Okay.  Way too much time on my hands if I'm bothering to write this ...

I thought the dancing was great, and the staging was inventive.  I especially liked that they had the band on the stage.

Then there was the book:  Interracial love – it’s forbidden.  This is a premise that a writer could draw enormous subtlety and nuance out of, or be completely ham-fisted, which is what this writer did.

And the music:  I was very excited to see this show.  Memphis in the early ’50s-  The end of jump blues, the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, what a great time in American music.  The preview said not to expect the songs of Elvis or Carl Perkins, and I figured that, due to licensing complications and fees, there would be no music from that period, per se.  I also read that the music was done by the keyboard player from Bon Jovi.  I figured that the poor guy had cut his teeth in an ’80s pop band, but as a fervent blues scholar, he was going to mine the rich field of American music and give us original tunes in the style of that region and period.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  For mass appeal, I can understand not wanting to be strictly constrained to the sound of that era.  A story about Jesus sung in ancient Hebrew utilizing historically accurate modal scales would not have the same oomph or commercial appeal as Jesus Christ Superstar,  but in JCSS, the music had a unifying aesthetic principle: modern rock of that time.  Memphis, a musical named after a town with its own brand of blues, rock, gospel and pop, was all over the map.  As hard as I tried to approach Memphis with a willing suspension of knowledge of American music history, I couldn’t help but cringe at the anachronisms and the geographical errors. “Someday”  Felicia’s song, supposedly the hit of the show, considering all the play it gets, is styled after 1960s  Motown.  It’s like having the main tune of a musical called Detroit being a surf rock number. 

I could throw all these complaints out the window if the music was undeniably great.  I have a fairly sharp musical memory, and anything resembling a hook is bound to get stuck in my head.  Two days after seeing Memphis, I couldn’t hum a single tune.  In the end, I guess it’s fair to say the music was written by the keyboard player from Bon Jovi.

I was asked to write an article about the 10 best places to see live music in New Orleans by what I consider to be a prominent paper.  The identity of said paper will be revealed when the article prints.  I had to keep it to 1000 words and, out of shape as I am I clocked in at 1400.  I also couldn’t help but spout about proper audience behavior.  This section was cut from the article for space reasons, but I think it’s worth sharing.

Welcome to New Orleans.  I’m so glad that you’re here to appreciate our greatest resource- live music.  New Orleans is one of the last places in the United States, or maybe even earth where one can make a decent living as a musician.  Not  a top tier million seller nor a dilettante or a hobbyist, but a journeyman making art for a living.  In order to protect and preserve this wondrous and mostly environmentally friendly resource I recommend the three following things to make you a desirable and appreciated audience member.

1. Pay the cover-  When I first started following the Rebirth Brass Band they were playing on a corner in the French Quarter in front of a tip bucket.  That was thirty years ago.  Now, for their legendary longstanding Tuesday night show at the Maple Leaf there is a $20 cover.  Are you aghast?  I say good for them.  They have a grammy, they’ve been at this for 30 plus years.  They deserve it and you’d be paying twice as much in New York or San Francisco.  Also, don’t try and  negotiate the cover.  If you drunkenly stumbled up to the airlines departure desk and suggested that since you have a group of 6 and it’s your friends birthday you should all get in at half price  -you would not be let on that plane.  You didn’t pull that bullshit when you were buying your ticket here.  Musicians have utility bills same as airlines.  Don’t waste the doorman’s time.  
2. Tip the band-  If there is no cover, or even if there is , passing the hat is a common thing in New Orleans.  The deal at a lot of places is the band will get a percentage of the bar ring.  That’s a supplement to what the band collects in the hat.  Don’t be cheap.  If there’s a five piece band on stage and you throw a dollar in the bucket you are giving each musician 20 cents for their time and effort.  Do the math.  Chips from the casino and coupons for tourist crap are insulting.  Drugs aren’t always appreciated.  You should be tipping the bartender every time you get a drink, the band has the right to pass the hat every set.  Also this isn’t Europe, coins are not money
3. Buy the CD’s.  This is the third stream of revenue and it helps keep the musicians going.  Copying your friends Rolling Stones CD’s or stealing Lady Gaga off bit torrent is wrong, but these artists are set for life.  None of the bands you’re seeing in the bars is on a real record label and the CD they made represents their hard work and investment.  You might not be able to find it online when you get home.  Most bands will have a sharpie on hand and they’ll be happy to autograph the product for you.  You couldn’t get a better souvenir.
4. Check your listings and come see me.

Okay folks.  I have now gotten this blog post connected to the website that will be up any day now.  The idea will be that the "news" collum will be realted to my music and ths will be my opining about various and sundry other topics ...

back in the saddle

Hello? Is this thing on?

What up, world?

Treme #4

Dear Jay,

I’m sorry. The Jazz Festival in New Orleans is a pretty intense work/party/network weekend. Since we communicated on Thursday I made my four gigs and saw countless shows and rocked a couple of house parties and simply didn’t have the energy to write anything yesterday morning. So I’m coming to you a day late. Fortunately for us there are no other major festivals in New Orleans between now and the series end so I see no problems with keeping the Monday deadline from here on out.

Regarding this blog - If you have any ideas about the focus of the scope I need to take I’d welcome that too. Do I have to explain brass bands, for instance? How much background do I need? Just curious to know what you think.

Re: Today’s dispatch. I am happy to report that

all the songs I mention are available on eMusic.

Episode 4. “At the Foot of Canal Street.” I’ll focus on the scene at Under The Volcano in Houston, Texas.

In episode 4 Sonny and friends take a road trip to Houston. There’s a club in Houston called Under The Volcano where the New Birth Brass Band held down a weekly gig after the storm. Due to the large number of displaced New Orlenians in Houston this turned into a bumping scene, so we see aspiring musicians actually leaving town to play there.

The scene was shot at Ruby’s Road House in Mandeville, a little town north of Lake Pontachatrain, about 30 miles outside of New Orleans, not as remote a location as taking the shot all the way to Houston, but it still gave the set a foreign “not in New Orleans” feel for the musicians and actors.

The brass band performing is the New Birth Brass Band. The first song we hear them play is “Who Dat Called The Police?” the response to that chant being “Them ho’s called the police.” (I was gonna write a paragraph about the unavailability of this tune, but WHOA, I found it on eMusic.) Available on eMusic via the Mardi Gras records release New Orleans Second Line.

Next Sonny jumps on stage and performs “Go To The Mardi Gras.” “Go To The Mardi Gras” alternately titled “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” is a carnival staple written by New Orleans pianist Henry Rolland Byrd, bka Professor Longhair. “MG in NO” was strictly a piano player driven song until it was rearranged by the Dirty Dozen Bras Band , heard here on their “Mardi Gras In Montreaux” album. Since then it has become a brass band standard also. The New Birth have a version on their NYNO records release “D-Boy.”

What’s cool abut this scene is it captures the on the spot confusion that happens when a piano player tries to jump in on the brass band arrangement. As a piano player from New Orleans I’m all too familiar with this dilemma. BTW the solution is to play along with the brass band arrangement, and when it’s your gig the brass players will bow to your left hand. I’m especially proud of Michael Huisman, the actor who plays Sonny. I’m Michael’s piano coach, one of the many hats I wear on this show. Michael is a solid guitar player who came to me in the beginning of November with zero piano playing experience, and a mere 6 weeks into the filming of the show he’s nailing the piano part in a camera close up. After “MG in NO” band leader Glen Andrews calls Joe Krown, a fine New Orleans pianist , along with Paul Sanchez, formerly of Cowboy Mouth, and John Boutte, the great singer who performs the opening theme, onstage to play the Sanchez/Boutte composition “At The Foot of Canal Street.” This song refers to the cemeteries at the foot of Canal Street, as in , rich poor, black, white we’re all going to wind up there. Both the Treme theme and “Foot Of Canal Street” can be found on Boutte’s record Good Neighbor.

As Sonny sits outside the bar we hear New Birth performing “Roll With Me” which singer Glen Andrews originally performed with the Little Rascals Brass Band on their album “Buck It Like A Horse.”

Four great songs in under 10 minutes. All performed live. Truly a music lovers show.

Treme #3

Dear John,

I’m offering you this first piece as a means of introduction, but also to shamelessly plug my record, which is kind of why I’m doing this.

I also promise you next week’s installment will be way less wordy.

There are several excellent web sites that explain and dissect the 20 plus songs per episode of Treme. In this blog I’ll try and focus on just a few and offer what special insight I may have. Who am I? Let me explain.

In the summer of 2005 I wrote and recorded my fourth record, The Once and Future DJ. Having crawled from the burning wreckage of my funk big band juggernaut All That, I had eschewed my B-3, Clavinette and Rhodes for a plain old piano and a quartet. Singing, not rapping. At the tender age of 30 I’d given up on trying to make it in the music business, but I figured another record would lead to a few more little local gigs to supplement the minimal income and assuage the drudgery of teaching elementary school music.

On Saturday April 28th, 2005 I put the master disk and a check for 1000 copies in the mail at the post office on Loyola Avenue.

Oh what a difference a slight hurricane and a major civil engineering failure can make.

The master disk was washed away but my producer had evacuated with his hard drive and my baby was not lost in the floodwaters. By mid September I held my CD release party, in the East Village of New York, not Frenchman Street in New Orleans.

Offbeat Magazine editor and writer John Swenson divides his time between NY and NO, needless to say he was in New York at the time and I gave him a copy. Offbeat Magazine returned to print in December of 2005 and Swenson wrote a review of the disc. David Simon was in New Orleans researching a show he was going to pitch to HBO. He read the review, bought the record and decided to base one of the main characters on me.

Okay music junkies, see if you can follow this chain of events.

I made a good record, it got a good review, somebody important read the review and a worm hole opened up where I got to quit my day job and go back to making music for a living. I know it seems mythical, but this really happened.

So, the song I’d like to spotlight for episode three is a composition of mine entitled “Strippers.” I wrote this tune in about five minutes. I was getting stoned on my balcony in the Treme neighborhood when, well let me quote the lyrics.

well I was hanging on my balcony

having myself a little smoke

well I was hanging on my balcony

having myself a little smoke

when this white girl walked by

I tell y’all it ain’t no joke

well she had great big breasts and a really small dog

and I’m sitting here and staring like a bump on a log

she walked into Cicciao’s bought herself a little something sweet

took her dog and her candy bar and walked off down the street

I saw her the very next day

with some friends who were similarly endowed

I saw her the very next day

with some friends who were similarly endowed

and as a property owner I had to sing ‘cause I was so proud

I got strippers

moving in my neighborhood

I got strippers

moving in my neighborhood

well you can call it gentrification

but I’m gonna call it good

In episode #2 Davis first spies said young women. We see the strippers again in episode #3 and then we see the scene of Davis writing the lyrics on his wall. Davis’ real life friend Henry Griffin arrives and Davis plays the song for him, on guitar - not piano.

One morning last December I was sleeping late. because I can and I open my door to see the street has been blocked off by a few big Hollywood trucks. It’s all lights camera and so on. Walking down the street one way are two hot young women with great big breasts walking really small dogs. Going down the street the other way is Steve Zahn, gawking.

Ahhh, I thought, life is a strange and beautiful thing. Or life imitates art, that depends if you wanna call the Strippers song art.

Are there other songs on this disc that spin into plot threads for the character Davis? Brah, I signed a confidentiality agreement I ain’t saying shit, but perhaps you’ll listen to the record, available on eMusic, and see what happens.

Shame Shame Shmae

Dear Joe, I’m sending this to you early for your editing purposes. I cannot stress enough that you can’t post this till 11 PM EST today.

Thanks,

Davis

Episode #5, titled, Shame Shame Shame.

“Shame Shame Shame” by Smiley Lewis

Today I’m going to expound a bit about the song that the episode takes it’s title from.

Treme touches on almost every style of New Orleans music: brass bands, modern jazz, traditional jazz. Hip hop and bounce, in my opinion, kinda get shorted in season one and punk and sludge metal are shut out, so you know what I’m lobbying for in season 2.

Season one definitely turns a fond and loving spotlight on Classic New Orleans Rhythm and Blues. Classic NO R&B is the music from the late 40’s and early 50’s. One foot in jump blues and one foot in rock and roll. Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin Tonight” - first time Rock is used in a song title. Guitar Slim’s “Story of my life”- first recorded use of feedback in a guitar solo. Many of the great records and artists from this era were made by the team of producer Dave Bartholomew and recording engineer Cosimo Mattassa.

Dave Bartholomew will turn 90 this year. David Simon and I had the privilege of attending a concert, hosted by Allan Toussaint, in honor of this and the 60th anniversary of two of Dave’s earliest records, Jewel King’s “3 x 7” and Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man” breaking the race barrier on the pop charts and becoming #1 records. It was at this concert that Bartholomew lamented that singer/guitarist Smiley Lewis never received the commercial and popular status of Bartholomew marquee artist, Fats Domino. A comparison of Lewis’ and Domino’s versions of “Blue Monday” pretty much tells the story. Lewis’ is grittier, slower and face it, he sounds Blacker. Often Lewis was on the verge of having a big national hit “I Hear You Knockin,” or “One Night of Sin” only to have it covered by a White artist, Elvis Presley, Gail Storm or Pat Boone, who scored hits with their sanitized versions.

The original “Shame, Shame, Shame” was written by Lewis and Bartholomew for the Elia Kazan/Tennessee Williams 1956 film “Baby Doll.” It’s used in the scene where Karl Malden chases Carroll Baker around her bedroom. In a “so much for a good placement and tie in” move the Catholic Legion of Decency had the film pulled from US distribution. Smiley Lewis never got the recognition he deserved in his life time, but if you have any interest in the dawn of Rock and Roll you should pick up his recordings.

“Shame Shame Shame” the scene in the recording studio.

David Simon had been telling me for a long time that he wanted to hear trumpeter Kermit Ruffins play “Shame, Shame, Shame” as Bartholowmew’s signature trumpet growl on the track isn’t far from Kermit’s stylistic bag. I said the best way to put a bug in Kermit’s ear would be to have him play it on the show, so I wasn’t too surprised when the script for #5 arrived and it had Davis, the character, writing a parody of “Shame Shame Shame” and hiring Kermit to play on it.

In terms of historical accuracy, yes, I used to be in a band with Kermit and yes, I’m pretty sure we were, as Kermit says, trifiling.

David Simon wrote a set of lyrics where the words “Shame on you Mrs. Roxy” are replaced by “Shame on you now Dubya.”

I wrote the horn arrangements and cut the scratch vocal track that Zahn uses as a template. Simon and the powers that be were so pleased with the demo recording of the “Shame” song that the scene went from a 90 second cutaway to being presented in its entirety.

The band: that’s me on piano, and yes I plan to lose some wight before season two. The bassist is Jimbo Walsh, who can also be heard on Michael Ray’s Cosmic Krewe records and his own space rock band The Other Planets. Ben Ellman, the tenor sax player plays in Galactic and produced the new Trombone Shorty record. Aurora Nealand plays with Hurray for the Riff Raff and the Panorama Jazz Band. Tyrus Chapman on trombone wrote most of the funky stuff on the Rebirth Brass Band’s record “We Come To Party.” Y’all know Kermit Ruffins by now. The three lovely ladies on background vocals are Holley Bensten, Yevette Cuccia and Debbie Davis, collectively The Pfister Sisters, a stellar early jazz vocal trio. I am not sure if, or when, this recording will be commercially available, but again I encourage everyone to pick up on the original.