OffBeat Magazine November 2010 Issue

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MONK BOUDREAUX

KERMIT RUFFINS

TELL IT LIKE IT IS

KICKSTARTER

SOLOMON BURKE

THE MASTER-MIND

THE FOOL LOUISIANA MUSIC, FOOD & CULTURE—NOVEMBER 2010

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

New Orleans Bingo!

Show The weirdo inside.

OAK STREET FESTIVAL COMPLETE GUIDE

THE VOODOO ISSUE

Weird Voodoo Stories

OffBeat previews this year’s Voodoo Experience with stories on the New Orleans Bingo! Show, Fatter Than Albert, the Local Skank, AM and Die Antwoord.

Neck and Neck

Sam Irwin discovers how Cajun fiddler Al Berard came to teach.

Obituary: Solomon Burke

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Letters

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Mojo Mouth

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Kick(start) Me

Lauren Noel finds out how New Orleans’ musicians are finding a new way to fund recordings.

OffBeat Eats

Frank Jones of Jean-Eric is in The Spot at Lola’s, and Rene Louapre and Peter Thriffiley review Bouligny Tavern.

Listings

+ Plan A with Joanna Newsom

Fresh

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Ozzy Shirt

Alex V. Cook examines the high school roots of Ozzy Osbourne’s legend.

A Festival, Dressed

OffBeat runs down the food and music at the Po-Boy Preservation Festival.

Classic Songs of Louisiana: “Tell It Like It Is” Jeff Hannusch tells how the Aaron Neville hit drove its record company out of business.

In the Kitchen with Monk

Monk Boudreaux talks gator, raccoon and other game with Elsa Hahne.

Reviews

BLAST FROM THE PAST “The Depths of Clint Maedgen”

by Christopher Blagg, July 2003

56 with 61 Backtalk Stephen Rehage

John Swenson talks to the Voodoo producer about Iggy Pop, football and the 2005 festival. “I called the mayor, I called Mitch Landrieu, I called Ron Forman and I told everyone what I wanted to do,” he says.

“I was told, ‘If you’re dumb enough to do it, go for it.’” www.OFFBEAT.com

The New Orleans Bingo! Show seems like a venerable local institution today, but seven years ago they were just making a name for themselves after playing their first gig following the 2002 Jazz Fest. In this 2003 cover story, bandleader Clint Maedgen talks about the troupe’s origins in a Marigny antique shop, the Ninth Ward, New York City subway cars, and its first home, Fiorella’s Café.

To read this article and more from this issue online, go to offbeat.com/2003/07.

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Letters

“Today we witness our city as it commits suicide by seeking to limit and possibly destroy our raison d’etre.”—Michael Russell, New Orleans, LA

RAISON D’ETRE There are many things that make New Orleans a great city. Our wonderful food and drink, our unique architecture and the majesty of the mighty Mississippi are all universally praised and appreciated by residents and visitors alike. However, the one thing that makes New Orleans one of the greatest cities is our unique contribution to the world’s musical culture. Our city’s contribution to jazz, blues and R&B and our spawning of the musicians who have brought this music to the world is undoubtedly the single most important reason for our greatness. In fact I would argue that it is our raison d’etre. That is why it is with great sadness that today we witness our city as it commits suicide by seeking to limit and possibly destroy our raison d’etre.

Assaults have taken place upon our spontaneous neighborhood second line parades where our local musicians and residents seek to continue our traditional expression of music and culture.

Limitations and restrictions have been placed upon our street musicians as they seek to entertain our tourists, to make a relatively honest buck, and to help continue another important cultural and musical tradition. Finally, it has recently been “noted” in passing that Donna’s has closed and that what had been the last live music venue on North Rampart Street has surrendered its “grandfathered” music license (apparently no new live music licenses have been made available on North Rampart Street for some time), as if to underscore the fact that the modern day assault upon our great musical tradition has finally been triumphant. After all, is there a more recognized street in American song and musical history than Rampart Street? It appears that a modern day tragedy has occurred whereby the citizens and leaders of New Orleans have sat idly by while our city voluntarily relinquished its

raison d’etre. However, my personal “reason for being” and the reason that I choose to live in New Orleans is because of my love for all of our musical traditions. Therefore, I for one will continue to fight to restore New Orleans to its rightful place as the greatest musical city in the world. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this fight. Thank you OffBeat.

—Michael Russell, New Orleans, LA

MUSIC OR BULLETS? These letters are in response to Jan Ramsey’s blog post “Music or Bullets?” and her comment, “People who love, love, love our music with a passion, can’t understand why more people who live here aren’t as passionate about it.”—Ed I have a friend in the town in which I live in Mississippi who proudly proclaims at every chance that he’s from New Orleans. Your post made me ponder what exactly he means by that. Turns out, he’s from Metairie, born and raised, hates the French Quarter, loves the Saints and doesn’t have a clue about New Orleans music. I showed him Kermit Ruffins’ (who he had never heard of) Saints Christmas video and his only response was, “Let me get my umbrella.” He listens to classic rock and really carries nothing of the New Orleans culture with him.

Is this just a “suburb” thing? Don’t know, but I find it ironic that I, being raised in Mississippi, know more than he does. I do think that he’s representative of a large portion of folks from New Orleans that uses the popular tourist perception of the city as a bragging point and nothing else.

—Kevan Kirkpatrick, Tupelo, MS The thing about those of us that “love, love, love” the music is that we are often more tied to the city and the culture than many that live here!

When I meet someone from New Orleans I always assume we’ll have an immediate connection, since that is the place my heart resides, but unless they embrace the music and culture they may as well be from Iowa.

I think this is a question for all Americans, wherever they are from—“What is it that makes you feel a pride in a place of residence if you don’t take time to learn about the culture which surrounds it?”

—David Kunian, New Orleans, LA

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

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November 2010 Volume 23, Number 11 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jan V. Ramsey, janramsey@offbeat.com Managing Editor Joseph L. Irrera, josephirrera@offbeat.com

NOT JUST MUSIC Just a note to tell you how much I enjoyed the current issue. I think that there has been a subtle transformation at OffBeat to include all aspects of New Orleans culture, not just music.

The piece on Susan Spicer was first rate.

—Bob Porter, Bergenfield, NJ

Louisiana Music & Culture

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 Ben Berman, Brian Boyles, Rory Callais, Alex V. Cook, Barbie Cure, Chloe Curran, David Dennis, Elsa Hahne, Andrew Hamlin, Jeff Hannusch, Drew Hinshaw, Sam Irwin, Aaron LaFont, Mark LaMaire, Chris Lee, Jacob Leland, Rene Louapre, Lauren Noel, Cooper O’Bryan, Julia Ramsey, Caitlyn Ridenour, John Swenson, Peter Thriffiley, Michael Patrick Welch, Zachary Young Cover Elsa Hahne Zombie Make-Up Asia Strong Design/Art Direction Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Advertising Sales Casey Boudreaux, caseyboudreaux@offbeat.com Melinda Johnson, melindajohnson@offbeat.com Aaron Lafont, aaronlafont@offbeat.com Advertising Design PressWorks, 504-944-4300 Business Manager Joseph L. Irrera Interns Rosalie Cohn, Barbie Cure, Chloe Curran, Jon-Devin Carrere, Cooper O’Bryan, Caitlyn Ridenhour, Julia Ramsey, Cierra Stovall, 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 © 2010, 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.

MOJO MOUTH

Threadhead Scores

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any books have been written about New Orleans, particularly since Katrina. I just read Dan Baum’s brilliant Nine Lives, and it’s one of the best books I’ve read recently about the city.

It follows the lives of nine New Orleanians from the time of Hurricane Betsy to Hurricane Katrina, bookmarks, if you will, of destruction and rebirth. If you want to know anything about why and how New Orleans is beloved, or reviled (in some courts), with an inside view into the city’s psyche, this is the book for you.

Paul Sanchez, whose Katrina experiences almost set him adrift, also read Nine Lives and, as creative types are wont to do, was so inspired by the book that he and Colman DeKay, his writing partner, wrote a series of songs based on the characters in the book.

Threadhead Records recently received a $50,000 grant from Pepsi Cola’s “Do Good for the Gulf Program” to produce the soundtrack album and score for what they hope will

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ultimately become a full-scale musical production of Nine Lives. Sanchez and DeKay have the theatrical rights to Nine Lives and they will enter the studio in early November to begin recording a 20-song cast album.

Staying true to the uniqueness, diversity and rich storylines in the book, Paul and Colman have written songs in a range of musical styles that will be totally new to the Broadway stage.

The musical’s score encompasses Delta blues, gospel, traditional jazz, modern jazz, ’60s soul, Haitian meringue, klezmer, funk, brass band, Mardi Gras Indian chants and hip-hop—the musical bedrock on which the city rests.

Through the grant from Pepsi, a number of New Orleans musicians and artists will be involved in this project, including Matt Perrine, who will arrange and orchestrate the score, along with Shamarr Allen, Craig Klein, John Boutte, Lillian Boutte, “Sista Teedy” Boutte, Tanya Boutte, Tom McDermott, Evan Christopher, Alex McMurray, Margie Perez, David Torkanowsky, and Debbie Davis.

Another tradition is about to be revived by local restaurateur Dave Baird, who hosted brass bands at his bar, the Warehouse Café, on Annunciation years ago. Baird purchased the city’s oldest structure in the lower Garden District, converted it into a restaurant—Le Citron Bistro (1539 Religious Street)—and will once again feature brass bands, beginning with Rebirth Brass Band on November 19. “We’ll have the only place in town where you can listen to a brass band and a have a Louisiana-style ‘plate dinner,’” says Baird. Fried catfish, shrimp Creole, fried chicken, jambalaya, red beans and rice, potato salad and more sides will be available, along with the brass band show, for only $25. Dinner is from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., and the show begins at 9:45 p.m. Reservations are recommended, (504) 566-9051.

One more note: I’ve not stopped pushing for music branding for the city, or a music museum. Keep up with the Weekly Beat (sign up at OffBeat.com) and my blog for updates.

—Jan Ramsey

www.OFFBEAT.com

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“I was in the middle

of working on this big shadow puppet show I was going to do in the windows of the Embassy Suites Hotel,” Arthur Mintz says.

“That’s when Keith and Parker called me to record Punches. I had no idea that all this craziness was going to happen, and when it happened it was a no-brainer. Of course I’ll go on the road and play drums, so I had to put everything on hold.”

“Keith” and “Parker” are Keith Ferguson and Parker Hutchinson, and they recruited Mintz to be the drummer for their rock band, World Leader Pretend. When the band broke up in 2008, he returned to his first love—puppetry.

“I studied animation in college, and I worked on James and the Giant Peach—the same company that did The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Then I came back to New Orleans, and puppetry seemed like a much more immediate way to get to the same idea that animation normally gets to, and it has a live performance aspect that I think I could relate to as a drummer, creating lines and shapes and space on the stage.”

In the spring, Mintz and Rene and Jacques Duffourc of the Bally Who staged their adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox, a puppet show built into the third floor of the Contemporary Arts Center.

The show returns for another run November 12 to January 2.

“The whole set’s still standing, right where we left it,” Mintz says.

“The installation takes up the entire third floor of the CAC. There are 12 cardboard rooms that can fit 30 people and the actors and puppets, and these 12 rooms are connected by very long cardboard tunnels that the audience slides through. This huge set-up stuck together the whole summer”—albeit with a few minor cave-ins that are being fixed right now.

“The tunnels are definitely structures in their own right, and it really is beautiful to just walk around. I think that’s a part of the whole movement of puppetry in the last 40 years. The process of bringing a puppet to life is as beautiful as the illusion, and if you put them both onstage at the same time, you get this Cubist perspective, which is very much how The Lion King works now. It happens a lot at our show. At the end, we take people around the structures and let them see how it’s created and what it looks like on the outside.”

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Photo: elsa hahne

he Hole Story

The project was two-and-a-half years in the making. “Probably a year of it was manufacturing. A lot of designing, a lot of figuring out how to break down his narrative into this specific type of movement that I do. I did a summer camp where I was teaching puppets between World Leader Pretend records. Jacques and I had come up with the idea of building a cardboard tunnel as a way of introducing kids to images of puppetry throughout time. We put up these little acetates inside the tunnel and they would crawl through and look at the pictures. Of course, they couldn’t care less about the acetates; they just wanted to run through the tunnel. One day after they had left, I went climbing through the tunnel, and I went, ‘Good God, this would be the coolest way to stage a show if each one of these tunnels came out into a new world.’ It’s a physical transition, so I thought it was a cool narrative device.”

—Alex Rawls www.OFFBEAT.com

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he e-Fires of Change

What? “TribeCon is about using social media tools and online

communities to ignite offline change,” says co-founder Chris Schultz. It takes place on the Voodoo grounds at City Park October 28-29. The Focus? Creating Campfires, a metaphor meant to emphasize the potential of new media to create focal points around which people can gather and converse. “New Orleans is experiencing a renaissance in technology and digital media,” says Schultz. “With the advent of the digital media tax credit, we’ve got a lot of techies and software companies that are moving here.” Who’s Talking?

Among others, “Micki Krimmel. She’s the CEO of a company called NeighborGoods. It’s an online e-community sharing site. You can load up onto the site your inventory of stuff that you’re willing to share with your neighbors. You can share your lawnmower.”

Also, Ben Huh, the founder and CEO of the ‘I Can Has Cheezburger’ network of Web sites, which includes Lolcats and FAIL blog. What’s New? Since Voodoo— TribeCon’s host—is a music festival, it seemed wrong to leave out music. This year, Earl Scioneaux III—the Madd Wikkid—will perform music from his Electronola project. Why New Orleans? “We’re very social by nature; people sit on their porches and have conversations with their neighbors,” Schultz says. “That’s one of the things we retain down here in New Orleans that a lot of the rest of the country has moved away from.”

TribeCon will take place October 27-October 29 in the dance tent on the Voodoo grounds. The schedule and tickets are at TribeCon.com.

—Zachary Young

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oin the Circus

This issue, L. Steve Williams has contributed an illustration for Alex Cook’s piece on the power of Ozzy. A little more than a month after Art for Arts’ Sake, he is presenting the 5th annual 504 What Style Rock Art Circus at Juan’s Flying Burrito Saturday, November 6. A month after a white wine-in-galleries evening, Williams is presenting a PBR afternoon with fire breathers, burlesque dancers, and artwork by musicians and inspired by music.

There will also be videos and heavy music by Suplecs (Williams has done cover art for them), as well as Spickle, Terranova, White Collar Crimes and more.

—Alex Rawls

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PITTSBURGH AT NEW ORLEANS, OCTOBER 31 On the first series, Brees is intercepted. Defense stops the Steelers, then a quick march down the field for a Shockey TD. Pitt responds with a FG. The Saints turn over the ball on the Pittsburgh 20, killing another drive, but again the defense bails them out with a three and out. With 1:12 left in the half, it’s the Pierre Thomas MADDEN show, catching two balls and running ON THE SAINTS in a TD to give the Saints a 14-3 lead at halftime. Steelers respond with a long drive that ends with a Rashard Mendenhall TD. They go for two and are denied, leaving the score 14-9.

Saints go on a long march converting three third downs along the way to a Hartley (who’s back) FG to go up 17-9.

Pittsburgh again responds with a long scoring drive and is again denied on the two-point try. The Saints run out the clock to escape with a 17-15 victory.

NEW ORLEANS AT CAROLINA, NOVEMBER 7 With the Saints running corps back at full speed, this game is a very different story than their first meeting.

Carolina again plays tough but don’t have the horses to keep up with the Saints. Carolina scores on their first play from scrimmage, an 80-yard Williams run. New Orleans comes right back with three consecutive scoring drives (and two three and outs) to go up 17-7. J. Stewart scores but Pierre Thomas answers on the next drive to take a 24-14 lead into the locker room at half. Carolina’s Stewart scores again, but on the next drive Henderson brings in his second TD catch. Another 3 and out for Carolina, then Bush ices the game with a TD on the ensuing punt return. All three phases put together a hard fought 38-21 road win. www.OFFBEAT.com

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Photos: erika goldring

FRESH

ew Orleans in the Hall

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will focus attention on the

accomplishments of New Orleans legends Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew for its 15th annual American Music Masters series. The event, dubbed “Walkin’ to New Orleans: The Music of Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew,” is scheduled for November 8-13 in Cleveland and will include lectures, films, and interviews focusing on their accomplishments, followed by a conference at Case Western Reserve University. The event will culminate on November 13 with a tribute concert featuring Irma Thomas, Dr. John and the Lower 911, Rebirth Brass Band, Robert Parker and more.

For more information, go to RockHall.com/event/fats-and-dave.

—Cooper O’Bryan

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ids’ Stuff

Who? Buckwheat Zydeco

What? Released his second album for children, Bayou Boogie What do you think about when you’re making music for kids?

“When I try to make music for kids, I think about kids,” Buck says. “We do the music for the kids but from the very first, parents got into it too. It’s very family-oriented, especially at the concerts. We have people eight to 80, and little babies. When we entertain, we entertain for everyone. You’re not going to take your kids in a nightclub!

But I do something that’s the right place for them. Every song has to have a lot of energy.”

—Julia Ramsey

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SEATTLE AT NEW ORLEANS, NOVEMBER 21 On the opening drive, Brees marches the offense to a Henderson TD in four plays. The teams trade three and outs, then Seattle drives for a missed FG. (Can anyone kick field goals this year?) Brees connects with Meachem for a TD just before half to go up 14-0.

Seattle responds with a second half TD drive, but the defense will hold them scoreless the rest of the way.

Colston (3/50, TD) and P. Thomas (90 total yards, TD) add two more scores to mop up a 28-7 Saints victory.

NEW ORLEANS AT DALLAS, THANKSGIVING MADDEN Dallas again gives the Saints pass ON THE SAINTS protection lots of problems in this rematch of the Saints’ first loss last season.

Saints go three and out. Dallas goes three and out.

Saints drive for a long Hartley FG. Another couple of three and outs, Dallas intercepts and takes advantage with a long Austin Collie TD reception to go up by four. Henderson responds with a long TD of his own. Dallas needs only three plays to score on a long Felix Jones run. In the two minute drill, Brees marches sixty five yards in four plays that ends the half with a Colston TD and makes the score 17-14. Dallas drives to a first and goal, then Porter picks off Romo when he goes to the Witten well one to many times. Pierre goes up the Cowboys’ derriere for a score to make it 24-14 with 4:30 left in the game. Dallas misses a long FG, the Saints go three and out, and Dallas scores with less than a minute remaining. New Orleans runs out the clock after the Cowboys’ ensuing failed onside kick to pull out a Turkey Day win, 24-21. Player of the game: Devery Henderson ends up with 2 catches for 87 yards and 2 TDs. —Chris Lee www.OFFBEAT.com

www.OFFBEAT.com

COVER STORY

A look at the things that come out of City Park during the Halloween weekend.

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By Rory Callais, Andrew Hamlin, Drew Hinshaw, Alex Rawls and Michael Patrick Welch Bingo! Photography by Elsa Hahne

hat’s why old people play this game—’cause it’s relaxing.”

Ronnie Numbers is explaining bingo, but when he calls the game at One Eyed Jacks, there are a lot more “motherfuckers” than there are in a church basement. Then again, bingo is rarely called in a church hall by a small, aggressive man in a suit with white makeup and rectangles around his eyes. When burlesque artist Trixie Minx hands him the ball marked O 69—comedy gold—Numbers lights up. Mr. the Turk monitors a board tracking the called numbers and tongues O 69 after placing it.

The wisecracks and innuendo have always been a part of the actual game of bingo that’s played as a part of each performance by the New Orleans Bingo! Show, an act that was inspired when Clint Maedgen found a stack of old, reusable bingo boards in a second-hand store in 2002. He started the musical theater game show in the back room of Fiorella’s, where he worked as a bicycle delivery man.

What’s unusual tonight is that there are five winners. Ties happen occasionally, but not five-way ties. The decision is made to break it through a Robot Dance-Off, and as the band settles into a mechanical groove, each winner does a sad version of the Robot. The guy who wins does something closer to the movements of the bear that ran in circles in Carrollton Station’s antique “Bear Hunt” game, but at least he embraces the mechanical concept. The best Robot moves come from a woman who identifies herself as a schoolteacher. Rather than demonstrating them from her feet, though, she did them from her knees, pantomiming a robo-blow job on Numbers.

The New Orleans Bingo! Show began as another outlet for the musically restless Maedgen, a home for his Tom Waitsian heart-in-thegutter songs drawing on New Orleans’ R&B history, but it has evolved.

Maedgen now plays sax and sings with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and musically, the Bingo! Show is closer to his first band in town, the rock-oriented Liquidrone. At One Eyed Jacks, they slam through Liquidrone’s “I Got a Harley and a Mail Order Bride.”

The Bingo! Show’s also not something service industry folks are doing in the back room of a fried chicken restaurant. They’re based out of Preservation Hall now, where Numbers—Ron Rona—is the Director of Marketing and Publicity. That association has given the New Orleans Bingo! Show credibility and access it never had before, so it’s not necessarily as guerilla an activity as it once was. In fact, it borders on respectable.

“We did performances at Bushwick, right off the Morgan Avenue stop,” Maedgen says, remembering a Bingo! Show road trip to New York City in 2002.

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“Just dial it in, all the lighting keys, all the sound keys. Is your monitor cool? Of course it’s cool, I’m running it myself.”

keys, all the sound keys. Is your monitor “It was a two-week run and then cool? Of course it’s cool, I’m running it I think it got extended to six weeks myself.” or something crazy like that,” Rona That desire’s understandable adds. because the Bingo! Show’s not “We’d get up in the morning what it once was. It works in Le and go out to Bedford and 7th and Chat Noir, One Eyed Jacks and busk,” Maedgen continues.

Jazz Fest, but it’s not “We jumped around exactly right in any a bit in our bus. We of those arenas. It’s drove an old school not a little back-room bus up there with an THE SIREN show with a guest old pump organ THE MAESTRO caller nightly—Rona in the back. We started as one—and sold out every it straddles the line between low-tech and cutting performance, and ain’t nobody was going edge. The prizes and aesthetic remain rooted in out to Bushwick at that time. There was a the sideshow, but Maedgen, the band and the meatpacking place and not much else.” clowns—Numbers, Mr. the These days, that Turk (Mattvaughan Black) appeals to Maedgen. and Trixie Minx—have The Bingo! Show’s a clean, professional not just an THE TURK look, as does the improbable, accompanying beautifully video. The mayhem of impractical blend the game may be off-the-cuff, but of music, carnival and theater the framework surrounding it is anymore. It makes videos, it has anything but. loaned its name and aesthetics to “I want the Bingo! Show a tent at Voodoo—which the band to be everything all the time,” will close on Sunday night—and Maedgen says, and it’s the sort of Rona’s the tent’s producer. In light of broad desire he and Rona share with Bingo!’s current semi-corporate status, THE EMCEE THE BASSIST Preservation Hall’s Artistic Director it’s no surprise that on a morning over Ben Jaffe. Jaffe has worked to make coffee, Maedgen talks about idyllic Preservation Hall and the Preservation future Bingo! Show plans. “It was Hall Jazz Band relevant musical forces today, instituting a multialways supposed to be a theater company,” he says. “It was always generational lineup, broadening its repertoire beyond the trad jazz supposed to be a television show; it was always supposed to be an offstandards, introducing it to DJ culture and joining it with a number Broadway run; it was always supposed to be a of Americana artists for the benefit album Vegas destination.” Over the course of Preservation. The band and the hall are the conversation, he circles back to the rooted in history and place but not prospect of returning to Bushwicklimited by them, and that vision is like residencies again in Vegas, simpatico with the Bingo! Show.

L.A., Paris and Singapore—“if It’s no surprise that Maedgen is in we only had the money.” That’s the Preservation Hall Jazz Band what we’re pretty much steadily as well. When he got the gig, he trying to get back to, some sort slicked down his then-trademark of residency situation where we spiky hair for a look he deemed can walk in, get set up, practice for more appropriate. four hours, go about our day, get Being associated with Preservation together after dinner and practice Hall’s prestige has subtly changed another two hours,” he says.

“Just dial it in, all the lighting [continued on page 35] THE ORGAN GRINDER THE SKIN MAN

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the Bingo! Show’s image. “I think it makes people a little less hesitant,” Maedgen says. “Angela Hill came to the show at Le Chat Noir and really had a blast.”

The Hall’s professional environment has served Rona well. “It’s really taught me a lot about the inner workings of how to make a project work,” he says. “All those dorky not-rock ’n’ roll things, like being clear about what you’re communicating to the group and responding to emails and doing all those things that a lot of people just don’t do.

It’s crucial that you’re kind of on point with things—and being able to apply those things to being a comedian—and really think it out. Think about what you’re presenting.”

His biggest project has become producing Voodoo’s Bingo! Parlour, one of the more eclectic stages at Voodoo. Last year, it featured heavy metal band Down as well as the Japanese Brother Taisuke Mass Choir.

“If there is a criteria, it’s people in groups that come in with a punk rock aesthetic that runs into this place and something else happens,” Rona says. “Like with MyNameIsJohnMichael. There’s something there that couldn’t have come out of Seattle, you know? We realized that we played like Supagroup; there’s something that happens, being a rocker in this city. It goes back to classic Bourbon Street burlesque, but they’re doing something completely different. It’s about people who take these traditions—whether they know it or not—and something comes out on the other end.”

The New Orleans Bingo! Show is firmly rooted in New Orleans traditions as well. There’s a burlesque element, but there’s also the broader theatricality that’s in the DNA of a city that costumes whenever it can. That helps explain the diversity of the audience at One Eyed

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Jacks—the bohemians and service industry friends you’d expect and the seniors and college kids you didn’t. The show is rooted in a punk rock love of confrontation, but it’s a carefully modulated confrontation.

Maedgen’s songs draw listeners in, but the antics of Numbers, Minx and Mr. the Turk remind people never to get too comfortable. They’ll turn bullhorns and spotlights on their audiences to create a little visual or sonic chaos, but there’s not a moment where the show seems haphazard, nor when a joke only works on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 level. The effect invites people to play along, even when they know that things rarely end well for bingo winners.

“We were at Le Chat Noir and there’s this group of seven or eight girls,” Rona remembers. “They look like they’re part of a bachelorette party, and these girls were acting kind of funny. You could feel it. They started crossing over to that other place.

“We started doing the second half of the show, and we’re at the bingo table doing our thing, and this girl comes strutting down the aisle. Right before the crescendo of the song, she comes over and straddles me. I’m trying to play the character and avoid it, and she is smearing her face all over me. Her friends came over and pulled her off. After the show, somebody told me this girl was in the bathroom and she’s staring at herself in the mirror covered in my makeup, crying and going, ‘What happened?’

“What in your mind clicks off where you go, ‘You know, I’m going to go straddle that clown?’ And that’s what I think the Bingo! Show does. It helps tap into your inner weirdo.”

The New Orleans Bingo! Show performs Sunday, October 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Bingo! Parlour.

—Alex Rawls www.OFFBEAT.com

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As AM puts it, “I think making music means taking what you listen to, and you jumble all that together. I don’t see how that’s avoidable, and I never understood trying to mask it.”

Fatter Than Albert, the Local Skank and Ska New Orleans Style Fatter Than Albert and the Local Skank are ska and they’re not. “We definitely don’t stay within the ska scene,” says Local Skank member Melissa Crory. “We want to get our sound out there and see how other people interpret it.”

“Gypsy, reggae and punk meld together to make our sound,” says D-Ray of Fatter Than Albert. “Hunter (Miller, FTA’s guitarist) holds down the jazz influence, playing a lot of seventh chords to give it a sound atypical of the more poppy ska from the ’90s.”

“I also grew up watching a lot of horror movies,” says Miller. “The dissonance found on the soundtracks always appealed to me. We’re technically a ska band, but we do what we want.”

Similarly, The Local Skank pulls together many different genres outside of ska, as the new album, Collect All 5!, demonstrates. “We’re a solid ska band, but we have a lot of bizarre influences,” says Crory.

“Some of us are into indie rock. I’m big on metal and goth. No matter what we bring to the table, it gets filtered through the ska format.”

Both bands retain one important element typical of modern ska artists: energetic live performances. “After playing so many years, we have to keep it interesting,” says Miller. “We tend to play things faster and challenge ourselves.” On the other hand, the Local Skank’s live shows have a loose, theatrical element, utilizing costumes, themes, and props. “We think that it doesn’t hurt to try anything once,” says trombonist and vocalist Ashley Shabankareh. “That’s why our shows are so zany and fun and always have surprises.”

Fatter Than Albert and the Local Skank embrace—and have been embraced by—the local ska scene, but both bands feel their arms are wide enough to also hold anyone who wishes to join their party. “The thing about New Orleans is that there are so many genres of music, sometimes people get bound down to what they do,” says Shabankareh. “We’re trying to break down those walls and be a little part of everything.”

Fatter Than Albert play Saturday, October 30 at 11:15 a.m. in the Preservation Hall Tent. The Local Skank play Sunday, October 31 at noon in the Bingo! Parlour.

—Rory Callais

AM and the Lure of History “I live in the wrong time,” claims pop singer/songwriter AM, his name a nod to the radio waves that once carried the music he most admires. AM’s new album, Future Sons and Daughters, recorded by the Magnetic Fields’ Charles Newman, is populated entirely with sounds made by instruments dated no later than 1970. “I knew I wanted to keep things sounding old,” he says. “As a result, I think the record has hints of psychedelia, a bit of a ’60s connotation, a trippy spaciousness.” AM even had his bassist play with a pick to get the same sound as famous session musician Carol Kaye, who played on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds among a slew of other classic recordings.

Like a lot of today’s more successful modern indie rock, Future Sons and Daughters forgoes risk-taking for a purely smooth, in-the-pocket sound that doesn’t force you to really pay attention to its beautiful

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details. Congas and other softer hand drums often occupy the space a rock drum kit otherwise might. As a result, AM has had great success landing over 90 of his songs (including all 10 from his Troubled Times album) in television shows, from Knight Rider and The Hills, to films including the New Orleans-shot Flakes.

AM grew up in Mandeville, graduated from Loyola University, and had his first major musical experiences and epiphanies in local clubs. “I got to work in a tiny little music store in Covington,” he recalls, “the now defunct Music Corner, where all the reputable bluegrass musicians would come in and broaden my musical palette.” Though it may seem incongruous after listening to his down-tempo pop tunes, AM also credits Walter “Wolfman” Washington as a musical motivator, and cites a Maceo Parker show at House of Blues that changed his life. “Growing up in New Orleans gave me the love of jazz and R&B and funk, but I don’t copy that sound,” says the current resident of Los Angeles’ artier Echo Park area.

Future Sons and Daughters escapes the retro tag with an undeniable modernity. The analog keyboard washes and tasty George Harrison-esque guitar licks pop in and out of the mix in a precise way only ProTools could manage. And though the record wears its influences on its sleeve— from Philly soul to Brazilian Tropicalia—it’s usually in the nonchalant, understated manner of a music fan from the iPod Generation, rather than a musician obsessed with eclecticism. Or as AM puts it, “I think making music means taking what you listen to—and these days there’s no excuse to not have a varied music collection, given the unprecedented access to music—and you jumble all that together. I don’t see how that’s avoidable, and I never understood trying to mask it.”

AM plays Friday, October 29 at 2:30 p.m. on the Voodoo Stage.

—Michael Patrick Welch

Figuring Out Die Antwoord Lost in the riddle of who South Africa’s most eminent Afrikaner gangsta rappers truly are and aren’t, is the thought of how fraught with imposters and racial shapeshifters entertainment has forever been in the Rainbow Nation. You and your ’80s roommate took this place for an easy morality play: Indisputable victims, most of them black, resisting jailkeepers who barked in a language so phonetically repulsive that schoolboys tried to stone it to death. Two minutes into Die Antwoord’s baffling, Wu Tangish Afrikaans rap “Wat Pomp” (“I rap like a sore thumb / what’s up with you, brotha’?”), the fog rolls in. Racial parody, not moral clarity, has triumphed on the South African stage for at least as long as its minstrels have been corking faces and swapping life places, which is to say, since Virginia’s Jubilee Singers introduced their “coon carnival” comedies to Cape Town, 1889. Ugh. We share some history, us and them.

History is why we share a white underclass whose Elvistastic kitsch— what the Afrikaner calls “Zef”—must be fondled through the vintage oven mitt of irony: souped-up Subarus, Van Halen mullets, mustaches last witnessed crawling across the face of 1970s pornographers. These are the trappings of our haunted historical memories. What else but a taboo past could inspire art school rebels to guzzle Pabst Blue Ribbons, rock trucker caps, and blog swoon over the mirror image of two Zef gangstas checking in from the Racial Utopia of South Africa?

Photo: Clayton Cubitt

COVER STORY

Die Antwoord

Said gangstas, Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er, come as color linetwisting, redneck anti-heroes from a nation whose fading heroes have been reduced to airports, shopping plazas, or, worse, politicians. Die Antwoord’s latest sinister rave-rap “Evil Boy” features a penis-cupping Xhosa rapper of the same name who disses his homophobic Xhosa chiefs and their macho teenage circumcision rituals as “gay.” That’s a fairly irreverent stroke of the mic. The video, filmed in dungeons, has Ninja and Yo-Landi scheme-rapping in harsh Afrikaner consonants amidst rats running, teeth bucking, and all manner of Ren & Stimpy grotesqueries. Slim Shady comes to mind. Like Eminem, the two make a carnival out of rap’s 1990s obsession with manhood, racial identity, and “what’s real,” the logic of which would only make sense to South Africa’s macho President Jacob Zuma—a disappointing Mandela successor who once testified that his Zulu heritage obligated him to allegedly rape a woman in a short skirt. It doesn’t get more MC Ren than that.

“South Africa is grimy, it’s dirty, and it’s nasty,” Yo-Landi said fondly in an interview, and you catch that impression like a staph infection from their filthy banter, and strained, constipated flow.

Their second YouTube result close-ups Ninja swinging his balls inside of Pink Floyd boxers, and it’s thanks to Ms. Vi$$er that I now know more Afrikaans specifics on ladyparts than I’d signed up to research. But their most repellent abomination is that they might not be the poor whites they said they were. “Just got word that Die Antwood is basically Da Ali G of South Africa, skewering the movement of middle class kids with apartheid-supporting parents becoming Afrikaner posers,” Videogum.com relayed in February.

Since then, every interview the duo has done has boiled down to an

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unanswerable question: Is it real? To which a typical Ninja response would go: “Da only real fings in life is da unespekted fings.”

Is it real? Well, isn’t that the idea, to urinate on the all-too-real social categories that embolden wrinkly Afrikaner curmudgeons, genitalia-slicing Xhosa homophobes, and liberation heroes who view their Zulu heritage as a mandate to lay semi-consensual pipe? South Africa has some rules to bend. As uncomfortable as it is to watch two post-Apartheid fortunate siblings make mockeries out of all that grows around them, it is an even more shuddersome thought to imagine a Rainbow Nation whose colors never blend or modify their Roy G. Biv spot on the social order.

Besides, count me among the duds who think it’s real. Realer than MC Ren, even. Ninja may be a wistful caricature of white impotence, rapping childish fantasies about wielding razors, lightsabers, decapitating blades, and other sharp instruments of power (Draw your own apartheid connections). But the act feels less like an alter ego than an id. “I’m just engaging my inner zef, which everybody has,” Ninja said, and I believe him. “Ninja is like Superman to Clark Kent,” he continued, pointing to his gangly, jailhouse tattooed skin. “The only difference is I don’t take off this fokken Superman suit.” Of course he doesn’t. This is South Africa.

For her part, Yo-Landi has one daunting claim to Zef authenticity: Her mullet, shaved with a bowl cut tiara. So poor is she that she returns to her mother’s house to have it trimmed, although she gets it dyed in a bourgeoisie salon. She explains: “It’s always important to remember your roots.”

Die Antwoord plays Saturday, October 30 at 6:15 p.m. in Le Plur, presented by Billboard.com.

—Drew Hinshaw www.OFFBEAT.com

CO VER STO RY

conditioning blown through a dented duct in a run-down motel, a shot space heater ready for meltdown. Then you notice how Dylan sings of self-sacrifice (“Down on Our Own Shields”) and suffocation (“They’ve Trapped Us Boys”). The meticulouslyconstructed subtlety might collapse under festival conditions, but take a chance—and keep this one on your playlist.

–Andrew Hamlin

Janelle Monae

QUICK PICKS Rusko Friday, October 29, 2:15 p.m., Le Plur presented by Billboard.com Ever since Jamaican dub-makers discovered the tape delay, the UK electro avant garde’s creative process has been largely a destructive process—a decades-long quest to force overpriced gear to snortle, groan, grind and dog whistle until the whispered voice of Him is intelligible below the fuzz.

It’s been a while since any one trickster-DJ exploited that techno-spiritual pursuit so explicitly, or for that matter, so successfully as Rusko: the duband-remix vandal who transmogrified M.I.A.’s (sorry, /\/\I/\’s) third record into an aural root canal, including actual dentist drill sound effects. The T.I. and Rihanna producer has a quieter gift for gorgeous soundscapes—something like the nerd who painstakingly pastes together model airplanes, just to shatter them loose with stolen firecrackers.

—Drew Hinshaw

Metric Friday, October 29, 6:30 p.m., Voodoo Stage A few discs back, Metric warned us against “Dead disco / Dead funk / Dead rock ’n’ roll.” Be careful where you point your collective crucifix since the quartet’s latest aluminum platter, Fantasies, finds them, if not dead, then trying to cell phone out from under layers of suffocating sheen. Imagine Nicki Minaj or even Jay-Z, without the bump ’n’ ready dance floor rewards. Singer Emily Haines might be too cool for school behind her retro sunglasses, but here’s hoping a live setting rips them back to some rawness on their surface.

–Andrew Hamlin

Jakob Dylan and Three Legs Saturday, October 30, 8:30 p.m., SoCo/WWOZ Stage Jakob Dylan’s Women + Country finds him driving out away from the intuitive hooks and tension of “One Headlight” and those Wallflowers fellows. A relaxed atmosphere pervades on the surface—not for nothing do folks call the country (territory as opposed to music) good for what clenches you up inside. But wait. T Bone Burnett’s at the board and he’s no simpleton. The songs keep fading out into sinister soundscapes—air

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Sunday, October 31, 2:15 p.m., SoCo/WWOZ Stage The interstellar intersection between Science Fiction and Soul has been that fertile lunar crescent lighting up the American imaginative sky for as long as America has been Metric soul-seeking in the cosmos while soul singers question the prospects for intelligent life in the Americas. Maybe this country needs a National Soul and Space Museum: “A Funky Space Reincarnation” is where Marvin Gaye beamed up when his marriage soured; the same vacuum beckoned P-Funk’s “sweet chariot” Mothership to “swing low” on their quest for the Motherland. Same for Big Boi and his fourth millennium bandmate who resolved three records’ worth of creative differences by recasting themselves as ATLiens battling New Gingrich “seven light years” below the Peach State—or something.

At 24-years-old, five feet, three inches high, and so full of songcraftswomanship, I’m not sure what Janelle Monae is escaping to, from, or with. But she may be the most consummate Afronaut that ever achieved lift off. Her 2719 space opera The ArchAndroid—with swooning orchestral suites, equally scored rhymes, and high-art backstory soaring beyond Ziggy Stardust aspirations—roves across exotic soundscapes that leave Dre 3000’s scattershot “Love Below” feeling like mere Sputnik. Before now, the best any future-fangled concept album could hope to achieve was an A for Ambition (More often, C for Conceit). But Monae has an extrahuman gift for follow-through, detail and moxie that George Clinton and Gaye could only lift their doobies to. Give this girl a ticker tape parade.

—Drew Hinshaw

Toubab Krewe Sunday, October 31, 5:15 p.m., Preservation Hall The “Toubab” is a linguistic import, a jesting, well-intentioned slang slung by griots carvings koras in Senegal and Mali, and it refers to foreigners—especially, one imagines, foreigners who buy up the Saharan supply of djembes, koras, balophones and percussive knick-knacks then bounce back to Asheville to jam on exotic modes. In the wrong 10 hands, that project could unearth new depths of human tedium, but the wisp of Arabesque counterpoint and hypnotic Taureg drum flutters evoke endless stretches of sun-parched sand and mystifying village life.

Their jesting, well-intentioned cover of “Billie Jean,” on the other hand, evokes the reasons why humankind invented the synthesizer.

—Drew Hinshaw www.OFFBEAT.com

OZZIE SHIRT

Ozzy Shirt When is a tour T-shirt more than just a tour T-shirt? illustration: L. Steve williams

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n shop-class on the first day of junior high, the guy across the worktable lifted his head from his folded hands and declared to me, to himself or maybe to no one, “I am going to wear an Ozzy shirt every day until the end of school.” He was not a kid on whom you would exactly pin the term “goal-oriented,” but this guy was resolute in his mission.

This task was not all that terribly difficult to pull off, for my seventh grade year commenced in 1981, during the black reign of Ozzy Osbourne, king of all teenagers. Ozzy was already infamous from Black Sabbath before his solo onslaught, but that incident with the bat (my cousin was at that show) set his mythology into overdrive. I heard one mom explain to another once that Ozzy Osbourne threw live dogs into the crowd and refused to start the show until they were delivered to the stage dead. I pictured him shirtless, tapping his foot, looking at the watch on his studded wristband for 10 minutes, wondering what was taking so bloody long with those dogs.

We’d just moved across town.

All my friends the year before went to a different junior high and my mom had just remarried.

My world was shaken and I hadn’t heard a note of Ozzy Osbourne, but I adapted, faking it. I’d say I preferred Diary of a Madman to Blizzard of Ozz when the subject was broached, a curious stance to most, one that falsely painted me an aesthete. My painfully uncool interest at the time really was in calligraphy—I had special pens and an inkwell and everything.

It turned out to be my greatest asset because I could dash off the Ozzy logo with the broken lines

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By Alex V. Cook

www.OFFBEAT.com

weaving throughout the Superman-raised O and Z’s and Y with ease. I quickly became the go-to Ozzy-logo-on-yournotebook guy. It was like discovering you have a knack for tattooing upon entering prison.

Ozzy Shirt took a shine to me when I emblazoned his unused notebook with a version done up with flames, and he had my back when the nerdy, virgin calligrapher I really was, was in danger of being exposed. “Nah man, he’s cool,” he said in my defense a couple of times over the year. I helped him get through the drafting portion of shop class, and he did all the work when we had to disassemble and rebuild a lawnmower engine.

I inherited a stack of records from my new stepbrother who was 12 years my senior, mostly terrible looking ’70s stuff, but at the bottom was a black cover with a smeary picture of an elf.

Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, the key to Ozzy consciousness. Upon

www.OFFBEAT.com

first listen, I didn’t get it. All that bluesy boo-hooing about the bomb and war. I couldn’t believe my well-honed calligraphy skills were being put into service of this hippie BS. I was about to shelve it and keep living a lie when I saw “Iron Man” on the track listing. Ozzy had been running low on new product for his dog-killing minions to consume and resurrected Black Sabbath tunes were filling the demand. Ozzy Shirt had imparted to me over the roar of our rebuilt lawnmower engine, “’Iron Man’ is the shit,” so I dropped the needle.

BAWNNN-AAH-AANNNNNN! I AM IRON MAN! BAWNNN-AAHAANNNNNNNNNNN! My stepdad came running to my bedroom door looking a little pale. “I was afraid that record was in that stack!” My stepbrother had played this song over and over, as I was about to, as does everyone when they first discover “Iron Man.” Repeated

exposure to “Iron Man” and that filthy caveman riff fills a teenage heart with flames. I suddenly could see why everyone wanted Ozzy’s name scrawled on their clothes, their knuckles, their every possession. Nobody wants him. They just turn their heads.

Ozzy was us and his mark was a talisman of a brotherhood of the damned.

On the last day of shop class, our teacher was spent. We had proven to be, in his final assessment, one of the worst classes he’d ever taught. Passing out the final exam, he issued strict orders to not turn the test over until he said so or you would get an automatic F. I glanced over at Ozzy Shirt as he absently flipped his paper over, as if his clumsy hands were an idle breeze blowing the paper around. The shop teacher witnessed this transgression and exploded “NO! WHAT DID I JUST SAY? WHAT DID I JUST SAY! AUTOMATIC F!” and wrote his name on the board

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and circled an F next to it. Ozzy Shirt’s head fell immediately to his desk like he’d been shot, and stayed there for the rest of the hour. He might have cried a little.

As we filed out of the shop, I tried to offer Ozzy Shirt some consolation, but he’d moved past it. “Dude, I have to repeat this year anyway. Shop was the only thing I was passing anyway so whatever.” He shot me some devil horns over his shoulder as he plodded off to fail another final exam, Ozzy’s hands writhing in madness on the back of his shirt, killing the people he once saved.

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CAJUN FIDDLE

Neck and Neck At Tom’s Fiddle and Bow, one makes them; the other plays them.

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l Berard takes his place in a chair at Tom’s Fiddle and Bow in Arnaudville. He runs his fingers down the neck of his violin and taps the bow lightly across the bridge. Luthier Tom Pierce has already set up the room for Berard’s Monday night “learn-as-you-play” Cajun fiddle-teaching jam.

Pierce’s shop is perched above the dark waters of Bayou Fuselier, where the violins in the display window draw visitors inside. The Fiddle and Bow, known for quality work, is also a jam center for Cajun music.

“When I decided to start the shop in Arnaudville, I was advised to host lessons,” says Pierce. Berard, from the nearby Grand Anse community, is among the select few who have taught lessons at the shop.

Pierce, a New England native, first heard Cajun music 25 years ago.

“I worked at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and I’d make a wish list for vacation,” he says. “We created this ‘circle of dance’ and traveled all over to dance to the best Cajun bands. It was like a Grateful Dead tour.”

The decision to locate his luthier practice in Arnaudville was easy. “I wanted to immerse myself in the music, especially the violin, and there were so many violin players in Louisiana, I thought it’d be a great place to live and work,” Pierce says.

Seventy-eight year old Harold Begnaud shuffles into the shop and pulls out a shiny violin from its case.

“I always wanted to play Cajun music so I bought me a violin,” he says in a distinctive Cajun twang. Begnaud is accompanied by son-in-law Tommy Taylor, who is obviously charmed by the fiddle display in the window.

Sisters Julie, 9, and Gracie Babineaux, 12, sit on Berard’s right. Their parents have driven in from Vermilion Parish because they want the children to learn from the Cajun virtuoso.

Pierce notices Begnaud’s instrument

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is strung incorrectly and takes it to his workbench to re-string and tune.

“What y’all want to play tonight?”

52-year-old Berard asks. He bends a note that resolves into the classic “Jolie Blonde.” He plays the melody with such easy grace, you’d swear he’d been fiddling since infancy. Not so, Berard says. Like most teenagers of his day, Berard was wooed by the soul of Johnny Rivers’ voice, Grand Funk’s bass and Boston’s symphonic guitars.

He was no fan of la musique Cadjin, embarrassed by the old-fashioned style—a generational shame inherited from his parents. His folks grew up speaking French but were prodded to abandon it. To Berard, Cajun music was cultural baggage.

“Cajun was old people’s music,” Berard says. “I didn’t get it.”

It took a cold night in Winnipeg for Berard to appreciate what Cajun old-timers called “French” music and the younger set classified as “chanky-chank”.

After a stint in the Basin Brothers, Berard got a call in 1986 to play lead guitar with the Hadley Castille

By Sam Irwin

CajunGrass Band. He knew Cajun music was undergoing a transformation (the popular BeauSoleil had already released three albums and been performing for eight years).

“So Hadley gets me to play with him,” Berard says. “It was the Festival du Voyageurs and minus 50 degrees.

I couldn’t believe it. I remember this big concert hall. I said, ‘My God, they’re not going to have nobody in this hall.’ Hadley said they was going to dance to Cajun music. I said there was no way. I started getting nervous.

When the people started coming in, I kept telling Hadley they was gonna boo us off the stage. I played that first song [a Castille original called “MaryAnn”] half of it with my head down. Hadley gave me the sign to take my ride. After the song? The wave of sound from the people, screaming and clapping. I looked up and they were all on their feet. I cried like a baby. Ask Hadley about that.

It blew my mind. I came back home with the biggest fire.”

That night, Castille gave Berard his first fiddle lesson.

“When my daddy heard me learning that music and saw that I had gotten it, that it clicked, he was proud,” Berard says. “Of course he had to endure me scratching on that thing for a while.”

After five albums, a Cajun French Music Association Fiddler of the Year award and a Grammy nomination, Berard keeps the faith by teaching fiddle at the Fiddle and Bow. He plays “Jolie Blonde” again, and the beginners note the fingering and bow movements. The melody finally inspires Taylor and Pierce loans him a fiddle. Obviously no one is going to learn everything in one session, but the class gives everyone confidence.

The remarkable thing for musicians like Berard is the cultural baggage he once carried is nowhere to be seen among his students.

Today, the folk music of the Acadians is recognized, cherished and even honored by Cajuns and Yankees alike. The music is not, as Berard once believed, “old people’s music.”

It belongs to everyone.

O www.OFFBEAT.com

OAK STREET FEST

This November, the Po-Boy Preservation Festival returns to Oak Street for its fourth year.

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long list of vendors including Boucherie, Coquette, Delachaise, Grand Isle, Jacques-Imo’s, Mahoney’s, Parkway, and Vaucresson Sausage will serve po-boys ranging from the traditional (oyster, shrimp) to the more unusual (tamale, bread pudding, Smoked Duck with Jalapeno Marmalade). There will be three stages of live music with performances by the Radiators, Rebirth Brass Band, Papa Grows Funk, Jon Cleary, and many more. There will also be an artist’s village, a history center, dessert booths, and beverage booths.

The fate of the festival was until recently shrouded in uncertainty. Since the festival began in 2007, steadily increasing crowds have flooded Oak Street until an estimated 30,000 people attended the 2009 Po-Boy Preservation Festival. Earlier this year, the Oak Street Association announced the festival would be moving to nearby Palmer Park because of overcrowding and safety concerns. More than 50 Oak Street merchants, angered at the potential loss of business, broke away from OSA and formed the Oak Street Merchants, Residents, and Property Owners (MRPO). The MRPO began to plan its own festival. In September, the two groups agreed to put aside their differences and support a united Po-Boy Preservation Festival at 32

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its original Oak Street home.

That means that the Po-Boy Festival will continue to be the premiere destination for connoisseurs of dressingslathered French bread sandwiches. The festival emphasizes the po-boy’s historical importance in New Orleans cuisine. While the sandwich’s origin is cloaked in mystery, there is one story that is generally agreed on. Bennie and Clovis Martin worked as streetcar drivers until opening Martin Brothers’ Coffee Stand and Restaurant in the French Market in 1922. On July 1, 1929 the streetcar motormen and conductors of New Orleans went on a dramatic, violent strike. As former streetcar workers, the Martin Brothers were sympathetic to the cause, and concocted a large, filling sandwich to distribute to the striking workers. The story goes that when they saw a striker approaching, they would say, “Here comes another poor boy.”

The festival will take place on Sunday, November 14 between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Oak Street at South Carrollton.

By Barbie Cure, Chloe Curran and Zachary Young

www.OFFBEAT.com

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BAND SCHEDULE Streetcar Stage (Carrollton & Oak): 11 a.m.: Clockwork Elvis 1 p.m.: Los Po-Boy-Citos 3 p.m.: Honey Island Swamp Band 5 p.m.: Papa Grows Funk

Pigeontown Stage (Leonidas & Plum): 11:30 a.m.: 101 Runners 1:30 p.m.: Pinettes Brass Band 3:30 p.m.: Dee-1 5:30 p.m.: Rebirth Brass Band

River Stage (Eagle & Oak): 11:30 a.m.: Baby Boyz Brass Band 1:30 p.m.: Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes 3:30 p.m.: Jon Cleary: Piano, Bass & Drums 5:30 p.m.: The Radiators

THE PO-BOYS BBQ Shrimp Po-boy (Pascal’s Manale) BBQ Shrimp Po-boy, Pulled Pork Po-boy with Cabbage Slaw, Roast Beef Po-boy (Boucherie/The Que Crawl) Bourbon BBQ Shrimp Po-boy (Bourbon House) Bread Pudding Po-boy (College Inn) Cajun Burger Po-boy, Bananas Foster Bread Pudding, Fried Crawfish Balls (O’Henry’s Food & Spirits) Cochon de Lait Po-boy, Alligator Sausage on a Stick, Crawfish & Spinach Boat (Saltwater Grill) Confit Pork Cuban Po-boy with Black Pepper Bourbon Mustard, House Pickles, Ham & Swiss (Dante’s Kitchen) Fried Shrimp Po-boy, Meatball Po-boy, Jambalaya, Fries (Original New Orleans Po-boys) Fried Shrimp Remoulade Po-boy, Prime Rib Po-boy, Tamale Po-boy, Baked Macaroni, Corn, Crab & Shrimp Bisque (Jack Dempsey’s) Godfather Po-boy, Corn & Crab Bisque, Canolis (Vincent’s Italian Cuisine) Hot Sausage Po-boy with Tomatoes & Peppers (Crescent Pie & Sausage) Housemade Sausage Po-boy, Collard Greens (Coquette) Nutella Crepe, Strawberry Crepe (Crepes a la Cart) Roast Beef Po-boy (Parkway Bakery & Tavern) Root Beer-Glazed Ham & Cheese Po-boy, Pork Belly & Pepper Jelly Po-boy (Mahony’s Po-boy Shop) Prime Beef Debris Po-boy (Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse) Sausage Po-boy (Vaucresson Sausage Company) Shrimp Remoulade Po-boy, Chicken & Sausage Gumbo (Seither’s Seafood) Smoked Duck with Jalapeno Marmalade Po-boy (Palace Café) Stuffed Crab Po-boy, Fried Catfish Po-boy (C & J Caterers) www.OFFBEAT.com

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IN MEMORIAM

Solomon Burke “There’s a song that I sing, and I believe if everyone would sing it, it would save the whole world.”—Solomon Burke, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”

T

he righteous “Bishop” Solomon Burke died October 10 in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.

He was 70, or 74, according to some sources.

Burke was born in Philadelphia and raised over the United Praying Band the House of God for All People Church. He preached, sang gospel music and was ordained as a minister at the age of 14. That year, he made his first recording, “Christmas Presents from Heaven,” a reasonable gospel best seller on the Apollo label. Several recordings for Apollo followed, but in 1957 Burke abandoned the music business and enrolled in mortuary school.

In 1960, Burke was signed to Atlantic Records at the prodding of Billboard editor Paul Ackerman.

Initially, Atlantic had no idea what to do with Burke material-wise, but after he was paired with the country ballad “Just Out of Reach (of My Two Empty Arms),” Burke’s career exploded and Atlantic would become the premier soul music label of the decade. Burke accounted for hit-after-hit during the decade—”Cry to Me,” “Down in the Valley,” “Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye),” “Stupidity” and “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” to mention just a few. Burke’s records stood out for their raw emotion, spontaneity and sincerity. His shows were also memorable as he appeared on stage wearing a crown and flowing ropes.

Unfortunately, the classic period of soul had drawn to a close by the 1970s. Burke returned to recording gospel but continued to appear on the so-called “Chitlin’ Circuit.” www.OFFBEAT.com

the problem with Solomon is that he kept trying to change the deal and get extra.

“We arranged for him to record here. I booked the studio and the musicians. We got to the studio and no Solomon.

Everybody was getting anxious and agitated.

Finally, Solomon shows up a couple hours late with his enormous entourage and says, ‘I thought you guys would be cutting tracks for me to sing on.’ I said, ‘No Solomon, we don’t record that way.’ When we started recording, things went smoothly and we recorded more songs than we planned. At that point Solomon wanted more money.

“I did find out from working with him Solomon had perfect pitch.

When we recorded the live album at the House of Blues, the bass was out of tune or had an intonation problem but Solomon adjusted on the spot. He was a funny guy, a real character and very thoughtful. When Nauman died, he was one of the first people to call. He overnighted a tape of gospel music he wanted us to play at the funeral.”

When asked how Burke will be best remembered, Scott replied, “I think Jerry Wexler (Atlantic producer) said it best—’Solomon was the best soul singer in the world with a pick-up band.’”

According to his Web site, Burke is survived by 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 greatgrandchildren.

—Jeff Hannusch

Bobby Marchan with Solomon Burke at Prout’s Club Alhambra.

Burke often performed in New Orleans at Prout’s Club Alhambra on North Claiborne Avenue and at the ILA Hall on South Claiborne.

New Orleans launched the first of Burke’s comebacks. In 1984, Rounder Records released Soul Alive!, a double album’s worth of live material recorded three years earlier in front of an enthusiastic club audience in Washington, D.C. A copy found its way to E. Rodney Jones, who was then working at WXOK in Baton Rouge. Jones played a monologue/ medley called “The Women of Today” and the reaction was electric.

Thousands of Soul Alive! albums were sold in the Baton Rouge area within weeks, and it caught on in Lafayette, Birmingham, Jackson, Mobile and New Orleans. The following year, Rounder recorded a follow-up album, A Change is Gonna Come, in New Orleans. In 1987, Burke appeared in The Big Easy along with Irma Thomas among others.

“I’ve known Solomon since his first big hit, ‘Cry to Me,’” recalls Thomas. “Percy Stovall booked him down here for a bunch of shows

in the area with his band. Even back then, Solomon was a male diva. One minute he could be easy to work with, the next minute he could be a real pain in the butt. He was less demanding then because things were segregated and he could only get so much. That changed in later years.”

But Thomas was quick to add: “Solomon always put on a good show. He never did anything half-assed. He’d do his current records and then do his hits. The audiences loved him.”

Burke also recorded two albums for New Orleans’ Black Top label in the mid-1990s.

“Solomon would never admit it, but he called us,” said Black Top co-owner/producer Hammond Scott. “We’d had some success recording blues and he said he wanted to do an album’s worth of classic blues. Nauman [Scott’s late brother and Black Top coowner] was out on the West Coast and met with Solomon and they worked out a deal to do an album. We paid him very well, but

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Photo: jeff hannusch

1940-2010

CLASSIC SONGS

Classic Songs of Louisiana:

“Tell It Like It Is”

A

s illogical as it sounds, a million-selling record can actually bankrupt the company that manufactures and distributes it. Such was the fate for the hypnotic “Tell It Like It Is.” Prior to recording “Tell It Like It Is,” Aaron Neville was one of many hustling New Orleans R&B singers; “Tell It Like It Is” would become his signature.

Neville was born January 21, 1941, the third of four children, and was raised in the 13th Ward, initially living on Valence Street before the family moved to the Calliope Projects. As a youth, Neville listened to spirituals, doo-wop and the cowboy music he heard in the Western movies he saw at the local theaters.

Besides his parents, his direct influences included his uncle, George Landry, a.k.a. Big Chief Jolly, a merchant marine who played bawdy barrelhouse piano and masked as an Indian for Mardi Gras. Older brother Art was another big influence. Art fronted the popular Hawkettes, and Aaron often sang with the group. When Art was drafted into the Navy in the late 1950s, Aaron took over leadership of the Hawkettes.

His adolescence included several brushes with the law and a sixmonth stint in parish prison for joy-riding in a stolen car. Upon his release in 1960, rock ’n’ roll bad boy Larry Williams—who Neville befriended during his days with the Hawkettes—took Neville to a Minit Records audition supervised by Allen Toussaint. Impressed by Neville’s voice and his original material, Toussaint signed him, and Neville’s initial Minit release—“Over You”—was a local hit and briefly nudged into the national R&B chart. Subsequent Minit singles were less successful, and the label was sold to Liberty Records in 1963, leaving Neville without a contract.

For the next two years, he divided his time between New Orleans and Los

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“Tell it like it is, don’t be ashamed, let your conscience be your guide. You know deep down inside I believe you really love me. You know life is too short to have sorrow. You may be here today and gone tomorrow.”—George Davis and Lee Diamond

Angeles, running with Williams, who had a reputation as a pimp and drug dealer.

In 1966, Neville was approached by writer and arranger George Davis, session man/liquor salesman Alvin “Red” Tyler, and school teacher Warren Parker, who were partners in a new production company, ParLo Enterprises. Wilbert Smith a.k.a.

Lee Diamond—a friend of Davis’ and former Minit labelmate with Neville—had a title for a song with a hook: “Tell It Like It Is.” Davis agreed, but because Diamond was incarcerated before he could write any lyrics, Davis finished the song. Neville then went

By Jeff Hannusch

to J&M Studio to cut the song and three other Davis/Diamond compositions. Davis arranged and played baritone sax, Emory Thomas played trumpet, Deacon John was on guitar, Tyler played tenor, Willie Tee supplied the piano and June Gardner was behind the drums.

Everyone involved knew they’d just cut a hit record.

Davis and Parker took the session to New York and were surprised that they found no takers. Finally, they formed the Par-Lo label and put “Tell It Like It Is” out themselves.

They pressed 2,000 singles and signed a distribution deal with Cosimo Matassa’s Dover Records. To

spur local sales, Par-Lo gave WYLD’s Larry McKinley—then the city’s top disc jockey—half the publishing.

Obviously, McKinley played the single often and other radio stations in the area followed suit. Dover reported selling 40,000 singles locally in just a week’s time. It didn’t take long for it to break in other markets.

The song would top the national R&B charts for five weeks and reach No. 2 in the pop charts early in 1966. Eventually, the single sold in the neighborhood of two million, and Par-Lo rushed out a Tell It Like It Is album. With a gold record, Neville should have had it made. Unfortunately, Par-Lo and Dover overextended themselves, granting their accounts terms that were far too liberal.

Matassa admitted his mistake to John Broven in Walkin’ to New Orleans: “It was common that a distributor would get 300 free records if they bought a thousand.

I was dumb enough to keep the freebies going after [“Tell It Like It Is”] was established. On “Tell It Like It Is,” on the books we sold over a million. What should have happened is after 150,000 we should have said, ‘The freebies are over, they’re 20 cents a piece now.

You’re gonna pay the basic royalties and cost of manufacturing.”

Eventually, Par-Lo and Dover couldn’t pay their pressing, shipping, promotion and tax bills.

The Internal Revenue Service seized all Dover and Par-Lo’s assets, and Neville wound up without a label and claims he didn’t get all his royalties from “Tell It Like It Is.” “It was a bad deal made by people from New Orleans that didn’t know what they were doing,” said Neville in 1997.

“There’s still people out there pirating that [“Tell It Like It Is”] and they’ve been doing it for years.” O www.OFFBEAT.com

KICKSTARTER

Kick(Start) Me Photo: elsa hahne

For musicians and artists, Kickstarter.com has helped them tap a new funding stream—their fans.

“I

’m refusing to get a full time job.”

Ask Kelcy Wilburn (a.k.a. Kelcy Mae) what she wants to do with her life, and it’s obvious—music is where her passion lies. “I know that if I get a full-time job, I won’t spend the time and energy that I need to on music and being creative, and that is where I want to be,” Wilburn says.

Wilburn [a former OffBeat intern] struggles to make a living solely as an artist. Today’s economy, especially in the music industry, has significantly narrowed the traditional outlets, and it is harder than ever to find someone to back a record. But hard times encourage creativity, and if you can’t find someone, you find many.

Wilburn and a growing number of New Orleans musicians used a

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grassroots method to fund their recordings: Take it directly to the fans. For her first album, she simply pre-sold copies at her live performances. “I raised about $3,000,” she says. “I did it at shows, got people to sign up and pay certain amounts, then they got stuff whenever the album came out.”

After graduating from the masters program in creative writing at University of New Orleans, she decided to take the leap from part time to full time with her music, using a new outlet to reach a wider audience for her sophomore effort. “I didn’t use the Internet [last time], so it had to be local. I went with Kickstarter. com this time so I could reach more people.”

Kickstarter.com is a digital marketplace of ideas and concepts

By Lauren Noel

for those looking to fund a project of their own or those looking to fund other creative ideas. Started

by Perry Chen, Charles Adler and one-time New Orleanian Yancey Strickland almost 16 months ago, Kickstarter has brought the concept of fan-funded projects to the widest audience yet.

New Orleanians are not new to concept. Threadhead Records, a fan-based record label, has been around since 2007.

Threadhead uses donations from fans to loan money to artists to record an album. A small portion of the loan goes to a charitable organization and to Threadhead’s overhead costs, the rest is given back to the contributors once the album is released to the public. Paul Sanchez, Alex McMurray, Margie Perez and Honey Island Swamp

Band are among the many artists that have recorded though Threadhead.

This isn’t only a New Orleans phenomenon, either. Singer/ songwriter Jill Sobule (of the ’90s hit “I Kissed a Girl” fame) also did something similar; she raised money from fans in 2009 to record California Years, and started her own record label based on the same concept, Pinko Records.

Kickstarter differs in its concept.

Fans only pledge certain amounts; they are not charged upfront. An artist decides on a goal and has a certain amount of time to raise it (no longer than 90 days), and if the money is raised, then the backers’ credit cards are charged.

If not, the project goes dead. In its best cases, it allows the artist www.OFFBEAT.com

KIC

K ST ART

ER

Despite a massive economic downturn and the continuing collapse of the traditional record industry, it seems that creativity is exploding.

to build a deeper relationship with his or her fan base, working directly with them to get the project off the ground.

It is only natural that an idea like Kickstarter would have its roots in a city like New Orleans, made up of hundreds of artists all trying to live creatively.

Strickland was living in the French Quarter when he first began kicking around the idea.

“I wanted to throw a nighttime show at the Contemporary Arts Center during Jazz Fest, (but) it was going to be a lot of upfront money, and I couldn’t stomach the risk,” he says.

That lost opportunity stuck with Strickland for years, and he thought of the idea to presell tickets to the show. “If you could get people to commit that they would attend, pre-selling conditionally, then I could use those funds to pay the initial expenses.”

The site builds in incentives for backers, so artists must think of rewards for different levels of money pledged. But, Strickland stresses, it must be well thought out and worthwhile. “Make an effort; people will appreciate it.

Have a private show you’ll play for them, not just ‘$25, you get a button, $100 you get a T-shirt.’”

Earl Scioneaux III (a.k.a. The Madd Wikkid), musician and sound engineer for Preservation Hall, used the site to pursue a side passion of his: Mixing electronica and more traditional New Orleans music into a blend of new sounds. Scioneaux and Strickland were roommates in the Quarter when the concept of Kickstarter first developed, and Scioneaux was one of the first people to use the site.

“In 2001, I got booked to play this Mardi Gras rave and I was

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mixing in clips of Mardi Gras tunes, and I had this idea to make a record with that sort of vibe,” Scioneaux says. “I quickly realized it would cost more money and had to back-burner it for a while.”

In April 2009, Scioneaux created his Kickstarter project profile and named the album Electronola. In 60 days, he raised $4,100 with his goal set at $4,000. Today, the album is available digitally at Scioneaux’s Bandcamp page (maddwikkid. bandcamp.com), and he is working on physical copies.

Scioneaux’s rewards included a music theory lesson for those who donated $35 or more and gumbo dinner and pre-listening party for people who donated $50 or more.

Countless New Orleans musicians are using Kickstarter today. Singer/songwriter Kristin Diable raised $15,083 and cellist Helen Gillet raised $2,179, each for new albums. Dirty Bourbon River Show raised $3,067 for touring costs. For artists like Wilburn and Scioneaux in a local setting with a limited fan base, Kickstarter provides the platform to go national.

“Initially it was friends and family, the people I had the quickest access to reach out to,” Scioneaux says. “But then I contacted music blogs and started pushing it whichever direction I could. By the end of it I’d say less than half were people I knew.”

The easiest way to explain the concept is using the album example, but Kickstarter helps fund more than just music. From documentaries to photographs, books to art, anyone with a creative idea can submit

an application, and as long as it meets Kickstarter’s few requirements, the project can go live on the site.

Local cameraman and documentary filmmaker John Richie used Kickstarter to push his film, Murder Through the Eyes of a Child, into its final stages. An emotional look at the teenagers in the middle of New Orleans street violence, the film began when Richie met students involved in the Fountain of Youth program and heard their stories.

“As I started talking to them, not only had all of them witnessed murders, but they all were desensitized to it,” Richie says. “I have lived here for 10 years, and I was aware of the statistics, but I never really thought about what they meant. I don’t think most people do.”

Richie set out to record the real-life experiences of the kids he met by having them use the equipment and record themselves opening up to one another about the violence they had witnessed. “We used the Kickstarter money mostly for post-production, organizing the footage by buying hard drives and supplies for cataloguing. We have 16 terabytes of footage. Just a 4-terabyte drive costs $1,200.”

Documentaries are one of those projects that many times don’t get made or take years to get made because they cost so much throughout the process and they sometimes lack a tangible outcome. Richie, who needed and raised $7,000 in 90 days, also acknowledged their lack of return. “It’s hard to get people to invest in documentaries because they don’t make money. A lot comes out of your own pocket, and a lot of times you get to a point when you have no funds

and you have to stop until you get more.”

For Strickland, that is where Kickstarter steps in: “We want to help things that may not have found funding before and things that aren’t about making money—that could never make money.”

Other local projects that have been funded include “Where They At”, a multi-media archive of bounce artists from New Orleans that included a showcase at South by Southwest in Austin, and a photography project of New Orleans cemeteries.

The artists behind the New Orleans Treehouse—a group of installation projects in and around trees that people can walk around in and experience personally—are using Kickstarter to build a second exhibition after the first was shut down.

To Scioneaux, funding these creative projects is not about a physical product or outcome. “To me, in the end it’s about people attaching themselves to cool stories.”

Platforms like Kickstarter are offering artists a way to put their ideas into action and let people be a part of them if they choose.

Despite a massive economic downturn and the continuing collapse of the traditional record industry, it seems that creativity is exploding. A quick look at the number of Kickstarter projects— most of which get funded— shows people’s willingness to promote the arts.

For Wilburn, having the money to record means the beginning of a new career and a chance to pursue a passion. “It’s been three years since I recorded last, and this is going to be a stepping stone for the future.”

O www.OFFBEAT.com

E TH

Y AV GR

In the Kitchen with Monk “W

hen I was a kid, I did never go outside. Always stayed inside, and my grandmother used to cook. I helped her cut up the seasoning. Then when my grandmother died, I liked to stay home and watch my mom cook.

I just wasn’t interested in being outside. I don’t go nowhere now, you know, unless I’m going fishing.

You won’t get any trouble, that’s for one thing. Just stay inside, watching cooking shows on TV. In the fall, I mostly cook greens— cabbage, mustard greens, turnip greens; rabbit, raccoon, venison in season. A lot of fish because I go fishing a lot. We go down to Port Sulphur and Empire. The oil is not in the fish because if it was, you could tell when you’re cooking them, you’d smell it. I have a small 14foot flat, enough to get me around where I need to be. I design for the second lines, the fans and the stuff in there. Prince of Wales has 12 adults and 6 kids, that’s what I’m working on now. So I can’t go fishing until after this. I can’t wait! When this is over with, that’s where you’re going to find me, sitting on some bayou.

I cook goat, the whole goat. Go get a goat up there in Boothville, up 90 going towards Houma. I soak him down in vinegar and a lot of seasonings—onion, garlic, bell pepper, celery—soak him down overnight. Put ice all over it, put the vinegar and the salt and the pepper, maybe a little cayenne, and the next day he ready. Put him on the grill.

Sometime, I run him in the oven first, at 300, kind of get him going, you know, and then go put him on the grill. You’ve got to cut the veins out, the silk running through it; same with the venison. They make the meat tough. When you say goat, they’re coming, from everywhere.

After you get it nice and tender on the grill, you put the sauce on there, start rubbing it down with the sauce, slapping it on there. I buy regular

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Monk Boudreaux and his finished, dry roux. barbecue sauce. I used to make one, but my daughter used to help me to make it so I don’t make it no more, I just go buy me a sauce. I might add a little black pepper, a little honey, seasoning salt, lemon. Might put some oranges and squeeze in it. Put it on the ribs, come out real good.

I might have goat, ribs, venison, coon, rabbit, squirrels. And there are hundreds of people out here, right out front my door. My mom used to do it when she was able; she used to feed everybody in the city.

For my roux, I just take a skillet, make it hot and pour the flour in there. That’s to keep the grease down. I don’t like all that grease.

I don’t even like butter. Got some in there that’s been there a year or something. Doing the roux dry like this is easy, but if the phone rings, don’t go answer, I’m telling you.

By Elsa Hahne

You have to stand there and stir it. That’s my cooking spoon over there, with the holes in it. I don’t know why, but that’s the one I like. I use this for everything.

Cooking is really easy, if you want to cook. I had to cook because I raised five kids by myself. I had to come home from work, cook for them, make sure they eat. And I knew how to cook. Now, I have seven grandchildren. The little girl, when I’m cleaning fish, she wants a knife, she wants to clean some fish, so I give her a butter knife, ‘Try this.’ I’ve got a lot of knives and they’re sharp. I love knives. I’ve got a lot more in the drawer right here. I buy knives for me everywhere. I do a lot of cleaning a lot of different wildlife and fish and you’ve got to have a good knife, so I keep a lot of knives. All kind; I love knives. My friends say, ‘Why do you

buy so many fishing poles?’ and I say, ‘They all do something different, that’s why.’ Same thing with knives.

Today, I’m making some filé gumbo with shrimp, crab, sausage, chicken and chicken gizzards—a lot of work for people who don’t like to cook. Like making an Indian suit, that’s a lot of work too. But, hey, not for the Indians. It’s easy, just take a little while.

I really like gumbo the next day.

Everything is settled down and worked it’s way through, got together like a magnet, all join in on each other, that’s when it’s good to go.

A friend of mine, he goes up to the country and get coons from the trappers. I always get five or six, because the people who follow me on Mardi Gras Day, they love it. The most important thing in cooking a raccoon is you have to musk him, you have to get the musks out.

A large coon got 32 musks, and most of them come out when they pull the hide off, but you’ve got to make sure you get them all out.

When I do that I put my glasses on.

The meat is like a dark red and the musks are a little lighter than that, so you can see them. You just got to know what you’re looking for. After you musk him, wash him down real good, put him in a big pot and parboil him, because he’s real tough.

Take a little seasoning salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper. Sometime I put liquid crab boil in there. Parboil him until you can flip the meat, breaks right loose. I do them whole because I like to barbecue the whole thing. Once you do that, you got him. Bring him to the grill, let him go. Some people don’t wait until you put the barbecue sauce on there. They’re going to eat it and love it. You know, I get a lot of this: ‘I don’t eat this, I don’t eat that,’ but when I go out there, the alligator, the coon and venison, all that’s gone. Somebody eat it.

Raccoon, that’s Mardi Gras evening. I generally get them for www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux casts a wide net.

THE GRAVY Christmas, but I hold them until Mardi Gras because I know they’ll get eaten up then. Then a friend of mine, he always comes from Detroit.

I taught him how to musk them, so I don’t have to do that, I just continue sewing. He call me, “Come check it out!’ And I come check it out, put my glasses on. They’re like a football shape. I learned that when I was about 12-13 years old, how to musk them. One time I was selling papers, and I see this sign way down on Rampart Street, say ‘Coons.’ I said to myself I was going to buy one for mommy, and the guy in there asked me if I knew how to musk them and I said ‘No.’ He said, ‘Let me show you.’ Some of them are as big as a little fingernail. Once you take them out you can’t beat the taste. Coon, that was one of the first foods, you know, back in the day. Pioneers and all that. They had raccoon hats.

What do you think they did with the meat? Threw it away?”

Baby Alligator Gravy

“If I use alligator fillets, I cut them up in little blocks, like bite-size pieces.

Something you can put in your mouth, so you don’t have to stretch your mouth open. Cayenne is good for wildlife, all of it. It adds another notch to it, but my old lady can’t eat nothing spicy, so, mess my day up.”

2 pounds baby alligator legs, skinned (look like chicken drumettes) 2 tablespoons margarine 1 small onion, diced 4 green onions, chopped 1/4 bunch parsley, chopped 1/2 bell pepper, diced 1/2 jar Ragu Old World Style Traditional Pasta Sauce 1 teaspoon garlic powder 4 tablespoons dry roux 1 cup water salt and black pepper to taste cayenne to taste

Brown alligator in margarine in a large skillet. Set meat aside. Add onion, green onions, parsley and bell pepper to skillet and sauté until soft. Add Ragu, garlic powder and roux. Thin with water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt, black pepper and cayenne.

Add alligator back in and simmer, covered, for another 30 minutes. www.OFFBEAT.com

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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.

Arnaud’s Remoulade: 309 Bourbon St., 523-0377.

Bistreaux at Maison Dupuy: 1001 Toulouse St., 586-8000.

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.

Mat and Naddie’s: 937 Leonidas St., 861-9600.

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Le Meritage at Maison Dupuy: 1001 Toulouse St., 586-8000.

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.

NEIGHBORHOOD JOINTS Café Reconcile: 1631 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 568-1157.

Captain Charles’ Café on the Ave: 4600 Washington Ave., 258-1719.

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.

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.

Frank Jones hits the [of Jean-Eric]

How often do you get a chance to come to Lola’s?

Not often enough, but I love it, I just really like the whole vibe.

Photo: CAITLYN RIDENOUR

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

Slice Pizzeria: 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525-7437.

Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza: 4218 Magazine St., 894-8554.

Turtle Bay: 1119 Decatur St., 586-0563.

What do you usually order?

I get the fabado soup and a house green salad and some chicken, pork, and sausage paella, which is like a spanish jambalaya and I’ll get rioja, a white wine.

Lola’s 3312 Esplanade Ave. (504) 488-6946

OffBeat

Chickie Wah Wah: 2828 Canal St., 304-4714.

House of Blues: 225 Decatur St., 412-8068.

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 come here with?

I usually come with my roommates, who are also in the band.

—Caitlyn Ridenour www.OFFBEAT.com

DINING OUT Bouligny Tavern Lilette has been a perennial top table in New Orleans, and recently Chef John Harris expanded his hold on the 3600 block of Magazine Street by opening Bouligny Tavern next door. The interior is anchored by a long, deep, granite-topped bar with candle-lit tables running parallel and lounge-style seating in the front. The décor harkens back to the MidCentury Modern period, and though we are neither architecture nor interior design majors, it looks pretty cool to us.

Though it calls itself a tavern, Bouligny is first and foremost a wine bar. While the wine list spans the varietal spectrum, the prices by the glass in some cases equal the cost of the bottle in a retail store. The cocktails, however, are well-crafted and affordably priced. The bar chefs at Bouligny love Campari, so much so that it shows up in one third of the cocktails, including the La Madrugada, which blends tequila with grapefruit, Campari, and St. Germain to create a softer expression of tequila’s troubled cousin, the Margarita.

www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: CAITLYN RIDENOUR

EATS Equal emphasis is placed on what goes on the plate as what fills your glass, and the food menu is entirely comprised of small plates. A half dozen options of bruschetta and crostini range from a rich combination of bone marrow and garlic to a Tuscan version pairing white bean puree with pesto. Soft burrata cheese is smeared so thick that the bread loses its crispness, but we don’t mind the texture so much as the $8 price, which detracts from the unquestionable deliciousness of the dish.

Knife and fork fare include a textbook example of duck confit, gently mixed spinach and ricotta gnudi in an acidic sauce of San Marzano tomatoes, and fried gnocchi that were, in a word, awesome. Gouda beignets are elongated, rough-edged pillows filled with soft, barely melting cheese, but their one-note flavor would do well with a dash of acid or a sweet dipping sauce.

Business is slow and relaxed during the early part of the week, but the crowds pick up over the weekend when the no reservations and no waiting list policy makes table space a coveted commodity.

3641 Magazine St. 891-1810. Mon-Thu 4 p.m. to Midnight. Fri-Sat 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.

—Rene Louapre and Peter Thriffiley

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REVIEWS

Reviews

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

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

Part of Our Lives

Kermit Ruffins Happy Talk (Basin Street) In 2007, Kermit Ruffins got married in Woldenberg Park during the French Quarter Festival.

As his beloved bride Juicee mounted the stage, Kermit and the fellas pointed their horns in her direction and the audience roared. Just as things hit a crescendo, the Steamboat Natchez passed and blew its whistle. It was another epically sweet moment when you re-appreciate our intimacy with music. Grinning in

the middle of that bond for four decades now, Kermit is family.

I’d bet you a hot sausage that more New Orleanians per capita have stories about Kermit than any living musician. I thought David Simon said something when he talked about the city as a moment factory. Of course, unlike HBO, you and I can’t predict the moments’ arrival or if they’ll be punctuated with gunshots, and anyway they don’t last.

Fortunately for us (and Simon), Kermit is a foreman in that factory.

Remember Henri the emcee!

Remember Emile the stone-faced pianist! Remember when No Limit decked out the band in football jerseys! All of us have been vipers, all aboard, all fo’shiggedy. These are unquantifiable, unrecorded gifts from our most public artist, whose voice isn’t perfect pitch but who’ll be there every week, telling you that New Orleans is home. Bumperstickered out as that sentiment may be, it remains 100 percent fresh and heartfelt when Kermit growls it.

Like many recordings by seminal locals, these tracks only suggest the value of the artist—a temporarily detached from his environment and acoustics, perfectly produced piece of a man, but only a piece. You won’t learn anything you didn’t already know (Kermit loves the two Louis, Sinatra and the occasional show tune; he picks good sidemen; his trumpet sounds as fuzzily whimsical as ever).

Things kick off with “Panama,” featuring Mark Mullins and Dr. Michael White romping through the Caribbean flavored standard. (Should Kermit ever record an album of songs from the Southern Hemisphere, we’d learn a lot.) “More Today Than Yesterday” is great. “If I Only Had a Brain” seems long, but it also takes a salsa turn.

Kermit’s unflagging dedication to Armstrong makes “Shine” and “La Vie En Rose” convincing, if not all that necessary.

But play a track in your car, or hear one on the radio,

and feel your chest swell up with something very necessary: high hopes. The album consists of favorites from masters of sweetness and light like Sam Cooke, Sammy Cahn and Cy Coleman. As interpreters of fancy, of mosey, of the positive go, who’s better than Kermit?

We appear to be at the odd juncture where the roles of neighborhood champ and HBO character can co-exist in a city actively mutating and resolutely committed to its identities. Good for everybody that at least one person remains true and sounds good doing it.

—Brian Boyles

Amanda Shaw Good Southern Girl (Poorman Mayfield) Amanda Shaw’s third solo album proclaims, with its title, that it’s about the performer’s identity.

That’s just as true of her debut, 2004’s I’m Not a Bubble Gum

I Am Recycling Leftovers Lil Wayne I Am Not a Human Being (Cash Money) Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and jail time makes the rapper grow legendary. Lil Wayne’s arrest and subsequent eight-month sentence launched a “Free Weezy” campaign and creepy fan sites where pre-teens send daily love letters to the incarcerated Hot Boy. For an artist that dropped whole albums-worth of material every 12 minutes over the last five years, eight months is a lifetime. Finally, fans are salivating for new Lil Wayne

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material. I Am Not a Human Being gives them what they want. Sort of.

I Am Not a Human Being is a collection of songs that were left over from previous projects and obviously recorded months ago. The album is a breath of fresh air for those missing Weezy’s non-sequiturs, wacky voices and nimble flow. Though plenty of Young Money cohorts pop up for forgettable cameos, this is Lil Wayne’s world as he runs roughshod over the bass-heavy “Bill Gates” and double time snares of “Hold Up (featuring T. Streets)” where Wayne raps “Pussy in the bedroom / pass that bitch down like an heirloom.”

While Wayne’s been off on his federally sponsored trip to Mars, a few of his lyrical tricks have become dated. Over the past few months, Drake has all but buried the inverted metaphor (“Faded off the brown…Nino / Come and find me…Nemo”) to the point of making it obsolete. I Am Not a Human Being uses this trope a few times, with each serving as a reminder that these are indeed cutting room floor tracks recorded almost a year ago.

I Am Not a Human Being is a serviceable project that reminds us just how unique Lil Wayne is as

an artist and personality. It’s also clear that the work is only a taste of his B-material, getting us ready for when Weezy is finally free to begin working on a real in-studio project. November can’t come soon enough.

—David Dennis www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS Pop Princess, but Good Southern Girl represents a more developed personal and musical statement.

The new title is obviously intended to be something of a tongue-incheek description of Shaw herself, but it finds the artist looking to locate herself with respect to the Louisiana Cajun tradition she grew up with and the Nashville new country and Southern rock

traditions towards which bubble gum pop princesses sometimes tend—and where they find mainstream success.

Good Southern Girl was produced by Trina Shoemaker, who is perhaps best known for her work with Sheryl Crow on The Globe Sessions (1998) and C’Mon C’Mon (2002). It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that its drums and

A Gospel for Everyone Aaron Neville I Know I’ve Been Changed (EMI Gospel) In a city of maddening talents, Aaron Neville’s has been one of the most perplexing. His voice is a remarkable instrument that has too often been employed for pedestrian purposes. It’s hard to argue with his drift toward MOR—he’s not getting younger, and underpaid R&B legends are a dime a dozen—but people have wanted something more substantial: The angelic desire of “Tell It Like It Is;” the streetwise grit of “Hercules;” the spirituality of “Amazing Grace.” Next to those, another version of “Everybody Plays the Fool” is likable but disposable.

On I Know I’ve Been Changed, he has put his talents to excellent use.

He’s singing gospel, and producer Joe Henry makes Neville’s voice and Allen Toussaint’s piano the focal points of each track. It’s Henry’s least obtrusive production, but you can hear subtle, smart decisions such as the choice to record the tambourines off-mic and with the treble rolled down. That keeps a native percussion instrument in the mix, evokes Mardi Gras Indians, but leaves plenty of room in the treble range for Neville.

The song choices are smart with few obvious selections, but Neville sings each with literal attention to the words. For the title track, he’s almost woozy with the good news, while he sings “Don’t Let Him Ride” as if he’s warning the listener about a trifling woman.

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Throughout, there’s an appealing buoyancy in his performances beyond his quaver, as if the transcendent subject matter has already lightened his load.

The arrangements don’t blur distinctions between gospel and other genres as much as they unify them. The frameworks reference country, folk and the blues, but Toussaint pulls them together by playing distinctly New Orleans piano accompaniment. His bounce spurs Neville’s inventiveness as a singer and adds a secondary charm to almost every track. His solo in “You’ve Got to Move” is as unexpected as it is compelling.

The blues and New Orleans underpinnings also show Henry’s hand a bit. His productions often treat American roots music as fine art, and here he uses beloved musical contexts to frame another genre—gospel—that has historically been so message-driven that those who don’t believe find it hard to stay with. He doesn’t betray the songs, the message or Neville, though. Instead, by integrating the songs in the history of American music—and particularly AfricanAmerican music—he puts Aaron’s voice and art in a dynamic context, and one that music fans can easily return to, regardless of their beliefs.

—Alex Rawls www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS guitar sound like they come from a Sheryl Crow record. Much of this album feels engineered for radio play and dancing at music festivals in front of the kind of big stages that more tradition-minded performers usually can’t book.

Shaw’s crossover effort bridges the gaps it notices between the various sections of her musical upbringing with aplomb, and its execution is impeccable.

There’s simply no arguing with her performances; she can play the fiddle. She’s precise, confident, and playful in her approach to soloing and, in particular, to the Cajun, Creole, country and traditional pieces sprinkled throughout Good Southern Girl.

Traditionalists might wish that she’d kept that work further clear of arena-rock drums, twangy lead guitar and electric bass, but Amanda Shaw—good Southern girl though she may be—is 19 years old. She’s justifiably

more interested in evolution and experimentation than in preservation.

—Jacob Leland

Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship?

Of Resolutions and Resolve (Domino Sound) Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? combines a folk-punk base with elements of traditional New Orleans music to create a sound that’s half brass-band dirge and half indie-rock sea shanty. This is one of the most unique groups on the New Orleans scene, and their third record finds them in excellent form.

Frontman Walt McClement’s accordion is the dominant presence here, setting the tone in aggressive staccato bursts or melting into the sprawling, tremulous chords that characterize the record’s more contemplative moments. At times,

Beauty in Spontaneity Frank Gratkowski & Hamid Drake Frank Gratkowski & Hamid Drake (Valid) Frank Gratkowski and Hamid Drake have a long relationship with New Orleans, having made it a frequent performance destination throughout their careers. Their debut as a duo was recorded live at Piety Street Studios in the Bywater, for Benjamin Lyons’ Valid label. The combination of sax and drums has a long history in improvised music, and its virtues are on full display here. While this type of pairing has its limitations, its simplicity allows for an exceptionally high level of spontaneous synchronicity.

Forced to be a one-man rhythm section, Drake spins out an endlessly shifting polyrhythmic web.

Gratkowski’s approach is original from the get-go, starting with a solo in which his playing alternates with soft vocalizations. At another point, he seems to coax his instrument into harmonizing with itself, then there are moments when the two

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seem to switch roles, Gratkowski supplying a repetitive rhythmic figure while Drake’s percussion takes on a more melodic bent.

Toward the end of “Square Root of Distraction,” Gratkowski begins a fluttering, percussive excursion into the upper register and Drake responds by dropping into perfectly complementary, low-pitched, hand drumming. The two maneuver into a steady groove before fading into a subtle duet of shakers and key noise. It’s a beautiful example of their dexterity as a duo. That same deep, mutual sensitivity is on exhibit throughout the record.

—Zachary Young www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS it’s hard not to picture him playing whilst perched on the edge of an old-timey merchant schooner as it bobs across the Atlantic.

WAWBSABS is a big group, and their sound is fleshed out by an assortment of brass and saxophones whose stately chorales lend the dignified air of a marching band topped off by McClement’s singing, which veers from sentimental hush to demonic rasp.

I sometimes wish the group would go in for some more raucous breakdowns to counter the stately manner that pervades the album. We get a brief taste of what could be in “1000 Colors” in a high-energy burst of squealing sax and crashing drums. But what these guys do, they do with sincerity and style. The group is adept at blending instrumental and vocal harmonies into lavish choruses, and at marshalling their forces for a syncopated, head-banging accelerando (as in “Hunger”). Of Resolutions and Resolve is an imaginative and finely crafted record.

—Zachary Young

AM Future Sons and Daughters (Filter US) The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist AM was raised in Mandeville and graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans. AM himself is usually careful to mention his Crescent City soul influences, but Future Sons and Daughters, his third full-length release, bears a much deeper imprint from the other LA. Recorded and mastered on Santa Monica Boulevard, Future Sons and Daughters is drenched in Southern California sunshine. It prominently features ukulele and synthesizers; it wants to dress in paisley, point the car down the freeway, and crank up the car stereo’s amplitude modulation band.

The album’s title notwithstanding, its dreamy, flower-child pop music comes from the past. It suggests a diverse musical heritage, from the European synth bands AM has toured with to the Brazilian www.OFFBEAT.com

pop legend Jorge Ben, for whom the tenth track is titled. Most prominently, though, AM’s sound here recalls Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Its second track, “The Other Side,” makes that clear. The composition’s structures, along with its main verses’ chord progression, arrangement and melody are nearly direct quotes from Albert Hammond’s 1972 “It Never Rains in Southern California.” On that same song’s bridge, though, AM departs from the L.A. pop canon in a way that makes clear that this isn’t simply an exercise in derivation.

With the recent success of acts like Mayer Hawthorne and Sharon Jones, “retro” is steadily becoming something of an easy move for musicians, and it doesn’t always pay off. Old recording equipment and techniques, nostalgic designs and familiar song structures can sometimes be less than their sum.

Here, though, AM’s beautifully crafted arrangements and the breadth of his carefully deployed sonic palette are retro-pop at its best. He gets at the tradition’s historical essence, and makes clear that he’s got something to add.

—Jacob Leland

Andy J. Forest NOtown Story: The Triumph of Turmoil (Independent) If you’re a musician or band that makes a living in live performance, you probably have always wanted to make that killer live album that captures the magic of your best nights. But the best moments of live performance are almost always left in the setting where they occur, which is why some of the biggest names in New Orleans music have made inferior live albums. Recordings have their own mojo, and while many musicians N O VEMBER 2 010

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REVIEWS use the studio conceptually, some are able to create a simulacrum of what they can achieve in live performance in a studio setting.

The key is not the energy of the playing itself, and it’s definitely not the interaction with listeners.

It’s a subtle alchemy of the right material presented at the right pace and recorded with a precision

that presents its own version of the excitement people associate with live performance. Creedence Clearwater Revival and the J. Geils Band made careers out of being able to cut records like that.

Andy J. Forest’s NOtown Story goes for this effect and for the most part pulls it off. While it won’t be confused with CCR or

400-Pound Lineman of Funk Dumpstaphunk Everybody Want Sum (Independent) Quick. Think of the worst smelling spot in New Orleans. Funkier than that one unfortunate spot of land at The Fly right behind the elephant patch at the Audubon Zoo. Think the intersection of Bourbon and Conti during Mardi Gras, and then think of the receptacles those trash heaps get thrown into.

Dumpstaphunk is that funky.

Right off the bat, the verses in the opener “Sheez Music” trigger memories of Brothers Johnson’s “Ain’t We Funkin’ Now” with the involuntary leg motions to match.

Most folks by now know the sheer power of Dumpstaphunk’s live show, but this track and others here sound huge coming out of the Maple Leaf’s house speakers between sets at their Sunday crawfish boils.

Some might take the Neville bait and compare Everybody Want Sum to the Meters’ later Warner Brothers albums, New Directions and Trick Bag, but a better comparison would be with the city’s other seminal ’70s funk outfit, Chocolate Milk. Like that great group, I thought I liked it most when the band sits back and slinks along in the pocket, as in the third song, “Do Ya.” The tempo lends itself to drummer Raymond Weber’s backbeats and the punchy horns that accent the bridges.

But my preference might just be correlation. Ivan Neville’s clavinet and keyboard playing make the track a standout, and it makes you stand up at attention when they burst from that into “Gasman Chronicles” at a

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velocity faster than the vibrations of one of Nick Daniels’ bouncing bass strings. Raymond Weber plays drums on this workout like a funk robot programmed with Swiss precision to play 150 bpm breakbeats. If you make it through all five-plus minutes you’ll be doing that James Brown grunt, too.

If the album were a Dumpstaphunk concert at Tip’s, the song “Oughta Know Better” is when you would walk to one of the bars and replace your beer. But much of that feeling is impatience to get to the Zigaboo Modeliste-penned “Standin’ in Your Stuff,” and especially to its ascending-to-descending harmonies in the chorus. The guest horn section is a welcome addition on this one, lending those choruses, breaks, bridges and transitions even more muscle, like a sixth 400-pounder on an offensive line.

Bottom line—this is a party album.

It’ll sound great when someone plays it on St. Charles before a Mardi Gras parade. The feelings of party records often get separated into those that are straightforward/earnest versus others that are ironic/removed, and it seems obvious where Everybody Want Sum stands. But how about this detail: the Producer credit went to Morgus the Magnificent.

—Ben Berman www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS Bloodshot, it manages to achieve the aural equivalent of trompe l’oeil by simulating the excitement of Forest at his best in a club setting. The recording of the basic quartet—Forest, guitarist Jack Cole, drummer Allyn Robinson and bassist David Hyde—is crisp and uncluttered, with guitar, harmonica and vocals tipping into the red with a fierce, in-your-face presence. On “True to You,” those three elements come out of the speakers with the force of a Chess side by Muddy Waters with Little Walter on harp.

Forest’s songs tend to scan like novellas; here he keeps his lyrics to the bare minimum, sticking with simple concepts like “Who Are You Tryn’a Fool,” “Pretend We’re Not Pretending” and “You Gotta Pay.” The simplicity is effective as it’s in service of the story of the break-up of Forest’s real-life marriage. Less is definitely more when such situations are rendered in song, and Forest thankfully sticks to generalizations. The

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hot sex farce “Dogs Chase Cats” offers comic relief halfway through the set, and “The Blues Blues” is a great piece of selfactualization.

Forest is a multi-faceted songwriter who’s written some of the more interesting pieces about New Orleans over the years. This time around he’s letting off some emotional steam. In the process, he’s made what is probably his best-sounding record.

—John Swenson

Bodhi3 Ceremony (Independent) The music on Bodhi3’s Ceremony is rooted in a tradition of jazz for spiritual purpose as pioneered by musicians such as John and Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. The band’s three members (Mike Mito on reeds and percussion, drummer Jeff Zielinksi, and bassist/vocalist Rebecca Greene) are relatively unknown on the New Orleans

music scene, but nevertheless show a great sense of musical maturity on this, their debut album.

Besides the great jazz tracks like “Autobahn” and “Thoughts of South America,” Bodhi3 also makes reference to other, more ancient forms of spiritual music.

Mito and Zeilinski’s shakuhachi (Japanese flute) duet “Two Birds” is a truly Zen expression in accordance with the instrument’s traditional purpose, and is one of the most beautiful passages on Ceremony. A similar high point is the chant song “Native,” where Greene’s commanding vocals and Zielinski’s intuitive rhythmic approach create a moving experience reminiscent of Native American pow wow music.

One thing that Bodhi3 does not exemplify is musical virtuosity.

None of the musicians have the chops of artists who play this style of music professionally, such as Hamid Drake or Charles Lloyd, but that doesn’t detract from their overall musicality. Despite

occasional moments when the band seems to reach beyond its grasp, Ceremony still glows with a genuine feeling of spiritual communion and showcases some excellent talent from three underrated members of the New Orleans music community.

—Mark LaMaire

The Madd Wikkid Electronola (Independent) Earl Scioneaux III, recording engineer for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, shares a deep passion for his native New Orleans and its storied, musical legacy. His producer alter-ego, the Madd Wikkid, possess an affinity for electronica and techno.

An unorthodox pairing to say the least, Scioneaux—ahem, the Madd Wikkid—began synthesizing his ideas seven years ago, tapping local jazz masters Jason Marsalis (drums) and James Singleton (bass) for a set

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REVIEWS of sessions that would lay the groundwork for his most recent effort, Electronola.

In 2009, Scioneaux revived Electronola via the (then) unknown, online pledging platform Kickstarter.

By August, he had successfully reached his funding goal, and within a year his once-derailed experiment had become a reality.

With an all-star cast of collaborators on hand—George Porter, Jr., John Boutte, Charmaine Neville, Lucien Barbarin and Joe Lastie among others—the Madd Wikkid mixed up an electronic gumbo, one that blends the boogie woogie of old New Orleans rags and the percolating strut of Crescent City funk with the grimy, atmospheric convulsions of dubstep and the spiky loops and stutters of house and drum-and-bass.

While neither jazz steeped in electronic exploration nor the electronic exploitation of jazz samples are new concepts, what defines the Madd Wikkid’s fusion of the two is that his focus is neither on the exponential avenues of improvisation nor the beautification of the beat.

Groove is his m.o. It’s a tone he establishes immediately with the churning push and pull between the sinewy funk and encroaching atmospherics of “The Days,” and propels through a vortex of New Orleans influences as the album ascends to the rushing euphoria of “Let It Go” after bopping through the minimalist space-swing of “Drinkin’ Alone” and raving through the rocketing R&B of “Haunt.” A dance album derived from the most unlikely of sources and a testament to his perseverance and passion, credit the Madd Wikkid’s vision and ace production skills for pulling Electronola together. VoodooDub/Trad-House, anyone?

—Aaron LaFont

George Thorogood and the Destroyers Live in Boston 1982 (Rounder) Along with Texas’ Fabulous Thunderbirds, New England’s www.OFFBEAT.com

J. Geils Band and California’s Mighty Flyers, Delaware’s George Thorogood and the Destroyers were products of the second blues revival. Having not listened to them in about 25 years, hearing this CD reminds one of when you play 33 1/3 rpm LP record albums at 45 rpm on a turntable.

At the time of these recordings, the Destroyers—the perfect name for this band—had just come off a North American tour opening for the Rolling Stones and were considered one of the best blues/ roots/rock/bar bands in the land.

Clearly Thorogood and the Destroyers ate their Wheaties before this show and slept well that night.

They rip through this set of blues, rock ’n’ roll and country like there was no tomorrow. Even the slower songs like “As the Years Go Passing By” are so intense they can wear out listeners. Thorogood’s influences are many here. Chuck Berry and Hank Williams come to mind, but especially John Lee Hooker, who he perfectly mimics on “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer” and “New Boogie Chillun.”

Thorogood uses the slide on his guitar masterfully, particularly on the raucous “House of Blue Lights” and Elmore James’ “Can’t Stop Loving.”

There are a few fine originals sprinkled in along the way, including “I’m Wanted” and “One Way Ticket,” which was the predecessor to Thorogood’s eventual calling card, “Bad to the Bone.”

While Live in Boston 1982 is a fine example of road house music at its apex, it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. I wonder what these guys would have sounded like if they had Red Bull back then?

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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

FRIDAY OCT 29

12 Bar Blues Club: Walter “Wolfman” Washington (BL) 9p, Halloween Party feat. the Call Girls (OR) 12a Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Holladay and Rick Westin (BL) 8p, the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: Black Pearl and the DJ Real (RH) 10p, Abney Effect (upstairs) (MJ) 10p, BSFN feat. the Revivalists (MJ) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Wilson & Moore (OR) 5:30p, Paul Sanchez (OR) 8p, Locos por Juana, Stooges Brass Band (LT BB) 11p

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Contemporary Arts Center: Voodoo Dance After Dark (DN) 9p d.b.a.: Meshiya Lake & the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Honey Island Swamp Band (RR) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf: Up From the Grave Hoodoo All-stars feat. John Gros, Nick Daniels, June Yamagishi, Russell Batiste and many more (VR) 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 (MJ) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (BL) 5p, Foot & Friends (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Groovesect (FK) 11p Maple Leaf: Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Eddie Parino (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Clive Wilson (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat.

Lars Edegran (JV) 8p Rivershack: Eduora and Deep Soul (RR BL) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: the Topcats (PP) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (MJ) 8 & 10P Three Muses: Harmonouche (JV) 6p, Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Galactic feat. Cyril Neville and Corey Henry (RR) 11p

SATURDAY OCT 30

12 Bar Blues Club: the Trio (JV) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Andre Bouvier & the Royal Bohemians (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p, Black Pearl and the GNO Orchestra (RH) 10p, Anders Osborne (RR) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: the Iguanas (LT RR) 10p Contemporary Arts Center: Voodoo Dance After Dark (DN) 9p d.b.a.: Rotary Downs (RR) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Hi Ho Lounge: Zydepunks, Debauche, Slow Burn Burlesque (RR SH) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Krewe of MOM’s Halloween Ball feat.

Papa Grows Funk, Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes, Josh Garrett and more (VR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bill Summers and Friends (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam feat. Hot 8 Brass Band (MJ) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Wilson & Moore (BL) 5p, Lynn Drury (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Dead Kenny Gs (OR) 11p Maple Leaf: Jon Cleary (PK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p One Eyed Jacks: Dax Riggs, Lost Bayou Ramblers (RR) 9p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lionel Ferbos (JV) 7p Rivershack: Halloween Party feat.The Refugeze (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Bucktown All-stars,Tab Benoit (BL) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Chris Thomas King (MJ) 8 & 10p

Three Muses: Debbie Davis (JV) 7p, Bottoms Up Blues Band (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave., Bonerama (MJ) 11p

SUNDAY OCT 31

12 Bar Blues Club: 1st Annual Funky Halloween Bash feat. Kirk Joseph’s Backyard Groove feat. the Jesse Hiatt Band (JV) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Andre Bouvier & the Royal Bohemians (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Dr. Gonzeaux (upstairs) (FK) 10p, Dead Kenny Gs, Gravity A (RR) 10p d.b.a.: call club 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): Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle (MJ) 7p, A Halloween Blow-Out (MJ) 11p Kerry Irish Pub: Rites of Passage (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio and Jerry Joseph (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Quintron & Miss Pussycat feat.

Jean-Eric, Vinsantos, Super Destroyers (RR) 9p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lucien Barbarin (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Halloween Party (MJ) 8p & 10p Three Muses: Kenny Claiborne (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: New Mastersounds feat.Art Neville (FK) 12a

MONDAY NOV 1

Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata (BL) 8p, Shotgun House (BL) 10:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Jon Cleary (FK) 8p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (MJ) 9p Funky Pirate: Willie Locket & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): James Andrews and Craig Klein’s New Orleans All-stars (JV) 5p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat.

Maynard Chatters (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (MJ) 8p Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 7p

TUESDAY NOV 2

12 Bar: comedy night (CO) 9p Apple Barrel: Luke Winslow-King (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Open Ears Music Series feat. Helen Gillet and Mark Sutherland (VR) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (OR) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (MJ) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Wiz Khalifa and Yelawolf 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p

Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (CW) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-stars feat.

Shannon Powell (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Clarence “Tadpole” Henry (RB) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Jeff Albert Quintet (MJ) 8p

WEDNESDAY NOV 3

12 Bar: Ruby Moon (OR) 7p, Brass-a-Holics (JV) 9p Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Mike Darby & the House of Cards (BL) 10p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: United Postal Project 8p, Khris Royal and Dark Matter (JV) 10p, Gravity A with special guests (upstairs) (FK) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: the Iguanas (LT) 8:30p d.b.a.: the Tin Men (MJ) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington & the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf: Combichrist, Aesthetic Perfection, Ivardenshphere and DJ Tarnish (VR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield & the NOJO Jam Session with the music of Gerry Mulligan (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Lafayette Square: Harvest the Music Concert Series feat. Allen Toussaint, Nicholas Payton and the Joe Krown Trio feat. Walter “Wolfman” Washington and Russell Batiste, Little Freddie King (FK) 5p Maple Leaf: Belleville Outfit (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Glen David Andrews feat. Ingrid Lucia (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: 22nd Anniversary Party feat. Johnny J. and Derek Houston (VR) 8:30p Sandbar: John Ellis (JV) 7:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis & Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8p Tipitina’s: the Aggrolites (RR) 9p

THURSDAY NOV 4

12 Bar: the Pinettes (BB) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 8p, Ivoire Spectacle (BL) 10:30p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Uncle Daddy (JV RR) 9p d.b.a.: Jon Cleary (PK) 7p, Coot (OR) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Gwar, the Casualties, Infernaeon, Mobile Death Camp (ME) 7:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Gram Parsons Tribute feat. Speed the Mule (RR) 9p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Captain Leo (BL) 7p Ogden Museum: Ogden After Hours feat. Papa Mali (RR BL) 6p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Palm Court: Crescent City Joymakers feat. Wendell Brunious (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Brass Band Thursday feat.

Survivors Brass Band (BB) 8p Rivershack: Truman Holland (RR BL) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Chris Ardoin and Zydeco NuStep (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: John Ellis & Doublewide (MJ) 8p

FRIDAY NOV 5

12 Bar: Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 7p, Grunge Jazz Trio (JV) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Holladay (BL) 8p, Mike Hood & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile : call club Chickie Wah Wah: The Pfister Sisters (VF) 5:30p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Papa Mali & Friends (JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Doogie’s YeahBrahCaDaBrah Magic Extravaganza CD-release show (VR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Gravy Flavored Kisses (OR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Tom Worrell (MJ) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Midnight Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (SH JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (BL) 5p, Lynn Drury Band (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Piney Woods Playboys feat. Cary Hudson (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Clive Wilson and Lucien Barbarin (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat. William Smith (JV) 8p Rivershack: Omega 3 (RR BL) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Kermit Ruffins CD-release party (MJ) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quartet (MJ) 8p Tipitina’s: Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe (FK) 10p

SATURDAY NOV 6

12 Bar: Jake Labotz (JV) 7p, Brian Stoltz (JV) 10p Apple Barrel: Maxwell (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: Consortium of Genius CD-release party 10p Chickie Wah Wah: call club d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Soul Rebels Brass Band (BB) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Shannon Powell (MJ) 8p, Round Midnight Brass Band Jam feat. Kinfolk Brass Band (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Betsy McGovern (FE) 5p, Rites of Passage (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Dave Jordan and the Neighhorhood Improvement Association (OR) 11p Maple Leaf: Johnny V’s Saturday Night Special (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Old Point Bar: Mission 3 (BL) 9:30p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band ft. Lionel Ferbos (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: New Orleans Little Jazz Men feat.

Joe Lastie (JV) 8p Rivershack: Soul Express (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Eric Lindell (RR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Wess Anderson Sextet (MJ) 8p Tipitina’s: OK Go, Those Darlins, Samuel (RR) 10p

SUNDAY NOV 7

Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Ready Teddy & his All-stars (BL) 10:30p

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Blue Nile: Sunday Night Brass featuring Mainline (BB) 10p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Mas Mamones (JV) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a, DJ Shadow (DN) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Brass Band Sunday feat.

Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Battle of the Bands (RR BL) 5p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (MJ) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Schatzy & Associates (BL) 8p Maple Leaf: Mean Willie Green (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p Palm Court: Sunday Night Swingsters feat. Lucien Barbarin and Wendell Brunious (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: 726 Jazz Band (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Neal Caine Quintet (MJ) 8p Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p

MONDAY NOV 8

Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata (BL) 8p, Johnny J. and Benny Maygarden (BL) 10:30p Chickie Wah Wah: New Orleans Piano Night (PK) 8p Columns: David Doucet (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Willie Locket & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Deerhunter, Deakin, Casino vs.

Japan (RR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bob French & the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat.

Maynard Chatters (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (MJ) 8p

TUESDAY NOV 9

12 Bar: comedy night (CO) 9p Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Open Ears Music Series feat. Simon Lott (VR) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (OR) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf: Perpetual Groove, the Revivalists (RR BL) 9:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-stars feat.

Shannon Powell (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: James Andrews (MJ) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Thelonious Monk Institute Ensemble (MJ) 8p

WEDNESDAY NOV 10

12 Bar: Lynn Drury Band (BL) 7p, Brass-a-Holics (JV) 9p Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, 19th St. Red (BL) 10:30p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: New Orleans Songwriters Festival/ Bluebird Café Open Mic hosted by the Bluebird’s Barbara Cloyd (SS) 7p; Gravity A with special guests (upstairs) (FK) 10p

Chickie Wah Wah: the Iguanas (LT) 8:30p d.b.a.: the Tin Men (MJ) 7p, John Gros & the Roadmasters (FK) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam with the music of Wynton Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Mike Ryan (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Los Po-boy-citos (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Topsy Chapman and Lars Edegran (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Joe Lastie & Friends (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Jerry Embree (SI) 8:30p Sandbar: Ted Ludwig Trio (JV) 7:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis & Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: a benefit for the New Orleans area food banks feat. Kirk Joseph’s Backyard Groove and the Jesse Hiatt Band (FK) 10p

THURSDAY NOV 11

12 Bar: the Pinettes (BB) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 8p, Margie Perez (BL) 10:30p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: The “Craft of Songwriting” Workshop (SS) 10a – 2p, DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy and Michael Skinkus (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Jon Cleary (PK) 7p, Will Bernard Trio feat.

Brian Coogan and Simon Lott (FK) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Dave James and Tim Robertson (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Thursday Night House Party feat. Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, call club for late show Ogden Museum: Ogden After Hours feat. A Ponderosa Stomp Collaboration (RR) 6p Palm Court: Crescent City Joymakers feat. Tim Laughlin and Connie Jones (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Brass Band Thursday feat. Tornado Brass Band (JV) 8p Rivershack: Don Williams & Colin Lake (RR BL) 7p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Lil Nathan & the Zydeco Big Tymers (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Ted Ludwig Trio (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: Boombox,Archenemies, Ryan Pearce (OR) 9p

FRIDAY NOV 12

12 Bar: Grunge Jazz Trio (JV) 7p, NOLA County (JV) 10p, Funkafried (JV) 11:30p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Holladay (BL) 8p, Mike Hood & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: New Orleans Singer-Songwriter Night featuring Amanda Shaw, Alex McMurray, Jimmy Robinson, Paul Sanchez, Drew Delaune, Jim McCormick, Mark Stephen Jones, Mark Adam Miller, Shane Theriot 9p, Indie Rock Fest featuring Sun Hotel, Vox and the Hound, Smiley With A Knife (upstairs) (SS) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Happy Hour feat. Amy Trail (RR) 5p, Paul Sanchez (RR) 8p d.b.a.: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 6p, Kenny Brown (MJ) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Josh Paxton (MJ) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Midnight Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (SH JV) 12a N O VEMBER 2 010

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Kerry Irish Pub: Steve Keith (BL) 5p, Foot & Friends (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: the Elements (RG) 11p Maple Leaf: Good Enough for Good Times (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Old Point Bar: Coot (BL) 9:30p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band ft. Clive Wilson (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters (JV) 8p Rivershack: Austin Sicard (RR BL) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Leon Chavis, Sonny Landreth (ZY) 8p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: the Dresden Dolls, Jason Webley, Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? (RR) 10p

SATURDAY NOV 13

Apple Barrel: Maxwell (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: The “Business of Songwriting” Workshop 11a-2p, Writer’s Roundtable featuring Ralph Murphy, John Rankin & Bud Tower 3p – 5p, Lynn Drury Band 10p, Chuck Perkins and Voices of the Big Easy 12:30a, Writer’s Roundtable with Beth Patterson, Ruby Rendreg & Kristin Diable (SS) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: call club 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 Howlin’ Wolf: Daedelus, the Gaslamp Killer, Samiyam, Free the Robots (VR) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Bill Summers and Friends (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam feat. Kinfolk Brass Band (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Buddy Francioni and Home Grown (BL) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: call club Maple Leaf: the Radiators (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p One Eyed Jacks: NOIR 4 feat. Empress Hotel, Big History and King Rey (RR) 9p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lionel Ferbos (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: 726 Jazz Band (JV) 8p Rivershack: Dash Rip Rock (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Honey Island Swamp Band (RR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Michael Wolff, Mike Clark and James Singleton (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: Joanna Newsom (OR) 9p

SUNDAY NOV 14

Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Ready Teddy & his All-stars (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Sunday Night Brass featuring Mainline (BB) 10p d.b.a.: the Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Kristin Diable (JV) 10p Domino Sound Record Shack: Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? (RR) 7p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a Howlin’ Wolf: Brass Band Sunday feat. Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (MJ) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: the Mockingbirds feat. Heidi Campbell and Mike Rihner (BL) 8p Maple Leaf: Mean Willie Green (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lucien Barbarin (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Tommy Sancton’s New Orleans Jazz Band (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: John Hebert and Terrence McManus Duo (MJ) 8 & 10p

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Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p

MONDAY NOV 15

Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata (BL) 8p, Adam Crochet and I Tell You What (BL) 10:30p Chickie Wah Wah: New Orleans Piano Night (PK) 8p 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 Band (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Old Point Bar: Brent Walsh Jazz Trio (JV) 5p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat.

Maynard Chatters (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (MJ) 8 & 10p

TUESDAY NOV 16

12 Bar: comedy night (CO) 9p Apple Barrel: Luke Winslow-King (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Open Ears Music Series feat. Andrew McGowan Quintet (VR) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (OR) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Social Distortion, Lucero, Frank Turner (RR) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (CW) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-stars feat.

Shannon Powell (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sweet Home New Orleans Presents (RB) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Patrice Fisher and the Garifuna Connection (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: Black Angels, Black Mountain (RR) 10p

WEDNESDAY NOV 17

12 Bar: M@ Peoples (JV) 8:30p, DJ Abilities (VR) 9:30p, DJ Pigeon John (JV) 10:30p Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Shotgun House (BL) 10:30p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: United Postal Project 8p, Nelsort (MJ) 10p, Gravity A with special guests (upstairs) (FK) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: the Iguanas (LT) 8:30p d.b.a.: the Tin Men (JV) 7p, John Gros & the Roadmasters (FK) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Giant Cloud, the Rocketboys (RR BL) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam with the music of Wayne Shorter (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Los Po-boy-citos (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Charlie Louvin (RR) 9p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Band feat.

Mark Braud (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Swing-a-Roux (SI) 8:30p Sandbar: Jacqui Naylor (JV) 7:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis & Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC

THURSDAY NOV 18

12 Bar: the Pinettes (BB) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 8p, the Louisiana Hellbenders (BL) 10:30p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p, Spyboy featuring Dan Caro (upstairs) (FK) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Boutte (JV) 8p d.b.a.: Jon Cleary (PK) 7p, Egg Yolk Jubilee (RR) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Steve Keith and Paul Tobin (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Thursday Night House Party feat. Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Captain Leo (BL) 7p Ogden Museum: Ogden After Hours feat. John Mooney (OR) 6p Palm Court: Crescent City Joymakers feat. Duke Heitger and Tim Laughlin (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Brass Band Thursday feat. Paulin Brothers Brass Band (BB) 8p Rivershack: Mockingbirds (RR BL) 7p

PLAN A: Joanna Newsom Hearing Joanna Newsom the first time in 2004 was like tasting the nectar of the wildest mountain flower. Her elfin voice woven into Bach-tight indie rock songs rendered on harp and harpsichord made sense in the most peculiar way. Some hated it immediately, others found their special purpose in it, but no one who took it in was indifferent to its flavor.

Newsom’s music begs descriptions that mimic her singsong density. She is hermetic, hermeneutic and herself. Hermetic in that her careful strategies are like that of a cloistered alchemist,

Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat. Kerry Brown (JV) 8p Rivershack: Christian Serpas & Ghost Town (CW) 9p Rock ’n’ Bowl: the Wiseguys (PP) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: Doomtree (OR) 10p

SATURDAY NOV 20

12 Bar: Randy Jackson and Black Magnolia (RR BL) 9p Apple Barrel: Maxwell (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers (MJ) 11p, Los Po-boy-citos (upstairs) (LT) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Michelle Shocked (RR) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Good Enough for Good Times (JV) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: Iron and Wine, Nomo (OR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Death on Two Wheels feat.

New Grass Country Club and the Lobbyist (VR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Shannon Powell (JV) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule feat. Paul Tobin (BL) 5p, Danny Burns and the Defectors (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Lynn Drury Band (BL) 11p Louisiana Music Factory: Tarik Hassan (JV) 3p Maple Leaf: 101 Runners (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Old Point Bar: Blues Frenzy (BL) 9:30p One Eyed Jacks: the Accidental Circus (RR) 9p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lionel Ferbos (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Band feat.

Mark Braud (JV) 8p Rivershack: Mo-Jelly (RR BL) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Deacon John & the Ivories (RB) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Stefon Harris and Blackout (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: Bo Burnham and New Orleans Friends Tour (OR) 9p

SUNDAY NOV 21 Rock ’n’ Bowl: Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Jacqui Naylor (MJ) 8 & 10p

FRIDAY NOV 19

12 Bar: Grunge Jazz Trio (JV) 7p, Soul Select (JV) 10p Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Holladay (BL) 8p, Mike Hood & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: call club Chickie Wah Wah: Happy Hour feat. Matt Lemmler (VR) 5:30p, Ven Pa’ Ca (LT) 9p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Carlo Nuccio’s 50th Birthday Bash feat. Royal Fingerbowl, John Mooney and Benny Grunch & the Bunch (JV) 10p Davenport Lounge (Ritz-Carlton): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf: Hot 8 Brass Band 15th Anniversary (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Tom Worrell (MJ) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (SH JV) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Damien Louviere (BL) 5p, Irish Bayou Band (FE) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Juice (FK) 11p Maple Leaf: Gravy (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Colin Lake (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Clive Wilson and Gerald Adams (JV) 7p

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applying folk magic through curious arrays of instruments in order to manifest gold.

Hermeneutic because it makes you think about how you think about it. It is pretty music, you might muse, but it sucks you into an internal debate about prettiness with each little crone rasp buried in her butterfly twitter. Her 2006 album Ys is for me a brilliant case study in counter-intuitive beauty; the second you get your arms around a song, it becomes a snake and wriggles off to the floor.

Her new triple-album Have One on Me is her tightest affair yet. It’s like microphones were carefully set up around her sparkling synapses and her biorhythms channeled to the strings of her harp.

Joanna Newsom plays at 9 p.m. Saturday, November 13 at Tipitina’s. Tickets $22.50 in advance, $25 at the door.

—Alex V. Cook

Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Johnny J. and Benny Maygarden (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Sunday Night Brass featuring Mainline (BB) 10p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Marc Stone Band (BL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett & All Purpose Blues Band (BL) 8p House of Blues: Sunday Gospel Brunch (GS) 10a, Misfits, Juicehead (RR) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (The Den): Brass Band Sunday feat.

Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Lynn Drury Band (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Mean Willie Green (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 2p, Cindy Chen (RR RB PK) 7p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lucien Barbarin (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Essential New Orleans Jazz Band feat. Carl LeBlanc (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: James Singleton feat. Sieberth, Dillon and Green (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p

MONDAY NOV 22

Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata (BL) 8p, Mike Sklar & the Hip Shakers (BL) 10:30p Chickie Wah Wah: New Orleans Piano Night (PK) 8p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 9p N O VEMBER 2 010

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC 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 Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, Brint Anderson (BL) 7p Old Point Bar: Brent Walsh Jazz Trio (JV) 5p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat.

Maynard Chatters (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (MJ) 8 & 10p

TUESDAY NOV 23

12 Bar: comedy night (CO) 9p Apple Barrel: Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Kenny Swartz & the Palace of Sin (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Open Ears Music Series feat. Dave Cappello and Jeff Albert (VR) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (OR) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Steve Keith (BL) 9p Mahalia Jackson Theatre: Lyle Lovett & his Large Band (SS) 8p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, BrintAnderson (BL) 7p One Eyed Jacks: the Posies, Aqueduct (RR) 9p Preservation Hall: Glen David Andrews feat. Ingrid Lucia (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sweet Home New Orleans Presents (RB) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Chris Adkins Quartet (MJ) 8 & 10p

WEDNESDAY NOV 24

12 Bar: Lynn Drury Band (BL) 7p, Brah (JV) 9p Apple Barrel: Wendy Darling (BL) 8p, Ivoire Spectacle (BL) 10p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: United Postal Project 8p, Khris Royal and Dark Matter (JV) 10p, Gravity A with special guests (upstairs) (FK) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Leslie Smith & the Cosmos (BL) 8p d.b.a.: the Tin Men (JV) 7p, John Gros & the Roadmasters (FK) 10p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p House of Blues: a Day to Remember, Underoath, the Word Alive, Close Your Eyes (RR) 5:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Sasha Masakowski (MJ) 5p, Irvin Mayfield’s NOJO Jam feat. The music of Danny Barker (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Davis & his Big Band CD-release (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Ched Reeves (RR) 2p, Joe Bennett (RR) 7p One Eyed Jacks: MyNameIsJohnMichael (RR) 9p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Joe Lastie & Friends (JV) 8p Rivershack: Blackened Blues Band (10p) Rock ’n’ Bowl: Top Cats (PP) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis & Uptown Jazz Orchestra (MJ) 8 & 10p

THURSDAY NOV 25

Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 8p, Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: DJ T-Roy (RG) 10p d.b.a.: call club Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Roman Skakun (MJ) 5p, Shamarr Allen (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (BL) 7p Le Bon Temps Roule: Thursday Night House Party feat. Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich, George Porter, Jr. and guests (FK) 10p

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Margaritaville: Frank Fairbanks (AU RR) 2p, Colin Lake (BL) 7p Old Point Bar: Blues Frenzy (BL) 6:30p Preservation Hall: Brass Band Thursday feat. New Birth Brass Band (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Geno Delafose (ZY) 8:30p

FRIDAY NOV 26

Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Holladay (BL) 8p, Mike Hood & the Hip Shakers (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: Earphunk (FK) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: Happy Hour feat.Wilson-Moore (RR) 5:30p, Paul Sanchez (RR) 8p, Pony Space (RR) 10p d.b.a.: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 6p, Otra (LT) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Professor Piano Series feat. Thomas Gerdiken (PK) 5p, Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (MJ) 8p, Midnight Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Linnzi Zaorski (SH JV) 12a COMPLETE LISTINGS ON THE GO at offbeat.com/mobile.

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Kerry Irish Pub: Mike Ryan (BL) 5p, Rites of Passage (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Truman Holland and the Back Porch Review (BL) 11p Maple Leaf: Bonerama (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Eddie Parino (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 7p Old Point Bar: Lynn Drury Band (BL) 9:30p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band ft. Clive Wilson (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: a Tribute to Sidney Bechet feat.

Aurora Nealand (JV) 8p Rivershack: call club Rock ’n’ Bowl: Bucktown All-stars (PP) 9:30p Snug Harbor: call club Tipitina’s: the Radiators, the Boondoggles (RR) 10p

SATURDAY NOV 27

Apple Barrel: Maxwell (BL) 4p, Sneaky Pete (BL) 8p, Andre Bouvier & the Royal Bohemians (BL) 11p Bistreaux: Paul Longstreth (PK) 7p Blue Nile: Soul Rebels Brass Band (BB) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Shannon McNally & Hot Sauce (RR) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Papa Grows Funk (FK) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark Penton (BL) 4p, Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Glen David Andrews (MJ) 8p, Midnight Brass Band Jam (BB) 12a Kerry Irish Pub: Hurricane Refugees (BL) 5p, Chip Wilson and Jesse Moore (BL) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Johnny Angel & the Swingin’ Demons (SI) 11p Maple Leaf: George Porter, Jr. & his Runnin’ Pardners (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Joe Bennett (RR) 2p, Irving Bannister’s All-stars (RB) 5p Palm Court: Palm Court Jazz Band feat. Lionel Ferbos (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Joe Lastie & Friends (JV) 8p Rivershack: Christian Serpas & Ghost Town (CW) 10p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Tab Benoit (BL) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Donald Harrison (MJ) 8 & 10p Tipitina’s: 101 Days till Mardi Gras with the 101 Runners feat. Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & the Golden Eagles, War Chief Juan Pardo & the Golden Commanches and more (FK) 10p

SUNDAY NOV 28

Apple Barrel: John Williams and Billy Outlaw (BL) 4p, Kenny Claiborne (BL) 8p, Blue Max (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Sunday Night Brass featuring Mainline (BB) 10p Columns: Chip Wilson (BL) 11a, musical showcase feat. Andy Rogers (VR) 8p

d.b.a.: Palmetto Bug Stompers (JV) 6p, Ingrid Lucia (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) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Tyler’s Revisited feat. Germaine Bazzle and Paul Longstreth (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Traditional Irish Session (FE) 5p, Dave Stover Project (BL) 8p 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 Palm Court: Sunday Night Swingsters feat. Lucien Barbarin (JV) 7p Preservation Hall: Tommy Sancton’s New Orleans Jazz Band (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Louisiana Legends (OL) 4p Snug Harbor: Rick Trolsen and Neslort CD-release (MJ) 8 & 10p Three Muses: Linnzi Zaorski (SI) 7p Tipitina’s: Cajun Fais Do Do feat. Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p

MONDAY NOV 29

Apple Barrel: Sam Cammarata (BL) 8p, Butch Trivette (BL) 10:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Steve Conn (BL FK) 8p 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 (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (BL) 9p Maple Leaf: Papa Grows Funk (FK) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, BrintAnderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Band feat.

Maynard Chatters (JV) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (MJ) 8 & 10p

TUESDAY NOV 30

12 Bar: comedy night (CO) 9p Apple Barrel: Luke Winslow-King (BL) 8p, Mike Darby & the House of Cards (BL) 10:30p Blue Nile: Open Ears Music Series feat. WATIV Mash Up (VR) 10p Chickie Wah Wah: John Mooney (OR) 8p d.b.a.: New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Big Al Carson & the Blues Masters (BL) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse (Royal Sonesta): Jason Marsalis (MJ) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Honky Tonk Open Mic feat. Jason Bishop (CW) 9p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p Margaritaville: Butch Fields (RR) 2p, BrintAnderson (BL) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-stars (JV) 8p Rock ’n’ Bowl: Sweet Home New Orleans Presents (RB) 8:30p Snug Harbor: call club

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

Weekly listings are available with a free subscription to OffBeat’s Weekly Beat email newsletter.

CONCERTS NOVEMBER 3-7 Rain: Head to the Mahalia JacksonTheatre and experience this tribute to the Beatles which is about as close as you can get to the real thing nowadays. RainTribute.com.

NOVEMBER 19 Concerts in the Courtyard: Paul Sanchez closes the last of this monthly concert series at the Historic New Orleans Collection. (504) 523-4662, Hnoc.org.

NOVEMBER 23 Lyle Lovett & his Large Band:The legendary songwriter plays the Mahalia Jackson Theatre at 8p. LyleLovett.com.

FESTIVALS OCTOBER 29-31 Voodoo Experience: The annual rock music festival features performances by Ozzy Ozbourne, Muse, Weezer, Interpol, Paul Oakenfold, Metric and many more. City Park. TheVoodooExperience.com.

OCTOBER 31 Voodoofest: Head to Voodoo Authentica at 612 Rue Dumaine for the 12th annual “Free Voodoofest.” 1-7p. VoodooFest.com.

OCTOBER 31 Costume Contest: Head to the famous Pat O’Brien’s for a fun Halloween costume contest before the Saints/Steelers game. 3p.

NOVEMBER 3-7 LadyFest New Orleans: This fourth annual event features musical performances and spoken word events. For more information and a schedule, visit Facebook.com/ladyfest.neworleans.

NOVEMBER 6 Mirliton Festival: Stroll out to Markey Park in the Bywater for a fun festival celebrating this unique vegetable. There will be food and drink along with music by local musicians. 12-7p.

BywaterNeighbors.com.

NOVEMBER 6-7 Louisiana Swamp Festival: Enjoy live music, handson exhibits, great food and more at this annual festival. (504) 581-4629, AudubonInstitute.org.

NOVEMBER 14 New Orleans Po-boy Festival: Head to the Riverbend and celebrate the almighty po-boy with music, an auction and of course—plenty of po-boys. (504) 2283349, PoboyFest.com.

SPECIAL EVENTS THROUGH NOVEMBER 3 Harvest the Music: Head out to Lafayette Square every Thursday for a concert series to benefit the Second Harvest Food Bank. 5p. HarvestTheMusic.org.

NOVEMBER 4-25 Ogden After Hours: Visit the Ogden Museum every Thursday evening for live entertainment by a variety of local musicians. 6p. OgdenMuseum.org.

NOVEMBER 18 French Market Annual Tree Lighting: Head to Washington Artillery Park at 6p for the annual lighting of the French Market Christmas Tree.

FrenchMarket.org.

NOVEMBER 20 Bywater Art Market: Head to this art market for paintings, pottery, glass, furniture and more. 9a-4p.

BywaterArtMarket.com.

NOVEMBER 20 Big Easy Rollergirls: Crescent Wenches, the local bad girl skate team takes on the Southern Misfits of Hattiesburg at the Human Performance Center at UNO. 5p. BigEasyRollergirls.com.

NOVEMBER 26 Fridays at the French Market:This monthly event features free live entertainment, drinking, dancing, local cuisine and fun.This month is a special tribute to Tuba Fats with over 20 tuba players. 5-8p. FrenchMarket.org.

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BACKTALK

Stephen Rehage

talks back

N

You grew up in New Orleans, right?

Where did you live?

On St. Claude Avenue, right where you go over the railroad tracks, It was pretty rough. I went to Annunciation and got an ass whipping walking home.

How did you get started in promoting?

I played football at LSU and I went up to New York to play for the New York Giants. I always like to say I “got traded” to the Canadian League and played for the Ottawa Rough Riders. At the time I was working on my MBA at Tulane. I would go to school down here during the week then fly to New York where I was taking an entertainment marketing class that started at 7 o’clock at night on Thursday night. Then I would take the morning flight to Ottawa. One night, the marketing director for Essence magazine came in and gave a lecture www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

ew Orleans has such a rich musical history that the city’s festival culture often reads like the climactic moment in Casablanca when Claude Rains says, “Round up the usual suspects!” Producer Stephen Rehage has rewritten that scene for the Voodoo Experience, now in its 12th renewal. Rehage sees New Orleans music in a millennial context in which the right mainstream music acts bring appropriate comparison with and contrast to local performers. Rehage insists he is not in competition with Jazz Fest, which he calls “probably the best music festival in the world.”

As producer of the Voodoo Experience and the Essence Festival, Rehage admits, “We really have our hands full with our own projects.”

Rehage has taken cues from such innovative gatherings as Bonnaroo and the Burning Man festival to contextualize New Orleans music globally and in the conceptual space of social networking. This year’s Experience will feature the return of the electronic music tent, a new design replacing the Bingo! Parlour’s Big Top and repositioning it as part of a series of small performance spaces designed to approximate the Frenchmen Street scene.

Rehage, a bright, soft-spoken man who lives right across from the festival site, sat down to talk just as his production crew began construction of this year’s Voodoo Experience in City Park. on how Essence was using the magazine to create properties with the help of sponsors and advertisers. They created the Essence Awards and music festivals and so forth. I thought, “That’s what I want to do.”

Did you go to Jazz Fest when you were a kid?

I grew up with Jazz Fest, but my earliest memories were the excitement of going to concerts. The first concert I went to was the Police with the Specials opening up for them at the Warehouse. I listened to radio at night and I remember David Bowie talking about how the Specials were his favorite band at the moment.

When I first heard about the Voodoo festival in ‘99 it seemed like an interesting idea but I didn’t really know what to expect. Then going to the first

By John Swenson

few, it seemed like it was searching for an identity.

I don’t know that it was searching for an identity. The identity was there, it was more putting all the parts together. Not having played in that space before from the production side created problems that had to be overcome. Logistically, we had to put an entire team together to create a music space.

The concept was always that New Orleans has been a place that historically allowed a lot of different people certain freedoms. Inside the bowl here, we’re a lot more liberal than the rest of the country, I think, but certainly the rest of the South. When you grow up with that kind of “anything goes” attitude and music and culture it seemed like a good fit here. You can turn on a radio station here and hear the connection between the drum beat of Congo square and modern music. You can hear the connection N O VEMBER 2 010

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I keep hoping I can get Bowie and Waits to play.

Every year those are my first two offers. between George Porter’s bass lick and Flea’s bass lick. So I think a lot of modern music has originated here. I was trying to make that connection. How do you put Moby on in front of Dr. John? To me it makes perfect sense.

How far out do you start planning Voodoo?

We plan pretty far out from the date. We already are looking at who’s touring next year.

It’s become a little bit different mindset now that we’re doing Essence because they’re two massive events. In years back, I would have been meeting with agents and planning Voodoo for next year, but we’re coming up to the event and everyone is doing their job and I’m working 23 hours a day booking Essence, on the phone with Prince and Sade and figuring out what’s the bill going to look like in July. They’re spread out enough that they’re in different work cycles.

We’re thinking about what 2011 Essence is going to look like, but meanwhile we’re in the production phase of Voodoo 2010.

I’ve covered a lot of big events and some of the best large-scale rock performances I’ve ever seen were at Voodoo. Iggy, for example, delivered a memorable performance.

On a personal level, that was a strong one for me. I grew up listening to Iggy. The gang I hung out with in high school, we’re all still very close friends, I got to send them an email: “We’ve just confirmed Iggy. Don’t tell anybody. He’s with the Stooges.” We were all hanging out on the side of the stage and hanging out with Iggy Pop. You become a fan, a kid again. You step out of that moment and you’re no longer a producer of the event. You return to being the kid who literally had that record next to my bed. “Play ‘Dog Food’!”

I keep hoping I can get Bowie and Waits to play. Every year those are my first two offers.

Ben (Jaffe) over at Preservation Hall made a great connection with Tom but Waits doesn’t like to play big outdoor events where he can’t control the environment. We’ve had a hard time trying to convince him to come out and play in front of 50, 60,000 people.

Voodoo taking place at Audubon Park right after the flood—I don’t think you can underestimate how important that was for the city. I know you’ve talked

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about this before, but I have to ask you what that moment was like for you.

A lot of it was in the mindset of trying to do it in eight days. It was kind of a two-part process.

We still have the same team together since before Katrina and we’re all a lot closer for that. We’ve all been together from seven to 12 years. Katrina was like a whole parallel life span. We moved everything to Houston, then we had a meeting in New York and I said I want to do it on the same date on the same site just to prove to everybody that we’re not goin’ nowhere. Not as a festival. Our production manager started crying. Everybody wanted to help, which was pretty incredible. I’d pick up the phone and it was a call from Austin. “We’ve talked to the mayor of Austin. We’ll give you our site, we’ll pay for production, the proceeds will be donated to the people of New Orleans, just move your entire lineup here.” I got a similar phone call from Memphis and a similar phone call from Miami. VH-1 wanted to do it. We were offered all kinds of support from MTV and other television outlets. Finally, the decision was made to move everything to Memphis and as we were making preparations, I kept thinking, “This doesn’t feel right.” So I called the mayor, I called Mitch Landrieu, I called Ron Forman and I told everyone what I wanted to do. I was told, “If you’re dumb enough to do it, go for it.”

It was the first time since the storm that a lot of people got a chance to stop dealing with the sheet rock and the insurance, sit down and have a beer with friends and have a day of normalcy. It was only 59 days after the levees broke, so there wasn’t a normal day between that point and when we held it. People started rolling in at nine in the morning.

I had fallen asleep on the grass with my dog and I woke up about 9:15 and saw these people storming in. I got a funny call from our production manager who said, “I think we can let security go.

Our audience has machine guns.” The National Guard was coming in for the show.

It seems like 2005 was a turning point.

Every year since the festival has grown and evolved its identity.

I had the idea in my mind. It was planned all along and then we got hit with Katrina, so I backed off and ran a music festival in a city that didn’t exist. After 2005, we had to decide how we would proceed in the future.

After growing up learning to appreciate the Indians and the unique culture of New Orleans, we were not sure how much of it was going

to return. The Neville Brothers were living in Austin for god’s sake! From a local standpoint, people that knew Voodoo in 1999 tended to think of it as a big rock festival and it’s so much more than that. The national audience got it: “Wow, you’ve got Rage Against the Machine and Preservation Hall and they’re playing against each other?” They got the contradiction. Locally, people said, “I’m going to see Rage Against the Machine, I can see Preservation Hall Jazz Band any time I want.” So we were trying to come up with a different way of communicating with the local audience. We were trying to incorporate the new energy of the city, the new talent, and all the things that were happening in Bywater.

So we came up with the idea of The Ritual and breaking the festival down into smaller components to speak to the audience. The Ritual is the big rock event where you see Rage Against the Machine. But then there are the subtexts of the event. The Flambeaux: How do we present New Orleans music? You may come here to see Rage Against the Machine but you’re going to walk by Preservation Hall. How do we present New Orleans music to a new generation, regardless of what happens to the city? That’s where the Carnival came in, with Bingo! and all these new musicians who came to New Orleans from around the country. Now it’s five years later and we’re coming back and it feels good to be in New Orleans again. But at the time we were having that conversation, we didn’t know that. So it was a matter of asking the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play with the Meters, asking the musicians to help us tell the story.

In recent years Trombone Shorty’s shows at Voodoo have been particularly great. He started bringing hip-hop artists into his big stage presentations and formulating an approach that was directed not at the traditional New Orleans audiences he’d played to before, but an audience of his own age group.

I’ve had a lot of conversations with Troy about that. Now he closes the festival. He closes what was the Neville Brothers slot. We decided he would play in one spot so people can look forward to that as something unique.

Every year he is closing, representing the city of New Orleans at the WWOZ Stage. No matter who is booked on other stages, Troy is the one constant. And I think that’s really paid off.

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