Off Beat Magazine September 2019

Palm&Pine Deja Vieux Food-Truck Park Caribbean Food 12 New RestaurantS

Turning the tables and creating a new New Orleans groove

NEW ORLEANS MUSIC, FOOD, CULTURE—SEPTEMBER 2019

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

Art Neville Charlie Wooton John BouttÉ Ken Burns

CONTENTS TA B L E

p. 16

O F

p. 15

6 Letters

14 The First Graduate

35 Restaurant Review

16 Not Fancy, Just Soulful

36 OffBeat Eats

Ailee Pardi likes the genre and the people.

7 Mojo Mouth

A message from the publisher.

8 Fresh

My Music with Carmela Rappazzo; Aunt Vicki’s ethereal folk-pop; Five Questions with Tree Adams; Siberia becomes Carnaval Lounge; Astral Project’s Tony Dagradi reveals his art work and more.

14 Obituary: Art Neville 15 Art Neville Memorial 16 Kind of Blues Basso

Charlie Wooton: Music evolves; if not it’s just gonna get stale.

p. 30

The Deja Vieux food-truck park is a unique dining experience.

24 Love Affair

Why Caribbean food works in New Orleans.

26 Eat New

A dozen recommendations for new restaurant dining choices.

30 Mixing, Mastering and Mentoring

Raj Smoove, the greatest DJ in the world, takes on the New Orleans music industry.

Michael Dominici reviews Palm&Pine.

38 Reviews

John Boutté, New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Tony Dagradi, Extended, Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band, Big 6 Brass Band, U.S. Nero and more.

44 Listings 53 Backtalk with Ken Burns O n l i n e E x c lu s i v e s

Art Neville: 2002 Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music Award.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

“I never took any piano lessons. Everywhere I’d get around a piano, I wanted to play it.

My aunt had a piano in the house down the street. They would always tell me, ‘You’re playing that barrelhouse music!’ I didn’t know what they meant but at that time, in the Art Neville: Best of the Beat barrooms, the beer came in barrels and they called the bars barrelhouses.”

Lifetime Achievement Award (To read more this issue can be purchased at

By Bunny Matthews http://www.offbeat.com/shop/back-issues/2003/offbeat-magazine-february-2003/)

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SEPTEMBER 2019

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letters “I am sure Louis Armstrong would love this bridging of cultures and generations through his music.”

—Randall Nash, Cohasset, Massachusetts

Louisiana Music, Food & Culture

SEPTEMBER 2019 Volume 32, Number 10 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

Doreen Ketchens Very talented! I had the opportunity to have her as a neighbor in the 6th Ward. Her mom had a “Sweet Shop” on St. Phillip St. I’m thrilled that she is being recognized for her awesome talent.

—Cabrinia Demello, Caddo, Louisiana

wanted to provide a quick update on the Jan V. Ramsey, janramsey@offbeat.com landscape now that the Louisiana House has Managing Editor amended the industrial hemp bill.

Joseph L. Irrera, josephirrera@offbeat.com This is a really exciting time for Louisiana Consulting Editor and a big “leveling of the playing field” John Swenson moment. Essentially, Kentucky has taken the Layout and design Eric Gernhauser opportunity to monetize this industry in a major capacity over the past several years, Listings Editor Katie Walenter, listings@offbeat.com I have so many beautiful pictures of and we’ve been missing out. Along with the Contributors Doreen and her band. Always thought she legalization, we’ve seen some really exciting Emily Carmichael, Michael Dominici, has the best seat in the French Quarter. So brands launch in town such as New Orleans Bill Forman, Robert Fontenot, Herman Fuselier, many awesome memories of Doreen and her Oil Co. (www.no-oc.com), that are focused Jeff Hannusch, Anna Marvuglio, Amanda band/family playing on Royal Street in front on quality rather than turning a quick buck.

“Bonita” Mester, Brett Milano, Paul Sanchez, John Swenson, Christopher Weddle, of that fabulous Rouses. Listening to Doreen, So, plenty of new brands are entering the Dan Willging, John Wirt, Geraldine Wyckoff with a Rouses chicken salad sandwich, a bag marketplace. Overall, we should welcome the Cover PHOTO of Zapp’s Creole onion chips and a Barq’s talent migration and investment that comes Laiken Joy root beer is a long, long tradition. I love you, along with these sea changes.

Web Editor Ms. Doreen. I do love to watch her perform.

In the service industry, CBD oil gives chefs Amanda “Bonita” Mester, amanda@offbeat.com Thanks OffBeat mag, finally. and bartenders another ingredient option— Videographer/Web Specialist —Connie Akard, Antlers, Oklahoma creativity and innovation is the lifeblood of Noé Cugny, noecugny@offbeat.com the city.

Delaney George Art Neville —John Hewitt, New Orleans, Louisiana Copy Editor Man, the second lines, brass bands, have Michael Patrick Welch, michael@offbeat.com just barely got done with Jazz Funerals for Dr. Advertising Sales/ Promotion and Event coordinator John, Dave Bartholomew, and some other Camille A. Ramsey, camille@offbeat.com wonderful NOLA artists recently lost, and Advertising Design now this. Feels like God is stripping me of PressWorks, 504-944-4300 one major influence after another. Man, this Interns hurts.

Michael Frank, Gabriella Killett, —TJ Wheeler, Hampton Falls, New Hampshire Anna Marvuglio, Julia Powell Erica Falls Erica Falls this a.m. [OnBeat Sessions: Erica Falls, on OffBeat’s YouTube Channel]. WOW, she is a vocalist supreme—I have reviewed for many years and that is a voice I would gladly go to New Orleans to hear—or for that matter anywhere. Thank you to the OffBeat staff.

—Bob Gottlieb, Tucson, Arizona Weed World Candies The following letter is in response to Lucy Foreman’s news post “Weed World Candies move from Promo Van to Flagship Store,” announcing the opening of a new store in the French Quarter.—ED. I enjoyed this article on WW Candies and

Distribution

Patti Carrigan, Doug Jackson

Kermit Ruffins and Haruka Kikuchi with her son Shouta

Satchmo Summerfest As a long-time OffBeat reader and a devoted New Orleans music fan, I wanted to share this photo with you. To me, this moment was the highlight of the festival [Satchmo SummerFest]. I am sure Louis Armstrong would love this bridging of cultures and generations through his music.

What a wonderful world indeed!

—Randall Nash, Cohasset, Massachusetts

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 /offbeatmagazine

Copyright © 2019, OffBeat, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the publisher. OffBeat is a registered trademark of OffBeat, Inc. First class subscriptions to OffBeat in the U.S. are available for $65 per year ($70 Canada, $140 foreign airmail). Back issues are available for $10, except for the Jazz Fest Bible for $15 (for foreign delivery add $5) Submission of photos and articles on Louisiana artists are welcomed, but unfortunately material cannot be returned.

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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SEPTEMBER 2019

O F F B E AT. C O M

mojomouth

A

In Denial

musician friend stopped by the office yesterday to drop off an album for review, and, as usual, we started talking about New Orleans, and all the changes it’s going through.

His Mid-City house has flooded twice in the past year or so, and the stress of repairing his property, as well as the anxiety of it possibly (probably) happening again, is beginning to wear on him.

I think most New Orleanians have that little cloud of anxiety hanging over them because we all know that our weather (and climate change), and the way the city is set up to deal with it, is changing rapidly. There a lot more residents who no longer can say things like “it never floods at my house”—because it does, and it will in the future, as we continue to experience quick, heavy, monsoon-like rains, which do seem to have become the new normal. New Orleans isn’t set up to handle on onslaught of rain with location below sea level and a woefully inadequate drainage system. Plus, the city is sinking, and our wetlands are shrinking in an ever-increasing, alarming rate. It is inevitable that some time mid-century, New Orleans is most probably going to become a promontory ending at the Gulf of Mexico.

But residents of the city don’t seem to be too concerned about it: that, to me, is the typical New Orleans “live for today” mentality. We complain when our houses and cars flood after a disastrous rain—

OF F B E AT.C OM

A Note From Publisher J an Ramsey

not even a hurricane or a storm surge—but your average Joe isn’t protesting in the street demanding that our pumps be replaced (with a willingness to pay for replacements) or that the Federal government create a serious flood protection (à la the Netherlands) along the Gulf Coast.

We’re so in denial.

So what does this have to do with music?

I think that most of the residents of this city are in denial when it comes to protecting and nourishing our musical heritage. Yes, they give lip service to “loving local music,” and they might go to the Jazz Fest or French Quarter Fest once a year, but I will guarantee you that the vast majority of the people who live in the metro area have no idea why or how music is an integral part of their identity as New Orleanians, and how our music connects us to the rest of the world in a deep, complex way. This is sad, but true.

If I had my way, every single school—elementary, middle school, high school, even college—would have to offer and teach at least one course in New Orleans and Louisiana music and its history and culture.

If economic development agencies want to create jobs, think about finding a way to teach music and music history to our kids. Denial would be abolished and replaced by enthusiasm and true appreciation.

And our kids would be much better educated. That’s a fact. O

SEPTEMBER 2019

7

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M Y M USIC

Carmela Rappazzo Doe at the Viper Room in a big straight-ahead jazz band led by Buddy Arnold. I had a trio but sang with other trios and big bands; I was a sideman, which I loved—ahhhh, that was heaven.

I started working movies; that was my fall-back job. I would take a job, make some money and go, ‘now I can make a record.’

My husband Mark Carroll is a musician and we planned on moving to New Orleans the fall of 2005 when Katrina forced a detour to New Mexico and a brief stint as farmers. It was a really odd left turn.

We moved back to New York briefly then it was New Orleans, finally. A casting agent friend who

had given me work had cast you [Paul Sanchez] in a Rob Reiner film and we went to see you perform at The Ogden.

I formed a band with pianist Oscar Rossignoli and bassist Jasen Weaver who recorded an album of my original modern jazz songs, Howling At The Moon, at The Marsalis Center last year.

I don’t think there’s any place I’ve loved living as much as I’ve loved living here. It is under my skin. The beauty, the feeling, the smells of it, the tastes of it, and the people are... I feel normal here; I know that’s an odd thing to say. I’ve never felt normal anywhere the way I feel normal here but there’s

Carmela Rappazzo

nobody here who’s normal. So my mental craziness seems to be comfortable here.

I love the audiences here as well.

When you play an original song that you’ve written, it’s a piece of you and the audiences here want to hear, they want that piece of you, they want to share in that piece of you, know the story of that piece of you... that means so much to me. I’ve never had that kind of acceptance anywhere.”

—Paul Sanchez

Photo courtesy of the artist

“I was born in Albany but got out as soon as I could. I knew New York City was my thing because that’s where I had run always away to; it was a different city than it is now. Back then it was affordable, dirty, dangerous and fun.

I was 19 and wanted to sing.

I sang with an old school jazz orchestra, did the showcase thing.

Played The Bushes and Ruskay’s on the Upper West Side, a little joint in the village, Seventh Avenue South, the Brecker Brothers club.

We moved to Los Angeles in ’91. For a place that had no jazz clubs there were a lot of gigs; I worked a lot. I opened for John

Not Y o u r U s ua l O l d A u n t Erin Campbell and Lee Dyer aren’t big on planning. Last summer, the two Michigan natives, who record and perform together as Aunt Vicki, spent several months out on the road, living in a 1986 camper van, before finally making their way to New Orleans. The fact that they didn’t know a soul

Aunt Vicki

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in the Crescent City wasn’t a problem, so long as there were a few venues to play and some restaurant work to supplement their income.

As luck would have it, Dave Clements, owner of the tin-roofed dive bar Snake ’n’ Jake’s, took the two strangers under his wing.

“Dave’s the closest we have to family in New Orleans,” says Dyer. “He let us park our camper across the street in the backyard of this beat-up old house that he owns. We lived there for a few months and then we got an apartment right down the road.”

Earlier this summer, the band released its self-titled debut album. A beguiling collection of psychedelic folk originals, Aunt Vicki serves as a drum-free showcase for the duo’s atmospheric folk-pop, ethereal vocal harmonies, and layered electric guitars that recall Daniel

Lanois’ more ambient work.

Songs like “This Old Blue World” convincingly capture the sound of classic Simon & Garfunkel, while “The Names of Things” and “Head in the Grass” respectively suggest Elliott Smith and Young Marble Giants.

Onstage, the duo provides further clues with Beatles and Jefferson Airplane covers.

“Ultimately, I feel like the Beatles are my favorite thing in life,” says Campbell. “We both agree on that.”

Aunt Vicki was recorded at the Fountainbleau, the one-time hotel and apartment building on Tulane and S. Carrollton, that’s been carved into storage units and rehearsal studios. “It’s in total disrepair—there’s like piss on the floor and in the stairwell— but you can go there at any time and make as much noise as you want,” says Campbell. “Our whole floor was like rappers and

metal bands.”

In July, the couple got married and headed out on tour just as the city was bracing for Tropical Storm Barry. “We left town and it was 99 degrees, bright and sunny,” says Dyer, “but if you turned around, you could see these threatening black storm clouds. And then a few days later, the flooding started.”

Once the summer heat subsides, Aunt Vicki expect to return to New Orleans. But for the moment, they’re playing it by ear.

“Being able to pick up and leave your life, and just try something new, is both a bad decision and an awesome decision,” says Campbell. “It’s made my life so much more interesting and complex, in both good ways and bad ways. But at the end of the day, it’s opened more doors than it’s closed.”

—Bill Forman

O F F B E AT. C O M

Photo courtesy of the artist

Aunt Vicki’s ethereal folk-pop has an atmosphere of its own.

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NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Five Questions with Tree Adams Tree Adams transitioned from singer-guitarist in a jam band to prolific composer of film and TV scores. Since 2017, he’s scored TV’s NCIS: New Orleans. The Los Angeles-based Adams recently spent a month in New Orleans while he crafted music for the popular crime series’ sixth season.

Adams’ 66 film and TV credits include Showtime’s Californication, TNT’s Legends and, his other current project, the CW’s postapocalypse drama, The 100. NCIS: New Orleans’ new season debuts September 24.

Born in Berkeley, California, Adams grew up mostly in New York City. As his first name, Tree, suggests, his parents were hippies.

The composer’s drummer father, Gary “Chicken” Hirsh, worked with Country Joe and the Fish,

folk-blues star Lightnin’ Hopkins and the blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Adams’ musical family also includes his ragtime pianist mother; a grandmother who taught piano; and grandfather who played violin.

NCIS: New Orleans and The 100 are very different genres of TV series. What sort of music works for The 100?

Epic, orchestral, contemporary soundscape stuff. And the show is super-dramatic. It’s Mad Max meets The Hunger Games in Middle-earth.

And what works for NCIS: New Orleans?

It’s a question of how much spice to put in the gumbo. For the action sequences and police procedurals, I use pulsing intervals.

And then we imbue that with

Siberia becomes Carnaval Lounge

Siberia has gone south to Brazil. The new owners of the St. Claude Avenue bar, restaurant and music venue have renamed it Carnaval Lounge.

“We want it to be a festive, welcoming place for everybody,” co-owner Jennifer Johnson said.

“We think Carnaval Lounge conveys that a bit more than Siberia.”

Carnaval Lounge’s offerings include Brazilian cuisine and beer, South American wine and Brazil’s national cocktail, caipirinha. An eclectic schedule of entertainment is scheduled for the grand opening, Labor Day Weekend, August 30-September 2.

Two married couples—Jennifer and Matt Johnson and Lisa and Joann Guidos—bought Siberia in May. Joann Guidos owns Kajun’s Pub, a longtime favorite neighborhood bar in the same 2200 block of St. Claude. Since the

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purchase, the owners have painted the building’s exterior and interior bright purple and renovated the interior and the bathrooms.

Because Siberia’s restaurant closed before the purchase, Jennifer Johnson said, “We knew we were going to have to launch a new kitchen concept. We’re thrilled with the change to Brazilian food.”

Chef Gustavo Naar, who grew up in Brazil and on the Northshore, inspired the Carnaval Lounge theme, Johnson said.

“The focus is music and the food and drinks of New Orleans and points south.”

As for music, Johnson said, “it won’t be terribly different from what it’s been recently. Over the past few years, it’s become eclectic.

Singer-songwriter nights, piano night and those sorts of things— we want to continue that.”

Johnson also anticipates early evenings at Carnaval Lounge will

Tree Adams

sounds that reflect certain characters. Dwayne Pride [Scott Bakula] has a horn theme. And I like a combination of horns with the clarinet. It’s different from a slinky Hollywood horn section.

We’ve got more grit in New Orleans.

Why did you move from your jam band, the Hatters, to writing music for film and TV? It was a lucky, horizontal move.

The record business was hitting serious bumps in the road. Part of it, too—I was getting burned out from traveling 300 days a year. And I wanted to have kids and a family. I thought if I do the composing thing, maybe I can make a living without being on the road.

You don’t usually spend time on location. Why do you make

an exception for NCIS: New Orleans?

It’s useful to come to New Orleans because the city is almost a character on the show.

It’s important to immerse myself in the culture, the food and the music here.

You formed a New Orleans band, the NOLA Dag Squad, featuring local musicians, including singer-percussionist Omari Neville and trumpeter Mark Braud.

It’s an all-star group. That’s part of what I’m trying to do in New Orleans. Not just to record here, but to perform alongside all these cats. I love sampling the different sides of the music here. This city and its music are a national treasure.

feature music suitable for dining and conversation. “You’re not talking over the musicians and they’re not playing over you,” she said. “And we want to continue the tradition of having really good rock shows—doors at nine, shows at ten kind of situation.”

Much of the Siberia staff, including bar manager Jack Long, stayed on after the sale, Johnson added. “Everybody who came with the place was given an opportunity to stay. We didn’t want to shake the Etch-a-Sketch for no reason. They have institutional knowledge that we don’t have.”

The Johnsons live within walking distance of Carnaval Lounge. Jennifer Johnson’s day job is LJR Custom Strategies, a market research and strategic consulting company. Her husband practices law. They’re pleased that the club and restaurant will

remain locally-owned.

“There’s a lot of change happening on St. Claude Avenue,” Jennifer Johnson said. “If someone had bought Siberia and turned it into a fancy restaurant or into a high-end clothing store— something very different—a lot of people would have been upset. I know there are folks who don’t want Siberia to be anything but Siberia, but the fact that it’s staying true to what it provided to the neighborhood makes me very happy.”

Former Siberia co-owner Daphne Loney will devote herself to making art and teaching at Delgado Community College.

“I loved my time at Siberia,” she said. “I wish the new owners the best and know they will have an amazing business.”

The new Carnaval Lounge is located at 2227 St. Claude Avenue.

—John Wirt

—JOHN WIRT

O F F B E AT. C O M

Photo by Michael Wilson

S O UND C H EC K

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NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Not J u s t t h e S a x o p ho n e

function as a window into the books’ original contents. “Because I never mix books together, each piece represents the inside of one book,” Dagradi explained.

He especially likes working with encyclopedias. “Because sometimes the images are so weird,” he said.

“What was important in 1936—in history, industry and science—is so outdated now. It’s fun to look back and see where we’ve come from.”

The Jonathan Ferrara Gallery presented solo exhibits of Dagradi’s artwork in March 2018 and August 2019. He also has a piece in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s juried exhibit, Louisiana Contemporary, running through January 5.

Dagradi comes from a family of visual artists. After music piqued his interest during his early teens,

he became the family’s only auditory artist. “But I always felt artistic and I always made drawings,” he said.

“When my wife and I first came to New Orleans, she painted portraits in Jackson Square. After she gave me a few lessons, I did portraits there for a while.”

Dagradi’s reentry into visual art was almost Jubilation accidental. Coming across a website about altered books, he found the mixedrequires a lot of patience and media artwork fascinating. “Some attention to detail,” he said. “I people take a book and throw knew I could do all of that.” it in a bucket of turpentine,” he What Dagradi does in jazz said. “A week later they’ll take the has much in common with what book out and hang it up in the he does in art. “The spirituality air. That’s how they do an altered of music intersects with all art book. A small group of people forms,” he said. “When I’m carving does something along the lines of in a book and deciding on a what I do.” visual composition, that is similar Seeing examples of the latter to the way I work when I create style of cut, recomposed and music. It’s checks and balances, transformed altered books, envisioning how something flows Dagradi immediately saw himself together.” working in a similar vein. “It —John Wirt

The Soul Rebels @SoulRebels It’s about to get lit. Get ready for our new album, #PoetryInMotion out Oct 25! Featuring @bigfreedia, @Emeril, @matisyahu, @pjmorton, @robertglasper, @Tromboneshorty and SO many more.

John Papa Gros @JohnPapaGros What I call New Orleans music is an amalgamation. We always use the reference of a gumbo. Our music is like a pot of gumbo, where all of these different ingredients are thrown into the pot and what comes out is as unique as the cook stirring the pot.

Harry Connick Jr @ HarryConnickJR can’t wait for y’all to hear my upcoming album, True Love, coming October 25th!

Following decades of being a renowned jazz musician, saxophonist Tony Dagradi extended his artistic reach to visual art. In 2015, Dagradi, best known for his musical explorations with Tony Dagradi Astral Project and teaching at Loyola University, developed a passion for making sculptural collages.

Dagradi’s medium is books—usually of the vintage kind. For each sculptural collage, he selects and cuts images from a single book or a set of encyclopedia volumes. Dagradi reassembles the images as collages seen through the rectangular opening he carves into the books’ covers. He seals and preserves the pieces in acrylic varnish, the same solvent-based finish that painters apply to canvases.

The carved-open covers

S W EET T W EETS

Ian McNulty @IanMcNultyNOLA The historic Little Gem Saloon, closed for now, will be folded into a bigger plan taking shape for an early cradle of jazz in New Orleans, reports @GordonRussell1 @NOLAnews Tonya Boyd-Cannon @TonyaBoydCannon Such an honor to perform @ FQFestNOLA #SatchmoSunmerFest2019!

Thank you for the opportunity to share my passion! You all are GOLDEN!

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LBJ @lbjnola Goodbye #ArtNeville

O F F B E AT. C O M

PhotoS courtesy of the artist

Astral Project’s Tony Dagradi reveals his art work.

inmemoriam Arthur Lanon Neville—“Poppa Funk”—a keyboardist, New Orleans music icon and downright great individual, died July 22 after several years of declining health. He was 81.

Jerry Wexler once described Neville’s ensemble playing “as close to perfect as funk can get.” In addition to an early successful solo career, Neville founded the brilliant funk groups the Meters and the Neville Brothers.

Among his many accolades, he won three Grammys, earned a Lifetime Achievement Award last year from the Recording Academy, and in 2002 was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in Music by OffBeat Magazine. Neville announced his retirement last December.

“Art’s playing was the rock of Gibraltar,” said Jimmy Ballero, who played guitar in the earliest version of the Neville Brothers and can be heard on the group’s first album. “In terms of New Orleans music history and influencing other musicians, he was way, way up there. Art made the musicians around him better. He was easy to work with because he told you what to play. He rarely soloed.

He played rhythm and filled in the cracks. He never overplayed. That’s why Allen [Toussaint] used him so much. Art didn’t get in the way; he always had good ideas that just added to what was going on in the studio.

“Art was great singer, and he had a real low tone. He loved to play standards and all the old doo-wop stuff. Some nights, between the band’s funk sets, Art would stay behind the keyboard and play that old stuff just by himself. He was just a great cat to work with.”

Neville was born December 17, 1937 at New Orleans’ Charity Hospital. He attended St. Monica’s grade school with James Booker and Allen Toussaint. Although never having music lessons, Neville learned keyboard in Catholic church. At the age of 16, he was recruited by a popular local group, the Hawkettes, and in 1954, the Hawkettes recorded “Mardi Gras Mambo” which became a Carnival standard.

In 1957, Larry Williams, who was in the charts with the hit “Bony Maronie,” hired the Hawkettes to back him on a national tour. The following year, Neville was recruited by Specialty Records A&R Harold Battiste, Jr. Neville’s first record “Cha Dooky Doo” proved to be a solid local hit. Unfortunately, Neville’s career was interrupted when he got his draft notice, winding up as a jet mechanic stationed at a Virginia naval base.

When Neville returned home in 1961, Toussaint hooked him up with Instant Records and wrote the unforgettable ballad “All These Things” for him. In 1965, Neville formed Art Neville and the Neville Sounds, whose nucleus was George Porter, Jr., Leo Nocentelli, and Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste. Toussaint recruited the band to be the in-house rhythm section backing Lee Dorsey’s “Working In A Coal Mine,” as well as backing other local artists Earl King, Betty Harris, Danny White and Ernie K-Doe. In 1969, with some spare studio time, the band cut a handful of funky instrumentals. Rechristening the band the Meters, they lit up the charts and filled the dance floors with “Cissy Strut” and “Sophisticated Cissy,”

released on Josie Records. The hits put the band on the road nationally. After several mid-range chart singles and two years later, Josie went bankrupt. Not missing a beat, in 1972 the Meters were signed by Warner Bros. The “new” Meters now incorporated vocals—often by Neville. While at Warner, the Meters waxed five breathtaking albums which literally became the template for New Orleans funk.

By the mid-seventies, because the Meters were a crack/funky rhythm section, New Orleans became a hub of recording activity.

Specifically, Allen Toussaint’s and Marshall Sehorn’s Sea-Saint Studios in Gentilly became a magnet for artists far and wide. They worked sessions with LaBelle, Paul McCartney’s Wings, Robert Palmer, King Biscuit Boy, Albert King and Z.Z. Hill, to mention just a few. The Meters also toured the world with Palmer and the Rolling Stones.

A pet project for Neville was recording The Wild Tchoupitoulas album in 1976 that spotlighted his uncle/mentor George “Big Chief Jolly” Landry.

Reviving and popularizing the music of the Mardi Gras Indians, the Meters were joined by Neville’s younger brothers, Aaron, Charles and Cyril. In many ways this album was the inspiration for the formation of Neville Brothers Band. The following year, frustrated by the record company and management, Neville left the Meters along with Cyril, who was a vocalist on the later Meters albums, to form the Neville Brothers band.

The Nevilles packed Tipitina’s and Jimmy’s regularly with their unique Crescent City groove. The people who attended a Neville Brothers set, with Art directing the music, will remember it to their grave. During the breaks, hundreds of people would spill out onto the neutral ground, tired and sweating profusely, and then go back inside to dance some more.

The Neville Brothers would close out the Jazz Fest for two decades.

However, initially the Nevilles’ sound didn’t translate nationally—Austin, Texas being an exception—and their fan base consisted of largely locals and New Orleans music fans. It was only after Daniel Lanois produced the atmospheric Yellow Moon album in 1989 in his studio at Chartres and Esplanade that the Nevilles’ career was catapulted into the international stratosphere.

In addition to occasionally playing lucrative Meters reunion sets, Art and his brothers rode the wave into the new millennium. Unfortunately, unsuccessful back surgery in 2001 incapacitated Neville and he was confined to a cane, walker and eventually a wheel chair.

But his mind and musical skills remained razor sharp. He would eventually suffer a debilitating stroke, and spent some time prior to his death in a rehab center.

Arthur Neville is survived by his wife of 33 years, Lorraine; three children, Ian (of Dumpstaphunk), Amelia, and Arthel (daughter of first wife Doris), as well as brothers Cyril and Aaron, and legions of loyal fans and colleagues.

Art Neville

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—Jeff Hannusch

O F F B E AT. C O M

photo by Elsa Hahne

(1937 – 2019)

G

rief is not an emotion that invites comparisons. It is an overwhelming, supernatural sense of loss that is an essential part of human consciousness, the realization that a part of all of us has passed along with the loved one who is now gone from our immediate lives.

The litany of losses that shocked New Orleans in the early summer of 2019 may not have culminated with the death of Art Neville— because who knows what might happen next—but it certainly feels like the last lines of a book that is such a great story you don’t want it to end. That story, of course, is the story of how New Orleans musicians took their legacy of jazz, blues and gospel music and transformed it into the ecstatic music of R&B, rock ’n’ roll and funk, elements that are all still with us, but are increasingly being subsumed into the culture of the 21st century Global Village.

Unlike the other giants of this era, Art was not a retired elder or ghostly presence but a constant neighbor. He was part of the fabric of New Orleans life. He didn’t move from the city after Katrina, but

Bayou, then front the band on a tour with the Rolling Stones. The Meters eventually broke up. But Art kept a promise he made to his mother and formed a band with his brothers. The first thing they recorded was the Mardi Gras Indian classic, Wild Tchoupitoulas, backing up Uncle George Landry, otherwise known as Big Chief Jolly. Then came the Neville Brothers.

Art kept playing as long as he could, even after suffering a debilitating back injury.

“I feel pretty good,” he told me in a 2011 interview. “I’m up and I’m around. I feel better when I play music. I’m the only one who’s not going anywhere. My wife takes care of me I’ve got a daughter, 14, that’s who takes care of me. I told ’em I’ll play any gig if you gotta push me to the gig on a gurney.”

Art had deep connections with both Bartholomew, who was producing many sessions at Cosimo Matassa’s studio when Art began his career, and Dr. John, who as the young Mac Rebennack was producing, playing and writing songs at Cosimo’s for several different labels.

“I’ve been knowing Dr. John for a long time, long before the Meters,” Art told me. “He and I are about the same age—he’s a little older than I am I think. I played a lot of his songs when we was recording for Specialty.

I did sessions for stuff that I did with Cosimo on his songs. He played on some of the tracks. I played on most of ’em. He played guitar and piano back then.”

Art played on two of Mac’s albums with the Meters, In the Right Place and Desitively Bonnaroo.

“Later on I got a chance to play with him with the Meters ’cause we went on the road together. We played some songs from that album but we played other stuff too.”

Desitively Bonnaroo inspired the name for the Bonnaroo Festival.

In 2011 festival organizers decided to reprise the album in a

by John Swenson live performance with the Meters and producer Allen Toussaint.

“He had never played it and returned to Valence Street, the Nevilles’ old neighborhood. His music we had no reason to play it but it came out good,” Art said. “Yeah. was and is very much alive, kept active by his younger brothers Aaron I talk to Mac all the time. He called me and said ‘They want to do Desitively Bonnaroo and I said ‘Yeah?’ and he says ‘ahma gonna get the and Cyril and a host of younger relatives. He was the patriarch of original Meters to do it,’ so I think he had something to do with us the Neville family, a New Orleans institution that shows no signs of being on that gig. Like I say I’ve been knowing Mac. I talk to him all the running out of steam. In that sense Art’s passing does not seem as time. Him and Herman Ernest, that was Mac’s drummer, we was good much like the end of an era that Dr. John’s and Dave Bartholomew’s friends.” did. His spirit is still thriving in the work of his relatives, a legacy that Art Neville was a humble man. He always saved his praise for his he sacrificed so many things in his life to ensure. brothers rather than himself. He lived to play, and he lived that life to From the very start Art always made music with his brothers the fullest. whenever he could. He brought Aaron into the Hawkettes, then “I saw my mother just before she died,” he said, “and she told me included Aaron and Cyril in the Neville Sound, which morphed into ‘It’s going to be all right if you keep those boys together.’ I tried my the Meters at the Ivanhoe on the Bourbon Street strip. He brought best. Things happen...” O Cyril in to sing and play percussion with the Meters on Fire On the

Photo by clayton call

Art Neville Memorial

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Kind of Blue Basso Charlie Wooton: Music evolves if not it’s just gonna get stale.

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t should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the evolution of New Orleans music in the 21st century that Charlie Wooton is one of the city’s finest bass players. His work in recent years with Royal Southern Brotherhood and then replacing Reggie Scanlan in the New Orleans Suspects helped to keep each of those groups into the top echelon of the city’s touring bands. Wooton has also played with a large assortment of other musicians over the years in genres ranging from zydeco to Brazilian music, while leading his own Charlie Wooton Project with longtime guitarist Daniel Groover.

Wooton’s latest album, Blue Basso, is likely to vault him onto a new level as a bandleader. The record is named after the blue five-string bass given to him by Spyro Gyra’s bassist Kim Stone, but it is also a tribute to Wooton’s deepest influence, Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius. Growing up in Lafayette—studying jazz during the day and playing in zydeco bands at night—Wooton fantasized about playing with Weather Report.

“My dream was to go to L.A. or New York and become a session player for Al Jarreau or Chaka Kahn,” he says. “My dream band would be Weather Report but I’ll settle for Spyro Gyra.” Wooton was a huge fan of Jaco, so much so that he acquired the nickname “the Cajun Jaco.”

On his latest solo album Blue Basso, Wooton pays tribute to Jaco’s influence with a cover of “Come On Come Over” and an instrumental called “Jaceaux.” The album is certain to enhance his career as a leader. Yet Wooton holds back on self-congratulations, saving his praise for the other members of his band—vocalist Arsène DeLay; Groover, who produced the album, drummer Jermal Watson; and keyboardist Keiko Komaki.

“The Charlie Wooton Project—I didn’t really just want to use my name because my band members are incredible,” says Wooton. “This record is not about me.To be honest with you, this record ended up being about Arsène DeLay’s voice. Keiko probably plays the least on it, but in my opinion, she’s the best musician. Jamal sounds wonderful, Daniel is incredible. I like to highlight the people I’m with. Without them I’ve got nothing, there ain’t nobody gonna come just to see a bass player.”

Blue Basso also features several outstanding special guests: bassist Doug Wimbish and guitarists Sonny Landreth, Anders Osborne, Damon Fowler and Eric McFadden all make outstanding contributions.

“Music evolves,” Wooton says of Blue Basso. “And here’s an example of how it evolves from the heart of blues. I grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana playing Cajun/zydeco music. Cajun/zydeco music is blues with accordion and a French accent. New Orleans music is rooted in blues, other than the influences that came from the Caribbean and Europe.

They play blues where I come from different than they do in Mississippi.

They play it different in Chicago and they play it different in Texas. So this record is a blues record, that in my career, is what I got out of the

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blues and where it took me.”

Arsène DeLay’s contribution on vocals and lyrics really brings the Charlie Wooten album to a different level. Her performance on the R&B style “Reflections” is an example of her seemingly limitless talent.

“She put a vocal on top of that guitar and sent it back to me,” says Wooton. “And I was like ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ And we just put the tune together. That’s kind of how we wrote. She wrote all the vocals and melodies to all the songs that you hear. We did the rhythm tracks and sent them to her. She had to write the melodies and the lyrics. She had to fit them into the arrangements.

“She’s the niece of John Boutté and Lillian Boutté. As much as she is New Orleans royalty, she is an independent woman and she doesn’t use that. It helps her, but she wants to speak her voice.”

The great lap steel player Damon Fowler sits in on “I Don’t Know.”

“Jamal the drummer had a hip-hop program on his iPhone,” Wooton explains. “The melody that you hear on the guitar in the second verse, that’s all we had. We had those three notes and a hip hop loop behind it. Jamal said ‘I wanna swing this,’ so we figured out a little A section, a little B section, some jazz chords, put an extra measure right before the solo, a little drum turnaround. Then Damon Fowler came and put some lap steel on it. First we were gonna mix it with the two guitars intertwining and Arsène says ‘Let me have a stab at that one.’ I thought ‘How are you gonna write lyrics to this?’ She came and knocked it out.

It was one of my favorites. The hook, that sounds like an R&B hook from the ‘70s.”

Sonny Landreth plays on two tracks, “Front Porch” and “Tell Me a Story.”

“I left Lafayette when I was 20 and Sonny was the hometown hero then, lives in Beau Bridge and goes around the world and plays guitar,” says Wooton. “When he comes home nobody ever sees him. There was this idea that you can’t be a little Cajun boy and be successful. But you don’t have to play Cajun and zydeco music to make a living, which was the perception. I grew up studying jazz and I thought ‘I’m never going to make a living playing this.’ So I didn’t know Sonny back then. I met him when I moved to New Orleans in 2010 and we just got closer and closer and then what happened was my group Zabaduo was going to Japan to play a live magic festival. The promoter called me and said ‘Sonny’s bass player’s not coming.’ So I called Sonny. Sonny was actually scared to hire me O F F B E AT. C O M

Photo COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

by John Swenson

because he watched me on YouTube soloing and going crazy.

So I told him ‘Sonny I respect you. There’s no way I’m going to show up on your gig not knowing your music.’ It went well.

He had other shows in Japan and he took us as a duo to open for him. Last summer he took me to Brazil. I have this other project with Zydefunk where I’m gonna record ‘Congo Square’ and get like 100 drummers in Congo Square, record them there, then go into the studio, ‘cause Sonny Landreth wrote that song, the Nevilles made it famous, have Aaron or Cyril sing it and bring in Sonny. So we started talking about that. That’s the first thing I asked him to do.

So that’s how that came about.”

On the first song with Landreth, “Tell Me a Story,” the band cut the rhythm track first. “I wanted to do a Freddie King type of thing,” says Wooton. “Jamal put the Ray Charles kind of rhumba thing going in with the drums. When I’m producing I’m always thinking about how I can add or take away something that still flows but makes the nature of the human body pay attention. So that’s why I put in the extra turnaround the second time. Then we put in a swing section for the solo. We got Sonny to play on it. Arsène in the vocal says ‘those stat cats,’ but it initially was ‘jazz cats.’ I have a video in mind for this. There’s jazz guys playing an early set and they’ve heard about this great guitar player, so they go across the railroad tracks to a blues club to hear this band. They’re jazz guys and they’re snooty saying ‘Ah, blues, but there’s this one guy who’s supposed to be really great.’

So they go in there and they get blown away. In my mind in the video, right before they play, Sonny sees these jazz guys walk in and says ‘Hey let’s show ‘em we can swing too. Then once we do that then let’s go back to the funky fun stuff.’ ” The acoustic “Front Porch” OF F B E AT.C OM

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is Landreth’s other showcase.

“People expect to hear Sonny playing killer slide and I thought ‘No man I’m gonna have Sonny on a resonator playing the most down-home Mississippi blues you ever heard.’ So I’m glad I got him on both because I think people expect to hear him play how he played on ‘Tell Me a Story’ and will enjoy what he did on ‘Front Porch.’ “‘Front Porch” is a very important song on the record. For one thing, it comes after the solo on ‘Tell Me a Story.’ I show you I can pretty much do back flips and acrobatics on the bass, but as a producer I put ‘Front Porch’ after that because as a bass player I just play whole notes there. It’s not about the bass, the bass is doing what the bass is supposed to do on ‘Front Porch,’ which is just support it. That’s a major factor when going to clinics or when kids come to me and ask me ‘How do I get hired?’You don’t get hired by playing like Jaco Pastorius, you get hired by playing the way I played on ‘Front Porch.’ The bass started out as a support instrument and became more than that.

Same thing with the blues. Blues started as an American cultural expression from Mississippi and Louisiana and Alabama from the black race. Now it is dominated by white people who have blues societies. There’s nothing wrong with that, thank God we have those people who keep the music alive. But something has happened where they think ‘Oh if it’s not a shuffle, it’s not blues.’ That’s not okay. Go listen to a Taj Mahal record, talk about eclectic. So this record, there’s a statement behind it that ‘Yes, this is a blues record, but guess what—the music evolves and if you don’t allow it to evolve it’s just gonna get stale.’ ” In addition to paying tribute to Jaco, Wooton says he cut “Come On Come Over” “because I could hear Arsène’s voice singing it. We recorded the track as is, like the record and at the end Daniel says ‘If we’re gonna do this we gotta change it.’ He wasn’t

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happy with it. So I asked him what to do. He said ‘Well we’re in New Orleans where everything gets slowed down, why don’t we just slow it down?’ So Jamal put more of a kind of street beat on it, and then I changed the bass line from a chromatic walkup to more of a reggae feel.”

“Dimenote” is a tour de force for Groover’s fusion-style guitar playing. “Daniel said ‘I’ve got this New Orleans kind of thing but it’s kind of weird, we could put a New Orleans street beat on it.’ The way it starts with Jamal’s groove kind of brings it back to New Orleans a little bit.

So that song was really about letting Daniel show off his guitar virtuosity while on the rest of the record he just plays sweet parts.”

The instrumental “Fulton Alley” is another example of Wooton’s interest in jazz fusion.

“We were playing a gig in Fulton Alley by Harrah’s. We were just setting up and I started playing; I’ve probably played a million of those grooves at sound check. It was just me messing around but everybody started to play so we started the show that way. It sounded cool so we decided to keep it. The lick, we play a tune called ‘King Cake’ by Chuck Carbo and I used to play that bass lick coming out of the chorus and Daniel copied it. So we took that lick and just put it in there.”

On “One Night” “I had those changes since ‘97,” muses Wooton. “I had written just the chords on my bass. Arsène came up with the story. You know what I like about what she does on this record is the sings the first verse a little subtle, then the second a little more and on the third one she belts it out. I watched her through the process. She doesn’t just go in and start singing; she maps out the whole tune. Her vocal track is a steady crescendo to the end.”

“One Night” also features Anders Osborne on guitar. “We were at the studio and Eric

McFadden had just recorded on ‘Miss You.’ He said ‘Anders lives around the corner. I’m thinking of going over to see him.’ So I texted Anders: Hey man, Eric McFadden just laid down his track on my record. Wanna come lay down yours? Which was my way of saying come play on my record.

He hasn’t actually officially said yes yet. He was like ‘I’ll be right there.’ I thought that was easy.

He came over, listened to it and said. ‘I took two weeks off from music. Everything. And it’s only been a week and a half but I was digging this trench and I got your text and I thought God this sucks. so I thought do I wanna dig this trench or go give Charlie a guitar track?’ So he took a shower and came over because he didn’t want to dig that ditch anymore.

He listened to a couple of things, he played that track and it’s just beautiful, that opening lick. The solo was put on before any vocals.

What I do as a producer is when I have guests I just let them play.

Sometimes I’ll take the vocal off and say ‘Look I just want you to solo on the whole thing. Just do whatever you want, be sweet, then when it comes to the solo section. go crazy.’ Then I’ll go in and just take stuff out. So Anders probably played a lot more than what you’re hearing.”

The Rolling Stones have come and gone to New Orleans amid much anticipation and confusion, and Wooton adds his two cents with a cover of the Stones’ “Miss You” that closes out Blue Basso.

“I had a band back in my 20s, just a local band, and we used to do that song,” he explains. “If you listen to Sugar Blue’s version you’ll understand where the groove came from. The Stones version is cute, but that bass line I put down, I just like playing that bass line. We were gonna release the song the day the Stones played Jazz Fest, do a little social media thing about it and draw some attention.”

Well, the Stones never played Jazz Fest, but Wooton has drawn attention nonetheless. O O F F B E AT. C O M

ee Ail

i Pard

The First Graduate ilee Pardi wasn’t living in Louisiana when

by Herman the Cajun music bug bit. But it left a mark that she happily hopes never heals.

Growing up in Edgewood, Washington, Pardi remembers her fiddle teacher introducing a few Cajun tunes in class. Those tunes pushed her to attend Cajun and Creole Week, a summer camp at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia, for five years. At Augusta, Pardi heard there was a university in Lafayette, Louisiana— the Cajun and zydeco heartland—that would let her obtain a degree in the music. The news was sweeter than a Harry Choates waltz.

“I decided to come check it out,” said Pardi. “I like the [Cajun] fiddling style. I really enjoyed that aspect of it, the heavy double stops and some of the stylistic features about it. As a whole, I like the genre and I like the people. It was a really inviting experience.”

Pardi’s love of Cajun fiddling turned her into a history maker at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Last May, she became the first graduate in the school’s traditional music program. UL Lafayette is one of only two dozen schools in North America offering hands-on instruction in oral traditions. It’s the only one to feature the Cajun and Creole music of Louisiana. Students can take classes in Cajun and zydeco accordion, fiddle, French vocals, songwriting and history of the genres. Instructors include professors and working musicians, such as Grammy nominees Wilson Savoy, Corey Ledet and Kristi Guillory. Semesters end with students performing for credit in ensembles, which also feature blues and bluegrass.

The program started in 2010 with the hiring of Mark DeWitt, the first holder of the Dr. Tommy Comeaux Endowed Chair in Traditional Music. Named after a musician and physician who was killed in a 1997 bicycling accident, the program was born after a decade of fundraisers collected more than $1 million. The state’s Board of Regents provided matching funds.

DeWitt praised Pardi as a trailblazer. “Ailee’s graduation is a major milestone for our program in traditional music, and a confirmation that there is a place in the world for a liberal arts degree in traditional music,” said DeWitt. “She brilliantly combined the study of musical performance, music history, and a minor outside of music, culminating in a senior project. She took the curriculum we designed and made it work for her, which means that it can and will work for others. We hope that her example will help us to recruit more students into the program.”

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Pardi officially graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a concentration in Traditional Music.

She relishes her role in UL and Louisiana music history. “It’s a very young program, so I was a little bit of a guinea pig,” said Pardi, who had a minor in French. “I was the first one to get through the whole thing. I had a lot of really amazing teachers—David Greely, Kevin Wimmer, Brazos Huval, Megan Brown. They gave me a lot of really good exposure.

“It kind of surprised me. But I like that they kept it really traditional.

I didn’t have to read sheet music. It was still all done by ear, like the music is done today. They kept the music traditional but highlighted the best parts of it. I think it was a really well set-up program.”

Pardi played and sang with the Angelle Aces, the university’s Cajun band-for-credit, led by Kristi Guillory of the band Bonsoir Catin and Roddie Romero of Hub City All Stars fame. She expanded her repertoire as a member of Vermilion Express, UL’s bluegrass ensemble under the direction of Dr. Len Springer.

For her senior project and recital, Pardi focused on Cajun fiddle tunes, particularly those of deceased Ailee Pardi pioneers Dennis McGee and Dewey Balfa. Born in 1893, McGee recorded groundbreaking waltzes and two-steps with Creole accordionist Amedé Ardoin. He also preserved the polka, mazurka, reel and other styles rarely performed today.

Balfa, a National Heritage Fellowship winner from the National Endowment for the Arts, was a fourth-generation fiddler and leader of the highly-influential Balfa Brothers band.

“Dr. Dewitt had told me ‘Take a topic you like and figure out how to explore it.’ I always like the fiddle tunes that are played in Cajun music—the ones that are only played on fiddle and not really with a full band. So I decided to do an exploration of that. I detailed those tunes, their origins, what makes them special. I wrote a 20-page paper, but that’s the condensed version of it.”

With her degree in hand, Pardi is considering taking a couple of years off from school. But she may return for a master’s degree and continued exploration of Cajun music.

Pardi advises students who follow in her footsteps to never stop doing homework—play music. “Take every opportunity you get. This program really provides you with a lot of opportunities—things to do and people to meet. Jump on them all. Get out there and play a lot.

Don’t get too caught up in the book work. I went to a weekly jam at the Blue Moon [Saloon] and I called it my homework. It really was.” O

Fuselier

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

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Ailee Pardi likes the genre and the people.

Not Fancy, Just Soulful oss and Sharonda Baudy met in Katy, Texas.

Not only is it all in their family, but Sharonda and

by Anna Marvuglio “I didn’t like him at first,” says Sharonda.

Ross agreed it’s the perfect place for the families of Ross, who moved from Gentilly to Texas after Katrina, had others. “If a family goes out to eat, there’s no pleasing everyone. This purchased the nightclub at which she was the general manager. “He kid wants this, the other wants that. We bring variety. Kids can’t run came in and fired everyone!” around a restaurant and play games. They can here.” There’s dominoes, The two laugh before he says, “I thought about firing you, too, but darts, corn hole, giant playing cards, and most importantly for the I didn’t.” Eye rolls and disdain eventually transformed to love and youth of today, Wi-Fi. Dog families are welcome too: the Baudys are marriage. Ross always knew he wanted to return home to New stocked for your pooches with doggie bowls, doggie beer, and even Orleans, and after seven years in Houston working in the depths poop bags. of the service-industry world, the two set out on a new venture The lot can hold up to seven food trucks at a time. It varies who together, with a goal of owning restaurants and bars. Inspired by what and how many on a daily basis, but you will never go hungry. There they saw on a trip to Austin, the Baudys decided to take a gamble, are always two mainstays: Johnny’s Jamaican Grill, specializing in jerk and be a part of the food-truck evolution. This would bring Ross chicken, curry and oxtail, and Sharonda’s truck, Soulsation Kitchen. “It’s back to his hometown, to open a food spot like nothing else available in New Orleans (or Ross and Sharonda Baudy Louisiana, for that matter). The first food-truck park in the city was born. With the success of these parks in cities like Austin, San Francisco, Portland, Nashville, Boulder, and Atlanta, Ross and Sharonda Baudy thought: Why not here?

The Baudys opened Deja Vieux Food Park in March 2018. This was no easy feat. “No one knew how to regulate it, ’cause it was the first one,” says Ross. After purchasing the lot on Religious Street, it took two years to get all the proper clearances to open. If you’ve ever tried to get a city permit to build on your own property, or had to call the Sewerage and Water Board to dispute your astronomical bill, imagine multiplying that stress by a thousand. Headaches ensued. “We’ve put everything we have into this place. It’s been challenging. We’ve had to keep our heads above water, but God is good,” says Sharonda.

You may have passed Deja Vieux before. Quite often, they get named that because I’m country, I’m from Texas, and I’ve got soul,” mistaken for a movie lot. says Sharonda. Her wings are named after soulful folks as well; you can It’s tough to open a business in this city, let alone a restaurant, let order the Patti Labelle, Fats Domino, and The Temptations. Themed alone a business with several mini restaurants on the same property. nights at the park rotate weekly, monthly, and seasonally. Ross updates The process to get the doors open seemed to have no end, and once the Instagram account (@dejavieuxfoodpark) on a daily basis to keep open the competition is fierce. Places open and close as quickly as customers informed. Deja Vieux’s popular Caribbean Night is every every relationship I had in my twenties. Starting small and learning Friday, with live DJs. through trial and error with a lot of patience and teamwork is what’s The space is open and airy, with a fully stocked bar. Whiffs of kept the Baudys’ food truck park dream alive. As Ross puts it, “It’s a Jamaican jerk chicken pass by with every gust of wind that randomly blessing. If I’m not here, she’s here. We get to create together, and we sweeps through, as semis roll by, one after another. There is seating for share the same vision.” days, plus umbrellas, a sign that reads “Bon Appetit,” and giant Jenga This labor of love is truly a family affair. Upon arriving to interview games line the bar tables. TVs hang from above, there are tiki torches the Baudys, the first thing I saw was the two of them, working throughout, and island music plays in the background. Between the together outside of a food truck, Soulsation Kitchen. Ross’ son Justin breeze, the fans, and the shade, the 80-percent humidity is bearable. and Sharonda’s son DeMarcus both help mom and pops with the The Deja Vieux Food Park is just like the Soulsation truck reads: operation. The mural painted across the bar and bathrooms (made “We’re not fancy. We’re just soulful.” O from an old shipping container) was painted by Ross’ nephew.

For full details check out www.dejavieuxfoodpark.com.

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PHOTOS COURTESY DEJAVIEUX FOOD PARK

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The Deja Vieux food-truck park is a unique dining experience.

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dgar Caro did not fully under“It’s stick-to-your-ribs food so very stand his success until he rifled similar to New Orleans style cuisine,” through his grandmother’s Pierre said of Haitian cuisine. “We cookbooks. He had taken a risk, he have our version of red beans and said, when he opened Baru 12 years rice. Very similar, but instead we just ago, serving Latin Caribbean food puree our red beans all the way. We at a time when New Orleans was have a gumbo that’s very similar but saturated with Creole and Italian. we don’t add filé to it.”

But it worked. “When I really go To Nelson, New Orleans’ jambalaya to old books that my grandma left looks like pelau, a Trinidadian rice me and I see the technique of how dish with meat, pigeon peas and something is done, it’s like, oh my vegetables. To Caro, it looks like god, they’re doing an étouffée but Colombian paella. Corn meal used for it’s not crawfish because we don’t grits in New Orleans, in Caro’s hands, grow crawfish [in Colombia], but it’s is turned into empanadas. étouffée,” Caro said.

The spices, too, vary. Caribbean At Baru, Caro was simply cooking food relies more on scotch bonnet the food he knew, plucking the peppers that, when freshly cracked, empanadas and favorite dry-fried fish “smell like Haiti when you first wake he ordered from a beach-side shack up in the morning,” Pierre said. New out of his childhood in Cartagena.

Orleans uses cayenne pepper and In doing so, he unknowingly tapped bell pepper, said Ashley Jonique,

by Emily Carmichael into the same undercurrent of the private chef and owner of the New Orleans cultural consciousness former DBLBLK Café. The Caribbean that has fueled the success of restaurants like Compère Lapin, Fritai, also has an East Indian influence that its northern counterpart lacks, 14 Parishes, Boswell’s Jamaican Grill, Queen Trini Lisa and more. As Joel adapting curries from the indentured servants Europeans brought Hitchcock-Tilton, founder of the NOLA Caribbean Experience festival, over from India. puts it, “New Orleans is Caribbean.”

The rise in Caribbean food in New Orleans is more of a re-discovery, New Orleans’ Caribbean identity often plays second fiddle to that of a journey into New Orleans’s culinary future through its past. its colonizers, the French and the Spanish, both of whom also occupied Fusion restaurants like Pierre’s Fritai are gaining popularity and Caribbean islands. The Caribbean, however, is no less present. national notoriety. Fritai’s signature dish is a plantain sandwich—two Indeed, many of the Caribbean chefs like Caro, Lisa Nelson (a native crispy, flat buns of fried plantain with either tofu or pork squeezed of Trinidad and Tobago who cooks as Queen Trini Lisa), and Charly between them and dressed with avocado, mango sauce and pickliz (a Pierre, a first generation Haitian-American who owns Fritai, were Haitian pickled vegetable relish). surprised to discover the similarities between their new homes and Baru promotes itself as Latin Caribbean, and Nina Compton, a chef their old. “Even the smell of the French Quarter reminds me of Port of from St. Lucia, was named Best Chef: South by the James Beard for her Spain, our capital,” Nelson said. work at her French Caribbean restaurant Compère Lapin. Compton’s In 1809, the decades of fighting—that constituted the Haitian menu at Compère Lapin includes Caribbean classics like curried goat revolution, the most successful rebellion led by enslaved persons in the and jerk chicken.

Americas—came to an end and set off a wave of emigration from that More traditional restaurants have equally gained traction. Nelson only island country. Ten-thousand people, equal parts people of European started selling her food after customers smelled her cooking it in her descent, enslaved people and free people of color, arrived in New corner store and were infatuated by the scent. She now runs a pop-up Orleans, doubling the city’s population. that can be found at festivals and every Wednesday at Portside Lounge.

This influx came after New Orleans had suffered two Great Fires Likewise, 14 Parishes, Johnny’s Jamaican Grill and Island Paradise in 1788 and 1794, collectively razing 1,000 buildings. The city was Restaurant & Grill all provide a delectable sampling of Caribbean rebuilding and Caribbean culture embedded itself into the scaffolding. cuisine. Boswell’s Jamaican Grill has an eight- dollar lunch buffet with a Voodoo, shotgun houses, second lines—those cultural emblems that robust sampling of rice, veggies, and curried and jerked meats that all New Orleanians treasure about their city, have their roots in Haiti. The taste like the hot, refreshing delight of a humid breeze. same is true for food.

Restaurants continue to open around the city. 14 Parishes has As the chefs described, Caribbean and New Orleans cuisines expanded to two locations and Hitchcock-Tilton’s NOLA Caribbean share many of the same staples: rice, beans, seafood, greens, hot Fest is going into its third year. spices and corn meal, though the way they are prepared varies from “New Orleans and Caribbean food is always going to have this love nation to nation. affair,” Caro said. O

Love Affair

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O F F B E AT. C O M

PHOTOS COURTESY BARU

Why Caribbean food works in New Orleans

Eat New

A dozen recommendations for new restaurant dining choices.

T

he vibrant restaurant scene in New

by Michael Dominici pollen, tuna ceviche with trout roe, and puff pastries filled with Époisses cheese. The perfect place to Orleans continues to expand with some begin or end a night on the town. 544 Carondelet St. (504) 814-7711 truly exciting new dining options. Here’s a little taste.

Addis Nola Ethiopian cuisine is one of the most flavorful and diverse in the world, and Biruk Alemayehu’s Addis Nola offers classic dishes such as savory sabusas, crispy stuffed fried dough pouches filled with lentils, collard greens or beef seasoned with garlic, onions, cardamom, cinnamon and cilantro. Kitfo is raw prime ground beef flavored with butter and mitmita spices and a mild Ethiopian cheese.

Stewed split peas and chickpeas are an essential component of this dining experience, and shiro wat is an essential preparation involving slowly simmered onions, garlic, chilis, seasoned with a turmericbased mixture. Every meal is served with traditional injera, a spongy flatbread made with tef (a millet-like grain) that is fermented for three days. Doro Wot is a pungent and deeply flavorful stew prepared with either chicken or lamb simmered for hours in berbere spices and boiled eggs is an essential component of an Ethiopian meal. Several beef preparations round out the entree listings. 424 S Broad St. (504) 218-5321 Bar Marilou Located at Maison de la Luz, Bar Marilou re-imagines the former library of City Hall Annex as Matisse’s The Red Studio with library shelves and unique curiosities, in a posh, upscale chic setting. The bar’s offerings include sophisticated cocktails, champagne and treats like stacked potato squares topped with a dollop of crème de fraise and caviar. Other sexy starters include seared scallops Saint Jacques, burrata with olive oil, lemon, and fennel

Bonci

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Bonci Pizzeria “I wanted to do something different. To make something noble out of something that was being destroyed, namely the quality of bread and pizza, and also give work to as many farmers as I could. That was my objective. Simply put, my food is natural.”

Gabriele Bonci on The Pizza Show.

Emanating from the Prati district of Rome in the shadow of the Vatican, Gabriele Bonci’s revolutionary approach to pizza brought forth some 1,500 different topping variations. Hot off the heels of success in Chicago, Bonci Pizzeria has taken the Warehouse District in New Orleans by storm. The New Orleans branch is more streamlined, with just over two dozen offerings that will rotate seasonally.

This unique Roman-style al taglio (by the cut) pizza is cooked in thin rectangular sheet pans, then sliced to order and sold by the pound, which offers diners the opportunity to sample many different variations. The pizza dough begins with a 200-year-old starter culture, organic heirloom einkorn farro semolina, whole spelt flour, extra virgin Italian olive oil, water, unbleached sea salt, and a pinch of brewer’s yeast. The dough goes through a day-long cold fermentation process that creates an airy, almost fluffy pizza similar but softer than focaccia, with wonderful crispiness.

Signature toppings include zucchini and ricotta, prosciutto cotta and mozzarella, sausage and mushroom, potato and mozzarella, sopressata and mozzarella, chicken parmesan, grilled eggplant with ricotta and

Gianna

O F F B E AT. C O M

many others. Bonci is a game-changer.

Bonci also serves suppli, a breaded Roman croquette with various fillings ranging from rice, tomato, and mozzarella, to meat sauce with cheese, and even spaghetti with different sauces.

A casual dining experience, Bonci offers wine, beer, and beverages in bright, sunny, sleek dining space that fits right in with the Warehouse District aesthetic. 726 Julia St. (504) 766-6071 Bywater American Bistro An upscale modern neighborhood restaurant, Nina Compton’s Bywater American Bistro took over the beloved Mariza last year and hit the ground running with a menu-driven by local, seasonally available ingredients as well as Chef Compton’s passion for resonating flavors. Here, gazpacho is enhanced with the addition of golden beets, and a dollop of buttermilk sorbet. Yellowtail tartar is complemented by smoked swordfish belly, crispy cucumbers, and the sweet-sour spicy twang of melon kosho, topped with a kiss of caviar. Cheese plates are served; charcuterie options include foie gras torchon, oxtail terrine, or country pâte. A savory farro risotto with maitake mushrooms and minted bread crumbs, and jerked chicken rice with jalapeño peppers are featured in the section entitled Rice, Grains, and Noodles. Fried oysters in oyster gravy are another highlight. Entrees include rabbit curry served with jasmine rice, pecans, and cilantro, and duck breast over a bed of butterbeans finished with port wine sauce, and fresh figs. Delicately steamed red snapper is contrasted with robust broccoli rabe florets and draped with a decadent Crystal hollandaise. Desserts run the range from watermelon meringue to spiced Nutella flan, as well as a selection of homemade sorbets and ice cream. Bywater American Bistro clearly elevates the local restaurant to destination dining status. 2900 Chartres St. (504) 605-3827 Gianna Restaurant At Donald Link’s latest restaurant Gianna, chef/partner Rebecca Wilcomb pays homage to her roots by honoring her grandmother Giannina Chieregati’s culinary heritage in Veneto, Italy. A big part of Wilcomb’s approach lies in her passion; not only for the food she prepares but to a more visceral overarching narrative, connecting with the lineage of families, their recipes and stories to the communities that grow the food. Farmers and foragers are listed on their website, including their background stories. The Good Food Project, Isabelle’s Orange Orchard and Veggi Farmers Cooperative are just a sampling of organic, ethical vendors going above and beyond with a more holistic outlook on food pathways.

Gianna is a grand-scale restaurant with an open-face kitchen serving panelle—chickpea fritters with Allen Bee Farms honey— creamy polenta with lamb sausage gravy, oysters and artichoke gratin and eggplant caponata. Hand-crafted pasta selections include rigatoni with pistachio pesto, Calabrian peppers, ricotta; lasagna with beef ragu layered with fontina béchamel; and their signature tortellini in brood: all speak to the soul of Gianna. Likewise, the entree selections are rustic presentations including roasted pork shoulder with fennel and orange; shrimp with garlic, rosemary and creamed cauliflower; veal saltimbocca; and a roasted bone-in ribeye. A family-style “Feed Me” menu is available with optional wine pairings. Desserts include specialty items such as tartufo with amarena cherries, chocolate amaretti cake dresses with with hazelnut toffee and espresso whipped cream; and pistachio cheesecake. The bar features signature drinks made with exotic Italian liqueurs and the wine selections highlight regional varietals from the motherland. 700 OF F B E AT.C OM

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Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken

Magazine St. (504) 399-0816 Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken Hailing from Mason, Tennessee, Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken began as a humble, homespun African-American owned tavern created six decades ago

by Napoleon and Maggie Vanderbilt to cater to black patrons in their segregated community and immediately became the talk of the town.

In 1973, the family established Maggie’s Short Order with the help of the entire community, then after his parents passed away in the early ’80s, their son Vernon Gus Bonner changed the name to Gus’s World Famous Hot and Spicy Chicken.

Now franchised nationwide, a New Orleans location recently opened to rave reviews. The specialty is a secret recipe battered hormone-free chicken fried in peanut oil, served over white bread with sides including baked beans, fried okra, mac ’n’ cheese, spicy French fries, coleslaw and greens simmered in bacon fat. Gus’s also has killer slices of pie including pecan, chess, coconut, and sweet potato which include the à la mode option. 308 S Diamond St. 504 252-4870 Jewel of the South James Beard Award recipient Chris Hannah achieved legendary status at the helm of Arnaud’s French 75 before creating Jewel of the South. This eclectic bistro serves delights such as crisp frog-leg bao with pickled shishitos, roast bone marrow crème with caviar, egg yolk and madeleines, and hummus made with black-eyed peas served with various pickled vegetables. The heartier fare includes boudin noir with peaches and kimchi, ox tongue with peanut salsa, and beef short ribs with caramelized fish sauce and green papaya.

Partaking in Hannah’s specialty cocktails is a must here. The Brandy Crusta, The Golden Monkey and the reportedly the most popular drink of the 19th century, La Belle de Jerez, demonstrate Hannah’s passion for the history of his craft. Likewise, The Night Tripper illuminates his equal love for the music and culture of New Orleans. 1026 St Louis St. 504 265-8816 Justine Featured in our March 2019, issue Justine has been a success since its opening day and the chic Parisian style brasserie remains one of the most exciting new downtown dining options. The dining room is nothing short of breathtaking, with its dramatic lighting, ambient burlesque performers and a live DJ adding to the ambience.

The menu ranges from seafood towers to French onion soup, to shrimp in parchment paper, fennel, and baby spring vegetables to steaks large enough to feed a family. Justine reminds us that serious can be quite sexy. 225 Chartres St. (504) 218-8533

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Shake Shack

Palm&Pine See feature on page 35. 308 N Rampart St, (504) 814-6200 Que Rico! Cuban Café Being half-Cuban myself, the menu at Que Rico! Cuban Cafe speaks to my soul. It has all the things that my mother Haydee prepares for family meals including sweet and savory versions of tostones (plantains), yucca, tamales, croquettes made with either ham or chicken—and that’s just the appetizers.

Lechon Asado is one of the world’s great pork preparations beginning with an insanely flavorful mojo marinade made with bitter orange, cumin, coriander, onions and lots of garlic slowly cooked all day until the meat falls off the bone. Pork chops, chicken simmered in onions and mojo, Cuban shrimp creole and various types of Cuban sandwiches round out the menu. Of course Ropa Vieja—Cuba’s national dish—is served, prepared in a cauldron with shredded flank steak simmered in sofrito. Black beans and rice are among the classic sides. Flan, tres leches, and the ever-popular churros are served with three sauces: condensed milk, raspberry and chocolate. 4200 Magazine St. 504-827-1398 Shake Shack Developed by the legendary Manhattan restaurateur Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park) Shake Shack has been a nationwide smash and the New Orleans metro area will soon have three locations, the first recently opened on Veterans Boulevard near Lakeside Shopping Center.

Shake Shack offers five burgers including a ’shroom burger consisting of a crisp-fried portobello mushroom stuffed with Muenster and cheddar cheese. The signature SmokeShack is a winner—a cheeseburger topped with applewood smoked bacon, cherry pepper relish, and ShackSauce. The Chick’n’Shack is a classic in its own right with its crispy crust set atop lettuce, pickles, and slathered with herbed buttermilk mayonnaise. Yukon gold crinkle fries are not to be missed, and the shakes are the best in the world, no lie!

The frozen custard selections are the bomb, too much, really. Super rich and loaded with flavor and calories, which are listed (you might want to take a look at that). Shake Shack proves to be a heavyweight contender in the field of local burger joints and blows away the chains. 3501 Veterans Memorial Blvd. 504 380-0279 Zasu Featured in our May 2019 issue, my most recent visit to Zasu reaffirms that Sue Zemanick’s new dining venture has everything one hopes for in a great new restaurant—pleasant service, great energy, and truly spectacular food. Every plate is beautifully arranged, and the flavors sing. 127 N Carrollton Ave. (504) 267-3233 O O F F B E AT. C O M

Raj Smoove has never had a “real job.” No summers mowing lawns, no part-time gig stocking shelves over the holidays, no late-night restaurant shifts in the French Quarter. At age 14, he was hired by a classmate to spin records at a birthday party in the East.

Today, he’s arguably the city’s busiest DJ. But don’t just take my word for it. The man who Grammy-winning rapper Lil Wayne dubbed “The Greatest DJ in the World” boasts a remarkable CV: in addition to prestigious residencies at the House of Blues New Orleans, the Ace Hotel and Blue Nile, Raj is an official DJ for the New Orleans Pelicans basketball team and the game-day DJ for the New Orleans Saints football team. He’s appeared at Essence Festival, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, NBA All-Star Weekend, the National Urban League Conference and the National Black Journalists Association Convention.

Raj reads rooms and enlivens dance floors with genre-less fluidity. He can delight the ears and feet of discerning hip-hop heads at venues like the House of Blues’ Foundation Room, but also animate the gyrating hips of Caribbean music fans at Soca Fête.You know that feeling, when you’re already enraptured by the music coming from the DJ booth, only to be swaddled by the joy of hearing exactly the right song at the right moment? That’s what Raj Smoove does.

“You can’t say ‘New Orleans DJs’ without mentioning Raj. No way.

No how,” Mannie Fresh tells me. Fresh, an icon of New Orleans hip-hop and a household name in rap music, has witnessed Raj’s star rise since its onset. “His contribution to New Orleans hip-hop is nuts. Just seeing him DJ, it made me up my game. A lot of people just play the hit records, but he knows when to play a record that no one else would even dare try to play.”

An example of Raj’s audacious DJ style happened when the National Urban League Conference came to New Orleans in 2012. Raj was hired to DJ the official after-party. It just so happened that Stevie Wonder was in town, and he made his way to the Conference after-party at Metropolitan, where a magical, extemporaneous moment was captured on film. In a video which has since gone viral, Raj plays a bounce beat on the turntables while Stevie sings “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours).” It’s a sensational example of Raj’s ability to read a room and the energy of an icon like Stevie Wonder. Like Mannie Fresh says, Raj wasn’t scared to throw a record on and see what happened.

“Stevie’s people came over to me and said Stevie wanted to know if I had some beats because he wanted to get on the microphone and do something. I started out with some old-school break beats.Then, I dropped a brown beat, and everybody just lost their mind. It was all just on the fly,” Raj remembers.

Unlike American cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York where DJs and producers are as famous as their MCing counterparts, New Orleans isn’t really known for its disc jockeys (and, to a lesser extent, its hip-hop producers). But for those who grew up when local DJs like Slick Leo and Money Fresh were architects of a new sound, the DJ has been as consequential as anywhere else.

“I think we’ve always had great DJs down here,” says Raj. “It’s just, in Chicago you have house music readily identified with DJs and in NYC you have East coast hip-hop readily identified with DJs. Bounce music down here didn’t get identified with DJs until, maybe, the 2000s. We always had DJs on the scene, but it wasn’t until you had DJ Money Fresh, Mannie Fresh, Slick Leo, Suave Productions in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s that they started being recognized some. We even have the term ‘going to the DJ,’ which is going to a block party, but you had a DJ on the street.

I think, nationally, we haven’t had a lot of breakout DJs, but it’s always been at the core of hip-hop, so that means it’s always been at the core of New Orleans hip-hop as well.”

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Mixing, Raj Smoove, the greatest DJ in the world, takes on the New Orleans music industry.

by Amanda “Bonita” Mester PHOTOGRAPHED BY LAIKEN JOY Raj Smoove has taken his predecessor’s blueprints and consistently expanded on them for two decades. In 2000, he became the official DJ for the Cash Money Records/Ruff Ryder Entertainment tour.That was followed by a tenure as the in-house DJ and producer for Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment, an era when New Orleans rap music was front and center in the mainstream. He appeared on two of hip-hop’s seminal television shows, BET’s Rap City: Tha Bassment and 106 & Park, and produced several tracks on Lil Wayne’s platinum-selling 2004 album Tha Carter. He also hosted Lil Wayne’s 2006 mixtape Lil Weezy Ana. His own compilation, 2001’s Raj Smoove Redefines Bayou Classic, features Mannie Fresh, Mia X, 5th Ward Weebie and his fellow Psycho Ward DJ-producers.

Before working side-by-side with hip-hop superstars, Raj Smoove was playing around with future Oscar winners and Pulitzer-nominated composers. His father is Roger Dickerson, who in 2014 was named the recipient of OffBeat’s Best of the Beat Lifetime Achievement in Music Education award. His mother, Sara, is a dedicated and accomplished educator with a fine arts and humanities background. As an only child, Raj was blessed with a foundation built on education, dedication and the O F F B E AT. C O M

Mastering Mentoring

pursuit of development.

In the Shadows of Giants Raj—born Roger Dickerson II—was a toddler surrounded by giants of New Orleans music. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize-nominated daddy (for the 1972 Louis Armstrong requiem, “A Musical Service for Louis,” and 1976’s U.S. Bicentennial-commissioned “New Orleans Concerto”), Raj grew up with Allen Toussaint and Ellis Marsalis as his elders, reared by the sounds of future Academy Award-winning composer Terence Blanchard who took piano lessons from his dad.

Dickerson, Sr. says his son was only two or three when he began showing an inclination for music. A young Raj entertained himself with musical toys for children, but it was an unorthodox instrument he picked up which truly showcased his budding prowess.

“Terence Blanchard was taking lessons from me in high school and Roger was there,” Dickerson recounts. “We turned around and Roger had his oatmeal boxes set up on the floor. I said to Terence, ‘Play a tune with him.’ And he did.”

Some of Raj’s earliest musical experiences also happened at Allen OF F B E AT.C OM

Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Studios in Gentilly, where he jumped on the couch while legendary musicians cut legendary records.Toussaint’s son, Clarence (whom most call Reggie), looks back fondly on the kid who was always around.

“I think I’ve known Raj since he was five. He was a little annoying.You can tell him I said that.Very annoying,” Reggie says through a chuckle. He says Raj was always “edgier” than his parents, a precocious kid who was articulate and armed with a complex musical vocabulary from birth.

“From early on, you could see his knowledge of music and how things blend,” says Reggie. “I thought he would end up playing [an instrument] but when you see him mixing, putting tracks together, the context of the music he puts together, you see his background. He would also poke the bear a lot. It was like he had no filter, and it’s just who he was. He didn’t give it a second thought. I put him in the category of Kanye West...our Kanye West. Because Kanye’s music vocabulary is so large, and he knows all of the intricate parts. Raj just sees music differently from most DJs.” Reggie remembers seeing Raj DJ for the first time. He’s unsure whether it was Essence Fest or Jazz Fest, but he hired him to play records off the strength of his mom Sara’s endorsement.

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“I sat back and watched the set from the audience, and I watched the crowd, and I watched his intensity, how he felt about it.You could see how he felt about the music, and then you could hear people’s response, and I thought, ‘Oh, okay, he has that. He has that gift.’ But with him, I kind of knew that whatever he was going to do musically, it was going to be successful because the other part was so refined. He still was an annoying little kid, though.”

Piano and drum lessons were part of Raj’s childhood, but he never had much interest in becoming a musician, at least not in any traditional sense.

As a young child living in Atlanta while his mother earned her doctorate, Raj saw the 1984 movie Beat Street, a film in which the protagonist is a DJ. “I had the Beat Street soundtrack. It was Volume One and Two, the yellow cassette and pink cassette.That was my first experience of really understanding what a DJ was. At that time in hip-hop, the DJ always got the top bill; that was a subconscious thing on my mind.The DJ was the hero.”

A few years later, Raj heard Live at Union Square by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Will Smith). On that record, a 17-year-old Smith introduces Jazzy Jeff and his “transformer scratch.”The technique, so named because

and got on for his set, they called me back on stage to get down with him.That was one of the great moments.”

Though Raj didn’t end up pursuing the classical and jazz music of his father, their careers share similar trajectories. Dickerson, Sr. gigged with high-school bandmate Ellis Marsalis; Raj gigged at high-school social functions. While dad played piano at clubs in the French Quarter, Raj’s late teen years and early twenties found him gigging Uptown, Downtown and all over New Orleans.

“I feel like I’ve been, not necessarily walking in his footsteps, but our lives have had a lot of the same parallels,” Raj says of his dad and himself.

They both attended McDonogh 35 High School and Dillard University.

Dickerson, Sr. was a Fulbright Fellow at the Akadamie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria. Dickerson, Jr. was offered a scholarship to Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business.

“My mom is a very free spirit, an artist and is the ‘whatever you want to do, follow your dreams’ type, so she was always supportive [of my DJing]. My dad was a little bit more suspicious. My dad’s a classicallytrained jazz musician, symphonic composer, and his son was doing rap music, which was the new trendy thing. I feel like my dad appreciated and respected it, because he gets it. He gets that things evolve in music and all of that, but he also knows how hard it is to be a career musician and make money off music because he’s been doing music his whole life, too.”

While performing with Wyclef Jean and carving out a name for himself on the local circuit, Raj was just as focused on his academics.

Heeding his parents’ advice about getting his education, Raj graduated from Dillard in 1998 with a degree in Mass Communication and Business.

After college, he continued DJing and used his former childhood home in Gentilly as his studio (which still operates today as Mirabeau Yeaux).

“Raj had this crazy mad following, like wherever Raj Smoove was playing, that’s where New Orleans was going. During his early rise, even up to this day, he has this cult following behind him. You know, he has to go down in the books as one of the New Orleans DJ greats.” of the manipulation of sound to mimic the theme song of the popular 1980s cartoon “The Transformers,” became a keystone in the development of DJing as an art form known as turntablism. Hearing it was a turning point for Raj. “I was a child during the eighties, so The Transformers—Optimus Prime and all that—was a huge thing and Jazzy Jeff starts doing the transformer scratch so I’m thinking ‘I want to do that. I can do that.’ At that point I had the idea in my mind, I wanted to DJ. As fate would have it, someone broke into our house and stole all my Nintendo tapes and console. Luckily my parents had insurance so with the insurance check, I got a DJ mixer.They would have these electronic fairs coming through the Superdome, and they would sell off-brand equipment, so I got another little turntable and I got another record player from my stereo component set. So, at that point I had two turntables and a mixer, and I’m listening to Rob Fresh—he used to DJ on FM 98.They were live on the radio during the weekends, and it would be like a real show—they were scratching and back spinning.They had a Sound Warehouse on Chef [Menteur Highway] by my dad’s house, so I would go over there and buy Rob’s records to try and mimic his mixes and try to figure out what he was doing.”

Raj began practicing his scratching whenever he could, inspired by things like the “kick, kick, kick” sounds on MC Lyte albums. He perfected the cross-fader and line switches, back spinning and more. It was in 1997, he thinks, that he had his first “aha” moment as a live DJ. He and Psychoward, whom he calls New Orleans’ Wu-Tang Clan, were opening for Wyclef Jean at the House of Blues. Raj decided to test out some of the tricks he’d been practicing.

“It was a whole under the leg, behind the back, go switch the other leg, turn around, behind the back, stop the record kind of routine. And I nailed it. And the whole crowd went ‘Aaaaah!’ When Wyclef performed

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Commitment and Focus Once Y2K rolled around, Raj was faced with an existential crossroads: accept a full ride to business school, which he had already deferred for two years to see if he could “make this hip-hop shit work out,” or join the Cash Money/Ruff Ryders tour. Well…

Raj remained committed to pursuing his music career. “What do they say about John Wick?” he asks rhetorically. “That he’s a man of commitment and focus. I’ve always tried to stay ahead of the curve, and just by trying certain things, I’ve become the standard bearer.”

Raj was one of the first DJs in New Orleans to integrate laptops and Serato programming into his sets. At that time, Hurricane Katrina had devastated the city, taking with her Raj’s record collection. Just before the storm, Raj was offered a promotion from mixing on 104.5 FM to being music director. “Then Katrina hit and blew everybody everywhere. So our core audience was spread out all across, and they ended up never coming back. Katrina blew everything away, and I was one of the first ones back to the city, DJing as soon as the clubs started opening back up.”

During a temporary displacement to Chicago, Raj began building up his music collection and landed gigs in Atlanta, Houston and the Windy City.

At home, things were slow to pick up.

“Things came back in full swing in ’06 or ’07 because the colleges came back. It was popping again for a nice minute. But it started tapering off because we weren’t getting the refresh of the college population and that really funnelled everything—people would come as freshmen and refresh the cycle. But then people were like, ‘I’m not sending my kids to New Orleans after the storm,’ so that started drying up. By 2008, the people O F F B E AT. C O M

that got there before the storm started graduating, and that’s when the drought started hitting and things started to slow down. It was a really clean break.”

Temporary setbacks now behind him, Raj John Wick-ed his way through his career with the help of a devoted fanbase. As Mannie Fresh puts it, “Raj had this crazy mad following, like wherever Raj Smoove was playing, that’s where New Orleans was going. During his early rise, even up to this day, he has this cult following behind him.

“You know, he has to go down in the books as one of the New Orleans DJ greats. If we say Slick Leo or whoever else, we have to say Raj Smoove. When he started DJing, it was a turning point in hip-hop.

He started DJing when his younger generation took over where we left off. When it was just like, okay, music is starting to change. New Orleans’ sound is starting to change, because New Orleans was a jazz city for forever. Raj helped change that. He’s somebody who’s from our school and a student of it, hanging around me and [DJ] Wop and all that. I feel like, in order to be great, you gotta go left sometimes, and that’s what he does, the stuff that everybody else is not doing.”

Turning the Tables Over the course of his 30-year career, Raj Smoove has conquered the DJ world several times over. His legacy is cast in stone. What excites him more now is using all of that experience to benefit the local music industry. In addition to having recently launched a label imprint (Parkview Records) as well as being a writer, studio engineer, manager and married father of four kids under four-years-old, Raj is on the steering committee for the New Orleans Music Economy Initiative, or NOME. “NOME is a collection of professional creatives that are, with the help of GNO Inc., trying to spur intellectual property in publishing and copyright stuff in the city, which really is what the whole music industry revolves around,” Raj explains. ‘Having people here actually making money off their intellectual property is something we want to make a reality for New Orleans.”

He’s also gearing up to launch his own creative consulting firm,The Gentilly Agency. Expected to launch in Fall 2019, the agency will put a formal name to the behind-the-scenes work Raj has been doing for other artists. Eventually, the agency will offer artist development, management, booking and more.

“I’m realizing everybody has to pitch in and help the diamonds in the rough get the tender love and care they need to bloom and develop,” he says of his decision to start an agency. “There’s a lot of talent here, and they just need a little buffing to make sure all their ducks are lined up so they can be marketable. I feel like there’s a lack of mentorship. People don’t know how to become effective because they don’t know professional etiquette; they’re not around people that do this professionally.

People will say ‘I do PR.’ I’ve found there are a lot of people who don’t know what they mean. By having an agency, I can involve other people and it’s an identifiable entity that’s not just ‘Oh, Raj does this, Raj does that.’

It’s something people can be a part of. It’s a movement. Everybody likes a movement.”

On September 22, Raj will showcase some of the artists he’s working with when he performs at the National Fried Chicken Festival.There, he’ll share the stage with Caren Green, Xeno Moonflower, Bobbi Rae, DeeLow Diamond Man, Kris Batiste, GG Pender and Paco Troxclair.

With all he has going on, I was curious to hear how Raj Smoove would define his own legacy.

“It’s hard for me to know how people see me. I know how I see myself.

I have all these memories of what I’ve done, and I’m like, ‘Damn that was amazing.’ I’m just looking at what I have next, what’s on the table.” O Raj Smoove and Friends | National Fried Chicken Festival Sunday, September 22, 3:30 p.m.

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Oaxacan mole

diningout relish, dollops of fresh cheese, torn greens, garnish of spiced, crushed peanuts, and grilled bread from Bellegarde Bakery. The seductive combination of robust flavors and texture variations is irresistible, and suddenly we’re spooning the last remnants of what just moments ago seemed like a rather large plate of food. Our attention is captured.

What’s next?

The Preservation Plate consists of pimento cheese, chicken rillettes, hogshead cheese, pickled vegetables, and preserves with crostini—another shareable feast.

There’s Corner Store Crudo, inspired by the salty-sweet, crispycrunchy cultural criss-cross of a Hank’s Market grab-bag; sashimi slices of pristine yellowfin tuna shimmy over a salad of daikon and Asian herbs spiked by a tangy Nuóc chấm vinaigrette sweetened with a splash of Big Shot pineapple soda and garnished with shrimp chips. Crab claws get a Tex-Mex twist, perched over tomatillo salsa and sprinkled with crushed tortilla crisps. Crackling pig ears perch atop a butter lettuce salad that’s tossed with Green Goddess dressing and complemented by the flavor burst of cantaloupe slivers.

Though I was given advanced notice on how incredible the fried chicken livers with plum preserves and shaved foie gras was, I just wasn’t prepared. Several times during the meal I found myself shutting my eyes and hoping I could describe how delicious this food was. It happened again with the blistered shishito peppers and grilled peaches that were enhanced with a pickled pepper vinaigrette, set over a smear of

Palm&Pine Review by Michael Dominici

Photo COURTESY OF PALM & PINE

A

t the open kitchen counter at Palm&Pine, sauté pans and sizzle plates sway to a rhythmic flow as chefs Amarys and Jordan Herdon reveal their story through touch and taste—where clams get a kiss of crispy chicken skins while fire-flashed chanterelles rub up against crunchy corn, jalapeño peppers, mole Amarillo, and maw maw’s backyard figs.

The advent of Palm&Pine is part and parcel of the rough and tumble DYI trajectory of pop-up restaurants in New Orleans. The concept, born out of necessity and passion, began in earnest in the aftermath of Katrina when everything was touch and go. Bacchanal proved to be one of the early incubators, and the trend continued: ranging from latenight taco trucks to one-offs at restaurants on their dark nights, to receptive bars, farmers’ markets, and even the superambitious behemoth, Food Lab. Often, restlessly creative chefs showcased specialty concepts, or just wanted to branch out with ideas and cuisines that didn’t fit into the framework established at their restaurants. Many of these pop-up offshoots morphed into brick

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and mortar restaurants such as Killer Po-Boys, Zasu, 1000 Figs, Pizza Delicious, and most recently, Palm&Pine.

At Susan Spicer’s Bayona, sous chef Amarys Koenig Herdon prepared dishes like Madras curried crawfish with lemongrass rice, mango relish, and crab boilspiced peanuts, as well as grilled salmon with butternut squash and tomatillo escabeche, green rice, and Guajillo créma. Her husband Jordan worked as sous chef at Ralph’s On The Park. They then converged to create more original concepts and even staged spectacular one-offs such as their epic soiree on the Bayou St. John Bridge. The Herdons eventually quit their jobs and partnered with entrepreneur Andrew Principe to establish their brick and mortar enterprise Palm&Pine. Just as they were about to open, they were disrupted by back- to-back flash floods that engendered an outpouring of support. On Facebook, Amarys stated, “We wanted to build a restaurant for our community, but instead our community helped us build a restaurant.” That support and their culinary talent has obviously paid off.

Charred eggplant emerges from the grill as a mound that just barely makes it to an oval plate, where it’s accompanied by chunky tomato

queso fresco and garnished with fried shallots. A Jamaicaninspired goat curry also elicited howls of hedonistic pleasure. Throughout the meal, our server Jessica Muszynski clearly delighted in adding descriptive flourishes as she deftly highlighted the nuances of the dishes. When I inquired about the drunken shrimp she mentioned that it used to be her favorite item on the menu. Then, I glanced over to see that several massive paneéd pork chops were being plated with black-eyed peas and green tomato chowchow.

She said, “That’s my number one now.” Nevertheless, the shrimp were just as amazing in their jalapeño-spiked Mezcal butter over Creole succotash.

Imagine if Uglesich’s relocated to Oaxaca, and you get the picture. Which brings us to the duck tamale with cocoa chili-rubbed duck breast, sweet plantains, and chimichurri set over an Oaxacan mole.

The dessert selection is limited, but outstanding. The chocolate flan with brûléed bananas and sesame brittle was a flavor explosion, and the molasses pie with a scoop of preserved lemon ice cream with blueberries was delightful.

Palm&Pine also offers an abbreviated menu after 11 p.m. that caters to the cravings of service industry warriors. Their Facebook page has every menu they’ve created, so there is a deep catalog of ever-changing items that will reappear and of course, many new creations to look forward to from these truly promising new kids on the block. O Palm & Pine, 308 N. Rampart St., 504-814-6200.

Closed on Tuesday. Hours, 5 p.m. until 1 a.m. except Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. until 2 a.m.

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offeats AMERICAN Poppy’s Time Out Sports Bar & Grill:1 Poydras St., 247-9265 Port of Call: 838 Esplanade Ave., 523-0120

MUSIC ON THE MENU Banks Street Bar & Grill: 4401 Banks St., 486-0258 Buffa’s: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038 Chickie Wah Wah: 2828 Canal St., 304-4714 BARBECUE Gattuso’s: 435 Huey P Long Ave., Gretna, The Joint: 701 Mazant St., 949-3232 368-1114 House of Blues: 225 Decatur St., 412-8068 COFFEE HOUSE Café du Monde: 800 Decatur St., 525-4544 Howlin’ Wolf’s Wolf Den: 907 S. Peters St., 529-5844 Morning Call Coffee Stand: 56 Dreyfous Le Bon Temps Roule: 4801 Magazine St., Dr., 300-1157 895-8117 CREOLE/CAJUN Little Gem Saloon: 445 S. Rampart St., Cochon: 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 588-2123 267-4863 Cornet: 700 Bourbon St., 523-1485 Maison: 508 Frenchmen St., 289-5648 Galatoire’s: 209 Bourbon St., 525-2021 Mid City Lanes Rock ‘N’ Bowl: 4133 S. Gumbo Shop: 630 St. Peter St., 525-1486 Carrollton Ave., 482-3133 New Orleans Creole Cookery: 508 NOLA Cantina: 437 Esplanade Ave., Toulouse St., 524-9632 266-2848 Palm Court: 1204 Decatur St., 525-0200 FINE DINING Rivershack Tavern: 3449 River Rd., 834-4938 Commander’s Palace: 1403 Washington Siberia Lounge: 2227 St. Claude Ave., Ave., 899-8221 265-8865 Josephine Estelle: Ace Hotel, 600 Southport Hall: 200 Monticello Ave., Carondelet St., 930-3070 835-2903 Mr. B’s Bistro: 201 Royal St. 523-2078 Snug Harbor: 626 Frenchmen St., 949-0696 FRENCH Three Muses: 536 Frenchmen St., 298-8746 Café Degas: 3127 Esplanade Ave., 945-5635 NEIGHBORHOOD JOINTS La Crepe Nanou: 1410 Robert St., 899Cake Café: 2440 Chartres St., 943-0010 2670 Dat Dog: 601 Frenchmen St., 309-3362; GERMAN 5030 Freret St., 899-6883; 3336 Bratz Y’all: 617-B Piety St., 301-3222 Magazine St., 324-2226 Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar & Restaurant: GROCERY STORES 701 Tchoupitoulas St., 523-8995 Breaux Mart: 3233 Magazine St., 262-6017; Parkway Bakery and Tavern: 538 Hagan Ave., 2904 Severn Ave. Metarie, 885-5565; 482-3047 9647 Jefferson Hwy. River Ridge, 737Sammy’s Food Services: 3000 Elysian Fields 8146; 315 E Judge Perez, Chalmette, Ave., 948-7361 262-0750; 605 Lapalco Blvd., Gretna, Tracey’s: 2604 Magazine St., 897-5413 433-0333 Mardi Gras Zone: 2706 Royal St., 947-8787 Ye Olde College Inn: 3000 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-3683 INDIAN PIZZA Nirvana: 4308 Magazine St., 894-9797 Midway Pizza: 4725 Freret St., 322-2815 JAPANESE/KOREAN/SUSHI/ Pizza Delicious: 617 Piety St., 676-8482 THAI Slice Pizzeria: 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525Sukho Thai: 4519 Magazine St., 373-6471; 7437 2200 Royal St., 948-9309 Theo’s Pizza: 4218 Magazine St., 894-8554; Wasabi: 900 Frenchmen St., 943-9433 4024 Canal St., 302-1133; 1212 S Clearview, 733-3803 LOUISIANA / SOUTHERN Mondo: 900 Harrison Ave., 224-2633 SEAFOOD Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., Crazy Lobster Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St. 943-3934 569-3380

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MEDITERRANEAN Mona’s Café: 504 Frenchmen St., 949-4115

Deanie’s Seafood: 841 Iberville St., 5811316; 1713 Lake Ave. Metairie, 834-1225

MEXICAN/CARIBBEAN/ SPANISH Barú Bistro & Tapas: 3700 Magazine St., 895-2225 El Gato Negro: 81 French Market Place, 525-9846; 300 Harrison Ave., 488-0107; 800 S Peters St., 309-8804 Juan’s Flying Burrito: 2018 Magazine St., 569-0000

SOUL Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934 VIETNAMESE Namese: 4077 Tulane Ave., 483-8899 WEE HOURS Buffa’s Restaurant & Lounge: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038

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

A Voice that Delights Gras Indian anthem “My Indian Red” gets one of the subtler treatments it’s had; he finds the hymn within the marching song.

On “The Very Thought of You” it’s the sound of his voice that delights; he becomes a muted trumped on the “my love” before the instrumental break. And on “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans”—perhaps the most oft-recorded of all the John Boutté songs here—his high-register a “well tempered” Boutté glide on the line “Wish that I (Independent) were there” says it all about Let’s face it: if an album of John yearning. (Notably he also Boutté singing (mostly) standards pluralizes the last line—“I miss with a jazz trio had turned out to the ones I care for”—maintaining be anything less than magnificent, the post-Katrina content he gave anyone who knows the man’s it on the Treme soundtrack). music would have been surprised.

The gamble of recording the His way with a standard is a calling whole album with only three card by now; most of these songs players pays off, as accompanists have been in his live repertoire for Christopher Todd Duke (guitar), years, and they’re a large part of Nobumasa Ozaki (bass) and Oscar the reason people float out of his Rossignoli (piano) know when to best shows instead of just walking. add subtle shadings and when to So we’re glad to report that step forward and swing. Guitarist this is exactly the album you’d Duke, who passed away soon after expect and hope for. Which is the sessions, carried a lot of the not to say there wasn’t some percussive role with his strumming, art involved in capturing these and added in some standout solos. particular performances: The There’s some especially nice guitar/ trick of making a standards voice interplay on “Little Red album is to make the songs Rooster” one of the few times sound like they were written here when Boutté calls on his last week, and Boutté manages funkier R&B side. that here: it’s no small feat to put True, it would have been nice a thrill of discovery into songs to hear an original song here, this familiar. It’s the delight in since Boutté’s written a local his voice that makes “Fly Me to standard or two himself. But this is above all a singer’s album, and The Moon” fresh again, as he you’re unlikely to hear a better playfully stretches syllables and holds off on the “I love you” until vocal disc this year.

—Brett Milano the song’s very end. The Mardi

New Orleans Jazz Orchestra Songs – The Music of Allen Toussaint (Storyville Records)

In one of those games where you have to guess the name of a song after hearing several notes, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra’s rendition of Allen Toussaint’s lovely “Southern Nights” would prove to be a real stickler. Set to a second line street beat, it could take bars of the song and the entrance of trombonist Michael Watson’s vocals to finally recognize the famous tune.

Later, the big band, led by artistic director Adonis Rose, starts swinging to give it a modern edge that is accentuated by the solos of Watson and saxophonist Ricardo Pascal.

Toussaint’s compositions, “It’s Raining” and “Working in a Coal Mine” are instantly recognizable, though. But because they are arranged for and performed by a large orchestra, they can purposefully stray far from how they were heard when played by a combo. At the start, “Coal Mine” stays true to its signature funky rhythm and the horns

“sing” the lyrics while the piano of Victor Atkins often brings the tune back “home.” To add some humor to this song, which, despite its grim theme, hit-maker Lee Dorsey made funny, the guys in the band shout out the lyrics, “Lord, I’m so tired, how long can this go on?”

Atkins brings the same melodic magic to “Ruler of My Heart” that’s soulfully sung by Nayo Jones. That it begins jumping doesn’t distract from the essence of the tune and Jones gets right into the groove. “With You in Mind” teams vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater and Phillip Manuel performing as a duet. They make it sound as if this song was meant to be sung by a duo.

It’s somewhat disappointing that three of the nine selections on the album are not written

by Toussaint whose songbook overflows with great material.

Songs – The Music of Allen Toussaint boasts the talentpacked, very tight New Orleans Jazz Orchestra sounding great. Its strong theme just cries out for further elaboration.

—Geraldine Wyckoff

U.S. Nero Why Don’t They Cherish the Moon?

(Independent)

Hello friends! Do you have musical ADHD? Do you enjoy torturing/illuminating friends with such famously “difficult” classics as Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica or the first Mr. Bungle album or Shudder to Think’s lost classic Pony Express

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

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Record, Mindless Self Indulgence’s Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, the first two albums by The Dismemberment Plan, or just about anything by Frank Zappa? Well, no need to be bored a minute longer. U.S. Nero’s latest release is a blast of nervous post-punk that gets a lot of mileage out of just over half an hour of run time: experimental rock that turns from gentle to corrosive in a flash and balances its arty tendencies with real balls.

Largely the brainchild of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Michael Kunz and his crack rhythm section, Why Don’t They Cherish the Moon? largely continues the process set forth on earlier releases like their

No one said it would be easy finding converts, but like all the best music, these 10 bursts of post-prog punk (post-punk prog?) eventually reveal their own inner logic on repeat listens. Just don’t expect the patterns to be ordinary ones.

—Robert Fontenot

good use of his mallets. Tonally they complement Dagradi whose baritone again plays a prominent role. This rhythmically textured tune at once suggests a laid back reggae attitude and then lightly swings in a modern mode.

The album goes out with the spirited “On the Savanna” that proves to be a fun way to end the altogether enjoyable Down Time.

—Geraldine Wyckoff

Superb Musicianship Extended Harbinger

(Origin Records)

Tony Dagradi Down Time (Astral Music)

In the late 1980s, Tony Dagradi, who is most recognized blowing sax with Astral Project, played and recorded with the New Orleans Saxophone Ensemble, an all-star group that was modeled after the debut EP Goes Pop And Buys internationally-renowned World Mansions in the Hollywood Hills Saxophone Quartet. It included and the full-length Free Thinker the late Earl Turbinton and Fred (not to mention last year’s Kemp plus baritone saxophonist unlikely single “Plumbers, All of Roger Lewis. Dagradi returned Them,” included here): delicate to that format for his 2014 mope-rock suddenly mutating release, Gemini Rising, though for into monster riffage and back, that outing he played the entire usually in a head-spinny two to range of saxophones—soprano, three minute burst. alto, tenor and baritone—plus “The Truth the Living Know” is added drums. Down Time probably the purest expression of continues that instrumental this antilogic, and thus the easiest concept with Dagradi as a to get your friends into, but the one-man sax section with Brian distortion is matched by a lovely Blade and Stanton Moore taking glockenspiel and admittedly turns behind the drum set. genius lyrics like something out It opens with the leader’s of an insane screamo psychecomposition, “Miles,” a pumpin’ delic version of “Moby Dick”: tune Astral Project fans will “Your pink, candescent harpoon / probably recognize with Moore Reflects the light of the moon / laying down the funk. What Which hangs aloof in the sky / immediately jumps out on this Dull as a loyal servant’s eye.” selection—as well as many OF F B E AT.C OM

throughout the album—is Dagradi’s strength on bari, a horn audiences seldom hear him play. On several ballads, including his originals “Fallen” and “Too Soon” as well as the only non-original, a Dagradi favorite, the beautiful “My One and Only Love,” the saxophonist forgoes the drums for a melodic quietude.

Blade is onboard for the title cut, “Down Time” and makes

Pianist Oscar Rossignoli, bassist Matt Booth and drummer Brad Webb make up the brilliant contemporary jazz trio, Extended. These talented, up-and-coming musicians stunned with the ensemble’s 2017 self-titled debut, and more than live up to those artistic promises on Harbinger.

The all-original selections, each individually penned by the members of the trio, stand as a free-flowing study in the power of dynamics that is perhaps best illustrated on Webb’s “Connie.” The simplicity of the bass and the chord structure of the piano become a passionate extravagance by the entire ensemble. The mood then becomes melancholy in its emptiness and almost hymnal with Rossignoli’s pronounced, deliberate repetitive phrasing. At last it bursts into an exuberant celebration that becomes resolved by the softness of release.

Though swing isn’t a part of these guys’ game, rhythm certainly is. Rossignoli suggests a Latin tinge rhythmically and melodically on another composition by Webb, “Hand-Written Letters,” on which Booth’s beautifully-recorded bass plays a dominant role. Like so many of the tunes, this number builds in intensity with Rossignoli’s insistent piano urging a forward motion. Webb’s drums wildly take up the call.

Bassist Booth offers the first cut, “Sweet Teeth,” that welcomes listeners with a touch of familiarity. Rossignoli’s two-handed dexterity has him in a way accompanying himself with the rhythm of his left hand providing the bottom for his elegantly vivacious single note runs that emanate from the upper end of the keyboard.

The pianist’s own contribution, the title cut, “Harbinger” displays his high regard for melody and the gift of classical training.

Harbinger manifests superb musicianship creatively employed to produce a highly individualized yet collective artistic endeavor that is a privilege to experience.

—Geraldine Wyckoff

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Amadee Castenell Amadee and His Driving Force (Black Rose Records)

Veteran New Orleans master tenor saxophonist and flautist Amadee Castenell’s latest release, Amadee and His Driving Force, finds him and a crack band in familiar territory.

Castenell was a member of Allen Toussaint’s orchestra for many years, and was the musical director of the seminal New Orleans funk band Chocolate Milk. This record is dedicated to and was overseen by his brother André, who tragically died of cancer three months before the album was released.

Throughout the recording, Castenell’s tenor is lyrical with a laid-back yet funky feel that complements impeccable phrasing and his obvious joy in playing. Of the 12 tracks, there are three originals and nine covers, featuring a range of artists including Wham (“Careless Whispers”), Boyz 2 Men (“End Of The Road”), David “Fathead” Newman (“Hard Times”) and more.

The opening track, “Fran’s Song,” sets up a solid groove for Amadee’s typical warm and mellow tone, a solid foundation for a certain tranquility that permeates the entire recording: smooth, but also pop-catchy.

One of the early highlights, “Peruvian Party,” is a Castenell original. It would be enticing to hear Amadee and company mine this territory a little deeper as

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it really provides ample opportunity for everyone to groove.

And speaking of groove, “Black Friday” features a sparse drum and percussion accompaniment that creates a trance-like feel— drawing on the long lineage of New Orleans beats that reach back in time and conjures spirits that have long left this realm. The Sade cover, “Sweetest Taboo,” showcases Castenell on flute, while the pop-jazz standard “Willow Weep For Me” allows Boston-based blues chanteuse Toni Lynn Washington to really shine on vocals.

All in all, Amadee and His Driving Force is what you would expect from one of New Orleans’ premier—albeit largely unheralded—saxophone masters.

His ability to joyfully cover everything from rhythm and blues, funk to rock—with a contemporary jazz groove—is evidence that his free-spirited and New Orleansimbued roots continue to shine and evolve.

—Christopher Weddle

Billy Branch & The Sons of Blues Roots and Branches: The Songs of Little Walter (Alligator Records)

Little Walter, the master of the Hohner, was to the harmonica what Wayne Gretzky was to ice hockey, what Leonardo Da Vinci was to oil painting, what Mark Twain was to American literature, or what Donald Trump is to bullshit.

Although Little Walter Jacobs O F F B E AT. C O M

died tragically in 1968 (he was beaten to death by winos in an alley), his legend and the popularity of his music has risen every year since his passing. His music has inspired thousands of younger harp players from around the world—including Billy Branch. Branch paid his dues in Chicago taverns, participating in weekly “head cutting” sessions with legendary harp men like James Cotton, Junior Wells, Carey Bell and Walter Horton (all of whom once played with Muddy Waters).

This material will be familiar to every blues fans, as it reads like Walter’s catalog: “Juke,” “Last Night,” “Nobody But You,” “Blues With A Feeling,” “You’re So Fine,” “Blues and Lonesome”— you get the picture. There are a few lesser-known Walter classics:

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“It’s Too Late Brother,” “Roller Coaster,” and the politically incorrect “Boom Boom Out Go The Lights.” Branch stays true to Walter’s unique style, which merely requires a doctorate in playing the harmonica. Branch is especially adept at playing the chromatic harp, which adds another dimension to the sound.

The Sons of Blues do a good job, playing the songs properly and laying back far enough to let Branch’s star shine. Roots and Branches concludes with a short interview with Walter’s daughter, which gives us a window into Walter’s family life, a view few fans knew about. Granted, you can’t beat the originals, but Branch plays with tone and with confidence. This is an enjoyable tribute to the great Little Walter.

—Jeff Hannusch

time / Can’t afford to eat!” Tristan screams through a maelstrom of guitar firebombs, toxic feedback and caverns of echo. Most of the tracks that come after are instrumentals, but the sonic attack speaks volumes on its own: this is a necessary ice pick jammed in the ear of the city’s cultural stagnation and banana-republic hipstocracy, and in case some of you were wondering, that’s a compliment.

Guitar Is Dead A Seattle import, Gianola comes Tristan Gianola’s Guitar is Dead by his noise honestly, following the (Accretions) trail blazed by noise-rock and free This album is a giant “fuck jazz icons like Sonny Sharrock, John you” on several levels at once, Zorn, and Bill Laswell; his power beginning with a shrieking trio recorded this aural assault at rap-metal service industry the drummer’s Methodist Church anthem called “Tip Bucket” that in order to maximize the space flips NOLA’s infamous complathey needed to exorcise all those cency (and the oppressive demons at once. Sometimes it feels capitalist grind of the tourist trade) on its ear: “Drunken all the less like an ice pick than a pie in

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the face, like on “Ukulele” (which is gonna irk a lot of millennials making twee Misfits covers on YouTube), and sometimes it’s a guitar history lesson, as with “Bush and Hendricks,” or a distorted jazzguitar clinic on “Melodia” and “Do I Look Fucking Happy?”Taken all together, however, an even better ironic title for this manifesto might be the wicked twist of Track 3, “The City That Always Sleeps.” Not while this is on, it doesn’t.

—Robert Fontenot

Mike Broussard & Nu’Edition Zydeko One Shot (Independent)

Before launching Nu’Edition Zydeko in 2017, Mike Broussard spent years playing guitar and/ or bass for Roy Carrier, Keith Frank, Lil’ Nate, Big Nathan, Wayne Singleton and Chris Ardoin. When it came time to record his debut album, Broussard didn’t have to look far and enlisted cousin Koray Broussard, also an established

Rhythmic and Melodic Big 6 Brass Band Big Six (Independent)

The Big 6 Brass Band is the sound of New Orleans streets today. The ensemble, which was founded in 2017, amazingly played all but about five of the approximately 40 social aid and pleasure clubs Sunday afternoon parades in the 2018-2019 season.

One listen to its debut album, Big Six, makes it easy to understand why it’s so popular, especially with yet another “next generation” of young buckjumpers eager to party down. Its music is hip in its rhythmic attack, forceful with the driving two trombones of Dwayne Finnie and Lamar Heard and often contains relevant lyrics and a stark hip-hop edge. Importantly, the Big 6 do it all with tonally fine ensemble work while seemingly having a ton of fun on all original material.

The album kicks off with trumpeter Chadrick Honore’s “After Party,” that moves with an almost celebratory Caribbean feel that is always welcome on a “line.” The snare accentuates the rhythm and the trumpeter goes a little wild on this tune that boasts a memorable melody that makes it a standout on the recording.

Another solid tune is trumpeter Eric Gordon’s composition “Haters” that opens with the tuba of Clifton Smith. It’s an anthem of sorts musically and a song with a message not unlike the Soul Rebel’s 1995 “Let Your Mind Be Free.” The lyrics offer some strong advice on how to deal with those who might lure one into trouble: “I walk past my haters, I ain’t got no time/I’m trying to get ahead and not behind.”

Clapping and hollering add to the live feel of the sound as heard on “Baby Mama” that, like several cuts, dons an “explicit” warning though why is difficult to detect and trombonist Heard assures that there is “no cussing” on the disc.

Big Six rolls with its street vibe and rhythmic and melodic variations that keep the feet and spirit moving.

—Geraldine Wyckoff

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z-artist, as producer.The resultant disc consists of three covers and a staggering baker’s dozen worth of originals that recall ‘90s punchy nouveau zydeco mixed with today’s keyboard-laced modern zydeco.

As an accordionist, Broussard certainly knows his way around the buttons, deftly alternating between the three-row and singlerow varieties. Listen carefully and occasionally he can be surprisingly funny, such as “Creole & Petty” where his blabbermouth ex says he only lasted five minutes with her. On “Follow Me Down,” he describes the ultimate country party with simmering black pots and eating chicken to the bone.

‘You want another glass? / Drink it until you throw up,’ he sings, a line that can blip by faster than a blink of an eye. Still, “Follow Me Down” and the money-grabbing “Up Life/Run It” are where it comes together the best and are the most fun.

What isn’t so fun is hearing Broussard’s straining voice give out on “When a Woman’s Fed Up.” The background vocals of “I Don’t Want” could also be brighter as they are on “Walk Away.” Still, it’s obvious that Broussard has enough tools to be a long term player more than being just a one-shot artist.

—Dan Willging

Santana Africa Speaks (Concord)

In this 50th anniversary year of Carlos Santana’s star-making

appearance at Woodstock, the Latin-rock maestro burns through his latest album. Featuring Spanish singer Concha Buika as the 71-year-old Santana’s co-pilot, Africa Speaks is both something new for Santana and an affirmation of the explosive Latin-rock-fusion he’s pursued since the 1960s.

Producer Rick Rubin (Johnny Cash,Tom Petty, Public Enemy, Mick Jagger) gives his super-expressive stars full abundant room. Neither Santana nor Buika are at a loss for material. Santana is credited with the album’s conception, arrangements and musical direction. Of course, he composed the music, too, primarily with lead vocalist Buika.

Santana, a career instrumentalist, opens Africa Speaks, setting the scene with a spoken-word intro in the rhapsodic title song. His guitar is his voice, the co-lead voice in Africa Speaks alongside Buika’s neverless-than-passionate, flamencoesque vocals. Santana’s eight-piece, including his drummer wife, Cindy Blackman, and jam-ready organist David K. Mathews, share his and Buika’s seemingly endless fervor.

The raspy-voiced Buika sings in Spanish and English for “Batonga,” a composition and performance in the fiery vein of “Soul Sacrifice”-era Santana. “Oye Este Mi Canto,” like the latter classic Santana instrumental, opens softly before bursting with Buika’s vocals, Santana’s stinging guitar and the band’s intensely active rhythm section.

Sensuous Latin jazz and English lyrics meet in “Blue Skies,” a nearly O F F B E AT. C O M

10-minute-long selection that’s showcases Buika. Santana holds his guitar fire, accompanying the singer until the song breaks into a ‘60s, psychedelic-rock jam. “Breaking Down the Door” and its call-andresponse vocals take an AfroCuban direction.

As engaged as Santana is in Africa Speaks, Buika may be an even bigger presence. She’s earnest, passionate and almost never below maximum force. It sounds as if Rubin never restrained her or the likewise effusive Santana.They

become too much of a good thing.

Listeners get a break from the eventually exhausting expressivity, though, via some musical diversity.

“Yo Me Lo Merezco,” unlike anything else on the album, takes a surprising classic-rock direction.

“Paraisos Quemados” grooves forth on funky rhythm guitar straight out of a Prince record.

Africa Speaks goes overboard at times, but Santana and Buika, two musical forces of nature, ultimately prove they have nothing to prove.

—John Wirt

Capturing the Spirit of a Live Performance Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band The Traveler (KWS / Concord)

It’s been nearly 25 years since Kenny Wayne Shepherd burst onto the music scene.

In that time he has covered a lot of territory and has firmly established himself as not only an amazing guitar player, but also a compelling songwriter. With the release of The Traveler, it’s evident that Shepherd has grown comfortable with his musical evolution. Joining in are long-time collaborators Noah Hunt (vocals), Chris “Whipper” Layton (drums), Kevin McCormick (bass), and Jimmy McGorman and Joe Krown (keyboards). Adding to the mix are Joe Sublett (saxophone) and Mark Pender (trumpet).

It’s often hard for a band that makes its living on the road to bring that same intensity into the studio; however, the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band is able to capture the spirit of their live performances throughout The Traveler. The opening track “Woman Like You” sets the tone for the record with a confident rock steady groove and swagger from a band that is clearly firing on all cylinders. For further proof one need only listen to the incendiary cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “Mr. Soul.” “Long Time Running” and “Gravity” showcase a slow heavy groove that hits hard and deep reminiscent of Gov’t Mule.

Of course Shepherd’s guitar playing is front and center throughout The Traveler. Like fine wine, his tone has aged gracefully. Unlike many talented guitar players, Shepherd doesn’t try to be flashy but uses his talents in the service of the song, a lesson learned through years on the road. “Take It On Home” showcases this as he plays with the kind of feeling that cannot be faked. His playing is perfectly matched to the lyrics. Shepherd’s bread and butter, though, is the blues and “I Want You” highlights his love and respect for the genre, the music that clearly informs his playing.

—Christopher Weddle

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express These listings are abbreviated. For complete daily listings, go to offbeat.com.

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

AF African AM Americana BL Blues BU Bluegrass BO Bounce BB Brass Band BQ Burlesque KJ Cajun CL Classical CR Classic Rock CO Comedy CW Country CB Cover Band DN Dance DX Dixieland DB Dubstep EL Electro FO Folk

FK Funk GS Gospel GY Gypsy HH Hip-Hop HS House IN Indian Classical ID Indie Rock IL Industrial IR Irish JB Jam Band MJ Jazz Contemporary TJ Jazz Traditional JV Jazz Variety KR Karaoke KZ Klezmer LT Latin MG Mardi Gras Indian ME Metal

FRIDAY AUGUST 30 Buffa’s: Marc St. Cyr (JV) 6p, Mike Doussan (VR) 9p Café Negril: Dana Abbott (VR) 6p, Higher Heights (RE) 10p d.b.a.: Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses (JV) 6p, Michot’s Melody Makers, Corey Ledet (KJ) 10p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Jake Landry and the Right Lane Bandits (FO) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, Beth Patterson (FO) 9p NOLA Cantina: Chance Bushman’s Rhythm Stompers (BL) 6p, Jay Anderson and the Night Trippers (BL) 9:30p Smoothie King Center: Backstreet Boys (PO) 8p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Dana Abbott (JV) 2p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (BL) 6p, the Rhythm Stompers (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Cake: A Party During Southern Decadence (VR) 10p Three Muses: Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Free Fridays feat. Cowboy Mouth, Daria and the Hip Drops (RK) 10p

SATURDAY AUGUST 31 Buffa’s: Connections with Darcy Malone and guest (VR) 6p, Cole Williams (VR) 9p Café Negril: Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 6p, Higher Heights (RE) 10p d.b.a.: New Orleans Jazz Vipers (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 11p

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RB Modern R&B PO Pop PK Punk RE Reggae RC Rockabilly RK Rock RR Roots Rock SS Singer/Songwriter SK Ska PI Solo Piano SO Soul SW Spoken Word SP Swamp Pop SI Swing VR Variety ZY Zydeco

Fillmore: Randy Rainbow Live (CO) 6p Kerry Irish Pub: Dave Hickey (FO) 5p,Van Hudson and Paul Ferguson (FO) 9p New Orleans Creole Cookery: Ed Barrett Trio (JV) 6p NOLA Cantina: Dan Ruch Quartet (JV) 6p, Dave Hammer Quartet (JV) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Herlin Riley Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Jazz Band Ballers (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p,Vegas Cola (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Cake: A Party During Southern Decadence (VR) 10p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p, Julie Williams (JV) 6p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Rebirth Brass Band (BB) 10p WYES Paulette and Frank Stewart Innovation Center for Educational Media:WYES’ Boots, Beer and BBQ feat.

Wayward Jones (CW) 11:30a

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 1 30/90:Tiffany Pollack (JV) 11a,Truman Holland and the Back Porch Review (SS) 2p, Carolyn Broussard (SS) 5p,T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Alto (Ace Hotel): Cake: Franky Canga presents Sun’s Out Buns Out (VR) 3p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, the Pfister Sisters (JV) 4p Café Negril: Ecirb Muller’s Twisted Dixie (JV) 6p,Vegas Cola (JV) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Cole Williams (SO) 6p, Bon Bon Vivant (SI) 9p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (JV) 6p,

Find complete listings at offbeat.com—when you’re out, use offbeat.com/mobile for full listings on any cell phone.

Slugger (VR) 10p Fillmore: Drag Diva Brunch (VR) 10:30a, One Nation Under A Groove feat. George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, Dumpstaphunk, George Porter Jr., Miss Velvet and the Blue Wolf (FK) 7p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p Howlin’ Wolf (the Porch): Supreme of the Wu-Tang Clan (HH) 10p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge:TBC Brass Band (BB) 6p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p NOLA Cantina: ACE Brass Band (BB) 7p One Eyed Jacks: Queer As Fuck: A Decadent Dance Party (VR) 9p Smoothie King Center: Charlie Wilson (SS) 7:30p Snug Harbor: Jason Marsalis and BGQ Exploration (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Aurora Nealand and the Reed Minders (JV) 2p, Robin Barnes and the FiyaBirds (JV) 7p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, the Clementines (JV) 8p

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 2 30/90: Dapper Dandies (TJ) 5p, New Orleans Super Jam presented by Gene Harding (VR) 9p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay and Charlie Wooton (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (VR) 8p Café Negril: Maid of Orleans (VR) 6p Carnaval Lounge: Comic Strip (CO) 9p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: John Lisi and Delta Funk (FK) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 10p Three Muses: St. Louis Slim (JV) 5p, Sam Cammarata (JV) 7p

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 3 30/90: Set Up Kings (RB) 5p, In Business (FK) 9p Buffa’s:Tacos,Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 7p Café Negril: Marla Dixon Band (VR) 6p, Diamond Dick Gorilla and the Swingin’

Vibes (VR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Beast (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Joy Theater: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, ORB, Stonefield (RK) 8:30p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Big 6 Brass Band (BB) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: Dr. Sick and the Master Shredders (BL) 7p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel):Tech Tuesdays: Hack Night (VR) 7p

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 4 30/90: Justin Donovan (BL) 5p, Mi’chel Rose (RB) 9p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 6p, Luscious Duchess (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: David Roe (SS) 6p, Blue Tang People (FK) 9p Carousel Bar (Hotel Monteleone): James Martin Band (JV) 8:30p d.b.a.:Tin Men (BL) 7p,Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p House of Blues (the Parish): Atilla, Hollow City, Rogue (ME) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Black Tusk, Cloak (ME) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Big Sam’s Crescent City Connection (FK) 8:30p Kajun’s Pub: Karaoke (KR) 5p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Creole String Beans (SI) 8p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p,Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 7p

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 5 30/90: Dave Easley (JV) 5p, Soul Project (FK) 9p, DJ Trill Skill (VR) 10p Buffa’s: Debbie Davis and Josh Paxton (JV) 5p, Connections with Darcy Malone and O F F B E AT. C O M

guest (JV) 8p Café Negril: Claude Bryant and the AllStars (VR) 6p, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Mark Rubin and friends (RK) 6p, Salt Wives (GY) 9p d.b.a.: Jessie Tripp and the Nightbreed (RK) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub:Vincent Marini (FO) 8:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Ogden After Hours feat. Davis Rogan (PI) 6p Snug Harbor: the Extended Trio CDrelease show (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Sal Geloso Trio (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Tableau:WWOZ Groove Gala feat. Irma Thomas ,Lena Prima, Amanda Shaw, Storyville Stompers, Doreen Ketchens, Gerald French, John “Papa” Gros, Al “Lil’ Fats” Jackson (VR) 6:30p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Harlequeen presents Honor Thy Mother (VR) 9p Three Muses:Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Arsene DeLay (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: the Motet (VR) 9p

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 6 30/90: Jonathan Bauer Project (MJ) 2p, Marina Orchestra (RK) 5p, Mofongo (LT) 8p, DJ Dot Dunnie (VR) 10p, Gene’s Music Machine (FK) 11p Buffa’s: Davis Rogan (VR) 6p, Looks Here!

(VR) 9p Café Negril: Shawn Williams (VR) 2p, Dana Abbott Band (VR) 6p, Higher Heights (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Secondhand Street Band (BB) 6p,Trench Digger, Eat the Witch, Death Ed (ME) 9p Carousel Bar (Hotel Monteleone): James Martin Band (JV) 9p Champions Square: Chris Young (CW) 7:30p d.b.a.: Swinging Gypsies (JV) 6p, Dave Jordan and the NIA,Tom Leggett Band (RR) 10p Fillmore: Daniel Caesar (VR) 7p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Thymios (FO) 6p House of Blues: Bustout Burlesque feat. Dylan Torrance and the Bustout Burlesque Jazz Band (BQ) 8p Howlin’ Wolf: Deep Fat Fried Podcast (CO) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, Beth Patterson (FO) 9p Marigny Opera House: Lilli Lewis Project OF F B E AT.C OM

CD-release show (SO) 8p NOLA Cantina: Chance Bushman’s Rhythm Stompers (BL) 6p, Jay Anderson and the Night Trippers (FK) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 6p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 10p Starlight: Or Shorlay (JV) 4p, Michael Watson and the Alchemy (JV) 7p, Second Hand String Band (JV) 9p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Big Easy Brawlers (BB) 8:30p Three Muses: Royal Roses (JV) 5:30p Tipitina’s: Free Friday feat. John “Papa” Gros, Darcy Malone and the Tangle (VR) 10p

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 7 30/90: Martin Moretto Quintet (LT) 11a, Jacks and Sparrows (RK) 2p, Sleazeball Orchestra (JV) 5p, Big Mike and the R&B Kings (RB) 8p, DJ Torch (VR) 10p, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (SO) 11p Ace Hotel (Lobby): DJ Soul Sister (FK) 11:30p Buffa’s: Charlie Wooton (VR) 6p, Greg Schatz (VR) 9p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 2p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (VR) 6p, Higher Heights (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Leslie Cooper (VR) 6p d.b.a.: Meschiya Lake (JV) 7p, Little Freddie King (BL) 11p Fillmore: Lizzo (PO) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): Passafire, Ballyhoo! (RK) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: DJ Smoke A Lot (VR) 4:20p, Neshia Ruffins (RB) 9p Kerry Irish Pub:Will Dickerson (FO) 5p, Paul Ferguson (FO) 9p NOLA Cantina: Secondhand Street Band (JV) 6p, Dave Hammer (RK) 9:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Odgen Museum’s Family Day feat. Ever More Nest (FO) 10a Snug Harbor: Quiana Lynell (BL) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Antoine Diel and Arsene DeLay (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, the Catahoulas (JV) 10p Starlight: Heidijo (JV) 4p, Helen Rose and Air-Cool Jenny (VR) 8p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Big Easy Brawlers (BB) 8:30p Three Muses: Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Galactic’s Back to School Night (VR) 10p UNO Lakefront Arena: Lil’ Weezyanna Fest (HH) 2p SEPTEMBER 2019

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express SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 8 30/90: Saint Mercedes (SS) 11a, Set Up Kings (RB) 2p,Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (FK) 5p,T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Molly Reeves and Nahum Zdybel (CL) 4p, Steve Pistorius Jazz Quartet (JV) 7p Café Negril: Colin Davis and the Night People (JV) 6p,Vegas Cola (JV) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Frenchie Moe (BL) 6p, Lady Baby Miss and the Tigermen (SS) 9p Carver Theater: Afternoon of Jazz and Gospel feat. Rickie Monie, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Jesse McBride, Ronnie Kole, Bridget Bazile and others (GS) 3p Central City BBQ: School of Rock presents Woodstock 50 (RK) 1p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (JV) 6p, Caesar Brothers’ Funk Box with Big Chief Juan Pardo (FK) 10p Fillmore: Drag Diva Brunch (VR) 10:30a, Lizzo (PO) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): Brian Courtney Wilson (GS) 7p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge:TBC Brass Band (BB) 6p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8p NOLA Cantina: ACE Brass Band (BB) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat.Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat.Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Royal Frenchmen Hotel: Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 8p Snug Harbor: Jason Marsalis and BGQ Exploration (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: John Lisi and Delta Funk (JV) 2p, Michael Watson and the Alchemy (JV) 7p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, the Clementines (JV) 8p

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 9 30/90: Margie Perez (SO) 5p, New Orleans Super Jam presented by Gene Harding (VR) 9p Buffa’s: Saints Season Opener (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (VR) 8p Café Negril: Noggin (VR) 6p, Soul Project NOLA (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Comic Strip (CO) 9p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Kajun’s Pub: Karaoke (KR) 5p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Saints on the Big Screen (FO) 6p NOLA Cantina: John Lisi and Delta Funk (FK) 7p

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Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Swing Night with DJ Twiggs (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Rhythm Stompers (JV) 10p Starlight:Willie Martin (JV) 5p,Theo Grizol, Amelia Neville, Ajäi (FO) 8p Three Keys (Ace Hotel):Too Trill Trivia with Eric and Terri (VR) 6p Three Muses: Keith Burnstein (VR) 5p Tipitina’s: Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (KJ) 5:30p

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 10 30/90: Mem Shannon and the Membership Band (BL) 5p, Ed Wills and Blues4Sale (BL) 9p Buffa’s: Mike Doussan Cooks and Rocks (VR) 7p Café Negril: Marla Dixon Band (VR) 6p, Diamond Dick Gorilla and the Swingin’ Vibes (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge:Transiberian Nightmare Drag Show (VR) 9p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p,Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Ellis Marsalis Center For Music: Big Al Carson (BL) 6p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Beast (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Big 6 Brass Band (BB) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: Dr. Sick and the Master Shredders (BL) 7p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel):Tech Tuesdays: Hack Night (VR) 7p

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 11 30/90: Justin Donovan (BL) 5p, Big Mike and the R&B Kings (RB) 9p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 6p, Luscious Duchess (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Meryl Zimmerman (SS) 6p, Slugs (ID) 9p d.b.a.:Tin Men (RK) 7p,Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Green Gasoline, the Hollow Roots, GOOLS (RK) 8p O F F B E AT. C O M

Howlin’ Wolf: the Great Love Debate with Brian Howie (CO) 8p Jazz Playhouse: Big Sam’s Crescent City Connection (FK) 8:30p Kajun’s Pub: Karaoke (KR) 5p Kerry Irish Pub: Hugh Morrison (FO) 8:30p Loa Bar: NOLAmericana Songwriter Series feat. Lynn Drury and Michael Cerveris (FO) 6p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Lars Edegran and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel):Think Less Hear More (VR) 8:30p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Band of Skulls, Demob Happy (VR) 9p

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 12 30/90: Andy J. Forest (BL) 5p, Smoke N Bones (FK) 9p, DJ Fresh (VR) 10p Buffa’s: Marc Stone (BL) 5p, Haruka Kikuchi and the Big 4tune (JV) 8p Café Negril: Claude Bryant and the AllStars (VR) 6p, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Josh Paxton (PI) 6p, Kuwaisiana (ID) 9p d.b.a.: Michael Cerveris and Loose Cattle (VR) 7p, Lacher Prise avec Michael Doucet (KJ) 10p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Sleazeball Orchestra (JV) 6p House of Blues: Glen Hansard, OHMME (FO) 6:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Joy Theater: Flying Lotus, Brandon Coleman Spacetalker, Salami Rose Joe Louis, PBDY (EL) 9p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (FK) 11p One Eyed Jacks: Mdou Moctar, Boogarins (VR) 7p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Duke Heitger and Tim Laughlin with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Grayson Brockamp and the New Orleans Wildlife Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Sal Geloso Trio (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses:Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Mia Borders (BL) 8p OF F B E AT.C OM

Tipitina’s: Jason Neville’s Funky Soul Band with Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and Big Chief John (FK) 10p

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13 30/90: Jeremy Joyce (BL) 2p, Jon Roniger and the Good For Nothin’ Band (JV) 5p, Carolyn Broussard (SS) 8p, DJ Dot Dunnie (VR) 10p, Deltaphonic (FK) 11p Buffa’s: Dayna Kurtz and Robert Mache (VR) 6p,Tiffany Pollack and Josh Wexler (VR) 9p Café Negril: Shawn Williams (VR) 2p, Dana Abbott Band (VR) 6p, Higher Heights (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Arsene DeLay (RK) 6p, Hydra Plane, Primpce, Luge (RK) 9p d.b.a.: Meschiya Lake (JV) 6p, Egg Yolk Jubilee, Norco Lapalco (RK) 10p House of Blues: New Orleans Burlesque Festival: Mondo Burlesque (BQ) 7 & 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Go By Ocean, Baby Boy Bartels and the Boys (ID) 10p Jazz Playhouse: Shannon Powell Jazz Quartet (JV) 7:30p,Trixie Minx’s Burlesque Ballroom feat. Romy Kaye (BQ) 11p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, Stephen’s Green with Andy O’Driscoll and Martin Doyle (FO) 9p Marigny Recording Studio: An Intimate Evening at Luthjen’s feat. John Boutte (JV) 6:30p NOLA Cantina: Chance Bushman’s Rhythm Stompers (BL) 6p, Jay Anderson and the Night Trippers (BL) 9:30p One Eyed Jacks: Lost Bayou Ramblers 20th Anniversary Live Album and Documentary Release (KJ) 9p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Lucien Barbarin and Kevin Louis with Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Shannon McNally, Roddie Romero and Hub City All-Stars (VR) 9p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, Dr. Brice Miller and Buku NOLA (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): the Living Room Experience (JV) 9:30p Three Muses: Matt Johnson (JV) 5:30p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: DJ Soul Sister’s Birthday Jam feat. Mannie Fresh (FK) 10p

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 14 30/90: Jonathan Bauer Project (MJ) 11a, Organami (JV) 2p,Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (FK) 5p, Crooked Vines (PO) 8p, DJ Trill Skill (VR) 10p, Soul Project (FK) 11p Ace Hotel (Lobby): Dashiki Diaries (VR) 5p SEPTEMBER 2019

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express Buffa’s: Freddie Blue and the Friendship Circle (VR) 6p, John Fohl feat.Tiffany Pollack (BL) 9p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 2p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (VR) 6p, Another Day in Paradise (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 6p, Lynn Drury (FO) 9p d.b.a.:Tuba Skinny (JV) 7p, Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall: Mark Mullins (JV) 6:30p House of Blues (the Parish): Loumuzik (HH) 8p House of Blues: New Orleans Burlesque Festival: the Queen of Burlesque feat.

Naydja CoJoe (BQ) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Dusty Diets and the Double Down, Disco Risque, Angie Maudlin (VR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf: Rhea Butcher (CO) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: DJ Smoke A Lot (VR) 4:20p, Neshia Ruffins (RB) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule (FO) 5p, Van Hudson and Paul Ferguson (FO) 9p NOLA Cantina: Alicia Renee AKA Blue Eyes (JV) 6p, Dave Hammer (RK) 9:30p One Eyed Jacks: Planchettes, the Painted Hands,Waste Man (PK) 9p Palm Court Jazz Cafe:Will Smith and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Donald Harrison Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 2p, Rhythm Stompers (JV) 6p, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): AfroXotica with Andrea Peoples, DJ Ojay, Kodjo (VR) 11:59p Three Muses: Debbie Davis (JV) 5:30p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15 30/90: Smoking Time Jazz Club (TJ) 11a, Truman Holland and the Back Porch Review (SS) 2p, Carolyn Broussard (SS) 5p, Chris Klein and the Boulevards (BL) 9p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Saints Game (VR) 3p Café Negril: Ecirb Muller’s Twisted Dixie (JV) 6p,Vegas Cola (JV) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Lilli Lewis Project (BL) 6p, Natalie Cris (SS) 9p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Deltaphonic (FK) 10p Fillmore: Drag Diva Brunch (VR) 10:30a Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge:TBC Brass Band (BB) 6p

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Kerry Irish Pub: Betsy McGovern and Patrick O’Flaherty (FO) 7p NOLA Cantina: ACE Brass Band (BB) 7p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat.Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat.Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Andre Bohren and Harry Hardin (JV) 10p Spotted Cat: Giselle Anguizola and the New Orleans Swinging Gypsies (JV) 2p, Robin Barnes and the FiyaBirds (JV) 7p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, the Clementines (JV) 8p

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 16 30/90: Dapper Dandies (JV) 5p, New Orleans Super Jam presented by Gene Harding (VR) 9p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay and Charlie Wooton (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (VR) 8p Café Negril: Noggin (VR) 6p, Soul Project NOLA (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Conor Donohue and Trent Pruitt (SS) 5p, Comic Strip (CO) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p Jazz Playhouse: Gerald French and the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Kajun’s Pub: Karaoke (KR) 5p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (SO) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Swing Night with DJ Twiggs (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Movement Mondays with Resistance Radio and Chinua (VR) 5p Three Muses: St. Louis Slim (JV) 5p, Joe Cabral (JV) 8p

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 17 30/90: Set Up Kings (RB) 5p, In Business (FK) 9p Ace Hotel (Lobby): Sinking City Selects (VR) 8p Buffa’s:Treme Tuesdays with Walter “Wolfman” Washington (BL) 7p Café Negril: Marla Dixon Band (VR) 6p, Diamond Dick Gorilla and the Swingin’ Vibes (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Coliseum Street (RK) 9p

d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p,Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Fillmore: In This Moment (ME) 5:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: Georgi Petrov Quartet CD-release show (MJ) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Beast (CO) 8:30p Jazz Playhouse: James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Big 6 Brass Band (BB) 7p Kerry Irish Pub:Will Dickerson (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: Dr. Sick and the Master Shredders (BL) 7p Snug Harbor: Geovane Santos Trio Tribute to João Gilberto (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Tipitina’s:Whitney, Hand Habits (VR) 9p

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 18 30/90: Justin Donovan (BL) 5p, Marc Stone Band (BL) 9p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 6p, Luscious Duchess (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: KatieCat and Cain Bossa Nova Love (LT) 6p, Josh Benitez Band (FK) 9p d.b.a.:Tin Men (RK) 7p,Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Karaoke (VR) 6p Kerry Irish Pub: Anton O’Donnell and Hugh Morrison (FO) 8:30p Loa Bar: NOLAmericana Songwriter Series feat. Lynn Drury and Mikayla Braun (FO) 6p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Lars Edegran and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): SONO presents Shape of Jazz to Come (JV) 9p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Schatzy (JV) 7p

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 19 30/90: Andy J. Forest (BL) 5p, Raw Deal (FK) 9p, DJ Fresh (VR) 10p Buffa’s: Michael Burkart’s Les Syncopators De Bayou Jazz Trio (JV) 5p,Tom McDermott and Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Café Negril: Claude Bryant and the All-

Stars (VR) 6p, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Josh Paxton (PI) 6p, Ron Hotstream and the Mid-City Drifters (RC) 9p d.b.a.: Little Freddie King (BL) 10p Gasa Gasa: Shane Smith and the Saints (FO) 9p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Brother Dege (SS) 6p House of Blues: Candlebox (RK) 7p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Ogden After Hours feat. Joy Clark (SS) 6p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Duke Heitger and Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl:Terry and the Zydeco Bad Boys (ZY) 8p Snug Harbor: Christien Bold and Soul Swing (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Sal Geloso Trio (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses:Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Arsene DeLay (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Homegrown Night feat. Sandra Love and the Reason, LYON, Baby Boy Bartels and the Boys (VR) 8:30p Vaughan’s Lounge: Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet (FK) 10:30p

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 20 30/90: Kettle Black (SS) 2p, Jonathan Bauer Project (MJ) 5p, Simple Sound Retreat (PO) 8p, DJ Dot Dunnie (VR) 10p, Smoke N Bones (FK) 11p Buffa’s: Calvin Johnson and Native Son (JV) 6p, Hannah KB Band (VR) 9p Café Negril: Shawn Williams (VR) 2p, Dana Abbott Band (VR) 6p, Higher Heights (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Lilli Lewis Project (BL) 6p, Cricket Selecky and the 2:19 (RR) 9p Carver Theater: Friday Night Stand-up hosted by Rob Kazi and Maegan Rachel (CO) 8p d.b.a.: Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 6p, Pine Leaf Boys (KJ) 10p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Jake Landry and the Right Lane Bandits (RK) 7p House of Blues: Daniela Mercury (LT) 7p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Supercharmer, Anne Elise Hastings andh er Revolving Cast of Characters (RK) 10p Joy Theater: Dr. Dude’s Masquerade Parade feat. the Iceman Special and members of Naughty Professor (FK) 8p Kerry Irish Pub:Tim Robertson (FO) 5p, Vincent Marini (FO) 9p O F F B E AT. C O M

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express New Orleans Jazz Museum (Old U.S. Mint): Leroy Jones (JV) 7p NOLA Cantina: Chance Bushman’s Rhythm Stompers (BL) 6p, Jay Anderson and the Night Trippers (FK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Kevin Louis and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 6p, Shake ‘Em Up Jazz Band (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Late Night Snacks with G-Cue (VR) 10p Three Muses: Royal Roses (JV) 5:30p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes (FK) 10p

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 21 30/90: Martin Moretto Quintet (LT) 11a, Adam Crochet and the Tender Figs (FO) 2p,Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (FK) 5p,Vance Orange (FK) 8p, DJ Torch (VR) 10p, Big Easy Brawlers (BB) 11p Abita Springs Town Hall: Abita Springs Opry feat. Steve Anderson Group, Little Freddie King,Tuba Skinny, the Zion Harmonizers (VR) 7p Buffa’s:Tchopsley (VR) 6p, Marina Orchestra (VR) 9p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 2p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (VR) 6p, Soul Brass Band (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Alex McMurray (SS) 6p, Pobre Pobre, Bayou Bullets, Soft Animal (ID) 9p House of Blues: Eluveitie, Korpiklaani, Gone in April (ME) 6p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Danielle Nicole (BL) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Pancake and Booze Art Show (VR) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: DJ Smoke A Lot (VR) 4:20p, Neshia Ruffins (RB) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Mike Kerwin and Geoff Coats (FO) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (FO) 9p Mahalia Jackson Theater: Eddie Griffin (CO) 7:30p NOLA Cantina: Baby Boy Bartels and the Boys (JV) 6p, Dave Hammer (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Cafe:Will Smith and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Lillian Axe (VR) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Dr. Lonnie Smith (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Russell Welch’s Band (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): La Noche Caliente with Muevelo and Mambo

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Orleans (LT) 10p Three Muses: Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 22 30/90: Carolyn Broussard (SS) 11a, Set Up Kings (RB) 2p,Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (FK) 5p,T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Steve Pistorius Jazz Quartet (JV) 7p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (JV) 6p,Vegas Cola (JV) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Anna Laura Quinn (SS) 6p, Sandra Love and the Reason (SO) 9p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (JV) 4p Fillmore: Drag Diva Brunch (VR) 10:30a Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p Howlin’ Wolf: Nonpoint (ME) 7p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge:TBC Brass Band (BB) 6p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p NOLA Cantina: ACE Brass Band (BB) 7p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters (TJ) 7p Preservation Hall: Preservation Legacy Band feat.Will Smith (TJ) 5p, Preservation All-Stars feat.Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Jason Marsalis and BGQ Exploration (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (JV) 2p, Robin Barnes and the FiyaBirds (JV) 7p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, the Clementines (JV) 8p

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 23 30/90: Margie Perez (SO) 5p, New Orleans Super Jam presented by Gene Harding (VR) 9p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay and Charlie Wooton (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (VR) 8p Café Negril: Noggin (VR) 6p, Soul Project NOLA (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Dick Deluxe (FO) 5p, Comic Strip (CO) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub:Will Dickerson (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: John Lisi and Delta Funk (FK) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Rhythm Stompers (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Simple Play Networking Happy Hour (VR) 5p

Three Muses: Bart Ramsey (JV) 5p

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 24 30/90: Mem Shannon and the Membership Band (BL) 5p, Ed Wills and Blues4Sale (BL) 9p Buffa’s: Gerald French and Bury the Hatchet (MG) 7p Café Negril: Marla Dixon Band (VR) 6p, Diamond Dick Gorilla and the Swingin’ Vibes (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge:Transiberian Nightmare Drag Show (VR) 9p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p,Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Fillmore: the Head and the Heart (ID) 7p House of Blues: Big K.R.I.T. (HH) 7p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Beast (CO) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Porch): Dan LaMorte (CO) 8p Joy Theater: Suicide Girls: Blackheart Burlesque (BQ) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Big 6 Brass Band (BB) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: Dr. Sick and the Master Shredders (BL) 7p Saenger Theatre: Deep Purple, Joyous Wolf (VR) 7:30p Snug Harbor:Tom McDermott plays Tom McDermott (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel):Tech Tuesdays: Hack Night (VR) 7p

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 25 30/90: Justin Donovan (BL) 5p, Big Mike and the R&B Kings (RB) 9p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 6p, Luscious Duchess (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge:Tiffany Pollack and Co. (SS) 6p, Afrodiziac’s Jazz (JV) 9p d.b.a.:Tin Men (RK) 7p,Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Shawan Rice (SO) 6p House of Blues (the Parish): Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers (ID) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Lars Edegran and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Uptown Jazz Orchestra with Delfeayo Marsalis (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel

and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Joy Patterson and Matt Bell (JV) 8p

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26 30/90: Andy J. Forest (BL) 5p, Smoke N Bones (FK) 9p, DJ Fresh (VR) 10p Buffa’s:Yvette Voelker and Harry Mayronne (JV) 5p,Tom McDermott and Matt Perrine (JV) 9p Café Negril: Claude Bryant and the AllStars (VR) 6p, Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Mark Rubin and friends (RK) 6p, Jeremy Joyce (SS) 9p d.b.a.: Sarah Quintana Trio (SS) 7p House of Blues (Foundation Room):Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (JV) 6p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Comedy Gumbeaux (CO) 8:30p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub:Vincent Marini (FO) 8:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Ogden After Hours feat. Kevin Gordon (SS) 6p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Leroy Jones and Katja Toivola with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Leroy Thomas and Zydeco Road Runners (ZY) 8p Snug Harbor: Alexey Marti Quartet (JV) 8 & 10pp Spotted Cat: Sal Geloso Trio (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses:Tom McDermott (PI) 5p, Mia Borders (BL) 8p Tipitina’s: Drive-By Truckers, Jimbo Mathus (VR) 9p Vaughan’s Lounge: Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet (FK) 10:30p

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 27 30/90: Old Riley and the Water (BL) 2p, Organami (JV) 5p, Sleazeball Orchestra (JV) 8p, DJ Trill Skill (VR) 10p, Soul Project (FK) 11p Buffa’s: Michael Burkart’s Les Syncopators De Bayou Jazz Trio (JV) 6p, HG Breland (VR) 9p Café Negril: Shawn Williams (VR) 2p, Dana Abbott Band (VR) 6p, Higher Heights (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: St. Roch Syncopators (TJ) 6p,Turbine 6 (RC) 9p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers (ZY) 10p Dmac’s: Hyperphlyy (CW) 8p Fillmore: Kacey Musgraves (PO) 7p House of Blues: Calexico, Iron and Wine feat. Natalie Prass (FO) 8p O F F B E AT. C O M

Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Pocket Chocolate (RK) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Hugh Morrison (FO) 5p, Van Hudson (FO) 9p NOLA Cantina: Chance Bushman’s Rhythm Stompers (BL) 6p, Jay Anderson and the Night Trippers (BL) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Lucien Barbarin and Kevin Louis with Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, Soul Brass Band (JV) 10p Three Keys (Ace Hotel): Brass and Beats: Kings of Brass and Raj Smoove (BB) 8:30p Three Muses: Matt Johnson (JV) 5:30p, Doro Wat Jazz Band (JV) 9p

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 28 30/90: Jonathan Bauer Project (MJ) 11a,Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (FK) 2p, Simple Sound Retreat (PO) 5p, Deltaphonic (FK) 8p, DJ Torch (VR) 10p, Big Easy Brawlers (BB) 11p Ace Hotel (Lobby): DJ RQ Away presents Happy Feelins (VR) 11p Buffa’s: Paul Sanchez (VR) 6p, Cole Williams (VR) 9p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (VR) 2p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (VR) 6p, Khris Royal and Dark Matter (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Royal Rounders (VR) 6p, Micah McKee, Baby Grand, LLYDIAN, Renshaw Davies (RK) 9p d.b.a.:Tuba Skinny (JV) 7p, Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p Fillmore: Kacey Musgraves (PO) 7p House of Blues (Foundation Room): Cosma Dog (PK) 7p House of Blues (the Parish): As Cities Burn, Handout (ME) 7p House of Blues: Bad Religion, Dave Hause and the Mermaid, Emily Davis (PK) 7p Howlin’ Wolf:Vicki Barbolak (CO) 7p, Fatboy SSE,Wordplay (HH) 9p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: DJ Smoke A Lot (VR) 4:20p, Neshia Ruffins (RB) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Dave Hickey (FO) 5p, Paintbox with Dave James and Tim Robertson (FO) 9p Music Box Village: Snarky Puppy (VR) 7p NOLA Cantina: Alicia Renee AKA Blue Eyes (JV) 6p, Dave Hammer (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Cafe:Will Smith and Palm Court Jazz Band (TJ) 7p Saenger Theatre: 70s Soul Jam feat. the Stylistics, Delfonics, Emotions, Heatwave, Harold Melvin’s Blue Notes (SO) 8p Snug Harbor: Herlin Riley Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p OF F B E AT.C OM

Spotted Cat: Jazz Band Ballers (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 10p Three Muses: Debbie Davis (JV) 5:30p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: Hiss Golden Messenger, Dee White (VR) 10p

Spotted Cat: Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, New Orleans Swing Consensus (JV) 10 Three Muses: Bart Ramsey (JV) 5p

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 29

The Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival in Morgan City includes live music, a parade, an arts and crafts market, regional food and drink vendors, and rides and games. ShrimpAndPetroleum.org

30/90: Arsene DeLay (SS) 11a,Truman Holland and the Back Porch Review (SS) 2p, Carolyn Broussard (SS) 5p,T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Burthena (VR) 4p, Steve Pistorius Jazz Quartet (JV) 7p Café Negril: John Lisi and Delta Funk (JV) 6p,Vegas Cola (JV) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Donna the Piano Goddess (PI) 6p, Dirty Rain Revelers (RR) 9p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p Fillmore: Drag Diva Brunch (VR) 10:30a, Stone Temple Pilots, Rival Sons (RK) 5:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 11p Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge:TBC Brass Band (BB) 6p Kerry Irish Pub: Saints on the Big Screen (FO) 7p NOLA Cantina: ACE Brass Band (BB) 7p Palm Court Jazz Cafe: Mark Braud (TJ) 7p Snug Harbor: Joshua Paxton (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Giselle Anguizola and the New Orleans Swinging Gypsies (JV) 2p, Robin Barnes and the FiyaBirds (JV) 7p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascale (JV) 5p, the Clementines (JV) 8p

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 30 30/90: Dapper Dandies (JV) 5p, New Orleans Super Jam presented by Gene Harding (VR) 9p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay and Charlie Wooton (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (VR) 8p Café Negril: Noggin (VR) 6p, Soul Project NOLA (VR) 10p Carnaval Lounge: Margie Perez (SO) 5p, Comic Strip (CO) 9p d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 7p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Beth Patterson (FO) 8:30p NOLA Cantina: Sierra Green and the Soul Machine (SO) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Swing Night with DJ Twiggs (SI) 7p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p

FESTIVALS Aug. 29-Sept. 2

Aug. 29-Sept. 2 Southern Decadence is a six-day festival for the LBGTQ community and includes a parade in the French Quarter.

SouthernDecadence.net

Sept. 4-6 The Who Dat Nation Rally and Festival on the grounds of Jefferson Performing Arts Center features live music, arts and crafts, and food and drink vendors.

WhoDatNationEvents.com

Sept. 7 The Downriver Festival celebrates Southern seafood with live music, food vendors, cooking demonstrations and kids’ activities at the Old U.S. Mint.

DownriverFest.org

Sept. 14 Irish Fest New Orleans at the Kingsley House celebrates Irish food, music and culture. IrishFestNewOrleans.org

Sept. 20-22 The National Fried Chicken Festival in Woldenberg Riverfront Park features live music and food and drink vendors.

FriedChickenFestival.com

Sept. 27-28 The Bogalusa Blues Festival features live music, food and drink vendors, camping and more. BogalusaBlues.com

Sept. 27-29 Gretna Heritage Festival includes live music, food and drink villages, arts and crafts, and carnival rides. GretnaFest.com

SPECIAL EVENTS Sept. 4-11 Various bars throughout the city compete in OffBeat’s Martini Week. OffBeat.com

Sept. 21 The NOLA Bluedoo Run benefit for prostate cancer research includes food, drinks, live music and a two-mile walk/run.

NolaBluedooRun.org

Sept. 28 The Vive Feliz: Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration at Jazz National Historical Park features all-ages entertainment including Latin jazz yoga, Latin drumming and live music. FrenchMarket.org SEPTEMBER 2019

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backtalk Cash give their insight into their celebrated ancestors.

Country Music follows such previous Burns films as 2017’s The Vietnam War and 2001’s Jazz. His first multi-hour documentary, 1990’s The Civil War, drew a record-breaking 40-million viewers to public television.

“Documentaries up to that point, with few exceptions, where expository,” Burns said of The Civil War. “But here was something that had all the emotion of feature film.”

Burns’ many shorter films include Huey Long, Jackie Robinson and Mark Twain. He’s won 15 Emmy Awards and received two Oscar nominations. Most importantly for the Brooklyn-born, 66-year-old storyteller and filmmaker, his 45-year career continues at a feverish pace. His seven in-progress subjects include Muhammad Ali, the American Revolution and Ernest Hemingway.

In an era where thoughtful reporting and context are increasingly rare, Burns and his collaborators do the time-consuming labor that yields nuanced storytelling. “I have a little neon sign in my editing room,” he said. “It’s in lowercase cursive script. It says, ‘It’s complicated.’ Most filmmakers, when a scene is working, don’t want to touch it again. But we always find more information. We’re researching the entire time. We’re writing the entire time.

We’re shooting interviews before we have a script. That’s who we do. It takes longer.”

When did you get the idea to do a series about country music?

I feel like I was supposed to do this all my life. I’ve never had something overcome me with such certainty.

But eight-and-a-half years ago, I was visiting a friend in Texas. He said, ‘You ever thought about doing country music?’ And everything popped in my mind. We’ve been trying to tell a good story ever since. And that’s all it is, trying to tell good stories.

You’re not a poet or a musician, but you totally recognize the timelessness, the universality in a Hank Williams song.

“Hear that lonesome whippoorwill/He sounds too blue to fly/The midnight train is whining low/I’m so lonesome I could cry.” As we say in the opening of the film, this music comes from the need that so-called ordinary people— people who feel like their stories aren’t being told—have to tell n early August, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns was in full evangelist mode. Five weeks before the September 15 debut their stories. And it turns out those stories are universal, experienced by the billionaire as well as the impoverished Okie living of Country Music, his latest television epic, Burns rhapsodized in a drainage culvert in Oakland, California during the Depression. over country music pioneers the Carter Family and Jimmie You weren’t a country music follower before you made Rodgers. He quoted verses from Hank Williams, the singerCountry Music? songwriter whose heart-wrenching lyrics earned him the title I wasn’t a huge country fan going in. I’m a child of rock and “hillbilly Shakespeare.” Burns, despite having already promoted roll and R&B. I worked in a record store, though, in the late ’60s the eight-part, sixteen-hour Country Music in dozens of cities, and early ’70s, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I sold all this stuff and reveled in his role as the film’s most fervent advocate. listened to it. Johnny Cash was a crossover artist. We loved Merle Eight years in the making, the film features more than 80 new interviews, including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Haggard and Emmylou Harris. But I don’t make films about stuff I know about. I’d rather share the process of discovery. And that Rhiannon Giddens, Loretta Lynn, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou keeps the fire, the enthusiasm present.

Harris, Kris Kristofferson, Marty Stuart, Ralph Stanley, Vince Gill You’ve tackled very serious subjects such as and Garth Brooks. Third-generation-country artists World War II, the Vietnam War, cancer, the Holly Williams, Rosanne Cash and John Carter

by John Wirt

Ken Burns

talks back

Photo BY Brendan Castne

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backtalk

Country music is a different thing, but it tackles huge American things like race. We think of this as completely white music, but it turns out that the five-headed Mount Rushmore of early country music— A.P. Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash—all had AfricanAmerican mentors or influences.

Mayo Clinic, but you’ve also made films about baseball, jazz and now country music. These latter subjects may be perceived as entertainment, topics less worthy of attention. But that’s not how you see it?

Not at all. Country music stands up. I have several different producing teams, which allows us to spend ten years on The Vietnam War and eight years on Country Music. We can release them two years apart. So, when we were finishing up with the Vietnam team and someone said, “I’m never going to work on a film this important again.” They were in tears. I said, ‘That’s funny. Because I already am working on a film this important.”

Country music is a different thing, but it tackles huge American things like race. We think of this as completely white music, but it turns out that the five-headed Mount Rushmore of early country music—A.P. Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash—all had AfricanAmerican mentors or influences. So, all of a sudden, you realize that country music isn’t simplistic. In fact, it’s an element attached to a complex molecule that abuts blues, jazz, folk, rock, rhythm-and-blues and gospel. It’s a two-way street on which the artists go back and forth.

What sort of resistance or skepticism did you specifically encounter regarding country music?

Even a little bit in myself, the sense was that country music is pickup trucks and good old boys and hound dogs and six packs of beer. That’s the artificial thing, the barrier that fans and non-fans alike construct. In fact, country music mainlines direct emotions. It deals with two four letter words many of us are terrified of talking about—love and loss. That’s what country music is about.

Is making a film about an ostensibly less serious topic such as country or jazz music less demanding than making The Vietnam War? All of these are really tough to do. Country Music was as hard as The Vietnam War. But there aren’t four or five million people dying in Country Music. It’s about a few people dying in accidents and others dying of broken hearts and alcohol. But still the death of Hank Williams is no less emotional than some things in the Vietnam series. What we’re looking for are good stories in American history, firing on all cylinders.

For interviews with major figures such as Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson, are you in the room asking the questions?

I’ve been working with Dayton Duncan [Country Music’s writer and co-producer] for almost 30 years. I know he can do it. He ended up doing Merle. I did Willie and Dolly [Parton]. Interviews are where the rubber hits the road. It’s got to be an interviewer of the highest quality. We were briefed by Willie’s “people” that he wouldn’t be forthcoming. He was wonderful. We had pared down our three-and-a-half pages of questions to essential things that I

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starred, feeling like we could just force it. We got all three-and-a-half pages and then some.

He was loquacious. He’s still offbeat, with jazz syncopation in his rhythm. That’s so hard to edit, but that’s the glory of Willie.

We did 101 interviews, 175-plus hours.

And we’ve lost 20 of those people since then. God forbid we lose anybody before the broadcast, but it’s inevitable that somebody’s going to go. We’ll mourn them, but also be thankful that we’ve woven them into the tapestry of the film.

Was the country music community receptive to you and your team? Of course, you have a great track record.

It was more that everybody wants their story to be told. And everybody knows that, in a modern media culture, stuff is abbreviated. It ends up with superficiality and conventional wisdom and tropes. But we’re doing an in-depth thing. Which means that people’s lives, their careers, expertise will be honored and not pigeonholed.

You depict the talent and perseverance artists had as well as their faults and self-destructiveness. That’s especially true of three of the genre’s greats, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.

Superficiality tends to make everybody either good or bad, as if we live in some perfectly binary universe. We don’t. I’ve spent my entire professional life trying to say that a hero is in fact a complicated and deeply flawed person. Look at our Roosevelt series.

Three heroes—Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt—all wounded, flawed and heroic.

Unlike your exhaustively researched films, many stories and reports that appear in contemporary news media and especially social media totally lack context, investigation and basic reporting.

And they grow like a cancer before there’s anything else more complex and researched. I’m blessed to be working in public broadcasting. Because I do have the time to develop these things. I don’t just travel the same old interstates. I get off on the backroads.

How many projects do you have in the works?

I’m working on seven films. If any filmmaker tells you they’re working on seven films, they’re either lying or they mean they have proposed films. But these are films I’ve already exposed film for, or I already have a script for, or a script is being written, or we’re already in the editing room. The older I get, the greedier I am for creativity. I want to make a film better every day of my life. O Country Music premieres nationwide on PBS stations Sunday, September 15 through Wednesday, September 18, and Sunday, September 22 through Wednesday, September 25. The series will stream on PBS.org and PBS apps. In advance of the premiere, the concert special Country Music: Live at the Ryman will debut September 8 on PBS stations.

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