2007’s La Louisianne Sessions put Roddie Romero and the Hub City All-Stars on the map. The ambitious album earned them a Grammy nomination as it honored the musical styles that met in Lafayette—Hub City—Cajun, zydeco, blues, rock and swamp pop, each treated as a living thing and not the last, revivalist vestiges of days of [...]
Jon Cleary has three pianos. There’s nothing obviously antique, historic or novel about them. They reside in his home studio in the Bywater under posters from gigs he’s played—one for a venue on Louisiana Street that featured “J. Marky D.” In the control room, a framed blue, battered poster advertising a Johnny Adams gig at [...]
On May 1, a star-studded lineup will play “New Orleans Musicians for Obama”, an effort to lend support to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Organizers Gaynielle Neville, Jimmy Anselmo, Diane Ireland and OffBeat’s Jan Ramsey have pulled together a musical lineup that so far includes Dr. John, Irvin Mayfield, the Neville Family, Zigaboo Modeliste, Caesar [...]
Quintron and Miss Pussycat tour regularly, but on November 8, they take their “Parallel Universe” art installation to Le Dojo Gallery in Nice, France. The show of Miss Pussycat’s puppets and Quintron’s Quintron opened at NOMA in January 2010. While at NOMA for three months, he recorded Sucre du Sauvage. He’ll record in the gallery [...]
The plan is to “introduce things about Louisiana you don’t even know,” The Oxford American publisher Warwick Sabin said this afternoon at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Sabin and Louisiana Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne shared the stage to announce that the state will partner with the Arkansas-based Southern culture magazine to produce the magazine’s 2012 [...]
It’s official—Kentucky, Louisville, Ohio State and Kansas are coming to town for the NCAA Final Four, and so are Kiss, the Black Keys, Jimmy Buffett and more. Starting Friday at 4 p.m., “The Big Dance Concert Series” brings free shows to Woldenberg Park starting with Kiss on Friday night. Saturday the Black Keys will headline [...]
[Updated] South by Southwest starts Tuesday, and Louisiana will be well-represented this year at the annual Austin music festival and business conference. The music showcase runs through Sunday, and area performers including Curren$y, Katey Red, Dee-1, MyNameIsJohnMichael, Brass Bed, Lost Bayou Ramblers and more will play alongside American and international bands. If you’re in Austin, [...]
The South has been a rich source of capital and small-“M” mythology, and it’s that mythic South that Kristin Diable taps into on Kristin Diable and the City. Filmmakers have presented stylized visions to evoke a strong sense of place, and Diable does a similar thing sonically. She sings with an exaggerated drawl that, like [...]
I often think that it must be hard to be Chris Thomas King—to have a restless musical imagination that prompts him to explore a host of styles and the chops to excel in all of them. What do you do? Deny the competing impulses and hew to one path, or follow them all and produce [...]
When Ruthie Foster first played Jazz Fest in 2008, I sat next to her as she sang during our interview on the Music Heritage Stage. At arm’s reach, her voice was as powerful and warm as it had been when channeled through the Blues Tent’s PA an hour earlier, and that voice has been her [...]
