Artist/guitarist Tony Green was born in Naples, Italy in 1954 and raised in Algiers. His murals, including those devoted to Storyville (at the Louisiana State Museum) and Pelican Stadium (at Mid-City Lanes), are New Orleans landmarks, and his paintings are in collections around the world. Besides college matriculation and many years spent painting in Venice (Italy, as opposed to the Louisiana fishing village), Tony credits as seminal his studies at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts under the Latvian artist Auseklis Ozols, who Tony calls “a direct link to the Renaissance.”
Throughout his artistic career, Tony has played guitar professionally, concentrating on “gypsy jazz” à la Django Reinhardt, the legendary Belgian musician. Tony’s musical excursions have also included stints on “air guitar” accompanying Cream, and gigs with the “Cajun Frank Sinatra,” a zydeco band in Arnaudville and a high-life band in Ghana.
Tony was interviewed at his apartment/studio in the French Quarter, where he was in the midst of completing yet another large mural—this one to be installed at Isidore Newman School in commemoration of the institution’s 100th anniversary.
Were you an artist or musician first?
I probably was an artist first because as a kid in grammar school, I was the go-to guy to do all the Mardi Gras decorations. At Holy Cross, I painted the tiger for pep rallies and all that sort of thing. I went to Holy Cross for four years and then due to an April Fool’s joke I was asked to leave and I finished up at O. Perry Walker on the West Bank.
I’m the youngest of four children and my two older brothers were into music, especially my brother Bobby, and he was big friends with this guy Terry Pattison, a great record collector. So back in the ’60s, my brother was bringing home all these records by Son House and these old blues guys. I was totally into the Stones and here comes the original stuff.
My sister brought home a guitar because she flunked out of college the first semester. So when she came back home, the guitar came home so we started messing around with guitars. I really got into this music that my brother had and I started playing that. Then we got a piano from the Salvation Army and I started banging on that. That was the beginning of my illustrious musical career.
Did you attend college?
I studied art at USL in Lafayette, and I was also playing music there, too. I got a job playing with this guy Allen Wayne, who was like the Cajun Frank Sinatra. We toured around the Lafayette area. When I was going to USL, I think it was voted the Number One Party School in PlayboyMagazine.
Then I got this great gig playing with this guy L.C. Donatto and the Drifters. He was a zydeco guy from Houston. I was living out in Arnaudville and one night we stumbled into this little club and he was playing there. His bass player didn’t show up so I said, “Man, I’ll play bass.” Here was this little white boy playing bass and the next thing you know, the little white boy’s playing with the band. We toured around all the cane-cutting areas playing for the cane-cutters on Saturday nights. That was a great experience.
Then I left and went to Washington. D.C. to study at the Corcoran School of Art. That was my first break from the South. I really wasn’t learning much there because I was more interested in learning the fundamentals and my teacher was into stripes. He was a master of masking tape.
Living in Washington, D.C., I had access to the National Gallery of Art and I also had access to the other museums—that was the cornerstone of my education. Then I got introduced, not only to the East Coast art scene, but I got introduced to some great jazz musicians who would come through Washington, D.C. This was at the end of the ’70s.
The biggest influence for me was Sun Ra and his Arkestra, who I’d heard about and I had some of his records. Then I started going to his gigs and I was totally blown away. I would go and bring my little sketchbook and make these drawings and at the end of the concert, I would go backstage, give Sun Ra the drawings and talk with him. But you don’t really talk withSun Ra—you listen ’cause he has this ongoing rap that never ends. He was looking at my sketchbook ’cause they had the King Tut show going on at the National Gallery and I had copied all these hieroglyphs. Sun Ra was looking at that and he was reading ’em for me. A couple of years later I’m in Boston and I’m looking through a record rack of Sun Ra’s albums and I pull up a Sun Ra record and there’s my sketch of the hieroglyphs on the cover. I didn’t know whether to be happy or call my lawyer. I was highly flattered.
My best Sun Ra story was that they came and played in Italy. At that time I was living in Venice and it was during Carnival. I’m walking along the street and there’s this poster advertising all this stuff going on and way at the bottom, in fine print: Sun Ra Arkestra. So I went there and all the guys were tuning up with the tunics on and pyramids on their heads. I said, “Hey guys—I don’t know if y’all remember me…” Sun Ra asked me if the next day I wouldn’t mind taking him around Venice. That was a day!
We went into St. Mark’s Cathedral and he said, “Oh man, this place!” I said, “It’s a beautiful church, isn’t it?” He said, “This is a church?! Oh no man, we’re outta here! I can’t stay in here! I don’t go in churches!”
In a nutshell, what Sun Ra meant to me as an artist, because he surrounded himself with the greatest jazz musicians in the world—these very disciplined men, and that’s what I learned from his music—the importance of discipline. Talking to the other guys, they described it as like being in the Sun Ra Army. The total commitment was to the vision of Sun Ra and even though these guys were great musicians, you could hear through their playing Sun Ra. So they were like extensions of his hand. That was a tribute to the genius of this man that he could inspire these great musicians but also he could get his voice through their music. I listen to him a lot. I like his “space music,” the stuff that sounds like a vacuum cleaner going on the blink. On the other hand, I really love romantic European music, too.
When did you discover gypsy music?
I left Washington, D.C., and went to visit my grandmother in Scotland ’cause my mother’s from Scotland. I had kept up a correspondence with my grandma since I was a kid. I took a cheap Icelandic flight to Luxembourg and started hitchhiking in the direction of Scotland [laughs]. Then I stumbled upon a country called Belgium, which I’d never heard of, and then Brugges. To make a long story short, I walked into a vegetarian restaurant, met this girl and ended up staying for two years, renting a room upstairs.
I walked into a café one night and here was this incredible group called Waso. They were gypsies who played the Django [Reinhardt] repertoire and they also did the European repertoire: two acoustic guitars, upright bass and a horn player. I was totally overwhelmed by this music. I became a gypsy jazz groupie right there on the spot. I started following these guys around with my little tape recorder and then I’d practice. I had my own band there in Belgium but it was more a rock ‘n’ roll band. I started incorporating more of this music into it and getting into Django. Then as I got into Django, I started discovering the beauty of European melodies and I got exposed to Portuguese music and then Hungarian gypsy music and Romanian music, Italian music, French valse musette, and I’m still discovering great music. I realized that this is part of my heritage, of who I am, because I’m from Europe. I was raised on New Orleans rhythm and blues—the Meters, Professor Longhair, Chocolate Milk and all that—but then I discovered melodic music, acoustic music and the power of that. I completely changed and haven’t looked back since.
When did you form your first gypsy jazz band?
I didn’t start a gypsy jazz group until I got back here to New Orleans. I lived in Venice, off and on, for 20 years. This is the first summer, since 1981, that I’ve spent in New Orleans. It’s been fabulous.
I lived in Venice from 1982 to 1985 for three years straight, and then I was doing six months here, six months in Venice for about eight years, and then I thought it would be a good career move if I came back and just settled in New Orleans, and use that as a trampoline for my career.
So I would take the hottest, nastiest months—July, August and September—go to Venice, create a body of work, leave all my tools over there and bring the work back over here. I had a working trio there and I had my working trio here.
Then I took a gig at the Columns Hotel back in the ’90s and I was there for about three years and I really established my repertoire—a weekly “practice,” you might say. I’ve kept with it ever since.
It’s a very demanding music. I get a lot of guys who come up here and want to play. So they put down their electric guitars, I give them one of these acoustic guitars, give them a fast tempo and after about five minutes…man! I say, “Well, look, the first 20 years are the worst…”
Who’s in your trio now?
John Rankin worked with me for a long time. Now I have this young Italian guy who’s perfect. He’s a guy called Daniele Spadavechia. He’s been my protégé for about six months—very enthusiastic, we’re always rehearsing. I use mostly Tim Paco on bass. Then I have my B-Team and C-Team guys.
Why did you first go to Venice?
I finally finished my degree, in art and art history, at the University of Maryland. I was renovating houses to pay the rent. I was working for this Englishwoman, Caroline Davidson, and I told her I wanted to get back to Europe. She said I should contact this old Venetian family—the Zorzi’s. Alvise Zorzi is a very famous Italian author. Caroline Davidson used to be a governess for Alvise Zorzi’s brother’s kids and she said I should write the Zorzi family a letter.
About three months later, a letter came back saying they had just purchased a palazzo—Would I be interested in helping with the renovation in exchange for staying there? I said, “Fuck yeah!” So I went.
They bought the palazzo, which had once been the residence of Casanova, with this count—Count Targhetta, who’s this old gay guy who lives totally in the 18th-century. He has all these little costumes and he even had this little black manservant. Things got kinda weird with him. The bottom line was I wouldn’t go down for the Count. So I left the palazzo and just made my own way as a painter. I know a lot of people there so I just call the usual suspects to line something up.
There’s a plethora of apartments available because there’s been a mass exodus of Venetians to the mainland, due to the prohibitive prices of living in Venice. If you’re a regular family-type person, it’s just too expensive to live there. A lot of Venetians go live on the mainland, retain their apartments and rent them out to strangeri—the foreigners like myself.
You also spent time in Africa.
I had a girlfriend whose father was with the embassy in Accra, Ghana, in West Africa. I went down there and the first day I arrived, I got arrested for black-marketing money. Then a week later, there was a coup d’etat—an overthrow of the government. We lived on the main street where all this stuff was happening. I woke up one morning and tanks are going down the street. It was an exciting experience being in a country like Ghana, to see a complete collapse of the economy—to go into a store and there’s no essential commodities whatsoever.
Did you play music there?
Yeah, I was playing with some of the high-life groups. I met this English guy called John Collins and he’d been living there a long time. High-life bands are pretty guitar-orientated. I was playing at a club that was run by these Lebanese guys—it was pretty sleazy.
The bigger picture of it is that my impression of Africa before going there was Tarzan movies and coup d’etats on television. I thought it was the land of barbarians. I tell you what, after a year there, I came back to the States, and I realized that the barbarians are right here.
In Africa, they practice brotherhood on a daily basis. They would give you the best of whatever they had. As a guest, whenever I would show up, they may live in a little mud hut but they’d give me the best bowl of soup or best place to sleep. Families are so important there. Kids are community property. Whereas here, if I reprimand a kid for throwing a rock through the window, I’ve got a lawyer coming at me.
Africa taught me a lot about what the real priorities in life are. The 9/11 experience was a terrible tragedy but I’m hoping that people’s priorities have changed and that the trivial things that we were concerned with have disappeared. That we have ended the Age of Cynicism and entered a new Age of Sincerity, which I hope to see reflected in the arts—that we go forward to studying those ancient wisdoms that the Greeks and the Egyptians knew about and which the Renaissance was based on 500 years ago. That the young generation will disown what their parents consider art and will want something that’s really deep and meaningful.
Can you describe the difference—creatively—between playing the guitar and painting?
I think they’re more similar than different. Me personally, number one, I’m a big believer in craftsmanship. Creativity is a wonderful thing, inspiration’s a wonderful thing, talent is a great thing, but if you don’t have a work ethic to mold and to nourish these wonderful gifts that you may be born with…a lot of people tend to let the talent do everything and you can only get to a certain level. With the art and the music, I find that both are disciplines and both require constant attention. They’re like two jealous mistresses.
It’s like getting in a zone. Let’s take music, for example. First of all, I need to know my fretboard. Then when I get inspired—so I’m not thinking about what notes to play—the flow is coming. I get in a zone like Michael Jordan, man. Three-pointers every time. You get to a point where you’re just playing and it’s a natural thing. It just flows.
The same with painting. After years and years of studying the fundamental things, then we can begin to hear your story as it flows out. The common bond between painting and music is the craftsmanship that’s necessary and of course, the divine intervention. The craftsmanship is a vehicle for the inspiration.
The big difference is that painting requires solitude and with music, you need accompanists.
That’s a great point. If you’re really doing this, if you’re really a painter, it’s a lonesome existence. I’m up here all day working on this mural. It’s so great working with musicians because it’s a team effort. We go out and play for people, there’s social activity.
Is it difficult working with others? Because as an artist you really don’t want other people’s input. It can get in the way of your vision.
That’s why I’ve got my own band [laughs]. I treat my guys right. I pay ’em to listen to me. They trust me ’cause I get the nice gigs. If they weren’t into the music that I play, I’d know it and it wouldn’t work out. I’m always open to hear people’s ideas but the truth of the matter is I’m the guy that goes to Europe every year and hangs with these people, going to the Djangofest [in Samois-sur-Seine, France], doing the research, playing with the Europeans, learning the music, etc. I just bring it back and say, “Let’s try this tune.” I don’t really know anybody here who has that passion for this particular kind of music. Right now, I’m the guy. I always treat my musicians right and make sure they’re happy. It’s like a wife—if your wife’s not happy, you’re not happy.
What’s your primary source of income—painting or music?
Painting. I would’ve been dead a long time ago if I had to rely on music. Playing gypsy jazz in New Orleans is like being an ice hockey player in Bombay, India.
I have a lot of respect for musicians and really, I don’t consider myself a musician in the true sense of the word because I never studied music. I don’t read or anything like that—I just play. The music, for me, is an extension of the painting. Painting I studied.
Real musicians, to me, are somebody like Tom McDermott or Tim Laughlin—those kind of guys who know their music and it’s always evolving and growing. I just found one niche and I work within my limitations. The bottom line is I want to play something that’s beautiful. I’m into beauty. I’ve sort of learned the European aesthetic as opposed to the American aesthetic.
The European aesthetic is something that’s centuries old. Like women—I love women. Women used to be the source of beauty for us. They were the symbol for fertility figures, the symbol for harmony and balance and architecture, the symbol for nature. They were the ultimate goddess. That’s been kind of tossed out.
My music has a certain feminine side to it, as my art does. I want to show that kind of aesthetic. In this day and age it’s getting rather barbaric out there.
What do you think happens with children? In kindergarten, everyone can draw and play music, and then eventually most people give it up.
I guess it depends on your parents—whether they’re going to nurture that talent or if it is enough talent to make a career out of it. Everybody’s life is different. I think there’s three ingredients to someone finally being an artist or musician. The chief ingredient is having that talent, the second ingredient is having the work ethic and the third, very important one is having a nurturing environment. You could have some kid in the projects who’s very talented, even has a work ethic, but if his parents are crackheads, he’s finished, man. It’s never gonna happen.
The fourth ingredient might be to marry a doctor or lawyer.
Yes! [laughs] Given that the standard of living has gone up so much here and people have a lot of free time, the art business is booming. When I say the ‘art business,’ I mean the hobby shops. Everybody is an artist now. Everybody thinks they’re a painter. I think it’s great. I think the more people that paint and draw, it’s really a great thing to do.
But I just wish that society would be a little more discerning about who is a happy amateur and who are the artists who are really part of the tradition of painting, which used to be a great tradition. Artists were like scholars in the community. An analogy might be that I like to play basketball, but who’s going to pay money to see me play basketball?
In the sensitive world we live in, people aren’t used to criticism. The general consensus is that we should always encourage everyone, no matter how limited their talents.
And I do encourage them.
I personally discourage anyone from attempting to be an artist. It’s such a difficult financial existence. I think only the best should be artists. I always tell kids to become plumbers or electricians, make a good living and do the art for yourself. Then you won’t start hating it.
Well, that’s true. Eventually, the weak ones get weeded out.
Sometimes the weak ones succeed.
Yeah, that’s been proven over and over again, hasn’t it? [laughs] I’m not critical of them. The American Dream—go out there and make a buck. Whatever. I’d like to see everybody painting and playing music, but I’d like to see some more standards, that the public educates itself a little more about painting and the arts.
That starts in elementary school. Instead of cutting out all the art programs, teach people aesthetics. It’s a quality of life thing.
I guess the Europeans are a bit more cultured than Americans.
Oh yeah. I can talk to the guy selling me chopped chicken liver about painting and he knows about his tradition in Italy. America’s a great country—I love the ambition that’s rewarded here, the pioneer spirit—that if it’s impossible, well, we’ll just find another way to make it happen. If I could link that to the European aesthetic of having the appreciation for the quality things in life, I think hitching my wagon to both of those makes for a well-rounded way of looking at the world. If I ever had kids, I would love to educate them in America and Europe so they could be trilingual, which is important in the 21st-century. I speak Italian fluently—still working on my English though [laughs].
