Playing music in a parade looks like fun, but while it is, it’s also hard, sometimes thankless work. OffBeat spoke with members of four nightclub bands who, during Mardi Gras, transform into street bands. Sue Ford fronts Mardi Gras’ first rock band, Pink Slip, once an all-woman group that now includes her husband, drummer Jimmy [...]
Despite living and performing in New Orleans most of his life, composer, pianist and singer Ratty Scurvics refuses to skip to second base by mentioning the city every 16 bars. From his work long ago as the musical director for End of the World Circus, to his astounding one-man-band Singularity, to his award-winning theater work, [...]
Other than Juvenile’s wildly irresponsible
[UPDATED] Trumpeter and New Orleans’ patron saint of froggy singers, Louis Armstrong, claimed throughout his life to be born on July 4, 1900. But birth records somewhat recently uncovered in New Orleans list the date as August 4, 1901. Some small controversy might surround whether we shouldn’t celebrate on the day Satchmo intended, but New [...]
The last time I met with bounce rapper Big Freedia, in 2009, I’d picked up her and DJ Rusty Lazer (Jay Pennington) at the airport after their second-ever string of New York performances. Before that, Freedia (born Freddie Ross) and I last spoke in the gym of Behrman Elementary on the West Bank, where she [...]
When rap group the Fugees released Blunted on Reality in 1994, not many realized it would be the initial unfolding point of a mysterious musical history that would wind its way through 16 years to now, when the much-worshipped Ms. Lauryn Hill will perform as part of her first tour in over 10 years. Within [...]
For 20 years, the Soul Rebels have remained a modern face in brass band music. “We are trying our best to push the envelope,” says Lumar LeBlanc, snare drummer and Rebels cofounder along with bass drummer Derrick Moss, both late of Dejan’s Young Olympia Brass Band. “The initial point of Soul Rebels was to put [...]
The New Orleans Nightcrawlers brass band began innocently enough in 1994 as a writer’s workshop founded by pianist Tom McDermott, sousaphonist Matt Perrine and trumpeter Kevin Clark. “We really just wanted to practice writing and arranging for a more modern, harmonically complex jazz band,” recalls Clark. Now, after 17 years of albums and gigs all [...]
Jazz harmonizers the Pfister Sisters have existed long enough to be considered a tradition, singing with everyone from the Neville Brothers to Jimmy Buffett to Linda Ronstadt. They sang on the wing of a plane with their hero Maxene Andrews of the swinging Andrews Sisters, and more recently were featured on the HBO series Treme, [...]
Over the years, brass-driven band the Magnetic Ear has marched so far from its point of origin that it’s a wonder bandleader saxophonist Martin Krusche doesn’t change the group’s name. “At first we were known as sort of a jazz freak-out band,” admits Krusche. But even then, the Magnetic Ear’s music was much more composed [...]
