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LOUISIANA MUSIC FACTORY—The small stage of the Louisiana Music Factory is packed to the edge with musicians. Matt Perrine leads an aggregation of musicians from almost every walk of New Orleans’ musical life to promote the release of his first record, Sunflower City. He hoists his sousaphone on to his shoulder with surprising grace considering the instrument and counts off a tune. “Moin Amie’ Doubon Moin” features gypsy jazz interplay between Chris Kohl’s clarinet and Matt Rhody’s violin while Matt Botell’s banjo adds rhythm chords that root the song in New Orleans.
His set takes the audience around the Caribbean from Martinque to Trinidad to Cuba and back to New Orleans. Perrine’s wife Debbie Davis comes to the stage, and they banter like Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. She sings the ballad “I May Be Wrong” in a simple voice that is perfect for the song’s yearning melody, then songwriter Alex McMurray climbs the stage to sing “May May,” the Mighty Sparrow tune that is one of the highlights of Sunflower City. With Perrine, McMurray, and drummer Carlo Nuccio, it’s also a reunion of sorts of Royal Fingerbowl, the underground rock band that people remember with great affection from the 1990s. The music is different, but it’s that way almost every night of Jazz Fest for Matt Perrine. Later today he’ll anchor the fun bombast of Bonerama. Tomorrow it’s electric bass with songwriter Paul Sanchez in Lafayette Square and Friday it’s acoustic bass with Banu Gibson at Jazz Fest. When the set at the Music Factory is over, Perrine carries the sousaphone offstage with a smile. It’s Tuesday between the Jazz Fest weekends, and he only has seven more gigs if no one else calls him.
Not that he’d turn a gig down if he didn’t have to. That pleasure in work has defined Perrine, who touches on all the influential music forms in New Orleans by playing almost nightly with one band or another. He doesn’t shy from effort, usually playing the heaviest instrument on the stage, and he does so with the unassuming grace of someone who understands his place in the job and the art. “My father was a working class guy who worked hard from 9 to 5. He had that kind of work ethic,” Perrine says. “I was ready to take a large load.
It was work that brought Perrine to New Orleans in 1991. He grew up in Sacramento playing piano, trombone, tuba, electric bass, and then acoustic bass. “When it came to music,” says Perrine, “things others struggled with came to me naturally. I got the most joy out of playing music.” There was a traditional jazz scene in Sacramento, and while in sixth grade he joined a trad band that played festivals in California. In high school, he says, “I heard Louis Armstrong, but I thought of it as specifically New Orleans music.” He continued music study in college, and then when he got to college, he had a revelation. “My sister gave me a cassette of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band,” Perrine says, “and I had never heard the tuba allowed to be played the way Kirk Joseph was playing it. My music started taking a New Orleans slant after that.”
He eventually became frustrated with the festival circuit and the limited opportunities he had to play. Steve Yocum, a trombone player who had moved to New Orleans to play on Bourbon Street, led one of the bands Perrine met. When Yocum couldn’t find a tuba player who could do and engagement at the Maison Bourbon, he called Perrine.
“I threw everything in my truck and drove to New Orleans,” Perrine says. “When I got here, I was playing tuba and acoustic bass five days a week, six hours per day for Steve. Then I got hired for nights at the Maison Bourbon by Wallace Davenport for four nights a week, five hours per night. I was at the Maison Bourbon a lot. That got my chops up.”
FAIS DO-DO STAGE—Bonerama is in full force today on a beautiful day at the Fair Grounds. Four trombones, guitar, drums, and the sousaphone of Matt Perrine are playing the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Perrine is blowing hard and strong, and he is thoroughly enjoying himself. The people in the audience are more accustomed to the usual Fais Do-Do fare of rubboard zydeco and accordion Cajun, but they’re into it. “Bonerama is the stuff dreams are made of,” Perrine laughs. “I won a Big Easy Award for Best Rock Band in New Orleans and I play tuba in the band. I never anticipated that.”
After years of playing in different bands, Perrine has made Bonerama his main gig. “The archetype of a musician’s career is to involve yourself in many projects. If one of them booms, you get swept along. With Bonerama, it’s gotten to the point where I book everything else around them like the Tin Men, the Nightcrawlers, Tim Laughlin, Kit Lowe, my European gigs.”
Bonerama keeps Perrine playing with two of his longest-running musical foils, trombonists Craig Klein and Rick Trolsen. All three also play in the New Orleans Nightcrawlers. Trolsen first hired Perrine for his gonzo-fusion band Neslort. “He’s very dedicated to finding the best thing to play for the best situation,” says Trolsen, “He has chops out the ass, but he doesn’t sacrifice musicality. There are a lot of cats who have chops but don’t say anything. Matt continues to say things.”
Klein agrees. “He’s a freak, basically is what it is,” Klein says, laughing. “He knows all the songs in any genre. He’s an intense musician and his songs are intense.” Klein and Perrine have played together in the current bands as well as the reggae band Sista Teedy and Cool Riddims and Jimmy Maxwell’s Orchestra in the 1990s, playing society dates and at Maxwell’s Toulouse Cabaret. In fact, it was a recent society engagement with Klein as the leader where Perrine got his inspiration for Sunflower City’s concept.
“I was playing a second line at Ponchartrain Vineyards,” Perrine says, “and Craig called ‘Muskrat Ramble.’ I’ve always hated that song. To break up the monotony, I asked Craig if we could do it with a Latin/South American vibe. He said sure, so I set up a Latin groove, and New Orleans musicians, they know what to do with that and they fell right in. It struck me as we were playing it that it sounded much more interesting as an island rhythm than as a jazz song. I started thinking about Kid Ory and how he was a Creole musician and it made me want to take New Orleans music and Caribbean music and put it next to each other and bounce them off of each other. New Orleans culture and Caribbean music are intertwined. They share street music and Carnival traditions. When you hear New Orleans musicians playing this, they sound alike.”
It may be difficult to hear this connection when Bonerama’s playing its version of heavy metal, but when the song ends and the band starts into the Meters’ “Cabbage Alley” with its Professor Longhair-esque riff and New Orleans shuffle, the connection is more than obvious.
THE REPUBLIC—Tucson, Arizona’s Calexico is about to hit the stage. The group’s bass player wouldn’t be able to make the date because of flight screw-ups, so they called Matt Perrine to sub. Perrine had never heard of the band before he got the call, but he spent several hours woodshedding and listening to the songs on the set list from the CDs he bought at the Fair Grounds music tent once he got the call to be ready. He is much more relaxed than one would think and when the band calls him onstage, he bounds up, straps on the Paul McCartney Beatle-style bass, and does a more than adequate job despite the unorthodox song structures of Calexico’s music. The band is impressed.
Backstage, Perrine says, “I couldn’t even pronounce their name when I got the call.” Even though he has plenty of work, Perrine thinks later, “I didn’t have the option to say no. I felt if they were good enough to play the festival, that I would enjoy the music. It’s something new, and I look forward to learning something new. I also was sympathetic to their situation. I’ve been in similar places looking for a horn or drummer. It was tough, though. They have complicated music and a really deep band vibe.”
When pressed, Perrine comes up with a couple names of musicians he would have called if he had been in this kind of bind, but all the musicians he can think of have gigs and he isn’t sure how quickly they could pick up the music. Sometimes the years of study and work pay off in ways no one can anticipate, but it’s time to move on. Tomorrow is Bonerama at the Mid City Rock ’n’ Bowl and Sunday is Lil’ Queenie at the Lagniappe Stage and Tin Men at the Saturn Bar.
CHAZ FEST—The setting mid-afternoon at Chaz Fest is the yard behind the Truck Farm, the Bywater recording studio. The yard is broken up into two stages separated by a row of trees, and drink and food vendors are set up on the patio. A hundred or so folks are scattered about, either standing in small groups or lying on the blankets on the grass. It’s hard to believe that the traffic and hustle of St. Claude Avenue is a hundred yards behind. It’s warm and friendly when Perrine takes the stage and puts the sousaphone on around 3 p.m. with fellow Tin Men Alex McMurray on guitar and Washboard Chaz Leary on washboard.
It is a fun, energetic set with an additional buzz because McMurray and Leary are Chaz Fest’s ringmasters. Midway through the set, assorted musicians and friends including film maker Henry Griffin, guitarists Jay Holland, Luke Allen, and Jonathan Freilich, and accordionist Greg Schatz come onstage to sing along with the choruses of the sea shanties that are featured on the latest Tin Men effort, The Valparaiso Men’s Chorus—Guano and Nitrates! It’s great communal music fun, and Perrine is rising to the occasion and playing with more force than ever.
Of the bands Perrine plays in, the Tin Men are one of his favorites. “The Tin Men make sense to me, but maybe not to others,” he says. “I have a great belief in this band. I know that the Tin Men could get popular if people could hear it. Within this unit, we have the ability to turn the show into a different direction. It’s important for the musicians to love the band they’re in, and we love this band.”
According to Leary, “It’s a challenge to play with Matt because he has so much musical knowledge, but it’s always fun because we keep it light and find interesting things to do.” McMurray agrees. “He can play anything that comes into his head, and what comes into his head is remarkable,” McMurray says.
“I play better with him because he knows the changes and I’m less worried about him getting the right notes,” he continues. “But conversely, he leans on you and you work harder with this guy. You can’t wipe your head between tunes.” Leary shakes his head and interjects, “Don’t have a chance to take a drink of water.” McMurray smiles and says, “Matt calls the tunes. Before you’re done with the last one, he’s got the next one going. The asshole wears you out, but we push back. When there are people in the room, he wants to bring his A game. We always want to take it easy, but we never do. We literally were discussing this an hour and a half ago.”
Leary sighs humorously and adds, “Yeah, let’s take it easy on ourselves, but by the time we’re halfway through the third tune, it’s like we’re at Shea Stadium.”
Fortunately for Perrine, the Tin Men and the bands he loves are playing a lot these days. “After the storm, I wanted to be careful to leave space in my calendar for things that I wanted to do,” he says. “I didn’t want to fill up my calendar to take gigs and then have something come up that I wanted to do and not be able to do it.” Perrine varies his work, supplementing gigs with both commercial sessions and recording projects and some writing and arranging. “That combo keeps me floating,” he says
But all the work takes its toll. Perrine chooses his words carefully as he speaks. “It takes a lot psychically to do this. A lot of personal energy. Sometimes when I’m offstage, I need to go into myself and be very quiet. When I’m working a lot or on the road, I love to go some place where I can be part of a large group of people watching someone else perform. It can be theater, classical music, even a football game. I leave those events feeling refreshed and ready to perform again. Watching someone else struggle through the motions of performance helps me.”
Watching him onstage at Chaz Fest, it’s hard to believe that he ever runs out of energy, but blowing into a 20 lbs. sousaphone is heavy load physically and can wear even the seasoned veterans out. Rest isn’t coming soon, though, as Jazz Fest goes on for another three days.
ECONOMY HALL STAGE—It has been said that to have fun and hear great music during Jazz Fest, Matt Perrine is one of the musicians that you should follow around. This gig is one of the reasons. Both the acoustic bass and sousaphone are onstage as Perrine joins pianist Tom McDermott, clarinetist Evan Christopher, drummer Shannon Powell, and percussionist Michael Skinkus for the Danza Quintet. The Danza Quintet shares the aesthetic Perrine exhibits on Sunflower City. It plays the music of the Caribbean whether Spanish tinge Jelly Roll Morton songs, Louis Moreau Gottschalk pieces, beguines from Martinique and choros from Brazil. Perrine slips into this mode like it’s a second skin. The entire band, most of which plays on Sunflower City, makes all this music sound like it could be from New Orleans.
Pianist McDermott is a particular fan of Perrine. “He always tries to find a way to fit in with his playing,” he says. “I am amazed at the freedom and virtuosity he brings to his tuba playing.” The crowd is particularly into this with the dance floor on the side of the tent crowded with couples waltzing and performing other intricate dances. Each musician onstage is so comfortable with the music that they’re playing with it, and not simply performing compositions.
Sunflower City contains this sense of fun and an aversion to genre. The music exists outside of any specific era, and that makes it different from other bands Perrine plays with. Bonerama plays classic rock and funk. The Tin Men have a larger scope, but it is still post-World War I music. Sunflower City would work in the parlor at soirees in the 19th Century Creole 7th Ward, in bucket of blood saloons on the backside of the Vieux Carré in the mid 20th Century, and backyard wine parties in the 21st Century Bywater. Perrine is flexible enough to be play music of all these eras and places and a few more without making them sound dated in any way.
To the Sunflower City collective, the Danza Quintet, and to Matt Perrine, it all comes from the same well, and to play it is to be a part of New Orleans as a part of the American South and the Northern Caribbean. “New Orleans is a musical crossroads and meeting point for different styles,” Perrine says. “To play New Orleans music well, you need to know a little bit about European music and a little bit about African music and Cuban music and American pop music. New Orleans music is so encompassing that to play it well, you need to look at all those things.”
In the middle of the set, the Danza Quintet invites up violinist Matt Rhody, and they do a couple tunes from Sunflower City. That music fits seamlessly into the rest of the set as it fits into the whole musical palette that makes up Matt Perrine’s life and work. Sometimes it’s work and sometimes it is play, but it is rewarding due to the music itself and the people he plays it with, and he loves playing it. He better love it, because he still has four gigs with three different bands before daylight Monday.
Published June 2007, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 20, No. 6.
