Panorama Brass Band. Photo by Marc Pagani.

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 Ford. Ben Schenck, clarinetist of Panorama Jazz Band, has for 12 years guided a flock of 12 musicians, some of whom come into town for Carnival to play in Panorama Brass Band. Geoff Douville (banjo) and Eric Belletto (trumpet) of Egg Yolk Jubilee take their feet off the Zappa pedal once a year to play sing-along trad standards, and Michael Hurtt returns from Detroit to front his Haunted Hearts, who, for the parades, add a drummer and more electric guitar to Hurtt’s well-curated selection of hillbilly music, swamp pop and rockin’ R&B covers. These musicians discussed the highs and lows of parading and how they survive the parades.

How did you start parading?

S. Ford: We moved here from Massachusetts and we’d go to the parades and see jazz bands and Dixieland bands, and I thought, “There are so many different types of music in this town, all of them should be represented.” They should at least have a rock band. People said, “You can’t do that. These are coveted spots that have been there for hundreds of years and it’s been this kind of music.” Then came along this new krewe, Muses, and they wanted all-female musicians, bands, and not the typical jazz and blues and stuff. We played for Muses and then booking agent Warren Serignet who books almost all the parade bands started booking us for a lot of parades.

We’ve been kicked out of a few. We didn’t realize Proteus was this ancient parade with ancient carts with wooden wheels. The guys freaked out, and they were right. We didn’t fit. We are perfect for the Tucks parade.

Hurtt: I asked Sue in Pink Slip how to go about doing it, long ago, before the Haunted Hearts, when I wanted the Royal Pendletons to play a parade. Matt Uhlman and I moved here from Indiana and we loved Mardi Gras parades and really wanted to do it. We saw Pink Slip, which was the first parading rock ‘n’ roll band, and we thought, “Why don’t more rock ‘n’ roll and cover bands do this?!” Sue told me what I now tell people who ask: you kind of have to figure it out on your own. For us, our bass player was in a jazz band that played in a parade, and he was able to get the info for who we needed to call and send our music. Fortunately we weren’t ignored.

Douville: Egg Yolk Jubilee started playing clubs in 1996. Krewe Du Vieux asked us if we wanted to do a marching band combination in 2002.

Belletto: Nah, it was earlier than that because our original business card said, “weddings, parties, funerals.”

Schenck: Our band started in 1995. Then in 1997 at a Passover Seder someone was riffing on the name Krewe De Vieux, and L.J. Goldstein said “Krewe Du Jieux.” I told LJ that if he organized that krewe, I’d organize the band. He got us into Krewe Du Vieux.

These days it’s only because of Warren Serignet and the St Anthony Ramblers that we have a brass band at all. There’s no other way to get these busy musicians together unless they’re getting paid. For a 12-piece band it’s really light bread, about a dollar a block, but if we get enough parades it barely becomes feasible.

Amplified bands must provide their own float. Tell us about yours.

S. Ford: Jimmy got help from the Lion’s Club, who already had the float. But then you also need a generator to power your PA, and you’ve got to get someone who knows how to engineer all that, then you’ve got to get a bathroom on board.

J. Ford: And a bar.

S. Ford: You have to build a bar. People think it’s all fun and games but it’s work.

How is playing parades different than club shows?

S. Ford: Onstage, you’re always trying to find that connection with the crowd. At a parade, it changes constantly. This block might hate you, but then for the next five blocks they’re rushing the float. Then the next block they have their arms folded.

Douville: Our bass player becomes our bass drummer, our drummer becomes snare, and I become incomprehensible playing banjo no one can hear. I look good but can’t be heard. I often walk to the perimeter of the band as close as I can get to the crowd; that way, I am the one closest to the hot chicks.

Belletto: The crowds on the street are looking for something to love. In a club, sometimes people are like, [folds his arms] “Impress me.” At the parade, they’re out to act a fool.

Douville: In its best moments, a parade gig beats a club gig because a euphoria grips people, especially during Krewe Du Vieux. People from Dubuque are like, “Oh my god they’re openly showing an effigy of a penis!” They don’t get to see a brass band every day, so people scream at you to play for them to create that titillation. People scream at you to play for them, to create that euphoria.

How is the club version of your band different from the parade version?

Schenck: A lot of our brass band moved elsewhere after Katrina, and all come back for Mardi Gras. We have our tunes arranged for 12, so if we come out with eight there are holes. For 17 days out of the year, between Krewe Du Vieux and Ash Wednesday, we work our asses off. With what we’re paid, our members who come from New York just break even, but it’s a spiritual pilgrimage. I feel like I get through all the mundane day-to-day life stuff all year because I have so much fun during that two-and-a-half weeks.

Hurtt: In clubs we’re more of a rockin’ hillbilly string band with some electrified guitars but no drums. At first, we did the float as a three-piece: acoustic guitar, lead guitar, standup bass and vocals, and I remember feeling like we barely had a band. We were playing rockabilly and western swing and the energy was good, but it wasn’t very loud. Everyone was frustrated. The next year we fell back into R&B and South Louisiana rock ‘n’ roll. John Trahey quit playing the standup bass on the float; he plays the electric bass. J.D. Mark, our regular guitar player plays drums, and I play electric guitar in a ‘50s rhythm and blues style, and that defines what we do on the parade route.

S. Ford: Pink Slip has a rotating cast. When picking the crew, it’s like going on a canoe trip. First you’re thinking about all the great friends you want to bring. Then it starts raining and the canoe gets stuck and you think, “Okay, who would not deal with this well?” and you start crossing people off that list. This year we’ll have Sean Yseult playing keyboards for us, with Aeryk Laws on guitar and synth.

Douville: In the club, just one person sings on the mic. But on the street, we all sing in an attempt to get as many people to sing along as possible. We are one of the only parade bands that do that.

Belletto: I love that part. Plus it gives my lips a rest from playing the trumpet. When I do Ninth Ward Marching Band [Belletto has done all their horn arrangements since its inception] and with any military style marching band, there are cadences where everyone gets a break while the drums roll. But with Egg Yolk, we are pretty much playing all the way through. You have to learn how to walk and play and breath, that coordination. I remember when we first were going to march, we were like, “Okay, let’s go outside and practice playing and walking at the same time.” We head down Chartres to Decatur, into the Quarter about a half a block, and this cop turns on his lights and is like, “You’re parading without a permit. You’ve got to go back.”

What is the biggest challenge, playing in a parade?

J. Ford: Getting good sound.

S. Ford: One minute you’re rolling down St Charles closed in by oak trees, then suddenly there are tall buildings, then the sound’s bouncing around under I-10, then Canal is a gigantic open field. You need a soundman on board to deal with that.

J. Ford: I run everything through the PA. No amps whatsoever. We do a good dry control room sound.

Hurtt: We’re still working on our sound, but it’s always going to be amps. We can’t compromise. We bring a friend with us whose job is to jump off the float and run off and check how it sounds on the route.

Schenck: It takes a lot more strength to play outside on the streets. No matter how much I practice for Krewe Du Vieux, I always blow out my chops before we reach Esplanade. The air is escaping from the corners of my mouth by the time we hit the R Bar. By the third parade though, I am good to go.

What about rain? I have been to some cold, rainy parades.

S. Ford: You drag out the tarps and tuck all the mics into the vehicle, then cover your own ass best you can because there’s nowhere to go. Or, we go into kamikaze mode and play through it, but I lost a Wurlitzer doing that. After that we made a rule: no more quality instruments on board.

How does your playing change from the start to the end of a five hour parade?

S. Ford: You become more uninhibited and start stretching things out. You’re playing this three-minute song and it’s almost over, but the crowd up ahead hears you playing it, and if they’re going nuts you’re not going to stop. We have hand signals like baseball. [Jimmy pats the top of his head] That means “from the top.”

You find yourself doing a lot of different new things with the songs. Susan Cowsill and I will be like, “You sing lead on this one this time, then I will next time.” It’s like doing 100 gigs in one gig. It’s a real workout for a drummer, and if they haven’t been working out for it there’s no way they’re going to last.

Hurtt: As it goes on, it gets more intense, more raw and hopefully more energetic. It does start to move into that kind of looseness where you’re not worrying about anything too much.

How do keep from getting too drunk?

Schenck: We have a little nip on the way, but we’re walking and it’s really physically demanding, so nobody gets super loaded. That’s not our M.O. because we really like the work.

Douville: You have to tactically approach your drinking, especially as you can’t pee for three hours.

Belletto: When we play clubs we drink beer, when we march we drink whiskey. That’s a big difference.

Hurtt: All of us are guilty of it in some form, but I do not get too loaded. You’ve got to get home afterward and break down, and lots of times take everything off the float and put it back where it’s stored. For that, you want to make sure your mindset is right. Regardless of the beer and whatever else, you just played for three to five hours.

S. Ford: I warn the novices about the “chocolates” going around and the alcohol. You can’t really drink and play at the same time. People start doing shots and halfway through the parade they forget what they’re doing. I pull the plug on them. [Being in a parade] is a big deal. It’s a coveted spot, I sign a contract. I have to make damn sure who I’m putting on that float has their shit together from beginning to end. Or else I will throw you overboard.

What is your favorite parade, or favorite parade moment?

Douville: I would have to say ‘tit Rex. We’ve become their go-to band.

Belletto: We dressed like giants one year because the floats are tiny. Or like Godzilla. The first year I came as the Jolly Green Giant and was the only one in costume.

Douville: This year they want us to learn “Fight for Your Right to Party” because of their well-documented conflict with the Rex organization.

J. Ford: Ms Mae’s. We stop no matter what at Ms Mae’s, and she would come out and give us a tray of lemon shots.

Schenck: The most exhilarating moment is going under the overpass, Melpomene. We try to stall out there. All the band’s friends know to meet us there, and they all come out into the street and get down for three minutes until the cops shoo us away. There are people I only see once a year, and it’s on that corner during the parades.

Hurtt: Turning the corner from Napoleon to St Charles signals the real start for me. The energy is still high, and hopefully we’ve beaten down any sound problems we’ve had. We always try to pick a ringer of a song when we come around that corner, like “Trouble Bound” by Billy Lee Riley.

How do you pick parade songs?

J. Ford: We base a lot on Muses’ theme. One year we had to learn all these James Bond songs.

S. Ford: Last year Muses’ theme was dance, so we had dancers, and when the parade would stop they’d do the Soul Train dance line to us playing “It’s Your Thing” or “Dancing in the Streets,” Marvin Gaye, Kool and the Gang.

J. Ford: These kids in McDonogh’s band were lined up on the sidewalk as we drove past playing Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star,” and the marching band busted into it with us and got the whole street was dancing.

Schenck: When we go past Touro Synagogue—we’re kind of the house band there—we always try to be playing klezmer. We try and stop and turn and salute and play something especially for them.

Hurtt: “Pass the Hatchet” by Earl Stanley and the Stereos, and “Congo Mombo” by Guitar Gable. People react to those instrumentals. We play them for 30 minutes, but people only hear 30 seconds. We always end up doing “Getting Drunk” By Johnny “Guitar” Watson on Canal Street, by which time we’re fairly drunk ourselves. And in the same way St. Charles signals the beginning, Canal and that song signal the end is coming and we have to go for it.

Douville: We play trad covers, and about three originals. We have an Egg Yolk theme. We do that Dylan song that everybody knows as “Everybody Must Get Stoned,” [“Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”]. A few years ago rounding some corner during Krewe Du Vieux, we were playing that and people went nuts. That tune is a big one.

Original music doesn’t go over as well?

Hurtt: In 2009, we released a 45 single of “Lonely Mardi Gras,” a song we wrote to be played on the parade route. To know that one of our own songs has now been enshrined in the lexicon of Mardi Gras music is otherworldly.

J. Ford: We have “I Wanna Die in New Orleans,” which I helped write with Dave Catchings, who’s playing guitar on the float this year.

S. Ford: On Canal once, a police officer tapped one of the girls and said, “Can you all play that song, ‘Die in New Orleans’? My buddy, he’s a rookie, I want him to hear it.” After Katrina, I didn’t think it would be apropos to play it. We’re parading on St. Charles and another cop says, “Can you please play, ‘Die in New Orleans’?” I was like “absolutely,” and I turned to Jimmy and started playing it. Now the song’s back.

What’s your biggest frustration, or your biggest triumph at a parade?

Douville: People show up and start playing with you, like, “Hey brah, we’re friends! It’s New Orleans!” They follow the whole route and play. Then at the end of the night they get mad you won’t pay them!

Hurtt: An unnamed musical guest—we have a lot of guests—tried to commandeer the band and play cheesy Carl Perkins covers like “Blue Suede Shoes” and didn’t even get the words right. I had to right the sinking ship and had to get the guitar away from him. Some of the guests don’t understand that it is to be taken seriously. You want it to be good.

S. Ford: One year we lost our generator and had to play “Iko Iko” for three hours on just drums.

J. Ford: Another time I spent the whole day rigging up the float and was exhausted. I got off the float and told them, “Good luck, girls.” I walked to Ms Mae’s to try and get a ride home, and suddenly I got a call.

S. Ford: The truck pulling us broke down. One minute you’re a fucking rock star and everyone loves you, and the next minute it’s “get the fuck out of our way!” The cops are shouting at us. The girls had to get off the float in our miniskirts and push. The crowd had to part. And if you don’t cross the finish line, you don’t get paid.

J. Ford: Sue calls and tells me to get another vehicle. I run into my buddy on the neutral ground and talk him into using his big truck, but we have to get up on the Huey P. Long Bridge and go all the way around via the West Bank to get to the girls.

S. Ford: The parade marshal is on the phone with her people, making it so Jimmy can cut up Melpomene.

J. Ford: We go flying up Prytania the wrong way. At every stop the cops tell us, “You ain’t getting in.”

S. Ford: Meanwhile, we’re sitting waiting and we see the fire truck go by, signaling the end of the parade just as Jimmy gets to the float. We had to transfer so much shit to this new truck. The whole time Jimmy’s yelling, “Start the generator! Tune those guitars!”

J. Ford: We pulled in right behind that last float.

When The Village Voice described New Orleans’ Soul Rebels as “the missing link between Louis Armstrong and Public Enemy,” they got it only half right. The Soul Rebels were deeply influenced by hip-hop, but Armstrong? Not so much. The Voice overlooked a more relevant phenomenon: Marching bands. The marching show bands represent and animate the campuses and stadiums of roughly 100 institutions of higher education, all established before the Civil Rights Movement and collectively known today as Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs. The world of HBCU marching bands surfaced in mainstream American culture in the 2002 film Drumline.

The modern HBCU style—expertly choreographed march routines executed with high-stepping style to intricate band arrangements of pop tunes running the gamut from Duke Ellington to Michael Jackson to the Black-Eyed Peas—originated in the 1950s with Florida A&M University and band director Dr. William P. Foster. Even though his first band consisted of only 16 members, Foster’s vision and determination led him to name the Florida A&M unit “The Marching 100.” When Florida A&M performed at the French Bicentennial in July 1989 (where they included a James Brown tune in their repertoire), Foster described the essential elements of the HBCU marching band aesthetic to The New York Times: “People want to hear the songs they hear on the radio,” he said. “It gives them an intimate relationship with you. And then there’s the energy. Lots of energy. In playing and marching. Dazzle them with it.”

In its obituary for Foster in 2010, The New York Times summarized Foster’s influence: “High school and college marching bands all across the country drew their inspiration from the Florida A&M style.” Among them were St. Augustine High School’s “Marching 100” in New Orleans and Southern University’s “Human Jukebox” in Baton Rouge.

The Soul Rebels’ Unlock Your Mind is due out this month, and founders and co-leaders Lumar LeBlanc and Derrick Moss show the HBCU influence. They were recruited more than 20 years ago to form the percussive backbone of the Young Olympians Brass Band, but they shared a desire to re-engineer the New Orleans brass band for the world of urban contemporary music. All eight current members graduated from New Orleans high school marching bands: four from St. Aug, two from Sarah T. Reed, and one each from Alcee Fortier and John F. Kennedy high schools. The current band contains two alumni from Southern University’s “Human Jukebox,” one from Texas Southern University’s “Ocean of Soul,” and another from Jackson State’s “Sonic Boom of the South.”

What was the New Orleans high school marching band scene like when the two of you were coming up in the 1980s?

Lumar LeBlanc: It was like the twilight of the golden era of school-based music programs in the city. At that time in New Orleans, the high-school band directors were our legends. You had Edward Hampton at St. Augustine, where a lot of us went. You had Mr. Donald Richardson at A.J. Bell, Mr. [Elijah] Brimmer at Fortier, Mr. [Herman] Jones at McDonogh 35. Before you could even think about playing in the marching band back then, you had to play in the symphonic band, and that’s where you learned all the formal musical terminology and formal musical structure. For that, there were complete music programs at these schools that exposed you to all kinds of music, everything from Tchaikovsky and Beethoven to Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and then to Quincy Jones, and Quincy brings you to Michael Jackson. From there, it’s just a step or two to hip-hop. All of these band directors exposed us to the whole spectrum of music, and to the complexities of really sophisticated music.

Derrick Moss: In fifth grade at Lafayette Elementary, I started to learn how to read music. When I got to seventh grade, I went to McMain, which at the time was a magnet school for college prep students. They only had a concert band; they didn’t have a marching band like they do today, and you had to read music really well to be considered for the concert band. By my sophomore year, I had become section leader and played the drum set plus every percussion instrument. Then I transferred to Fortier High School, which was right up the street from McMain. McMain was a very serious, very academic school, and I wanted to be at a school that had more of a social atmosphere. At the time, a lot of my friends were transferring to Fortier and there were a lot of people from my neighborhood in Hollygrove that went to Fortier.

Fortier had a really good marching band, which was a big part of it. All my friends were marching in the Mardi Gras parades, and they all had football games to go to on Friday night. I wanted to perform at half-time, and march in the parades. Being in the band at the time was like being a movie star, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I already had musical training from McMain, but what we learned in the marching band was how to take any song of any style and arrange it for horn sections. When I graduated in ’84, I wanted to go to Southern University because a lot of my family members had gone there. The year I went, a whole bunch of us from Fortier went. There had already been some guys from Fortier, graduates who’d gone there and brought a more funky style of drum section arranging to Southern. In both bands, they named the drum section The Funk Factory. Fortier really had an effect on the Southern band during those years because so many of us were going there. There were very few St. Aug graduates in the band, almost none that I can remember.

LeBlanc: A lot of us from St. Aug were being recruited by Texas Southern. The Houston Oilers came to play the Saints one year in the early ‘80s, and St. Aug played the halftime show in the Superdome. The Oilers were so impressed with the band that when the Saints went to play the Oilers in Houston, they invited the St. Aug band to come and play their halftime show. While we were there, Mr. Hampton arranged for us to attend a TSU game. That was the first time I saw “The Ocean of Soul,” and I was blown away. They had, like, 300 band members, and a division of majorettes the called “The Motion of the Ocean,” and these really funky arrangements that relied on the heavy beats coming from their drumline, known as The Funk Train.

I guess Mr. Hampton talked to TSU’s band director, Mr. Benjamin Butler, who wanted to recruit some of us. When it came time to take our SATs, Mr. Hampton told us to make sure we had our scores sent to TSU. I was planning to attend LSU and study to be an accountant at the time, but TSU offered me a music scholarship, and after being so impressed by the “The Ocean of Soul,” I changed my mind. A lot of us did. That year, about 20 band members from St. Aug wound up going to TSU, their biggest recruiting group from New Orleans up to that time. Since then, there’s been a steady stream of graduates from the “Marching 100” going on to TSU.

Moss: That year, a lot of cats from St. Aug and from John McDonogh 35 got recruited by TSU with scholarships and all that stuff. The year before, when a lot of us from New Orleans went to Southern, we had to try out for the band just like everybody else. I went up there with my tenor drum, and I had to compete with 10 other guys for the one remaining drum spot. By the end of the year, due to the drum major leaving to join the Marines because he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant, the band captain asked me to try out. I really didn’t want to do it. He made me practice all the moves and the gymnastic routines you have to do as drum major. When it came time to try out, Dr. Greggs picked me out of maybe 20 other guys. I guess Dr. Greggs and the drum captain saw a leadership quality in me that I wasn’t really aware of at that point in my life.

I was a drum major at Southern while I was still technically a freshman. Off the field, the band director, the assistant director, and the band captain are in charge of the band, but on the field, the drum major’s the one who’s in charge. He’s the one who stops and starts the show. He sets the tempos by blowing his whistle, and he’s the one who leads the entire band through all the formations, sets up the dance routines, and positions himself strategically on the field so when the formation shifts, or the dance routine is over, he’s standing in front of the band, ready to lead them into the next tune by giving them the tempo on his whistle. And he has to make sure the band doesn’t stay on the field too long because you have a ten-minute time limit, and if the band is on the field longer than their time limit, the football team gets penalized.

What kind of music were you playing in the marching bands back then?

Moss: Even back in high school, the bands were playing pretty much whatever people wanted to hear, anything that had soul and feeling. We were all about music people were dancing to. We wanted to play everything they played on Soul Train.

LeBlanc: It all comes down to Earth, Wind & Fire. That was one of the first bands to be adapted for the marching bands, and that music really influenced us when we started the Soul Rebels. In the beginning, it was also anything coming out of the late ‘60s: James Brown, Motown, that kind of sound. Then the marching band music started incorporating mainstream pop music—Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, David Bowie, that kind of stuff.

What difference do you think the marching-band experience has made on your lives?

LeBlanc: Oh, man. My experience in the TSU band had such a profound influence on me that it’s continued to affect my adult life to this day. It was a tightly run and precisely focused organization. We were treated almost as if we were professional musicians, being coached on how to do media interviews and appearing in commercials. Anywhere we traveled, we always wore suits and ties.

The university had the resources that allowed us to realize our full potential personally and musically, so by the time we graduated from the high school and university bands, we could play everything from classical to John Philip Sousa, from jazz and R&B to Latin and reggae. But when you add the discipline that was demanded of you into that situation, you have an individual who’s not only musically accomplished, but one whose character has been strengthened, who’ll never be tempted by drugs or drinking or any other kind of self-destructive behavior.

Moss: After Southern, I was in the Air Force Reserve for six years, and the experience was not all that different from being in a university marching band. I keep telling the younger guys in the band, “Y’all don’t know the sacrifices Lumar and I have made to still be here.” If Lumar and I had given up, the Soul Rebels wouldn’t be here anymore. In the world of marching bands, you always work to be the best, but you also learn that if somebody gets the best of you, you have to just take that in stride, and go back and work a little harder to fix whatever your weaknesses are, so you come back stronger than you were the last time.

Ani DiFranco. Photo by Patti Perret.

Folk singer Ani DiFranco moved to New Orleans approximately eight years ago, but she has entered the city’s musical community discreetly, playing the occasional show such as last year’s Gulf Aid benefit for those affected by the BP Oil Disaster. She has done so, she says, because “that is my style. I like to do things organically and without hoopla. Living in such a powerful musical place now, of course, I organically make more and more connections every day. My path intersects with the paths of other musicians. My associations deepen. I could certainly grow old and die in New Orleans and never be at a loss for magical company and musical inspiration, and that is my plan.”

When she recently played the Voodoo Experience, she was accompanied for the first time by an all-New Orleans band made up of Ivan Neville and Herlin Riley. Neville she met when he performed on the song “J” for her upcoming Which Side Are You On? album, which also includes performances by Cyril Neville and members of Galactic, Bonerama and the Rebirth Brass Band.

“Ivan came over to my house, sat down with this unusual track,” she says. “I watched him in the course of 10 minutes make his way to something amazing, something completely uplifting for the track.” Riley, she says, “is not a drummer. This is a musician sitting behind a drum kit who plays jokes, who plays his heart, who plays greetings, who plays love, who’s able to express and interpret on the drums in a way that very few can.” After the experience, the three started conspiring about playing together again.

On the day of this conversation, DiFranco is in New York City to play a couple of concerts. As a long-time activist and folk singer who takes her job seriously, she had the Occupy movement on her mind.

How closely have you been following what’s going on?

I’m not a TV person. We don’t have a TV at home, so I don’t watch the major networks spew about it, but I’ve certainly been aware of it since day one, and aware of the evictions that have happened in New York and Oakland. I don’t know if you heard, but there were thousands of people on the Brooklyn Bridge last night, so the energy is still out there in the streets of New York. The police backlash seems to be getting pretty intense, so I want to go down and see for myself what there is to see.

Did you visit Occupy NOLA?

Yeah, I did go down there, two or three weeks ago. I hung out for two or three hours. It was pretty low-key—a lot of people camping down there by City Hall, a lot of boards specifying a lot of meetings about how to get through the daily food and dishes and trying to figure out the daily biz of urban camping.

What did you take away after visiting Occupy NOLA?

I think that it’s great that there are people in the streets calling attention to the disparity of wealth in this city, and to the exploits of the top one percent. I agree with all the commentators commenting that the movement needs to articulate more specifically the solutions, to grow beyond pointing out huge problems and begin to point out some of the solutions.

I wish I lived back in New York right now and could participate directly in one of the epicenters of the movement. I heard on the news last night a very cool film director, Robert Greenwald, who makes progressive documentaries. He was saying, “Now we need to identify the One Percent. Who are these people?” And I was thinking, “No, I don’t think we should go on personal vendettas even though we would love to shame these people who are ruining our country and our lives. I don’t think that’s the best way to go.” Naming the laws that were enacted and de-acted and all of the systematic devices these people use to exploit the system—that’s what we need to focus on.

If you were back in New York, would it be hard for you at your level of success to get involved in a project like this at a grassroots level?

Dealing with celebrity is something that I negotiate in my life. I saw Pete Seeger down there marching a few weeks ago—such a wonderful statement because Pete Seeger is as radical as the day is long. He’s also an American icon and has become accepted by the general populace and really loved by most of America. His showing up there was very powerful. Billy Bragg has been down there singing songs. I have an audience that’s very intense, very passionate about their connection with my work, so it’s definitely something I have to weigh. I have to do a show tomorrow night and I don’t want to be drained.

As a folk singer, it’s part of my job now. I recently went with an expedition down to the Gulf Coast and saw things for myself—talked to a lot of activists, a lot of locals. It’s my job to show up and to ask questions and try to learn as much as I can about what’s going on in this country. But yes, celebrity makes it a little tricky.

How did you meet Pete Seeger?

Probably at the Clearwater Folk Festival on the Hudson River. I started showing up there when I was probably around 20 years old, which was the first time I was hired to play there. I remember being onstage with Pete as a young pup. I remember the phenomenon of me showing up there at Clearwater and suddenly there was this huge infusion of teenagers at this folk festival. This was happening at a lot of folk festivals when I was beginning to show up, and there was a bit of a fear factor amongst the old folkies, and then there were people like Pete and Utah Phillips and Tom Paxton who were right there with me, saying, “Right on! New blood!” They were very welcoming to me. He was instantly on the same page as me. There was no fear or hesitancy. “Here’s a new generation with a different sound and a different uniform but doing the same work. Pete has always been a great inspiration to me and a great comrade to me in that way.

How did the decision to record his “Which Side Are You On?” come about?

I got asked to play at his 90th birthday at Madison Square Garden. There was a huge group of people there to play and sing and support the Clearwater organization. So I got my folk singer assignment before that show, and one was to play “Which Side Are You On?”, which was a song he recorded in 1953 and sang a lot. My job was to play that song with Bruce Cockburn and “Hole in a Bucket” with Kris Kristofferson.

As I began to learn it, I couldn’t help but tinker with it, that being the folk process. I ended up rewriting the verses extensively and I’ve been singing it ever since. It’s become sort of my rabblerousing show closer. This new record I’ve been working on for years, I think it morphed a lot along the way, and “Which Side Are You On?” became the theme over the course of the years I’ve been working on it.

Pete plays on it. I called him up and I said, “Pete, I’m recording ‘Which Side’ and do you think you could join me on it?” He was like, “Hang on!” He gets his banjo and gets back on the phone: “Okay, are you doing the modal version like this, or this version like this, and…” Dude is 90 years old and has more energy and more passion than I could ever hope for. He played the banjo intro to the track on the record exactly like the 1953 recording that he made in one take.

I loved the use of the Roots of Music on the recording. How did that come about?

About 16 years ago, I went on a coast-to-coast summer tour and hired the Rebirth Brass Band to open it. It was a month-long party. Ever since then Derrick [Tabb] and I have been buddies. He and his friend Allison [Reinhardt] basically started that music program from nothing. They knew about as much as any of us about starting a free music school for underprivileged kids and somehow they’ve done it. It’s incredible what they’re doing. I’m on the board now, and I’ve been working with them and trying to help in various ways. It was actually my partner and co-producer, Mike [Napolitano], his idea to get them on that track and I love it. It feels so good that there’s just a huge, diverse population playing on that track. It’s politically appropriate.

How do you continue to write political songs now after you’ve been writing them for so long? What are some of the challenges you are facing?

The political songs have always been the hardest. To write about the love, the personal foibles, the heartache, that’s automatic. To write about things that are bigger than yourself, things that are maybe far out there, it’s more tricky. One of the problems that I’ve experienced over the years is a simple problem of language. If you want to say something really specific, politically, you get into a territory of language that is very un-musical. Maybe it’s because we’re not used to hearing this language in song, but “patriarchy” and “multinational corporation”—it’s hard to put those across in song and succeed and say something that doesn’t have an expiration date. Or something that does. Folk songs are very often topical, and they’re part newspaper, part song. I think that’s a cool genre as well.

Recently, I’ve had some conversations with younger artists who I admire, and I’ve had experiences where they’ve said to me, “Wow, you were such an inspiration. You emboldened me.” After twenty-something years of making songs, I’ve realized one of the roles I play in music and in society is boundary-pusher, especially in the arena of politics and art. In thinking about that lately, if it’s my job to push these boundaries, then let’s see how hard I can push. I think of “Amendment” [on the new album] as a stand out. I worked really hard on that song to make it a song and also to be a proposal to a constitutional amendment that leaves nothing out.

Was this a time that particularly called for a political record?

Gee, what time isn’t? Even the time of quiet prosperity of the ’90s was really time of deregulation and setting up all of this freeloading inequality. I think anytime is a time when citizens need to be citizens and art needs to challenge society. That’s how we grow and that’s how we evolve.

From left to right: Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick bassist), Sean Yseult, Robin Zander. Photo from Sean Yseult's book I'm in the Band.

“Thank you so much for this interview because normally, I get pushed out of the way for interviews,” Cheap Trick singer Robin Zander says. “It’s usually that freaky white motherfucker with a baseball cap,” he says, referring to guitarist Rick Neilsen. Sean Yseult—formerly of White Zombie, now working on a new project, Star and Dagger—has been friends with Zander for years. Among other bonds the two share, Schecter Guitars makes instruments for both of them.

Yseult will be out of town when Cheap Trick plays the Voodoo Experience on Sunday, October 30 at 6:15 p.m. in the Bingo! Parlor, so she caught up with Zander and let OffBeat listen in.

Last time I saw you we were in Vegas doing the Sgt. Pepper show [Cheap Trick performed the entire Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in Las Vegas in 2010, complete with a 32-piece orchestra.].

That was so much fun to be able to do a big show in Vegas and not pull down your underwear as Cheap Trick but you know, do Cheap Trick as Sgt. Pepper.

It was brilliant; are you going to take that on the road?

If the money was right. There’s not much money in that.

Really? Because in Vegas it was beautiful.

Way too expensive. You’ve got to pay all the cello players and the singers. We don’t get paid enough as it is. We are doing something similar with Dream Police, though.

Are you going to take that on the road?

That we can take on the road because it’s not quite as involved. We have some dates in Wisconsin. You can go to our website to find out more about that.

Wow, I’m definitely going to buy a plane ticket to see that.

Yeah, you’ve got to come up, if not just to hang out.

Are you in New Orleans right now?

Yeah, I am; where are you?

I’m at home. I’m in Florida.

Florida. I knew you were on East Coast time, but I thought you were in New York for some reason.

The band’s in New York but I’m down here.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the early days of Cheap Trick. I was wondering if you guys had a time where, when you were getting large, you were getting these large audiences but were still financially playing catch-up? I know with White Zombie, we were starting to play these big places but were still really poor because labels don’t really account for you.

We accumulated a lot of debt. Even after [At] Budokan was successful, we didn’t see the money for a couple years. On top of that, we sued our record company.

I didn’t know that.

And we lost the lawsuit because of the laws back then. We were suing over royalties, and spent another million fighting that. I remember sitting in the lawyer’s office during a deposition with my Chicago lawyer with a stogie in his mouth, and they have seven lawyers! One of them just won the Von Bulow case! I was thinking, “Oohhh, great.”

It took us a while to get on our feet, but eventually we did, and you’re right. It’s sort of a strange feeling looking out into an audience of 50,000 people thinking, “Why am I broke?”

So was Budokan the turning point for you?

I think it was pre-Budokan or leading up to Budokan that really did it for us. It was probably during the Heaven Tonight album. We went on a world tour that lasted two years, and in those days you made two records a year.

Oh my god.

January ‘77 our first record came out and in the fall of ‘77 our second record came out.

I didn’t realize they were that close together.

And in ’78, Heaven Tonight came out, and we were recording Dream Police.

Wow, you guys were on a roll, cranking out all that amazing material.

What happened was, during that period we toured with AC/DC and at that point both bands were fairly unknown. They knew who we were in the Midwest, and they knew who AC/DC was in Australia, but the rest of the world didn’t know about either band yet, so we toured for about a year and a half.

I knew that you toured with AC/DC, but I didn’t know you toured with them for a year and a half together.

One of my favorite shows that we did was in ’78 at Zeppelinfeld, in Nuremberg, Germany and the Who were headlining. It was the Who, Cheap Trick, the Scorpions, AC/DC and about three or four other metal bands. It was for over 120,000 people where Hitler did his rallies! The party afterwards was unbelievable.

Getting back to what happened to us, Budokan had happened right before Dream Police, and by the time we got to play Budokan, we had a following and anticipation. They were expecting Dream Police to come out, and they had heard the review of the tour with AC/DC. When we got to the airport, I looked out the window and saw a thousand people out there.

Oh my god, you must’ve felt like the Beatles, huh?

I thought the president was there or something. It wasn’t until we got off the plane that we realized it was for us.

What’re you doing? You’re touring now because you got the book? [Last year, Yseult wrote I’m in the Band: Backstage Notes from the Chick in White Zombie.]

I got you a copy of that, right? When I saw you in L.A. for the NAAM show?

I’m so proud to be in the book!

Oh god, are you kidding? One of the main things I tell people in this book is that not only was I in a band and a musician, but I was such a fan of the bands we got to tour with and see. Running into you guys in Tokyo and getting to be friends and hanging out was so exciting. Remember that night you and I closed down the bar with Phil Anselmo?

When you’re on that different time zone, you aren’t tired.

They were so polite. They weren’t going to shut down the bar when there were musicians hanging out. I think Phil was surprised that both of us could keep up with him.

You know, I just saw him. We did a fest in England and he was there, and we grabbed him by the neck and threw him in our van and drove him around. He still lives in New Orleans, doesn’t he?

He does. I just saw him about a month ago for his birthday. He lives across the lake and, as you can imagine, every square inch is covered in horror movies and posters and old, old VHS tapes and things. He’s doing really great. I really love the Down stuff.

I also heard a rumor about a comic book?

Oh yeah, that’s almost out.

That’s not secret?

It’s called The High Priest of Rhythmic Noise, and it’s actually a hard copy comic book, which will be in stores, but there’s also an Internet version of it. Each episode will be about 3-5 minutes long, and you can download it off of iTunes. The core of it is not the comic book itself; the core of it is that it has a soundtrack. The soundtrack has dialogue and, you know, the things that movies do to enhance their product. What we’re trying to do is keep the integrity of the comic book by not having motion, but to enhance the comic book by zooming in and out as if you actually had the hard copy in front of you

I used to bring my comic books to school. On the way there, I would read a comic book, and nobody does that anymore. I figured this was a way to do two things, and that’s to bring back comic books to where they should be—in the hands of 18-year-olds, and to let them enjoy them on their way to school, on the way home.

Sounds very cool. Are you the star of the comic book or did you help create it?

I wrote the story and I wrote the music. But it’s not just my music. The segues and some of the songs are from other artists that cared to contribute. I wanted the material to be mostly new so that it’s exposing bands that normally wouldn’t have a chance to be exposed. It’s just another avenue, you know?

That’s great when you get opportunities like that. I’ve been offered to do a soundtrack for this iPhone app, which is cool. It’s something about going on a date with a vampire, so they need all this creepy music for the background and wanted to film in my house!

I’m looking forward to that. By the way, as long as we’re talking about this, if you’ve got anything laying around—it doesn’t have to be a song, it can just be a piece of music—I’ll find a spot for it and we’ll put it in there.

Awesome! I compose on piano quite a bit, so that might be fun.

I have to ask you about something I’ve heard before and I’m not sure if this is true—in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, Cheap Trick was supposed to be the band, right?

Yeah, it was. I’m not sure why it changed, and it’s a shame, really, because it was written with us in mind.

It’s so obvious.

I don’t really care because the Ramones are a good band too.

Last time I saw you guys play in L.A. a few months back, you guys did an amazing set, and I know with White Zombie, we would have this very locked-down set we would play every night and it got a little tiresome—“How many times can I play these songs over and over again?”

We do the same thing. The locked down set is there and we change one or two songs once in a great while. It was difficult for the four of us to come to any consensus on how we might change it so we could lighten it up a little bit, but it never seemed to happen. Then one day we all looked at each other and said, “Why not at our soundchecks go over some of this older material so we can add it in?” That kept going for a couple of years until every night we ended up doing a different set with the exception of a few core songs. “I Want You to Want Me,” “Dream Police” and stuff like that.

Your catalogue is so vast at this point. I don’t know if a lot of people who aren’t musicians know this, but a lot of what you do is—

A lot of them don’t because they don’t think we still made records after the ’80s, but we continue to make records. In fact, we just had one out that we did recently called The Latest, which is think is one of our greatest, but because of our age—I mean, I consider us to be one of the most famous cult bands in the whole world.

Another thing that I’m just always blown away by is your voice. You’ve been singing for—

37 years.

37 years! And your voice sounds great.

Well, thank you. I don’t know what that is. I’ve never considered myself necessarily as the singer of Cheap Trick. It was the first band I was in where I was the singer, really.

What did you do before?

I owned the PA system.

(laughter) Isn’t that always the way.

And I had a van before anybody else did. I was in a lot of bands before Cheap Trick. I played the guitar and I sang back-up. I just got a funny email from some friends of mine in Chicago. I was in his band for a couple of weeks and I auditioned for the lead singer part, and was fired after about three days.

Oh my god! For what reason?

They found somebody they thought was better, but I just got an email from the drummer from that band and he said, “Goddamn it, how many times am I going to kick myself in the ass for firing you?”

Do you remember the name of the first band you played with?

The first band I was in was the Destinations and I was 14 years old. Then I was in a band after that called Butterscotch Sundays.

Were you guys kind of psychedelic?

Of course “Sunday” was spelled S-u-n-d-a-y. I thought Strawberry Alarm Clock was cool. Then just before Cheap Trick, I was in a duo for a while with another fella, and we played a lot of coffee shops and we got into an acoustic mode. For about four years I just traveled around with my guitar—over to Colorado and back, over to Scotland. Went there and lived there for about a year and a half. I tried to “find myself.” I came back and realized I wasn’t really lost in the first place!

What was it like being in Scotland at that time?

At every show I met a lot of people. I met this great band called Lindesfarne—they lived in England—and I wanted to go see Neil Young at City Hall because this new band called the Eagles were playing there and I had read a lot about them. The guy in Lindesfarne who played the mandolin was the guy who played on “Maggie Mae” with Rod Stewart, and he gave me a ride. Stuff like that would happen all the time. I almost got mugged going to see Slade one night.

Oh my god!

With Ten Years After at this bingo parlor. I probably blew my ears out because I saw the two loudest bands I’d ever heard in my life.

I love Slade. You didn’t happen to catch the Sweet around that time, did you?

Of course.

Which one was more impressive, the Sweet or Slade?

Slade was definitely more impressive. They were so cool live, I don’t even know how to explain it. They were a pop band, but they sounded so heavy to me.

One of the reasons we’re called Cheap Trick is because there was a performance of Slade, and Tom [Petersson] looked at Rick [Nielsen] or Rick looked at Tom and said something like, “These guys use every cheap trick in the book.”

Really? (laughter) That was about Slade? So those guys influenced you when you started?

I think so. It was more attitude than anything else; they had a lot of attitude and real positive songs.

Yeah, you guys always had that sensibility, super pop but heavy rock at the same time.

We just took it to a different level. Our songs are different so that sets us apart, but we did a tribute, a song on The Latest, by Slade.

Which song?

“When the Lights Are Out.” (begins to sing) “When the lights out, we’ll be sitting pretty.”

Awesome. I’ve got to check it out. I have to ask you if you had any inside stories or funny memories of hanging out with the AC/DC guys while you were on tour with them.

Bon Scott was really a great guy. He was a perfect gentlemen, but everyone thought he was this creepy, dirty old man. And he was older than us, so the shoe kind of fit. He’d get up in the morning and have a donut and a shot of whiskey. He would be able to drink that pretty much all day long, but he was never out of it or drunk.

That’s so European! When they maintain a certain level of drunkenness but never appear too drunk. That’s an amazing talent.

He rarely drank wine or beer with a meal; with a meal he always had a shot of whiskey. He wouldn’t do a shot to get drunk; he would just sip on it and eat a little doughnut, have another little sip.

He was a great guy. That band was my favorite rock band and still is to this day. They do one thing, but they do it better than anyone else on the planet. I’ve got a lot of respect for all those guys, their music, their longevity. What they’ve done is great.

You did the major label thing for so many years and now you’re independent. Which one do you prefer?

When you’re young and you don’t know any better, getting signed to a major label is what you’re after. But you’re not really prepared for the business aspect of getting ripped off, because that’s what’s going to happen. You get into this situation where the label says, “We’re going to take everything from you because we know how much you love what you do, and you’re not going to pay attention to what we do.”

That’s so horrible that you guys went though that, I’m really sorry to hear that. I didn’t know you guys had to go through lawsuits and stuff like that.

It’s alright. I’m not starving. I’m far from well off, but I have a house that I love, and I have a family and I’m happy.

They’re right on that account—we love what we do; it’s horrible that they take advantage of it.

They needed the money a lot more than I did, so it doesn’t bother me. Looking back on all that stuff, it’s just a shame and you know, I think that other acts coming up, it’s different because they’re aware of it and the state of record companies now. The world is changing and they have to change with it and the companies are all shrunk.

Definitely, and there are so many people doing it over the Internet for themselves now.

And these people can make a humble living. They may not be getting rich for it, but they survive and they continue to make records that people enjoy, even if it’s locally. However you can scrape by—making a living by making music—is wonderful because music is more than all that other stuff. Music is a part of life, whether you’re a professional musician or not. Music is religion; it’s a spiritual thing that transcends everything.

This isn’t a question, but I’m just going to say it: You’re one of my favorite singers, and your voice seems to have built-in sound effects. It sounds like there are sound effects in your voice, you know what I mean? But it comes right out of you.

Rick’s father said a similar thing to me. He was an opera singer. Rick’s mother and father were actually both opera singers. He said it to me one time because I’d done shows with Rick’s dad.

Really? Meaning what? You got up on stage with the opera?

One show was an operetta that I did called The Mikado. Then we did “An Evening with Robin Zander,” which was me singing, along with Rick’s dad—various songs that he chose for me that he thought I would be able to do with his orchestra, the Mendelssohn Orchestra, out of Rockford, Illinois. I did that, and he said to me that when I sing, it sounded like I had two voices.

Cheap Trick plays Sunday, October 30 at 6:15 p.m. on the Bingo! Parlor Stage.

Arthur Roger. Photo by Elsa Hahne.

The walls of Arthur Roger Gallery on Julia Street are uncharacteristically bare. On Art for Art’s Sake (Saturday, October 1), the gallery will host a show by filmmaker/writer/artist John Waters titled “Catholic Sin,” but this afternoon, they’re just broad expanses of white. In the back rooms of the gallery, meticulous paintings that depict paperback book covers and album jackets by Richard Baker are leaning against the wall, waiting to be hung.

Arthur Roger has been a mainstay of the Julia Street contemporary arts scene, and for years his gallery has been one of the must-see stops on first Saturday art openings. For years, Art for Art’s Sake has been the contemporary arts community’s signature event, though in recent years, White Linen Night has challenged that standing. On a quiet afternoon, Roger talks about changes in the New Orleans arts community and the business of art.

How long have you been on Julia Street?

We started the gallery right after the World’s Fair, so we were making plans in this building in ’84. We moved into the gallery in ’88.

When did Julia Street become an arts center?

We were on Magazine Street for 10 years before that, and at that time Magazine Street was pretty funky and very inexpensive, which was the reason why we were there. But the buildings are these long, narrow buildings that go back forever, and they’re not ideal for contemporary art. When the developers asked me if I’d be interested in this space, it was like winning the lottery. They were just giant boxes.

The Contemporary Arts Center had already been opened. The Children’s Museum was Dixie Art Supplies, Naomi Marshall had a gallery—Downtown Gallery—that was there, and we came right after Galerie Simone Stern left uptown to come to Julia Street at well. But we all came here to be by the Contemporary Arts Center.

Who was showing at the CAC at that point?

It was all the main mid-career artists that you see now. George Dureau had his first show at the Contemporary Arts Center at that time, Gene Koss, Ida Kohlmeyer—all these people who really have been taken for granted. The people that pioneered contemporary art in New Orleans were having their first moment. The museum (NOMA) had been very neglectful of contemporary arts and the CAC barged in with a very remarkable entry, with Don Marshall being the director.

At that time, the scene seemed really dynamic. You could see brilliant stuff and woeful missteps, which I thought was part of its beauty.

There was an energy about it more than anything, and a curiosity of what was coming. It was very experimental in an exciting way, but it’s like everything. Things are always changing— they’re evolving and you have to keep up.

How have they changed?

Well, one, we’re not new anymore.

We were like every other city looking for validation from New York, and I think we’ve gotten over that in a lot of ways. It’s not that we don’t care anymore, but it’s different. It’s not like that is the emphasis anymore. I think the emphasis is to just do something really well.

You have a lot of new institutions like the Ogden Museum, and I think NOMA will be much more active in contemporary art. They have a contemporary art curator for the first time.

The other thing is, artists were on an island and we were insulated, and even though it was denied, there was a sensibility of the South. After the hurricane, there was this influx of younger energy and creative people and I don’t see that anymore.

Also, the universities have produced so many art students, and those people are very active, so that brings in another influx of tremendous energy and changes the dynamics.

Has the Internet broken down the sense of distinctions between places?

It’s always about artists. No matter what anybody says, artists are the ones who determine everything. They’re the ones who make this possible for me. They’re the ones moving the whole dialogue, and they’ve decided they don’t all want to live in New York anymore, for whatever reason—it’s too expensive, it’s not the same as it was, they like their big studio spaces, they like being near their family, whatever.

When I started the gallery, there wasn’t a business school for art. Leo Castelli [a New York contemporary art dealer] was a shirt salesman, my father was a streetcar driver. I learned from my artists. One of the first things Ida Kohlmeyer told me was, “Always follow the artist; don’t follow the collector.” It was good advice because they’re the ones that are directing the dialogue.

What was your background?

I studied special education at UNO. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Galleries were generally failures, and at that time you could disappear and owe artists a lot of money. The only successful gallery was Simone Stern when she was still living, and it was a gallery where someone had committed that there would be a good gallery in New Orleans even if they had to pay for it. We were the first to come in and actually make it into a business.

I thought of myself more as an artist when I opened the gallery. I brought artists together with the idea that we’d run the gallery democratically, and it was one of the most frightening things I’ve ever done in my entire life. It was horrible and scary, but it made me realize that artists wanted a businessman on the front lines for them, and that they didn’t want an artist handling their career. I’ve modeled myself on the person I think my artists want me to be.

What did they want you to be?

Someone there to fight for them who’s fair, and someone who understands them, who understands what they’re doing, what it takes for them to do what they do, and who tries to make a living for them.

Julia Street has become the establishment in New Orleans’ contemporary art community and St. Claude Avenue has become the new upstart row. What are your thoughts on that shift?

I love it. I think it’s really great. One of the advantages of growing older is that you understand what they’re going through. I’m very supportive. They can do things that I can’t do anymore, but I know that they’re on a ride now where they have to figure it out as they go along, and the roads change. It’s very hard to keep a gallery going. It’s a business most people don’t understand. I’ve always said if anybody says they can explain the art business to you, don’t trust them.

What can a St. Claude Avenue gallery do that you can’t?

When you get to the maturity of the gallery that we have, you have an image and you have to be respectful of that. I’d love to be able to do wild and crazy shows—and I’m not saying that in any derogatory way—but after you’ve been showing art for 33 years, you can’t be hit and miss. You’ve got to have some consistency. Some purpose as to why you’re showing this work. Like anything that’s older and bigger, we’re slower-moving. If you’re younger and you’re rawer, you’re faster. You can respond quicker. When we opened the gallery, we took on 13 artists in three months; now we take an artist on in a year, that’s a pretty big deal.

How do White Linen Night and Art for Art’s Sake factor into your business?

Don Marshall, Barbara Muniot—she was the director of Galerie Simone Stern—and I, we started the first Art for Art’s Sake in the early ‘80s. Art for Art’s Sake was a name for the benefit for the Contemporary Arts Center. My openings were on Saturday and hers were on Friday, so we decided to coordinate openings. Because summers are so long, we can’t really begin in September like the Northeast does for their openings, but you need some sort of punctuation: “Okay, it’s the cultural season.” We thought the title was good, we coordinated the openings on the early side, and we all ended up at the Contemporary Arts Center. The CAC at that time was a dessert party. It was an extraordinary success, way bigger than any of us ever anticipated.

The other part of it—and the other reason for these big events—is that there was a lot of resistance to contemporary art at that time. It was easier to attack art than understand it, so you’d have people say crazy things like, “I don’t know about art, but I know what I like,” or “A child could do it,” or “Is it sideways?” The openings give an opportunity to bring everybody in in a non-intimidating way and they can have a good time and hopefully learn something in the process.

Now things have changed. People realize that they’re dumb to say things like that and they’re more knowledgeable. It has been really successful. Unfortunately, we lost control of Art for Art’s Sake. It’s become a party for party’s sake.

Is Art for Art’s Sake night a good night for business?

I never look at them as selling nights, but after doing this for so long, I can pretty much tell when somebody’s very serious about something. I can also tell whether or not I need to wait until I have a better opportunity to spend more time with them. Some nights are very serious and people are very interested in what you’re doing. Others, you feel like you’re a backdrop that no one’s really paying attention to.

Our White Linen Night show would not be changeable with our Art for Art’s Sake show. White Linen Night—we try to be lighter, we try to put up something that will connect with that audience, whereas Art for Art’s Sake—we try to be edgier. I want things that are going to be a bit uncomfortable, that will make people think a little bit more. White Linen Night—I’m all about the feel good.

Can you look at a room and tell who’s a serious buyer?

Absolutely. I can tell you who’s a serious person who wants attention. I can tell you who’s interested that wants you to leave them alone, and I can tell you who’ll suck the blood out of you if you get cornered in a conversation.

Has White Linen Night eclipsed Art for Art’s Sake?

I thought White Linen Night was the worst idea. I was there at the beginning. I sponsored it. I said if anybody’s going to do it, I’ll be there for them, but this is craziness. I hated the whole pretension of dressing up for an event, but I was wrong. People love it.

I think the restaurants make more than the galleries do. We had three shows—one did phenomenally well, one did okay, one didn’t do well at all. I have a love/hate relationship with White Linen Night. I never want a line at my door. That’s not who we are, but there comes a time when there are so many people in the gallery where it’s a bad feeling rather than a good feeling to be in here.

I wish the St. Claude galleries could be here rather than there. No matter what it looks like, we’re all trying for the same thing. We’re not fighting each other. I worry about Julia Street becoming boutique-ish, but what can you do? You look at New York and how Soho is now, and who’d go there? And it just happens. I understand why they want to be over there and not over here, but it really upsets me. I can’t go over there to see what they’re doing as easily.

Ira "Dr. Ike" Padnos, producer of the Ponderosa Stomp. Photo by Joseph Rosen.

The Ponderosa Stomp is a record collector’s library come to life. The classic—and occasionally obscure— R&B, rockabilly, blues, garage and swamp pop songs that shaped pop music history are performed by the artists who made them. It’s not an oldies show, though. Producer Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos pairs the artists with bands that love the original recordings and try to recreate the original sound and fire, and results help the performers shed years and present the voice, sound or intensity that made their names in the first place.

This year, the Stomp celebrates its 10th birthday September 16-17 at the Howlin’ Wolf, and over the years it has expanded to be more than just a series of shows. On September 15, the Stomp’s 45s-fueled dance party “The Hip Drop” enters its fifth year, this time at d.b.a. The Stomp has led to the Ponderosa Stomp Conference—a series of oral histories and interviews with some of the participants in the Stomp. This year, it takes place September 15-17 at the Renaissance Arts Hotel. Also that weekend, the Stomp’s Clandestine Celluloid Film Series screens rare rock ‘n’ roll-oriented movies at the Renaissance Arts Hotel as well.

Needless to say, a decade of working with the legends of rock ‘n’ roll has left Padnos with many stories.

When you were booking this year, did you have anything particular in mind that you thought was appropriate for the tenth year?

Number one: we wanted to go heavy on Louisiana and New Orleans acts. We also felt some of the greatest people involved, such as Cosimo Matassa, have never really gotten a good musical tribute, so we wanted to have a tribute to Cosimo Matassa. We also wanted to recognize the great J.D. Miller and Excello Records out of Crowley, Louisiana, so we booked heavily to that.

Another thing we wanted to do was bring back some of the Stomp’s greatest hits through the years, some of the people we haven’t brought back in a long time. So it’s Big Jay McNeely; we wanted Big Jay back. G.G. Shinn was another performer who really killed it. Jivin’ Gene—people still talk about him. They weren’t necessarily the biggest names, but they put on really great sets so we wanted to bring some of those back.

Another thing we always talked about doing was a Stax revue, but since everyone else has done a Stax revue, we were fighting the urge. But [Ponderosa Stomp veteran band] the Bo-Keys play that stuff better than anybody, so we finally decided we’re going to give in and do a Stax revue. We’ll have Eddie Floyd, William Bell and Mack Rice be part of it, and have a combination of obscure and well-known material. “Big Bird” by Eddie Floyd has always been one of my favorite songs, but you’ll never see Booker T and the MGs play it because Booker T was the guitar player on the record. [Steve] Cropper didn’t play that part. This way, I can get them to do it.

Do you ask musicians for specific songs?

If you have a guy that was known to be the nastiest, low-down guitarist in town, why would you want him cleaned-up playing B.B. King songs? If you had someone who caught one or two great songs, why keep him on stage for two hours padding with covers until you got to the good material? The idea was to treat the Ponderosa Stomp like the old rock ‘n’ roll revues, and the old revues were like a jukebox—all killer, no filler. We ask, “Can you please do this material?” A lot of times they’re like, “Those songs didn’t sell.”

But what do you do when you have people like Allen Toussaint or Dave Bartholomew who changed the face of music? How do you tell someone who’s been producing, writing and arranging music, “We’re trying to make a special program; could you do that?” We’ve had discussions with them, and when doing that you have to be very respectful. Luckily, we’ve had good responses. When we had Mac—Dr. John—revert to Mac Rebennack and do that [guitar-based] material, we weren’t sure he was going to take to it, but he said, “As long as Wardell [Quezergue] does the arrangements, I’ll be willing to take a stab at it.”

We had Johnny Farina of Santo & Johnny, and we asked him to play “Bullseye!.” He goes, “Why would I want to play that? We recorded it once; I never played it again.” I said, “Johnny, believe it or not, people are going to ask if you’re going to do it.” Sure enough, he got done and said, “Man, you were right I couldn’t believe it.”

The problem too, is to make sure you have sympathetic musicians that have the capacity to play with the musicians. A lot of times they’ll say, “That band doesn’t know how to play my music.” I say, “They will know how to play your music; just talk to them.” Billy Boy Arnold walked into a rehearsal and he looked at Alex Chilton and he said, “Okay, guitar player, I want the tenth measure, third stanza guitar fill now.” Alex looked at him for a few seconds and said, “Okay, got it,” and played it. Billy Boy said, “Okay, you’ll do.”

I’ve always thought the real success of the Stomp was getting sympathetic young bands that love and hear the life in the classic recordings.

Luckily, we have some really talented musicians in the background bands established. Lil’ Buck Sinegal and the Top Cats are like having a Cadillac of bands for soul and New Orleans rhythm and blues. Then you add Deke Dickerson, who can play anything with his band. The Bo-Keys out of Memphis do that Memphis sound. Michael Hurtt and the Haunted Hearts can do swamp pop and country-ish things.

We have had a great ability to attract some top-notch musicians to put together. Alex Chilton would sometimes be playing guitar. Mr. Quintron could sometimes be spotted on keyboards. The drummer for the Afghan Whigs, Paul Buchignani, played a bunch of stuff for us, some of the great New Orleans horn players. The Stomp wouldn’t be successful without their contributions.

I always wonder what’s in it for Lil’ Buck and Buckwheat Zydeco to play. I imagine they wouldn’t get the same sort of buzz with playing with contemporaries.

In Buckwheat’s case, it’s like a musical vacation. He gets to put down his accordion and get on the Hammond B3, which he loves to play. With Buck, people forget that Lil’ Buck and the Top Cats used to be a 14, 15-piece band in Lafayette. In the ‘60s he had his own TV show. He used to back people back in the day such as Percy Sledge, so for him, it’s the opportunity to go back to that era that he loves but doesn’t get the opportunity to really play.

His response when I hand him material—when I handed him Howard Tate’s for the first time—was “Where did you find this guy? This guy’s incredible.” Last year it was Sugar Pie DeSanto. He likes the challenge of putting it together. Buck is not a reading musician; he charts everything out by ear. Last year, he was pulling his hair out because the singers changed keys three times on him, and it still came out.

I’m always blown away at how together they are.

They spend two days eating and playing up in Lafayette before they even come to the Stomp. Sometimes you get musicians who want to know how much they’re getting paid for rehearsal, but for this band wants to rehearse and get it right. The Bo-Keys are the same. So’s Deke Dickerson. When you walk in, that band knows how to back you.

Do you have day of the show rehearsals?

Yes, we do have day of the show rehearsals. It’s kind of funny because the hotels through the years have been true rock ‘n’ roll hotels. One of the rooms is set up as a practice room. Last year, Cyril Jordan and Roy Loney of the Flamin’ Groovies were doing a bunch of rehearsals with the A-Bones in the lobby.

We used Le Cirque Hotel during Jazz Fest [2008] and Freddie Roulette was rehearsing and people were coming in grabbing cocktails, treating it like a party, and that’s the type of atmosphere it’s always been.

Some of the bands have rehearsed at the venue too. Once I was going to pick up Roy Head and Archie Bell to go to rehearsal. One of the seats in my car wasn’t up, and Ben Vaughn came up running asking if he could get a ride to work. Roy Head jumps up gets in the back seat in the human pretzel position that’s got to be uncomfortable for anybody but Roy Head. He was like, “This is great. I have so much room.”

At the very first Stomp, I’m sleepy, it’s 5:30 a.m. and I’m in my bed. At 6, the doorbell’s ringing, it’s James Blood Ulmer. “You can’t send me back to New York City; I have to stay the next two days.” He had so much fun he didn’t want to go, and he kind of fell in love with one of our friends—“I met this beautiful woman, and I love New Orleans. The Stomp is so different; I can’t go back.” He wound up hanging around for a few more days.

Everyone told me Link Wray was going to be really problematic, but he was like a big kid. He walked up to Scotty Moore, got down and kissed his feet, and said, “You’re my idol.” Scotty Moore was like, “Get up, get up. You can’t do this.”

The first year, Dave Bartholomew would call me every night at midnight: “You’re not advertising enough.” Every night. I would be like, “Dave, people will be there.” He called one night: “I don’t know if this is going to work out. I don’t know if people will be there. I went to the casino and people didn’t know me there.” “Dave, they’ll be there.”

Dave put on one of the best shows of that first Stomp, along with Tony Joe White, who sounded like Suicide that night.

Tony Joe White was monstrous when he pulled out his Whomper Stomper [a distortion pedal] as he called it. I didn’t realize until a couple of years later that he and the 13th Floor Elevators nearly formed a band together. I ran into him at South by Southwest and I asked him about it and his eyes started gleaming. He said, “Oh yeah, the Elevators. Those were some fun days.”

For Roky Erickson [who first played the Ponderosa Stomp in 2007], one day I’m sleeping and I got a phone call from someone who says, “This is Roky Erickson’s drummer.” “Yeah, right,” and I go back to sleep. He calls back: “No seriously, this is Freddie Steady, Roky Erickson’s drummer. We want to play the Ponderosa Stomp.” I couldn’t make it happen for two years, and finally we did it. His manager said, “There’s only one thing I’ve got to ask you. It’s on Roky’s rider: Does the hotel have the Cartoon Network?”

I took Big Chief Roddy of the Black Eagles to see Roky at South by Southwest one year, and he loved Roky. Thought it was amazing. At the Stomp one year, Big Chief Roddy did this monstrous Indian funk set with Lil’ Buck, and at the end of it, he’s still in his suit and he’s running through the upstairs of the House of Blues to go hug Roky. It was pretty surreal.

How present was Roky offstage?

The first year he played, he got there a little bit before he played and stayed a little bit afterwards. The second year, he was hanging out backstage for quite a while. He was very happy and very at ease.

The night before he played the first time, we went out to dinner with 15 people and him. Nothing was open, so we ended up at the St. Charles Tavern, where people were amazed that he was hanging out. But he was very personable and signed autographs. I gave him the lobby card for Creature with the Atom Brain or I Walked with a Zombie, I can’t remember. When I saw him the first year, he hugged me, and someone said, “Wow. He never hugs anybody.” That’s very different from Roy Head trying to kiss you on the lips once in a while because Roy’s so crazy and wants to see what response he can get out of you.

Who was hard to get?

Throughout the years, Allen Toussaint was hard to get because we wanted to do some stuff that he usually hasn’t done. It took two years-plus to get Ronnie Spector. I called up one of my friends and was like, “How do I get Ronnie Spector?” He said, “Well do you know her husband comes to the Stomp? He wasthere again this year.” I said, “Can I have his number and call him?”

There are some that we couldn’t pull off. One was Ike Turner. I took him a whole bunch of Ponderosa Stomp posters with guitar players and said, “Notice whose name is missing from this list.” He wouldn’t talk to me; so I’m talking to his girlfriend. He said, “I want my band, I want this, I want that.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do all that, but I want this: a set of guitar instrumentals.”

“Who is this man? He’s crazy.”

“Then I guess we don’t have a deal.”

Phil Phillips, I actually had to go with Lil’ Buck to find him. I knew his real name and he lives in Jennings, so I got his address by googling him. Lil’ Buck says, “I bet he lives by the railroad tracks.” Sure enough, it was right next to the railroad tracks. No one answers, so we left a note and went to the little grocery store right there, and they said he’s kind of a hermit. About two weeks later, he called me back and I was able to get him. His voice was still amazing.

Duane Eddy was quite a few years in the making. Duane’s an icon, so when he played, he’d show up and do a song or two. I overheard him tell someone that the longest set he’d ever played was at the Stomp. On those Dick Clark tours, you did two or three songs and that was it.

I always loved the song “Bar-B-Q,” so we were trying to track down Wendy Rene, but that was hard because nobody knew her real name.

I’d been trying to hire Scotty Moore for a couple of years prior to the Stomp. On a fluke, I went to the Elvis Festival in Tupelo with Paul Burlison. He said Scotty was over at the hotel and that he’d introduce us. When we got there, he wasn’t feeling too good. Paul told his girlfriend that I was an anesthesiologist. Scotty was going in for a procedure that he didn’t understand, so I went from meeting Scotty Moore to giving him a medical consult. In a couple of weeks, we had some Circle Bar shows; the next morning, there’s this call on my answering machine, “Hi, this is Scotty Moore. I’d really like to come play for you.”

Khandi Alexander as LaDonna on HBO's Treme. Photo by Paul Schiraldi.

The second season of Treme ended last month, and if you haven’t seen it yet, you really should set this story aside until you have. The series is unusual in many ways, not the least of which is its relationship to a specific city and a specific time. The intricacies of that relationship have prompted a small herd of bloggers to explicate and analyze scenes and stories. To put this season to bed, OffBeat rounded up some of the bloggers in our offices and via Skype (which worked better for some than it did for NPR’s Josh Jackson, who crashed midway through, never to return). Dave Walker of The Times-Picayune has done yeoman’s work writing what Ray Shea refers to as the “Walkerpedia,” providing backgrounds and explanations for some of the show’s references. Jackson and Patrick Jarenwattananon focused on Treme’s music for NPR’s “A Blog Supreme,” and Maitri Erwin and Ray Shea are part of the community of bloggers at Back of Town, a site that even David Simon visits on occasion.

What are your first thoughts on the season?

Patrick Jarenwattananon: Most people who I’ve talked to have enjoyed this season better than the previous one, and I think that might have to do with them working out their issues on how they process the narrative, and fielding more diverse musical selections throughout New Orleans.

Maitri Erwin: The season really focused on home a lot, whereas last season was about trying to get back. A lot of it focused on the music and contrasting that with crime in the city. It’s a pretty accurate representation for the most part, but in that last moment, everything wrapped up a little neatly for my taste. But that was me projecting what I want on the show, and a lot of us are guilty of that.

Josh Jackson: I was extremely impressed by Khandi Alexander’s performance as LaDonna, and it may have been the saving dramatic grace of the entire season. I think that she’s the most interesting character in the series as it pertains to my own personal peccadilloes.

Ray Shea: Last season that was very much about survival and trying to cling to traditions and what made New Orleans great in the past, which is where everyone was at the time in the city. In this season, you could see a lot of the characters not so much clinging to tradition as trying to reinvent the tradition. That was the year of the Unified New Orleans plan, all the redevelopment plans, so there was a sense that year that we switched from survival mode to rebuilding mode. You have Delmond doing his fusion of traditional and modern music and Janette doing her stuff with David Chang, and Davis—all taking the old and transforming it into something new, which is very symbolic of what New Orleans was doing that year.

Dave Walker: I thought as television, the show gave more viewers more entry points than it had in the first season. I’m thinking about Janette’s whole storyline leaping outside what the narratives had been for the show before that. I’m thinking of the hip-hop music and LaDonna’s storyline. As horrific as it was, it was a drama/television/film circumstance that you see all the time, and I think as great as her performance was, it was something that was familiar to television viewers.

The introduction of crime into the chronology gave folks who don’t really know or care that much about New Orleans another thing to latch onto and be pulled through the episodes, which can be very dense. So I think as a TV series, it succeeded more in the second season, but I don’t think the writers would ever admit they did it on purpose or to attract more viewers. A lot of it was the circumstance of the timeline, and a lot of it was what they wanted to show about the New York restaurant world and exploit the contributions of Anthony Bourdain, and a lot of people mentioned to me that they loved those restaurant scenes and the intimacy and delicacy of all that, and her life there.

What do we make of the character of Nelson?

Shea: You know when LaDonna goes off on her rant in the last episode and you realize that all these bad things have happened to people, but we don’t see the bad people [that made them happen]. We don’t see the bad person at State Farm screwing people out of their money in the first season. We don’t see what happened at the DA’s office that made LaDonna’s rape case go belly-up. We never saw who Liguori’s people were; we just saw the effects that they had on Nelson Hidalgo. We never saw who was getting him into these positions or giving him the money, and we never saw who took him out at the end.

This is how New Orleanians experience the dysfunction in the city all the time. It’s largely invisible. You can’t point to the person that fucked this place up. You can’t point to the institution that needs to be fixed; it’s all sort of inherently broken, and Nelson got to ride that wave until it broke underneath him as well.

Erwin: I think it also says something about how bent out of shape we were about the whole concept of the carpetbagger who came into New Orleans and was going to reshape the city into their idea of what is “modern” and “efficient” and “good” in America. We said, “Leave New Orleans alone,” but here we see that Nelson enjoys New Orleans. He sees the amazing things about New Orleans, especially in his wonderful French Quarter balcony speech. Then you have him basically screwing us over with money from New Orleans and giving money to people from New Orleans in order to make these deals happen.

Walker: One of the things I liked about the Nelson character, and both of you sort of got at this, is that he dedicates himself to the transparent pleasures of New Orleans in a way that newcomers do. And it makes everything seem transparent when you realize that you can walk around with a drink. Then when you get slapped with the dysfunction, it’s that much more mystifying and disappointing.

I took a lot of pleasure in his journey of discovery of the tactile things that are great about New Orleans. The food, the music, Mardi Gras, Zulu, all of that. I also think that was a great entry point for viewers who got to take that tour with him. Aside from the socio-political or commercial things he did, I thought it was an interesting and smart thing the writers did with that character. Everybody else feels like they’ve been here forever; here are a pair of new eyes.

Except for the way he profited on human misery, he’s everybody who came for Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest and stayed. My single favorite scene of the whole season is the one where he’s got a naked woman on his couch and he’s watching cartoons on a Sunday morning, and trying to get her to watch.

Jarenwattananon: I think Nelson’s character was the most like the ones we’d see on The Wire in that he’s the vehicle for an unstoppable capitalist force. He doesn’t really produce any tangible goods; he’s just the person who makes money out of more money. And you sort of see the end-product of such an economic transition system. He’s also given such moral ambiguity that you or I can identify with his motives, but he’s just a doomed pawn of the schemes, powerless to stop his downfall.

At PopMatters.com, Will Layman wrote that David Simon hates modern jazz. Josh, did this season say that to you?

Jackson: If that’s what you’re taking away from two seasons, you might be missing other more important things entirely. Obviously, Donald Harrison is a modern jazz artist.

I hate to get caught in this polarity between what’s traditional and what’s modern; there are a lot of musicians who are both. There are traditions that they’re dealing with, but they’re making music now.

Erwin: I’m curious, how well-received was the Donald Harrison jazz/Mardi Gras Indian fusion album [Indian Blues]?

Jackson: That album came out in the early 1990s on Candid Records; it had very limited distribution. I think that it was fairly well-received.

Layman talked about Delmond being selfish and distant, and it made me wonder if he watched the same show I watched. I wonder if it’s a function of the way characters are created, with enough ambiguity for people to read them in different ways from us.

Walker: I think the natural tendency is for viewers to observe and make judgments on characters line-by-line, and over and over this show has proven this to be a big mistake. They’re laying the foundation for a story that may be two seasons away. People could not stand Davis early on in Season One. Sonny was an utter villain. Both of them had redemption this season. Delmond was presented as a selfish young guy pursuing his own life and character, and by the end of Season Two he becomes his father’s son in every way he was resisting before, so I think it’s an accurate observation.

That is one of the problems with the serial-recap-deconstruction of the episodes, which is one of the reasons I resisted it. Having seen The Wire, and having seen the way the stories are knit over full seasons or the full five-season run of the show, I think it’s reckless, although human and natural, to draw those conclusions right away. The creators of this show have demonstrated that they’re not following the script that most TV dramas follow as far as introducing characters.

Shea: With Sonny, it surprised me that of all the characters people would think would be one-dimensional and irredeemable, and knowing what David Simon has done these past 10 years, they would pick the junkie as the one who won’t have any redemption at all. David Simon’s been writing about junkies for a very long time, and very compassionately.

What was the most compelling storyline this season?

Erwin: It had to be LaDonna’s rape and dealing with the criminal justice system, and her breakdown and resurgence towards the end. Her whole experience and feelings afterward really hit home with me.

Jarenwattananon: I haven’t really tried to rank storylines. It seems like the whole point of the show is that there’s so many of them and they all intersect and not to give any of them priority over the others.

One of the criticisms people have made of this season is that it seems like it treated all storylines equally. Is that a valid criticism?

Walker: It is a really democratic way of storytelling, and very unusual in TV films or drama. Shows get packaged with stars for reasons that have nothing to do with the story, and those stars get the screen time because it’s negotiated in advance. This is driven by writers who are putting fictional characters in a real place at a real time with lots of real people, and it may be the greatest tragedy of the show that many of them may never meet significantly. They’ve had some clever scenes where characters will intersect briefly, but even the actors say they’re frustrated by the fact that they rarely get to work with or even see their fellow cast members. That’s just a function of the way they’ve decided to tell the story.

I’ve written that I love Annie’s storyline because it was a great vehicle to see all these different musical styles. I think she’s a very sympathetic character, and I think Lucia [Micarelli] is a great musician. I do agree, however, that Khandi’s performance was stunning. And India [Ennenga] and Melissa [Leo]—I’m sure many of their scenes together resonated with local viewers who lived through those times with young people in the house.

Shea: This isn’t traditional, storyline-driven television, where at the end of the week the guy gets the girl or the bad guy gets caught. It’s much more akin to literary fiction, where the characters are at conflict with themselves or their environment, and the character transition is an internal thing. I’ve read where people compare Treme to Robert Altman films like Short Cuts, which was three hours long and blended a dozen Raymond Carver short stories into this little, intertwined thing that spans a few days in LA. I don’t know how people can compare Treme to Altman and not do the math and realize that’s what this sort of character-driven drama looks like when you translate it to long-form television. You’re not going to get a resolution to every story arc every week. This is a 10 or 11-hour long movie; you’re watching a little bit at a time. If you watch 20 minutes of an Altman film every week, you’d get the same experience where you don’t really know how it’s all going to resolve until the end of it.

To me, one of the interesting things about Treme certainly of this season, is the ways in which it’s unlike other television. One criticism of the show is that all the musicians talk about is music and the way they do it is obnoxious. We’re accustomed by television to think people talk with Aaron Sorkin-esque glibness, so when we run into characters who are preachy like Harley, and who say stupid stuff like Davis—television doesn’t usually give us that, so viewers react badly.

Jarenwattananon: Talking about the dialogue in music scenes, I found some of those scenes awkward myself. I think it’s somewhat accurate that musicians in general say things like “chops” and “cat,” but some of the scenes seemed to be actively trying to dramatize “Jazz Issue” with capital letters. Some of this writing reduces these really complex issues into Sorkin-esque writing at some points, which is strange because music is such a strength of the show. Then again, a lot of musicians and a lot of people who like music really like the show, and those back-and-forths between tradition and innovation resonated with them.

Shea: If you’re watching a program where the topic and characters are something that you’re involved in in real life, you know too much and you can see the moving parts in the dialogue, and that makes it hard to suspend disbelief. Some people from New Orleans have this thing where if someone makes reference to red-beans-and-rice-and-it’s-not-even-a-Monday, people laugh because it’s obvious, but, people talk like that all the damn time here. You hear it coming out of an actor’s mouth, it sounds like a cliché because you know it’s a cliché.

The Wire had the same awkwardness, but you don’t notice it the first time you see it because it’s an unknown environment—FBI and wiretaps—but after a while, you start to notice the speeches and the awkward copspeak moments that don’t really exist. With Treme, because we’re so close to it right out of the gate, we see it a little faster.

For me, one of the great musical moments was Jonathan Batiste’s piano solo early in the season when he’s playing with Delmond in New York. I don’t remember a musical moment in the rest of the series as intense as him attacking that piano. I wanted more moments that that are magical, but I realize Treme may play more magically to people who aren’t from here.

Walker: The thing that’s interesting to me about the music is that it always appears to advance something in the story, either a scene that had already happened or was going to happen. A lot of the music is as important as what the characters are saying around it. That’s something a lot of the viewers don’t understand because they’re not familiar with the music or they’re not familiar with the artist. They’ve really got to work to find the lyrics, but that’s an additional driver of the drama for the show.

Plus, it’s great performances, and that’s another thing that no one has ever done on television: live music performances. Most of what you hear in a live setting on the show is actually a live recording, and that’s never done on television.

Shea: A lot of the song choices, the lyrics to whatever is going on in the background are often like a harmonic dialogue line going on. When Antoine and LaDonna had that big fight in the bar near the end of this season, in the background on the jukebox is Otis Redding’s “A Thousand Miles Away.” You listen to the lyrics of that song by themselves and then you watch that scene over again—it’s heart-breaking to think that these two people used to be married and had two children together, and now they’re so fiercely angry at each other, and she’s in so much pain, and he doesn’t see it. That song is saying the exact same thing as what they are saying to each other, but it’s Otis Redding’s words doing it. And they do that on the show all the time.

Erwin: The Aunt Mimi/Lil’ Calliope story line initially bothered me: “When does a rapper from the hood get to be great friends with this lady Uptown?” But these things do kind of happen in New Orleans sometimes.

Jarenwattananon: I thought the Mimi/Don B./Lil’ Calliope story line actually ended up working quite well in that Davis ended up with egg on his face as the Uptown, rich boy who was trying to claim some sort of authenticity in it. And yet, he also came from such a genuine place that they actually made some of those arrangements work as music.

Erwin: There’s New Orleans rap, which is not bounce right? I think that they put a lot more emphasis on the bounce, trying to get exposure to Katey Red, and Big Freedia, and all these bounce big wigs. Sometimes it worked because I’m partial to bounce, but sometimes I felt like it was kind of forced in, “Okay, now we’re gonna have two minutes of ass-shaking.”

Shea: I had no problem with that.

Bounce worked for me because I think the “preserve everything” spirit that followed Katrina had people grabbing everything that was once a part of New Orleans. Suddenly, everyone wanted to talk about bounce.

Shea: It’s like Hubig’s Pies. Hubig’s Pies became these mystical things for a while, and that was reflected on the show because we thought they were gone.

Somebody on Back of Town pointed this out, which I thought was kind of clever, that Aunt Mimi basically sold Lil’ Calliope out to Cash Money Records, and somebody asked if the bar that they were sitting in when she pulled that check out was anywhere near where any of the slave markets in New Orleans used to be. We like Aunt Mimi. She’s one of the more endearing characters on the show, but there’s a little bit of that white-business-person-just-made-a-big-profit-out-of-yet-another-black-New-Orleans-musician, which has been going on for almost a century. It’s really the story of a lot of R&B from the middle of the 20th Century. A lot of people got rich off of that music and it wasn’t the musicians, and Mimi dramatizes that.

I hadn’t thought about this until you said that but with a better demeanor, Mimi is Nelson. She invested money and then figured out how to back the project, and sold the project. She just did it with out being quite so nakedly opportunistic or throwing people out of their houses.

Erwin: I thought Mimi actually did something more tangible than Nelson did. She helped these musicians get off the ground and Calliope got all this press. What happened in the end kind of bothered me too, but Calliope got his single out there.

Walker: That journey started with her indulging Davis. And my takeaway is that she basically broke even, given all the expenses that Davis piled up. And if she didn’t break even, she just maybe got a little richer. My takeaway wasn’t that she was ever involved to make money.

The other thing I want to say about her being in this world and the incongruity of that is that I can’t count the number of people of her generation who will recall that the giants of New Orleans R&B played at their prom. “Dr. John played at my prom.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that. “Irma Thomas played at my prom.”

We’ve been at this for an hour now, so let’s conclude with some final thoughts.

Erwin: I’m really interested in how they ended Season Two. There were so many places they could go. LaDonna and Larry are back in New Orleans, but is that wrapped up? Is she done for the season? What’s going happen with the Colson deal? I really want to see more of that pre-Danziger stuff go down. Somebody wrote on our comments that they wrote the last episode almost as if there wasn’t going to be a Season Three.

Jarenwattananon: It does seem like some characters have almost been written out of the show by the end of this season. Like what happens to Antoine? Does he just go back to his life as a schoolteacher and a broke-ass trombone player? Where do all of these narratives that tie up neatly end? Davis is guaranteed to start some hare-brained scheme for next season too. You’ve got to have faith in the writing staff to figure it out.

As Dave said earlier, it’s very unconventional television. They’re not making television with any formula in mind, but that doesn’t mean it still can’t be good television. I think they’ve refined how to tell stories in this ensemble cast in a multi-narrative, multi-threaded way this season.

Shea: I sort of agree with Maitri that things closed up very fast at the end of this season, but that happened on The Wire for almost every season as well. I remember I watched the first season when it was on TV and I thought, “Oh look, it’s all over. I thought it was a series, but I guess it was sort of a miniseries.” Then I found out there was going to be a Season Two, and I thought, “How is there going to be a season two? All the bad guys are in jail. There’s no more Major Crimes Unit. McNulty’s on the boat. How can you possibly have a Season Two?” When actually there were five seasons spinning around in their heads.

There are also limitations as to how much you can analyze this show by looking at it an episode at a time; there are also some limitations to looking at it a season at a time because they’ve got five seasons rattling around in their heads. Some of this stuff that’s happened the past two seasons, we’re not going to see the payoff unless we get to see Seasons Three, Four and Five actually get produced. I hope we get to see all five seasons because you can see this ending up with the oil rig blowing up and Brandon Franklin getting killed and all of these things that sort of bring the entire story full circle. Since we know the history of what happened, we can see some of the arc already which is different from The Wire, which was all fiction.

Walker: A lot of what we saw in episode 11 simply has to do with the mechanics of how the show got made. The pick-up for season three came while they were shooting episode 11. It was fully scripted. They had no idea when Simon and Bourdain wrote that script that they would get a third season. As Ray pointed out, that was exactly same circumstance for every season of The Wire. They had to conclude a season with the very real possibility that that would be the conclusion of the series. They had hoped there would be a third season of Treme, but they didn’t know for sure until May 13. On May 12, they were shooting the scene where Janette was at the David Chang restaurant. I think they had three or four days to go before they wrapped at that point, so the concluding montage and the concluding resolution for some of the characters was just a way to put an envelope around Season Two while not limiting the possibilities for going forward. I thought episode 11 had the same powerful concluding half-hour that a lot of The Wire seasons had, where so much of what was introduced during the season was resolved—not neatly, in many cases—and that may be the way they go forward with a lot of the characters and storylines.

I think The Wire as a model is still valid because each season there introducing new characters and new players and new ideas. Hildalgo was introduced this season and David Morse’s character, we haven’t mentioned him at all but I thought he was stunning. I think the possibilities are really grand for Colson to continue as the crime element continues in the show, although I’m terrified of predicting anything with these guys because Keith Phipps, the guy who recaps for the Onion A/V Club, pointed out in his recap for episode 11 that of the six things he was sure would happen in this episode, none of them happened.

One quick other thing about the very subtle kinds of resolution that they have built into this show and in episode 11. Three of the main characters got to spend physical time with their character muses. Janette got to be with Susan Spicer, Delmond got to be onstage with Donald Harrison, Jr., and Davis got to be onstage with Davis at the end.

I look forward to Prince and the Revolution helping Annie finish her song.

“Stand flat-footed, and sing from your heart.” These were the words Roebuck “Pops” Staples used to motivate a young Mavis Staples. Together with her father and siblings, the Staple Singers did just that, creating a unique legacy in the history of popular music. Their songs, which became known as “message songs,” blended elements of gospel and secular music, and their message resonated with people of all colors and creeds during the turbulent Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and ‘60s.

The 1970s saw the Staple Singers take their positive message to even higher heights, recording on the famed Stax label and reaching the number one spot on the Billboard charts with the soul anthem “I’ll Take You There.” Other classic tracks such as “Respect Yourself” and “This World” endure even to this day.

Mavis Staples will perform Friday, July 1 at the Essence Music Festival, and at 71, she’s taking her soul-stirring serenades to a new generation. She recently took home her first Grammy award in the category for Best Americana Album with You Are Not Alone, a collaboration with fellow Chicago native and Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. “He took me back to that time,” she says, “and he took me back to that sound. What we as a family did in the Staple Singers, and what I continue to do is to try make a difference in this world with our music.”

Looking back on your career and your life and all of your different achievements and experiences what are you most proud of?

That’s kind of hard to say. I hate to say one and not the other because all of the accolades are special. I have a lot of stuff in here, awards and plaques. I’m happy to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’m happy to get my Grammy. [Music] has been my life. Those things show that I’ve been appreciated, and that makes you feel good.

But I can say that I am the most proud of the fact that after all these years, people still want to hear me. I’m still getting letters. A lot of people write on my Facebook about how our music has helped them. That hits my heart. That’s what the Staple Singers and myself have been all about. I’ve always said that if I just could help one somebody through my music, then my living has not been in vain. Of course I was excited, and I’m still excited about the Grammy because it took so long to get one, but I would have been just as pleased if I had left the world than get one.

The Staple Singers’ were able to connect with audiences from the start. What was Pops’ driving force?

Pops, he wasn’t a guy like a Joe Jackson [the father of the Jackson 5]. He didn’t keep us rehearsing all the time. What really drove Pops’ was being a father, a hands-on father. [Laughing] My mother let him have us. My father would take us to the movies on Saturdays, and on Sunday mornings he would take us to Sunday School. After, he’d come down and play with us. We’d jump up and down, “Oh, Daddy, Daddy, make us some candy!” He knew how to make this peanut brittle that was something else. Aw, shucks, he was the best dad in the whole world. I know everybody feels that about their father, but he was a father.

He taught me well, too. Pops pulled me off of the stage one time in New York. I was about 12-years-old, and some kids had sung just before us. They were about my age, and they were just jumping around the stage and singing loud and carrying on. When we got up to sing, I started doing that. Pops sat me down, and said, “Mavis, what are you doing?”

“I’m just singing, Daddy. I’m singing.”

He said, “Let me tell you something, you don’t need gimmicks. You don’t need to clown. You’re singing God’s music. You don’t need to sing at the top of your voice. You be sincere and sing from your heart. What comes from the heart reaches the heart.”

The Staple Singers were on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. When it was happening, did you think it would have shaped American history the way it has?

I really didn’t. When we started with Dr. King, I was still a young girl. As time went on, and I grew into a young lady, I saw the seriousness. I knew what “Colored Only” meant. When we started going to the South, Pops told us, “Everybody’s not going to like you. There are people that are prejudiced. You can’t just go into the bathroom like you want. You can’t go into all of the restaurants. You can’t stay in all of the hotels.” At first we couldn’t stay at the Holiday Inn. But Dr. King got that straightened out.

One time, we were staying at a Holiday Inn, and my sisters and I were walking down the hall when a white man stopped us and said, “I need some towels!” He thought we were maids.

My sister said, “Well, I do too!”

I am so proud to have stood next to Dr. Martin Luther King. I still sing my freedom songs. I’m grateful to have been a part [of the Civil Rights Movement]—and to still be a part.

You recently wrote the song “My Own Eyes” that revisits what you saw in your time with Dr. King. Today, where do you feel we as a society are in upholding his message?

I think we’re doing better, but we still have a ways to go—and not a short way. We have a long way to go. I never thought I would live to see a black president, but it has come to pass. Obama made it, but they are giving him hell. He can’t do anything right.

Now, he went over there and got Bin Laden, but that ain’t nothing. We have die- hards that are not ready. Pops used to tell the songwriters, “We want to sing about what’s happening in the world today, so we can try to fix it, try to make it better.”

I don’t feel that in my lifetime I will see us all come together as one in peace—black and white, brown and yellow. That’s why I’m still singing my message songs. I feel that they are needed just as much right now as they were back in the day.

This sentiment is something that is echoed throughout your latest album, You Are Not Alone, produced by Jeff Tweedy. What brought you two together?

In ’06 I was doing a concert at Millennium [Park] downtown, and Tweedy had sent word that he wanted to come out and meet me and possibly sing a couple of songs with me. I thought it was great because Wilco had always felt like, to me, the Band. But it turned out he couldn’t make it down there. He had just come back in town from touring. He was tired, and he called and apologized.

The next time I heard from Tweedy was in ’08. We had a concert at a little funky club on the North Side called The Hideout. All of Wilco came down there. Jeff Tweedy came to the dressing room and introduced himself after the show. It wasn’t quite two weeks later after that my manager called. “Mavis, I got some news for you,” he says, “Jeff Tweedy wants to produce your next album.”

“Well, let’s let him produce,” I said. “I think he might be good, but I think that I should talk to him and see if I could get to know him a little bit before we go into that.”

So we met at a restaurant in Hyde Park. We talked for about two-and-a-half hours. He let me into his life. I let him into my life. Tweedy let me know that he grew up working in a record shop. He said, “Mavis, I had access to all Staple Singers’ music.” He was cracking me up. He was kind of shy at first. I had to say some funny stuff to loosen him up.

What really got me about Jeff Tweedy was that he talked so much about family—his boys and his wife, his father and her father. He’s a family man. This was something that Pops always instilled in us—that family is the strongest unit in the world. Stick with your family, and you’ll be strong.

A second ago you were talking about how Pops worked with songwriters. You guys revisited some of Pops’ songs on You Are Not Alone. How did that come about?

Tweedy walked into the studio one night, shaking his head with his headphones on. “Mavis,” he goes, “Guess what I have on my iPod?”

“What?”

“I have all the Staple Singers’ music from the ‘50s and ‘60s on here.”

“You got to be kidding,” I said.

“No, how would you feel about doing some of them?”

“Oh, Tweedy, I would love to do some of my father’s songs. That’s the best music of my life.”

So we sat down, and we pulled out “You Don’t Knock” first. I told him, “Tweedy, I can visualize us right now standing around Pops when he was teaching us that song.”

[Singing] You don’t knock, ring, push, or hold. / The door’s wide open waiting for your soul.

And Pops would sing, “You don’t knock.” And he would knock. [Mavis knocks]

You just walk on in!

I remember it so well.

This record also brings you back to your gospel roots. Two years ago, I saw you perform a tribute to Mahalia Jackson at Jazz Fest. Can you tell me about her influence on you?

Sister Mahalia Jackson, she was the very first female voice I heard. Pops would have these big 78[rpm] records, and he would be playing all of the quartet singers—the males—the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Soul Stirrers, and the Nightingales. I was playing one day, and I heard this lady’s voice. It moved me on up into the living room. I sat on the floor, and Pops was just rocking away.

When it ended, I said, “Who is that, Daddy?”

“That’s Sister Mahalia Jackson,” he said. “You like it, don’t you?” I said, “Oh, yes, Sir, I like that!” Then Pops had to play Sister Mahalia Jackson for me almost every day. When he’d come home from work, I’d be waiting by the phonograph.

One day he came in and said, “Mavis, guess what? They want us to open up for Sister Mahalia Jackson Monday night at Tabernacle Baptist Church.”

Man, my little heart just about came out of my chest. I was going to meet Sister Mahalia Jackson. The bad thing was that this was a Friday, and I had to wait until Monday. All that weekend, I walked around the house talking and talking to myself, getting in the mirror practicing what I was going to say to her.

The night of the show, we were dressing in the same dressing room. My sisters were watching me, and I was watching the door. When she came, I made a beeline right to her. They couldn’t catch me. I looked up at her and said, “Hello, Ms. Sister Mahalia Jackson.” You see, I thought her first name was “Sister” because Pops would always say, “Sister Mahalia Jackson.”

She started laughing and said, “Hi, baby, how are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “My name is Mavis. I sing too.”

“Oh, you do, huh?”

“Yes, Ma’am, I sing with my father, my brother, and my sisters.”

“I want to hear you sing,” she said.

“You’ll hear me because I sing loud.”

When I came back to the dressing room after singing, she said, “You’re a good little singer.”

“Thank you,” I said and grabbed my jump rope. Us kids, when we’d go to church, we would sneak out with our jump ropes because we didn’t like to hear the preacher. We just liked the singing.

“Wait a minute,” she said, “where you going?” She felt my chest, “Don’t you know you’re damp? When you get through singing, you get dry before you go out. You want to get to be an old lady like me and sing a long time, don’t you?”

In 2007, I saw you perform at Bonnaroo, and you recently played there again. Now you’re headed to Essence Music Festival. At your age, are you finding yourself connecting with a younger audience?

Yes, indeed! That is a treat. I’ll tell you, I’m having the best time of my life right now. I look out in the audience, and I see all of the young faces. When we did Lollapalooza, Jeff Tweedy came on stage with me. But the first song I sang was “Wonderful Savior”—that’s the a cappella song on the record. We started singing, and I looked down at those children, and thought, “Oh, oh, I done chose the wrong song.” But as it went on, they started getting into it.

I guess when everyone feels the same, age doesn’t matter.

Now, that’s the truth. I feel that I am doing what I was put here to do. I feel good.

“Work always gets you work, man,” Wendell Pierce says while driving. He’s in the last week of shooting for the second season of HBO’s Treme, but he has been splitting time between shooting the show and a new Bruce Willis film, Play the Favorite. “We’re finished shooting in Vegas and now we’re shooting in New Orleans,” he says, and he’s scheduled to star in a B.B. King biopic.

Last season, Pierce’s Antoine Batiste was a struggling trombone player trying to make cab fare; this season, he’s an assistant band director against his will while his heart is in his new band, Antoine Batiste and the Soul Apostles. His scenes with the band have to chill the hearts of New Orleans musicians. When he says, “We’re a nine-piece band with 54 fuckin’ pieces,” he could be talking about half the bands in the city.

All the scenes with you and the band sound brutally accurate. Is any of that improvised?

All of that was written except for maybe one moment. What I tried to do is between takes, we try to live it. We live it, and what happens is it’s easier for all the musicians. They don’t realize—or maybe they do now—that that’s an acting exercise. They flow right into the scene. They understand, they’re bullshitting and fucking around and shit like that. We did some improvising right before we go into the takes to keep it going, but now when we get the scripts, it’s easy (to get the chemistry). And we actually have rehearsals. We have music rehearsals, and the music rehearsals—talk about art imitating life; life imitating art—it’s like, “Damn, is he ever going to come? Man, you sound like shit, Wendell.” [laughs] I think it was maybe one or two lines improvised, but everything is written. Everything.

I’m so honored to be working with those musicians. I really had a healthy respect and love for musicians, but in the past two years—I can’t tell you, man. The level of respect for the craftsmanship, the dedication. You really understand how years and years of experience you earn in music. And how the guys take solos, it’s just amazing. You hear them play a solo after you know them and go, “Oh man, I hear everything I love about you, everything I know you’re struggling with, everything you fear, everything you love, everything you’re angry about.” It’s beautiful.

Do I understand correctly that you were one of the motivating factors for the “Night in Treme” tour?

Yeah. I was working with Danny Melnick, who is a jazz producer. We were doing a concert at Carnegie Hall and at Lincoln Center and he said, “I heard you on Treme. I would love to produce something with that, or do a show with you on that.” I said definitely, so I approached HBO before we even started the pilot and said that we would like to do a tie-in.

Danny Melnick produced the 50th anniversary Blue Notes tour and he wanted to do the same tie-in—he worked with the Blue Note label on that one—and we wanted to do the same thing with HBO, where they use their marketing arm and so we put together the tour. They just asked us to wait. David [Simon] wanted us to wait. He had some say in that also, trying to establish the show. After the show was established in the first season, we went out and started producing dates. We’re going to start on June 10 in San Francisco, and then June 11 is going to be The Hollywood Bowl at the Playboy Jazz Festival, and then we do Chicago and then D.C., Ann Arbor. We’re doing the Monterey Jazz Festival. So yeah, I’m the co-producer of that with Danny Melnick.

Are you going to be a part of the show?

Yes I am. I do the introduction, and in Los Angeles I do a narration. That’s the whole idea—tell people a little bit about Congo Square, about social aid and pleasure clubs, about Mardi Gras Indians, and do a tie-in to the music. So I narrate the show. I’m not on all dates, but I’m going to be in San Francisco and Chicago and D.C. and Monterey. I just introduce the concerts at The Hollywood Bowl. We’re not going to do the full narration there.

Who is on the tour?

It’s different bands on different dates, but we have Rebirth and we have Kermit Ruffins, we have Dr. Michael White, we have John Boutte, we have Donald Harrison, Jr., so it’s going to be a great tour.

Very cool. It seems like you’ve found ways to make Treme work for you in terms of projects you want to be involved in.

I’ve always been doing that. I’ve always been a producer. When I was on The Wire, I produced two of August Wilson’s plays, Jitney and Radio Golf, on Broadway. I’ve actually produced Ntare Mwine—who plays Jacques—and his one-man show in Uganda. The producing aspect of it is just an extension of what I wanted to do. I see producing as being as creative because I’d like more people know about the culture of New Orleans, and at the same time I think there’s a great opportunity to get all of these musicians to get a higher profile out there and do a musical tour. I think it’s logical, you know?

As for the stuff that I’m doing civically, it’s “if not now, when?” you know? It’s New Orleans’ most difficult time. As someone who loves this city, I wanted to be able to have a good answer to that. I love Pontchartrain Park, and restoring Pontchartrain Park is really important. I knew that I could bring some attention to that. I knew that if no one brought the attention to rebuilding the neighborhood, it would be suffering even more than it is now, maybe not even come back at all. I thought, if you’re going to use any sort of celebrity or notoriety, that’s the best way to use it. That’s the role of an artist, really.

What’s the status of Pontchartrain Park?

Pontchartrain Park is moving along. It’s slower than I want it to be. There are a lot of challenges. I feel as though we’ve done our part. We’ve put together a platform of being able to bring in homes, almost two every week. We have over 200 pre-qualified homebuyers and families ready to move home.

Now on the other side, we have the challenges of government, which is all of these subsidies that they ask that this is the way you apply, these are the qualifications you have to have, and then here is access to money to get into the homes. We’ve done all of that and now we need the government’s side to live up to what they said they were going to do. It’s those challenges of bureaucracy that we’re still dealing with at the city and the state level.

It’s got to be strange to go through that while the show is dealing with exactly these questions, and realizing that four years later the same problems still exist.

It’s art imitating life, and life imitating art.

We have a very special opportunity here. Around the city on a Sunday night, there are gatherings in people’s homes—small groups in homes; larger groups like at Charbonnet’s and at the Hi-Ho Lounge and the R Bar—where people are having these viewing parties. And what thoughts are to the individual, I always say, art is to the community as a whole. It’s where you reflect on who you are, where you’ve been, where you hope to go. It’s almost like a group therapy session where we’re just enough ahead of the story in real life that we can reflect on the choices we’ve made and what we’re doing.

Last week’s episode was a perfect example. When Toni is interviewing the kid who is the witness and he says, “I’m scared to talk to the police. Look at that guy who beat that kid to death in Treme, and he still hasn’t been caught.” That trial just ended, and that cop was convicted. So now we can say “Okay, fine. Now we know.” We have to make that progress. We didn’t let that slip through the holes. We can feel a sense of pride that, okay, we’re making progress, and how important that is to make sure that those choices are made because then witnesses will come forward. It is essentially a reflection that allows the show to have an impact.

People tell me, “Man, this is a great show for your career; it’s really wonderful,” and I say it’s really more than just a job and a part of my career. This will be a marked period of time. We’re going to do next year. We’re going to have 30 hours that years from now we’ll be able to look at and reflect on and play over and over and say, “Where were we (as a city)? Where did we try to go? Have we achieved it? Have we fallen short?” It actually encourages people because you can look at the show and go, “Yeah that was four years ago even though it doesn’t feel like it. I am a little further along. I have moved.” It’s like watching the sun set. You don’t see the Earth moving, then when the sun drops right on the horizon you go, “Okay, yeah, we are moving.” Years from now this will be sitting on our shelves, and we’ll be able to pull it out and put on episodes and understand where we were.

But more importantly, the role of culture and art, and how unique we are as a city and as a place, that so few places come close to New Orleans when it comes to culture actually being a part of everyday life. And that’s what culture is, the intersection of people and life itself. And that intersection is culture. How we deal with death, how we deal with love, how we deal with adversity, how we deal with joy and triumph. It’s produced in our food, produced in our music, and how we relate to those things around us. It’s a very, very beautiful thing.

All that is reminding me, what are your thoughts and remembrances about performing the play “Waiting for Godot” in sites of devastation in 2007.

I remember the Lower Ninth Ward especially. There’s a moment in the play where you say, “At this place and at this moment in time, all humanity and all mankind is us. And I can hear that ringing in my ears of the souls screaming.” To be standing in the very spot where so many people died, to have people from all over the city coming back for the first time to that area, to be seeing a play—it was the most cathartic moment of my life.

We were all at the same place and emotion all at the same time, where art was actually informing and moving people in that moment to let them understand what we were going through. And how difficult, how painful it was. We were actually on hallowed ground. That moment—doing that play in the Lower Ninth Ward—will forever be in my spirit, and the place I go to motivate me when times are tough to remember why I’m doing what I’m doing. Rebuilding Pontchartrain Park, dealing with bureaucracy, dealing with inertia. Dealing with all the crime that’s happening. I remember all those people that lost their lives. We owe it to them to not let this city die, and to bring it back and honor their walk on this earth. That’s what that play meant to me.

One thing I found fascinating about the Jazz Fest after Katrina was the way that musicians found songs that at least partially spoke to the situation and made so much art seem very relevant and immediate.

We’ve lost the understanding of the role of art in culture and in our lives. We understand that it’s entertainment, but entertainment is really the byproduct of art. Art is that form, that place, where you consider collectively those things that you think about lying awake in your bed at night as an individual. When you worry about your family, when you go, “How’s my health? What do I want to do in the next part of my life?” That’s the form and the role of art for the society as a whole. Who are we? What do we want to do? How are we going to live together? Eighty percent of this country lives in cities. No matter how agrarian a philosophy we want to promote, we all live in cities. This disparate group of people living in these urban centers, how are we going to live? How are we going to get along? What is our value system as a whole?

That goes back to the beginning of art, when people would go to the Acropolis in Greece and see the same plays every year over and over. These morality plays. Remember what we’re doing here, what we’re trying to do. Don’t make these mistakes. Here is the sin of hubris that Oedipus is making. Here is where Medea loses her mind. Everyone knew the stories before they even went into the theater, but it was a reminder: Hold on to your north. What do you want to do with your life? What do we want to be as a group of people? And that’s the role of art.

After Katrina, never was that more clear to more people because of the disaster. People heard the music for the first time and understand how the tradition of social aid and pleasure clubs. I’d daresay there were a lot of white people in New Orleans that discovered what a social aid and pleasure club was after Katrina. It wasn’t just the second line where people get together on Sunday and dance and party. This came out of a community that was denied access to basic human necessities like insurance, burial plots, access to health care. As they were denied these basic human dignities, they put together there own social network to protect themselves and pool their money. If your mama took sick, here’s some money. If you dad dies, we’ll send him off nice in a funeral. That’s what a social aid and pleasure club is.

We understand the pleasure part. But the “social aid” part—the role of art and culture as a safety net in the community, and all the stuff that grew out of that: the pathology of that self-sustaining, self-determination of black folks dealing with this country’s original sin—that’s what the second line is. You go to members’ houses and businesses to make sure there’s some economic engine that’s running. The second line doesn’t stop at a bar just to stop at a bar. That’s a member’s house, their business. People aren’t just following with a barbecue just to follow with a barbecue. This is a small economic engine, and it’s a display and demonstration of American aesthetic of self determination, every Sunday. That’s the role of art. The tangible role of art.

I was really reassured by the art reasserted itself in the lives of New Orleanians after the storm, particularly at a time when it seemed like American culture had grown so distant from art.

It shows you that art is not some amorphous, intangible thing. It is a function of life.

During his tenure as the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Mitch Landrieu made “cultural economy” his calling card. He worked to show how cultural products aren’t simply valuable in an aesthetic, intellectual or social way, but that they are good business. He has maintained this interest as mayor, and the recent 2010 Cultural Economy Report shows that the cultural sector is the second-largest employment sector in the city, and that it is responsible for 28,000 jobs, or 12.5 percent of New Orleans’ workforce. His approach hasn’t been an unqualified success as he acknowledges, but it has been overwhelmingly effective in establishing the city as Hollywood South, and he’s clearly optimistic that it can work for other cultural endeavors as well.

What do we take away from the culture economy report?

First of all, that culture absolutely means business. From an objective measurement, it’s a huge piece of the economy of the city of New Orleans and is something that should be treated like a business from a policy perspective. We started this initiative when I was Lieutenant Governor and we had statewide numbers. Now we have the numbers that are specific to New Orleans, and it’s broken down in a way so the individuals working in each sector know that they are part of a much larger picture.

The idea here is to identify what is, and then to design a strategy to continue to grow each one of these sectors. We broke it down into non-tourism cultural jobs, non-cultural tourism jobs, and then we showed people where the intersection was. We’re hoping that each of the folks that fall into these categories will be aware of the other partners and shareholders that they have so that we can grow it purposefully. We’re going to do that through good tax policy, good zoning, and treat it just like how we would grow maritime or how we would grow IT. I think it’s a great first step and I’m very happy with it.

On top of that, it basically confirms exactly how much money is generated by all of these cultural not-for-profits, and the percentage of the economy that it is. When they come to the table, for the policymakers, they actually come with the position of strength in numbers. Look at it. It’s 12,361 jobs in cultural jobs that are non-tourism related, 20,218 jobs that are in non-cultural tourism industry and then 16,000 jobs that fall in the middle. That is a bucketload of economic development for the people in this city. It basically proves what people have been saying—that almost by accident, we have created this industry that is probably bigger than in most other cities in America, and it is something that we ought to pay a lot of attention to.

Does the model of using tax policy work as well for the music sector as it does for the film and television industry?

Let’s answer that two ways. First of all, right now it does not because I think that the numbers reflect that we’ve put a tremendous amount of emphasis on film. One of the things that we’ve never done particularly well—that we’ve all scratched our heads at—is how you treat music like a business in its narrowest sense, so that we become more like Nashville. Everybody’s perplexed. How did Nashville get to be the music capitol of country music? Why does Austin claim to be the music capitol of the world when we know that the authentic production of music is in New Orleans? We’ve gotten the front of the house side of it right, but we really haven’t got the back of the house side of it right. We need to spend more time (on that) because now we know it’s possible. Now we know that if you concentrate on publishing, if you concentrate on production and if you concentrate on writing, then you can get there. But the problem is that most musicians have never seen themselves as business people or industry-providers. They’re just players of music. What happened in those other areas is that the business people got there first and then brought the musicians. What we have to do is train people in the industry of music. We haven’t done that well. We’ve done the artist side better than anybody else. But that’s why people have taken our raw talent and exported it some place else, rather than us having the raw talent here, adding the value to it here, and I think we can absolutely do it. I think we’ve proved that with the film tax credits. But we haven’t yet as a community agreed to get that done and actually done it really well.

Do you have thoughts about how we can make this work better for the working musician who is bringing home around $17,000 a year?

Yes. That’s one of the reasons why Scott Hutcheson (Advisor on Cultural Economy) is here. One of his jobs is to figure out how to do that and how to create the industry of music in the city of New Orleans. Scott has spent a lot of time on this, I know you have, I know Jan [Ramsey] has—a lot of folks. But it’s fair to say that we haven’t gotten there yet, right?

Some of the way the business works is that people have to travel. New Orleans is not Chicago and it’s not New York and it’s not Los Angeles, so the major houses are not here. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t keep adding value to it and find a way for folks to make a better living. We tried to create products where they could participate, so you’ve got Jazz Fest, French Quarter Fest, and Essence Festival. You’ve got a bunch of different opportunities, but we’re not anywhere close to where we could be.

The study shows that festivals increase the number of gigs per day by 34 percent, and that they attracted approximately 3.2 million people in 2010. With that in mind, does the city have a role to play in helping festivals? Perhaps in helping to pay musicians who play the French Quarter Festival?

You asked two questions: What is the city’s role in helping festivals get off the ground and work? Well, first of all, none of the festivals could operate without the city being involved in them because they are using city space and city streets. A huge amount of day-to-day coordination, even though they aren’t city-sponsored events, is actually run by the city. For example, for French Quarter Fest, just the logistics for the police department, fire department, city services, and sanitation are huge. People don’t count that for some reason, but it is a huge investment from the city’s perspective.

When you get into the idea of should the city be in the business of sponsoring and/or producing, you get into a kind of difficult territory because there’s not enough money in the city to subsidize music festivals. One of the things we tried to do with the cultural economy initiative is make cultural products—Satchmo SummerFest, French Quarter Fest, Tomato Festival—understand that they really need to be a business and have to have a business model that could sustain themselves. That business model could take on a couple of different forms: a closed gate where you charge for tickets and have sponsorships, or an open gate where you just have sponsorships. But it would be unrealistic to expect that at any point and time that the city would become the major producer of festivals.

Before we got good at movies, the state tried to be the producer of movies. People would come to the Office of Culture, Recreation and Tourism and say, “Please give me money so I can film a movie about—pick the subject as it relates to authentic Louisiana culture—and they did that. So Glen Pitre did a little piece and a couple other people did, but there’s not enough money. What we decided to do is let the private market do it, but we create the incentive and we didn’t care what they produced as long as what they produced created a job. That was the private sector/public sector model that worked. We think that makes a lot more sense than the city becoming the producer of a festival.

One of the ways that the city can help the French Quarter Fest grow, for example, is to ask them to think about expanding the footprint of that festival. If we close the quarter down to traffic, that festival can grow at least twice the size that it is right now with the city’s involvement from a facilities point of view. That’s a better way for us to do that because we can use city services to give them the footprint, and then they can actually fill it in with whatever model they think works. We’ll continue to do that. Same thing with Jazz Fest. We think that’s a smarter way to leverage city assets than just handing over cold cash. Having said that, there are some instances where the city will sponsor certain events. When the BP money came in and it was important to communicate to the world that seafood was alive and well, we made some direct sponsorship investments in those festivals to trumpet that particular message. We can do that, but we never want to be in the position of being the first place people come.

The study estimates that the economic impact of New Orleans’ festivals to be more than $600 million. Does that mean we should look to create more festivals, or will we reach a point of diminishing returns?

I don’t think we know the answer to that yet because we haven’t maxed out. But let’s ask the direct question: If we keep pushing the French Quarter Fest so it grows twice as much, is it going to hurt the Jazz Festival? That’s a legitimate question because they are in close proximity to each other. We haven’t seen that, and the long-term experience in the other sectors of the economy would reflect that that’s not going to happen. Let me give you an example. In the drugstore business, everywhere there is a Walgreens, there is a CVS. They’re not doing that so they can compete for a limited amount of people and steal each other’s business. They’re doing that because they know that once a corner becomes a place for a thing to happen, more people actually come there.

I think that you’re going to find that at some point and time it’s possible—I guess if you had a festival every day—then people would stop coming, but I don’t think we’ve gotten close to how big the Jazz Fest could be or the French Quarter Fest. What’s interesting is that they are two completely different models, and I don’t think one is going to rob the other one. I think we need to add more product, not less.

Have you talked to any businesspeople about this year’s experience? A few business owners that I’ve talked to said their business was down from what they’re used to this year during Jazz Fest, and that there was concern that the audience might be being split by the two festivals.

We haven’t heard that, even anecdotally. What I heard was the opposite. Now, I did hear was that businesses that were busy during the French Quarter Fest were not the same ones that were busy during the Jazz Fest. It appears as though they serve different markets. For example, the po-boy shop on Magazine and First (Magazine Street Po-Boy Shop), they were really busy during Jazz Fest but not so much French Quarter Fest. I don’t know why. That’s a peculiar thing. Maybe it’s a different demographic, a different group, I don’t know. A lot of local businesses during the French Quarter Fest say they didn’t do so well (during the festival) because a lot of business went to the French Quarter. It was a free ticket, so they spent their money eating in the Quarter. Jazz Fest is the exact opposite. So if you call up La Petite Grocery on Magazine Street and ask when he did better business, it’s usually one or the other and not both. It’s kind of good because a good part of the city eats during French Quarter Fest and the other eats during Jazz Fest.

I did hear people talk about how great the at-night functions were after Jazz Fest. The clubs really seemed to be getting a hold of it, and it’s starting to feel a lot more like SXSW now than it did in the past, which means that we’ve got a lot of room to grow especially if you think of the entire city as the stage. If you think about the French Quarter as the stage for French Quarter Fest, with a stage on every corner instead of just linearly along Decatur and the river, if we would shut it off to pedestrian traffic and then drive a clear picture between the river and Armstrong Park, what that could actually look like for a weekend or two. That would be a pretty spectacular event.

The city has a much bigger role to play in that. Now think about the opposite. The opposite would be the city saying, “Look, it’s just too inconvenient for people who live in the French Quarter to do the French Quarter Fest so from a zoning perspective we’re not letting you have it.” We’re doing the exact opposite. We’re saying, “Yeah, let’s try to find a way to coordinate all this stuff.”

You mention zoning. That leads to another question. Where do we stand with the effort to find some sort of accommodation for street musicians in the French Quarter?

Can I let Scott answer that for you? He’s been point on that and the sound ordinance with Kristin Palmer’s office.

Scott Hutcheson: To kind of do this in the right order, we have to deal with the noise issues first. Jan was a part of that working group we put together. The ordinances have been scrubbed, which means it has been looked at for redundancies, contradictions, and for things that are blatantly unconstitutional. It’s in Councilwoman Palmer’s office now. It’s been reviewed by the NOPD, the mayor’s office, and it’s in their court right now to move forward with offering public comment and renewed legislation. I think that a lot of the issues that are zoning issues are really noise-based issues. I think we’re going to tackle the first piece of that when that ordinance is revised. It’s going to be a very positive piece.

Historically, many of the city’s signature live music venues are in places that aren’t zoned for live music. In recent years, clubs have tried to put on live music but have been forced to stop because of zoning violations. Speaking philosophically, what do we do when the study says cultural products are economically good for the city, but the neighbors object to the music?

It’s a very good question. The fundamental question is, do you have to have complete anarchy on the streets of the city in order for an indigenous art form to manifest itself on the streets? Or, can you grow an authentic culture through managed chaos? This is the underlying question about Super Sunday or Mardi Gras Indians. Are the police watching over the Indians or are they protecting them? There are some basic lessons in civility or protections that always have to be taken when people are marching down streets. If there’s nobody stopping folks from driving through the parade, somebody is going to get hurt. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the parade. It means that there has to be some organizational structure to that.

The same thing is really true about how you grow an indigenous culture. Because there are so many competing interests, zoning is designed, by the definition of the word, to allow certain uses in certain neighborhoods at certain times. Basically, what’s happened in New Orleans is anything goes and no rules apply, and then when they are enforced, they are enforced in an unequal and an unfair way. What we are trying to do is bring some organization to what it is that we want to accomplish. I do think that you can do both at the same time, although it takes a little bit of work.

For example, in the last couple of years, there has always been a rift between the NOPD and the Mardi Gras Indians when they want to do second lines because nobody knew where anybody was going, and the cops didn’t understand them and they didn’t understand the police officers. This year it went off perfectly well, and the reason it went off well is because it was planned. Now it may not have looked planned while it was marching down the street because it looked as free and as open, but the Mardi Gras krewes and the Indian krewes and the police said, “You know, it worked just like it was designed.” There was a kind of broad protection and whatever happened within that protection was free. It was freedom of expression and freedom of music and it worked really well. And I think you can do that with culture too, but you’ve got to design it in a way.

Music and culture are just like any other use. They can’t not be part of a much larger organizational structure of how our city works with itself. In the French Quarter right now with the noise ordinances, the challenge you have is that some of the quarter is residential; some is commercial. Some is live music; some of it is not. They have to work out that consensus and once they do, then everybody’s got to follow the rules. Eventually, you get to a place where everyone can live in peace and harmony. People play where they’re supposed to play, and people sleep when they’re supposed to sleep. That’s the way it is supposed to work, but that takes effort, it takes strategy and it takes implementation.

I look forward to that day.

I didn’t say it was easy chaos to manage [laughs].