I’m just glad that everybody still gets so excited about us,” says a grateful Daryl Hall during a few minutes of downtime at his winter home in Charleston, S.C.

Excited is an understatement for fans of Hall & Oates, the number one selling duo in music history according to the Recording Industry Association of America. At any given jukebox or karaoke joint, a mix of nostalgic Gen X-ers and retro-rimmed hipsters clap to “Private Eyes,” croon “Sara Smile” and air-sax “Maneater” as if MTV and YouTube hit critical mass in the same beat.

That era-spanning appeal isn’t lost on the 66-year-old Hall, who in late 2007 launched his Live from Daryl’s House online. A monthly mashup of music legends and up-and-comers, the acclaimed series—filmed in Hall’s Upstate New York digs—has featured everyone from Booker T. Jones and Nick Lowe to Minus the Bear and Cee Lo Green, who perform original tunes and Hall-penned standards alongside their host. The once web-only jam session has since landed in national syndication, on hi-def cable outlet Palladia and, most recently, on VH1—as much a testament to the show’s fly-on-the-wall intimacy as to Hall’s crossover charms.

This year finds the Songwriters Hall of Famer prepping his next house party: a forthcoming television series in which the Pottstown, Pennsylvania native will take his lifelong interest in historic home restoration to the airwaves. Production is in the works on the DIY Network program, which will debut in early 2014.

In anticipation of Daryl Hall & John Oates’ May 5 performance at Jazz Fest—a first for the duo, who marked their 40th anniversary in 2012—Hall takes a break to talk music, Mardi Gras and the architecture of a career built upon reinvention.

 

The Hall & Oates songbook is as current as ever. What do you attribute this enduring popularity to, and its renaissance to boot?

I think that there’s something about our music, you know, soul music and the kind of music we do, which is a very regional music, and I think that there’s an intergenerational aspect to it all. I don’t know the answers for it, I don’t know why our music does do that but I know in that my work with my show Live from Daryl’s House, I make it a big point, one of the points of the show is this intergenerational give-and-take between me and new artists. So I think that helps it to sort of cross over that way. I mean, there are so many reasons that it happens…

 

I think, also, of viral hits like Nicki Bluhm’s cover of “I Can’t Go For That.” What’s it like to observe your relevance from the birth of the MTV generation to a different kind of video generation, the online one?

Yeah, when I decided to do this show, six years ago, I really was thinking—what’s the word—I was really mining my experiences, you know… It would be like in the beginning years of MTV because, in those days when MTV was just starting out, they had no format, it was all brand new. Nobody really knew what was going on, it was all very unscripted, I would go on there and be a guest VJ and they would say, “You’ve got four hours, here’s a list of songs, of videos to play and just say anything you want and be clean.” It was very, very loose like that and I think that I got experience from doing that with John, to know how to do sort of an out-of-the-box kind of show that would resonate in the world of the internet, so I really did use a lot of those experiences, incorporated them into the beginning of Live from Daryl’s House.

 

Tell me a little about the visitors at your House. Now with more than 60 episodes under your belt, how do you choose whom to invite? Do you have a hit list of guests, do acts approach you, or is it a little bit of both?

I kind of take it as it comes. There are people I have had on my show, like Smokey Robinson, that were a big influence on me when I was a kid and I knew him back when I was a teenager and it was sort of a homecoming kind of thing to have him at the house. And then a contemporary like Joe Walsh that I really respect as a fellow musician who has had a lot of the similar experiences as I have. But then there’s all these bands that were sort of blind dates, really, like Nick Waterhouse and Allen Stone and it goes on and on and on that are new artists that I really think are amazing musicians and have a lot to say and I wanted to get their vibrance—of them just starting out—and sort of, what’s the word, juxtapose that against my long experiences and see what came out of it. So I don’t have any wish lists or anything like that. Every show is an experience and a surprise.

 

Are there any episodes that stand out for you?

Well, there were moments in a lot of them. I’ll go back to Smokey Robinson—Smokey Robinson, my hero when I was 17, 16 years old and for me to sing “Ooo Baby Baby” with him and all these other songs that defined me as a child and to be there with him, it was a big deal. That’s a moment that I’ll always remember and that really sticks out in my mind, and then just the exuberance of the Nick Waterhouse show. I love his music, I love where he’s coming from, I like making that kind of music with him. That sticks out in my mind. You know, Allen Stone sticks out in my mind because he’s such a great guy and he’s such a great musician. Todd Rundgren’s an old friend of mine, and so to have him at the house and sort of have this almost telepathic thing that he and I do… You know, these are all moments that stick in my mind amongst, God, thousands of other moments that are equally important to me.

 

You mentioned soul and regional music. I know you’re from the Northeast, but I’m curious as to any New Orleans’ connection or influence.

I haven’t been in New Orleans in a long time. It’s been before Katrina, really, and I’m anxious to come back, because I love New Orleans. I have a real spot in the heart for New Orleans and the music was, of course, I was influenced by it because all R&B was influenced by New Orleans’ music back when I was a kid, but you know at the same time we incorporated it into the Philly sound when we were listening to stuff as a kid. … There’s a regional interplay between what’s real. There’s only a few places in the United States where music just bubbles out and I certainly have an affinity for any region where that happens.

 

Your latest solo album, 2011’s Laughing Down Crying, is an especially personal outing, informed in part by your 2005 diagnosis of Lyme Disease and the 2010 passing of your longtime bassist, Tom “T-Bone” Wolk. What’s been the reaction from fans, both of your solo work and of Hall & Oates, now that it’s been out for over a year?

I always write about what’s real to me and my experiences and observations, but in the eight years or whatever it was since I made an album, a lot of shit happened to me, as you said: I lost my best friend, I got divorced, I got married, I have a family, I have three children now. So many things happened that completely changed my life really. And as a songwriter if you are in touch with your feelings and not afraid to express them, it allows all kinds of things to come out and I’m not the kind of person who holds back so the album was a very personal album, as all my albums are. It’s just more, I don’t know, it’s more intense events that made the album more in that direction. So I think that people that like the work that I’ve done with John, I think that they probably understand what the album was all about. I’m very proud of it. I really got something off my chest and described a long period of time dealing with it in music, which is what really I like to do.

 

Forty years into your career, it appears you like to do a lot. How do you decide?

I do everything. It’s just a matter of time with me—how much time do I have? I do solo work, I do Live from Daryl’s House shows, I do Hall & Oates shows, I have a new show that I’m starting to work on where I restore houses, for the DIY channel… I am so busy. It’s a matter of where I can find the time to do anything because I’m doing so much, but I’ll figure it out somehow. … I have so much to do that I can’t really commit to any long road tours, so [John and I are] just playing a lot, only in little short bursts, and then I’ve got a solo record I’m working on right now for Sony, I’ve got more Live from Daryl’s Houses to work on, and as I said, I’m working on a new show about restoring an early American house.

 

So the next move is from one house of Daryl’s to another?

It’s my other avocation, I guess you could say. I love antique architecture. Yes, I do love New Orleans antique architecture and early American architecture, and European architecture. I mean, I grew up with it, I grew up in Pennsylvania historic house areas, in a historic house. My grandfather was sort of a house restorer so I learned it at an early age, and it is one of those things that I do have a major passion for. And now I get to, I’m gonna restore a new house to live in, I’m gonna move my operation about 20 miles away from where I am now and gonna record the whole reconstruction process.

 

Any chance for a remote, Jazz Fest-installment of Live from Daryl’s House?

Right now we have no plans of doing anything, because festivals are hard to film, because it’s not my environment—you know, I don’t own the environment, I’m sort of coming into something, so it’s hard to do… But who knows? I might see a potential guest that I want to bring up to the house.

 

When people mention Kermit Ruffins, they rarely use his last name. They just say, “Hey, we’re going to hear Kermit tonight” or “We’re heading to Kermit’s place later.” Like one of the trumpeter’s and vocalist’s mentors, the late bass drummer “Uncle” Lionel Batiste, Kermit makes folks feel like they are a part of his family. Or, to paraphrase vocalist Lloyd Price, “He’s got personality, walks with personality, talks with personality.”

So it comes as no surprise that Kermit’s smiling face lights up one of this year’s three French Quarter Festival posters. Only a few other musicians—clarinetists Pete Fountain and his protégé Tim Laughlin, trumpeter Connie Jones and bluesman Coco Robicheaux—have held that place of honor in previous editions.

Ruffins has performed at the French Quarter Fest too many times for him, or most anyone else, to exactly remember. One of his first appearances, when he was in his early 20’s, was playing on a Bourbon Street stage with the legendary guitarist/banjoist/vocalist Danny Barker. “I love the Bourbon Street stages. They’re more intimate.”

Naturally, the small bandstands that line the famous street wouldn’t accommodate the huge crowd that he and his band, the Barbeque Swingers, draw each year. As has long been the custom, they command the expansive lawn stage at Woldenberg Park.

At one point during this interview, held over a couple of beers at Frenchmen Street’s Marigny restaurant, it became apparent that music had barely been mentioned. “Everybody knows my music,” says Ruffins, who’s got plenty else going on. His place, Kermit’s Treme Speakeasy on Basin Street, where he mans the kitchen and plays two nights a week, celebrates its first anniversary in April. Beyond his weekly gigs, Kermit has been busy trying to open up the Mother-in-Law Lounge, which he began leasing back in 2011. Of course, there’s no Kermit without the music and the release of his new album on Basin Street Records, We Partyin’ Traditional Style, is comin’ right up.

So it’s been a year since you opened up the Speakeasy. How does that feel?

Every time I tell somebody, ‘Come to my restaurant,’ I’m in disbelief. I’m like, ‘What did I just tell that person? That I’ve got a goddamn restaurant?’ I still don’t believe it. Every time it scares the hell out of me when I say it. When I think about everything I’m doing each day, it scares me that I might not be able to get up in the morning and do it.

Last night Robert De Niro was in there and LL Cool J. We told nobody they were coming because we thought it would be too much. Saturday night Snoop Dogg’s wife was there and Mia X came in and the great R&B singer Monica. It’s turned into the place where the stars go—thank God! I wondered what I was going to do in that old age—it’s all coming together and without poker machines. I hate those damn things.

What’s the biggest surprise about running the Speakeasy?

It’s a lot, a lot of work and a lot of fun and it’s so balanced. I’m so excited that I finally got a day job. I love to use that line. It’s the first day job I ever had in my life. I gotta get up and do stuff. I got to make a list every morning and take inventory every day. That’s so much fun. I even go in there some days and mop the whole floor just for the fun of it. It’s meditation, it feels so good. You put the chairs up and you get the feel of the place; it’s almost like playing music. Actually, it’s just like playing music. Anything that you love that much, you don’t mind doing that hard work.

One thing I really, really like about it is that I can wake up tomorrow and say, ‘I don’t want to do this no more,’ and just turn the keys over to whoever comes in first. That helps out a lot.

You called for a meeting at the Speakeasy after the City closed down the music at Mimi’s in the Marigny and St. Claude Avenue’s Siberia club in late September. How did that come about?

I was just going through Facebook and I saw this guy’s post that said: “I’ll be damned if I’ll let the City shut down all these clubs and stop the street performances. And I got upset after I read it. So I posted up a meeting at my place about the City Council or whatever. Sure enough, Channel Four was at my restaurant at 5 o’clock in the morning—it wasn’t even sunlight yet—and announced, “They’ve got a big meeting at Kermit’s Speakeasy and he promises to feed everybody.”

The mayor called me real pissed and said, ‘We got your place open with K-Doe’s and now you want to do this to me? Man, what’s going on?’ I said, ‘Really I don’t know what’s going on, I just called a meeting because I wanted to help the musicians.’ [Mayor Landrieu replied] ‘You’re turning against us.’ He couldn’t get in contact with me so he had [pianist] David Torkanowsky call me and he said, “The mayor really needs to talk to you, Kermit.’ And I’m laughing my ass off in the truck. I know what he wants to talk to me about. He wants me to come to the office. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m drinking at noon; you’re stopping me from having my Bud Light.’

It was a crazy coincidence that as soon as the City Council gave me the zoning permit [for the Mother-in Law], I saw that post on Facebook two days later and I called the meeting. They must have thought I just waited but it was all a coincidence.

The meetings [led by the Music and Cultural Coalition of New Orleans “MACONO”] are still going on every Wednesday. Jimmy Anselmo is always there because he’s trying to fight to get his club [Jimmy’s] back open. They’re trying to help anybody that has problems with the City—music permits, street permits, live entertainment.

What’s happening with the Mother-in-Law? What’s taking so long after the zoning permit issue was issued?

Money. You can’t file for a liquor license and entertainment permit if you owe back taxes. You might think I’m rich, but I’m not so the money just wasn’t available for me [to pay the $3000 outstanding taxes on the Speakeasy]. So we caught up. All the paper work is in. All my daughter Tawanna—she’s my right hand man—has to do now is put the legal notice in the paper and then after that it takes 35 working days.

They want me to fix the sidewalk, but I think that’s a City job, so I’m fighting them on that. We have an inspection coming up. When they come in, they’ll probably say you need to paint this yellow instead of black. It’s all this little bitty stuff like that. We may make it for Jazz Fest.

So you’re going to be appearing in HBO’s Treme again this upcoming season?

I’m in the last episode, of the last one. It’s at Sidney’s when Obama won. I kept saying if Obama wins the Saints are going to win the Super Bowl. I kept telling everybody.

Treme has had the best positive effect that ever hit New Orleans music and business. It really helped. They always ask me, “How can we get traditional music back in the mainstream?” “Put us on TV every week”—that was my answer every time. We need to have our own show on VH1, MTV or BET. Now we can do that thanks to Treme because more people would watch it. They’ve seen New Orleans music, they know how we live, they’ve seen this beautiful city under a big microscope. They’ll watch a show like that now—not before. The ratings would have gone straight to the bottom.

You have a new album coming out, We Partyin’ Traditional Style that’s filled with classic New Orleans jazz and with local players noted in that genre. Why now?

I’m setting myself up for when I get older. Every CD I do from now on will be traditional. I’ve done all kinds of stuff already. So when the time comes when I can’t get up and sing, “I get a feeling…” and all that jumpin’ around and stuff, I can play, “Da da da [singing the notes of “Just a Little While to Stay Here.”]

That damn trumpet whips my ass. It’s the most physical thing you can do is jump on that stage for two hours and play hard and strong which got me where I’m at because I was playing hard and strong and having a lot of fun. I know I ain’t going to be able to keep doing that. I hate doing a show at 9 o’clock at night with a passion. If the show is not at 6, I’m really pissed about it. I don’t want to waste my days. I want to wake up at 5:30 and be full of energy.

Some of the songs that I’ve been told are on the album, like “Careless Love,” remind me of what you might have learned from Uncle Lionel.

Exactly. Uncle Lionel and the Olympia Brass Band. I just pulled out all the songs that I fell in love with as soon as I started playing brass band music. All I did is go right back to where I started. I went right back to Jackson Square. Uncle Lionel taught me a lot of words. It’s simplicity at its best. When I listen to the album, I’m still a little bit upset that I was too fancy. I was so excited with Lucien [trombonist Lucien Barbarin] sitting next to me, I started playing kind of hot.

What can you tell us about your French Quarter Festival set?

Everybody up there is wearing white on that day. We always try to do something special.

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The Alabama Shakes have made it. 

What is “it”, you ask?

It’s three Grammy nominations for the not quite 4-year-old quartet’s full-length debut, Boys & Girls. It’s attracting a crowd of thousands at the 2012 Hangout Fest, their first major festival appearance and, later in the year, a closing set at Bonnaroo. It’s nailing their Saturday Night Live performance February 16. It’s success.

Alabama Shakes—lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell and drummer Steve Johnson—have wowed audiences and industry insiders alike without studio sheen or stage antics. The dressed-down rockabilly blues and soul of Boys & Girls ebbs and flows much like Howard’s alternately honeyed and guttural voice, a visceral force beyond her 24 years.

In early February, Howard more than held her own during a Grammy Awards tribute to Levon Helm—no easy feat considering she shared the stage with Elton John, Mavis Staples, T-Bone Burnett and fellow indie darlings Mumford and Sons. The rest of the Shakes provide tight backing for their charismatic frontwoman, whether on the infectious groove of “Hang Loose” or the restrained, quiet rhythm of “Goin’ to the Party,” and their smoldering live shows are the stuff of recent legend.

While the last couple years have been a trippy adventure in all that accompanies being The Next Big Thing, Alabama Shakes remain focused on what launched them in the first place: a heaping dose of Southern pride. In an interview with Portland, Ore.’s KINK-FM, Howard responds to a DJ’s question about the band’s origins by rolling up her shirtsleeve and pointing at a tattoo of Athens, Ala.—population just under 23,000.

In anticipation of the Shakes’ March 15 show at the Sugar Mill, the ever candid Howard discusses their roots and recent triumphs, as well as her recommendation for your next vinyl purchase and the band’s plans for the near future.
What have been your greatest influences?

I think we all such different tastes but there is a common ground that influences our sound. Even though they may sound completely different, there are similarities with artists like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Charles Bradley, Sharon Jones, My Morning Jacket, Tina Turner, Eddie Hinton, Otis Redding, Drive-By Truckers, etc. It’s the raw sound that we love.

Can you share a bit about the music scene in Alabama?

Honestly, there was not much of a music scene where we are from. We are from North Alabama, close to Huntsville, and about 90 minutes south of Nashville. We had to seek out music really by going to bigger cities or later on through the internet. Most of the bands around our parts played covers. That is how you would get paid. We did it. There are definitely more cool bands now than there have ever been and I have been hanging a lot in Nashville, which has a real great scene.

When you come home to Athens, has anything changed?

Yeah, things have changed a little but nothing too crazy. You get recognized in the grocery store more now but everyone is respectful and nice. I love being home so I treasure every second there.

You have a tattoo of Athens on your arm. What motivated the ink?

I got it a few years ago. I am real proud of where I am from. Roll Tide!

As the band’s popularity has grown, how do you stay in touch with that down-home feel you developed?

I think the fact that we all grew up together and are such close friends helps keep us real grounded. We are all different people, but I think there is a common vision to really be focused on the music and the songwriting and not to get too caught up in being popular or famous. That was never why we decided to do this.

When was the first moment that you realized the band was about to break out? What was that like?

I think there were a few moments when we were like, ‘Hmm, something is going on.’ I think our CMJ gig in 2011 in New York, our first three London gigs and our first festival gig at Hangout when there were thousands of people out there for us. It was all really exciting.

What do your families think of your recent success?

They are all real proud of us. Most of them came out to Los Angeles for the Grammys, which was great. I got to go the Grammys with my nana, which made me so happy.

You killed it onstage with the Levon Helm tribute. Describe the scene.

It was all surreal. Being in a rehearsal room with Elton John. Or meeting Adele. When you are at the Grammys, you kind of feel like you are in a dream. You are walking down the corridor and there goes Prince or Jay-Z or Taylor Swift. You are like, ‘Is this really happening?’ But, you realize that we are all the same. Just people.

Your most popular song is “Hold On,” but my favorite track of yours is “Hang Loose.” It has such a fun rhythm, sweet lyrics, and it grapples with a tough question of knowing where home is. What’s the story there?

It’s a stream of consciousness-type song. [Guitarist Heath Fogg] actually wrote the Waikiki line [“We gonna fly to Waikiki, it just be you ‘n’ me / And we’ll let the sun melt our cares away”]. I love Heath’s guitar lick.

Do you have any favorites from New Orleans?

We love Dr. John. We love some current artists from New Orleans like Hurray for the Riff Raff and the Tumbleweeds (Sam Doores and Riley Downing). We listened to the latest Dr. John record [Locked Down] 1,000 times in the van. I hope to get deeper into New Orleans music history as we start coming down to New Orleans more and more.

Speaking of which, who’s the most annoying member in the van?

Me.

What’s been your weirdest tour experience while on the road?

There have been a lot of weird ones. But, we tend to seek out weird.

I recently inherited a record player from a friend and one of my first buys was the vinyl of Boys & Girls. What would have been your first buy?

Charles Bradley and the Menahan St. Band No Time for Dreaming. It’s a masterpiece. The perfect record.

Has your breakout success changed anything about the creative process, and your perspective?

I surely hope not. We just recorded four new songs and I was listening back to them today and thinking that they sounded very similar to Boys & Girls. I wouldn’t expect our next record to be super polished and overproduced.

What act do you look up to and say, “This is how we want to do it”?

There are several. Drive-By Truckers, My Morning Jacket, Radiohead. They all seem to put the music first.

I noticed that y’all use Twitter to connect with fans via downloads and giveaways. What role does the online community play with your band?

I think social media has been huge for us. It feels like a lot of our fans learned about the band with something that was posted online or spread around the interweb.

You’re fresh off a Saturday Night Live appearance last weekend. How was it?

It was an incredible experience. We grew up watching the show so we were a bit nervous coming in, but it was actually a really relaxed environment. It was so much fun. There is a real family vibe to the entire show. People just took us in and made us feel at home. The cast and entire crew are incredible. It was especially cool because Christoph Waltz was the host. I loved Django Unchained.

What’s next for the Shakes?

We are about to go on a two-and-a-half week tour of the U.S. with our friends Michael Kiwanuka and Sam Doores and Riley Downing. We are excited to be coming back to New Orleans. We had a crazy show last time and I have a feeling this one will be even crazier. Then we go to South America and Mexico for a short tour. We then get two months off to do some writing and rehearsing for the next record. We are all really looking forward to the next record.

Complete BackTalk Interview with Dr. John and Sarah Morrow

Mr. Mac Rebennack, aka Dr. John, has played just about every conceivable type of popular music over the course of the last half century. In that light it is less surprising than it may seem that a septuagenarian like himself would undertake a career change this late in life.

“Like I say, I just wanna make sure I keep it fresh,” Mac said from an Ohio rehearsal studio where he was putting together a new group with his bandleader and arranger Sarah Morrow. “That’s what I’ve always been looking for. Sometimes people is pressurin’ me to stay in one little zone, and that ain’t me. I’ve won blues awards, I’ve won Grammys, all these different things over the years. But I always try to keep getting to somewhere musically where we can get some vibe on that so that I can feel like, ‘Hey, this feels fresh.’ That’s the main feeling I like to get.”

Mac’s ability to be a stylistic chameleon throughout the decades recalls the great Ray Charles, whose music was beyond category, topping pop, country and R&B charts. Trombonist Sarah Morrow got her start in the Ray Charles orchestra and three of the new players Mac chose are also Charles alumni. He couldn’t give names at the moment as they all have other obligations that need to be completed, but we’ll know soon enough. Changing up his touring band raised more than a few eyebrows around town, yet Mac pointed out that it’s all happened before—he’s played with an awful lot of people over the years. Mac discussed the new management and his reasoning behind the change in direction. Sarah didn’t say much but their interaction was fascinating.

How’s it goin’, Mac?

Mac: Everything is goin’ slammin.

Sarah, your website says that you co-produced an upcoming album of Mac’s. What project is that referring to?

Sarah: That’s actually a project that is coming next, which is a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

Mac: We’re workin’ on it right now but we have a few roadblocks in the way that, well, we’ll see what’s gonna happen. When we get to it, then we’ll get to it.

I saw the shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last spring, an interesting run of three completely different programs. The Armstrong tribute was really different. Is that show a kind of blueprint for the album concept?

Mac: It might be shifted around a little bit. We’ll take it a day at a time.

You did cut that record though, or parts of it, already, right?

Mac: Yes, we did do some recording.

I love the version of “Saints,” that slow funeral dirge.

Mac: That kind of harks back to Frank Lastie and the spiritual church in New Orleans.

It’s beautiful the way the Blind Boys do that with you.

Mac: They’re good friends. I’ve just got off the road with them. They’re very cool.

Are you rehearsing a new band now?

Mac: Yes.

Who’s gonna be involved?

Mac: Right now it’s a little too soon to make the announcement. I got some good players.

How many pieces? What instrumentation will it be?

Mac: Right now we have five pieces but there will be variations for certain gigs.

Will this be your touring band or will you also record with them?

Mac: Listen, the ones that can really play certain great things they might be on a session or whatever. We’ll see when we get there.

Have you ever thought about how many musicians you’ve actually played with over the years?

Mac: If I include studio stuff I guess it’s in the thousands of different cats but if I just include the gigging bands it’s been maybe a couple of hundred cats playing in my band over the years.

So even though you changed off this last band it’s not really out of character for you to shift gears.

Mac: If you don’t do that you ain’t gonna stay so fresh. You gotta keep it from gettin’ stale.

Did you go through a process of auditioning managers?

Mac: We must have looked at eight or ten. Maybe more. Sam [Feldman], and Mike [Gorfaine], they’re way cool. I ain’t known them that long but I know where they’re coming from about a lot of things. You know, there was times in my life I worked for a lot of people and these guys are just right. I can relate to certain things about them. Before I even hired them cats I said to them “Give me some guidance. Show me the direction, the path to take” and it came to me fast.

Sarah: Word spread very quickly and people were contacting him constantly. There were a lot of people interested in working with him.

Do you have your next projects lined up?

Mac: I’m leaving that to [management] right now—that’s kind of a different set of petunias at the minute. When I had Louis Armstrong come to me in a dream and say “Try this stuff your way” and all of that, that was something strong to me because I had never had Louis Armstrong in a dream before.

When did that happen?

Mac: Before we ever got started on the first chunk o’ dat project.

I was wondering why you chose to do an Armstrong tribute.

Mac: He came to me in this dream and just said, “Hey pop, I don’t want you to do it my way, I want you to do it like you do it.” I’ll never forget that. It stuck out in my head from that minute on.

Did you ever meet him?

Mac: Yeah, I met him at Joe Glaser’s office in New York. Joe was his manager and Joe was Dizzy Gillespie’s manager. He was also their booking agent and he was gonna work with us. He had just signed B.B. King—that was in 1967. There was a picture in Joe Glaser’s office of Louis Armstrong sitting in Bucktown on a rock and pointing his horn toward where my daddy’s shop and the Ralph Shultz Fresh Hardware store was. I asked Louis if he saw that. There was only two ways you could get there then—you either had to go through that street or another street and he said, “I went right by there.” I said, “That’s my father’s shop on the other side there.” We had a good laugh about that. You went there for all kinds of stuff, to get your brake stickers, whatever. You could get just about anything right there in Bucktown.

I met him a couple of times in Joe’s office, but I never actually got to see him play live on a gig.

[Your new manager] Sam Feldman said the first order of business is fulfilling previous obligations.

Mac: Right now I just want to take things I can get to ’cause if I start looking at everything I’ve got to do then what I feel like doing and what I can do is gonna be a little more limited because I’m trying to put a new band together and do a lot of things at the same time.

I know there’s an album of Bobby Charles material sung by Shannon McNally.

Mac: I was really happy with that. That was one of the last projects Wardell [Quezergue] did and it was something. The strings he wrote for that was really special.

Shannon’s gonna put that out on her own label. Another project I know of is the one with Will Porter.

Mac: I’m just trying to do whatever I can do with it. I have to take everything one thing at a time for the time being. Will’s thing was actually the very last project that Wardell did. Will got the Womack Brothers together to sing backup stuff on it. As the Valentinos, they did that song “I Used to Love Her But It’s All Over Now” [sic]. I always thought that was a great song. I like the fact that Will got them guys involved. We gonna try to take it all chunks at a time.

One of the things Sam Feldman mentioned is you might be doing some TV or film work.

Mac: That’s one of the things I wanted to pursue. I had studied some film scoring with Harold Batiste when he was doing some kind of a movie thing with Sonny and Cher. I kind of worked it out with his chords. He really should have been there but he couldn’t go ’cause he was workin’. So I went and I learned a lot. I’ve been involved with a lot of those projects that didn’t pan out. I might write a song or something but that ain’t what I’m looking for. I wanna do something where I can score a flick.

When I first heard Locked Down on the record I wasn’t sold. Then when I saw you guys play it live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music I got it. That really smoked.

Mac: That’s one of the things I wanted. The Locked Down stuff, I wanted it to be fresh.

Sarah: That whole experience working with Dan really helped Mac to understand what he wanted his music to be…

Mac: It was a big influence on me. It started me thinking in different directions. First of all I think Dan is a hellified record producer, but second of all, aside from being a good guitar player, he’s got a good ear for a lot of things. I can see why he does good with the Black Keys, but I can also see why that record’s up for a Grammy for me. All of that goin’ together is stuff that’s gonna make me lock in better. All of a sudden he called me up from outta left field about the Bonnaroo thing.

Sarah: From what I remember, Dan really tracked Dr. John down.

Mac: And I think it had a lot to do with the guy that writes his liner notes, Gabriel [Soria]. He told him, “You’ll like this stuff he did in the beginning like the Gris-Gris and Babylon records, maybe you should think about doing something like that.”

That’s right, at BAM you filled out some of the set with material from the first few albums—“Craney Crow,” stuff like that. It fit perfectly with the Locked Down material.

Mac: We did some stuff from a couple of the early records, we did something from the Sun, Moon & Herbs record.

The “lost” album that was going to be a three record set and ended up coming out in a truncated version in 1971. Did you ever find out what your former manager Charlie Green did with the original tapes from Sun, Moon & Herbs?

Mac: No, but Atlantic found some of the tapes and we’re trying to put together a reissue with some more of the material from the original sessions.

Wow that’s exciting.

Mac: I got more bootleg records out than I got legitimate records anyway. It’s a frustration.

So, Mac, how are you feeling these days?

Mac: Hey, you know what? I’m feeling better. I’m gonna take it a day at a time. As I’m going along.

Sarah: Mac’s the boss. I have enormous respect for everything he’s done and everything he will do. The goal is to surround him with a situation that validates him and lets him be free and makes him happy. So far it looks like we’re heading in the right direction.

How did you go about auditioning a new band?

Sarah: A lot of thought went into it and a lot of research. It was similar to the way we approached finding a new manager. We had an enormous list to start with and with research and conversation and thought we were able to get it down to a select few and from there Mac was able to make his final decisions.

Mac: There’s always gonna be that the good players always have some stuff ahead. That’s ok. We’re gonna make it work anyway. I’m pulling together some people that we need for this date and that date.

Sarah: The only drawback is that the people that Mac wanted to go with are all great musicians, great people and are very well respected so they’re very busy. They all want to be committed to Dr. John and are so excited to work with him but it’s gonna take a number of months for everyone to be completely free to do all of Mac’s work. So that’s the one challenge we have going up through the next five months.

Mac: That challenge might turn into some blessings. Sometimes you go through something and it turns a lesson into a blessin’. I’m just gonna be open minded about it, and be honest and roll with it ’cause I like it. If I don’t have fun I’m not gonna be able to make the people have fun. Anything is possibilities in the plan. I’m just enjoying what I’m doin’ right now and havin’ a good time doin’ it.

Is there anything you haven’t done that you’d like to get done in the future?

Mac: I wanna get a couple of things out of the way first. I wanna do this thing with Sarah, hopefully I get that Armstrong thing goin’ but you can’t make calls until you know everything is straight.

Sarah: One of the best things about having expert managers like Mike and Sam is that they’re great at  putting together a three year plan. Their goal is to find out whatever Mac wants to do and make it happen. They can make it happen. Mac deserves that. And people want that. They want more of Dr. John.

You and Dan Auerbach are both Buckeyes.

Sarah: Dan is a really gentle soul and a great spirit. That’s just one of those many coincidences that you find in music all the time. Here’s a perfect example. During rehearsals we found out that three of the musicians Mac chose are alumni of the Ray Charles Orchestra. It’s funny how the spirit world works in music when you’re open to it.

Mac: It’s funny ‘cause Sarah played with Ray and some of the cats played with Ray. These cats got a big handle on so much of it all.

Sarah: It’s a small and beautiful and exciting world and as long as we stay true to the spirit of the music and don’t let our egos get involved the ride is pretty extraordinary.

Mac: Hey, if we lose the spirit… we know that the spirit of the music goes way beyond anything and the spirit kingdom is the air we breathe. So between it all if you don’t have no spirit you’re dead.

Yeah you right.

Mac: But we have to know that’s right!

No matter what, John, we’re just kind of early on in doin’ everything, but there’s something really kind of hip about it. I’m excited. Anything and everything happens in the world of music. It’s like something Miles [Davis] taught me a long time ago. We were sittin’ at Art Blakey’s gig and some guy asked Miles for his autograph and he chased the guy out of the club. Miles had just did the [Filles de Kilimanjaro] album and we were all sittin’ around watchin’ this and laughin’. The funniest thing was, when Miles chased the guy out he yelled at him, “I told you I ain’t giving you no signed paper.” When we all thought about it later, it was just, “That was Miles.” He was that kinda guy. People liked Miles’ spirit.There was this club where Joe Glaser used to book us in New York called Ungano’s club down in the basement. Miles used to come to that gig, Celia Cruz used to come there, tons of very famous people would come by the gig. I remember at the time Ginger Baker was Eric Clapton’s drummer and he’d come and sit in on some tunes that was in different meters but when we’d get into the tune he’d lose the meter so I had my girls just kind of tie him up and tape him up all night to keep him from playin’ but he did eventually go and learn how to play stuff in other kind of meters and keep it goin’. He went to Africa to do that, and that always made me think “Hey, there’s hope for everybody in this racket.” And I’m still callin’ this a racket. This business has been a racket since I was a part of it and I haven’t seen it change that much to call it something else.

In the late ’90s, with a young, criminally underrated crew hell-bent on partying its way out of the projects, unheralded Uptown label Cash Money Records had the hip-hop charts in its sights, a real big chip on its shoulder and the hottest producer in the Dirty South in its pocket: Mannie Fresh, the maestro whose booty-dropping bass lines paved the way for Juvenile, Lil Wayne, B.G., the Hot Boyz and the Big Tymers’ multi-platinum hits. More than a decade removed from ringing in the age of “Bling, Bling,” Mannie Fresh’s cuts still shine even though, these days, the made man maintains a low-key profile and keeps his collaborations to a close-knit few. With mainstream hip-hop largely devoid of substance and the underground scene awash in mixtapes, a hungry, new generation of rappers now turns to Fresh for its beats. But for the 43-year-old New Orleans veteran who will take the Best of the Beat stage alongside hometown prospect Dee-1 on January 18, it isn’t the game that’s changed; it’s just been a while since someone raised the stakes.

What are you looking forward to the most at this year’s Best of the Beat Awards?

I love performing in New Orleans. The city has been with me my whole career and it’s just made me love whenever I perform here. Any time I perform at home or do anything that has to do with the heritage of the city, I get a warm welcome, especially from the new generation.

So what exactly will you performing with Dee-1?

You know, I never know. I kind of just feel it out. That’s why I guess it goes well for me. I just feel the crowd out and wherever they are, that’s where I go. That’s what separates me from a lot of people. I never say, “Hey, I got a showcase and that’s what I wanna do.” I’m more of a people-reader. When I get there, I’ll know what I’ll do.

Well, what’s the marquee song that gets the crowd the most hyped?

“Still Fly.” Definitely. “Still Fly” and “Get Your Roll On,” too. But “Still Fly,” when that comes on even bartenders and everyone there go wild. I can turn the volume down and just let the crowd sing the song word for word. It’s incredible.

What’s the most memorable performance you’ve ever had?

I’d probably say the time I was DJing and I got into and they went crazy. This was in Baton Rouge somewhere. They were feeling everything I was dropping so much that I just ended up getting on stage and rocking with the crowd the whole night. It was so energetic and crazy and I was like, “Yeah, this is one I’ll never forget.”

What’s the secret to a great performance?

Have fun. When you stop having fun, maybe it’s time to put the gloves up. You’ve got to connect with the people. You’ve got to feel them, not just yourself. You need to figure out what it is they love about you and what it is you love about them. Music doesn’t have a face to it. You can get purple, black, blue, green under one roof and they will jam and party and it’s your job to figure out how to make them do that. And if you can do that, it’s touchdown. Game over.

What was the best performance you’ve ever seen?

I’ve seen so many great performances I haven’t really thought about it. Wow. I’ve seen Parliament when they had their spaceship thing going on and my dad took me. I’ve just been blown away so many times that I just try to absorb that like, “Damn, I need to take some of that and figure it out.” I will say this: Most of the best performances I’ve seen have been from older artists. They take time to perfect their craft. You ever seen the Temptations? The moves they do and the way the show flows, everything is on time and it’s crazy.

This year you’ll be performing with Dee-1. What brought you guys together?

I’ve been knowing Dee-1 for a while. The first time he handed his tape to me, I listened to it and was like, “You’re cool, but you got a long way to go.” He kind of took it as, “Damn, dude, you dissed me.” I was like, “No, dude, I’m just being critical… That’s what I think.”

Then later on, somebody I know had his music and passed it on to me. So he didn’t give me his next project; someone passed it to me. I listened to it and I was just overwhelmed with his improvement. I just called him out of the blue and said, “I just listened to your music and you’re on the right path right now.” I was really surprised, like, he really shocked me. And he said, “I thought about what you said, and when I first met you I thought you were going to put me on because I thought I was the greatest rapper in the world. You pretty much put me in my place.”

I said to him that I wasn’t trying to put him in his place, but I was telling my opinion. I thought he was really onto something and you got a long ways to go, but keep doing it. By the third time I met him I was so impressed by how convinced he was on everything he believed.

In what way?

For example, he had this song out about Jay, 50 and Wayne [“Jay, 50, and Weezy”] and I was like, “You don’t really know if that’s how they feel,” and he said, “That’s how I feel. I don’t feel like they’re doing their parts for the community.” And he was so headstrong in his beliefs it was impressive to me. Because I kind of know how it is from doing this and I was coming from that perspective like, you can’t save the world. He was headstrong, like the three of them could have done way more than what they were doing. And we went to blows over this and I said to him that I like the fact you’re not going to stand down. And we just started working together and I’d give him ideas on how to make songs work and a lot of my ideas weren’t working with his beliefs, like, we’re two different people. And I respect that. If you’re that ballsy to go that hard for what you believe in, then it’s worth a try. And the rest is pretty much history.

You’ve mentioned the new generation of New Orleans acts looking up to you and holding you in high regard. Who else are you looking at here?

Curren$y, definitely, He’s always impressed me. There’s this other guy named Show I’ve been working with. Raj Smoove, he’s a DJ out here. He’s still like, “Dude, I play your songs and it’s impossible to do a set without playing your music.” And for me, that’s good music. If it’s timeless and it can last for years, it’s good music to me.

One thing from back in the day that has stood the test of time has been the crazy album covers you guys at Cash Money and the artists at No Limit used to make. What were you all trying to accomplish with those?

We were just thinking whatever we do, it’s gotta be in your face. We didn’t think it would catch on like that, but we wanted it to be in your face. But the crazy thing is thinking about how it takes off with marketing. Think about being in the store and seeing that cover. You’re going to pick it up and now we have your interest. We were just different from everything else. It was crazy, then all of a sudden everyone was making those album covers.

That’s interesting because back in the day, everyone wanted to mimic the New York style. I know you guys were even in a group called New York Incorporated back then. And now you see guys like A$AP Rocky and others from New York trying to carry on the southern sound. What do you think about that change?

Even with that, though, New York Incorporated was invented by some guys from New York. It wasn’t like we were taking anything from the original members. When we came along, it was like a second-generation thing. So why change something that already works? But that was the only thing that was popping off at the time. I’ve always said that down south we had all the New York records. So we bought their records and tried to rap like them and everything. What was crazy is us trying to sound like them wasn’t accepted. But now you have all these rappers from up top that sound like they were born and raised in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and New Orleans. I’ve DJ’d in New York, and the whole night it’s all southern songs.

Do you think it’s a double standard then, since it wasn’t okay to sound like up north but now it’s okay to sound like you’re from the south?

To these kids, like A$AP Rocky, you’re young and you’re doing what music sounds like. And this is what you grew up listening to. So I wouldn’t say it’s mimicking, but it’s just the music he grew up listening to. In all honesty, I would love to get back to our areas of music. I’d love to hear East Coast music, West Coast music, Down South music, not just all Down South music. It’s killing hip-hop because that’s the only thing you hear now. When was the last time you heard East Coast music and knew it was East Coast music? They were still jamming songs, but now it’s all about 808s, snare drums and hi-hats. I used to do all of that and now it’s getting to be overkill. Go out and do something else, don’t just use an 808 kit.

Moving forward, I know you and Mos Def have linked up. How did that happen?

Well, that’s pretty much in a nutshell what I was saying a second ago. We’re looking for a project that appeals to everybody. We don’t want to have one sound. When you think of Mannie Fresh you think of 808s and [drum noises] but that’s not all. Me and him both agree that we want to make East Coast songs that sound like East Coast songs. And we want Down South songs that sound like Down South songs. We just want to recapture what hip-hop is.

Mos Def is one of those enigmatic figures in hip-hop. What is it like working with him?

He really is that mysterious person. He disappears, but what impresses me is his knowledge. He knows exactly what he wants to do. He knows what sort of songs he wants to make. And—on a humorous side—he’s an arrogant MC. And you have to be like that. He feels like there’s no one on the planet as good as him and I miss that. Just the whole “doing this.” That’s how you have to feel about yourself.

Finally, you’ve done everything, platinum hits as a producer and a rapper, pretty much all you set out to do. What keeps you motivated?

Just to be embraced by this generation. Sometimes I have my moments where I feel like it’s fun, sometimes I feel like it’s not. When I meet artists who know my whole catalog it’s like wow—someone really is checking, somebody took the time to do their homework and that gives me hope.

In 1979 New Orleans native and young divorced mother Jan Ramsey was driving home from work when a drunk driver jumped the median on I-10 and crashed head-on into her car. Prompt EMS response saved her life, but when Ramsey left the hospital seven months later she was permanently disabled and confined to a wheelchair. Ramsey’s disability did not break her. She determined to change her life and overcome the tragedy through her work.

“When something catastrophic like that happens to you, you don’t know how you’re going to react,” she says. “You just deal with it.”

Ramsey dealt with it by returning to UNO to finish her degree.

“It was hard,” she says. “I remember dragging myself back to school on crutches. I could barely move.”

Her professors knew of an international CPA firm that was going to open offices in New Orleans. Ramsey finished her degree, moved to Miami for master’s studies (and to further recover), and went to work. She moved back to New Orleans in 1982 and spent many a night frequenting music clubs around the city. Eventually she decided to combine her marketing skills with her love of music and started OffBeat out of her Mid-City apartment in 1988. Twenty-five years later, Ramsey is still publishing the magazine.

What led to your decision to start the magazine?

Jason Berry had written a piece contemplating why there was no music industry in New Orleans. Me, I had stars in my eyes about all the great musicians in town. I knew nothing about the music business, but I loved music. That article struck a chord with me. I thought this was something I could sink my teeth into because I had come to the decision that I was an entrepreneur. I had gotten to know all these music people and they had interesting ideas but they never seemed to get anything done. So I thought I could offer some of my business expertise. I started this nonprofit whose mission was to develop and support the music industry of New Orleans and I thought, if I want to change the way people look at music in this city, the media is the most effective way. Back then the Times-Picayune didn’t even have a music writer. “Lagniappe” had some freelancers but there was hardly any music coverage in our mainstream media.

I had met Connie Atkinson, who edited the local music ‘zine Wavelength, and she tried to sell it to me. But it was in financial trouble and I gave up on it eventually.

I put together a music conference, and gave the mayor’s office credit. It was very successful and got lots of publicity. I thought—being a businessperson—that the way to get people to pay attention to music was to look at it not from the entertainment side but from the economic side. We put together a survey and came up with an economic impact study that showed live music had a $90 million economic impact.

That opened people’s eyes.

Big time. We got on the front page of the business section of the Times-Picayune, a write-up in the Wall Street Journal. The Republican National Convention convened in New Orleans in August 1988 and Connie told me that it would be a good idea to give them something that put local music in front of the media who were expected to come. So we sat down together, started another magazine and that was OffBeat, with her as editor and me as publisher. David Jones, an old friend of mine, hooked me up with the people at the RNC. I sold ads, got quotes for the printing. Apparently, Connie didn’t take it seriously and bailed, leaving me in the lurch. I had promised 15,000 copies to the RNC people, so I had to get it out. We had included the “New Orleans Music A-Z” piece before she left, but not being experienced at magazine publishing, we had four pages with nothing on it, so that’s why we included some of Bunny Matthews’ older “Vic and Nat’ly” cartoons. John Sinclair’s piece on Mardi Gras Indians had run in Wavelength and we used it again for the first OffBeat issue. I managed to get the magazine out. Kevin Combs, who served as art director, and I did everything. Connie was really dealing with a neophyte—she said we could use photographs filed at Wavelength, but neglected to tell me we had to pay people to use them. It was incredibly hard work, but I got pumped. I put another issue out in the fall, and the first monthly in February 1989. I never intended to have OffBeat set up against Wavelength but that’s what happened. Wavelength finally went under in 1991. I did whatever I could just to keep the magazine going.

Where was your office?

I had an apartment on South Murat Street and I set up a separate office in my house. My first intern was Anthony Clark, and he’d work on my dining room table. The magazine was originally supposed to be like Time Out London. It was going to be broader culturally, but music was going to be the focus. Times were tough. I had put everything into the magazine. I had started it on my credit and I was broke. Anyone who starts a magazine with no capital is insane! One month I decided to write about psychics and the one I interviewed said, “Someone is going to contact you in the next few days and give you a really big boost.” The next day, no kidding, I got a call from Philip Carter, who had been involved with Figaro, the precursor to Gambit. Philip had bought the Maison Blanche building and he said, “I would like to see if I could build up a sort of music incubator in the Maison Blanche building. If you help me get some music tenants, I’ll give you free office space.” So I moved into the ninth floor of the Maison Blanche building. Larry Jacobs, Rockin’ Jake, was our first sales rep!

You’ve had a lot of characters as sales reps.

I tell the story about the sales rep shoes. My daughter Meredith had moved back to town and she called me and said, “Ma, there’s this really good sales person. I know he can help you.” So this guy comes over and tells me, “I can sell anything!” He comes to the office and he’s wearing sneakers. He says, “I’m gonna take my sneakers off and leave ‘em here because I want to put on a pair of good shoes and look sharp.” I had made an appointment for him at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. So he leaves and I’m working at my desk and the office manager comes in and says, “There are two guys in suits out here from the FBI.” They come in, one of them shows me his badge, and they ask me, “Does this guy work for you?” I told them I’d literally just hired him to make sales calls. He was wanted by the FBI! So they went chasing him and jumped him in the lobby of the hotel and took him away. I still have his shoes. A relic.

When did you feel that the magazine was going to succeed?

WWOZ used to have a small Jazz Fest booth, smack in the middle of the Fair Grounds. I knew the Jazz Fest was onto something really important in exposing local music to a wider audience, something I knew I wanted to do too. So I volunteered to work the OZ booth. People were always coming up to ask us who was playing at what stage. Back then the schedule in the local media, instead of being in the cube format, was listed by stage. They weren’t user-friendly. The Jazz Fest program had the cubes and I thought obviously this was the way to do this. One day I made this little brochure myself to give out at the OZ booth. I saw people reacting positively and thought this is what’s needed: user-friendliness. We started including the cubes. Accurate live music listings were also crucial. A few years in, I made a deal to offer a free copy of OffBeat to people on the Jazz Fest shuttles. It worked like a charm and I started getting advertising for the first time. But I think Jazz Fest perceived me as exploiting the festival, which is a pity, because that’s not what I was doing at all. I put OffBeat out 12 times a year, not just at Jazz Fest.

Jazz Fest then tried to ban the distribution of OffBeat outside the festival?

It wasn’t quite like that. After three or four years of working together, the shuttle bus contractor couldn’t work with us anymore because Jazz Fest didn’t want them to do it. So we started distributing the magazine outside the Fair Grounds. We did that for several years, and the NOPD tried to stop us from distributing the magazine one year. They said we needed a permit, but you couldn’t get a valid permit around the Fair Grounds then. There’s a law covering distribution of commercial literature—but that means timeshare brochures and that kind of stuff. Long story short, we were in a courtroom the day before Jazz Fest started, and the judge said that clearly it was a First Amendment issue and we had every right to give the magazine away on the street. The judge looks at the magazine and says to the city attorney, “This is a magazine. There’s editorial content here. Why are you doing this?”

What do you see as OffBeat’s legacy?

Music is now a regular part of all local media, and it just wasn’t happening when we first started. Now there’s somebody working at the daily paper [Keith Spera], who was almost like a protégé of mine, a really good writer, plus there’s even a second music writer!

All this stuff that’s happening with music, I don’t think OffBeat can take credit, but we certainly had an influence. I guess that OffBeat helped to open up the minds of the people in the community to how important music is to the culture and to the economy, and how we need to take care of our musicians and their legacy. I don’t feel like I’ve done enough, because I still don’t think that the city appreciates music the way it should and doesn’t really market New Orleans as a music destination. It doesn’t have a music museum and it’s still trying to crack down on clubs and live music. All that stuff bothers me. But at least I started a movement that is continuing.

I’ve been asked the question a million times by people from around the world: “Why is music important here?” And there’s no place where people can go and find out the answer to that question and be entertained and educated at the same time. We need something like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or the Country Music Museum or the Experience Music Project. There’s no place to go to get the answers in one place as to why New Orleans is considered a music city. We really need that.

You set out to do something and you’ve accomplished it. A lot of the people you were looking to bring attention to when you started are gone now. OffBeat documented their lives while they were still here. That is an accomplishment.

I hope people can read the magazine and learn about our musicians and musical history. Many thought OffBeat could never last, but I didn’t get into it for the money. I got into it to do something good for the community, and that’s still the way we operate, and will as long as we can.

“The America’s Cup’s about to kick off, I’m up on the veranda looking out across the bay, across the city and hoping I see some speeding sails,” says Thomas Dolby by phone from San Francisco.

It’s hardly a surprise to find him on the water again given the transatlantic scope of 2011’s A Map of the Floating City, a three-part sonic voyage that takes listeners to the imaginary realms of Urbanoia, Amerikana, and Oceanea. The album, Dolby’s first in two decades, is an emotional travelogue for the five-time Grammy nominee, and an exotic journey spanning the roots, reggae, electro, funk, and London pop landscapes.

Those who know Dolby as the MTV generation Oxford-educated mad professor only know half the story, though. After topping ‘80s charts with iconic singles “She Blinded Me With Science” and “Hyperactive!,” Dolby quit the pop business to focus on the software sector, where his company Beatnik Inc. created the polyphonic ringtone synthesizer now embedded in two-thirds of the world’s phones.

Now 54, Dolby remains at the intersection of music and technology, whether it’s his tenure as longtime music director of global think-tank conference TED, his renewable energy-powered recording studio (built aboard a 1930s lifeboat), his interactive video game “The Floating City,” or the steam-punkish Time Capsule trailer accompanying him to his stellar show at Tipitina’s in March of this year.

Dolby returns to New Orleans October 26, three-piece band in tow, to perform at the Voodoo Music Experience. During his recent chat with OffBeat, he was curious as ever about the unknown, asking what to expect at Voodoo (“Are they packed down in front and sort of moshing or lounging on the grass, having a picnic?”) and looking forward to the date, his first festival in the Crescent City: “It’s gonna be a lot of fun.”

It’s been a year now since the album has been out, and you’ve toured the world with it. What’s been the reaction?

It’s pretty much the way it’s always been for me where sort of the extroverted, quirky, catchy songs are the ones that first grab people, but people cut to the ones they take most seriously and end up loving the most. So things like “Spice Train” or “Toad Lickers” have gotten on people’s playlists and hopefully that’s a springboard for them to explore the album a bit further and find things like “17 Hills” or “Oceanea,” which are a little bit more personal, a bit more abstract.

Tell us about the origins of the album, and your creative process, including the interactive transmedia game you designed to accompany it.

The genesis of this Floating City album was moving back to the U.K. from the States and back to East Anglia where my family’s from and I spent a lot of time as a kid. I set up shop in my lifeboat, and when I’m in there staring out over the North Sea there’s amazing stuff going on. They’re building a wind farm offshore, I’ve been watching the vessels going in and out that are servicing the wind farm. And then, in addition, I’m very close to one of the largest container ports in Europe, so I see these massive container ships going out there. I think you have those on the Mississippi as well.

So if you can imagine spending the day watching the comings and goings, I find that now where you can just sort of point to the vessel and find out all about its destination and stuff, so I sat there in my studio powered by the wind and solar panels and got interested in the ship traffic and just the general sea life. My imagination just started to run wild and I came up with this post-apocalyptic sort of dystopian reality where it’s too hot to live on land and we had to take to the water using the hulls of abandoned ships. That’s sort of the idea with the backdrop for the songs on the album. But then, so I’m making an album and I haven’t made one for 20 years and during that time people have stopped buying albums [laughing] — but what they are doing is spending a lot of time playing video games and on social networks and so on. I mean, I love learning a new skill and I’d never made a game before so I decided that’s what I was going to do.

The album has such a great guest list. How did you arrive at your collaborators?

The collaborators for the most part were the people that I worked with briefly over the last few years at TED. For example, Nellie McKay or Natalie MacMaster had been guests at TED and we made the mental note we’d like to work together a bit more in the future. Eddi Reader is an old friend and he sang on a previous album of mine, and Mark Knopfler was sort of a long shot, really…. When I was arranging the song [“17 Hills”], somebody thought that it was a composition that reminded them a little bit of Mark Knopfler because he’s a Brit who can tell an American tale, and so I sent him a demo of the song and he liked it and he just took a couple of hours out, in the studio.

The name of the record, Map of the Floating City, and the motifs running throughout it are very evocative of New Orleans. Any correlation there?

I wasn’t around for the storm but my friends moved there right about the same time that I moved to Northern California in the ‘90s and I’ve visited over the years ever since. I’ve had some amazing experiences there, both musical and otherwise, and it’s always been a really inspiring place for me, [but] I sort of get it a little bit wrong — I allow myself to be influenced by a place or a culture without really doing my homework.

I remember, for example, I put out the song “I Love You Goodbye” in 1991 and I guess it was a bit of a radio hit on an alternative station in New Orleans. And I remember arranging to do an interview on a morning show and I was in California, so it was like 4 or 5 in the morning. I set my alarm to wake me up and slept clean through it, and so the phone eventually goes [off] by the bed and I pick it up and go “Hullo” and [hear] “You’re live on” whatever it was. So there I was live on this morning talk show and the guy was, “Yeah, we love that, the bayou rain song, people are always calling in for the bayou rain song.” “Well, that would be ‘I Love You Goodbye.’” “Yeah, we love that one…. Have you ever actually been to New Orleans?” “Yeah, yeah, I come all the time.” He says, “Well, you oughta know, then, that we don’t have county sheriffs down here, we have parishes.” “Oh.” “But we love the bayou rain [song]. …Are you aware which state the Everglades is in?” [laughing] So he called me out. But yeah, I really have a soft spot for the place.

Do you anticipate how people will absorb an album, especially one as cohesive and conceptual as this, and especially in the single-driven age of iTunes?

I’m perfectly fine with people taking my songs individually but I like to think that by the time you’ve got two or three of them in your iPod that you might start wondering, “What’s the album that this came from?” … I do feel as an artist, given that I haven’t made an album for nearly 20 years, that I wanted to show people a snapshot of where I’m at. Each one of my songs is often stylistically very different and I don’t want to put one out and have people say, “Ah, this is his new direction.” I want people to recognize that there’s a spectrum of styles in what I do and that I love to tell stories and paint pictures.

Could you have imagined when you were starting out with synthesizers, with Beatnik, in the Silicon Valley, that we’d be where we are now in terms of technology?

I don’t think I would say that, “Well, I predicted all of this was gonna happen.” I’m generally quite good on what will happen, I’m very bad on when it will happen. It often surprises me that I thought something just too early or too late and suddenly a couple of years after I thought the time had come and gone, it actually sort of comes to be, you know? And I can’t for the life of me figure out why it was then and not a few years earlier.

Given your work with so many media over the decades, do you have a favorite format? What do you think of the vinyl renaissance?

I love vinyl but I’m too lazy to be a vinyl enthusiast myself. The other day I was at a friend’s house and he collects radiograms, those big pieces of furniture from the ‘50s and ‘60s that had four legs and sort of looked like a cocktail cabinet or something. You’d open them up and there would be a big radio and record player with a repeat arm on it. The thing I’d forgotten about, though, is, [when] you think of vinyl, you think of the sort of scratchiness of it, but I’d forgotten about the “plunk” when you actually put the needle down on the record initially. It’s very, very satisfying, that plunk and this anticipation that you get, so it’s easy to wax romantic about vinyl. But I think music has sort of become like a utility these days, like turning on the faucet and people really being able to stream it wherever they are. Ultimately I think that’s a good thing, because I think that a lot of the evils of the music business came out of the fact, punching out pieces of plastic, shipping them in fleets of trucks, to shopping malls — it’s a hard thing to do and only a few companies really have the wherewithal to do that. And so that, coupled with the fact that you can only get so many minutes on a side, pretty much dictated the shape of the music business, and it was time for it to end. I think now that all of that’s gone away it opens up lots of new possibilities, and I think that’s a good thing.

Is there any piece of technology that you wish you had thought up, or did but it wasn’t recognized at the time?

Again this comes down to timing. When I started Beatnik, we were making interactive music apps for non-musicians, sort of touchy-feely things that would give you the sensation of creating music, without needing to spend years practicing scales. We were doing it on the web, and computers were not very fast and the bandwidth was slow and there was no business model for it at all, really. People wouldn’t pay for stuff that was on the web and so we were just way too early. We were doing that in the middle of the ‘90s, and when I look at the interactive music apps in the app store today, it’s very, very similar to the stuff that we were doing back then. It was just being in the right place at the wrong time.

What are you working on now?

I’ve been making this film, which I’m very new to — I mean, I’ve sort of done that stuff over the years, doing music videos, but it’s amazing how technology has changed for filmmaking, like they’ve had sort of a revolution like we had in music 20 years ago where the stuff that used to cost thousands of dollars has now become accessible to everybody. So that’s been my cue to teach myself a new skill, really.