Owner Barry Smith at the Louisiana Music Factory. Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee.

When it started, it was a long, rectangular room with a couple wooden racks for records and CDs on a section of North Peters street that had very little going on. Twenty years later it’s a must-visit store for the legions of New Orleans music lovers around the world, but Barry Smith, owner of the Louisiana Music Factory, never thought it would make it this far. “Honestly,” he says laughing, “we weren’t thinking that far ahead.”

The Louisiana Music Factory started in 1992 when Jerry Brock, co-founder of radio station WWOZ and producer of the first Rebirth Brass Band record, met Smith while both were working at local independent record store Record Ron’s. Brock had an idea to start a store focusing on New Orleans and Louisiana music, and he and Smith paired up to open one on the 200 block of North Peters Street in 1992. They made the move through an alley to Decatur Street in 1996. “The doors opened up to one another on Clinton Street, so we made carts to haul the racks through the back doors,” remembers Smith.

Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee.

“Our vision was never as big as it has become, both physically and product-wise,” he says. There have been uncountable highlights from all the in-store performances, but Smith remembers best the ones where “some of the top performers who didn’t need to come in still did to do promos at our little store. People like Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Johnny Adams, Danny Barker, Dave Bartholomew. Things like that are touching. It means something to me that people are willing to come and give their time to support what we are doing.”

Smith appreciates all the great musicians that the store has developed relationships with and who have come to perform at the Louisiana Music Factory’s famous, free in-store performances. However, with the music industry in the midst of what some call a restructuring and some call an apocalypse, it hasn’t been easy. “We’re hanging in there, and we’re proud we’ve come this far, but with the economy and music retail in general and the availability of everything online and downloads, it’s certainly a tough business to be in. I think the only reason we’re still here is that we’re a specialty shop in New Orleans that focuses on local musicians with so many great musicians in town. We offer unique products and independent product that you don’t see in many record stores, so we’ve beaten the trend of chain stores going out of business.” He continues, “I like to think that we’ve become a singular place where it all comes together and people can come and see the amazing music in the region and find out about artists they’ve never heard of.”

The Louisiana Music Factory’s 20th anniversary party is Saturday, February 25. Everything is 20 percent off from noon to 6 p.m. that day. Kermit Ruffins, Little Freddie King, the Stooges Brass Band and more will perform.

The new Ani DiFranco record is the latest entry in DiFranco’s musical and lyrical view of the world and current events. Over the years, she has perfected her sound, and this record is a pristine example of that. Her guitar sounds tight chords with a heavy, yet not overwhelming emphasis on the lower range. Her voice is lovely—alternately cute and flirtatious or strident without being overblown, and there is a certain subtlety to delivery. She gets her point across on these songs without yelling. Her lyrics again have great turns of phrase, whether it’s “If you’re not getting happier as you get older, you’re fucking up” of “If Yr Not” or her metaphors for promiscuity on the song of the same name.

What many people forget about DiFranco is that her records combine folk, rock and funk music with interesting sound textures. Whether it’s the menacing, slightly distorted guitar in “Amendment” that matches the song’s content about the rights of women, or the stark piano filling out “Albacore,” there is a focus on the sound of each track which reveals treasures upon each listening.

All of this comes together on the title track, the labor movement anthem from the mid 20th Century. The song opens up with Pete Seeger’s banjo before the electric guitar plays a lead that sounds like a clarion bell call as DiFranco updates the lyrics to reflect the current state of government. Starting off at an intense level, the track continues to build by adding the cadences of the Roots of Music Marching Crusaders amid DiFranco’s defiant calls to action. It is a terrific update of a song whose dense textures and unequivocal point of view add to its anthemic vibe.

The art of listening, whether on the bandstand or in daily life, is a highly underrated skill. As Kidd Jordan continues his formidable yet underappreciated career, his playing shows more and more how much he values listening to and complementing his fellow players. This has always been evident in his music, but now it has come to the forefront. On his new record, the appropriately titled On Fire, Jordan spends a good part of the time weaving in and out of the playing of drummer Warren Smith and bassist Harrison Bankhead with slower, more lyrical saxophone lines that complement, not overwhelm the other members of the trio.

On the track “The Evil Eye,” he plays short motifs that build to dense textures against which Bankhead can base melodies. When Smith plays his vibraphone on the beautiful track “We Are All Indebted to Each Other,” he and Jordan give the music a pretty, ethereal sound that would be right at home on a late 1960s Blue Note recording.

For those fans of Jordan’s more extreme playing, there are still some great passages where Jordan demonstrates that he plays that style better than anyone. It’s not for nothing that in 2003 he released an album called No Compromise. However, this album maintains the balance between both styles and should be heard by jazz fans everywhere.

Buy Kidd Jordan’s On Fire on iTunes

Listen to Kidd Jordan’s On Fire on Spotify

Ruthie Foster has a cult/fanatic following. People either have never heard of her or they think she has one of the best voices of our time. Her new CD Live at Antone’s shows why her voice has received such notice. It is husky and soulful but never overdone. She wails at the top of her register when she needs to, but then brings it back in an easy manner. Her singing possesses a familiarity that welcomes listeners, and her onstage persona is good- natured and inviting.

Her song choice is similarly appealing. She takes Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Up Above My Head (I Hear Music in the Air)” and transforms it from an upbeat gospel rocker into an eerie meditation. Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits of My Labor” moves from its dirge-like vibe to an inspirational number. However, the remaining songs would benefit from imaginative arrangements. Aside from her voice, there is little to distinguish the songs from other folk/roots rock music out there. Her voice digs in and really goes for it all over this disc, but the songs rarely go beyond third gear. It takes special guest guitarist Papa Mali to kick up Foster’s song “Heal Yourself,” and other songs could use that kind of goosing. Live at Antone’s is a good record, even great at times, but it doesn’t equal the talent of its leader.

Buy Ruthie Foster’s Live at Antone’s on iTunes

Few people know that Sun Ra, besides being an avant-black futurist big band leader, was also a poet. He and his band would recite chants and poems during and between songs at performances, and now, thanks to Kicks Books—Norton Records’ publishing imprint—many of Ra’s works of words are collected in the appropriately titled This Planet is Doomed. All of the themes of Sun Ra’s music are present here. There are romantic notions where the idea is to “dream my dreams / reach into the well as philosophical treatises in poetry darkness / and touch the stars,” as form. In Ra’s poetry, outer space and the apocalypse are always near and earth is backwards and primitive. Poems such as the title poem and the punk-rock-esque “Earth is a Hole in Space” confirm that viewpoint.

Some of these poems ended up as lyrics for some of Ra’s more obscure songs. “Message to the Earthman” ended up as a wild and wooly rock ‘n’ roll track with its repeating words acting as a chant to take listeners and readers away from this planet. Ra also revamps the rhythm of his poems throughout several of them by reworking certain phrases and repeating lines with only one word change, such as “out is the way of the outer / and in the way of the inner / the in of the inner in” in “The Damnedest Air.” This continues into an almost tongue-twister as it continues “is different from the outer in / because the outer in is the outer out yes.” This serves either to enlighten or confuse the reader, but the language itself becomes a music not unlike Ra’s musical themes.

Some of these poems get out into the universe, but that does not make them unintelligible or boring. As Sun Ra says outright, “Strange worlds whirl in my mind.”

Mary Howell. Photo by Greg Miles.

For more than three decades, attorney Mary Howell has been at the frontlines of police misconduct and civil rights litigation in New Orleans. She has represented plaintiffs in the Algiers police rampage of 1980, the killing of Adolph Archie in 1990, and the execution of Kim Groves by order of policeman Len Davis in 1994. What most people do not know about Howell, however, is her efforts on behalf of the New Orleans music community as well. For such efforts, OffBeat Magazine is proud to give her the 2011 Heartbeat Award.

Howell was born in a rural town in southeastern Missouri. She graduated from LSU, then went to Tulane Law School, and once there, the music of New Orleans made an impression on her. “I remember listening to Babe Stovall in Jackson Square, and I always considered that a blessing,” she says.

Her interests in civil rights and music led her to represent street musicians and try to eradicate the archaic laws and ordinances that prevented them from making a living. Some of these legal decisions were among the first to protect music as a form of speech. “We’ve gotten four city ordinances and one state statute declared unconstitutional,” she says. “The latest one, a state statute that prohibited the playing of a musical instrument more than 55 decibels and within 50 or 100 feet of a hospital or church—I think some legislator looked at a speed limit sign and thought, ‘We’ll use that number.’ The sound engineer, when we took him all around the city following Mardi Gras parade routes and second line routes, said, ‘A law like that would end life in New Orleans as we know it.’ That was the most recent one.”

Howell looks at the streets as essential to the music of New Orleans. “It’s a critical question of streets and byways being used for public performances, and it’s not just the music,” she says. “The streets are critical venues not just for the expression of the cultural life of the community, but they are venues for the passing on of the tradition, and for people being able to continue and develop their art. That’s where the convergence of the First Amendment and civil rights and the cultural life of our community come into play, probably uniquely here in New Orleans.”

Howell has represented clubs such as Cafe Brasil and Donna’s, and helped craft the ordinance that governs the music around the St. Louis Cathedral. She also helped on the lawsuit that the ACLU brought on behalf of the social aid and pleasure clubs over increased permitting fees. Despite progress on these fronts, the issues remain. “I’m always amazed how this stuff keeps coming up periodically,” she replies when asked why the city seems to have such trouble dealing with its native music and musicians. “I think it is being afraid of that which you can’t control. Unfortunately, the tension between freedom of expression and government control is a constant tension in our society at large, and you see it played out particularly in these little vignettes. Also, the street performers are frequently working class people or they’re poor people. They often offer convenient and vulnerable targets.”

But there have been triumphs. The social aid and pleasure clubs prevailed in their lawsuit against the city. It is easier for street musicians to ply their trades in New Orleans. Howell also notes, “We’ve made a lot of headway with the Mardi Gras Indians. I was involved in representation after the St. Joseph’s Night event [when the police forced Mardi Gras Indians to get off the streets and take off their suits in 2005] and that’s another thing I feel good about. We’ve come a long way with Captain Bardy in the 6th District Uptown. Last St. Joseph’s Night was really successful. It was the one of the few that I can remember where we didn’t have incidents. We’ve established the importance of legal observers, and I think we’ve been able to play a really positive role in that and facilitating that situation.”

As she reflects on her work, Howell thinks of it as a privilege. “I have the honor of knowing the musicians and playing a small role in providing some space there,” she says. “I look at musicians like Troy and Glen Andrews, Ingrid Lucia and the Flying Neutrinos, and I’ve represented some of them since they were kids. I’ve watched them grow up and they’ve become wonderful artists and they’ve done wonderful things in the community. I don’t want to overstate this, but to some extent the music and the culture is, ultimately, irrepressible, in that it will continue and it will prevail. If I have contributed to that in any small way, it would be in fighting to insure that there is some breathing room, some space for this to happen and that governmental efforts to suppress the culture are stopped wherever possible.”

Son House has long been regarded as one of the most authentic Delta bluesmen. His music and performances were as intense as music gets, and his influence stretches from Robert Johnson to John Mooney, both of whom were his pupils. Daniel Beaumont’s book, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House, is the first full-length biography of the mercurial musician. House’s career encompasses the heyday of Delta blues in 1930s and 1940s Mississippi and its resurgence as part of the folk revival of the 1960s.

Beaumont gives a fine portrayal of House’s life and music in both eras. His writing is straightforward and extensively researched. He lets the reader know what House’s life as a black musician in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi was like, and he delves comprehensively into House’s music and recording sessions. There are some great stories about well-known fellow bluesmen and travelers Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson as well as more obscure ones such as Willie Brown. Beaumont also gets into House’s mind and motivations too. As great a musician as he was, House was a conflicted man. He had been a preacher and had difficulty justifying singing “the devil’s music” on one hand and being a religious man on the other. He also seemed ambivalent about his fame and making music in the 1960s after he started his career again.

Beaumont devotes much analysis to these issues and more without patronizing or making cultural assumptions. This reserve serves him well as he spend almost half the book detailing House’s career after his “rediscovery” by white blues fans in the 1960s. Here, Beaumont presents a fair assessment not only of House’s career post-1960s but also of the different viewpoints of the folk revival, the “rediscovery” of these musicians, and the way all this was seen both then and now. Beaumont unearths previously unknown facts about House’s life and offers several new interviews with people who knew and played with him after he left Mississippi and ended up in Rochester, New York. This biography of one of the essential musicians of blues music is a required read for blues lovers and a good primer for those whose interest in this music isn’t as deep.

Preachin’ the Blues on Amazon.com

At first this is a far cry from Mathus’ recordings with the Squirrel Nut Zippers. There was a tight stateliness to the Zippers, even when they were playing at their most fast and furious. On Mathus’ new record Confederate Buddha, the music is relaxed and playful. What both bands share is the seriousness with which they take the roots music they play, whether it’s swing and string jazz or Southern music of the country.

Confederate Buddha is a loose record. It’s music that sounds best after the second cocktail around 4 p.m., and it covers the gamut from honky-tonk to piano-laced rhythm and blues to straight rock ‘n’ roll boogie and even mariachi. The steel guitars bend their notes like tears or laughs. The female back-up singers add depth as they complement the rough, tossed-off vocals of Mathus on the lovely, romantic “Walks Besides” or sass their harmonies on “Jimmy the Kid” like outtakes from 1970s Lynyrd Skynyrd sessions.

The lyrics contain simple images and sentiments like the “There’s too much water under the bridge” on “Too Much Water” or “Best be heading to higher ground / and keep your eyes on the horizon” on “Cling to the Roots.” They’re images that everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to Mahalia Jackson to Charlie Patton have used, but Mathus’ voice and songs combine with these lyrics to give them a strength that goes beyond the clichés that they might be in the hands of someone with less conviction. Each person defines soul differently, but however you define it, this fine recording has it with lots to spare.

Buy Jimbo Mathus’ Confederate Buddha on iTunes

Blues music can generally be divided into two categories. There are the rock-informed blues with polished, clichéd solos, going- through-the-motions vocals, and obnoxiously loud and pummeling versions of everything from “Sweet Home Chicago” to “Down-Home Blues” to “Mustang Sally.” Then there are the more idiosyncratic blues that are passionate, distorted, and raw. Kenny Brown’s new double album, Can’t Stay Long, is firmly planted in the second camp. Brown is a native of Northern Mississippi, where he learned from and played with the gods of that minimal chord trance boogie: Joe Callicot, Junior Kimbrough, and R.L. Burnside. One disc is a live, closing set from the wild North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic. It’s raucous and rambunctious as Brown and his band roll through such Hill Country classics as “Skinny Woman,” “Jumper on the Line” and “Ms. Maybelle.” The tunes hit hard with Brown’s slide guitar playing sometimes taking them into a new dimension. His vocals are tough yet resigned, especially when he sings the always-true lines “I’m laughing to keep from crying” and “I’m going back to Mississippi / Got to get away from you.”

The second disc is a solo, acoustic session recorded on Brown’s front porch. It is quieter and prettier, but the songs still have a drive to them with a sense of menace and foreboding, accented again by Brown’s precise but unexpected slide work. Even spiritual numbers such as “Denomination Blues” have a metaphorical cloud over them. Both these recordings are excellent and soulful, and they stand out over the less subtle stadium music that most blues have become.

Buy Kenny Brown’s Can’t Stay Long Vol. 1: Porch Songs on iTunes

Listen to Kenny Brown’s Can’t Stay Long Vol. 1: Porch Songs on Spotify

Buy Kenny Brown’s Can’t Stay Long Vol. 2: Money Maker on iTunes

Listen to Kenny Brown’s Can’t Stay Long Vol. 2: Money Maker on Spotify

Jeremy Lyons and Members of Morphine. From left to right: Dana Colley, Jerome Deupree, Jeremy Lyons. Photo by Laura Cere.

Jeremy Lyons, guitarist and leader of the greatly missed Deltabilly Boys, never thought he would end up playing with two of the surviving members of Morphine, the 1990s “low rock” trio of drum, saxophone and bass. “I had not heard Morphine before, but I had heard of them peripherally,” says Lyons over the phone from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Morphine, with a sexy, mysterious sound and lyrics that echoed beat poetry, was one of the highlights of the music of the 1990s until lead singer/bassist Mark Sandman dropped dead of a heart attack onstage in Palestrina, Italy in 1999.

Lyons hooked up with the remaining members, sax player Dana Colley and drummer Jerome Deupree, after he moved to Cambridge following the federal flood after Hurricane Katrina. They met through mutual friends, and “Dana told me to come by Hi-And-Dry Studios if I needed anything and to hang out,” remembers Lyons. They hit it off, and in 2009, when the festival at Palestrina invited Dana and Jerome back, they asked Jeremy to join. “I had to learn all these tunes, and I was going to do it on guitar, but I had Sandman’s two-string bass, and it was cool. However, it’s full size, and I’m 5’6”, so I felt ridiculous playing it. I had a friend of mine who makes instruments make me a better-sized bass.”

They now often play under the name Ever Expanding Elastic Waistband, and Lyons is enjoying his new gig. “It’s good that I was not familiar with the music, so I can come at it in a different way. Two-string slide bass works for me because I’m a slide player anyway. It’s bizarre at first but wonderfully freeing. It’s really great to flail away at the two strings and pull up the slide and hit another chord or just play one string. And some of the lyrics are amazing. It’s lots of fun and fun to play.”

Even though he had not heard Morphine before, he had come in contact with the band. “Dana has these wonderful diaries of touring with Morphine and he took Polaroids while he toured. Dana was reading to me from a diary of when he was in New Orleans in 1993 or 1994 with the band. He’s walking around Jackson Square and sees a band with multiple steel guitars and a tap dancer. I told him, ‘That’s my band.’ and Dana flips the page over and there is a photo of me.”

Jeremy Lyons and Members of Morphine play Friday, October 28 at 4:15 p.m. on the Preservation Hall Stage.