The Jazz in the Park concert series, currently in its first year, is produced by People United for Armstrong Park. Next Thursday’s concert features the Wild Magnolias featuring Bo Dollis, the TBC Brass Band, a second line led by the New School Brass Band, and DJ Quickie Mart.

All photos were taken by Kim Welsh.

Keith Urban

Country superstars Rascal Flatts, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood and Jason Aldean headline the main stage in the stadium during the two nights. In addition, a second stage sponsored by Bud Light will be set up outside the stadium to entertain concert-goers while they tailgate LSU football-style. Daily tickets are available from $50 to $250.

Here’s the full schedule:

Saturday, May 26

Main Stage

5:00 p.m. – Jerrod Niemann
5:45 p.m. – Little Big Town
6:40 p.m. – Eric Church
8:05 p.m. – Carrie Underwood
10:00 p.m. – Keith Urban

Bud Light Stage

11:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. 90 Degrees West
1:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Katie Armiger
3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Will Hoge

Sunday, May 27

Main Stage

5:00 p.m. – Joe Nichols
5:45 p.m. – Sara Evans
6:50 p.m. – Dierks Bentley
8:05 p.m. – Jason Aldean
10:00 p.m. – Rascal Flatts

Bud Light Stage

11:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. CJ Solar Band
1:15 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Winfield’s Locket
3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Kim Carson & the Enablers

Yann Tiersen first made a name for himself outside of his native France when he wrote and performed the soundtrack to the movie Amelie in 2001. He started making soundtrack-like music starting in 1993 playing a host of instruments including guitar, violin, accordion, harpsichord, toy piano, mandolin and more. His more song-oriented albums are still heavy on atmosphere and texture, but they’re not heavy. His most recent album, Skyline, was released in Europe last year and last month in America. He’ll perform at House of Blues Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale now. Here’s “The Gutter” from Skyline, and I challenge you to look at something other than the jelly.

Why did you decide to record your version of the theme to The Godfather on the album?

Oh I love that movie, came out in ’72 I believe. I loved it, and that melody stayed with me all those years. I had never played it before so I decided to go to the studio and record it and then play it live. I just love the song and everybody calls me the godfather.

So it seemed appropriate.

I did not designate that name for myself. My friends did it and my radio station did, so it’s just such a beautiful thing, you know? I’m getting some props for something finally.

Is there any song that you tried to put the go-go beat to and didn’t like it?

Yes, happened to me many times. When I pick the right tune, its like “Moody’s Mood for Love.” It was a slow song, and I always loved slow songs. I said, “We gotta put this ‘Moody’s Mood’ thing on a go-go beat! Give it a whole new flavor and put it out again. And sure enough, I did that and the people loved it.

My first big album, We the People, that’s when I was trying to get go-go together back in 1972, and then after that I put out a single called “Blow Your Whistle,” and that was for the little kids running around in school. These kids are 40-something years old now, and remember it from when they were in school, only about 10 years old, riding around blowing their whistle. I was trying to relate to that, and they ate that song up. They still do; they ain’t kids no more though.

They liked that and I decided to do another album, and we called it Bustin’ Loose. That song, “Bustin’ Loose”, we had about two years before we went into the studio to record it. That was really the one that established it like it is. Go-Go caught on in ’76, and from there we’ve been trying to create different melodies to this go-go beat and it worked quite well. “Bustin’ Loose” busted everything loose. This is what go-go is about.

After that I came back with a tune called, “We Need Some Money”, and there was a reason for that because I hadn’t got none in a long time. I’ve never been a lyric writer, but I can write hooks, and I can write some funky tracks. “We Need Some Money”—I wrote that song in 15 minutes. It took me two years to write “Bustin’ Loose,” you know the reason for that: inspirational empty pockets.

Back in those days, you had go-go clubs and go-go girls, but they didn’t have go-go music, so I just decided to call this go-go music. I knew it was going to work when most of the bands around were doing top 40, and they jumped on the groove. I thought, “Hey, we got something here.” It’s not just my sound; it’s the sound for the town. And that’s what happened. You’ve got the innovators and the pioneers like Sugar Bear [Gregory Elliot of E.U.]. He opened up for me with Experience Unlimited in Washington, D.C. The Whispers were on that show. The Delphonics were on that show. We opened up for all of them, and that’s when I first met Sugar Bear. He was like 17 years old. I had the honor of producing their first album and their first hit single was “Body Moves.” I was the producer on that, and I used to go to the studio and work with them and teach them when they were trying to put the band together. Trouble Funk came behind them, the Backyard Band. Now you got a lot of new bands coming out with their own sound. My thing is, I want to make sure that I can distinguish the different styles. They all have basically the same styles, but I can distinguish the different sounds in each band.

What makes your sound different from the others?

I try to incorporate more music. The crowd response and the audience participation, and the percussion breakdown and all that shit is real good; I started all of that. But back in the day, [when] we were doing 20, 25 songs a night, top 40—you didn’t do James Brown, you may not get that gig no more. James Brown was the biggest thing in my life, and I’ve been inspired by a lot of artists. A lot of great artists from gospel to blues to jazz and all that. I’m inspired by all of that, and that’s why I wanted to do a jazz album. I did two jazz albums, and I was happy with that. The type of music that I do, I try to pick something that is unusual that nobody else would normally try on a go-go beat. Some of the same tunes that I’ve done in jazz like “Misty,” I tried that on a go-go beat and it worked quite well. Duke Ellington—“Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” I like to take ballads and update them. “My Funny Valentine,” which is a slow tune, I redid that in up-tempo go-go style. All this keeps me going.

I heard that one of your first jobs was playing guitar with Jerry Butler.

I wasn’t actually hired in the band. I was playing at this night club with this group called Los Latinos, and the Los Latinos was one of the greatest, influential groups. I got so much experience playing with these guys. Joe Manley and Thomas Smith, they were Latin dancers and Latin singers and we only had up top percussion. We didn’t have that bottom, low bass drum. The Latins don’t have that big drum trap, and I enjoyed doing all the top 40. I learned a lot, had a great experience. I got to where I could do any kind of song that we wanted to do: Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, James Brown, all that with the particular Latin sound. I decided to get my own band together and that’s when I took that flavor with me.

When was that?

1966 is when I started to put my own band together. That’s 41 years, huh?

Jeez, yeah, do you feel it?

Look at me, 60 years old. Shucks, I’ve been partying since I was a teenager! When I get on that stage I feel like a big ol’ kid! We used to work seven nights a week, double gigs on weekends, triple gigs on weekends, two gigs on Saturday, two gigs on Sunday, and two gigs on Friday. Work work work work work. We used to do as many as ten gigs a week, and they kept us going. We used to play until 7, 8 a.m.

I knew go-go would catch on eventually, in 1972, ’73 when we would do the top 40 songs, and then we’d break down. A lot of people would dress up all the time. Coming to my shows, they’d have suits and neckties and mink coats and all that, especially in the winter time, and they came and they chilled and would sit around ’til they got drunk or high, then they’d get up and dance. There was a small dance floor, and by the time we threw that go-go at them, the mink coats came off, the neckties and they stopped wearing them suits. The tables and chairs disappeared, nothing but a big dance floor. Everybody was dancing, and that’s when I knew we got it. It done caught on. All they did was sweat, sweat, sweat, alllllll night long.

In the song “The Party Roll”, you mention Deno’s. What’s Deno’s?

Deno’s is a club that I played in. He [Daniel "Hollywood Breeze" Clayton] changed the name from Breese’s Metro to Deno’s. A young man that used to have a little TV show around here, Teenarama, we called him Breeze, he was a disk jockey, a great disk jockey too, from Virginia, and he ended up owning his own club. He got started at the Ebony Inn. The Ebony Inn is one of the clubs I got started in. That was the first club that gave me a job and we wasn’t getting any money, but we was playin’ Friday, Saturday, Sundays, and we was getting barbecue and beer.

Back in those days, I was a drunk. Not an alcoholic, a drunk. There’s a difference. I put that in the song. After we started packing that place, then they started payin’ us a little money, you know, $5 a night, then we got up to $10 a night and they took away the beer! $15 a night, we had to start payin’ half for the barbecue. Then Breeze came up there and looked at us and said, ‘Look, you guys are getting pretty good. You’re packing this place. How much are you getting?” I said, “We’re getting $15 a night.” He said, “I’ll tell you what. Come on uptown with me and play the Red Carpet Lounge and I’ll give you $17 a night.” That’s where we got a lot of exposure, and those people started booking us for their cabarets and their political affairs, and that really got us started being popular.

Is go-go primarily a Washington, D.C. thing?

That’s what I intended for it to be. It’s a sound for the town, you see, and I didn’t expect it to go anywhere, but then we started traveling everywhere, all over in Europe, great reception in Japan, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Yokohama, from there to Paris, London, Newcastle, Germany—everywhere we went we got great receptions. They loved go-go! They had one place in Germany where they would play go-go 24/7. Twennnnty-four-seven. And not just ours, everybody’s go-go. You see go-go was out before rap. Rappers were young in those days, and some of them would come from New York and come to my shows, and that was quite impressive to me. That was incredible. I kept talking naturally to the people while we were playing music. We would call their names, dedicate things to them, where they’re from and all that. I know they was doing basically the same thing, but they was rhyming with it. They created a very unique style. Now, I listen to them and a lot of rappers are using the go-go groove. A lot of them. And I’m excited by that.

Can you explain the go-go beat?

Well, it’s a spiritual thing with me. Back when I was a child, my mother used to have me singing in church at 2, 3 years old, and sometimes we would go to people’s houses and sing. We were very poor; when we needed something to eat, mama would take me to people’s houses and say, “Come on baby, let’s go sing,” and we would go there and sing a few gospel songs and they’d feed us and pass that hat around. That particular beat came out the church that I was going to as a little boy. That beat was real fast, and the people were jumping and shouting over that beat, and I decided to use that beat and take it down when I heard Grover Washington come out around 1977 with a tune called “Mister Magic”. I said, “I recognize that beat!” “Mister Magic” has got that church beat that they used to play when I was a little boy going to church. I would slow it down from 120 beats-per-minute to 60 beats-per-minute and everybody started grooving.

It’s a wonderful thing to see how music develops slowly and gets into the people’s minds, into their rhythm and into their existence. And Washington, D.C. has the most loyal, inspirational fans in the world. They’re the ones that tell you what they want to hear, and they’re the ones that have the last say-so. The fans and the radio stations. Once you get them on your side, you owe them, and that’s exactly what happened with go-go. I was so happy to see it go like that when it first caught on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Updated May 18, 10:25 a.m.

Dan Gibson at the Tucson Weekly brought attention to David Simon’s thoughts on Chuck Brown’s passing:

Just heard the news that the father of D.C. go-go has died. He was 75.

Argument enough to burn that motherfucker down to the Lake Erie waterline.

I’d link to Simon’s blog post, but at the moment it’s down. Simon and Blown Deadline Productions brought the Backyard Band to Tipitina’s last week as part of the Treme vs. The Wire battle of the bands, and truth be told, if we name a winner based purely on who could make the audience dance, Big G and the Backyard Band walked away as the champions. The go-go groove in action is a remarkable thing, as seeing Trouble Funk twice in a 36-hour period in Toronto in 1983 or 1984 made clear. At the time, the city was a dance-free zone, but Trouble Funk had people dancing with whoever was next to them at the Bamboo Club, then they played a daytime party in the parking lot next door as part of the city’s jazz festival and that turned into a dance party. Chuck Brown’s musical innovation may be a very specific one that never found its way out of its region, but it’s power can’t be overstated.

Click here to view the embedded video.

All photos were taken by Kim Welsh.

All photos were taken by Kim Welsh.

“The Essence Music Festival has always been more than just music,” says Michelle Ebanks, the President of Essence Communications Inc. “It’s a forum to transform lives by the power of our voice to celebrate our community through music, entertainment and empowerment. We are deepening our youth empowerment day to the festival to focus on the matters that are most critical to our next generation, and we are celebrating their voice with our first-ever youth empowerment concert at the Superdome.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

In case you haven’t heard, next year’s Super Bowl will be held in New Orleans, and the Convention Center board voted to donate $30 million to help “improve the infrastructure” in these neighborhoods—which comprise most of the areas visitors will frequent during the Super Bowl.

Tell me we don't need infrastructure and more city service in the French Quarter...? Courtesy: nowpublic.com

But the proposed hospitality district would also be able to levy taxes within the district on hotel rooms (1.75%), restaurants and nightclub sales (.02495%) and parking (1% increase in hotel parking tax for overnight hotel guests). The proposed board could also direct additional tax revenues to additional infrastructure improvements, and to spend more money on attracting tourists to the city. At this writing, it’s proposed that about a third of revenues will go to a dedicated fund to enhance city services and to add to infrastructure improvements, and the other two-thirds to funding activities of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors’ Bureau and the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. It’s also interesting to note that the CVB intends to spend some of its marketing dollars pursuing international visitors. I’m surely hoping they do it smartly and they use music to market New Orleans as an international music mecca. But at least they are committed to attracting people from outside the US.

I think this is a good idea. I’ve supported additional marketing and promotions to attract international visitors for many years, and this could help to contribute to these efforts. However, I do believe that the revenues should be split down the middle: 50% for infrastructure improvements and 50% for tourism marketing. We need better sanitation, nice sidewalks and streets, and increased police presence in this city, especially on Frenchmen Street; it’s an important part of the infrastructure that makes visitors want to come to New Orleans and to return again.

It is important that every neighborhood involved in the district be given a voice on the new agency board. But I just don’t comprehend the protests from the residents in these districts to stop the legislation—primarily from the French Quarter and the Marigny residents. According to the Times-Picayune, in 2010, “French Quarter voters voted down a proposed security district that would have taken in about $1 million a year in property fees to spend on private security patrols in the roughly 100-block neighborhood. Although most of the money would have come from business owners, only residents registered to vote in the Quarter could cast ballots.”

This refers again to certain residents in the Quarter, most vocally represented by the Vieux Carre Property Owners & Residents Association, and French Quarter Citizens, not wanting more tourists in their neighborhoods. I find this attitude counterintuitive to the fact that these people chose to live in an urban tourist destination. The French Quarter is one of the most interesting tourist destinations in the world. We should we not want more business because a few people with a lot of political clout—who have the money and determination to oppose more visitors in the Quarter—don’t like the traffic, noise and inconvenience of tourists? Huh?

I understand not wanting your neighborhood to become a tourist destination, but the Quarter and Marigny already are places people go out of their way to visit, and they have been for many years. How many people who live in these two districts and who are the vocal members of the dissenting organizations actually work in the hospitality industry in the city? Will their incomes be affected if tourism drops? I can guarantee you that the businesses on Frenchmen Street and in the Quarter would curl up and die without the support of visitors. When the hospitality industry flourishes in the city, you can tell. The city buzzes with vitality. The hospitality industry is the backbone of the city’s economic health and its success is crucial.

Without a safe, secure, clean place for visitors to patronize, we are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Without reaching out to market to attract more visitors to New Orleans, the French Quarter and Marigny will die.

June 6: Wild Magnolias Mardi Gras Indians + Lagniappe Brass Band
June 13: Latin Night with Son Como Son + Ritmo Calypso
June 20: Big Daddy ‘O’ Revue + Blues4Sale
June 27: Sunpie Barnes & the Louisiana Sunspots + August Rush
July 4 (5-9 p.m.): Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes + Zena Moses & Rue Fiya All-Stars + the Brent Walsh Jazz Trio
July 11: George Porter Jr. & the Runnin’ Pardners + Sound Man Presents
July 18: Brass-A-Holics + Melomania
July 25: Amanda Shaw & the Cute Guys + St. Cecilia’s Asylum Chorus

The Wednesdays on the Point concert series is presented by the Algiers Economic Development Foundation.

Tonight, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band headline Wednesday at the Square in Lafayette Square with the Breton Sound opening. The Dozen have a new album, Twenty Dozen, which includes “Dirty Old Man,” a song that has been a staple of the band’s live show for a few years now. Here they are performing the vehicle for baritone sax player Roger Lewis in Germany in 2008. The show starts at 5 p.m.