New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

Jordan, maybe you can give Offbeat writer John Swenson grief for his brass band overview Friday night down there at this Offbeat magazine event:

We're having a First-Day-of- Fest-Party at the Seahorse Saloon on the opening Friday of Jazz Fest from 7pm-9pm with music by the Free Agents Brass Band

ha, actually i was planning on being there anyway.

oh shit, this dude put up 15 videos of a hot 8 second line: http://www.youtube.com/user/widgetbrain

A quiet Friday and weekend around DC is not like seeing all the action at the J & H Fest and at area clubs down there. There's finally "Ponderosa Stomp" at the Fest this year, in addition to the 2 nights at HOB Tuesday and Wednesday. I'll just look at those youtube videos and the Offbeat calendar issue I got in the mail and yearn (or maybe buy more cds since I'm not paying for airfare, hotel, food and stuff).

From Alex Rawl's blog (he's an Offbeat Editor)who also spoke at the EMP Pop Conference- talking about New Orleans jazz fest

Susan Cowsill played the Acura Stage for the first time, and debuted two new songs (that I saw - I missed the start of the set), one that she finished that morning and the band learned before the show, and a stronger pop song titled "Dragonfly." Underused fiddle player Tom Maron joined her for the set, and she brought James Andrews, Craig Klein and Derek Huston out to add horns to "Crescent City Snow." I wasn't sure where horns went in the song, but they fit beautifully, adding texture and intensity more than punctuation, and Andrews' trumpet played the bright blare associated with New Orleans.

While at Cowsill's set, I had time to marvel at the horror of the new Grand Marshal area. The audience was backed up at least five yards - now approximately 10 yards from the stage - so that those wealthy enough to make the $450+ price tag had room to wander up and loiter comfortably during the show while fans were pressed against the railing. The area runs the width of the stage, so it's not just a pocket at stage center. It's a strip of prime real estate that has been turned over to the rich.

http://offbeatpoplife.blogspot.com/

Here's his site.

I wonder if any New Yorkers saw the following movie at the Tribeca Film Fest over the weekend (I also think there are a few showings coming up).

Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

Faubourg Tremé is a first-person documentary by New Orleans natives Dawn Logsdon and Lolis Eric Elie. Drawing on several years of pre-Hurricane Katrina footage, the film brings alive the history of Black New Orleans through an in-depth look at one historic neighborhood, the Faubourg Tremé. Executive produced by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Nelson, the film follows journalist and first-time filmmaker Lolis Eric Elie, who sets out to renovate his 19th-century house in this now deteriorating neighborhood. Drawn to the architecture and its mix of old and new, Elie soon finds that the history of this place is the real story. This once vibrant neighborhood, he learns, was in fact the center of African American economic independence and political activism from slavery through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. In recent years, the Faubourg Tremé, now more often referred to as the Sixth Ward, has suffered from blight, drugs, and crime, and even more recently was devastated by the wrath of Hurricane Katrina-the effects of which we see here in heartbreaking detail. Yet Logsdon and Elie bring an insightful perspective to the retelling of this community's past, particularly through its literary and musical artifacts. http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/filmguide/Faubourg_Treme_The_Untold_Story_of_Black_New_Orleans.html

I'm not crazy about Wynton's attitude on some subjects so I wonder what his exec producer role entailed, and I'm curious if he and hornman Glenn David Andrews who is in this, got along (maybe they had no dealings with one another).

Oh, Lolis Eric Elie is a Times-Picayune columnist

http://toulousestreet.wordpress.com/

I don’t know how many of the happy hippy mud dancers or tourists at the Jazz and Heritage Stage at Jazz Fest Sunday understood what it meant when little Dinerral Shavers Junior took the stage holding his father’ s instrument, the snare drum, with his father’s band, the Hot 8. For a kid who didn’t look much older than seven or eight he did a creditable job. I just wish I’d gotten a decent picture. You can see a bit of a blur in one picture of one of the two young men from one of the marching clubs that joined the band on stage. Seeing those three young boys walking in their father’s steps was impressive and encouraging.

May the line of warrior drummers be unbroken in New Orleans.

Can anyone recommend for me a contemporary brass band album? I really enjoy this shit, especially live, but have the sinking feeling that I might not have an appetite for more than one CD's worth. So I want to make sure that I start out on the right foot. But there are sooo many places to go wrong - cheesy bands, over-produced or over-arranged bands, smooth bands, bad recordings, too MOR or too ramshackle, etc etc etc. So: help?

I have been listening to this New York City Live thing by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, which is pretty fine - love the energy, the melodicism and rhythm, - but it's also maybe a touch too safe, not quite hot/loose/free enough. I'm not looking for anything remotely avant garde but just a bit of uh i don't know, recklessness? My favourite brass band thing I've heard is the Hot 8's version of "Sexual Healing" (even though i usually hate that song). Love the way they play with the dynamics, the different timbres, and then the push of their voices. It feels just a tiny bit bittersweet, cracked around the edges. But I have no idea if the rest of their album/s follow through on that.

oh and for what it's worth i'm really into any band with a bit more of a rhythm section. bring on the brass-band-meets-go-go shit.

sorry that this isn't New Orleans-specific, but you guys seem like experts...

That tune is pretty representative of the whole Hot 8 record. It's hard to pick one representative brass band album, but if I had to it would probably be New Birth Brass Band's D-Boy. It's got a good mix of tunes and as a recording it comes as close to capturing the feel of a second line as anything out there.

i saw some young, young bands this weekend, like trendsettaz and baby boyz. TBC can't really be considered kids anymore, and they sound unreal these days. way sicker than even a year ago.

Jordan, did you happen to catch the To Be Continued Brass Band anywhere? They were playing at the beginning of Bourbon Street near Canal Thursday and Friday nights.

Gah, delete post. Just realized what "TBC" is.

Jordan: great to hear that there are young bands like Trendsettaz and babyboyz happening

yeah, they've got a way to go, but it really does seem like there are more brass bands than ever before.

Did anybody go to this:

COMMON GROUND and GUERRILLA MANAGEMENT PRESENT:

THE PEOPLES COMMUNITY FESTIVAL (Because many residents of New Orleans Can’t Afford A Jazzfest Ticket)

Friday, May 2nd, 7pm To 11pm

1800 Deslonde (at Roman) LOWER 9TH WARD
Featuring:
*MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD
*REBIRTH BRASS BAND
*The NEVILLE FAMILY BACKED BY the CAESAR BROTHERS
*TRIBE 13
*The WILD TCHOUPITOULAS
*TBC (To Be Continued) BRASS BAND
*BIG CHIEF VICTOR HARRIS & FIYIYI
*REVOLUTION 2ND LINE

***FREE! BUT BRING YOUR JOY and CHECKBOOKS to DONATE TO THE RELIEF!***

Sweet!

So the Tuba Fats tribute on the 2nd Jazzfest weekend had to compete with the Neville's return to New Orleans...

We left Jazzfest way before 7 yesterday hoping to avoid the mad exit rush, but stopped to check in at the Jazz and Blues tents before the final goodbye. What strokes of luck! The horn-packed jazz jam tribute to Tuba Fats blew me away with the clarity of each note, the passion, the friendliness of those onstage and the extremely low number of listeners in the tent (the rest still watching The Nevilles, of course). http://vatul.net/blog/index.php/1757/

Five tuba players (including Lacen's young grandson, whose name I didn't catch over the joyful rumble) joined an all-star band combining members of the Rebirth and Pinettes brass bands, plus Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Glen David Andrews (who proved a spirited MC: "Put your hands up for tubas, y'all!") Shamarr Allen, ad hoc members of the Wild Magnolias and one very enthusiastic stage-diving, scaffold-climbing dancer.

The set ended with someone on stage officially announcing the conclusion of Jazzfest 2008.

Minutes later, though, Trombone Shorty was somehow on the Acura stage taking a cameo trumpet solo during the Neville Brothers' rendition of "Big Chief." http://blog.nola.com/living/2008/05/allstar_tuba_fats_tribute_drop.html Dave Walker, Times-Picayune

kid that killed dinerral shavers shoots some other dude. on canal st. specifically, at canal and st charles. during jazzfest. dumb motherfucker.

Can the city get bullet-proof vests and new identities for the witnesses and potential jurors?

i think it depends on whether or not nagin/a city councilperson/bill jefferson has a crony or family member to take an inflated no-bid contract for bulletproof vests and new identities.

Ha.

Back to the music---I love how the horn-playing Andrews cousins--David Glenn and Trombone Shorty--manage to appear on numerous stages at Jazzfest every year. Glenn David's in that Treme movie too.

I just found a postcard in my local bagel place for some hippie jamband fest in Virginia this summer that Trombone Shorty and his Orleans Ave band are gonna be at. That jam band stuff is not for me, but it may be a nicer paycheck for Trombone Shorty these days than just playing New Orleans clubs in the summer after the festivals have come and gone.

May 3rd article on police breaking up another brass band funeral procession--

http://www.nola.com/timespic/stories/index.ssf?/base/library-147/1209793205219220.xml&coll=1

excerpt:

The only squad car involved with the parade was the unit that followed the parade, Young said. He doesn't know anything about a second car, the one that allegedly dispersed mourners. "If there was another unit, we don't know about it," Young said.

Yet the marchers say a police cruiser ordered them to disperse and a Dillard University professor who witnessed the incident took a photograph.

Snuffing Saturday's parade was an "attack on the culture," the same culture that gave birth to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, said Wilson's longtime friend, Jerome Smith. He found the timing ironic: At about the same time that police had scattered an authentic funeral march, near Esplanade and Claiborne avenues, Jazz and Heritage Festival-goers were lined up behind a band at the Fair Grounds, ready to follow a second-line recreated for tourists.

Wilson, known to hundreds of protégés as "Coach T-Gully," was a fixture in the 6th and 7th wards because of his involvement at Hunter's Field.

new Rebirth!

Louisiana Music Factory unfortunately sells too much stuff at list price--$17.99 for Rebirth.

yeah, their prices are pretty ridiculous. the problem is that the only other option is usually to get it at a show.

(maybe it'll get on iTunes eventually, Rebirth is pretty good about that)

TBC killing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ipIYa3KHcM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG1C0wQO_eQ

No brass involved but still worth checking out:

One of the most enduring artists and greatest icons of New Orleans, Irma Thomas, will be featured on the season finale of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. In the episode, the Extreme Makeover project is Noah’s Ark Missionary Baptist Church, which was destroyed by the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. After the completion of the church, Thomas performs the gospel song “Singing Hallelujah” in its new sanctuary. She is accompanied by Hammond B-3 organist Dwight Franklin and pianist Diane Peterson, from the historic New Orleans First African Baptist Church. The episode airs Sunday, May 18 at 8 PM EST/7 PM CST.

more TBC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw1rww16oTc

i'm digging the new rebirth, btw. it's short (~55 min) and a couple of the tracks are throwaways, but the long medleys are hot shit for real.

apparently it's available here as a download: http://www.digstation.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?albumid=ALB000018692

cool

you're going to pay $2 for 2/3rds of the album, admit it

Apparently, there's a song on the new Dr. John cd called "My People Need a Second Line" with James Andrews and Trombone Shorty Andrews (Though, uh, Eric Clapton's name and others get the big type on the image in the link) see part-time New Orleans resident and jazz critic Blumenfeld's review below:

THE VILLAGE VOICE
May 27th, 2008

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0822,crucial-caustic-postcards-from-new-orleans,451825,22.html

Dr. John and the Lower 911's City That Care Forgot
Crucial, caustic postcards from New Orleans

by Larry Blumenfeld

"This record ain't mad as it coulda been," Dr. John told me recently, sitting in his Harlem office. Fan-pleasing funky grooves aside, City That Care Forgot seems angry enough-more a connected set of rants than a collection of songs. But it's easy to underestimate the depth of outrage in New Orleans, the breadth of indignity and injustice endured in his beloved birthplace. Locals gave knowing nods and approving hollers when Dr. John tried out some of this material at this year's Jazz & Heritage Festival. Taken in full, these 13 tracks might incite more widespread outcry: He channels post-Katrina fury as capably as rappers like Juvenile have, and lays out relevant issues-local, national, and global-in ways that, say, Nancy Pelosi simply hasn't. If elected leaders lack Dr. John's political will, they also don't have his magnetic drawl or the bristling power of his Lower 911 band. Plus, he's built a strong coalition of the concerned here, including Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, Ani DiFranco, Terence Blanchard, and a number of local-hero New Orleans players.

"If ya wonder how we doin'/Short version is we gettin' there," Dr. John sings at one point, then changes up the lyric: "If ya wonder how we doin'/Short version is we gettin' mad." "Promises, Promises" sounds like a revival-tent version of "Down by the Riverside," its sing-song refrain nonetheless cynical: "The road to the White House is paved with lies." "Black Gold" takes on the oil-industry greed fueling everything from environmental catastrophe in the Gulf to endless war in Iraq. "Say Whut?" demands accountability for the botched Katrina response, and bites hard: "Say it's a job well done/Then you giggled like a bitch/Hopped back on the Air Force One." In "Dream Warrior," Dr. John imagines himself as an avenging samurai "sleeping with my sword" and proffers a conspiracy theory: "Lemme explain/About the second battle of New Orleans/Not about the loss, not even the devastation/About it was done with intention." Beneath this beats a bamboula rhythm, bedrock of local resistance music for centuries.

It's not all national headlines, though. "My People Need a Second Line" is a pointed response to an ongoing culture war over the brass-band-led funeral processions that define New Orleans musical tradition. It specifically references a moment when 20 police cars converged in Tremé (the oldest black neighborhood in the city), and two musicians were led away in cuffs. Dr. John explains the meaning of the jazz funeral via a doleful melody; then a snare-drum snaps and the tempo speeds up, signaling the second-line. "It's something spiritual/Ought to be kept out of politics," he chants as trumpeter James Andrews and trombonist Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews-older and younger brothers of a storied Tremé lineage-play soaring variations on a hymn. Such songs, directed at us all, are dedicated to families like these.

I bet this was a good time

Rebirth Brass Band 25th Anniversary Celebration with Special Guests Kirk Joseph, John Gros, Trombone Shorty , Shamaar Allen, Kermit Ruffins, and DJ Captain Charles. More TBA

Friday, May 30, 2008 10:00 PM CDT
at The Howlin' Wolf

The Rebirth 25th Anniversary show was great. Not so much for the named guests as the many, many graduates of "Rebirth University." I think every living band member who still resides in New Orleans was there and onstage. In addition to Shorty, Kermit, and Shamaar (rapping the hidden track from his solo CD), there was James Durant and John Prince Gilbert on saxes, Tyrus Chapman (singing "Let Me Do My Thing") and Keith "Wolf" Anderson on tbs. Plus everyone who is in Rebirth now. I know I'm forgetting someone. OK, and now that I think about it, drummer Ajay Mallery wasn't there and neither was trombonist Herb Stevens. But still amazing to hear Rebirth as a 15 piece! And most of them stuck on stage the whole night and played through 2 sets.

At one point they played their signature jazz funeral dirge for about 10 minutes and gave a shout out to all the members, friends, and family who have died over the last 25 years.

Saw an ad for a new Treme Brass cd. Haven't heard it yet.

saw hot 8 adventurously booked opening for indie-afropop novelty band extra golden the other week. took them a little while to get into it but they are prob most consistently good of the big name brass bands.

that new dr john record is pretty decent as far as late period phoning-it-in dr john goes.

new treme cd is okay, i guess. good tracklist, but it sounds a little sterile and the dirty dozen sax players on it are annoying. corey h3nry is on trombone, but he doesn't really let it rip like he can.

no one hits a slow groove like the h8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl74E-0F_Fo

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92456200&sc=nl&cc=nn-20080711

Farai Chideya talks with three notable musicians from the Crescent City: Irvin Mayfield, a trumpeter, composer, and bandleader; Irma Thomas, who is known as the queen of New Orleans soul; and Greg Davis, a trumpeter and member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, one the most famous marching bands in New Orleans.

A 17 minute NPR interview

apparently TBC is in spain? good for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0soxSM265g

interview w/benny pete on boing boing tv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgbjjECWrvU

How about this ridiculous showdown between TBC and Glen David Andrews at Jackson Square? I wish the kids had been able to bring it, but they still make the older guys look pretty pathetic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZEzkNPe1q0&feature=related

Kinda sad...

Hot 8 and Donald Harrison in Maine July 30th posting by Larry Blumenfeld

http://www.artsjournal.com/listengood/2008/07/lobstercrackers-social-aid-ple.html

Satchmo Summerfest

music starts Friday night with the Satchmo Club Strut. The event takes place on and around the Frenchmen Street corridor Friday, August 1 starting at 5 p.m. with opening ceremonies and the start of a second line with the Rebirth Brass Band at Washington Square. Over the course of the evening, 29 acts will perform including Irvin Mayfield, Lionel Ferbos, Ellis Marsalis, Charmaine Neville, Vavavoom, Good Enough for Good Times, New Orleans Jazz Vipers, Twangorama, the New Orleans Saxophone Quartet and many more. During the Club Strut, writer Gary Giddins-who speaks Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Old Mint on Louis Armstrong's influence on Bing Crosby-will sign books at Faubourg Marigny Art and Books.

tbc doing a wedding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtCQqthjt_M

Good sounds in NYC today.

25th Annual Roots of American Music Festival Learn More Saturday, August 23, 2008 4:00 PM South Plaza Lincoln Center Out of Doors - free, no tickets required Battle of the Brass with The Pinettes Brass Band and The Hot 8 Brass Band 25th Annual Roots of American Music Festival Learn More Saturday, August 23, 2008 5:00 PM South Plaza Lincoln Center Out of Doors - free, no tickets required Featuring The Hot 8 Brass Band featuring Shamarr Allen; Betty Harris with the Marc Stone All Star Soul Band; The Campbell Brothers’ Sacred Funk featuring Kirk Joseph’s Backyard Horns; John Boutté & the Hot Calas; and Irma Thomas & the Professionals