When Frederick “Shep” Sheppard died in Phoenix in January of 2008, a small piece of the impressive legacy he left behind was the basic tracks for Habari Gani, which he’d recorded in December 2007. Some were released in a somewhat rougher form in 2008 as Tradition: The Habari Gani Sessions. Now, drummer Chris Lacinak, who [...]
The history of recorded music is littered with albums whose recording sites are central to their sound and lore: from the Rolling Stones making Exile on Main Street in the basement of Keith Richards’ villa in southern France to Radiohead recording OK Computer at St. Catherine’s Court. Closer to home is Quintron’s 12th album, Sucre [...]
Those who have gotten used to live performances where Fredy Omar con su Banda takes the audience through an extensive catalog of relatively well-known Latin dance hits over a wide range of rhythms and styles may be surprised to see that Omar’s new release, Bailando, collects 10 new originals composed by the bandleader himself. The [...]
In a city where Joe Krown, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, and Russell Batiste, Jr. play so many nights for tips, drinks, and nominal cover charges, it can be easy to take for granted the wealth of experience, professionalism, and straight-up talent that they bring to the stage every night. They’re so familiar to us that we [...]
The first song on Little Darling Pal of Mine is “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” and with it the band announces its intention to turn the listener’s clock back past 1960,when Elvis Presley released the version most of us know best, to the late 1930s, when the Carter Family recorded it. In its arrangement and performance, [...]
The Professors of Pleasure, John Doheny’s Tulane University faculty jazz band, use their second CD, Volume Two, to put on a clinic in modern jazz performance and composition. In less capable hands, we’d need to worry that the recording would sound clinical, but that isn’t a concern here. Instead, the interactions between the band on a [...]
Perhaps the dominant trend in recent New Orleans party-rock music has been to lean heavily on wah-wah guitars and drum kits. Flow Tribe is an interesting case in point, as their groove pushes funk hard towards its rock ’n’ roll edge. The cover of Flow Tribe’s Now Ya Know updates the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ [...]
Updated: Amanda Shaw’s third solo album proclaims, with its title, that it’s about the performer’s identity. That’s just as true of her debut, 2004’s I’m Not a Bubble Gum Pop Princess, but Good Southern Girl represents a more developed personal and musical statement. The new title is obviously intended to be something of a tongue-in-cheek [...]
The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist AM was raised in Mandeville and graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans. AM himself is usually careful to mention his Crescent City soul influences, but Future Sons and Daughters, his third full-length release, bears a much deeper imprint from the other LA. Recorded and mastered on Santa Monica Boulevard, [...]
Dax Riggs’ cover of “Heartbreak Hotel” on Say Goodnight to the World clocks in at almost four and a half minutes; Elvis Presley’s 1956 version takes just over two. Riggs slows the song’s pace and reduces its instrumental palette to heavy bass, sparse drums and a guitar melody crackling just on the edge of feedback, [...]
