“The other day at brunch I was expediting over at Mondo, and [sous chef] Paul [Chell] put something up in my window. I did a garnish on it and said, ‘Take a picture of that shit, my friend!’ He looked at me, and I was laughing. I liked that line.”
Chef Susan Spicer is referring to [...]
Mondo Spicer: The World of Chef Susan Spicer
Unchained Melodies: Improvised Music in New Orleans
For a drummer, Justin Peake spends very little time at his kit. A few judicious taps on the cymbal, then it’s off to his laptop, where the sound is captured and electronically perpetuated as an evolving series of digital blips and screeches. Sitting back, he lets computerized processes take their course, intervening with a few [...]
Ed Blackwell: Speaking in Drums
Ed Blackwell died a few days shy of his 63rd birthday in 1992. He was eulogized around the world. His obituary ran in hundreds of papers, mostly because of his groundbreaking work with Ornette Coleman. But Blackwell had long been credited with introducing a subtlety to the fervent jazz sides he played on. His work [...]
Curren$y: The New High Life
Weed and hip-hop have a long history together. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic ushered in an era of marijuana appreciation that hip-hop has never quite gotten over. At the time, it was associated with Scarface Chic: weed, a house full of homies, expensive alcohol, half-naked women, more weed, and someone with a big, sexy gun. Hip-hop’s [...]
Honeyboy Edwards: Riding the Rails
It’s not every day that an interview subject slips his hand under his pillow and slides out a pistol. “When you got money,” 95-year-old blues musician David “Honeyboy” Edwards says, unclipping and reclipping the magazine of his .38, “it’s good to be on your cues.”
More than 70 years ago, just before the Depression, a teenaged [...]
The Ponderosa Stomp at Nine
[UPDATED] In its nine-year evolution, the Ponderosa Stomp has become important in more ways than just celebrating the largely unsung architects of rock ’n’ roll. The event that returns to House of Blues September 24-25 began as Stomp creator Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos’ elaborate wedding party morphed into a wild bowling alley get-down before becoming [...]
Paul Sanchez on Shamarr Allen
I met Shamarr at an in-store in Louisiana Music Factory Jazz Fest 2006. I was still with the Mouth and he was still with Rebirth. They were playing after the Mouth set, and during our set I sang Randy Newman’s “Louisiana, 1927,” and Shamarr got up and joined me on that song. I said into [...]
Shamarr Allen: None of the Above
1907 Jourdan Avenue is situated just past the east wall of the Industrial Canal. Shamarr Allen recalls growing up there, practicing his trumpet at home with encouragement from his father and Kermit Ruffins. Playing with his childhood friend Dinerral Shavers, buddies so close people thought they were brothers.
But like so many other such New Orleans [...]
Seeking Satch Competition: The Sons of Satchmo
“New Orleans is the only place I know of where you ask a little kid what he wants to be and instead of saying ‘I want to be a policeman,’ or ‘I want to be a fireman,’ he says, ‘I want to be a musician,’” said Allan Jaffe, founder of Preservation Hall.
The French Market and [...]
Hurricane Katrina 5 Years Later: Where Are We Now?
Perhaps it doesn’t seem like five years since we were all running from a hurricane roughly the size of the entire Gulf of Mexico. For some, it seems like even more time. Much less for others. Just the first six dreamlike months after the flood—when you could leave your bike outside, unlocked for days—felt like [...]
