Quick: Name a New Orleans funk band that recorded for a major label in the ’70s, worked with Allen Toussaint, played backup on dozens of notable sessions, and left behind a stack of essential grooves. Odds are that you named the Meters, who’ve become synonymous with golden-era New Orleans funk. But history’s paid less attention [...]
From the start, one of Porter-Batiste-Stoltz’s strengths was their lack of a keyboard player. The power trio format is fresh territory for funk and PBS has worked wonders with it, keeping the jams spare and sneaky. Instead of recreating the funky Meters with someone else in Art Neville’s place, they effectively made open space a [...]
Every Jazz Fest seems to bring another stack of one-off, local supergroup, live jam albums. What’s different about this one? For one thing, it wasn’t made during the Fest, but one early summer night at the Maple Leaf. For another, there isn’t a Meters cover or New Orleans standard in the batch. Then again, it’s [...]
Early in this rural travelogue of an album, Grayson Capps finds an arrowhead in the dirt and makes you care about that for three and a half minutes. Finding meaning in such piddly events is what a good songwriter does. Doing so in a lively, roots-rock setting is what Capps does here. The mood here [...]
You know exactly what to expect whenever anyone strikes up the opening riff to Professor Longhair’s “Go to the Mardi Gras,” right? Not quite. That riff opens Jon Cleary’s first live CD, and what follows is anything but a traditional version of the song. Instead of charging into the familiar groove, his Absolute Monster Gentlemen [...]
The concept of linear time just doesn’t exist when it comes to the Radiators. Their live shows always felt like slices of one, never-ending gig; you show up and get your three hours’ worth. It’s one thing to keep the same lineup together for three decades, but if ZZ Top or Aerosmith were to release [...]
The post-Katrina record has become its own genre by now, but what of the post-Katrina party record? Not as crowded a field, but Walter “Wolfman” Washington pretty much owns it with this disc, which folds some upbeat recovery sentiments between tunes about the continued importance of shaking one’s booty. If his Katrina songs are about [...]
On paper, this live set has all the makings of a supremely excessive blooze-rock rave-up. Always a mean guitar-slinger, Tab Benoit is backed up here by Louisiana’s LeRoux, who’ve had their arena-rock moments in the past. And his guests include Wet Willie singer Jimmy Hall and Fabulous Thunderbird Kim Wilson, who’ve worked a few enormadomes [...]
Whenever someone tries to fuse brass-band music with anything else, the brass band sound usually overwhelms, as if it’s just too cocky to move onto other turf. Trombonist Big Sam Williams was part of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band during that group’s not-entirely-successful flirtation with funk. But with Funky Nation he’s found the right mix, [...]
For much of their career, the North Mississippi Allstars have strived to avoid doing the obvious blooze-rock thing. They’ve chased after new directions, whether adding studio polish on Polaris, jamming with Robert Randolph in The Word, or going semi-trad on 2005’s Electric Blue Watermelon. With Hernando (the inaugural release on their own label), they finally [...]
