Our Man in New Orleans

Jury Duty.

2010-02-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

I know this doesn't have much to do with jazz, but I thought some people might find it interesting. Because a "jury summons" in Orleans Pariah is a different kind of experience.

At least I assume it is, cause I've always managed to avoid these kinds of things in the past, mainly by taking the cranky, anarchist stance of not voting because it "only encourages them," and because then "the government has your name on another list." Then came the 2004 presidential election, and I decided the state of the union was so dire that I had to bite the bullet and take the plunge. I voted for Kerry (fat lot of good that did ) and for Obama (we'll see, but it's not looking good). And then, a couple of weeks ago, I got that dreaded little red-lettered summons in the mail.

I'd gotten one before and was enormously relieved to see that it had been delivered to the wrong address. Some poor bastard in the thirty two hundred block of St. Philip was on the hook, not me. Boy, he was not thrilled when I brought it down to him either. But this time it was for me, and since it said, it big red letters, "failure to appear may result in fine or imprisonment," and since it's conventional wisdom around here that the Orleans Parish Criminal Justice system has a real thing for slinging people willy nilly into the OPP jail and is not to be messed with, I figured I better show.

At the appointed hour of 8:30a.m. I was at the Broad St. courthouse, along with a whole gang of very unhappy looking people. Since I hold a whole raft of opinions that are box-office poison to prosecuting attorneys (do the police ever lie? Of course they do, just like the rest of us. Do you support the death penalty? No, because the justice system, like every other human endeavor, is wildly imperfect, and I'm not a big fan of making those kind of 'mistakes') I figured I'd be gone by lunch. But it was not to be.

The Orleans Parish jury system, possibly because the demographic of people without felony convictions in New Orleans is rather shallow, slings a wider net than most other places. I was not just required to show up one morning, voice my dangerously liberal opinions, be vetoed by the prosecuting attorney during voir dire and sent home in time for lunch. Instead I was to show up at 8:30a.m. every monday and wednesday for the entire month of february, and, get this, get shuffled through all twelve coutrooms in the system until their dockets had been cleared. If I'm not selected for one jury I return to the jury lounge to await a call for the next.

Unconcionably early and not at all bright, I arrived last monday at the 'jury lounge,' (after of course first passing through the metal detector) along with a couple of hundred other tired, pissed-off looking people. Around 9:00a.m. a guy comes in wearing a blue blazer and gray slacks (only the blazer is the kind of electric blue worn by airline ticket agents), leans into a mic and says "good morning." After getting a few mumbles and grunts, he leans in again and says "Who dat" and gets the thunderous response he's looking for (for the uninitiated and non-New-Orleanian, "Who dat?" is an abbreviation of the New Orleans Saints fan's tribal war whoop, "Who dat say gonna beat them Saints.") and announces he's a judge, and procedes to lay the voodo down. We will be rrequired to sit here pretty much exactly like a bunch of two dollar hookers awaiting our call, until one of the judges in the 12 courtrooms upstairs announces he or she needs a jury, and which point we'll be lead up to the appropriate courtroom, questioned by both prosecuting and defense attorney's regarding our various quirks and pregudices, instructed further in the law by the presiding judge and, if deemed acceptable by all parties, sworn in as a juror and paid $20 a day for our trouble. If not, it's back to the jury lounge for the next cattle call.

From conversations with those around me (and since this is New Orleans, there's plenty of conversating) I learn that we're a pretty eclectic bunch. We actually are a pretty good cross section of the city's population. Visually, the crowd is maybe 60-40 African-American (again, about like the city) and there's all kinds; employers, employees, professionals, laborers, retired people, a couple of guys who look like thugs but turn out to be counter help at Auto Zone. A guy who owns a fence company. A retired high school teacher.

The first call is for 75 potential jurors, and as they read the names off, it feels like the grim reaper setting down and spiriting people away. Most of us don't want to go, because it offers the possibility of wiping out the rest of the day, whereas if we just sit down here we're told the dockets are usually cleared by 1:00p.m. I don't teach anything before 2:00p.m. mondays and wednesdays, so it's possible this whole thing won't inconvenience me beyond loss of sleep and weekends in the office to make up for the administrative stuff and personal practising I usually do in my office in the mornings. 75 jurors are called and I'm not among them.

Next round, I'm not so lucky. Potential jurors are numbered, then called by name. When the next round is called, the first thing out of the speakers is "juror number one. John Doheny."

to be continued.

Another Year Gone...

2009-12-30T11:49:00.000-08:00

...in this delightful, horrifying place.

I've never been able to explain the appeal, really, when I'm away on the road and people ask why I live here. The fact is that after six years in residence, the things that are an easy 'sell' to tourists don't interest me at all. The French Quarter wears pretty quickly, I seldom go down there unless I have a gig. It's full of t-shirt shops and obnoxious tourists; sometimes it seems like every jerk in America is there for the express purpose of getting blind drunk and acting the fool. The Garden District is physically beautiful but devoid of streetlife, everyone hiding inside with the air-conditioning, guarding their money. The St. Charles Avenue streetcar makes for a scenic ride, but you'll get where you're going a lot faster on the Freret Street bus.

Don't get me wrong, all this stuff still blows me away. I was recently reading a blog written by a guy who moved to Argentina a year ago, and he was saying that the trouble with actually living in a place like Buenos Aires was that after a while, it starts to seem normal, even mundane. I'm guessing Buenos Aires must have a better functioning infrastructure than New Orleans then, because here, mundane don't enter into it. What with all the shooting and cutting and hurricane evacs and the general sense of insecurity, like we could all be flooded out again at a moments notice, or blown away, or take a stray round through the head, there's never any chance of things feeling ho hum. But get up in the morning and go to work? Wait in line at the grocery, pick up the dry cleaning? We all do that. It's just that in New Orleans, the conversation is a lot more entertaining.

I guess that last sentence catches the corner of it. I could (and often do) go on about "da cultcha," the music, the food, the architecture, the various elements that create the lived experience of being here, something everyone in town walks out the front door and into every day. But it the end it's just that simple; it's the people, the sense of engagement, the feeling of every human encounter and transaction being something to be savored and enjoyed, not rushed through so one can get to one's 'real life.' All that mundane shit, that is your real life, and if you don't get that, you're gonna miss it.

That's it, isn't it? I put up with the weather, the violence, the poverty, the diminished lifespan and career expectations, all because I had a funny and enjoyable conversation with a stranger on line at the Post Office this morning.

Well, that, and parades like the Young Men Olympian last fall:

(warning: turn down the volume on your computer playing this video. This is pure, uncut, hardcore New Orleans street shit, bruh.)

The Best Jazz Singers You've Never Heard Of...

2009-12-27T08:46:00.001-08:00

...or maybe you have, if you live in New Orleans, but I'm assuming (in my vanity) an international readership.

Philip Manuel, Betty Shirley, and George French are people with almost no 'internet' presence whatsoever, yet their rep among discerning listeners here in New Orleans is stellar. More importantly, their reputation among working musicians is such that the best players in town go out of their way to gig with them, even if the money is less than impressive. And that is the most impressive recommendation of all.

"Researching" this entry proved to be an excercize in futility. Searching Youtube (where conventional wisdom has it you can find "almost anything" nowdays) turned up only three entries on Manuel, none of which show him at his best. (This version of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" with drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Roland Guerin, and New Orleans piano guru Larry Sieberth, is about the best of the bunch, even though the tune has been done to death: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8WUddNmriA ). Just about everything I know about the guy comes from either watching him work, or talking to him on the street (when we lived uptown in the 13th Ward, our next door neighbor was one of Manuel's close friends).

I've got a few of Manuel's CDs in my collection (my current favorite is the 2000 release "Love Happened to Me," which contains stellar performances of jazz standards like"Just Squeeze Me" and "If I Were A Bell," as well as pop tunes like Stevie Wonder's ""I Wish" and Sting's "Fragile," and an all star cast of players including trumpeter Nicholas Payton, saxophonist Brice Winston, pianist Ellis Marsalis, drummer Adonis Rose, and my good friend Fredrick Sanders on organ) but nothing compares to hearing him live, where the astonishing range and resonance of his voice is compellingly present. My wife Darlene and I caught him this past december 23rd at Snug Harbor (with Sieberth on piano and bassist Chris Severn) and when he hit low notes, the whole room vibrated.

Son of oldschool jazzman Albert "Papa" French and brother of drummer and WWOZ DJ Bob French, I first heard George French as a singer on the now sadly out of print Rounder CD "Mood Indigo," featuring the CAC Jazz Orchestra and singers Germaine Bazzle and the late Johnny Adams. It wasn't until I moved to New Orleans that I found out he was also a bass player. He and Bazzle had a long standing gig every Monday night at Donnas on North Rampart, and lately he's been appearing with a trio at the Ritz Carleton on Canal. French has one solo CD, "It's A Beginning" http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/showoneprod.asp?ProductID=1766 which unfortunately falls rather flat, to my ears. It's got some killer players on it (including New Orlean's unsung hero of the tenor saxophone, Eric Traub) but it's basically a representation of his club set, which tends to be pitched at the tourist trade. French has a gorgeous voice (very Lou Rawls-ish) that sounds good on anything, but tunes like "Sunshine of My Life' and "What A Wonderful World" have, quite frankly, been done to death. French sounds better to me on other people's records, like his brother Bob's "Original Tuxedo Jazz Band"http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/showoneprod.asp?ProductID=1946
particularly his duet with Tricia "Sista Teedy" Boutte (sister of John Boutte, another underappreciated singer) on "Over in the Gloryland." But his best recorded performances are on "Mood Indigo." If you can find a used copy, snap it up.

Betty Shirley I first heard about from bassist Jim Markway, who insisted I come down and catch a gig he was playing with her at the Royal Sonesta a couple of years ago. Once again, Youtube proved slim pickings, with only a WDSU news story on "Women of Jazz" showing up (that's Betty with the long curly hair, and Tulane drum instructor Geoff Clapp with no hair at all) :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1MTkokHKf4 However, unlike French and Manuel, Shirley actually has a website: http://www.bettyshirley.com/

Your best shot at hearing her, short of coming to New Orleans, would be to pick up her CD "Close Your Eyes." :http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/showoneprod.asp?ProductID=5333

Or you could give yourself the best Christmas gift ever; a trip to New Orleans.

Left on the Cutting Room Floor.

2009-12-15T08:10:00.000-08:00

This year the Professors of Pleasure were asked to record a version of "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" for Tulane's holiday e-card. The session itself was a breeze (we tacked in on to the end of the first of two days of recording for the new CD) , if I recall correctly we did two takes, the second just for insurance, since take one sounded fine and ultimately that's the one we used. The "video shoot" a couple of months later was another matter. I'm starting to develop sympathy for Britney Spears and the rest of the MTV set who suffer from "lipsync malfunctions." It's harder than it looks to fake playing to a pre-recorded track, especially if you're trying to hook up finger motions to a solo you recorded two months before.

Basically, we looked so lame that Tulane decided to cut us out of the visuals altogether. Here's the final version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NhC-JqlbSA

We get the same bread either way, so that kind of takes the sting out of it.

Delfeayo Marsalis @the Rat, 8:00p.m. Nov. 19th.

2009-11-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

...Rathskellar Bar in the Lavin-Bernick Center for Student Life, on the Tulane campus.

Delfeayo is, of course, the trombonist of the clan, but he's also one of those all-round cats that so many jazz musicians are or aspire to be these days. As a producer he's supervised numerous recordings over the years, both for his brothers (most recently "From the Plantation to the Penitentiary," "Don't Be Afraid," and "Swinging With the Cats" for Wynton, and "Steep Anthology" and "Romare Bearden Revealed" for Branford) and others (both trombonist and producer on Jeff Watt's "Citizen 'Tain," producer only on Marcus Roberts' "Marcus Roberts Plays Ellington"). As a trombonist his CV is equally impressive, with releases as leader (2006's "Minion's Dominion," 1996's "Musashi") and sideman (Brother Branford's "I Heard You Twice the First Time," former Sun Ra sideman Michael Ray's band the Kosmic Krewe's "Funk if I Know," Elvin Jones' "It Don't Mean a Thing").

That's only a sliver of the man's pedigree. For the full story, check his website: http://www.delfeayomarsalis.com/ .

I recently had opportunity to play with Delfeayo in a small band setting (with Jesse Mcbride's Next Generation at Donna's on North Rampart) and here's the deal. Stellar technique. Great ears. Endless supply of ideas, and total fluency with the language of jazz from the beginning to right now. You cannot lose him playing background figures, it's like trying to outrun your own shadow.

As usual, admission is absolutely free. Be there.

Kohler Recording Session.

2009-11-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

After many false starts and a little actual pre-production, drummer Geoff Clapp, bassist Rob Kohler and I finally managed to get together for our first recording session last Sunday night in the Tulane Recital Hall. The Hall has excellent acoustics (the band room is dampened all to hell and makes my horn sound dry and puny) and is a wonderful environment for recording and performing.

We'd actually looked at a number of tunes in the one rehearsal we'd had (three of Rob's, one of mine) but Rob dragged in after an extremely rough week and said, "hey man. Let's just play 'free,' alright?," then set up a 6/4 groove in C minor and we were off.

I've always had a kind of conflicted relationship with 'free' playing. In some circles I've been lumbered with a rep as someone contemptuous of the genre, but that's really not true. I've simply avoided (for the most part) playing it because I don't think I've got the chops. It's one thing to play reactively with others within the perameters of a set of chord changes, it's quite another another to put yourself in a space where the music can go absolutely anywhere at any time, and you have no choice but to deal with it. It takes great ears, great chops, and the ability to play pretty much anything you can hear to pull it off with style.

I don't lay claim to being 100% in any of those areas but that didn't stop me, (or the other cats) from having an absolute blast. Geoff Clapp was playing so hard at one point that the air whooshing out of the hole in his bass drum head was making my pant leg flap around ten feet away. The stuff we did had structure, varying moodscapes, historical referrences (to funk, 20th century classical, be-bop, and early jazz) and humor. In fact, at one point something we played struck me so funny I fell out of my chair laughing.

Next session we'll probably tackle some actual tunes, but this is a very good start.

Bill Summers/Alexei Marti Pics.

2009-11-06T15:40:00.001-08:00

Louisiana Repertory Ensemble.

2009-11-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

Of all the oddball gigs I've done since moving to New Orleans, this one is probably the furthest outside my 'comfort zone.' Or maybe not, it's all music, after all.

The Louisiana Repertory Ensemble was originally formed by musicologist (and drummer) John Joyce Jr. and musicologist (and saxophonist) Fred Starr as a vehicle for reproducing early jazz, using transcriptions from recordings (where such recordings existed) and painstaking research into the performance practises of the period. A kind of Tafelmusic for early jazz buffs, if you will. Their initial recordings, like Moods of Old New Orleans http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=9506 and Marching, Ragging and Mourning http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/showoneprod.asp?TypeID=70&ProductID=131 are painstaking reproductions of what jazz sounded like at the moment of it's genesis, around 1890-1910. "Mourning" in particular works very hard at capturing that moment when early jazzmen starting walking out of the paradigm of the traditional brass 'marching' band, breaking free of the written arrangements and improvising on top of them.

Over the years the band has evolved some, using a revolving cast of players and slipping more into the 'jammed' style of ad-lib playing that came to dominate jazz by the 1920s. But the ensemble still remains tied to it's pedagogical roots, and last night's concert at Dixon Theater (with drummer John Joyce Jr. at the helm) was conceived as much as a teaching device for the numerous Tulane jazz history students in attendance as it was as an entertainment.

Professor Joyce (J.J. to his friends) kind of took me under his wing when I arrived here as a grad student and we've remained friends ever since, so I suppose it was inevitable he'd eventually ask me to sub on one of these gigs. I don't claim to be any kind of expert at playing early jazz, but if you work as a musician for any length of time in New Orleans, you pick up a fair bit of traditional repertoire. What J.J. wanted me to do, though, was play the tenor sax part on Sam Morgan's "Bogulusa Strut" from the score of his transcriptions of the complete Sam Morgan recordings from 1927.

What surprised me about this, when the tune actually kicked off, was how hard this was. I suppose I might harbor a touch of the 'modern jazz player's' snobbery towards this stuff, but I'd like to think that after six years of studying the music I'd be past that. I really was surprised at how tricky the chart was, not an easy thing to sight read at all. "Bogalusa Strut" itself, as a tune, is actually fairly easy, I'd even played it before on gigs. But the tenor part in Morgan's nine piece band is actually a continuous counterline that has zip to do with the melody, and if you kack one eighth-note's worth, you're cooked.

The band this time out was packed with some of traditional jazz's brightest lights. On my left were trumpeters Duke Heitger and Charlie Fardella, and trombonist Rick Trolsen (also well known in funk and avante guard circles). On my immediate right, clarinettist-saxophonist Tom Fischer, banjoist Johnny Parker, pianist Steve Pistorius and Louisiana Philharmonic Tubist Robert Nunez (grandson of old-time New Orleans jazzman Alphonse "Yellow" Nunez). And of course John Joyce Jr. on drums.

The opportunity to play with both the bright lights of traditional jazz and the very best modern jazz players in America is one of the things that makes living here so special. I'm a lucky guy.

Percussion Discussion.

2009-11-02T13:49:00.000-08:00

The Bill Summers gig at the Rat was a perfect encapsulization of why these sorts of things (the opportunity for students to share the stage with top-drawer professional jazz musicians) are so vital and inspiring for young musicians.

I'd told my students in front, "listen, Bill isn't messing around. He's not going to treat you with kid gloves, so you need to know your material strong or he will put you in the ditch. Don't be half steppin up there." These events are sometimes referred to among the jazz faculty as the "ritual humiliation" part of the course, the part where you get scuffed up a bit by players far above your level. I tell em I'm a fellow sufferer, because I get to play with these guys too, and while on the one hand this is both an honor and a privilege, it's also kind of scary. I mean, Bill was on Herbie Hancock's Headhunters. man! He played on Thrust! And of course he showed up with his wingman, master percussionist Alexei Marti.

The first tune was Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" as performed by one of Jesse Mcbride's combos. Bill and Alexei set up an introduction that was only distantly related to the tune's 6/4 time signature, but when it came time for the students to come in, led them there in the most obvious way. This gracious and selfless approach was the order of the evening; Bill and Alexei played their asses off on every tune and with every band, but went out of their way to not confuse anyone (they confined the tricky stuff to percussion breakdowns within the tune, leading the various bands back into the head with simple, clear percussion calls, or sometimes just counting it off with a stick against the side of the timbales) and really made the students sound good, creating luxurious pockets for the student drummers to solo in, and cooking grooves for student soloists and rhythm sections.

We finished up the evening with a short faculty set (our faculty bass and drums were unavailable, so Jesse brought in bassist Mike Ballard and drummer Jamal Batiste), and of course that's when Bill and Alexei really cut loose. "Afro Blue" had six kinds of time going, "Impressions" felt like Coltrane-meets-Tito-Puente taken at a hair raising tempo and went on forever, complete with feints, fakeouts, mini-dialogues within meter changes and scarifying percussion breakdowns. I've never seen the club so full, and the place was bumpin.

We really need to get these guys on faculty.

Bill Summers at the Rat.

2009-10-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

After much back and forth we've finally got a hard date on the first of our series of performances at the Rathskellar Bar in the basement of the Lavin-Bernick Center For Student Life here on the Tulane campus. This coming Thursday, October 29th at 8:00p.m. percussionist Bill Summers will appear with the Tulane Student Combos.

Summers of course is best known for his work with Herbie Hancock, most notably the groundbreaking 1973 album "Headhunters," but his career is much broader than that, encompassing film and television work ( The Color Purple, Roots) as well as nine solo releases. In New Orleans he led the band "Summer's Heat" (guitarist and singer duo Bill Solley and Kim Prevost are alumnae) and currently works in Irvin Mayfield's Afro-Cuban Nuevo-Orleans project "Los Hombres Calientes."

I've told the students to be ready, cause Bill doesn't mess around. If they don't know their stuff strong, he will put them in the ditch.

Young Men Olympian 2009 Parade Pics.

2009-10-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

Robert Glasper and Re-Birth Clinics.

2009-10-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

Yikes! Sorry for the short notice on these, but I've been slammed, absolutely slammed with stuff.

Today, yes that's today, Oct. 20th at 4:00P.m. in the band room at Tulane (Dixon Hall, Rm. 260) snare drummer Derrick Tabb and bass drummer Kieth Frasier will show the evolution of traditional parade rhythms as they developed into the current 'new school' of funky innovations and applications. Charles Keil will moderate.

And right the next day, Oct. 21st, pianist Robert Glasper and his trio will hold forth on the state of modern jazz piano. 1:30p.m. Dixon Hall, rm. 260. Be there or be square.

Kohler/Doheny CD

2009-10-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to put my hand on the name of the famous physicist who supplied us with the quote, "time is God's way of preventing everything from happening at once." Was it Stephen Hawking? Albert Einstein? Lenny Bruce? Doesn't matter because it's at least partially hogwash. Right now a confluence of at least five events (the Profs of Pleasure CD, the fall term at Tulane, the upcoming midterms at Tulane, an additional TIDES (Tulane Interdisciplinary Educational Seminar) course I've taken on, and some deadlines on academic writing) is making it seem like everything is happening at once.

The "Profs vol 2." CD is in the mixing stage now, so the pressure is partially off there. But a new project looms large, and that's the recording I'm scheduled to do this month with bassist/composer Rob Kohler. Rob's will be a familiar name if you know the jazz program at Stanford University in California (he's on faculty at the jazz camp there) the Bozeman Bass Bash in Bozeman, Montana (where he also teaches) and especially to those familiar with the jazz scene in Vancouver, Canada, where he is a frequent collaborator in recordings and live performances by Vancouver guitarist and educator Jared Burrows (the Jared Burrows Trio) and British saxophonist and composer Len Aruhlia (the Len Aruhlia Quintet). Just to show you what a small world the jazz community is, when he first moved here to New Orleans two years ago we discovered we not only knew and had played with both Jared and Len, but also a half dozen or more musicians on two continents, including drummer Stan Taylor, who played in my Vancouver quintet for years and appears on my first solo CD "One Up, Two Back."

I'm afraid that those of you who think this is all part of some sort of 'master plan' to catapult my personal agenda forward are doomed to disappointment, as events in my life tend to resemble more a collection of random objects falling down a flight of stairs than any kind of coherent plan. At this point we're not even entirely sure who's going to be on the record besides us, although New Orleans drummer Geoff Clapp appears to be definitely on board. We have a couple of tantalizing prospects for piano and/or guitar (I'll say no more about this, lest I jinx it), but we still might do a few tracks as a bass-drums-tenor trio. Hell we might do a tune or two as a bass-sax duo, Rob and I have played entire gigs in that format, and he's just released a duo CD with Billings, Montana percussionist Clay Green, "Harmony and Bells." I'm not even sure what we're going to play, although I have some ideas and suggestions, as does Rob. All I know for sure is, by this time next month we'll have a CD in the can.

In Algiers.

2009-09-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

The Professors of Pleasure outside Word of Mouth Studios in Algiers LA. Left to right: Jesse Mcbride piano and Fender Rhodes piano, Geoff Clapp drums, John Dobry guitar, Allen Dejan Jr. tenor alto and soprano saxophones, Jim Markway acoustic and electric bass, John Doheny tenor and soprano saxophones, Andrew "Da Phessa" Baham trumpet. Sept 21, 2009.

Professors of Pleasure vol. 2. Bagged and Tagged.

2009-09-23T11:51:00.000-07:00

Actually we're not quite there yet, as I need to do some serious listening to the ruffs and then get with engineer Tim Stambaugh for mixes and fixes but, for all intents and purposes, this record's done. And, much to my surprise, I like it.

Normally at this stage of the game, I'm somewhere between the "bargaining" and "denial" stages of recording. Those of you who've made records know what I'm talking about. There's "elation" (hey! We're going to record!!!), "apprehension" (Oh my gawd. Every wrong note will be on the permanent record), "bargaining" (hey, maybe no one will notice that huge clam), and "denial" (you know, if you listen to that clambake often enough, it doesn't sound too bad. Anyway, it's too late to fix it now). But I'm listening to a rough mix in a trial sequencing order and I gotta tell ya, it's sounds pretty good.

Day two of recording started out with trumpeter Andrew "Da Phessa" Baham coming in to lay a trumpet part on the bed track for "The Tulane Fight Song' we'd recorded the previous monday. We still didn't have a chart for the damn thing but it turned out 'Drew had gone to J.F. Kennedy and played all the football games so he knew literally every school song by heart. Allen and I chimed in on soprano and tenor respectively for a 'second line' front line and banged the thing out in one take, no sweat. Then it was a fast pass on a be-bop version of "Let It Snow" that we'd agreed to record for Tulane's e-christmas card. This one took two takes, but only because they'd specified it be about two minutes long and we had to make a slight tempo adjustment to get it to fit the allotted space.

The rest of the session was spent laying down "Funky Breeze" (a Jim Markway original he'd written when working in local tenor player Brian "Breeze" Cayolle's band) a beautiful Afro-Cuban thing by Harold Battiste called "Child Playing," nicely arranged by guitarist John Dobry for alto, tenor, and guitar, another Marway composition, the quirky "Elysian Fields" (on which I discovered, to my surprise and delight, that I could actually play a borrowed soprano sax in tune), and John Dobry's Pat Metheny-esque "Cautious Optimism."

It was a lot of music for two days (if we were releasing it on vinyl, it would be a double LP) but we actually finished a couple hours early, and that included a 90 minute lunch break and stroll through scenic Algiers Point, where Word of Mouth Studios is located. Now it's on to artwork, sleeve design, pressing, and release.

In The Studio.

2009-09-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

This past monday was the first of two days in the studio to record what will ultimately become John Doheny Presents the Professors of Pleasure vol. 2. I've managed to do a little money management within the departmental budget that should, if we keep recording costs rock bottom and session fees for adjunct instructors (who are paid an hourly rate for teaching. Since John Dobry and I are full-time, salaried faculty, we're contributing our services to the project gratis) as low as possible without being totally insulting, we should be able to do one of these CDs every two years. Aside from raising the profile of the department through CD sales and touring, we hope to be able to generate income streams that can be diverted into a scholarship fund. Tulane is an expensive school, and talented students with potential are not always fortunate enough to win the genetic lottery by being born to wealthy parents.

Anyway, in the interests of keeping costs down (and again I must stress that everyone playing on this project is either doing it for nothing, or for peanuts) we decided to use Tim Stambaugh's Word of Mouth Studios over in Algiers. As much as we loved recording at Piety Street Studios last time out, it would have broken our budget, even at studio owner and head engineer Mark Bingham's special jazz-bum rate (as Mark puts it, "yeah, there's a 'book rate,' but only Green Day and Dave Mathews pay it"). Stambaugh's facility simply offers a much more affordable price, and a couple of guys on the band had done projects there and had good things to say about it.

I must admit that my only real trepidation was over "seperation issues." Piety offers the option of recording in one big room without the use of headphones. Headphones are a major source of irritation for me, as I hate spending time getting a good mix in the cans, and the best headphone mix in the world is never going to be as good as hearing each other live in the room, as God in Her wisdom intended it to be. But Stambaugh's place offers the best possible equipment to achieve a semblence of this; each player has a series of buttons on his headphone 'tree' that allows him to essentially creat his own mix. No more watching the air get sucked out of a session by an hour of shouting back and forth about levels. The total separation of instruments (at Word of Mouth you are literally in seperate rooms, although they are glass-walled, so there's still visual contact) allows for real time punch-ins and fixes as well, something I was long suspicious of. I felt that a solo overdubbed over an existing rhythm track, for instance, was likely to sound "un-jazz-like," since a recorded track cannot 'react' to a real-time soloist the way a live rhythm section does. I still feel that way, but I must admit I really enjoy being able to go back in and fix that one Bb where my finger slipped playing the head out, rather than having to re-record the whole friggin' tune over again.

On monday the first thing we did was a two-tenor feature for me and new guy Allen Dejan Jr. (and yes, for you jazz history buffs, he is related to the late saxophonist and Olympia Brass Band leader Harord "Duke" Dejan). We chose the Tadd Dameron's "Ladybird"-based tune that Miles Davis wrote while playing in Charlie Parkers quintet, "Half Nelson," and took it at a tempo somewhere in between Miles' burning 'up' version from "Working With the Miles Davis Quintet" and the medium-swing Dexter Gordon-James Moody interpretation on Dexter's "More Power." On the first take we tried the "Mingus" gambit of first trading choruses, then eights, then fours, twos, ones etc. but in the playback that sounded too stiff, so on the next pass we started with chorus-trading but then just started getting loose with it, eliding phrases over bar lines, pushing and pulling each other, and ending with a chorus of New Orleans-style collective improvisation. Often this is only something you can pull off convincingly if you've been playing with someone for a while. Allen and I hadn't played together much before , and we certainly had never attempted anything like this, but it worked like greased lightning the first pass and we somehow peaked just in time to launch into the "Ladybird" shout chorus before trading eights with drummer Geoff Clapp, then head two times and out. Tune one bagged and tagged in less than an hour.

The whole session went more or less like that and by the end of the day we had rough mixes of "Half Nelson," a tune by bassist Jim Markway called "Don't Know About That," a beautiful reading of "Nancy With the Laughing Face" featuring Allen Dejan Jr., pianist Jesse Mcbride featured on a Harold Battiste waltz-ballad called "Beautiful Old Ladies," and yours truly featured front and center on the Hank Mobley cooker "This I Dig of You." We also got a bed track on a 'second-line' version of the "Tulane Fight Song" the university asked us to record for their web site, with me honking away pretending to be a trumpet on what I could emember of the melody (we didn't have a chart, just some chords Jim Markway had cribbed off a Youtube of the Tulane Marching Band that morning). Andrew "Da Phessah" Baham comes in next monday to record the trumpet part for real.

So far, it's going great. I'm pleased, and that has not always been the case for me with previous projects. Hell, I even like the way I sound.

We're Number One!

2009-09-09T09:37:00.000-07:00

Relax, I'm not going to get one of those silly big foam-rubber fingers and start jumping around shouting this. I'm much too cool for that. I'm just reacting to the Society of American Travel Writers rating of the Top Ten Cities For Live Music in North America.

http://www.satw.org/admin/detail_news.asp?id=739&parent=15&SId=26&C=

1. New Orleans, Louisiana

2. New York City

3. Austin, Texas

4. Nashville, Tennessee

5. Chicago, Illinois

6. Memphis, Tennessee

7. Montreal, Canada

8. Las Vegas, Nevada

9. Branson, Missouri

10. Denver, Colorado

On reflection, I'm really not surprised they rated New Orleans over New York. New York has been the center of the jazz universe for over half a century, but in terms of the breadth and depth New Orleans has in a wide, wide variety of live music, and the the sheer ubiquitousness of it...I mean, live music can hit you any time here, a second line never roared past my front door in New York.

Austin? Hmmm. Certain times of the year, particularly festival times (South by Southwest comes to mind) Austin can look like music central, but that's kind of illusory, because a lot of those bands are from out of town. The old Antones-Jimmy-Vaughn-Thunderbirds-Lee-Ann-Barton axis ain't what it used to be, and I don't see anything that organic coming up to take it's place.

Nashville? Corporate country. Big black hats. Pass.

Chicago? Lots of good blues. Some great jazz, if you know where to look.

Memphis? Some great music. The Stax museum. Beale street has some good sounds, but I can't help thinking of everything they mercilessly tore down to build that sanitized safe-for-tourists strip. In some respects the real story in Memphis (and in New Orleans as well) is in hip hop music. I recommend a viewing of "Hustle and Flow." for the uninitiated.

Now Montreal...there's a well kept secret. Quiet as it's kept, the birthplace of Oscar Peterson has had a vibrant scene going back to the first half of the 20th century if you know where to look. Plus it's just a great allround cosmopolitan, sophisticated burg.

Vegas? I don't think so.

Denver I don't know much about, but I know cats there who can really play, and they tell me it's happening.

I'm dissapointed Vancouver, Canada didn't make the list. I lived there for many years and know from personal experience that the place is crammed with first rate musicians. A very underrated scene. The main problem is there's just not enough places to play, so maybe that's why it didn't make the cut.

Okay, so we're 'number one' in live music. Now if they'd just bring the bread up to that standard, everybody'd be happy.

Quick Hit.

2009-09-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

Into our second week of classes here at Tulane and of course very busy. No dates confirmed yet for the fall Jazz @ the Rat series but I'll post them here as soon as I get them. The two confirmed artists are Bill Summers and Idris Muhammad, so I guess we're on a percussion tip.

Summers of course is best known for his work with Herbie Hancock, most notably the groundbreaking 1973 album "Headhunters," but his career is much broader than that, encompassing film and television work ( The Color Purple, Roots) as well as nine solo releases. In New Orleans he led the band "Summer's Heat" (guitarist and singer duo Bill Solley and Kim Prevost are alumnae) and currently works in Irvin Mayfield's Afro-Cuban Nuevo-Orleans project "Los Hombres Calientes."

Idris Muhammad I'm even more excited about than Bill. Muhammad is kind of a legend around New Orleans where he started life in 1939 as Leo Morris. The Morris family has been well known around town for producing top shelf drummers so apparently when young Leo arrived in his school band program they didn't even ask him his instrument-preferrence, just handed him the sticks. One of his earliest recording sessions (at age 15) was Fat's Domino's "Blueberry Hill."

As a leader he's released twelve discs, beginning with 1970's "Black Rhythm Revolution" on Prestige Records. As a sideman he's recorded with Johnny Griffin, Lou Donaldson, Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Grant Green and John Scofield. Since 1994 he's held down the drum chair in Ahmad Jamal's trio. To say that I'm excited by the prospect of playing with the man is the understatement of the century.

In other news we've confirmed recording dates (Sept. 14 and 21) at Word of Mouth studios
http://masterdigital.com/studios/data/wordofmouth.htm Bassist Jim Markway, pianist Jesse Mcbride, drummer Geoff Clapp, guitarist John Dobry and myself, along with new guy reedman Allen Dejan, will be recording Professors of Pleasure vol. 2. Now all we have to do is figure out what we're going to play, learn the music, and record it. But, as anyone who's done this knows, that's the easy part.

Vacation (not).

2009-08-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm noticing a palpable slowdown in activity this time of year. People are harder to get hold of, or, if you can get hold of them, are more reluctant to commit to things. Apparently this is because of the Vacation.

Up until I started working at Tulane, my response to this would have been, "what is this 'vacation' of which you speak?" I've now come to understand that this means a period of time in which one does not work, and yet paychecks continue to be deposited in one's bank account. Many people actually leave home and check into a hotel somewhere (something I've always associated with work) during this period of idleness.

All kidding aside, I was 50 years old before I ever had a 'paid vacation.' Prior to that I'd certainly had times of no-work, but that was called being 'unemployed' and simply meant it was time to panic and start casting around for gigs or, if those were particularly thin on the ground, the dreaded 'day job,' usually some low-level scut-work thing that didn't require much in the way of commitment, like cab driving or bartending or day labor. Even when I was a high school band sub, I was paid on a per diem basis. If I wasn't working, I wasn't earning. Then, in late August of 2005, Tulane hired me as visiting professor of music under a one year contract. A week later, Katrina hit.

So, my first 'paid vacation' consisted of fleeing the greatest natural disaster and engineering failure in U.S. history, not exactly a low-stress holiday. But when I discovered (much to my surprise and delight) that Tulane had electronically deposited two months pay (my official hiring date was July 1st, 2005) into my bank account, it actually did soak up some of the worry. I had no idea whether our house was still standing or not (or whether it was submerged) but both Darlene and I still had jobs, and we even had a few bucks in the bank. I could take gigs on the basis of whether they were interesting and fullfilling, rather than just grabbing the best paying ones. It has been my experience that there is often a direct, inverse relationship between how much a gig pays and how interesting/fun it is.

Tulane, god bless 'em, kept it's faculty on full salary the whole four months we were gone. The next spring, I had an opportunity to take advantage of my first 'paid vacation' over the summer break.

I took a pass, instead using the break to tour personal projects, write new music, write articles for academic journals, and incubate schemes for expanding and improving the jazz performance studies department. I've continued to do these things every summer since, and quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Lying on the beach is overrated.

Currently, I'm spending time in my office practising, preparing music for two CDs (one with the faculty band the Professors of Pleasure, and one with bassist/composer Rob Kohler), preparing syllabi and course outlines for the fall semester, and conferring with Jesse Mcbride about who we'll be booking for the upcoming "Jazz at the Rat" series. More on this in my next post, and remember; idle hands are the Devil's tinsnips.

Brass Bands.

2009-07-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

Good to be back home. It's fun to go out on the road and play with new people for fresh audiences, but it's also, as Frank Sinatra once famously sang "so nice to come back home." I had a ball in Vancouver playing with my old pal Colleen Savage, and all the folks in her band (drummer Phil Belanger, bassist Dave Guiney, and pianist Brenda Baird) are people I've known and worked with for many years, so that took care of the "old home week " portion of the trip. My gig as a leader, with bassist Jen Hodge (AKA "Hudge Hudgins"), drummer Mike Ardagh and pianist Cat Toren was an opportunity to make new connections with some of the up and coming, gifted young players the city continues to produce in such abundance.

Ruminating on this while going through security again *eye roll* at LAX got me to thinking about some of the aspects of the scene in New Orleans that make being a working musician here so different from anywhere else in North America. It's no secret (or shouldn't be) that there's good players everywhere, not just in New York. It's kind of like minor league baseball, there's lots of major league level players in the triple A who are there simply because there's only a certain number of spots in the bigs. Similarly, New York City can only (sort of) support a certain number of jazz musicians; there are plenty of world class players who choose to live in Vancouver or Miami or Cleveland or Kansas City or wherever for all sorts of reasons having nothing to do with ability. The result is it's possible for someone like me to go to pretty much any city in North America and find a first class rhythm section capable of handling the entire canon of straight-ahead jazz at the drop of a downbeat.

You can do that in New Orleans too, of course, but there's also a lot of musical situations here that don't really exist anywhere else. There's R&B gigs everywhere (for players of my generation being able to bust out with "Cleo's Mood" and "Honky Tonk," as well as knowing that the bridge to Aretha Franklin's version of "Respect" is the same changes as the one in Sam and Dave's "When Something is Wrong with My Baby" often meant the difference between eating and not eating), but New Orleans has some specific repertorial requirements, like Smoky Johnson's "It Ain't My Fault" and the Meters' "Cissy Strut." There's also some South-Louisiana-specific genres like Cajun music and Zydeco.

But the big jobbing-gig thing here, kind of the local equivalent of the wedding band, is the brass band. These can be old-school outfits like the Majestic or Michael White's Liberty Brass Band, which plays traditional repertoire almost exclusively, or bands that play in the more funk-based contemporary style of the Dirty Dozen band, or the Rebirth. Even newer-school outfits like the Hot 8 or the Soul Rebels play a kind of 'brass hop' style of hip-hop, rap music adapted to brass band instruments. There are also more esoteric groups like the Panorama Jazz Band that play hybrids of traditional brass band, early New Orleans jazz, and various Latin and Afro-Cuban styles. The one thing they all have in common is portability, marching capability, and (usually) percussion sections made up of two or more seperate players (one player on bass drum and one on snare).

In addition to these relatively fixed-personell outfits there are dozens of 'pick up' type brass bands where who shows up at the gig is related to who's available. My buddy Kevin O'Day, for instance, has a band called the Oakside Brass Band that consists entirely of him on snare and his brother-in-law Frank Lodato on bass drum. When he gets a gig he just starts calling people and you never know who's going to be on the gig. Could be some guy you've never heard of on trumpet, could be the great Kirk Joseph on Sousaphone.

Because of the large amounts of Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in New Orleans (all of whom need at least one band for their annual parade), the persistance of the "jazz funeral" tradition, and the large numbers of other functions which employ these bands (weddings, picnics, political rallies, wine tastings, art gallery openings etc.) there is quite a lot of work for these types of ensembles, and if you're around, competent, and available, sooner or later you'll get called for one of these gigs. What follows are a few pointers for the novice:

Music:

Needless to say, there ain't no charts. If you're like me, and your knowledge of traditional New Orleans music is rudimentary at best, you'll be relying on your ear to get you through these things initially. The good news is, brass band music, both new school and old, is pretty simple, both melodically and harmonically. Listen to a chorus or two and then sneak in there, you'll probably be cool. The down side of this, for me anyway, is that I now know a whole bunch of tunes I don't know the name of, since nobody ever seems to call anything, one guy just starts playing and everyone joins in. Oh well.

The March:

Hopefully, you're not so uncoordinated that you can't walk and play at the same time. If you're lucky, you'll get eased into this kind of thing at a "fake" second line of some kind; the art gallery openings and weddings and things that also hire this type of music. At these things the actual 'parade' is usually fairly short, like up and down the block a few times or (a wedding I played a while back) from St. Louis Cathedral to Tipitina's French Quarter location, a distance of about five blocks. But a genuine second line parade for one of the SAPC's, I'm telling you bruh, that march can be a killer, especially in hot weather. Parade permits are issued for four hours. Thank god for bar stops.

Attire:

Traditional bands require "black and white," meaning white shirt and black pants. The first few of these I did I wore my black wool tuxedo pants. In hot weather this proved to be a tactical error. Black jeans or black cotton summer-weight pants are acceptable to most leaders.

Oh, and hats. Ugh. The more casual outfits don't require the traditional five-pointed, visored 'bandsmen's hat', if you're subbing for someone in a band that does, you will be handed someone else's. It will not fit. It will stink. In fact, as my buddy Jim Markway puts it, it will smell "like somebody's old shoe."

New school bands generally don't go in for black and whites or hats. As a rule, loose jeans or shorts and oversize t-shirts, either all white or all some other color, are the rule. Sometimes the shirt will have the name of the band on it, sometimes the name of the social club. Or, if it's a funeral, it might be a "memory shirt." These are t-shirts specially made up with the name and photo of the deceased on them, and his dates of birth/death. Sometimes these are rendered as "Sunrise" (date) and "Sunset" (date). If the deceased was a drug dealer or gangster of some kind it will be "Thugged in/ Thugged out."

General social issues:

As a rule, being the 'new guy' on these things is not that different from any other type of gig, ie. not unlike your first day at kindergarten. Try to make friends and not be a tightass. One big difference though is you get a lot wider range of capabilities than you do on the average jazz gig, everything from self-taught guys who's chop capability begins and ends with "That Old Rugged Cross/Didn't He Ramble" to schooled players who can sight-read fly shit and make any kind of gig. It's not a good idea to jump to conclusions about which is which either. That guy you assume is just a neighborhood bar gnat might be Terence Blanchard's new tenor player.

Oh, and if the gig is a straight up second line through the 'hood with a 'new school' funk-style band, you are pretty much guaranteed to be the only white guy around, aside from the Times-Picayune photographer and a few ethnomusicologists doing field studies. You are going to take some teasing about this. Be a good sport and suck it up.

And welcome to New Orleans.

Vancouver Jazzfest 2009 Pics.

2009-07-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

Jen Hodge, bass. Mike Ardagh, drums. John Doheny, tenor saxophone.

Photos by Tom Weibe.

Vancouver Jazzfest

2009-06-28T18:33:00.001-07:00

So I'm holed up here at 7th and Oak in Vancouver, a neighborhood known as Fairview Slopes. I know I'm in Vancouver because, even though the weather is a bit chilly (believe me, I appreciate it. It was 103F the day I left New Orleans) every second person I pass on the street is wearing shorts, hiking boots, a North Face fleece vest and some variety of expensive, designer baseball cap. I'm doing the Vancouver thing, getting up in the morning and hiking up the hill to Broadway for coffee at Starbucks, reading the paper, like that. It's nice, you know?

It's funny because I used to live in this neighborhood in the 1970s, when it was a radically different place. Nowdays it's all ticky-tacky but very expensive condos, many of them leaking due to poor design and construction. Back then it was filled with beautiful but run-down Victorian and Queen Anne period houses inhabited by slackers like me. In 1971 I lived in a three bedroom house at 2328 Willow Street with my girlfriend and two other people. The rent was $150 a month and my share was $25. We made our own beer in the basement crawl-space and shared a communal can of tobacco. My total monthly nut; rent, food, beer, smokes, was about $70.

All that's gone now. In the mid seventies real estate developers went through this and other Vancouver neighborhoods like the Four Horesemen of the Apocalypse, flattening hundreds of beautiful period houses and replacing them with expensive (though often poorly designed and cheaply constructed) condos. The irony is that in the long run (though, of course, they had no interest in the long run) there would have been more money to be made renoing the existing housing stock than in flooding the market with cheapo construction. The architectural rape of Vancouver is one of the great untold stories of the 70s and 80s.

Because of my long history in the city, playing the Vancouver Festival is much more than just another gig to me. I've played it every year since 1997, both as a "local guy" and an out-of-towner, and Ken Pickering and the folks at the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society have been very supportive of me all that time. Unlike the New Orleans festival, whose artist passes are only good on the day of performance, CJBS hands out passes good for the whole festival, giving me the opportunity to catch a lot of music I'd otherwise be unable to afford. And the opportunity to play with and socialize with my many friends and colleagues in the Vancouver jazz community is a treasure beyond price.

My gig on Staturday was with singer Colleen Savage, whom I have now known for...good lord, 33 years. We first met as students in Vancouver Community College's fledgling Jazz and Commercial Music program in 1976. When I recorded my first CD as a leader, 2002's "One Up, Two Back," Colleen guested on two tunes, Jobim's "Djindi" and a great arrangement of "Time After Time" that Colleen has in her book. We played that same arrangement at the gig Saturday night, at the tempo I should have recorded it at back in 2002. It's hard to record slow stuff slow enough, you know? It really takes nerves of steel. I chickened out on that session seven years ago, and counted it in too fast. Last Saturday Colleen nailed it dead solid perfect.

Speaking of hard, Colleen's book is hard. I'd forgotten just how hard it is. It would be a real mistake to go on a Colleen Savage gig expecting just another My-Funny-Valentine-chick-singer kind of job. She's got a lot of tricky arrangements and obscure, oddball tunes in there, stuff like Eartha Kitt's "I Wanna Be Evil" and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames' "Yeh Yeh." A tune like "It Could Happen To You," which most singers take at a medium swing, Colleen does in it's original form, as a sloooooow ballad. Gigi Gryce's "Music In The Air," with it's constantly cycling key centers, is taken at a blistering tempo.

This is the third year I've played the Capilano Suspension Bridge stage with her, and I talked to several people afterwards who'd been in attendence every year. Despite the rain and cool weather we had an excellent house and Colleen had them eating out of her hand by the end. I doubt anyone there would have guessed that she was just getting over a terrible cold she'd brought back from California.

My own gig on July 1st at the Railspur Alley Stage is with what I've been referring to as the "mystery rhythm section," because I haven't met them yet. Actually I do know bassist Jen Hodge fairly well, but I've never played with her. I'll be meeting up with drummer Mike Ardagh and pianist Cat Toren on the day of the gig.

I've had some very, very good experiences playing with fresh rhythm sections in Vancouver over the last few years. In 2006 Cory Weeds offered me a date at the Cellar and the band I was using in Vancouver at the time (Tony Foster on B-3, Joe Poole on drums, and Jon Roper on guitar) was unavailable. I considered calling up the "usual suspects" then remembered that Morgan Childs, a young drummer I'd worked with once on a casual big band date, had been playing regularly in a trio with pianist Amanda Tosoff. Along with bassist Josh Cole they made up the rhythm section on that Cellar gig, and it was one of the most fun experiences I had playing jazz that year. I'm hoping for a similar experience with Jen's bunch.

When you have long working associations with certain players, as I do in Vancouver, it's very tempting to stay within the comfort zone of people you've worked with a lot. But it can also be great fun (and pay tremenduos musical dividends) to take a shot and work with some of the many terrific young musicians this city continues to produce in such abundance.

Saddle Up (Again).

2009-06-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Seems like we just got back from Tulsa but it's already time to hit the road again. I'll be in Vancouver, Canada for two gigs at their jazzfest; June 27th with my good friend vocalist Colleen Savage at the Capilano Suspension Bridge, and July 1st fronting a new (for me) local rhythm section of Cat Toren (piano) Jen Hodge (bass) and Mike Ardagh (drums) at the Railspur Alley Stage on Granville Island.

I'll also be out at the South Delta Jazz Festival in Whiterock July 9th for a concert (with Jarrod burough's on guitar, my old Vancouver runnin podnuh Stan Taylor on drums, and my New Orleans crony Rob Kohler on bass) and clinic/lecture.

http://www.southdeltajazzfestival.com/faculty09.html

Man it is so hot and humid here right now. I've been riding my bike back and forth to my office at Tulane, and it was so bad yesterday that the condensation on the inside of my watch crystal caused the watch to stop. I think it's rusted shut in there.

All in all, a good time to get out of town for a while. I'll try and do a little blogging from the Vancouver fest, always one of my favorite playing opportunities. If you're in town and make either of those gigs, hollah at me.

Meyer the Hatter.

2009-06-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

It should come as no surprise to anyone that, in a place like New Orleans, the sun is not your friend. After years of living in Vancouver, Canada, where a warm sunny day is such a rarity that a kind of mass hysteria grips the city when one occurs, compelling tens of thousands of Vancouverites to skip work in a mass stampede to the beach, to the bike path, to rollerblade, here I deal with an embarrassment of riches. The sun, much of the year, is so brutal that locals use umbrellas as much for protection against sunlight as against rain, and only non-natives (like most of my students at Tulane) are crazy enough to actually lay out in it. And if you're walking any distance out in the open, you're nuts not to wear a hat.

I own quite a few of them already (when I was a kid I loved hats of all kinds, and had a whole box of them); my current stash includes two felt fedoras ( Biltmores, in brown and grey), a pricey straw panama with a black band (the kind favored by the recently deceased pianist and raconteur Jack Velker), a cheap straw fedora with a band that says "Vancouver Sun Golf Tournament" that I bought for two bucks at a thrift shop in Vancouver, a "one size fits all" vent-air fedora (another thrift shop purchase, this time in Vicksburg, Mississippi), and a stingy-brim job I got for $4.98 at Walgreens drugstore on Tchoupitoulas last year that's actually made of paper, even though it looks like straw, and that never fails to get me complements from middle-aged African-American sports at second lines. I also recently aquired a straw version of the British "flat cap," which Mr. Arthur, our local truck-vendor fruit and vegetable man, refers to as my "Dago" hat. But since I'm going on the road for a few weeks worth of gigs this summer, and none of these hats are what you'd call "suitcase ready" (and hat boxes on the plane are a real pain in the ass) I decided today that I needed to pay a visit to Meyer the Hatter for something more portable.

Meyer the Hatter is a long, narrow store on St. Charles Avenue, just off Canal and right across from the streetcar stop in front of the Pearl Oyster Bar, that sells nothing but hats. It's sign advertises "quality headgear since 1894." When I was in there last winter the place was full of derbies (some of them green, for St. Patrick's Day) felt fedoras, porkpies, and dark colored Kangols, as well as the odd stovepipe and topper. Today it's filled with straw boaters, panamas, fedoras , various and sundry Palm-beachers and summer hats and of course the white, eight-point black visored caps that bandsmen wear in brass-band jazz ensembles. But I don't see what I'm looking for, a lightweight cotton version of the British flat cap, known in New Orleans as a "bebop cap."

A chubby little guy with a goatee, wearing, incredibly, a peaked-brim cap with earflaps, ala Ignatious Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," skates up to me and says, "How ya dooin cap. Ma heptcha?" A major y'at for sure. God I love this place.

(For the uninitiated, a "y'at" is a working class, white New Orleanian. Their manner of speech is surprisingly un-southern, containing a lot of dese-dem-and-dose-isms. Think Archie Bunker with southern diction. The term "y'at" comes from the once-ubiquitous greeting "where y'at?" and he was asking me "how are you? May I help you?" The expression "cap" (short for "captain") is roughly equivalent to "buddy" or "pal," and is another form of address that one doesn't hear as often as even just a few years ago. Sadly, the homogenizing effects of mass American culture are spreading even here).

But I digress. Clerk: "Ma heptcha?" Me:"Y'all got any a those bebop caps in the store, in maybe a white or a powder blue?" Clerk:"Ohyesindeedy bruh, y'all follow me through heah, watch yah step" (he proceeds to lead me through a narrow opening between mountainous hat trees to a tiny, secluded oasis of hat drawers) "it's a little tight up in dis piece an dat's fuh sho." And after 15 or so minutes of this kind of back and forth, in which we discuss jazzfest ("too expensive for me bruh. I pay $50 to hear music, I want a chair, know what I'm sayin?") the absolute joy and perfection of life in New Orleans ("although I could use a bit less a da flyin bullets, an dats fuh sho") and his total commitment to my continued sartorial well being ("I gotcha covered like dew on da ground, baby"), I walk out of there in a spiffy new white Kangol be-bop cap.

And by god looky here, right under the brim. Meyer's has a website:
http://www.meyerthehatter.com/meyer/

Oblique New Orleans Encounter #971.

2009-05-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

I take my bike to Tulane about two or three days a week, as Darlene and I split one car between us and she works way out on Veterans Highway in Metairie. It's about a five mile ride from Saint Philip Street to my office, through all kinds of interesting and diverse neighborhoods. Things start out quasi-ghetto in the 6th Ward, then go a little more upscale as I pass Bayou St. John. There's a bike path on the neutral ground on Jefferson Davis Parkway and I stay on that from Toulous St., past the Boulevard Club just before Canal Street, and all the way past Tulane Avenue and over the freeway as far as the Washington Avenue canal. Then I cut behind the wreckage of the Blue Plate Mayonaise factory and straight down Audubon Street, across South Claiborne and onto the Tulane campus.

Back behind the Blue Plate factory is a scruffy little neighborhood that's only about half re-populated since Katrina. There's a couple of bars that are still wrecked (Leroy's Place and the Gert-town Lounge) and a bunch of churches. There's an old guy I see everytime I pass by, looks like he's 90 if he's a day, sitting on his porch. There's a trailer in his yard so I suspect he's still living in that and just sits up on his porch in an attempt at some sort of pre-Katrina normalcy. I'm such a familiar sight, grinding slowly by on my $50 Walmart bike, his dog doesn't even bark at me anymore.

Me: "Good morning sir."

Him: "Oh you don't hafta call me 'sir,' young fella."

Me:" Well, you know how it is. I was raised to respect my elders."

Him: "Well looka here, youngblood," (at this point I'm off my bike and it's become an official conversation)"just be glad you have elders. At my age, everbody older than me is dead."
Hard to argue with that.

A few blocks later, a woman I'd never met before called me 'baby.' "Good morning baby," she hollered.

Of course she was about 60 and standing in front of the House Of Refuge Ministries, but still, it was nice, you know?

Getting ready to go on the road this summer for a bit, and I'm really going to miss this kind of stuff while I'm Gone.