OffBeat Magazine September 2010 Issue by OffBeat Magazine

FEEDING THE SAINTS CURREN$Y CLYDE KERR, JR. PONDEROSA STOMP DR. JOHN SWEET HOME N. O.

Susan Spicer Out of the frying pan

LOUISIANA MUSIC, FOOD & CULTURE—SEPTEMBER 2010

Free In Metro New Orleans US $5.99 CAN $6.99 £UK 3.50

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Riding the Rails

Ponderosa Stomp performer Honeyboy Edwards recalls his hobo days to Gianluca Tramontana.

Speaking in Drums

Ed Blackwell let his drums do the talking, says Hank Cherry.

THE FOOD ISSUE

Mondo Spicer

Alex Rawls goes inside the world of Chef Susan Spicer.

Behind the Rind

Peter Thriffiley takes a class from St. James Cheese Company.

In the Kitchen with DJ Captain Charles

Elsa Hahne talks to the DJ about his new restaurant and his late night snack.

www.OFFBEAT.com

Mojo Mouth

Obituary: Clyde Kerr, Jr.

The Stomp at Nine

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Listings

The directors of the non-profit agency talk to Alex Rawls about the state of business for New Orleans’ musicians. “The opportunities that New Orleans musicians have to earn a living are few and far between, and are not sufficient for this community to sustain itself long-term.”

Fresh

Backtalk with Sweet Home New Orleans

Letters

Reviews + Plan A with Shooter Jennings

Michael Patrick Welch charts the growth of the Ponderosa Stomp.

The New High Life

David Dennis looks at the relationship between rapper Curren$y and his muse.

Unchained Melodies

Zachary Young documents a local music community that can’t say its name.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner of Champions Rene Louapre finds out what fuels the Saints.

Bywater Brew

BLAST FROM THE PAST OffBeat, September 2005

Courtney Young goes to the coffee roaster in our midst.

OffBeat Eats

John Rankin is in The Spot at Mandina’s, and Rene Louapre and Peter Thriffiley review Tartine.

Five years ago, we were supposed to pick up the September 2005 issue of OffBeat from the printer on Monday, August 29. Instead, the federal levees failed that morning, and the magazines sat at the printer, dry, for weeks. Most were brought to Baton Rouge, and the rest were distributed around New Orleans in some places to cheers and standing ovations. Too bad many never saw it—this issue was full of juicy stories, including some, er, deep reporting on French Quarter strip clubs. It’s interesting to note that none of the events in the listings took place. To buy a copy of this back issue or to read it online, go to offbeat.com/2005/09. SEPTEMBER 2010

Letters

“I miss my home town, my friends, colleagues, teaching, especially the great musical experiences, but this was our only choice, as we saw it.” —Edward “Bill” Huntington, Hot Springs Village, AR

Louisiana Music & Culture September 2010 Volume 23, Number 9 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jan V. Ramsey, janramsey@offbeat.com Managing Editor Joseph L. Irrera, josephirrera@offbeat.com

PLAY ON THE STREETS I once was a street musician before and when you could buy a permit. I remember meeting John Phillips of the Mama and Papas, and he told me that he played on the streets of New Orleans in the early ’50s with Chuck Berry. Everyone should have a t-shirt that says “Remember Tuba Fats” with his photo on it saying, “Play on the Streets.” He would tell the cops to put him in jail or shut up, simple. —Gary Kent Keyes, New Orleans, LA

OUR ONLY CHOICE I want to weigh in on the street music controversy. Since I am a native and started playing jazz in the city in the late ’40s, I have opinions based on experience. Street music, the second line, the Indians, etc. are all wonderful and important contributions to the culture of New Orleans. But where the musicians really hone their art, learn to listen to each other, and use dynamics and nuance, is in the clubs. When Bourbon Street clubs began opening their doors to the street, jazz died. After that, it was simply cover bands belting out garbage for beer swilling yahoos. The loudest wins. This gradually developed into “the level playing field” where anybody can come to the city get a spot on the street and play. Most of these people were not from New Orleans and could care less about the city or its music. They just picked up some licks and went at it. What they did was as good as the other guy down on the next corner, right? Hell, those tourists don’t know the difference anyway. It’s just part of their wonderful banana republic experience? One afternoon, I think it was in the late ’80s or early ’90s, I had a gig at the ill-fated Basin Street Jazz Club, (I believe it was the site of the old D.H. Holmes restaurant). It was a great band: Nick Payton, Steve Masakowski, Adonis Rose, and Christina Machada on vocals. Across the street, on

the corner in front of Felix’s Restaurant, was a guy with an alto sax. He couldn’t play it, but it made no difference to him. He was bleating away from the time we started to the time we quit. He must have had bionic lungs. He might still be out there! Of course, ballads were out of the question—a shame, because Christina’s were lovely. People would walk in, try to listen, and leave in disgust. The guy was so loud and insistent that he drove them away. Well, he had a right to be there. That is just one story. No wonder so many great musicians who are serious about playing and the business of music leave. I know there are some good players out in the street. I don’t begrudge their making a living. The problem is allowing street music all over. It should be confined to a certain area, like Jackson Square. Not doing it encourages every-man-for-himself and mediocrity. One also has to consider that one of the charms of the Quarter is that it is a residential neighborhood. Having a sax bleating under your window day and night does not add to the ambiance. I now live in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, on top of a mountain and in a forest. We left Metairie after Katrina. We were disgusted with the stupidity of the government—local, state and federal—and the denial of our neighbors. Instead of worrying about hair styles and Mardi Gras, they needed to have town meetings about the future of the area, why the tragedy happened, and possibly planning some lynching of those responsible. We not only sustained damage to our house (FEMA refused to repair), but to both cars, our computers, many important books and teaching materials. I had been on tour with a New Orleans traditional jazz band; my wife was with me. By the time we got back, the sight that greeted us was just too much. My $20,000 upright bass was reduced to a soggy mess. I remember carrying pieces of it outside to the bright sunlight, as if that would help. I know many went through far more than we did, but when you reach old age, it doesn’t take much to push you over the edge.

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.

SEPTEMBER 2010

Associate Editor Alex Rawls, alexrawls@offbeat.com Consulting Editor John Swenson Listings Editor Craig Guillot, craigguillot@offbeat.com Online Editor Ben Berman, benberman@offbeat.com Contributors Hank Cherry, Erica Colbensen, Alex V. Cook, David Dennis, Elsa Hahne, Jeff Hannusch, Aaron LaFont, Chris Lee, Red LeVine, Rene Louapre, Caitlyn Ridenour, Cierra Stovall, John Swenson, Peter Thriffiley, Gianluca Tramontana, Michael Patrick Welch, Dan Willging, Courtney Young, Zachary Young Cover Elsa Hahne Cover Make-Up Artist Asia Strong Design/Art Direction Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Advertising Sales Casey Boudreaux, caseyboudreaux@offbeat.com Melinda Johnson, melindajohnson@offbeat.com Advertising Design PressWorks, 504-944-4300 Business Manager Joseph L. Irrera Interns Rosalie Cohn, Barbie Cure, Brittany Epps, Lauren Noel, Caitlyn Ridenhour, Kate Russell, Cierra Stovall, Courtney Young, Zachary Young Distribution Patti Carrigan, Doug Jackson, Shea MacKinnon 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 © 2009, 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.

I miss my home town, my friends, colleagues, teaching, especially the great musical experiences, but this was our only choice, as we saw it. —Edward “Bill” Huntington, Hot Springs Village, AR

Mr. Goldenberg, and yes, you are a bad person for judging and misjudging visitors to your neighborhood. —Mari Brandon, New Orleans, LA

FRAT BOY CROWD

[Re: the article “A New Suit”] I think Mardi Gras Indians should get paid for pictures being taken of them because they work just as hard as the photographer. They have to make the suits and pay for all the materials. The Indians don’t have the pictures taken for money, but if the photographer is getting paid so should the Indians. That’s why I think the Mardi Gras Indians should get paid. —Tyrinnic (via email), Lafayette Academy, 6th Grade, New Orleans, LA

I hope that you published Ian Goldenberg’s slanderous missive because you know it would shock more tolerant folks. (“Hillbillies from Deliverance,” Letters, August 2010) If Mr. Goldenberg doesn’t want dudes pissing on his doorknob, maybe he ought to move from Bourbon Street! I would imagine that the people of Appalachia as well as the sharecroppers and “dirt farmers” of the rural South cannot afford to come to NOLA unless it is to work. Poor people can’t afford to drink or eat on Bourbon Street. They would shake their heads at $13 a plate of frog legs. You seem to know nothing of country folks,

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SHOULD BE PAID

KEEP THEM COMING I attended my first Jazz Fest this year and I am hooked on the music!

In July, my wife and I were fortunate to see Trombone Shorty at a local club and just a few weeks ago Chubby Carrier performed at our local blues festival—both were excellent. Keep them coming to Pittsburgh! See you next year for Jazz Fest. —Les Shar, Pittsburgh, PA

DONNA’S Just a note to let you know that Charlie and I have decided to close Donna’s permanently. We have had a good run on Rampart Street but it is time to move on. We will never forget all the good times and the people who passed through our doors to listen to the best musicians in New Orleans and to eat Charlie’s good food. Charlie is doing great. He is busy writing a cookbook and re-inventing himself as an author! I, of course, still “Miss Dr. P” to my science students and I enjoy every minute of it. I will most certainly keep the website active for a while until we know that our customers

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ERS

“across the pond” and elsewhere in the world know that Charlie will not be “holding court” any longer in Donna’s kitchen! —Donna Poniatowski and Charlie Sims, New Orleans, LA

CD MAKES HER SMILE Just received my first issue and the CD. What an awesome surprise! I’m listening to it as I type this. I love it; it makes me homesick, but it makes me smile, too. —Christin Logarakis, Saint Francis, WI The last CD that OffBeat issued was the 2008 compilation issued in 2009. We are currently working on publishing both the 2009 and 2010 CDs. We apologize for the delay.—Ed.

SEPTEMBER 2010

MOJO MOUTH

The Ends of Eras

’ve heard older people say many times that they’re lonelier because all of their friends have passed on. Once they’re gone, all you have are memories. It’s the nature of life: things change, people die, old familiar faces and places pass away. That happened this month, with the passing of someone I was proud to call a friend: Herman Leonard. I first met Herman at Joshua Pailet’s A Gallery for Fine Photography, where Pailet had put together an exhibit of Herman’s photos. Like most people, I was familiar with some of his most famous works, like the portraits of Dexter Gordon and Billie Holiday, but I had no idea how talented and prolific this man was. Herman was in love with music and musicians, and decided to move here in the mid-’90s after the Pailet exhibit. He bought a house on Robert E. Lee Boulevard where he lived and kept a studio. Then he proceeded— in his 70s—to immerse himself in the New Orleans music scene and to capture as much of it as possible. Being the fledgling publisher I was not afraid to ask anyone—even Herman Leonard— to take photos for us. Once we met, we talked for hours. Herman was so brilliant, and such a charming, passionate, knowledgeable man. He was one of those rare people who made everyone he met feel that they were special to him, which is probably why he was such a great photographer. I’ve always felt that great photogs and interviewers were people who could create instant connections with their subjects, and Herman could do that with anyone. I happen to be a real photography lover, as anyone who’s visited the OffBeat offices can perceive. Back in 1992 I think, realizing how strong the community pull of the Jazz Fest was (way before MySpace, Facebook or the Threadheads), I thought it would be a cool idea to ask our readers to send in samples of their work to create an exhibit of musical and Jazz Fest experiences. Herman sent over a couple of pieces of his work, along with about 100 others from around the country. Being the novice that I was, we had to find a place to hang the exhibit, and we ended up at Jax Brewery, of all places. Two of Herman’s pieces hung in a mall with work

SEPTEMBER 2010

from amateur photographers. What a nice, gracious guy! Roselyn Leonard wrote a very moving tribute to Herman (see my blog), thanking him for taking her and her husband David’ photos—for nothing. He shot a cover of OffBeat with Jon Cleary for our November 1997 issue—and didn’t charge his normal fee. Herman’s energy was amazing. One night, Joseph and I went to see Hadda Brooks perform at the Shim Sham Club (now One Eyed Jacks). When Herman found out Hadda

Herman Leonard’s portrait of Jon Cleary was on the November cover of OffBeat in 1997. was playing he went wild, and ran around like a kid taking great photos of her. I am gratified and privileged to have known and worked with Herman Leonard and to have autographed copies of his books, which I will treasure, along with this memory and his spirit. One of the great documenters of musicians has passed on.

I love Donna Ponitowski-Sims and Donna’s. There wasn’t any purer expression of love for local music than Donna’s Bar and Grill at 800 North Rampart St. Since Katrina, Donna’s has been run by Chef Charlie Sims, but after many years of struggling to keep the building where the club in a condition to welcome customers, Donna and Charlie have decided to close the club. Charlie was sick last year, and Donna has been teaching in Florida since Katrina to help make ends meet. The owner of the building (who also owns the building that housed the Funky Butt—closed since Katrina—and The Maison on Frenchmen Street) would not make necessary repairs to the building. “We just couldn’t see putting any more money into a building that wasn’t ours, and we had to since the ceiling was almost caving in from water damage,” said Donna. So they decided to close the business. This is a tragedy for all music lovers, brass and jazz bands, as well as for the hopes of reviving the idea of live music on North Rampart Street. Donna’s was the last venue on North Rampart that had been grandfathered in for a permit to feature live music. The Funky Butt was also grandfathered in, but the operators also closed it just before Katrina because they couldn’t afford to repair the building, which was in a bad state (read my blog for more information). A new operator who wanted to revive the club wasn’t allowed to do so post-hurricane because he could not acquire a license to present music. It’s certainly the end of a musical era on North Rampart Street and a pity for a city where music is so much a part of the culture. —Jan Ramsey www.OFFBEAT.com

FRESH

dults Only

By virtue of recording the classic R&B “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” in 1952, Kenner’s Lloyd Price is not just a pioneer of rock ’n’ roll, he just might well be the founding father. Besides recording several hits over the next 15 years, Price hasn’t been content to assume the role of an “oldies” performer and sit on his laurels. Instead, he’s displayed an aggressive entrepreneurial side which over the years has led him to develop his own line of stereos, clothing, food products and most recently, publishing an autobiography. The 78-year-old member of the Rock & Roll Hall

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 10

Chris Lee

of Fame is now planning on going into show business. Price was recently in New Orleans to announce that he’s working on presenting a Broadway musical titled—not surprisingly—“Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” “It’s not a new idea,” Price says. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about awhile. It’s my story from back in the day, and the introduction of music for teenagers. 1952 was just seven years after the war. Growing up in Kenner, we just barely had electricity and a lot of houses still didn’t have plumbing. It’s about me listening to Okie Dokie (a local radio deejay) and hearing him say, ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy, eat those homemade pies and drink Maxwell House coffee.’ “That inspired me to write a song and bring it to Dave Bartholomew. We had adult music back then. I loved Louis Jordan, but that was adults’ music. Even Fats Domino’s ‘The Fat Man’ was an adult record. ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ was a million seller, and it was the first record directed at teenagers. It broke down a lot of walls.” Price won’t appear in the musical, which he hopes will open at the Mahalia Jackson Theater next year before hitting the road and making it to Broadway eventually. But he promises to be totally hands-on on the project. He’s enlisted music producer Phil Ramone as musical co-ordinator (16 Grammys), and will select the cast himself. When “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” reaches Broadway, he hopes to attract a Jamie Foxx or an Eddie Murphy to play his character. “It’s a super script,” Price says. “And it’s all historically accurate. It’s absolutely a story worth telling.” —Jeff Hannusch www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: SEAN YSEULT

aints in September

(For the past few years, Supagroup’s Chris Lee has played the Saints’ season on Madden and found it startlingly accurate at predicting the actual game results. This season, he’ll preview the Saints games for OffBeat based on his play.—ED.) September 9, Minnesota @ New Orleans: Played with Brett Favre, because who really thinks he’s not coming back? Watch for Adrian Peterson to give the Saints D fits, and Pierre Thomas gets a lot of touches to slow down Minnesota’s pass rush. Saints 21-Vikings 14. September 18, New Orleans @ San Francisco: SF’s D is tough to run against and loves to blitz, collecting two sacks and two picks. Frank Gore becomes the second back this season to rush for over 100 yards, and poor tackling on the Saints’ part becomes an upsetting trend. Too bad the Niners don’t have a corner they can leave on an island as Marques Colston kills them on play action and quick slants for over 200 yards and three TDs. Saints 35-49ers 14. September 25, Atlanta @ New Orleans: New Orleans has no answer for Michael Turner, who rumbles for 178 yards and a touchdown. Pierre Thomas does him one better with two TDs on the ground, while Drew Brees connects with Devery Henderson on a bomb at the end of the first half. Tracy Porter goes house with a 95yard pick six with Atlanta down only 21-14 with less than a minute to go to end the scoring in a very tight Saints win. Saints 28-Falcons 14. —Chris Lee, fake football expert

FRESH

All New Orleans musicians have a story. Jimmy Robinson wants to hear them. The Twangorama guitarist’s Musicworks Series features a guest musician every Thursday night at the Carrollton Station starting in September, and Robinson hopes to take audiences behind the scenes of their favorite local musicians and expose them to information not easily found at a club or concert. “Basically we’re doing it as a performance/interview series with a lot of really good New Orleans musicians,” Robinson says. “We’re going to play music by guests and some of my stuff in collaboration. We’re going to talk about their influences, how they learned how to play, songwriting, the creative process, things about their lives, whatever they want to talk about.” Robinson credits Elvis Costello’s Spectacle show, which follows a similar format of interviews and musical collaboration between artists, as his inspiration behind the Musicworks Series. Robinson previously attempted a collaboration series as part of Twangorama with “Seriously Twisted Guitar.” Despite the success surrounding the series, Twangorama set it aside and never picked back up. “I think just two people in an acoustic environment will be less labor intensive,” Robinson says. “There are so many great people and so many of these guys I go way back with. I remember different bands they were in and when they were starting.” The lineup for September features artists including Spencer Bohren, John Gros (Papa Grows Funk), Mark Mullins (Bonerama) and June Yamagishi (Papa Grows Funk). “I have friendships that go back with these people, some are relatively new, but some, like Spencer Bohren, we did gigs together with different bands that we were in probably in 1982—way the hell back. “There are so many great stories, so many great gigs and episodes, interesting things about all of these people. I’m hoping the Station will take to it. I think that they will because it’s something you don’t usually get. You hear somebody at a gig, you learn some stuff, but you’ll really go below the surface.” —Courtney Young

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hy Joni?

The very first PazFest, held 10 years ago, attracted more than 400 people, and more than 50 musicians participated. On September 2-6, PazFest returns with a tribute to Joni Mitchell in efforts to raise money for the Ruth Paz Foundation, which is committed to making adequate health care available to those who can’t receive healthcare through the efforts of their family. Michael Paz, president of the foundation and son of Ruth Paz, along with Amtrak is sponsoring PazFest II, which returns to the Howlin’ Wolf, the site of the first event. “Joni Mitchell is one of the greatest modern composers of our time. Her music is widely regarded by so many other artists, it is easy to find people who are willing to do a tribute to her. It seems to be very popular with audiences as well,” Paz says. This time, there will be a preview at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art during “Ogden After Hours” on Thursday, September 2, then Jimmy Robinson on Friday night will be the New Orleans tribute to Mitchell with a diverse line-up that includes Randy Jackson of Zebra, members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Alex McMurray, and many, many more. Donations start at a minimum of $20 and all proceeds benefit the foundation. Ruth Paz was a Detroit, Michigan native who devoted her life to helping people who were in need until she passed away in 1996. She had a special desire to help the underprivileged children of Honduras, where her family originated. In the past, that often meant bringing children of Honduras to the United States to receive treatment because of the lack of services and facilities there. The foundation is in its last stages of building and equipping a burn unit for children that is slated to open in Leonardo Martinez Hospital in San Pedro Sula in October 2010. “All children have the right to receive adequate health care,” is the foundation’s motto, and the unit will deliver health care services to patients regardless of ability to pay. For more information, go to RuthPaz.com. —Cierra Stovall

www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: elsa hahne

ollowing Costello

FRESH

ox on the Run

Leo DeJesus can’t limit himself to the sidelines. Vox and the Hound started as yet another project for the former front man of the City Life and member of MyNameIsJohnMichael. He needed an outlet for the songs he was writing that weren’t right for MyNameIsJohnMichael but that were too good to pass up. He recruited MyNameIsJohnMichael drummer Eric Rogers and began forming Vox and the Hound. “Leo and I got to cherry pick the band,” says Rogers. “We saw D-Ray (Daniel Ray) playing a show and we knew we had to have him. Andrew Jarman had expressed interest in playing with Leo, and Rory Callais and I were in a band together when we were younger. It was all a no-brainer.” Immediately, the guys knew that this could work, despite their hectic schedules; “The musical chemistry was there and everything just happened when we got into the room,” said keys player, D-Ray. “Back when I was in The City Life, it was everyone’s first band,” DeJesus says. “It was much less collaboration and more of me teaching the band the songs. Vox is more mature. We all have a long resume of things done in the past.” The band’s first show was during Foburg, where they played to a full house at La Maison. After five months, however, the guys recognize the difficulties of being in several bands at once. “We

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don’t schedule a practice because we never know when we’ll be able to have another one,” says guitarist and OffBeat contributor Rory Callais. “But everything falls into place when we do get together.” DeJesus keeps the band in perspective. “Our next show is August 27 at Republic and we have plans to record then as well,” he says. “For as much time as we’ve been together, overall, I like where we are.” —Erica Colbensen

onna’s Gone

Donna’s closed last month. “We turned in our license,” said the club’s namesake, Donna Poniatowski. “When we went to city hall the lady told me, ‘Now there won’t be any live music on North Rampart Street.’” Poniatowski and husband Charlie Sims closed Donna’s because of the condition of the building. “It’s in horrible shape,” she said. “We rent the property and couldn’t see investing thousands of dollars into a building that wasn’t ours.” —Alex Rawls www.OFFBEAT.com

IN MEMORIAM

Clyde Kerr, Jr. N

ew Orleans jazz lost one it’s most respected musical educators when Clyde Kerr, Jr. died in his sleep at his New Orleans home. He was 67, and his cause of death is not determined, though he had been suffering from several health problems in recent months. It’s undeniable to say that he has left his mark. A native of Treme and graduate of St. Augustine High School and Xavier University, Kerr led a 43-year career of teaching at middle schools, high schools, and college universities. He had a career as a performer with artists as different as Kidd Jordan and the Temptations, and in 2009, he released an album, This is Now!, his only album under his name. But he’s much better known for his teaching career, including 16 years at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and his spirit remains through the hearts and minds of those he touched. Kerr received OffBeat’s 2002 Best of the Beat Award for Lifetime Achievement in Education. Interviewed for the award, Kerr said “Life is like playing the trumpet; it’s a matter of endurance. So if you can endure, then your thing will eventually come around to you.” OffBeat spoke with a few of Kerr’s students as they shared their memories of his teachings.

Christian Scott To be frank, to describe him as a teacher is really hard to do. No man could ever boast about having a better mentor and teacher than I was allowed to have with him when I was growing up. Every possible facet of learning to play music but also being a man, this person engaged me in and made sure that when I was in his presence I was striving to be better. I don’t think he fully knew the amount of trust that he engendered in his students. He could’ve told

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Ronald Markham, Clyde Kerr, Jr., Irvin Mayfield and Jason Marsalis in 2000.

we learned goes beyond mere music theory, far beyond scales and arpeggios and odd time signatures. Mr. Kerr kept alive for his students the sense of discovery and fascination that is the lifeblood of the music, even as he shared with them its secrets.

Nicholas Payton

us to jump off the moon and we would have did it just because there was a small amount of teachers around that would lead you with that type of honesty and sincerity. He was an actual teacher, not someone who just played the trumpet and talked to some kids. This man was a master and I always look at myself as being one of his apprentices; he was like a sensei.

Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews Mr. Kerr was an extraordinary teacher. He understood when you had weaknesses and understood how to teach whatever he was trying to teach you. He knew how to strengthen our weaknesses and teach us different ways by explaining to us by using props. He was the type of person that always wanted us to learn. No matter what we did, he always made sure we got it some way. He would show us how to break down rhythms if it was too much for us at the time, or he’d teach us different options on slowing things down and looking at them

By Cierra Stovall

in a different way that made it easier for us. He was a gentleman first of all, and we all looked up to him as a father. He changed my life in different ways. When I first got to NOCCA, he told me straight up, “Talent can only get you so far. You must learn the fundamentals to become a complete musician.” That right there had me studying and working as hard as I could possibly work.

Davy Mooney Mr. Kerr was a great teacher, and not just of the fundamentals of the jazz art form. He taught all his students something deeper: an appreciation of the spiritual side of the music. Not in a religious sense exactly—although I believe music is a sort of religion—but anyone who spent long afternoons in the room overlooking Perrier Street in a calland-response session with Mr. Kerr at the piano, or sat for hours on a bench in the overgrown backyard shedding tunes like “Treme,” “Leo’s Lady,” “D Jam,” and “Sylvia’s Kitchen”—those of us lucky enough to have shared those experiences know that what

He led by example and through his experiences. It’s funny because when he was teaching you things you really wouldn’t know he was teaching you because it was so subtle. Because he played with us often at the piano, a lot of times he would guide you musically to certain areas and places so that when you played with him, you didn’t recognize he was guiding, but he was. He wasn’t an overbearing presence; it was a lot more subtle in many ways. At the same time, he could really get in your stuff. If you weren’t taking care of business, he would let you know. As an improviser, he was very daring. Pretty fearless in terms of taking chances and being willing to live the way he played. He was unwilling to compromise his musical vision for the sake of anything shallow. His music was very deep, and he stood by what he believed. All of his musical stories had personal experiences attached to them. I took that as him demonstrating that you write tunes from your personal experiences. It’s not about music, it’s about life, and that was in everything he said as an artist.

Adonis Rose He was much more than a teacher and musician to me; he was family. Mr. Kerr knew my entire family and we were very close. He invested an immeasurable amount of time—in and out of school—into helping me become a professional musician and person. It takes a great man to constantly www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: Elizabeth mcmillan

1943-2010

IN MEMORIAM encourage a bunch of kids to practice and work hard when most of us were distracted by other things. I am proud of what he achieved as a human being and a teacher, and I will always remember the good times, conversations and performances we shared over the years.

Irvin Mayfield In terms of a “teacher,” I don’t think that’s the appropriate word for somebody like him because he’s more of a master of a craft or an art. To study with him, you’re not just studying with him; your life is changing. It’s not like you going to take science or math or something like that. Going study with Clyde Kerr is like going to Japan to study with a great sword maker, or going to Thailand to study with an ancient martial arts teacher, or going to Italy to study great Italian opera. He was like that. He had a lot of rich understanding. The difference between studying with somebody who’s just a teacher and studying with somebody who’s a master is that there are a lot of things that you learn that doesn’t deal with things that happen inside the classroom. We would learn from him by him calling you on the phone, or vice versa. Once you started the process of being his student, it never ended. He was always on my ass, and knew he always knew he had to watch over me. The last day of high school when I was at NOCCA, he said, “I have one lesson for you. Everybody’s got bullshit with them; it’s when you start believing your own bullshit that you got a problem.” And that was Clyde Kerr. There would be no New Orleans jazz artists without Clyde Kerr, Jr. That Grammy award this year wouldn’t exist if I had not met Clyde Kerr, and I’d probably not be a musician. When I met Mr. Kerr, I fell in love with jazz—not just jazz but art. His exit from this place is a significant phenomenon, and I’m so lucky and fortunate I got to know him and spend time with him. O www.OFFBEAT.com

SEPTEMBER 2010

PONDEROSA STOMP

The Stomp at Nine En route to its 10th anniversary, the Ponderosa Stomp became more than a record collectors’ dream come to life.

n its nine-year evolution, the Ponderosa Stomp has become important in more ways than just celebrating the largely unsung architects of rock ’n’ roll. The event that returns to the House of Blues September 24-25 began as Stomp creator Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos’ elaborate wedding party morphed into a wild bowling alley get-down before becoming the ambitious non-profit organization it is today. The festival really began when formerly-local musician and OffBeat contributor Michael Hurtt crashed Padnos’ wedding and was blown away by the line-up of bands. It was Hurtt who pushed Padnos to recreate the event, sans nuptials. The organizers called themselves The Mystic Knights of the Mau Mau (named after Screaming Jay Hawkins’ “Feast of the Mau Mau”): Padnos, his wife Shmuela, Hurtt, Jim Marshall and late Circle Bar owner Kelly Keller. “I was even processing the tickets myself,” Padnos says, laughing. Since then, the staff has grown, but not much considering all the new events the Mau Maus have taken up since forming the non-profit Ponderosa Stomp Foundation in 2005. In recent years, the foundation has collaborated with the Ogden Museum’s “Ogden After Hours” series of concerts and interviews. “We’ve been video taping, transcribing and archiving all those—as well as the Ponderosa Stomp Music History Conference during the festival—as part of an ongoing oral history project,” says Padnos, who recently utilized some of these archives to partner with the Louisiana State Museum for “Unsung Heroes: The Secret History of Louisiana Rock ’n’ Roll” at the Cabildo on Jackson Square. The Stomp’s education

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A still from a Ponderosa Stomp clandestine film. initiative has in the past worked at local Good Shepherd School, and with Xavier University freshman classes, bringing in various important music types—from Dave Bartholomew to New Orleans rap producer Precise—for further oral history projects. The foundation has spread the Stomp gospel at conferences during Austin’s South By Southwest, and more recently in Michigan, where Padnos and company curated the Detroit Breakdown music festival, featuring Mitch Ryder, Dennis Coffey of the Funk Brothers’ studio band, plus garage rock bands Death and the Gories, among many others. Padnos himself still handles much of the talent hunt. “It started out pretty organic, going around town seeing June Victory and the Bayou Renegades, and you’d find out one of June’s cousins played sax with Rockie Charles, and then another cousin would turn out to be Big Chief Roddy of the Black Eagles,” says Padnos. “I remember, in looking for Phil Phillips, me and Lil’ Buck Sinegal drove to Jennings,

By Michael Patrick Welch

Louisiana, and Buck was joking, ‘I’ll bet he lives by some railroad tracks.’ And sure enough, when we found his house, he did! He wasn’t answering though. His neighbors said he was a hermit. So we left a note.” These days, artists contact Padnos, as do other festivals, hoping to pick through his now-impressive Rolodex. “One day I am sleeping in my bed,” Padnos remembers, “and I get this call: ‘This is Roky Erikson’s drummer, Roky would like to play The Stomp.’ I thought someone was pulling my leg, but he called back later. Roky wasn’t far enough along in his recovery to play out at that time; it took two years to actually make it happen.” The venue has also changed several times throughout the years. The first Stomp, in 2001, happened over the course of a week at the Circle Bar, then the next year moved to the Fine Arts Center, then to the Rock ’n’ Bowl bowling alley. Many fans of the Stomp still consider Rock ’n’ Bowl its ideal venue. Still, after the flood, the Stomp moved to

the Live Nation-owned House of Blues, where it continues this year. “People forget that even before Katrina, Rock ’n’ Bowl had lost the lease to the downstairs, so we lost our second stage,” explains Padnos, who himself worried that moving to House of Blues might change the festival’s house party atmosphere. “But in the end, we focused on our mission statement,” he says. “We were trying to reinvigorate artists’ careers and present these world-class musicians in the best possible light. The House of Blues’ production value makes the artists feel proud. And honestly, some artists just wouldn’t come all this way to play a bowling alley. If we hadn’t moved, we wouldn’t have ever gotten Rockie Charles or Little Jimmy Scott or Dave Bartholomew.” In the end, House of Blues relaxed its many rules— such as no photography—in order to help preserve the Stomp’s vibe. The Ponderosa Stomp Conference takes place at the Cabildo during the days of September 24 and 25, with oral history presentations with Duane Eddy, the Trashmen and more and the Ponderosa Stomp “record hop.” At the same time, One Eyed Jacks hosts the two-day Clandestine Celluloid Film Series of obscure and long-lost films, which this year includes a movie the Washington Post called, “the best film ever made about rock ‘n’ roll,” yet is so secret The Stomp can’t list its name. “We were never trying to make any of this happen though,” Padnos says, “and we don’t want it to distract from the original mission of having fun helping musicians, and educating people on the true history of rock ’n’ roll. We never want to lose sight of where we came from.” O www.OFFBEAT.com

HONEYBOY

Riding the Rails I

t’s not every day that an interview subject slips his hand under his pillow and slides out a pistol. “When you got money,” 95-year-old blues musician David “Honeyboy” Edwards says, unclipping and reclipping the magazine of his .38, “it’s good to be on your cues.” More than 70 years ago, just before the Depression, a teenaged Honeyboy—who’ll play the Ponderosa Stomp September 24 and 25—left home to travel with Big Joe Williams, right on through to the 1950s when Edwards settled in Chicago. In the years he lived as a hobo and hustler he shook hands with some of the first recording artists, including Son House. He knew Robert Johnson and was with him the night he was poisoned by a jealous husband. His first visit to Chicago was in 1946 with 15-year-old soon-to-be harmonica giant Little Walter, and on subsequent visits he would be in the middle of the Chicago electric blues scene that begat Muddy and Buddy. Today Edwards is recalling the almost 30 years he spent as a hobo. “I’d ride freight trains,” he says. “I’d see the brakeman hook up the carbox, and hang around in them bushes and wait. When the train’s hooked up, I’d see the brakeman throw the lantern up to give the engineer the signal, then I’d ease on down there and jump in.” When the railroad cops were particularly enthusiastic, there was always “riding the rod.” “You lays crossways between two steel rods that ran beneath the undercarriage,” he says. They’re large enough that you can get your rest if you want to.” But the system was not without drawbacks. “Sometime a train run so fast that rocks would jump up and hit you.”

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Being used to the heat of the South, Edwards keeps the thermostat in his South Side apartment cranked up high. He has accumulated very little over the years—some mementos and statuettes given to him by blues societies as well as a few blues CDs, also gifts. The photographs that line the walls of his bedroom are also framed in “traveling light” fashion— mounted to cardboard backing and covered with Saran Wrap. There is also a large poster of Charley Patton, who died when Edwards was 19—the one thing framed in glass. Everything seems like it could be packed in an hour if need be. “The best way to ride if you want to go a long ways hoboing,” Edwards says, “is to get in a carbox and spike

By Gianluca Tramontana

it from the inside.” Which leads to the first lesson in hoboing: always carry a clean newspaper to lay on and look for a railroad spike to jam the door shut with. “If you pull into a station and have a bad railroad cop, it doesn’t matter how much he pulls and rocks the door, he can’t get in.” Though the young-faced Edwards is no longer nimble enough to shimmy up the side rungs of a moving train to sit on the roof (“You got to watch out for them tunnels”), his mind is still razor-sharp, and he is blessed with an almost perfect recall of names, dates, places and events from the distant—often way distant—fog of time. He still rattles off colorful stories at lighting speed in a thick, fast Mississippi drawl, his

words often pitching up in sharp notes of enthusiasm. It would have been in the late ’30s that Edwards learned a lesson in a moving boxcar shooting dice game with a one-eyed fellow hobo “somewhere twixt Memphis and Tupelo,” he says. By the time the pair pulled out the railroad spike at their destination, the one-eyed hobo had all of Edwards’ money. “Now that’s a slick guy,” concedes Honeyboy. After playing music that night to recoup his losses, Edwards accepted an amorous offer from a female admirer and asked if she had room for the fellow traveler. “He slept on the floor and I slept with the girl!” Edwards says, laughing. The next morning the oneeyed hustler took Edwards aside. “He said to me, ‘You’ve got a lot of sense, but you ain’t got enough,’” Edwards recalls. “‘I’m going to learn you something and give you a stick to walk with for looking out for me last night.’ With that, he pulled out a sock full of dice. Every one of them was crooked! He showed me how to use them, what they was, everything. From then on, I started to gambling. I’d go to a levee camp, play my guitar, make a stack then jump in the game. Sunday, I’d leave with a pocketful.” But after a moment, he says, “I quit that shit. Too dangerous, I used to (have to) carry a gun, just like I do now.” As he sits waving his pistol around the room, the dark and dangerous side of being a hobo comes to the forefront. Though he is now settled and a card-carrying member of the “living history” club, one thing is for sure. Edwards’ 30 years as a hobo, gambler and hustler left lessons that can never be forgotten. You can take the man out of the streets but not the streets out of the man. A version of this story previously appeared in the Clarksdale Press Register. The full interview can be heard at SittingWith.com. www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: PETER CAHILL

Ponderosa Stomp performer Honeyboy Edwards recalls his hobo days.

CURREN$Y

The New High Life W

eed and hip-hop have a long history together. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic ushered in an era of marijuana appreciation that hiphop has never quite gotten over. At the time, it was associated with Scarface Chic: weed, a house full of homies, expensive alcohol, halfnaked women, more weed, and someone with a big, sexy gun. Hip-hop’s weed purveyors rapped about Mary Jane as though it was only part of a larger sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll equation, and smoking added a hazy danger to the bad boy image. But it’s 2010 and your grandmother smokes weed. There has been a drastic shift in the way marijuana is treated in hip-hop, and the reigning King of Kush is Curren$y. Curren$y raps about weed. A lot. But unlike his 1990s predecessors, the New Orleans native raps about smoking weed, sitting around and doing not much of anything. “Download a updated NBA roster / Play a 82-game season / Condo full of snacks / Spitta not leaving,” he raps on “Breakfast,” from his debut album on Def Jam Records, Pilot Talk. Curren$y champions the everyman stoner image, rapping about munchies, video games and episodes of Family Guy, and he’s speaking to a substantial audience. Though XXL Magazine just crowned Curren$y a top rap freshman in 2009, he’s made enough rounds in coveted hiphop crews to be considered a vet. His first stop was Master P’s No Limit Records, where he was a member of the 504 Boyz. But this was during the height of No Limit’s reign when half of the Crescent City was a member of

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The growing Internet and critical buzz caught the attention of semifallen rap mogul Damon Dash, whose Roc-A-Fella empire crumbled in the wake of once-partner Jay-Z’s rise to pop culture icon. Dash has since latched on to Spitta, becoming his liaison between him and Def Jam, which finally released his debut on July 13.

No Limit, so the young rapper got lost in the shuffle. After his failure to catch on there, Curren$y was approached by Lil Wayne to become the first member of the Cash Money star’s offspring record label, Young Money Entertainment. For a couple of years, Curren$y Da Hot Spitta was Lil Wayne’s sidekick, appearing alongside the soon-to-be megastar in every music video and trading bars on mixtapes and Weezy’s Tha Carter II. After a handful of impressive cameos, Spitta was ready to drop his debut album, or so he thought. The single “Where Da Cash At?” featured Wayne and Remy Ma, but it failed to expedite the album’s release. After months of waiting and false starts, Curren$y ditched Young Money and went indie. With his newfound independence, Spitta underwent an important image change. His gangsta life rhymes about money and guns were replaced with stories of rolling up and hanging out, much to the delight of a slowly but steadily increasing crop of fans who could relate.

By David Dennis

While Kanye West raps about material conquests the rest of us don’t have because we don’t have his millions, Curren$y works on a more modest scale. He raps about affordable but limited edition Air Jordans that only specialty online boutiques or eBay carries. He raps about clothing brands that aren’t extravagant, but they’re ones only found after hours of searching the Web. They require weed-assisted patience more than cash. And where does one market a sound catered to the marijuana lover that has free time to surf the ‘Net for hours looking for hardto-find outfits in between games of Madden? Why, the Internet, of course. After leaving Young Money, Curren$y took his show viral. Equipped with a new catch phrase (“Jets, now where haven’t we been yet?”) he released free mixtapes (including the excellent Smokee Robinson from earlier this year) and countless songs to adoring listeners who wear the same shoes as he does and appreciate a nice $30 t-shirt as if it were a fine Sauvignon Blanc.

“This is the greatest night of my life,” Spitta said in front of a packed crowd at Republic, bottle in hand, dancing along as EF Cuttin spun tracks from Pilot Talk. “I’m just partying with my friends tonight,” Curren$y says on the house microphone as “The Day”—his collaboration with fellow New Orleanian Jay Electronica and new local Mos Def—plays in the background. As he says this, he looks to the VIP section, packed with local rappers and DJs that all have a different story about hanging out with Spitta. Right outside of the VIP area are even more people maneuvering past the security, trying any excuse, swearing that they are close friends with the man of the hour. Curren$y then turns his attention to the crowd: “We’re all friends, right?” A roar erupts, filling the room just as much as the billowing smoke. Yes, Curren$y is the rapper with the microphone and album coming out. But that doesn’t matter. Right now, he’s just a guy on a stage looking for a good time and better bud, just like everyone else. O www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: Jonah Schwartz

Curren$y takes weed from hip-hop mansions to the basement.

ED BLACKWELL

Speaking in Drums E

d Blackwell died a few days shy of his 63rd birthday in 1992. He was eulogized around the world. His obituary ran in hundreds of papers, mostly because of his groundbreaking work with Ornette Coleman. But Blackwell had long been credited with introducing a subtlety to the fervent jazz sides he played on. His work drumming for Ray Charles built a basis for much of the funk drumming that followed in his wake, even though he never recorded with that band. Blackwell so impressed Charles that he continued to offer Blackwell a place in his band well after he stopped playing R&B. But Blackwell had heard a new thing, and for the rest of his life he followed after it. As a kid, Blackwell banged on borrowed or homemade kits, bashing out parade songs and brushing somber dirges, sometimes finding gigs sitting in with local R&B acts. He took lessons from the legendary drummer Paul Barbarin, the composer of “Bourbon Street Parade.” Barbarin introduced Blackwell to the martial beat of parades, and throughout his career he returned to it, giving even the most skronkiest of sessions a tight underpinning that still allowed soloists the room to breathe. Bop was blossoming around him, and he searched out like minds, finding them in lifelong friends and band-mates Ellis Marsalis, Harold Battiste, and Alvin Batiste. They formed a band and had some success, even recording with Cosimo Matassa. They went out west, and Blackwell thought he had it made. Sunny California. In Los Angeles, he started playing with Ornette Coleman, and it was Ornette who gifted him with another key to drumming. The two had such an immediate affinity they moved in together. Blackwell’s second line-

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Blackwell’s Best American Jazz Quintet In the Beginning (AFO) Ed Blackwell Walls-Bridges (Black Saint) Ornette Coleman Free Jazz: A Collective Jazz Improvisation (Atlantic) Old and New Dreams Old and New Dreams (Black Saint)

Ellis Marsalis, Jr., Harold Battiste, Richard Payne, Alvin Batiste and Ed Blackwell infused beat enraptured Coleman, but one night during an impromptu jam, Coleman blew through a particularly intricate piece. Blackwell counted the bars, gave a press roll, and began driving the song back toward beginning. Coleman stopped and issued Blackwell a cutting look. “Why did you end my phrase?” This was new music, he told Blackwell. They weren’t following the rules anymore; they were making their own. It set Blackwell’s concept of music on its ear. In the meantime he became a lifelong devotee of drummer Max Roach, who gained fame for eschewing the typical 4/4. Back in New Orleans, he took odd jobs with R&B bands, but it wasn’t the same anymore. His sense of time erupted in California. Stoppering that knowledge in the regimented bottle of R&B wasn’t happening. In his prime in his hometown, Blackwell struggled. Luck was with him. Coleman called from New York City, and by 1960 Blackwell found himself firmly ensconced in the jazz capital of the world, family in tow. He became a

By Hank Cherry

part of the town’s musical royalty, gigging and recording with John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Dewey Redman and Don Cherry, all of whom helped break down the boundaries of postbop as it slid into this new free jazz. Still, Blackwell was more than willing to let his work speak for him, riding on reputation rather than cult of personality. Jazz writer Val Wilmer noted in her obituary of Blackwell, “I discovered his shyness was an act; Blackwell was a deeply serious artist who, whatever his circumstances, put the music first and insisted his associates did likewise. In New York percussion circles he was seen as a teacher. He often quoted the Chinese adage, ‘Neglect your art for a day, and it will neglect you for two.’” In the mid-1960s, Blackwell accompanied Randy Weston to Africa, and the experience affected his playing. “If you sing with the drums, then you really get it to happen… and that’s what I try to do. And in Africa that’s the way the drummers play. They really sing with their drum, and it’s phenomenal.”

Blackwell’s skills were taking him around the globe when he took ill. He was diagnosed with kidney disease and would need dialysis for the rest of his life. His energy was so completely drained after a session of dialysis that touring became impossible. With a family to care for, Blackwell took a position with Wesleyan University as artist-in-residence. He didn’t stop playing, though, and as the ’80s rolled along, Blackwell took part in reunions with the American Jazz Quintet and members of Coleman’s band. Just 11 months before his death, he played a vital part in Dewey Redman’s 1991 return at New York’s Alice Tully Hall. And then, he was gone. Blackwell’s drumming influenced hundreds if not thousands of musicians, whether they know it or not. It is his ghostly beat that haunts everything from Zigaboo Modeliste’s boom bip to Johnny Vidacovich’s pregnant fills. Blackwell even surfaces in hip-hop producer Manny Fresh’s treasure chest. It’s high time people remembered Ed Blackwell. O www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION

Throughout his career, Ed Blackwell let his drums do the talking.

JAZZ IMPROV

Unchained Melodies F

or a drummer, Justin Peake spends very little time at his kit. A few judicious taps on the cymbal, then it’s off to his laptop, where the sound is captured and electronically perpetuated as an evolving series of digital blips and screeches. Sitting back, he lets computerized processes take their course, intervening with a few taps at the keyboard when things need coaxing along. This is no private experimentation. Peake, alongside fellow drummer Simon Lott, is performing upstairs at the Blue Nile on Frenchmen Street. A sparse but appreciative crowd mills about in front of the stage, savoring the music. Some sip drinks at the bar, others spill out onto the balcony for a cigarette or casual discussion. The sound is not what generally springs to mind at the mention of New Orleans music. It ranges from jarring bursts of electronic noise to delicately synthesized hums, punctuated by Peake’s minimal approach to the drums. The sounds take an intricate route from their genesis at the kit through a succession of cryptic digital manipulations before emerging from the speakers. Peake belongs to a rich corner of the New Orleans music scene, one that is nonetheless largely invisible within the town’s broader musical culture. In the birthplace of jazz—a music born out of the freedom of creative improvisation—it’s only natural that there should be a dedicated faction of artists taking that freedom to its limits. Peake’s electro-acousticism is just one branch of an extremely varied tradition. “It’s a very small community,” Peake says. “It doesn’t cater to tourism as much, unfortunately.” “I got addicted to New Orleans in 1997,” says Andy Durta. “My first night in town, I went and saw (bassist) James Singleton’s 3 Now

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mastered other worlds,” Durta continues. “People who make those sorts of noisy sounds really well generally know how to make any sound they want out of their instrument. Within a moment, they give me something that lets me know that they can play bebop or they can play swing, but they’re consciously doing what they’re doing.”

Jeff Albert Quintet 3. I had no idea what the hell I was getting into.” Durta is perhaps better known by his pseudonym, “Scatterjazz”. He tracks interesting performers of the experimental/improvisatory variety from the U.S. and abroad, finds venues for them, and hooks them up with musicians with whom they can perform. His tastes, while broad, tend toward the melodic-jazz end of the avantgarde spectrum. “In 2006, I brought Frank Gratkowski here, who’s a saxophone player from Germany,” Durta says. “It inspired me to realize that some of the really great players from Europe and elsewhere hadn’t been here. They don’t know how strong our

By Zachary Young

improvising/modern jazz scene is. We have one of the very few best scenes in the country. The musicians here are as strong as anywhere, if not stronger.” Durta does his best to find truly interesting performers. “There’s noisy music I listen to sometimes where I don’t get a sense that the musicians really could do more traditional jazz styles,” he says. “That stuff’s less interesting to me.” It’s a frequently leveled criticism that free improvisers use artistic license as a smokescreen for lack of ability, which is why seeing skilled practitioners of more traditional styles engaging in the creative scene can be so reassuring. “I like to know that I’m in the hands of people that have

People tend to have a certain character in mind when they think of the avant-garde musician: the conceited eccentric, blowing silly noises out of his horn in an ostentatious attempt to distance himself—it’s a predominantly male community—from the mainstream musical world that shuns him. Whatever the picture, it certainly doesn’t look much like trombonist Jeff Albert. The music of Albert’s own quartet lives between the worlds of the composed and free-improvised. But he can often be found playing a variety of more straight-ahead styles, with groups like George Porter, Jr.’s Runnin’ Pardners or the John Mahoney Big Band. He thinks of the idioms not as opposed to one another, but rather as different points in a continuum. “In my conceptualization, it’s not that it’s all that different,” he says. “It’s just that in my band, it’s my version of how I organize this music.” Albert is the co-founder and curator of the weekly Open Ears series at Blue Nile, of which Justin Peake’s performance is a part. Before the series began in late 2007, there was no truly consistent venue for this music in New Orleans. “Stuff would happen at the Mermaid [Lounge], which doesn’t even exist anymore,” says Albert. “The Dragon’s Den was once a real haven for left-ofcenter musical happenings—it www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: CAITLYN RIDENOUR

For one community of musicians, the biggest challenge is what to call their work.

JAZ Z

IMP

RO V

One moment order is barely discernable, and the very next the three have united in an inspired bit of coordinated spontaneity.

still is to some extent, but not to the level that it was. [Open Ears] was started with the intention of having a place to present interesting music without having to argue with someone to get it done.” Open Ears got off to a slow start, but the audience grew. “One night I looked around and said, ‘I don’t know most of these people,’” Albert remembers. “That was a sign to me that Open Ears was becoming successful.” In a town whose name is virtually synonymous with generations-old musical tradition, the music faces an uphill battle in attracting a larger audience. “People look at it and say ‘Oh, well, that’s not a New Orleans thing. That must be some anomaly,’” says Albert. “When actually, it goes all the way back. Louis Armstrong was the radical in 1925. Ornette [Coleman] spent some time here, Kidd Jordan’s from here. Michael Ray was here for a long time. There’s always been this outside angle to New Orleans music. Sometimes you’ve had to search it out and find it, but I think it’s always been there.” What’s remarkable about the scene in New Orleans is how many of the musicians make their living playing more mainstream styles. Even Peake—whose improvised performances can be particularly turbulent—records under the producer-alias Beautiful Bells, creating more straightforward sample-and-beat-based electronic music. It’s April at the Big Top in Central City, and the Konk Pack is deep in a lengthy improvisation. Thomas Lehn’s analog synthesizer dips and trembles wildly alongside Tim Hodgkinson’s shrewdly

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plucked lap-slide-guitar and the shimmering tonal backdrop of Roger Turner’s drum kit. It’s in the nature of a performance like this one, where organizational structures are nearly absent, to veer wildly between cohesion and chaos. One moment order is barely discernable, and the very next the three have united in an inspired bit of coordinated spontaneity. The trio’s members hail from England and Germany. They’ve been courted by “Anxious Sound” a.k.a Rob Cambre who, like Durta, liaisons with creative musicians from afar and gives them an audience in New Orleans. When Cambre started booking acts like this in the mid-’90s, there was very little precedent. “I was doing it on this very old-fashioned, DIY punk-rock level,” Cambre says. “Call, book the gig, make your own flyers, send out your own press release. “When I first started organizing concerts like this in ’96-’97, it was considered very, very strange, to the point where a lot of people, even friends and fellow musicians were frankly rude about it. I had people look at me like I was a lunatic for trying to present this music in New Orleans, even though at that point the idiom already had a 40-year track record. That’s less so now because it’s undeniably a part of the cultural landscape. Since they can’t deny its existence anymore, it’s given it some degree of legitimacy and acceptance.” Cambre sees a spiritual kinship between free and traditional music. “A lot of collective improvising is not really so different in sonics or methodology from how an early New Orleans ensemble would handle things,” he says. “The

dawn of Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins was the dawn of the importance of the soloist. After those two musicians in particular, jazz began to be about featuring a soloist, whereas in the era that led up to them, it was much more about collective play. Free jazz, I think, reiterated the importance of the collective.” Many in the Konk Pack audience were likely drawn to the show by Andy Durta’s Scatterjazz email newsletter. In his most recent mailing, he referred to the Konk Pack as an “astonishing, inimitable German-British unclassifiable sound trio”. That designation highlights the difficulty in describing a musical world in which each performer seems to have his own distinct language. “‘Creative Music’ is a term I find myself using more and more,” Durta says. “It doesn’t imply jazz in any way, though it tends to come out of an improv/noisy jazz world.” But Durta himself acknowledges the shortcomings of the ‘creative music’ moniker, carrying as it does the unfortunate implication that other music is ‘uncreative’. For Peake, even broad terms like ‘experimental’ can be troublesome. “For me, experimental music is a very specific genre that really involves hypothesis and undetermined outcome in the literal sense of scientific experimentation,” he says. A reporter once asked Charlie Parker what he called his strange instrumental style. His reply: “Let’s just call it music.” That’s a sentiment that would surely find sympathy here. It’s summertime at Open Ears, and the Jeff Albert Quartet has taken the stage. As the group

reaches the climax of a dense collective improvisation, Albert nods and the four emerge into a composed section, horns in parallel. This prompts a short round of hoots and applause. It’s a small crowd but you wouldn’t know it from the energy on stage. The affinity between the players is mesmerizing. “There’re a lot of great improvisers who publicly deal with this music less than they would like to just because of financial considerations,” says Albert. “Tuesday night of making $22 at Open Ears or $75 at whatever else they’re doing—if that $75 is paying their phone bill, they don’t have a lot of choice.” Those numbers exert a strong influence on musicians. “People get locked in to what it is they’re known for,” says Peake. “Once they’ve built a following, I think it’s a dangerous thing that they don’t branch out from that.” “It’s like recreation,” says Durta. “They can’t expect to pay their rent that way. It’s sad; it would be great if we could get them to pay their rent that way.” It’s a prominent school of thought that places free and experimental forms in opposition to the bop-based styles that continue to dominate the mainstream of jazz. But if everyone can agree on one thing, it’s that the creative spontaneity of improvisation is at the heart of jazz. Here that creativity is on full display. The music is full of melody, of dynamism and energy. “The whole conversation of how you define jazz—I don’t know that that conversation’s all that productive,” Albert says. “There’s music, and I like a lot of it. And some of it’s called jazz, and some of it’s not.” O www.OFFBEAT.com

COVER STORY

he world of Susan Spicer has expanded to include TV and lawsuits, and she’s right at home in it. “The other day at brunch I was expediting over at Mondo, and [sous chef] Paul [Chell] put something up in my window. I did a garnish on it and said, ‘Take a picture of that shit, my friend!’ He looked at me, and I was laughing. I liked that line.” Chef Susan Spicer is referring to a moment on HBO’s Treme, quoting Kim Dickens’ chef, Janette Desautel, the character she inspired. Because the show brings real and fictional people together, there has been a tendency to read some measure of biography in the show, despite the numerous significant differences between the characters and their “muses,” as Treme’s producers call them. Spicer has taken the association with the show in stride.

Mondo Spicer By Alex Rawls Photography by Elsa Hahne

“I’m pleased about it,” she says before lunch service starts at Bayona, the French Quarter restaurant she opened in 1990. “I think it’s nice, as long as people realize it’s not me. Kim and the sous chef [Ntare Mwine] came and spent time in the kitchen. We taught them how to handle food. I told her how to expedite: ‘More urgency, more urgency!’ It’s fun being on the set and working with them.” Still, the on-screen relationship between the character she inspired and the character Davis Rogan inspired caused some to try and put two and two together, Spicer’s husband included. “It caused a little issue between Chip and I. ‘Chip—it’s fiction.’ My restaurant obviously hasn’t gone under. I don’t use the ‘F’ word quite as much anymore. He wasn’t too pleased.” She’s bemused by the story, and as she reflects on the state of her life and her restaurants—Bayona and the newer Mondo on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview—she does so with the centered air of someone who’s at peace despite recent turmoil. Mondo opened in May, so it’s still in process, and she filed a class-action lawsuit against BP in June for damage done to restaurants and the seafood industry. Even the suit has its place, though. “I’m a little more mellow now.” www.OFFBEAT.com

What’s the status of the lawsuit? I don’t know the answer to that question. There’s a panel of judges up in Idaho somewhere that are deciding the venue where the actual cases are going to be heard. I thought that was going to be a short process, but apparently it takes quite awhile. [The suit] was a survival mechanism for me. It was the big “What if”? What’s going on with this thing? What are the long-term ramifications going to be? Is it going to affect tourism in the long run? Is that going to affect my business? People come to New Orleans to eat; they come to eat the seafood. If the seafood isn’t good, will they come in the same numbers? Ultimately, even if we are supported by the locals, that would affect my business. I’ve worked 20 years to make this business a success, and I don’t want to see it go under because of some arrogant oil company. The ones most in need will be the ones to get compensation. If we are not affected and I don’t get compensation, I don’t care. If tourism is not affected, and my business is fine, I’m not looking for anything I’m not entitled to. BP is starting a whitewash campaign, and I think it will be important to stay on top. I sit on the board of the Gulf Restoration Network, and they are pretty good at keeping an eagle eye on what goes on with the oil. SEPTEMBER 2010

CO VER STO RY

How was Bayona affected by Katrina? We were lucky. We were here in the French Quarter so we didn’t flood, and the building was pretty much intact. We lost our wines because they were all up in the attic. The key thing was people, getting employees back. We got some key people back and because some other restaurants were still closed, we were able to employ some other people that were out of work. What do you remember about the first menu back? It was smaller. The other thing was, I also am a partner in Wild Flour Breads, which I started through Spice, Inc., and I partnered up with Sandy Whann from Leidenheimer [Breads]. It’s a wholesale artisan bread bakery, and that’s the bread we use. Of course they were shut down. A couple of my signature items use that bread, so I was like, “Okay, what am I going to use for my goat cheese croutons?” Our original baker showed up out of nowhere: “Oh do you need a hand?” So I had the bread right as we opened, and that was a beautiful thing. It was important for me to be open by Thanksgiving, because we always serve Thanksgiving and have never missed one. I was commuting from Jackson, Mississippi. My house flooded, so my husband and my two stepchildren went up to live with his brother and my sister-in-law and their two children, and our two cats, and their dog for two or three months. We put our kids in school up there and rented an apartment, and I would come here for four days, sleep at my mom’s house, run the restaurant, and then drive up to Jackson Sunday morning or after service Saturday night if I had the energy. I listened to a lot of books on tape.

Now they’re reporting that they can’t find any more oil. Isn’t Mother Nature miraculous? [smiles sarcastically] I’m just concerned with the day-to-day, and trying to be informed through all the mire of information and misinformation and conflicting information. I don’t think Bayona today is feeling the impact. Maybe some impact and more for seafood. The variety is less, although this morning there was a pretty good list of seafood and I asked, “Where is the drum coming from?” and it’s out of the Gulf. That’s good because I haven’t seen drum around for the last month or so. If everything is miraculously A-okay, that’s great. When will you be able to gauge the spill’s impact? Summer is a slow time. It’s October, November, December that we start gearing up for the busy season. We’ll see how that looks this year. You know, we struggled to come back from 9/11. That affected tourism a lot. People didn’t travel for the first year and a half after that. After that it’s like, “Okay, we’re coming back strong,” then Katrina hit. 2005 was going to be the best year since 2001. Katrina came along, and you scratch your way back up, start building up the business again, we’re starting to look really good and boom, we’re smacked down. I’m sure you know the old saying, “How do you make a small fortune? Start with a big one and open a restaurant.” [Restaurants] are not a highprofit business. Maybe if you’re a chain or corporation where you’re so beloved by our American population. Independent restaurants struggle.

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I remember going out to eat in the Quarter in the fall of 2005 and seeing dining rooms full of men—no women. I never thought about that. I’m usually surrounded by men anyway. There’s some women, but it’s a male industry. I was working so I didn’t get out and about that much. That’s the sad thing: I work so much. I used to, in my younger days, go out and partake in the music a lot more. My husband loves music. We managed to snatch a Tuesday night last week and had a late night at Boucherie and stopped at Banks Street Bar and heard a country band from Vermont. I can’t remember what they were called [J.P. Harris and the Tough Choices], although my husband did put their sticker on the back of my car in a drunken fit, which I peeled off the next day. They were good! We used to do that a lot, and hit Rock ’n’ Bowl. I miss that. Do you not go out because you get out of the restaurant so late? It has a lot to do with working 15-hour days and being a parent—a stepparent—and being married. You have a reason to go home, as opposed to being a single. This year, Bayona is celebrating its 20-year anniversary, and its place in the restaurant scene has changed over the years. It’s not the buzz restaurant it was in the early 1990s, and sous chefs that have passed through Spicer’s kitchen have opened their own buzzworthy restaurants—John Harris (Lilette) and Donald Link (Herbsaint, Cochon) among them. Bayona has become part of the dining establishment, and its menu speaks to another day in fine dining. An item is described simply—grilled duck breast with pepper jelly www.OFFBEAT.com

CO VER STO RY

sauce and wild rice, for example—rather than encyclopedically, with every ingredient sourced as if we’d recognize the best farm for free range ducks in Mississippi. Spicer’s dishes are similarly unfussy, gently enhancing and framing the flavor that drew diners to a dish in the first place. Has Bayona developed enough momentum to go on its own? No restaurant is a machine that rolls on its own, unless it’s one of the corporate things. I tend to micromanage, so it’s hard for me to delegate. I have a really good sous chef right now, a really good guy in the evening, but I’m looking for somebody strong in the daytime to help support him. I’ve been trying to get off the schedule for about 10 years now and it isn’t happening. I still love being in the kitchen, but it makes it hard to do it all and still have a life. Which you don’t really expect to have if you’re a chef, anyways. Fortunately, my husband was in the business for about 15 years, so he can’t bellyache too much. What does your workday entail? It changes depending on what the situation is. Right now, I’m here early in the morning and I either stop at Mondo on my way here or my way home. I was four days here and two days there, but now I’m like six days here and two nights there. I come in, I help get the specials ready, I help determine the special menus. At dinner we have our signature items, but we also have a list of things that change on a daily basis. Not every single item changes every day, but I buy my seafood every day. We always have scallops and rabbit on the menu, but we change the preparation according to season and whim. We have a lot of regulars for lunch, so we want to keep it interesting. And we have pasta of the day, fish of the day, scallop of the day. We do a mixed grill with different things, we do an omelet or egg dish every day, and at night there’s a couple of appetizers, a salad. I have some good people that have been with me for several years, so they help me with the ordering and the receiving and keeping things rolling. Sunday we’re closed, so I always had Sundays off until we opened Mondo and had Sunday brunch. So now I can count on having Sunday after four o’clock off till about eight Monday. But that will change. How does the grind affect you? It’s hard to stay fresh. I feel like I would go out to eat more, think about dishes more, but it’s hard to do that when you’re in there all the time. And when I do have spare time, I do things like this, or PR stuff, or special menus or the other things that go along with running a restaurant. With all of that, why start Mondo? The neighborhood. I’d been living out there 20 years, and I felt a little surge of energy in the last two years. I’d always had my eye on the spot because it’s been a lot of different restaurants. Just the idea that you can have some place that you can take kids. The food is casual, but the quality of the food is really good. The things it’s made with are fresh. It’s not a bunch of Sysco cole slaw, or potato salad. You can get a good glass of wine, reasonably priced, or a good margarita. That’s what I want. I want to go out and have a variety of good food on the menu and get a good glass of wine. That’s all I drink pretty much.

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“If I was a singer, I would probably be in an alt country band. We’d call it ‘Urgency’ and it’d be a band of chefs. You have to have a sense of urgency in the kitchen when you’re cooking.”

COVER STORY

Does the shift toward casual mean that the days of dressing up for dinner are passing? No, I think by and large most people don’t want to [dress up] except on special occasions, unless you’re having a business dinner or you’re used to doing that. It is kind of fun to get dressed up if you don’t work all the time or have kids. We’ve never had a dress code. If we ever had a dress code, none of my friends would be able to come. When we go out, we tend to not dress up like suit and tie, but I want to get out of something that looks like a uniform. I like putting on a dress. I don’t necessarily want to put on heels. I still try to dress nicely when I go on to an airplane. I can’t get into the sweatpants. I’m serious! My husband and I are of like minds when it comes to that. It used to be such a big event to go on an airplane.

figure there’s a lot of stress anyway in a restaurant environment; you don’t need to manufacture more. I yell occasionally, but not that much. Only when absolutely necessary. I lean more towards sarcasm.

What are the challenges in opening a new restaurant? I was talking to Frank Brigtsen about it, because he went through it with Charlie’s. I think you don’t realize, if you’ve already had a restaurant,

Where do you go out to eat? There are so many new restaurants, but I still really like Herbsaint. I’m not a partner there anymore, but it’s still one of my favorite restaurants.

all the systems and all the things that being opened for a few years—how hard it is to get that going right from the get-go. Just the way you interact with people and the way you move around people and how you get used to the space. There are some real subtle things you don’t realize. Then knowing how to staff. We didn’t know how slammed we were going to be. We didn’t have enough prep people. We had everyone staffed for the service, but it was the sous chef and I coming in and making the food every day. We were working 16-hour days for a couple of weeks, cooking as fast as we could to get ready to open at 5:30 and make it all again the next day. But you don’t want to overstaff because labor is the biggest cost. I have a wonderful manager out there; she’s the best. We can get some people who are learning; you don’t have to pay top dollar. If I’m charging $15 for an entrée, I don’t want to have to hire $14-an-hour line cooks. We figured we could teach people, but then you get people who don’t understand how a kitchen runs, and they don’t know how to label and consolidate. You do need people with a little bit more experience and know the basic stuff to check. Air conditioning has been a big issue. It’s been really hot, hot, hot. We opened in the hottest summer, and we have a western exposure. We have a 20-foot hood in the kitchen that was sucking up all the air conditioning. We had to bring in temporary air conditioning. You can anticipate, try to think ahead, but it’s not until it’s up and running….

We’ll go eat Vietnamese because the kids like that. I like Mona’s. If I’m there shopping for my pita bread, or my curry paste, or feta, I’ll grab a falafel or something. When I am off, I try to cook at home, something simple. I try to get green vegetables in the kids, something with green beans or broccoli. My stepdaughter is a vegetarian. My husband is really good at cooking a lot of things; he’s much faster than I am. At home, you’ve got to peel the onions and peel the garlic. It took me a while to get used to that, always looking around for the stuff that was already prepped.

I’d imagine a restaurant eventually develops its own culture. Obviously this kitchen is not as high-testosterone as most are. We have a pretty helpful kitchen. It’s not an “every man for himself” situation. I

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What do you cook at home? Ice cream. I start my day with PJ’s granita and I end it with coffee Häagen-Dazs. I’m a one-trick pony. One’s just a little sweeter and creamier, and the other has a better kick. If I were to ever endorse any product, it would be PJ’s granita. It has gotten me through more long days, hangovers, whatever. I have a relationship with my granita. A medium will get me through any day. A medium is extreme for me. I put them in the refrigerator, so it’s a time-release thing. I go, and they stay pretty frozen.

When discussing Mondo and Bayona, Spicer talks about the trials and challenges with good humor. She’s been in the chef business since 1979 and earned a James Beard Award in 1993, so she’s got some perspective. A brutally hot night in Mondo this summer is a story she’ll laugh about five years from now. When asked if cooking in a restaurant takes the fun out of cooking, she laughed as if the question’s ridiculous. What ingredient inspires you? I love eggplant. I know that seems very pedestrian. It’s usually produce as opposed to a piece of meat or fish. You can do Asian, Mediterranean, Southern—it goes in a lot of different directions. A lot of times when I go to the Asian market they have Thai ones, which are good for curry and hold their texture a little bit more; they’re firmer. Then you get the white ones and the Japanese ones and the fat Italian ones. I just love the flavor and texture. The texture is very sexy. O www.OFFBEAT.com

FEEDING THE SAINTS

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner of Champions What do you feed the New Orleans Saints? Everything but butter.

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Photo: elsa hahne

o paraphrase Dave Barry, the stomach is the most important organ in the human body. The heart is fine and dandy, but it is not nearly as satisfied by a slice of pizza. Without a stomach, armies would not be able to march and the heart of a man would be unreachable. Dean Pigeon (pronounced Pea-jean) of Pigeon Caterers has been taking care of the bellies of the world champion New Orleans Saints at their facility on Airline Highway since the spring of 2001. Pigeon provides meals and snacks to the Saints players, coaches, staff and administrators throughout the year, but his season really picks up during training camp, when Pigeon serves 150 breakfasts, 250 lunches, and 175 dinners a day, all the while keeping the larders stocked with ice creams, fruits, snacks and the players’ favorite chocolate chip cookies. Pigeon has spent nearly his whole life in the food industry, but it was through luck of the draw that he ended up as the caterer for the Saints. One day in 2000, Pigeon found himself catering a luncheon at Rummel High School with some higher-ups from the Archdiocese in attendance. This being New Orleans, “I got a call the next day from someone at the luncheon saying their daughter worked for the Saints and they were looking for a caterer. A couple interviews later, I got the job,” Pigeon says. The dining hall of the Saints would make any high school jealous. A long buffet anchors one end. Black tables and chairs line down the hallway, and flat screens tuned to ESPN adorn the wall.

Dean Pigeon serves New Orleans Saints tackle Jon Stinchcomb 7 a.m. breakfast. Because of a shoulder injury, Stinchcomb wears an icepack under his shirt.

Large coolers hold juice, sports drinks, Häagen-Dazs bars and other goodies. But Pigeon says it was not always this luxurious, “There was no cafeteria when we started. There was a basketball court that the team put a tent over. You’d come in here and the ketchup would be bubbling in the bottles due to the heat.” Cooking for men who burn thousands of calories in one practice presents a unique set of challenge. Under previous head coach Jim Haslett, fried foods were verboten. Now, coach Sean

By Rene Louapre

Payton tells Pigeon fried chicken is okay, just make sure there is baked chicken also available. Other nearly indispensible elements of New Orleans cooking like butter and heavy cream sit on the sidelines while turkey breasts, whole wheat pasta and salads see the field. Whether it is a kid in grammar school or a college-aged kid in a dining hall, every cafeteria-goer has one meal that is their favorite. At the Saints facility, sandwich day brings out everyone in droves. Pigeon and his crew will

set up countless stations so each person can make his or her own sandwich, panini, or yes, even a po-boy, which is a point of pride for Pigeon. “I got them eating po-boys now. They used to say, ‘What is this? A sub?’ Now they ask for a shrimp po-boy.” In a typical day during the season, Pigeon will go through 75 pounds of fresh fruit, 50 pounds of starches, including rice and potatoes, 200 chocolate chip cookies, 200 chicken breasts, 40 turkey breasts, and 50 pounds of red meat. He gets special requests www.OFFBEAT.com

FEEDING THE SAINTS from the players as well. Reggie Bush is a well-documented junk food hound. He’ll ask Pigeon to go down the street and get him four foot-long Sonic Dogs. The requests don’t stop with players. Saints owner Tom Benson has called upon Pigeon’s services to cater private events or locate a bottle of Silver Oak when the mood calls for celebrating. The one general rule is the bigger the player, the better they eat. “The skinny guys, like wide receivers and cornerbacks, they love bacon. Bigger guys won’t touch it,” Pigeon says. Besides providing breakfast and lunch, Pigeon provides the coaches with dinner each night. Monday nights are steak nights where each coach gets his steak cooked the way he wants. On other nights, Pigeon may pick up hamburgers from the Harbor, or Italian from Impastato’s. But every Thursday, it is pizza night in the film room. During last year’s miraculous run to 13-0, those Thursday night pizza orders came strictly from Rotolo’s under direct orders from Coach Payton. The reason why was an example of Payton’s notorious superstitious ways, “That was where we ordered from the Thursday before week one,” Pigeon says. Pigeon, a lifelong Saints fan, is not without his own superstitions, some of which include driving a precise route to the game, wearing the same shirt, and cleaning his house when things aren’t going well. It is this dedication to the Saints through thick and thin that earned him the greatest tip any food service worker in this town could ever get: a Super Bowl ring, the most gorgeous creation in Tiffany’s history (in this writer’s opinion). Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams, an NFL journeyman, claims the Saints have the best food service program in the NFL. Sportscasters and scouts have spent months dissecting why and how the Saints won the Super Bowl. But the answer is simple: the New Orleans Saints have the stomach of a champion. O www.OFFBEAT.com

SEPTEMBER 2010

CHEESE CLASS

Behind the Rind St. James Cheese Company’s classes go inside cheese.

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Photo: ELSA HAHNE

ow well do you really know your cheese? Long gone are the times when our choices were limited to cheddar, Swiss and American. Today, a veritable flow chart of questions presents itself when deciding which cheese to buy. What’s the difference between cow’s milk, goat’s milk and sheep’s milk cheeses? Do you prefer your goat cheese aged or are you an advocate of chevre frais? What’s so special about buffalo mozzarella as opposed to that shredded stuff in the bag? Is it true that the smellier the cheese, the better? The anxiety is not unlike the nervousness one encounters when selecting a bottle of wine. Wine shop owners and label distributors began hosting wine tastings in order to assuage the apprehension of their customers. At St. James Cheese Company, owners Richard and Danielle Sutton decided to apply the same educational tool for cheese, and thus their “Cheese School” began accepting students. The professors du fromage are Casey Foote and Justin Trosclair, two cheesemongers who guide each class through six different cheeses paired with six different wines or beers. Classes are organized around a theme based on commonality among the cheeses, whether that is geographic origin, type, texture, aging time, or other distinguishing characteristics. How does such a small store gather such an extensive catalog so as to design class after class without repeating the same old mold? “The cheese world is a rather small community, and [St. James owner] Richard [Sutton] has connections throughout the world,” explains Trosclair. These associations are how aged cheddar from a tiny farm in Indiana winds up next to epoisses flown in from Bourgogne. Classes are held inside the store, where tables are arranged in a

jigsaw manner to accommodate the various groups. Each student is provided with an individual tasting plate. Baskets filled with sliced baguettes from La Boulangerie are scattered amongst the tables. The tasting begins with a brief introduction from Trosclair and Foote, who offer insight as to why the taste differs from one cheese to another. As scholars of their trade, Foote and Trosclair can succinctly explain the science behind the cheese, such as the chemical process behind a washed-rind cheese, or how a golden yellow cheese denotes a grass-fed animal. Having worked in a number of positions in the industry and visited a wide variety of cheesemakers, the duo has firsthand knowledge of whose cheeses suffer from inconsistencies and who sources their own milk. Such subtleties are magnified in the flavor and texture of the product. Lessons are not limited to the science of curds and whey. Instead,

By Peter Thriffiley

Foote and Trosclair often interject their own personal anecdotes from their time on the cheese circuit. While enjoying a sharp wedge of pecorino, Trosclair educates the class on the strange seduction technique of male goats, who perfume their heads with urine in order to attract females. The ludicrousness of the FDA’s pasteurization requirements often comes up, but the discussion usually deteriorates into a cacophony of laughing and clinking glasses with the first mention of “barely legal cheese.” Contributing to the festive atmosphere are the libations that accompany each course. St. James typically works with Beth Kehn, their representative from Glazer’s Distributors. “We usually call Beth and give her an idea of what cheeses we will be serving or what geographic region we are focusing on, and she tries to find wines that are either from the same region or will complement the flavor profile of the cheeses,” says Trosclair. The collaborative effort

produces an eclectic list of pairings, ranging from a domestic microbrew with muenster to a German sparkling riesling with aged goat cheddar. Because they recall their own increased enthusiasm for showand-tell during school, Trosclair and Foote often incorporate special guests into the classes. Cheesy celebrities such as Wanda Barras from Belle Ecorces Farm are periodically in attendance and offer stories from the farm. On September 16, St. James will go porcine when Herb Eckhouse hosts a Thursday night prosciutto tasting of his Iowa-based La Quercia Meats. Originally, classes were held every Wednesday evening, but demand is now such that there are duplicate classes on Thursdays. Despite the tight seating and shared tables—or because of them—the cheese class has become the party of the week for many local cheese lovers. For more information, go to StJamesCheese.com. www.OFFBEAT.com

TRY-ME

The Bywater Brew Try-Me Coffee is so much a part of its neighborhood that people smell it before they see it.

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Photo: ELSA HAHNE

t’s a typical Tuesday morning at Try-Me Coffee—roasting coffee, contacting clients and filling out police reports. According to third-generation owner Bob Lutz, “I got in this morning and found out they stole my van again. You get the feeling, ‘Okay, we’ll sell out and get out of here.’ But I can’t afford to retire; I’m too young for that!” For the Bywater-based Try-Me Coffee, joining the tier of the Crescent City’s household favorites such as Community Coffee or French Market has proven as daunting as the everyday nuisances Lutz tackles. But the roasters at Try-Me are no amateurs when it comes to their craft. The Try-Me Coffee Mill has been serving “discriminating coffee lovers” since 1925. Its name isn’t a household brand, but Try-Me has likely soothed your craving for a cup of brew at one of the many restaurants or coffee shops it supplies. Try-Me has been in business for nearly a century, but the brand name is as unrecognizable as the mill itself. Nestled in the middle of its block in the Bywater, the mill’s outward appearance is camouflaged, blending in with the surrounding neighborhood homes. From the street, it looks like just another house, with the same iron doors that it had when it was built in 1925. The mill also holds the original roaster that was used by TryMe’s founder, Henry Kelper. Lutz has upheld his grandfather’s tradition of roasting and blending coffee to precise shades while providing distinct local blends. “King Cake,” “Mardi Gras,” “Southern Delight” and “Toasted Southern Pecan” are among the flavors that you won’t find up North. But the fact that Try-Me Coffee has been around for so long raises a question: Why haven’t we heard of you? “I’ve tried all kinds of advertising, and for some reason none of it

works,” Lutz says. “It’s amazing how many people walk up [at catering events], read the sign and say, ‘I know who you are. I thought y’all went out of business?’” The Try-Me brand has not gone out of business, and every sip of brew has been influenced by the history of the city. When blockades closed the port of New Orleans during the Civil War, the city was unable to get many common necessities, including coffee. New Orleanians became resourceful and reinvented the flavor with a local ingredient, chicory root. Today, one-third of all coffee imported to North America enters through New Orleans. With such a relationship with coffee, New Orleans’ coffee companies take pride in providing locals with original tastes and flavors. CC’s, PJ’s and Rue de la Course are among the few that have helped keep Starbucks at bay. Like so many other local businesses, Try-Me struggled to return after Hurricane Katrina.

By Courtney Young

“We gutted the entire building down to the walls. Thank God I have great friends,” Lutz says. “One of the guys that came in town left his wife who had just had twins, and one [of the twins] died. She was in the hospital, and the baby was in the hospital. He left them and came down here to work for me for about three months doing whatever it took. “A bunch of people didn’t come back. One lived right below the bridge and lost everything—the house, the whole nine yards. He and his family relocated to Houston. He would come in four days a week, we would bust butt, and then he’d go back to Houston for a couple days.” In addition to loyal workers, Lutz also has a regular, familiar clientele: Rue de la Course, Café Degas, Court of Two Sisters, Sun Ray Grill and Antoine’s are among the many companies Lutz sells to. Lutz also sells coffee flavors exclusive to Aunt Sally’s Praline Company, including Crème Brulée and Pralines ’n’ Crème.

Try-Me Coffee caters to anyone interested in their coffee, whether it’d be a weekly visit from neighbors on roasting day or making home deliveries. (Try-Me delivers on Wednesdays and Fridays to customers who purchase five pounds or more.) “That’s how my grandfather got the name ‘Try-Me Coffee,’” Lutz says. “He would go down Franklin Avenue back when it was a dirt road, banging on doors to see if they wanted to try some coffee.” But new neighbors don’t always realize that they’re sharing the block with a coffee mill. “In the winter time, when you’re roasting an espresso or something, it’ll steam, and a new neighbor will call the fire department,” Lutz says. “[The fire department] generally walks out with a box of coffee. Sometimes they show up when they know we’re roasting. I figured that one out.” O www.OFFBEAT.com

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In the Kitchen with Charles “W e’ve been open now three months. I purchased this building in ‘07, and didn’t have a plan what I was going to do with it then. Found out my youngest daughter (Javonda) can cook, ‘Let’s try and open a little restaurant and see what it’ll do.’ In the ‘80s, I had a po-boy shop. Captain Charles’ Po-Boys, it was on Washington and Robertson, right by the Magnolia Projects, and then I had a sno-ball stand between all that, in the ‘80s, ‘90s. Somehow I wound back up with another restaurant. Somebody kept saying, ‘You know, Javonda is cooking’ and I said, ‘Javonda is cooking? Na-huh.’ During the Super Bowl week, when the Saints was in the playoffs, I said, ‘Let’s try some jambalaya’ so she cooked a jambalaya and I enjoyed it. Everybody enjoyed the jambalaya. After that, I was convinced. We have folks who come here and want to order her gumbo. She does a hell of a gumbo, and sometimes folks come in and ask just for the juice. What do I cook? I can do a poboy. I can grill steaks. Thursdays we do steaks, so I’m grilling steaks on the deck out there; I grill steaks for lunch every Thursday for 12 o’clock. I’m pretty good. Rare, medium, get a little red in it. I’m pretty good at getting oatmeal together too. That’s my favorite dish. By me being in the clubs all night and eating a bunch of junk, either I’m eating chicken or grits or pancakes, and it’s not good for you, it’s too fatty, so when I get home I put some fiber in me. Every night when I go home, I put some water on the stove, put my oatmeal, let the oatmeal cook. No salt. Real creamy. It’s a big bowl and I eat it all. I put butter, cream and sugar on it. Sometimes, I cut up some bananas, but I’m not a raisin person. The only way I can eat raisins is the Raisinets with the chocolate. Only way. Also, I get my toast. I dip my [buttered] toast in the oatmeal. I eat

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people do it, we’ve been doing that for years. That was like our meal. We fed five people off of that. Some people put hot sauce, but I don’t eat a lot of hot. Folks come in here and ask for eggs and rice because not a lot of people sell it. My vision was, when I decided to do a cafe, make it simple. But people kind of dictate what they want. So we have to give people what they Buttering the bread at want. ‘I want to his new restaurant, be able to come Café on the Ave. in and order some red beans and rice.’ Or they’ll come in and order some my toast and then I eat the oatmeal. white beans, smothered chicken, Cream, like canned cream, PET milk, or some macaroni and cheese. I did the evaporated milk, I put that in not have that vision of doing a lunch my bowl, stir that in with the sugar special every day, but we wound until it’s sweet and juicy. It has to be up doing that. Steaks on Thursday, juicy so I can dip my toast. I allow seafood on Friday. I wanted to focus the butter to melt on top. I tear my more on a cafe; nachos and wifi. But toast up and dip it, eat it. Never no leftovers. I make just enough. Ask me when folks started coming, we had how, I couldn’t tell you. Luck! But I’ve to cater to the crowd. I wanted to do more health foods—salads, grilled been eating oatmeal my whole life; stuff, baked chicken, but folks rather my grandmother introduced me to it and I love it. I might have been three. fried chicken than baked chicken. Coming back in those days and being Tomorrow they’ll complain about their weight but today, ‘Hey, give me poor, not having food stamps, if you didn’t have nothing else to eat, you’d some of that fried chicken!’ We do more better with specials. either eat the oatmeal or the rice People like what they like. They love it and eggs, and that was your meal. and they don’t try to change it. Oatmeal, I was raised up on that and My grandma was the cook in the I have never gotten away from it. It’s family. She did all the cooking. You something I love doing. got home from school and she used Here, in the morning, folks come to cook chitlins. I could never eat it. in and ask for rice and eggs. Call it Back in those days, you bought them a poor man’s special. Have you ever and you had to clean them yourself. tried rice and eggs? Good meal. If When I got home, the whole you want them scrambled, scramble your eggs. If you want fried, fry. Cook house was stinking, it was terrible. Everybody in my house would eat your rice, add a little salt and pepper, them, I was the only one who didn’t. and mix it up. Like all the Chinese

By Elsa Hahne

I still don’t eat them. I’m a basic person. I like red beans, smothered chops, smothered chicken, candied yams, green peas, creamed corn or whole corn. I grew up in the Magnolia. I moved out of the Magnolia and my mother moved us to Zion City, right on the other side of this canal, behind the storage place. We used to play football right here by Coca Cola, right here was a toy center, swimming pools. And here on the neutral ground, back in the ‘70s there used to be a police talent show, and the inmates used to be the band, and people in the community would come out and perform. There’s a lot of history in this area. I have a lot of real estate here. This place used to be a gas station. It gets on my nerves if I don’t have any PET milk when I come home. There was only one Walgreens that’s open 24 hours, on St. Charles—the one on Carrollton just opened—and I get home late at night and then run and get my can of PET milk. If I come home at four in the morning and have no milk or no sugar, we have a problem; I have to go get some. So I walk right out the house and get right back in the car at three in the morning. Go get that milk, or get that sugar. Sometime the butter too. For whatever reason, I guess it’s a mind thing, oatmeal just don’t taste right without that butter.” DJ Captain Charles’ Oatmeal His favorite meal. 1/2 cup instant oatmeal 1 cup water 4 tablespoons evaporated milk 3 teaspoons sugar 1/2 tablespoon butter buttered toast Cook oatmeal in a pot, according to directions on box. Do not add salt. Pour oatmeal into a bowl. Stir in milk and sugar until creamy. Let butter melt on top. Dip toast and eat. O www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

DJ Captain Charles tries to keep it simple.

EATS

AMERICAN Green Goddess: 307 Exchange Pl., 301-3347 Feast: 200 Julia St., 304-6318 O’Henry’s Food & Spirits: 634 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-9741; 8859 Veterans Blvd., 461-9840; 710 Terry Pkwy., 433-4111. 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. Walker’s BBQ: 10828 Hayne Blvd., 2418227. 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: 634 Frenchmen St., 949-2292. CREOLE/CAJUN Atchafalaya Restaurant: 901 Louisiana Ave., 891-9626. Clancy’s: 6100 Annunciation, 895-1111. Cochon: 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 588-2123. Dick & Jenny’s: 4501 Tchoupitoulas, 894-9880. 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. Stein’s Market and Deli: 2207 Magazine St., 527-0771. FINE DINING Antoine’s: 701 St. Louis St., 581-4422. Café Adelaide: 300 Poydras St., 595-3305. Commander’s Palace: 1403 Washington Ave., 899-8221. Emeril’s: 800 Tchoupitoulas, 528-9393. Iris Restaurant: 321 N Peters St., 299-3944. Lüke: 333 St. Charles Ave., 378-2840. Maison Dupuy Hotel: 1001 Toulouse St., 586-8000. Mat and Naddie’s: 937 Leonidas St., 861-9600. Le Meritage: 1001 Toulouse St., 5868000.

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Mr. B’s Bistro: 201 Royal St. 523-2078. Restaurant Cuvée: 322 Magazine St., 587-9001. 7 on Fulton: 701 Convention Center Blvd., 525-7555. Stella!: 1032 Chartres St., 587-0091. FRENCH Café Degas: 3127 Esplanade Ave., 945-5635. Delachaise: 3442 St. Charles Ave., 895-0858. La Crepe Nanou: 1410 Robert St., 899-2670. Crepes à la Cart: 1039 Broadway St., 866-2362. Restaurant August: 301 Tchoupitoulas St., 299-9777 GERMAN Jäger Haus: 833 Conti St., 525-9200. ICE CREAM/GELATO Creole Creamery: 4924 Prytania St., 8948680. La Divina Gelateria: 3005 Magazine St., 342-2634; 621 St. Peter St., 302-2692. Sucré: 3025 Magazine St., 520-8311. INDIAN Nirvana: 4308 Magazine St., 894-9797. ITALIAN Domenica: 123 Baronne St., 648-1200. Eleven 79: 1179 Annunciation St., 299-1179. Irene’s Cuisine: 539 St. Philip St., 529-8811. Maximo’s: 1117 Decatur St., 586-8883. 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. Nacho Mama’s: 3240 Magazine St., 899-0031. RioMar: 800 S. Peters St., 525-3474. Taqueros Coyoacan: 1432 Saint Charles Ave., 267-3028 Tomatillo’s: 437 Esplanade Ave., 945-9997. Vaso: 500 Frenchman St., 272-0929. 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.

NEIGHBORHOOD JOINTS Café Reconcile: 1631 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 568-1157. Captain Charles’ Café on the Ave: 4600 Washington Ave., 258-1719. Gattuso’s: 435 Huey P. Long Ave., Gretna, 368-1114. Lakeview Harbor: 911 Harrison Ave., 486-4887. Parkway Bakery and Tavern: 538 Hagan Ave., 482-3047. Sammy’s Food Services: 3000 Elysian Fields Ave., 948-7361. 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. PIZZA Fresco Café & Pizzeria: 7625 Maple St., 862-6363.

Slice Pizzeria: 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525-7437. Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza: 4218 Magazine St., 894-8554. Turtle Bay: 1119 Decatur St., 586-0563. SEAFOOD Acme Oyster & Seafood House: 724 Iberville, 522-5973. Casamento’s Restaurant: 4330 Magazine St. 895-9761. 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. Huck Finn’s Café: 135 Decatur St., 529-8600. 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.

John Rankin hits the What do you usually order? The Trout Meuniere, it’s one of their specialties, with french fries, but I’ve been gearing towards the shrimp salad a lot, it’s so big we always bring some home. Also, the onion rings are killer! I like to come here with a group so everyone can order something different, and we all get to share a little.

Photo: caitlyn ridenour

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

Mandina’s 3800 Canal St. (504) 482-9179

OffBeat

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.

Who do you usually bring here? The family; my wife and daughter, and whenever we have house guests this is one of the spots we like to bring them. It’s a great family restaurant.

How often do you come? About once a month, we always come for dinner because lunch time is busy. —Caitlyn Ridenour www.OFFBEAT.com

DINING OUT Tartine While our cholesterol levels know no boundaries, we often must yield to the health consciousness of our loved ones. We both have women in our lives that sometimes are not in the mood for a lunch consisting of a deep fried foie gras po-boy, cheese fries covered in gravy, and four or five glasses of red wine. Luckily, at Tartine we can still eat well while satisfying our better halves. Tartine borrows its name from the sandwiches often eaten by the French for breakfast or at lunch. To wit: take a baguette from the local boulangerie, smear it with a decadent spread such as a pate, and eat it open-faced. Simple yet delicious. Should you order the namesake at this bakery off Broadway, be prepared that the sandwich is best described by the Seven Mary Three song, “Cumbersome.” The eight-inch, baked-in-house baguette is sublime, and has a dense crust that is the opposite of New Orleans style. The classic toppings are pate matched with Dijon mustard

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and sweet confit of onion, or rillete, which required a sprinkling of salt to punch up the flavor. The open-faced eating technique can result in toppings tumbling onto your plate, but with a little practice or the use of a knife and fork, you will soon enjoy what is a very rich and filling lunch. A recent soup du jour consisted of a smooth concoction of potato, leek and spinach ladled into a brioche bread bowl. For serving as a containment vessel, the bread flaked apart with delightfully surprising ease. Sandwiches are also available for those who have trouble eating without spilling. Thinly sliced ham is matched with triple cream brie, whose richness is offset by a spicy fig mustard. Both tartines and sandwiches are served alongside housemade pickles and a ramekin of bean salad with black eyed peas, miniwhite beans and diced red onion in a vinaigrette.

Photo: RENE LOUAPRE

EATS

Seating is available inside under the intoxicating aroma of freshly baked bread or outside on the patio, where a number of fans successfully battle the heat of summer. Dessert is a must, and can be taken on the go by picking up a container of velvety smooth fudge with a background flavor of peanut butter. For those dining in for dessert, a light, deeply chocolaty mousse begs you to run your fingers around the edge of the glass. When we do this, the women in our lives just laugh. 7217 Perrier St., 866-4860, Tues.-Sat. 7-3p. —Peter Thriffiley and Rene Louapre

SEPTEMBER 2010

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

Dr. John at Love and War

Dr. John Tribal (429) Dr. John is among the core group of New Orleans musicians who’ve brought renewed purpose to their work in the last five years. His last release, City That Care Forgot, was a masterpiece of post-Katrina commentary. Tribal is more personal, with a spectacular performance from his “Lower 911” band, particularly from drummer Herman Ernest III, who co-produced the album, and guitarist John Fohl.

Of all his myriad talents, perhaps the most overlooked aspect of Dr. John’s genius is the quality and depth of his songwriting. His offhanded, conversational delivery makes it all sound deceptively simple, like the outfielder whose seemingly effortless speed allows him to appear nonchalant on his way to difficult catches. But few writers of his generation have produced as wide a catalog of songs for varied occasions, from his voodoo-based constructions to R&B classics, love ballads, observations of various “char-actors” he’s known and anger-fueled protest material. Lyrically, Mac Rebennack can be by turns the surliest of cynics and the most clear-eyed of idealists, and in every case he writes the perfect music to accompany those feelings. Tribal is a characteristically strong collection of songs that are easily seen as a pair of EPs, one about Rebennack’s worldview and the other about personal relationships. The album title provides the theme for the worldview material, tying

together a lot of ideas that have populated his work over the years—the importance of Nature and the pre-Columbian animus of the spirit world as an antidote to the evils of contemporary society (“The tribal plan is for every man”); the connection between that world and the African-American spirit world, explicitly drawn in the title track, which opens with a Native American drum circle that brilliantly morphs into Mardi Gras Indian drumming; and the power of music to transform negativity into celebration and spiritual transcendence. In Dr. John’s world, music is always a healing force, an idea forcefully demonstrated in the album’s opening track, “Feel Good Music.” “I’ve got a song,” he promises. “I got the cure in the palm of my hand.” The animistic element of his vision comes to the fore next in “Lissen

at Our Prayer,” which counsels the listener to pay attention to Mother Earth, the Great Spirit and “the critters” as well as “your own self.” The record comes back down to earth for “Big Gap,” an overtly political tune with a carefree lilt that gives the refrain, “There’s a mighty big gap between rich and poor / The rich are rich but the poor have more,” the merry feel of a nursery rhyme, a sense underscored by the sprightly horn chart. The album shifts gears for “Change of Heart,” the first of several songs about a relationship that’s fallen apart. Dr. John can make the bummer of getting dumped by your lover sound like fun, and he takes things a step further on “When I’m Right (I’m Wrong),” coining the memorable phrase, “When I’m right I’m wrong / When I’m wrong I’m wrong.” The climax of this song cycle is “Manoovas,” a great put-down of his ex. “Don’t use your manoovas on me,” he sings accusingly as guest guitarist Derek

“Ballad of John and Yoko”—moves with the drive of a song that knows it’s running late and will do so again tomorrow, even as it documents the indignities of the road. The live version of “Polk Salad Annie” was clearly the blueprint for Elvis’ treatment. As powerful as the band is, White plays a number of songs on his own with just his acoustic guitar, and the effect is sufficiently entrancing that when someone unplugs him near the end of a song, he announces he was unplugged, finishes the song and the audience loved it as if nothing happened. He plays “Willie and Laura Mae Jones” on

the acoustic, letting the story’s drama play out on its own terms. Those moments serve as a reminder that Tony Joe White not only has one of rock’s most singular voices and grooves, but songs that hold up, despite being from “another place and another time.” —Alex Rawls

On the Road Again Tony Joe White That on the Road Look Live (Rhino Handmade) Tony Joe White has made a career out of being laconic, and his matterof-fact delivery lent a homespun truthfulness to race relations in “Willie and Laura Mae Jones,” a subtle wink to “Polk Salad Annie” and a mournful quality to “Rainy Night in Georgia.” When he dueted with Shelby Lynne on “Can’t Go Back Home,” each sang with the hushed awareness that they’d crossed lines they couldn’t come back from. The memory of that Tony Joe White makes That on the Road Look

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Live a revelation. This live album from 1971 featuring MG Duck Dunn on bass presents White in a context closer to the blues bands he musically grew up in, singing with ferocity and raving up many songs past the five minute mark and “Polk Salad Annie” for more than 10. According to White’s liner notes, the recording came from a Creedence Clearwater Revival tour, where John Fogerty’s swamp imagery collided with a real, live Louisianan. “They tried to burn us down and we tried to burn them down,” White says, and the show is as hot as that suggests without being showy. “A Night in the Life of a Swamp Fox”—White’s

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REVIEWS

The Family That Plays Together… The Marsalis Family Music Redeems (Marsalis) The family band has been a cornerstone of the American entertainment industry since the 19th Century, when singing families became the first domestic music stars. There’s something magic about the way blood relatives interact with each other spiritually and instinctively rather than technically. This is even more important in the African-American music tradition, in which musicians have learned from their relatives for generations. That special relationship is much in evidence on Music Redeems. Liberated from the critical necessity to make a Big Statement or define some new trend, the Marsalis family’s only agenda here is to enjoy playing together. The occasion is a live concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., honoring family patriarch Ellis Marsalis for receiving the Lifetime Achievement award from the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. The family made a similar album in 2003, also a live concert recording honoring Ellis, but this one is better. The surprise star of the record is Jason Marsalis, who demonstrates how much his total concept has matured with an outstanding performance on vibraphones, drums and, of all things, whistling. His breathtaking doubling with Wynton’s trumpet on Charlie Parker’s delightfully tricky “Donna Lee” is so well articulated that I thought I was hearing a flute on first listen. The band plays together beautifully on a familiar tune, James Black’s lilting “Monkey Puzzle,” which is illuminated by Jason’s vibe solo. Ellis follows with a thoughtful solo piano construction, “After,” then another of his compositions, “Syndrome,” built around a stately theme. Wynton’s trumpet solo opens the song’s exposition with a

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jaunty flair as the rhythm section goads him, and Ellis dances across the keyboard in response. Harry Connick, Jr. joins in for a broad, two-piano reading of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” then offers a lengthy spoken tribute to Ellis which is the album’s only blemish. On an otherwise flawless technical recording, Connick’s speech is recorded at an appreciably lower level than the rest of the record, making it an irritating distraction in the flow of the program. The band proceeds with a perfectly crafted interpretation of Thelonious Monk’s difficult piece “Teo,” featuring excellent solos from Branford, Delfeayo and Wynton, who rallies through an extra chorus, playing off his own lines. Ellis Marsalis III’s spoken word tribute to Ellis follows much more successfully than Harry’s as he ruminates on aspects of his dad’s personality from “ass whipping” to “beacon.” Jason’s expansive “At the House, In Da Pocket” pulls the performance to a climax as the individual band members trade fours in an entertaining exchange that builds to single note exhortations and then breaks into exciting collective improvisation and riffing, a glorious interlace of ideas that reach back to the earliest traditions of jazz while sounding wholly contemporary. The encore is pure party time. Wynton’s trumpet provides the piercing clarion call for “The 2nd Line,” and the palpable crowd noise suggests that an audience that may well be dancing in the aisles. Definitely worth the price of admission, especially because all proceeds go to funding community programming at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, soon to open at the Musicians’ Village. —John Swenson www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS Trucks spins a nasty slide guitar riff that adds a stinging exclamation to Rebennack’s declamation. Trucks fits well with Fohl, a great guitarist who can play invisibly inside a piece or take it over with a bold flourish as the occasion warrants. He turns in his best performance on Tribal, using an inventive figure to propel the uplifting “Music Came” and turning the hard funk of “Potnah” inside out with outstanding support lines. “Potnah” concludes Tribal’s political commentary, and it fits into Rebennack’s career-long history of writing tough songs about shady characters. When he sings, “Your runnin’ potnah / be the one that swung ya,” it sounds a lot like his accusations of political betrayal on city. Dr. John’s capacity for optimism following his dire observations about bad politics and relationships is inspirational. He ends Tribal with a flourish worthy of Flannery O’Connor on “A Place in the Sun.” At an age (69) when most people are contemplating their past, he’s still planning his future. “Gonna reach for the top before I die,” he promises. “I’m a seeker of the truth…. Gonna find a little place in the sun.“ This flourish of goodwill is in fact a summation of Mac’s worldview, that faith in the world of the spirit mediated to what he calls “the meat world” through music can redeem us all. —John Swenson

Kenny Neal Hooked On Your Love (Blind Pig) Like the jazz tradition in New Orleans and zydeco music’s in South Louisiana, many of the current blues artists that from Baton Rouge are second, and even third generation musicians. Not only is Kenny Neal the oldest son of blues harp legend Raful Neal, each of his siblings has pursued careers as a musician (brother Noel has played bass with Bobby Bland on-and-off for years). A descendent of the “Excello generation,” Kenny grew up playing the late Slim Harpo’s guitar behind his father in local clubs. The acorn doesn’t fall much closer to the tree than that. His best release www.OFFBEAT.com

to date, Neal has created an instant modern blues classic with Hooked on Your Love, combining tradition with the 21st Century. The title track is a beaut. It has a classic, early 1980s Malaco sound, and the song would surely have been a chitlin’ circuit hit had Z.Z. Hill got his paws on it 30 years ago. Other worthy originals include “Bitter with the Sweet,” a clever reminder where the journey through life takes one. Ditto the chugging “New Lease on Life” and the sharp shuffle “You Don’t Love Me.” The handful of enjoyable covers—O.V. Wright’s “Blind, Crippled and Crazy,” Little Milton’s “If Walls Could Talk,” Bobby Bland’s “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” and Spencer Wiggins’ “Old Friend” (This song has been covered a lot lately)—lead to an interesting sidebar. These are the blue-collar blues Neal was surrounded by since he was a toddler, and unlike many of his contemporaries, he hasn’t turned his back on them. Very highly recommended. Hooked on Your Love belongs at the top of a short list of this year’s essential purchases. —Jeff Hannusch

Lyrikill A Time to Kill (Independent mixtape)

Lyrikill Shut Up and Rap (Independent mixtape) With the resurgence of bounce music, the release of Mystikal and the rise of Curren$y, there’s no denying that the Crescent City has once again reclaimed its place as a hip-hop hotbed. Beneath the surface, the Big Easy is also home SEPTEMBER 2010

bookmark

REVIEWS

The Eyes of the Storm Elizabeth Kleinveld (ed.) Before During After: Louisiana Photographers’ Visual Reactions to Hurricane Katrina (UNO Press)

Before During After speaks to the power of Hurricane Katrina, though not in the way it intends. Photographer Elizabeth Kleinveld had the provocative idea to document how Katrina affected people—in this case, photographers—by looking at the work they did before, during and after it. That means that there are only two or three Katrina-related photos for each of the 12 photographers chosen, but Katrina’s gravity is such that everything comes back to it. John Biguenet has written a forward and afterward for the book, but they’re about Katrina. LSU’s Dr. Tony Lewis contributed an essay titled “Hurricane Katrina: The Aesthetics of a Disaster,” but he discusses Katrina-related photography, not the story of change that is the book’s purpose. Even some of the “After” photos feel more like a continuation of Katrina coverage, such as Zack Smith’s portrait of a somber Blair Gimma struggling to make human connection, or the woman whose face is partially obscured by a warped, mudcovered record album. Kleinveld presents six to eight photos by a dozen photographers, and the premise is that these tell a story of change. Unfortunately, such a small sampling makes such stories misleading. Jonathan Traviesa is represented by three portraits (before) and two low-angled, unpeopled landscapes (after), and it’s tempting to think about how his Katrina experiences on Bayou St. John led to that change—except that he didn’t stop shooting portraits, and the relationship between the subjects and the spaces they inhabit continues to matter in

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to one of the fastest growing underground rap scenes anywhere. One needs look no further than the recent outpouring from battle-champ Lyrikill for a taste of the freshest flow on the block. Since the start of the summer, the Soundclash emcee has released two mixtapes: the first, A Time to Kill, a loosely strung-together conceptual collaboration with DJ Jay Skillz and producer Prospek based upon the film of the same name; and the second, Shut Up and Rap, a heavy-hitting, beatjacked rhymefest. One of the biggest knocks on his work. Eric Julien didn’t have hip-hop albums is that they fail to his camera with him during his Katrina exile, so he started making make a cohesive musical statement. A Time to Kill does just that. Sure, mixed media collages, and his it’s got a couple of flubs. Electro“after” is represented by more tampered vocals stifle the menacing collages. He hasn’t quit shooting soul-funk of “Talk of the Town,” photos, though, as his sequence and the R&B ringer “Treat Her Like would lead you to believe. I a Lady” altogether misses. But with suspect that if you looked at any photographer’s collected work and Prospek serving up primo beats, Jay Skillz throwing down, and Kill pulled out six to eight shots from different periods, you could tell 10 slinging bars with a platoon of different stories depending on the underground bombers, the vibe rarely wanes. The funk-rock thumper choices. “We Rock S%#*,” the retro banger That said, Before During After “Ugly Face” and the tribal monster does suggest the way an artist’s “Paradox” all bring serious heat. process changes. Frank Relle’s Lyricism is another area that seems photos now look largely like to have gotten lost in the world of his pre-K shots, but he started hip-hop today. For Lyrikill, mastery using lights to shoot architectural of the mic has always been the photos because the city was so dark after Katrina that he couldn’t cornerstone of his game. Though not as adventurous as A Time to count on natural nighttime light Kill, Shut Up and Rap is the New to be sufficient. Lori Waselchuk started shooting with a panoramic South maestro’s most aggressive camera to capture the vastness of effort to date. While not one to the damage, then found its broad name names, Lyrikill doesn’t pull any punches as he pops off pointed sweep spoke to her for other barbs over borrowed beats. “Peasant situations. mad at the crown holder / That’s In the end, the strength of you,” he blurts in “Three Piece” over Before During After is the work A-Mafia’s “1000 Grams.” Later, atop of the photographers’ work. Chalie Boy’s “I Look Good,” he spits, They may not say what the book “Put that shotty to ya brain, Kurt suggests that they do, but as a Cobain / It ain’t my fault you grindin’ collection of photographs, it’s strong, with a few precious visions with no name.” Like its predecessor, this tape makes its mark on the and a number of remarkable Prospek-produced originals. The shots. No “during” photo is as surreal as one of David Rae Morris’ smooth, rolling “OG Everything” is a solo powerhouse, and the street-soul “before” shots, taken before the start of a Mardi Gras parade. And collaboration “Point of No Return” is a smoking sign-off. Two formidable if the Katrina shots seem more documentary than artful, that may mixtapes in two months—pick your poison. be further evidence of its gravity. —Aaron LaFont —Alex Rawls

Troy Turner Whole Lotta Blues (Evidence) The title of this one is somewhat misleading. A better one might well be A Little Bit of Blues and Let’s Rock a While. The former Baton Rouge guitarist recorded this in Nashville with the multi-tasking Jon Tiven producing. Former Howlin’ Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin co-wrote several of the songs here. In fact, he helps out on the clever title track that serves as the opening track and high point of the CD. Thereafter, though, the quality generally disappoints. Turner rips off some decent solos, but the break-neck tempos are repetitive and the material is largely unimaginative. Tiven’s liner notes compare Turner to B.B King and Buddy Guy, but those are awfully big shoes to fill. If bluesrock—with the emphasis on rock—is your bag, you find this has something to offer. But for the blues purist, you might want to look elsewhere. —Jeff Hannusch

Johanna Devine Mile-High Rodeo (Independent) Johanna Devine did what any aspiring singer-songwriter does—she wrote a batch of songs with plans to eventually record them on voice and guitar. But when producer Dirk Powell heard them and realized the Nouveau String Band front gal’s affinity for ’30s Western swing, ’50s torch jazz and rockabilly, not to mention early ’60s country, genre-hopping arrangements began to blossom on this lo-fi recording. Assisted by various Red Stick Ramblers, pianist David Egan and Feufollet’s Chris Stafford on twang guitar, Powell allowed Devine www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS to recall those whose youth has faded away on the Western-swing styled “Done ’em In;” then to testify about those hearty, “joie de vivre” Lafayette women (“Lulu Saint Marie”) accompanied only by a piano. None of this would matter if Devine didn’t have sturdy, versatile pipes and lyrics that provide for many a memorable moment. One arrives on “Bright Side,” a lilting swamp popper where she croons, “If I can make it though one day, I can make it through two,” offering friendly reassurance to those struggling in daily combats. As an emerging artist, Devine is worth keeping an eye on. —Dan Willging

Jean-Eric Get It (Defend New Orleans) What did one Jean-Eric fan say to the other when the drugs wore off? No, the band’s sassy, minimal, class-A electro is not as bad as that old joke. In fact, it’s been doing great in New Orleans, where all a band needs

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The vocal comes out (almost) singing on the second track, “So Lovely,” which features beautiful vibraphone and a nice female voice warbling the vapid hook. This is followed by a great-sounding male voice rapping amateurish lyrics and the bridge, “I don’t give a shit / I don’t give a fuck”—a cliché that should be retired, especially in music where not giving a shit is its biggest flaw. The first non-sassy track, “Real World,” has just enough melodic (not lyrical) pathos to let you know the in order to succeed is to be fun. It doesn’t hurt that the white chicks and kids do care, and that Jean-Eric’s lead dude has a damned solid indie rock skinny boys of Jean-Eric take a good voice. “Preposterous and Fun” sounds photograph. They also tout perfectly recorded vocals and heavy bass drum really nice—like MGMT lite—but it’s not nearly preposterous enough. In on the band’s debut album Get It, fact, nothing Jean-Eric does here goes which is as tightly produced as any far enough. Drugs (which, in life, are Peaches record. The beats, though done to make things more exciting repetitive, grow on you, with classic than they actually are) are mentioned techno keyboard lines fading in and a lot (“I snorted beaucoup diamonds, out. When the beat gets tiresome now I have a ruby nose”), and you though, there’s little else to distract. “Ooh Ah Ah” kicks off the record can’t help but associate this music with the state of mind where one with a coda chanting the title, and feels way more badass and talented you can picture locals having hella fun out dancing to these snotty kids. than maybe they should.

The songs feature some clever lines (“Me and my gas tank are both rolling on E”) but not nearly enough of them. The word “shit” is used to death (“I don’t like my shit fucked up girl / I don’t like my shit fucked,” from “Bull in a China Shop,” the album’s best tune), but seemingly as a placeholder like “um” or “like.” “Pickle” is a lame female rap about a “bitch” farting, or something. Some of the codas and chants the group hit upon are hot, and will surely bring a room together (as long as it’s a pretty young room), but when you’re alone with the music (as I am writing this), you notice the blaring dearth of meat. What some may consider a noble lack of pretension can also feel like a lack of effort. The deepest track is the last: a remix that adds tons of fun choppy details to “Bull in a China Shop.” The whole album, though not bad, could have used this same creative upgrade. One would have to assume, however, that Jean-Eric is hoping you’re dancing too hard to notice. —Red LeVine

SEPTEMBER 2010

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 FE FK GS IR IN MJ TJ JV LT ME PK PP RG RH RB RR SI SW TC VO ZY

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

WEDNESDAY SEP 1 Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Mike Darby (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Carolina Gallop’s Annual Fashion Show (SH) 7p, Gravity A (upstairs) (RR) 11p d.b.a.:Walter “Wolfman”Washington & the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Corinne Bailey Rae (SS) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield & the NOJO (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (BL) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p

SEPTEMBER 2010

Maison: Jerry Jumonville & the Jump City Band (JV) 6p, No Name Group (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Wensdency with Russell Batiste (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Joe Krown (SI) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: Unique Wednesdays feat. DJ Proppa (VR) 10p Three Muses: Pat Casey Trio (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere & the Garlic Truck Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY SEP 2 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 8p, Louisiana Hellbenders (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Reggae Night feat. DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p, Tom Harvey’s Unlock the House (upstairs) (RR) 10p Carrollton Station: Jimmy Robinson’s Musicworks feat. Spencer Bohren (OR) 9p d.b.a.: Alex McMurray (RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Matt Lemmler Quartet (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Dave James and Tim Robertson (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels Brass Band (BB) 11p LittleTropical Isle:Al Hebert (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 10p Maison: Rue Fiya (RR) 10p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Colin Lake (BL) 7p Ogden Museum: Ogden After Hours feat. Pazfest II (OR) 6p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Geno Delafose (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Brent Rose Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Happy Jack Frequency, Shamarr Allen & the Underdawgs (RR) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

FRIDAY SEP 3 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Holliday and Mike Westin (BL) 8p, Mike Hood (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Ani DiFranco (upstairs) (VF) 9p, Khris Royal and Dark Matter (RR) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: the Pfister Sisters (VF) 5:30p; Mia Border (JV) 9p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, the City Champs (JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Easy Company and Mama’s Love (RR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf Northshore (Mandeville): Appetite for Destruction, Coscino (RR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Joe Krown (PK) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Midnight Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx, Jayna Morgan and Sazerac Sunrise (MJ) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Roy Gele’ & Friends (BL) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Dwight Breland (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 9p Maison: Some Like it Hot (JV) 7p, Booty Trove, Shakedown Friday feat. DJs Brice Nice, Kazu, Bees Knees and Yamin (VR) 10p Maple Leaf: Dead Winter Carpenters (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Eddie Parino (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Rivershack: Mo Jelly (RR BL) 9p

Rock ’n’ Bowl: the Topcats (PP) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Jayna Morgan (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Free Friday feat. E.O.E. and Gov’t Majik (RR) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Davy Mooney Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Harmonouche (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY SEP 4

MONDAY SEP 6

Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Sammy Naquin (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7p, Corey Henry’s Jam Session (JV) 11p Carrollton Station: Susan Cowsill Band Covered in Vinyl Series feat. Hotel California (RR) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Stephanie Briggs feat. K. Phillips (OR) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Rotary Downs (JV) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: the Who Dat Hip-Hop CD-release party feat. Ying Yang Twins, Partners-n-Crime and more (RH VR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf Northshore (Mandeville): Harvester, Noisecoil, Grenade Man (RR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf: Slow Burn Burlesque presents Pretty Not Practical (SH) 8 & 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Shannon Powell (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule feat. Paul Tobin (BL) 5p, Rites of Passage (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 10p Maison: Superstar Brass Band (BB) 10p Maple Leaf: Papa Mali (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Love Gun (RR) 9p Rivershack: Wattusi Radio (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Gal Holiday & the Honky Tonk Revue, Eric Lindell (CW RB) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Deacon John & the Ivories (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: dance party feat. Definition DJs (VR) 10p Three Muses: Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 7p, Bart Ramsey (OR) 10p Tipitina’s: Back to School Bash feat. Soul Rebels Brass Band and Flow Tribe (BB RR) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata and Dominick Grillo (BL) 8p, Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Columns: David Doucet (JV) 8p Funky Pirate: Willie Locket & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury (BL) 8p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (BL) 4:30p, Jason Bishop (RR) 9p Maison: Jayna Morgan & the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 7p, Super Jam feat. Rue Fiya (OR) 10p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Nathan Lambertson Quartet (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Butch Fields (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 9p

SUNDAY SEP 5 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Johnny J. & Benny Maygarden (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey feat. JohnnyVidacovich (FK) 10p d.b.a.: the Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Shamarr Allen & the Underdawgs (JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Brass Band Sunday feat. Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Germaine Bazzle (MJ) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Schatzy & Company (BL) 8p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (SS) 9p Louisiana Music Factory: Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey (JV) 4p Maison: the Rhythm Jesters (JV) 7p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p

TUESDAY SEP 7 Apple Barrel: Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Kenny Claiborne (BL) 7p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Open Ears feat. Louis Romanos (JV) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (BL) 8p Columns: John Rankin (JV) 8p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): the Big Busk, a Night of Burlesque and Live Music (SH) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (CW) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (OR) 4:30p, Rainmakers (RR) 9p Maison: Caroline Fourmy Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Cat’s Pajamas (OR) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Bobby Love, Sweet Home New Orleans (VR) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Spencer Bohren (BL) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Frank Fairbanks (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Rainmakers (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Radio Active (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY SEP 8 Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Andy J. Forest (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Cant’ Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: WWOZ live broadcast feat. Magnetic Ear (RR) 10p d.b.a.: the Tin Men (MJ) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters (MJ) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield & the NOJO (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (BL) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p Maison: Jerry Jumonville & the Jump City Band (JV) 6p, No Name Group (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Russell Batiste (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Swing-a-Roux (SI) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis (MJ) 8 & 10p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Sports Vue: Unique Wednesdays feat. DJ Proppa (VR) 10p Three Muses: Rick Westin Trio (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere & the Garlic Truck Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY SEP 9 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 8p,Washboard Chaz (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Tom Harvey’s Unlock the House (upstairs) (RR) 10p, Reggae Night feat. DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p Café Negril: Smoky Greenwell & the Blues Gnus (BL) 9p d.b.a.: call club Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule feat. Paul Tobin (BL) 10p Little Tropical Isle: Al Hebert (RR) 4:30p Maison: Jeremy Phipps and the Outsiders (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (VR) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Colin Lake (BL) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Saints game on big screen TV Snug Harbor: Louis Romanos and Dan Sumner Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

FRIDAY SEP 10 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Holliday and Mike Westin (BL) 8p, the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Soul Rebels Brass Band (BB) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Paul Sanchez feat. Sonia Tetlow and Mary Lasseigne (OR) 8p d.b.a.: Meshiya Lake & the Little Big Horns (MJ) 6p, Good Enough for Good Times (RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: A Concert for the Gulf feat. Fastball, Shawn Mullins, “Reba”-star Scarlett and more (VR) 8p Howlin’ Wolf Northshore (Mandeville): Touching the Absolute, 24 Miles, Intervert (RR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf: Holy Fuck, Quintron and Empress Hotel (RR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Joe Krown (MJ) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Midnight Burlesque Ballroom feat.Trixie Minx, Jayna Morgan and Sazerac Sunrise (SH) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (BL) 5p, Foot & Friends (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Dwight Breland (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 9p Maison: Some Like it Hot (JV) 7p, Gris Gris (JV) 10p, Shakedown Friday feat. DJs Brice Nice, Kazu, Bees Knees and Yamin (Penthouse) (VR) 10p, Earphunk (FK) 12a Maple Leaf: George McConnell (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Eddie Parino (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Rivershack: Pigeon Town (RR BL) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers (MJ) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Steven Walker Trio (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Jake Smith, the Scorseses, Cortland Burke Band (VR) 8p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY SEP 11 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Sammy Naquin (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p, Amanda Shaw (KJ VF) 10p Café Negril: Smoky Greenwell & the Blues Gnus (BL) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Country Fried feat. Christian Serpas & Ghost Town (CW) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Little Freddie King (BL) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Lyfe Jennings (PR) 8p Howlin’ Wolf: NOLA to the 5th, a Celebration of Rebuilding (VR) 10p

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Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Glen David Andrews (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson and Jesse Moore (BL) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 9p Louisiana Music Factory: Potent Bathers, Will Wesley, Andy J. Forest (BL VR) 2p Maison: Russell Batiste (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Last Waltz Ensemble (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p Rivershack: Refugeze (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Boogie Men, Wiseguys (PP) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Dr. Michael White (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: dance party feat. Definition DJs (VR) 10p Three Muses: Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Back2School Bacchanal feat. Gravity A, the Trio (FK) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

SUNDAY SEP 12 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Andre Bouvier & the Royal Bohemians (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: call club d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Louisiana Cane Cutters (JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): Shooter Jennings and Hierophant, the Band of Heathens (RR) 8:30p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Brass Band Sunday feat. Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Germaine Bazzle (MJ) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: the Mockingbirds feat. Heidi Campbell and Mike Rihner (BL) 8p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (SS) 9p Maison: Rhythem Jesters (JV) 7p, Casey Robinson Band (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (VR) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Derek Douget, Martin Krusche Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Harmonouche (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

MONDAY SEP 13 Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Big Pearl (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Washboard Rodeo (CW) 7p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Willie Locket & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Stone (BL) 4:30p, Jason Bishop (RR) 9p Maison: Jayna Morgan & the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 7p, Super Jam feat. Rue Fiya (OR) 10p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Butch Fields (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 9p

TUESDAY SEP 14 Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 7p, Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, Bayou Club: T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Open Ears feat. Collective Vision (JV) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (BL) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cotton Mouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): the Big Busk, a Night of Burlesque and Live Music (SH) 9p

SEPTEMBER 2010

LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (CW) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Mark Kaul (OR) 4:30p, Rainmakers (RR) 9:30p Maison: Caroline Fourmy Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Cat’s Pajamas (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sweet Home New Orleans (VR) 8:30p Snug Harbor:Thelonious Monk Institute Ensemble (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Frank Fairbanks (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Rainmakers (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Radio Active (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY SEP 15 Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Slewfoot Blues Band with Alabama Slim (BL) 10:30p Banks Street: Major Bacon (RR BL) 11p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Khris Royal and Dark Matter (RR) 10p, Gravity A (upstairs) (RR) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Stone River Boys (RR) 8p d.b.a.: the Tin Men (JV) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield & the NOJO (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Lafayette Square: Harvest the Music Concert Series feat. Anders Osborne (RR) 5p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (BL) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p Maison: Jeremy Jumonville & the Jump City Band (JV) 6p, No Name Group (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Russell Batiste (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Jerry Embree (SI) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: Unique Wednesdays feat. DJ Proppa (VR) 10p Three Muses: Pat Casey Trio (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere & the Garlic Truck Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY SEP 16 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 8p, Mike Darby & the House of Cards (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Tom Harvey’s Unlock the House (upstairs) (RR) 10p, Reggae Night feat. DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p Carrollton Station: Jimmy Robinson’s Musicworks feat. John Gros (FK) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Junk Shot (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Paul Sanchez (JV) 7p, My Graveyard Jaw and Country Fried (CW RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: the Dave Stover Project (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Al Hebert (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p Maison: Ashton Himes & the Big Easy Brawlers (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Colin Lake (BL) 7p Rivershack: Bill Davis (RR BL) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Stephen Richard Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

FRIDAY SEP 17 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Holliday and Mike Westin (BL) 8p, the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Ani DiFranco (upstairs) (VF) 9p, Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes (FK) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Amy Trail (OR) 5p, Paul Sanchez (OR) 8p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Grayson Capps (CW) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Nick Cannon, Spanky Hayes (CO) 7:30p, New Orleans Burlesque Festival’s “Rising Soiree” (SH) 11p

SEPTEMBER 2010

Howlin’ Wolf: Saturate, Poltern Kinder, City Below and Gethsemani (RR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat.Tom McDermott (MJ) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Midnight Burlesque Ballroom feat.Trixie Minx, Jayna Morgan and Sazerac Sunrise (SH) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Buddy Francioni & Home Grown (BL) 5p, Irish Bayou Band (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Dwight Breland (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 9p Maison: Some Like it Hot (JV) 7p, Margie Perez (JV) 10p, the Stooges Brass Band (BB) 12a, Shakedown Friday feat. DJs Brice Nice, Kazu, Bees Knees and Yamin (Penthouse) (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: 101 Runners (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Eddie Parino (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Rivershack: Rivershack Run and Mustard Brothers (RR BL) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: the Help feat. Barbara Menendez (RR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Steven Walker Trio (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Dumpstaphunk CD-release party feat. DJ Soul Sister (FK) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY SEP 18 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Sammy Naquin (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p, Mike Dillon & Friends (JV) 10p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Joe Krown, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Russell Batiste (FK) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf Northshore (Mandeville): Brian Jones and the Ozzy Cash Band (RR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: 3rd Coast Bass Benefit feat. Djunya, Mindelixir, Frequent C, Young Hedons, the Floozies, Machete, Pymp and many more (RH DN VR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Shannon Powell (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule feat. Paul Tobin (BL) 5p, Rites of Passage (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Billy Iuso & the Restless Natives (FK) 11p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 10p Maison: Easy Company (OR) 10p Maple Leaf: George Porter, Jr. & his Runnin’ Pardners (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p Rivershack: Blackened Blues Band (BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sgt. Pepper’s Beatles Tribute Band (RR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Germaine Bazzle (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: dance party feat. Definition DJs (VR) 10p Three Muses: Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 7p,Washboard Rodeo (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: call club Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

SUNDAY SEP 19 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: call club Chickie Wah Wah: Bill Kirchen “Word to the Wise” CDrelease (RR) 9p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Andy J. Forest (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Brass Band Sunday feat. Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Germaine Bazzle (MJ) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Irish Session (BL) 5p, the Mockingbirds feat. Heidi Campbell and Mike Rihner (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (SS) 9p Maison: the Rhythm Jesters (JV) 7p, Jamey St. Pierre & the Honey Creepers (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (VR) 10p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Harmonouche (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p

MONDAY SEP 20 Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Big Pearl (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Willie Locket & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: OAR, Steel Train (RR) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Kaul (BL) 4:30p, Jason Bishop (RR) 9p Maison: Jayna Morgan & the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 7p, Super Jam feat. Rue Fiya (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Washboard Chaz Trio (BL) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Butch Fields (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 9p

TUESDAY SEP 21 Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 7p, Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: singer songwriters open mic (upstairs) (SS) 7p, Open Ears feat. John Madere Group (JV) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (BL) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cotton Mouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: the Black Keys, the Whigs (RR) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): the Big Busk, a Night of Burlesque and Live Music (SH) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Mark Kaul (OR) 4:30p, Rainmakers (RR) 9p Maison: Caroline Fourmy Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Cat’s Pajamas (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sweet Home New Orleans (VR) 8:30p Snug Harbor:Thelonious Monk Institute Ensemble (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Frank Fairbanks (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Rainmakers (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Radio Active (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY SEP 22 Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, 19th St. Red (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Cant’ Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Khris Royal and Dark Matter (RR) 10p, Gravity A (upstairs) (RR) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Ray Bonneville (RR BL) 8p d.b.a.: Tin Men (JV) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: the Mike Ponser “Up in the Air” Tour (SS) 7p Howlin’ Wolf: Flyleaf, Story of the Year (RR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield & the NOJO (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Lafayette Square: Harvest the Music Concert Series feat. Cowboy Mouth and Creole String Beans (RR) 5p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (BL) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p Maison: Jerry Jumonville & the Jump City Band (JV) 6p, No Name Group (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Russell Batiste (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: Unique Wednesdays feat. DJ Proppa (VR) 10p Three Muses: Rick Westin Trio (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere & the Garlic Truck Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

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THURSDAY SEP 23 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 8p, Andy J. Forest (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Tom Harvey’s Unlock the House (upstairs) (RR) 10p, Reggae Night feat. DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p Carrollton Station: Jimmy Robinson’s Musicworks feat. Mark Mullins (FK) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Junk Shot (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Jon Cleary (PK) 7p, call club for late show Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Al Hebert (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Colin Lake (BL) 7p Ogden Museum: Ogden After Hours feat. Henry Gray (RR) 6p Rivershack: Ryan Patterson (RR BL) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Chris Ardoin (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Rob Wagner Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

FRIDAY SEP 24 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Holliday and Mike Westin (BL) 8p, the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers (MJ) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Wilson & Moore (RR) 5:30p; Paul Sanchez (OR) 8p d.b.a.: Meshiya Lake & the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, 007 (MJ) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: 9th Annual Ponderosa Stomp feat. The Trashmen, Thee Midniters and many more (RR VR) 7p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): the Coleman Jernigan Project (OR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf Northshore (Mandeville): Alkatraz Out Patient “Courtesy Flush” pre-release party feat. Reed Litefoot, Joey Pkaso and Profet (RH) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Citizen Cope (RR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Joe Krown (MJ) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat.Trixie Minx, Jayna Morgan and Sazerac Sunrise Band (SH) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (BL) 5p, Foot & Friends (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Dwight Breland (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 9p Louisiana Music Factory: Alabama Slim, Dash Rip Rock, the Trashmen (VR) 3p Maison: Some Like it Hot (JV) 7p, Soul Project (JV) 10p, Shakedown Friday feat. DJs Brice Nice, Kazu, Bees Knees and Yamin (Penthouse) (JV) 10p Maple Leaf: Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Eddie Parino (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Rivershack: Cold Shot (RR BL) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Mixed Nuts (PP) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Jayna Morgan (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Rebirth Brass Band, the Revivalists (BB FK) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

SATURDAY SEP 25 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p Andre Bouvier & the Royal Bohemians (BL) 11p Bayou Club: Sammy Naquin (KJ) 1p, Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blue (BL) 7p, call club Chickie Wah Wah: Malcolm Holcombe (RR) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Lost Bayou Ramblers (RR) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: 9th Annual Ponderosa Stomp feat. Duane Eddy, Sugar Pie DeSanto and many more (RR VR) 7p Howlin’ Wolf Northshore (Mandeville): Generation Way & Friends (RR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf: Pepper, Shwayze (RR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Glen David Andrews (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam (BB) 12a

SEPTEMBER 2010

LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule feat. Paul Tobin (BL) 5p, Rites of Passage (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (SS) 10p Louisiana Music Factory: Louisiana Hellbenders, John Carey & Piano Bob, Jenny Dee & the Deelinquents feat. LaLa Brooks (BL VR) 3p Maple Leaf: Good Enough for Good Times, Gravy (RR) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Honey Island Swamp Band and Soul Rebels (RR) 9p Rivershack: Austin Sicard (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Chris Duarte plus Brint Anderson’s Tribute to Snooks Eaglin (BL) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Astral Project (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: dance party feat. Definition DJs (VR) 10p Three Muses: Debbie Davis (JV) 6p, John Gross (FK) 10p

Tipitina’s: John Scofield & Piety St. Band (FK) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Captain Leo (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

SUNDAY SEP 26 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: call club d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Mas Mamones (OR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Brass Band Sunday feat. Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Germaine Bazzle (MJ) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jason Bishop (RR) 4:30p, Lacy Blackledge (SS) 9p Maison: the Rhythm Jesters (JV) 7p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p Mulate’s: Bayou Deville (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: John Mahoney Big Band (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Harmonouche (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Marc Stone (OR) 1p, Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Butch Fields (OR) 1p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

MONDAY SEP 27 Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata and Dominick Grillo (BL) 8p, Butch Trivette (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Jimmy Robinson and Cranston Clements unplugged (AU) 7p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Willie Locket & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Marc Kaul (BL) 4:30p, Jason Bishop (RR) 9p

SEPTEMBER 2010

PLAN A: Shooter Jennings A famous name is like a sail that weighs a ton; it’s the kind of thing that will pull you out into open waters, but when you are ready to retack, you’ve got a lot of pulling to do. Waylon Albright “Shooter” Jennings was born in 1979, growing up on a tour bus as his namesake father and mother Jessi Colter were warning mamas to not let their babies grow up to be cowboys.

Young Shooter played drums by five, guitar by 14 and had even sat in with his father’s band a few times, later dabbling in L.A. rock bands through the ’90s and early ’00s. He appeared to be an echo of his father when he emerged in 2005 with his own outlaw country record Put the “O” Back in Country and playing the role of his father in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. Two more acclaimed albums and engagement to Drea De Matteo from The Sopranos followed. It seemed being the son of Waylon Jennings was working for him. In 2009, Shooter aimed at a different target, forming the hard rock band Hierophant and in March 2010, released the cataclysmic album Black Ribbons (smartly, under Shooter’s name). This re-tooled Shooter Jennings has more in common with Tool than any whiskey-steeped country revisionist act. It features Stephen King as the Art Bell-like “Will O’ the Wisp” late-night radio host, who is playing Hierophant’s slabs of monolithic, arena-ready dystopia rock on his final broadcast. The songs have an unhinged quality, even going a little Skynyrd in spots, but with an arsenal more like a massive space armada. The most improbable aspect of it all is how well it works.

Shooter Jennings, Hierophant and the Band of Heathens play the House of Blues’ Parish September 12. —Alex V. Cook www.OFFBEAT.com

LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Maison: Jayna Morgan & the Sazerac Sunrise Jazz Band (JV) 7p, Super Jam feat. Rue Fiya (OR) 10p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (VR) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: La Touche (KJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Butch Fields (OR) 5p, Can’t Hardly Playboys (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Damien Louviere (OR) 1p, Big Feets (OR) 5p, Rhythm & Rain (OR) 9p

TUESDAY SEP 28 Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 7p, Doc Ottis (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Can’t Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Ige*Timer feat. Rick Trolsen and Chris Alford (OR) 10p, Open Ears feat. Ige*Timer, Rick Trolsen and Chris Alford (JV) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (BL) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cotton Mouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Amberlin feat. Crash Kings and Civil Twilight (RR) 6p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): the Big Busk, a Night of Burlesque and Live Music (SH) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Mark Kaul (OR) 4:30p, Rainmakers (RR) 9p Maison: Caroline Fourmy Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Cat’s Pajamas (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Credo Blues Society, Sweet Home New Orleans (VR) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Thelonious Monk Institute Ensemble (MJ) 8 & 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Frank Fairbanks (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Rainmakers (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Radio Active (OR) 9p

WEDNESDAY SEP 29 Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Johnny J. & Benny Maygarden (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Cant’ Hardly Playboys (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Blue Nile: Gravity A (upstairs) (RR) 11p, Khris Royal and Dark Matter (RR) 10p d.b.a.: the Mirlitones (JV) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield & the NOJO (MJ) 8p Lafayette Square: Harvest the Music Concert Series feat. Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 5p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (BL) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p Maison: Jerry Jumonville & the Jump City Band (JV) 6p, No Name Group (JV) 9p Maple Leaf: Russell Batiste (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Mulate’s: Lee Benoit (KJ) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Joe Krown (SI) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis (MJ) 8 & 10p Sports Vue: Unique Wednesdays feat. DJ Proppa (VR) 10p Three Muses: Pat Casey Trio (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Damien Louviere (OR) 5p, Damien Louviere & the Garlic Truck Band (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 9p

THURSDAY SEP 30 Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 8p, Louisiana Hellbenders (BL) 10:30p Bayou Club: Waylon Thibodeaux (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Carrollton Station: Jimmy Robinson’s Musicworks feat. June Yamagishi (FK) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Junk Shot (JV) 8p d.b.a.: call club Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Bassnetcar feat. Filastine (RR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Quite Contrary (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Al Hebert (RR) 4:30p, Frank Fairbanks Duo (BL) 9p

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Maison: Swing Dance Festival (SI) 9p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Colin Lake (BL) 7p Ogden Museum: Ogden After Hours feat. Mike Dillon and Earl Harvin Percussion Duo (OR) 6p Rivershack: Home Grown (RR BL) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Curley Taylor (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: George Garzone and Pete Zimmer Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Luke Winslow-King (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Mark Barrett (OR) 5p, Debbie & the Deacons (OR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Mark Penton (OR) 1p, Cruz Missiles (OR) 5p, Late as Usual (OR) 10p

LOUISIANA MUSIC ON TOUR Complete listings are available at offbeat.com

FESTIVALS SEPTEMBER 1-6 Southern Decadence Festival: As one of the largest gay events in the country, Southern Decadence features parties, a parade and plenty of fabulous fun. SouthernDecadence.net. SEPTEMBER 2-3 PazFest II: This all-star musical tribute to Joni Mitchell features performances by Beth Patterson, Ingrid Lucia, Alex McMurray, George Porter, Jr., Sharon Martin and many more. Visit PazFest.com for more information. SEPTEMBER 2-6 Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival: Shrimp and petroleum might not sound good together but they’re the lifeblood of Morgan City. Celebrate the both of them with great food, live music and fun. Shrimp-PetroFest.org. SEPTEMBER 4 Annual Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival: Head to Plaisance for a full day of authentic Zydeco and French music, regional cuisine and African-American crafts. (337) 942-2392, Zydeco.org. SEPTEMBER 24-OCTOBER 23 Oktoberfest: Celebrate German heritage and culture with food, music, dancing and fun at the Duetsches Haus. DeutschesHaus.org. SEPTEMBER 25 Where Y’Hat Festival: Wear your favorite and craziest hat to the French Market and join in on a fashion show with hat-making booths, a hat contest and plenty of hats for sale. FrenchMarket.org. SEPTEMBER 25-27 New Orleans Seafood Festival: Celebrate local seafood in Fulton Square with live music, special events and plenty of seafood dishes from local restaurants. NewOrleansSeafoodFestival.com. SEPTEMBER 30-OCTOBER 4 New Orleans Swing Dance Festival: Enjoy a weekend of traditional jazz and swing dancing at this fun event. There will be performances by 8 bands, a riverboat cruise, dance classes, a fashion show, tap jam and more. LindyShowdown.net

SPECIAL EVENTS SEPTEMBER 2-30 Ogden After Hours: Visit the Ogden Museum of Southern Art every Thursday evening for live entertainment by a variety of local musicians. Check the OffBeat daily listings for a schedule of performances. 6p. OgdenMuseum.org. SEPTEMBER 15-NOVEMBER 3 Harvest the Music: This free weekly concert series benefits the Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans. Lafayette Square, 5p. Check the OffBeat daily listings or visit HarvestTheMusic.org for a schedule of performances. SEPTEMBER 24 & 25 Chinese Acrobat and Orchestra Show: head to McAllister Auditorium at Tulane University and experience a traditional Chinese variety art show. Fri. 8p, Sat. 4p. International-Culture-Exchange.org/p/Event

SEPTEMBER 2010

BACKTALK

talks back

on-profit organizations did as much as anyone to help the New Orleans music community recover. Sweet Home New Orleans (SHNO) formed in 2006, and it was the culmination of that effort, a needs-based organization that coordinated the resources of a number of non-profits to help get the city’s musicians and culture bearers—Mardi Gras Indians and social aid and pleasure club members—get back to New Orleans and back to work. Shortly before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, SHNO released its third annual State of the New Orleans Music Community Report, a statistical snapshot of the financial, social and physical health of New Orleans’ musicians as represented by SHNO’s 4,500 clients. OffBeat sat down with outgoing executive director Jordan Hirsch and incoming director Gabriela Hernandez to discuss the report and the future of SHNO in this economy. What are the highlights of the report? Hirsch: The cultural community of the city has rebounded very strongly, and the indigenous traditions are in a lot of ways stronger than they were in 2005, which is an astounding achievement because this community had so many obstacles to just getting back to level. At the same time, the economic conditions for professional musicians in New Orleans are scary right now. The opportunities that New Orleans musicians have to earn a living are few and far between, and are not sufficient for this community to sustain itself long-term. Do I read correctly that the study says the recovery has reached a plateau? In a couple of ways. The percentage of the preKatrina music community that’s back in the metro New Orleans area has stayed steady at around 80 percent for the last 24 months. Most of the people who are going to be living here are here. Another plateau we found was the number of gigs available to local musicians. It’s about half of what musicians had the opportunity to work before the storm.

Jordan Hirsch and Gabriela Hernandez

What do we attribute this to? It’s primarily a lack of visitors who come to town and pay money for live music. Venues that cater predominantly to locals are doing better than venues that cater predominantly

to out-of-towners. Convention and Visitors Bureau numbers [show] fewer people holding meetings here and filling up hotel rooms. Of course, there are fewer people living in New Orleans, so even though people are going out quite a bit, there’s fewer residents that can go out and fill up these rooms every night. Also, the spending is down everywhere. When you look at New Orleans broadly, there’s a lot of ways to say that New Orleans is in better shape than a lot of cities in the recession.

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By Alex Rawls

What musicians are most affected? Older musicians, traditional jazz musicians. A lot of riverboat gigs and convention gigs that were dependent on that type of traffic have seen the biggest hit. [Musicians who] did lots of stuff in hotels and conventions. Older artists are perhaps not as able to adapt to the new environment. Perhaps they’re living in an area where it’s harder to get to and from a gig. You really have to get your hustle on to make things happen here now, and a younger SEPTEMBER 2010

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

Sweet Home N.O.

BAC

KTA

This year, we’re helping more people with professional development. It’s as critical now as rebuilding houses was two years ago. person might be more nimble at building new relationships and adapting to where the work is and who to talk to. Our client’s average age is 50 and we have clients in their 60s; it’s harder to do business in a new way when you’ve been doing business one way for 40 or 50 years. Fifty percent of our clients are not online.

play them is relatively small. Club stuff has been happening and opportunities on the road have been happening a little bit. They’re by no means sheltered from these other conditions, but because they’re younger and better able to adapt, the contemporary brass bands have fared a little better than the traditional brass guys.

In the report, it says musicians’ earnings are down 43 percent. Is that in the last year or from 2005? That’s a function of gigs-per-month and take-per-gig as opposed to ’05.

I find the state of brass interesting because brass bands seem to be doing well, but there are few brass band recordings. About two-thirds of our clients don’t have a recording. I agree, the level of activity and the number of CDs on the streets are very different numbers. Part of it is the cost of recording. If you’ve got 11 friends in a brass band, getting all those guys into a studio, organizing it, paying for the time, the post-production and the pressing and everything else is a tough deal. There’s also a lack of management. If you’re a young brass band, there’s no building you can walk into and say, “Hi, we’re a young brass band. Everybody loves us on the street but we want to make a record.” There’s nowhere to go with that.

Do we know the average number of pre-Katrina gigs-per-month? The average number of gigs per month was 12; it’s now around 6. The take per gig is down slightly as well, so there’s less work for less money. The post-Katrina, post-oil spill recession is rough—42 percent of our clients have had reduced hours or been laid off from day jobs. You have people looking for work outside of music but not able to find it. You’ve got the music industry issues alongside the broader issues in the economy that hits wage laborers first; the unemployment rate of people who earn less that $25,000 is many times higher than the 10 percent you hear quoted for the national unemployment rate. It’s the confluence of all these issues that’s creating the urgency. I wonder if some of what we’re seeing is the nationwide decline in audience for traditional jazz finally playing itself out here. Sweet Home wasn’t here to take the measurement in 2003, but what I’d imagine if we were to extend our line graph farther back to the ’60s is that you’d have a downward slope, but what we’ve seen from ’05 to ’10 is a steep drop. The community had a greater capacity to absorb the decline and adjust to it [before]; the abrupt nature of the change now is a different story because it was overnight and alongside all these other issues. Are you able to speak to the health of the brass band community? My recollection from ’09 is that the brass bands are doing better than the traditional jazz guys. Second lines are at their pre-Katrina frequency. That’s only 35, 40 gigs a year, but they’re good gigs, and the number of bands in circulation to

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 10

The numbers for people who are trying to make their living making music in the city are discouraging, but it seems like there are more people than ever trying to have national careers as recording artists that include regular touring. What the data showed is that the statistical factor that determines your stability was the consistency of your non-musical income. If you’re a Sweet Home client—someone looking for additional resources to stabilize your living situation—you have the same number of gigs per month as a musician who isn’t, but the musician who isn’t, their household income is significantly higher because of their non-music income. Maybe it’s a spouse, maybe you’re in a brass band but you’re an electrician and that business is steady. It [also] comes back to age. Certain types of musicians are in a position to pursue touring or marketing a recorded product, and some aren’t. Most of our clients are not. We’ve got so many clients who don’t have a press kit, who don’t have management, who don’t have an agent, who don’t have a Web site and don’t know how to get online. The people who are in a position to pursue those opportunities have more skills and resources going into it.

How’s the fundraising business? Hirsch: Challenging. Hernandez: What separates Sweet Home from other non-profits is that we have the data to substantiate the programs that we’re doing. Yes, the country’s in an economic slump, but there are resources available. Foundations are looking for high impact and visibility in terms of the moneys given and what you’re going to do with it, and we’re in a good place for that. New Orleans is a cultural gem and people are willing to invest, but they want to invest wisely. Sweet Home offers that opportunity because we’re looking at real people who contribute to the culture. How have donations been in the last year? Hirsch: They’ve been about what we expected, which is half of what they were two years ago. What we’re doing in response to that is delivering different types of services. In 2008, we helped a lot of people buy sheetrock and rebuild houses. This year, we’re helping more people with professional development. It’s as critical now as rebuilding houses was two years ago. We’re hoping as people step back and assess what’s happened over the last five years, they’ll see the return on their investment and build our revenues back up. That’s what Gabriela’s here to do. What is your background? Hernandez: My academic background is arts and education, so we’re looking at culture and forming identities. I’ve worked with at-risk communities, specifically at-risk youth, using art as a conduit for social change and social justice. My past six years have been at the Louisiana State Museum as director of education, and forming partnerships with cultural organizations to highlight what makes Louisiana culture different and unique. What’s necessary for the long-term health of Sweet Home New Orleans? Hernandez: Once the report is out, Jordan and I are going to sit down with the staff and look at the services we provide. Specifically, we’re looking at professional development and social services. Musicians want to be involved in the transmission of musical heritage to children. It helps the creative development of children as well as the cognitive development, and it enables the transmission of culture. A lot of the tradition bearers are getting older, so it’s important that transmission occurs. O www.OFFBEAT.com