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 [...]
Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer, writing partners and core members of indie-pop band Generationals, are not related. But having played music together since freshman year of high school, they now seem, in their late twenties, to in some ways be twins. “We do the exact same things within the band,” says co-singer/multi-instrumentalist Widmer. “On tour [...]
Without music, how many would never have fallen in love? Without love, how many songs would have never been written? And yet two musicians in an intimate relationship sounds like romantic chaos. Not so for respected local low-end specialist (sousaphone/bass) Matt Perrine and wife Debbie Davis, best known for her interpretations of songs by the [...]
Rappers popularized the questionable phrase “baby mama.” But in naming his new WGSO radio talk show about parenting, local rapper Daniel “Impulss” Perez chose “Mr. Mom Radio.” The premise: “I am not Dr. Phil or Joy Brown,” says Perez. “I am not giving people answers, just trying to start a dialog between parents about parenting. [...]
Since his nomination as CNN’s Hero of the Year in 2009, Derrick Tabb has perhaps received more attention for his work helping New Orleans’ kids than for his role as snare drummer in the mighty Rebirth Brass Band. Each day after school at the Jackson Square Cabildo (the use of which was made possible by [...]
As their new second album, Brand New Dance, attests, Los Po-Boy-Citos are different from other local brass bands, and not only because they represent a form of Latin music in New Orleans. On their first album, 2008’s New Orleans Latin Soul, the group took traditional New Orleans R&B and other standards such as “Big Chief,” [...]
“I live in the wrong time,” claims pop singer/songwriter AM, his name a nod to the radio waves that once carried the music he most admires. AM’s new album, Future Sons and Daughters, recorded by the Magnetic Fields’ Charles Newman, is populated entirely with sounds made by instruments dated no later than 1970. “I knew [...]
[UPDATED] In its nine-year evolution, the Ponderosa Stomp has become important in more ways than just celebrating the largely unsung architects of rock ’n’ roll. The event that returns to House of Blues September 24-25 began as Stomp creator Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos’ elaborate wedding party morphed into a wild bowling alley get-down before becoming [...]
