Playboys feat. Mark Braud (TJ) 8p Rivershack Tavern: Dave Jordan (BL) 7p Siberia: Holy Dirt, Embolization, Life Erased (MT) 10p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 9p

TUESDAY JUNE 14

Apple Barrel: Darell at the Barrel (BL) 4p, Luke Winslow-King (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz and Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Alford/Morrow/Cappello (JV) 10p BMC: Willie C. Stebon (OR) 6p, Royal Rounders (OR) 8:30p, Lagniappe Brass Band (BB) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Trevor Reichman (FE) 6p, Grayson Capps (RR) 8p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Jason Marsalis (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic with Jason Bishop (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 4:30p, Chip Wilson (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Truman Holland (FE) 9p Mojitos: Dr. Bone and the Hepcats (OR) 6p, Lagniappe Brass Band (BB) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Mark Growden and his New Orleans Band (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Two Fools on Stools (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Jay B. Elston Band (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY JUNE 15

Apple Barrel: call club 4p, Dave Gregg and the Odd Man Band (BL) 8p, Shotgun House (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: United Postal Project (JV) 8p, Gravity A with guests (FK) 11p BMC: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Blues4Sale (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Tom McDermott (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RR) 7p, Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): George Prentice (RR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Sasha Masakowski (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FE) 9p Lafayette Square: Wednesday at the Square feat. Cyril Neville and Monk Boudreaux, Gravy (FK) 5p Little Tropical Isle: call club (OR) 4:30 & 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Jeff “Guitar” Nelson (BL) 10p Margaritaville: Lisa Lynn (OR) 3p, Joe Bennett (RR) 6p, Andy J Forest (BL) 9p Mojitos: Monica McIntyre (OR) 6p, Lantana Combo (OR) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat. Mark Braud (TJ) 8p Rivershack Tavern: Brandon Foret Band (OR) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Joe Krown (BL FK) 8:30p Rusty Nail: Jenn Howard’s Jazz Set (JV) 8p Siberia: the Show is the Rainbow (IR) 10p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Jayna Morgan (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Bootsy Collins (FK) 9p Tropical Isle: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY JUNE 16

AllWays Lounge: Really Olde Airplanes (RR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, John William (BL) 8p, Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy’s Bayou International (RG) 10p BMC: Ramblin’ Letters (OR) 6p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Social Dance with Smoking Time Jazz Club (SI JV) 8p d.b.a.: Jake Eckert Band (RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Roman Skakun (JV) 5p, Shamarr Allen (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Quite Contrary (FE) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Little Tropical Isle: Al Hebert (OR) 4:30p, call club (OR) 9p Maison: Influencia de Jazz (JV) 7p Maple Leaf Bar: the Trio with Johnny Vidacovich (JV) 10p Margaritaville: Beth Patterson (FE) 3p, Colin Lake (BL) 6p, Captain Leo (RR) 9p Mojitos: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (BL) 9:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: After Hours feat. New Orleans Moonshiners (JV) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Otis Bazoon with Crescent City Joymakers (JV) 7p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Preservation Hall: Paulin Brothers Brass Band feat. Dwayne Paulin (BB) 8p Rivershack Tavern: Truman Holland (OR) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Ed Petersen and the Test CD-release party (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, New Orleans Moonshiners (JV) 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7:30p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 5p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

FRIDAY JUNE 17

Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Bobby Ellis (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Rick Westin (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar and the Hipshakers (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mykia Jovan and Jason Butler (JV) 8p, Soul Rebels (BB) 10p; Balcony Room: Bottoms Up Blues Gang (BL) 9p, DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 12a BMC: Moonshine and Caroline (OR) 7p, Soul Project (OR) 10p; One Mind Brass Band (BB) 1a Chickie Wah Wah: Paul Sanchez (FE) 8p, Ray Bonneville (BL) 10p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Grayson Capps (RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Historic New Orleans Collection: Concerts in the Courtyard feat.

Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots (BL) 6p House of Blues (The Parish): Nicole Atkins and the Black Sea (IR) 9:30p Howlin’ Wolf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): the Tangle (RR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Professor Piano Series feat.Tom Worrell (JV) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat.Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (FE) 5p, Ghost Town (FE) 9p Maison: Kristina Morales (JV) 7p, Dirty Bourbon River Show, Blair Crimmins and the Hookers, Megan Jean and the KFB (BL RR) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Gravy (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (BL) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6 & 9p Masquerade at Harrah’s: DJ Rob Nice (TC) 10p Mojitos: Jerry Jumonville (OR) 4p, Alex Bosworth (JV) 7p, Fredy Omar con su Banda (LT) 10:30p New Orleans Museum of Art: Where Y’Art feat. Kora Konnection with Morikeba Kouyate and Thierno Dioubate (IN) 5:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Clive Wilson and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat. Leroy Jones (TJ) 8p Ritz-Carlton (Davenport Lounge): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 9p Rivershack Tavern: Refried Confusion (OR) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Glen David Andrews, Mia Borders (JV) 9:30p Rusty Nail: Country Fried (RR) 10p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Raphael Bas (JV) 7p, Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue (CW) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY JUNE 18

AllWays Lounge: MC Sweet Tea and da Tastee Hotz (RH) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 8p Apple Barrel: Maxwell Eaton (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar and the Hipshakers (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p, Brass-A-Holics (BB) 10p; Balcony Room: DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 1a BMC: New Orleans Jazz Series (JV) 3p, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (OR) 6:30p, Mainline (BB) 9:30p, Ashton and the Big Easy Brawlers Brass Band (OR) 12:30a Buffa’s Lounge: Tim Paco and Company (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Mem Shannon and the Membership (BL) 10p d.b.a.: Otra (LT JV) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 1p, Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf: Birdfinger’s 2001 Class Reunion (IR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: James Andrews (JV) 8p, Kinfolk Brass Band (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: call club 5p, Rites of Passage (FE) 9p Maison: Ramblin’ Letters (OR) 5p, Soul Project (FK) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Khris Royal and Dark Matter (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 9p Mojitos: the Mumbles (OR) 12:30p, Kristina Morales (OR) 4p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 7p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 10:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lionel Ferbos and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: 727 Jazz Band feat. William Smith (TJ) 8p Rivershack Tavern: the Kingtones (OR) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 9:30p Rusty Nail: Colin Lake (JV) 10p Snug Harbor: Vernel Bagneris and Orange Kellin’s Blue Serenaders (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Steven Walker (JV) 7p, Frenchmen St. Jug Band (JV) 10p Tropical Isle: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Island Fever Band (OR) 9p

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Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

SUNDAY JUNE 19

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne and Blood from a Stone (BL) 8p,Andre Bouvier and the Bohemians (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mainline (BB) 10p BMC: Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 1p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 7p, Andy J Forest (OR) 10p Buffa’s Lounge: Some Like It Hot! (JV) 11a, Treme Screening Party feat. musicians from show (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Marc Stone Band (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Fidgety Rabbit with Beth Patterson (FE) 8p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (OR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Joe Krown Trio with Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (JV BL) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 3p, Cindy Chen (RR RB) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Mojitos: Tom McDermott and Kevin Clark (JV) 11a, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 5p, Javier Olondo and Asheson (LT) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lucien Barbarin and Sunday Night Swingsters (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: St. Peter Street All-Stars feat. Lars Edegran (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Betty Shirley with Chuck Chaplin Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 1p, T’Canaille (OR) 5p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

MONDAY JUNE 20

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Sam Camaratta (BL) 8p, Ready Teddy and the All-Star Band (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Big Pearl and the Fugitives of Funk (FK) 9p BMC: Fun in the Pocket feat. Mayumi Shara (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Jon Cleary (FK) 8p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Accordion Babes (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 4:30p, Jason Bishop (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Truman Holland (FE) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Rivershack Tavern: Dave Jordan (BL) 7p Snug Harbor: Les Getrex ‘n Creole Cooking (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 10p Tropical Isle: Captain Leo (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 9p

TUESDAY JUNE 21

AllWays Lounge: the Low End (RR) 10p Apple Barrel: Darell at the Barrel (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne and Blood from a Stone (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz and Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Balcony Room: Brad Walker (JV) 10p BMC: Willie C. Stebon (OR) 6p, Royal Rounders (OR) 8:30p, Lagniappe Brass Band (BB) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Grayson Capps (RR) 8p d.b.a.: call club Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Bill Summers (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic with Jason Bishop (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 4:30p, Chip Wilson (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Truman Holland (FE) 9p Mojitos: John Michael Bradford (OR) 6p, Eudora Evans and Deep Soul (OR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Phil DeGruy and Cloud Sharp Nine (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Smokin’ Time Jazz Club (JV) 6p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV TJ) 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Two Fools on Stools (OR) 1p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Jay B. Elston Band (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY JUNE 22

Algiers Ferry Terminal: “Wednesdays on the Point” feat. Glen David Andrews, Sasha Masakowski (FK JV) 6p Apple Barrel: call club 4p, Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Ivoire Spectacle (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: United Postal Project (JV) 8p, the Mumbles CD-release party (JV) 10p; Balcony Room: Gravity A with guests (FK) 11p BMC: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Blues4Sale (BL) 9:30p

Bombay Club: Marlon Jordan Jazz Trio (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: call club d.b.a.: Tin Men (RR) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 9p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf: My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, 16 Volt, Twitch the Ripper (TC MT) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Kipori Woods (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: call club (OR) 4:30 & 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Roy Jay Band (BL) 10p Margaritaville: Lisa Lynn (OR) 3p, Joe Bennett (RR) 6p, Andy J Forest (BL) 9p Mojitos: Monica McIntyre (OR) 6p, Dr. Bone and the Hepcats (OR) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Jerry Embree (JV SI) 8:30p Rusty Nail: Jenn Howard’s Jazz Set (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, call club (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY JUNE 23

AllWays Lounge: Gantez Warrior (IR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, John William (BL) 8p, Mike Darby and the House of Cards (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy’s Bayou International (RG) 10p BMC: Ramblin’ Letters (OR) 6p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Social Dance with Smoking Time Jazz Club (SI JV) 8p d.b.a.: call club Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Roman Skakun (JV) 5p, Shamarr Allen (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Crescent City Celtic Band (FE) 8:30p Little Tropical Isle: Al Hebert (OR) 4:30p, call club (OR) 9p Maison: Influencia de Jazz (JV) 7p, Doombalaya (OR) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: the Trio with Johnny Vidacovich (JV) 10p Margaritaville: Beth Patterson (FE) 3p, Colin Lake (BL) 6p, Captain Leo (RR) 9p Mojitos: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (BL) 9:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: After Hours feat. Rotary Downs (RR) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Tim Laughlin with Crescent City Joymakers (JV) 7p Preservation Hall:Tornado Brass Band feat. Darryl Adams (BB) 8p Ritz-Carlton (Davenport Lounge): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 5:30p Rivershack Tavern: Brent and George (OR) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Chris Ardoin (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Treme Brass Band CD-release party (BB) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, New Orleans Moonshiners (JV) 10p Three Muses: Washboard Rodeo (JV) 7:30p Tropical Isle: call club (OR) 5 & 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p Vaughan’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 8:30p

FRIDAY JUNE 24

Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Bobby Ellis (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Rick Westin (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar and the Hipshakers (BL) 10:30p Big Top: Dancing Room Only feat. Maddie Ruthless, DJ Yamin and Dubla (RG SK) 10p Blue Nile: Mykia Jovan and Jason Butler (JV) 8p, Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 11p; Balcony Room: DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 12a BMC: Moonshine and Caroline (OR) 7p, Soul Project (OR) 10p, One Mind Brass Band (BB) 1a Chickie Wah Wah: Pfister Sisters (JV) 5:30p, Paul Sanchez (FE) 8p, Jimmy Robinson and Cranston Clements (RR) 10p d.b.a.: Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Iguanas (FK) 10p French Market: Sweet Jones, Flowtribe (OR) 4p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): All I Am, Divebomb (MT) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Professor Piano Series feat.

Joe Krown (JV) 5p, Little Freddie King (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Benjamin Zeus (FE) 5p, Foot and Friends (FE) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Dave Reis (PK) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Dwight Breland (OR) 4:30p, call club (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: call club 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (BL) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 9p Mojitos: Jerry Jumonville (OR) 4p, Alex Bosworth (JV) 7p, Fredy Omar con su Banda (LT) 10:30p New Orleans Museum of Art: Where Y’Art feat. Friendly Travelers (GS) 5:30p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Palm Court Jazz Café: Lucien Barbarin and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Rivershack Tavern: Refried Confusion (OR) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Beth McKee, the Help (AU PP RR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 6:30p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: call club (JV) 7p, Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Free Friday TBA 10p Tropical Isle: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Jay B. Elston Band (OR) 5p, the Prescriptions (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY JUNE 25

Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 8p Apple Barrel: Maxwell Eaton (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Andre Bouvier and the Bohemians (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes (RR FK) 10p; Balcony Room: DJ Real and Black Pearl (FK) 1a BMC: New Orleans Jazz Series (JV) 3p, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 6:30p, Eudora Evans and Deep Soul (JV) 9:30p, Ashton and the Big Easy Brawlers Brass Band (OR) 12:30a Buffa’s Lounge: Royal Rounders (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: call club 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Rotary Downs (RR) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 1p, Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p House of Blues: Psychedelic Furs (PP RR) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Joe Krown Swing Band (JV) 8p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam (JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Hurricane Refugees (FE) 5p, Invisible Cowboy Band (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (OR) 4:30p, call club (OR) 9p Maison: Josh Reppel (OR) 5p, Smokin’ Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p, Yojimbo (JV) 12a Maple Leaf Bar: Feed the Kitty (MJ) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 3p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 6p, Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 9p Mojitos: the Mumbles (OR) 12:30p, Kristina Morales (OR) 4p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 7p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 10:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lionel Ferbos and Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Pontchartrain Vineyards: Iguanas (FK) 6:30p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Swing Kings feat. Orange Kellin (TJ) 8p Rivershack Tavern: Mo Jelly (OR) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sgt. Pepper’s Beatles Tribute Band (RR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Topsy Chapman and Solid Harmony (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Kristina Morales (JV) 7p, Frenchmen St. Jug Band (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Generationals, Giant Cloud, Empress Hotel (RR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 1p, T’Canaille (OR) 5p, Jimmy Thibodeaux (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields Band (OR) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

SUNDAY JUNE 26

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne and Blood from a Stone (BL) 8p, Ivoire Spectacle (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Mainline (BB) 10p BMC: Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 1p, Dana Abbott Band (OR) 7p, Andy J Forest (OR) 10p Buffa’s Lounge: Some Like It Hot! (JV) 11a, Treme Screening Party feat. musicians from show (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Traditional Irish Session (FE) 5p, call club 8p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (OR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (OR) 9p Maison: Courtyard Kings (JV) 7p, Margie Perez (OR) 10p; Penthouse: DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p Maple Leaf Bar: Joe Krown Trio with Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (JV BL) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-Stars (RB) 3p, Cindy Chen (RR RB) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Mojitos: Tom McDermott and Kevin Clark (JV) 11a, Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 5p, Javier Olondo and Asheson (LT) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lucien Barbarin and Sunday Night Swingsters (JV) 7p Rivershack Tavern: Rivershack Anniversary Party feat. Broken Heart Pharoahs, the Meanies (OR) 2p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Landry Family Fundraiser feat. Wise Guys (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Humanization 4tet with Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Aurora Nealand (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, call club (OR) 5 & 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: T’Canaille (OR) 1p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p

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MONDAY JUNE 27

Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, Sam Camaratta (BL) 8p, Butch Trivette (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Big Pearl and the Fugitives of Funk (FK) 9p BMC: Fun in the Pocket feat. Mayumi Shara (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: call club 8p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Cori Walters and the Universe Jazz Band (DX) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Maple Leaf Bar: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Truman Holland (FE) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Ched Reeves (RR) 9p Rivershack Tavern: Dave Jordan (BL) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm and Rain (OR) 9p

TUESDAY JUNE 28

Apple Barrel: Darell at the Barrel (BL) 4p, Luke Winslow-King (BL) 8p, call club 10:30p

PLAN A: Guitar Wolf The only time I thought I was in the presence of superheroes was in the late ’90s at a Guitar Wolf show. The trio appeared suddenly on stage with a thunderclap coming from Drum Wolf on the risers. The late Bass Wolf stood stage left, sneering over a low, diesel-powered throb generated by his instrument while Guitar Wolf, halfman, half-manifestation of rock ‘n’ roll, crouched with his leather-clad back to the audience, combing his thick greaser locks with a switchblade comb.

Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Debbie and the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY JUNE 30

AllWays Lounge: James Justin Burke and Co. (RR) 10p Andrea’s Capri Blue Bar: Baby Ruth (PK) 5p Apple Barrel: John William (BL) 4p, John William (BL) 8p, Hellbenders (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy’s Bayou International (RG) 10p BMC: Ramblin’ Letters (OR) 6p, Charley and the Soulbillyswampboogie (OR) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Social Dance with Smoking Time Jazz Club (SI JV) 8p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett and the All-Purpose Blues Band (BL) 4p, Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Roman Skakun (JV) 5p, Shamarr Allen (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Andre Bouvier and the Bohemians (FE) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: the Trio with Johnny Vidacovich (JV) 10p Margaritaville: Beth Patterson (FE) 3p, Colin Lake (BL) 6p, Captain Leo (RR) 9p Mojitos: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Smoky Greenwell’s Blues Jam (BL) 9:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: After Hours feat. Gypsy Elise and the Royal Blues (BL) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Tim Laughlin with Crescent City Joymakers (JV) 7p Rivershack Tavern: Jason Scott (OR) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Geno Delafose (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Nicholas Sanders Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 4p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, New Orleans Moonshiners (JV) 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7:30p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton and Frank Fairbanks (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Late As Usual (OR) 9p

LOUISIANA MUSIC ON TOUR

Complete listings are available at OffBeat.com. OffBeat’s Weekly Beat email newsletter is free and offers weekly listings.

FESTIVALS JUNE 11-12 The Jazz and Heritage Foundation presents the fifth annual Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival at the Old U.S. Mint featuring live music, food vendors, a large crafts fair and more.

JazzAndHeritage.org/cajun-zydeco Blue Nile: Humanization 4tet (JV) 10p BMC: Willie C. Stebon (OR) 6p, Royal Rounders (OR) 8:30p, Lagniappe Brass Band (BB) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Grayson Capps (RR) 8p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Bill Summers (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic with Jason Bishop (FE) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 4:30p, Chip Wilson (OR) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 3p, Brint Anderson (BL) 6p, Truman Holland (FE) 9p Mojitos: John Michel Bradford (OR) 6p, Lagniappe Brass Band (BB) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Loren Pickford Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 5p, T’Canaille (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Two Fools on Stools (OR) 1p, Butch Fields Band (OR) 5p, Jay B. Elston Band (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY JUNE 29

Algiers Ferry Terminal: “Wednesday on the Point” feat. Luther Kent, the Mumbles (RB) 6p Apple Barrel: call club 4p, Dave Gregg and the Odd Man Band (BL) 8p, Ready Teddy and the All-Star Band (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: United Postal Project (JV) 8p, Gravity A with guests (FK) 11p BMC: Peter Novelli Band (OR) 6p, Blues4Sale (BL) 9:30p Chickie Wah Wah: call club d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Al Carson and the Blues Masters (BL) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Sasha Masakowski (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FE) 9p Maple Leaf Bar: Jeff “Guitar” Nelson and Daryl Hance (BL) 10p Margaritaville: Lisa Lynn (OR) 3p, Joe Bennett (RR) 6p, Andy J Forest (BL) 9p Mojitos: Monica McIntyre (OR) 6p, Eudora Evans and Deep Soul (OR) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat. Mark Braud (TJ) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Swing-A-Roux (SI) 8:30p Rusty Nail: Jenn Howard’s Jazz Set (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p

Demolition Doll Rods had performed topless during the first set and the Cramps were the evening’s headliner, so everyone was attuned for high camp, but this tableau vivant went on for minutes.

The band formed in Nagasaki in 1987 with the Ramones as a loose stencil, closing all the possible gaps to create a quarter-century of parody so tight it transcends its subject.

They’ve starred in their own movie Wild Zero and inspired a young Jack Oblivion to start Goner Records just to distribute Guitar Wolf music to the teen delinquents of America. The band has a new bassist who adopted his fallen comrade’s Bass Wolf sobriquet, continuing the power trio’s mission with 2010’s Uchusenkan Love (“Space Battleship Love”) I’m not sure what crime-fighting applications there are for Guitar Wolf’s superpower, but I knew when I saw them that we were securely protected by rock ‘n’ roll.

Guitar Wolf performs with King Louie’s Missing Monuments, Cheap Time and Hans Condor at Siberia on June 6. 10p.m. $13.—Alex V. Cook

JUNE 11-12 The Louisiana Seafood Festival features dozens of food vendors, demonstrations by top local chefs, live music and more. Louisiana State Museum and Old Mint.

LouisianaSeafoodFestival.org JUNE 11-12 The 25th annual French Market Creole Tomato Festival features food booths, live music, kids’ activities and food demos. FrenchMarket.org/events

SPECIAL EVENTS JUNE 5-10 The New Orleans Trad Jazz Camp for adults presents performances by the students throughout the week. To sign up visit the website. NewOrleansTradJazzCamp.com JUNE 10 The PRC presents its annual Ladies in Red gala honoring the contributions of musicians to New Orleans’ jazz legacy. This year’s honorees include Maynard Chatters, Thais Clark, Wendell Eugene and Daniel Farrow. The patron party and gala, with music by the George French Band, take place at Generations Hall. Prcno.org JUNE 17 The HNOC presents Concerts in the Courtyard featuring Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots. 533 Royal St. 5:30 p.m. HNOC.org ONGOING Ogden After Hours presents live entertainment every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Check OffBeat’s daily listings or visit OgdenMuseum.org for a complete schedule.

ONGOING Wednesdays on the Point, the concert series located on Historic Algiers Point, returns for its summer concert series.

Shows start at 6p; check OffBeat’s daily listings for schedule.

ONGOING New Orleans Museum of Art hosts Where Y’Art, a weekly Friday evening party featuring musical entertainment, performances and gallery walkthroughs. Visit noma.org for details. Check OffBeat’s daily listings for a complete schedule.

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BACKTALK

Mayor Mitch Landrieu

talks back

D

other areas is that the business people got there first and then brought the musicians.

What we have to do is train people in the industry of music. We haven’t done that well. We’ve done the artist side better than anybody else.

But that’s why people have taken our raw talent and exported it some place else, rather than us having the raw talent here, adding the value to it here, and I think we can absolutely do it. I think we’ve proved that with the film tax credits. But we haven’t yet as a community agreed to get that done and actually done it really well.

uring his tenure as the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Mitch Landrieu made “cultural economy” his calling card. He worked to show how cultural products aren’t simply valuable in an aesthetic, intellectual or social way, but that they are good business. He has maintained this interest as mayor, and the recent 2010 Cultural Economy Report shows that the cultural sector is the secondlargest employment sector in the city, and that it is responsible for 28,000 jobs, or 12.5 percent of New Orleans’ workforce.

His approach hasn’t been an unqualified success as he acknowledges, but it has been overwhelmingly effective in establishing the city as Hollywood South, and he’s clearly optimistic that it can work for other cultural endeavors as well.

What do we take away from the culture economy report?

First of all, that culture absolutely means business. From an objective measurement, it’s a huge piece of the economy of the city of New Orleans and is something that should be treated like a business from a policy perspective. We started this initiative when I was Lieutenant Governor and we had statewide numbers. Now we have the numbers that are specific to New Orleans, and it’s broken down in a way so the individuals working in each sector know that they are part of a much larger picture.

The idea here is to identify what is, and then to design a strategy to continue to grow each one of these sectors. We broke it down into non-tourism cultural jobs, non-cultural tourism jobs, and then we showed people where the intersection was. We’re hoping that each of the folks that fall into these categories will be aware of the other partners and shareholders that they have so that we can grow it purposefully. We’re going to do that through good tax policy, good zoning, and treat it just like how we would grow maritime or how we would grow IT. I think it’s a great first step and I’m very happy with it.

Does the model of using tax policy work as well for the music sector as it does for the film and television industry?

Let’s answer that two ways. First of all, right now it does not because I think that the numbers reflect that we’ve put a tremendous amount of emphasis on film. One of the things that we’ve never done particularly well—that we’ve all scratched our heads at—is how you treat music like a business in its narrowest sense, so that we become more like Nashville. Everybody’s perplexed. How did Nashville get to be the music capital of country music? Why does Austin claim to be the music capitol of the world when we know that the authentic production of music is in New Orleans? We’ve gotten the front of the house side of it right, but we really haven’t got the back of the house side of it right. We need to spend more time (on that) because now we know it’s possible. Now we know that if you concentrate on publishing, if you concentrate on production and if you concentrate on writing, then you can get there. But the problem is that most musicians have never seen themselves as business people or industry-providers. They’re just players of music. What happened in those

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By Alex Rawls

Do you have thoughts about how we can make this work better for the working musician who is bringing home around $17,000 a year?

Yes. That’s one of the reasons why Scott Hutcheson (Advisor on Cultural Economy) is here. One of his jobs is to figure out how to do that and how to create the industry of music in the city of New Orleans. Scott has spent a lot of time on this, I know you have, I know Jan [Ramsey] has—a lot of folks. But it’s fair to say that we haven’t gotten there yet, right?

Some of the way the business works is that people have to travel. New Orleans is not Chicago and it’s not New York and it’s not Los Angeles, so the major houses are not here. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t keep adding value to it and find a way for folks to make a better living. We tried to create products where they could participate, so you’ve got Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, and Essence Festival. You’ve got a bunch of different opportunities, but we’re not anywhere close to where we could be.

For much more with Mayor Landrieu including thoughts on French Quarter Fest, Jazz Fest, street performers and zoning, go to OffBeat.com.

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BACKTALK

Wendell Pierce

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we have Dr. Michael White, we have John Boutte, we have Donald Harrison, Jr., so it’s going to be a great tour.

ork always gets you work, man,” Wendell Pierce says while driving. He’s in the last week of shooting for the second season of HBO’s Treme, but he has been splitting time between shooting the show and a new Bruce Willis film, Play the Favorite. “We’re finished shooting in Vegas and now we’re shooting in New Orleans,” he says, and he’s scheduled to star in a B.B. King biopic.

Last season, Pierce’s Antoine Batiste was a struggling trombone player trying to make cab fare; this season, he’s an assistant band director against his will while his heart is in his new band, Antoine Batiste and the Soul Apostles. His scenes with the band have to chill the hearts of New Orleans musicians. When he says, “We’re a ninepiece band with 54 fuckin’ pieces,” he could be talking about half the bands in the city.

All the scenes with you and the band sound brutally accurate. Is any of that improvised?

All of that was written except for maybe one moment. What I tried to do is between takes, we try to live it. We live it, and what happens is it’s easier for all the musicians. They don’t realize—or maybe they do now—that that’s an acting exercise. They flow right into the scene. They understand, they’re bullshitting and fucking around and shit like that. We did some improvising right before we go into the takes to keep it going, but now when we get the scripts, it’s easy (to get the chemistry). And we actually have rehearsals. We have music rehearsals, and the music rehearsals—talk about art imitating life; life imitating art—it’s like, “Damn, is he ever going to come? Man, you sound like shit, Wendell.” [laughs] I think it was maybe one or two lines improvised, but everything is written.

Everything.

I’m so honored to be working with those musicians. I really had a healthy respect and love for musicians, but in the past two years—I can’t tell you, man. The level of respect for the craftsmanship, the dedication.

You really understand how years and years of experience you earn in music. And how the guys take solos, it’s just amazing. You hear them play a solo after you know them and go, “Oh man, I hear everything I love about you, everything I know you’re struggling

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with, everything you fear, everything you love, everything you’re angry about.” It’s beautiful.

Do I understand correctly that you were one of the motivating factors for the “Night in Treme” tour?

Yeah. I was working with Danny Melnick, who is a jazz producer. We were doing a concert at Carnegie Hall and at Lincoln Center and he said, “I heard you on Treme. I would love to produce something with that, or do a show with you on that.” I said definitely, so I approached HBO before we even started the pilot and said that we would like to do a tie-in. So yeah, I’m the co-producer of that with Danny Melnick.

Who is on the tour?

It’s different bands on different dates, but we have Rebirth and we have Kermit Ruffins,

By Alex Rawls

Very cool. It seems like you’ve found ways to make Treme work for you in terms of projects you want to be involved in.

I’ve always been doing that. I’ve always been a producer. When I was on The Wire, I produced two of August Wilson’s plays, Jitney and Radio Golf, on Broadway. I’ve actually produced Ntare Mwine—who plays Jacques—and his oneman show in Uganda. The producing aspect of it is just an extension of what I wanted to do. I see producing as being creative because I’d like more people to know about the culture of New Orleans, and at the same time I think there’s a great opportunity to get all of these musicians to get a higher profile out there and do a musical tour. I think it’s logical, you know?

As for the stuff that I’m doing civically, it’s “if not now, when?” you know? It’s New Orleans’ most difficult time.

As someone who loves this city, I wanted to be able to have a good answer to that.

I love Pontchartrain Park, and restoring Pontchartrain Park is really important. I knew that I could bring some attention to that. I knew that if no one brought the attention to rebuilding the neighborhood, it would be suffering even more than it is now, maybe not even come back at all. I thought, if you’re going to use any sort of celebrity or notoriety, that’s the best way to use it. That’s the role of an artist, really.

This interview with Wendell Pierce is significantly longer. For more on “Night in Treme,” “Waiting for Godot,” Treme and the role of art, go to OffBeat.com. www.OFFBEAT.com