On April 27th, Fiyawerx Productions will host Fiya Fest, a music festival and crawfish boil benefiting the New Orleans’ Musicians’ Clinic (NOMC). From 1-10 PM at Mardi Gras World, the event will showcase 95 artists across three stages. The line-up promises a medley of talent, including Funky Meters, Soulive, Robert Randolph, Ivan Neville, Erica Falls, and Stanton Moore–to name a few.
All proceeds from the festival will go to the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, which provides health care to those in the New Orleans music community who can’t afford insurance. Currently, 2,501 registered patients utilize the clinic. That’s more than the entire bill of French Quarter Fest—which, according to the 2014 survey conducted by The University of New Orleans Hospitality Research Center, generated a total economic impact of more than $251. 4 million.
“This is the backbone of Louisiana tourism,” says Bethany Bultman, Co-Founding Director and Chair of the New Orleans Musician’s Assistance Foundation. “Yet many of these cultural icons don’t have basic human services.”
69% of NOMC’s patients fall within the 100% poverty guideline ($0-$11,770 annual income). When Governor John Bel Edwards signed the executive order expanding Medicaid, it was a boon to NOMC; but it did not efface the necessity of the clinic. “It really helps our bottom line, but the fact is that our public hospital system has been privatized,” said Bultman. “And it makes it more imperative that we keep our musicians out of the hospitals.”
Events like Fiya Fest, which raise funds and reinforce donations, help that imperative. I had a chance to talk with drummer Stanton Moore, who will play both the general and VIP stages at Fiya Fest next week. Moore, who is returning to New Orleans from his Spring tour with the inter-dimensional funk outfit Galactica, took some time to open up about the history of Fiya Fest, his personal investment in NOMC and the fulfillment that comes from fostering music in New Orleans.
So you’re playing Fiya Fest again this year. What keeps you coming back to this particular festival?
Well I’m really good friends with Chris Rogers, who throws the festival. We’ve known each other since we were in third grade at St. Catherine of Siena grammar school. So we’ve known each other for a long time–and we’ve become really good friends over the years. He started Fiya Fest as a crawfish boil for his family. And then he started adding music to it, and I came by and sat in with Leo Nocentelli. And I think the next year I wound up being Leo’s drummer on the gig. He had the Roots of Music come parade through the crawfish boil.
So he [Rogers] moved it to a bigger location. And then that’s when he started calling it Fiya Fest. And then he decided to go bigger, and move it over to Mardi Gras World. And that’s where it’s been the past couple years. And now he’s moved it to a non-Jazz Fest day—but he always did it on a Jazz Fest day. He would just pick one of the Jazz Fest days that he wasn’t seeing anyone, and throw his family and friends a crawfish boil. So that’s how it kind of started. I don’t think he ever intended to compete with Jazz Fest. But once it started becoming a thing where he was competing against Jazz Fest, then I think he realized it was better to move it over to Wednesday. And this is the first year doing that.
So this year the proceeds from Fiya Fest are going to the New Orleans’ Musicians’ clinic. I think in organizations like that—organizations doing the good work that our bigger systems fail to do–we see an overlap of the personal and the political. For many musicians, health care isn’t really a political issue, it’s personal: you just need it to survive. Was there ever a moment for you that the cause of the Clinic struck you on a personal level?
Yeah, for sure. I can remember Johnny Vidacovich having several issues that he needed to have addressed, and he would go to the Musician’s Clinic, and they would help him out with that. I mean we should have health insurance provided. It’s a crime when New Orleans is known for its food and its music—that’s why people come here—and yet there’s nothing being done on any level to try to help the musicians, except for when someone like the Musician’s Clinic steps in and tries to start helping people. I think that’s why it’s such a great cause: It’s helping New Orleans’ musicians when a lot of people are not.
The whole city benefits from New Orleans’ musicians, and the tourism dollars that they bring in–yet no one’s doing anything to help New Orleans’ musicians. You know, New Orleans’ musicians can’t even load into clubs without getting a ticket. That’s an easily fixable situation, you know. If you’re a working musician, and you can show that you’re a working musician, you should get a loading pass. These loading docks sit there with nobody in them, and if you try to load in for 15 minutes, you get a ticket. It’s ridiculous.
There’s a cruel irony to that.
There really is, you know. It really is a crime. It’s an easy fix. Why don’t they do that? I mean, you are loading–I mean it doesn’t make any sense. And you can move the car later. But even if you’re there for 15 minutes and actively loading in, you’ll get a ticket–you know? It’s ridiculous. But the New Orleans Musician’s Clinic is great in that it’s helping New Orleans on the level that it’s helping New Orleans’ musicians.
So you’ve been on tour with Galactic this year, promoting your latest record with the band, Into The Deep (2015). What’s that been like?
It’s been great. It’s been a lot of touring, but it’s been really enjoyable. A lot of the gigs were really well attended. We had sold-out shows most everywhere we went. Some of the shows were in larger venues—3,000 ft or 2,500 ft. clubs—and we had Soulive on some of that, we had Cyril Neville singing on some of that. So for some of the bigger clubs, we brought some of the extra meat, and it really paid off. It was great. Just about all of those larger shows were sold out. So that was exciting.
Now, the latest solo record you put out was Conversations. But it’s been a minute since this record–What are you working on now, what can we expect to hear at Fiya Fest?
Well, I just finished doing an Allen Toussaint tribute record. And it’s featuring my trio–the same trio on Conversations, David Torkanowsky and James Singleton—but we also added all these special guests to it. We got Cyril Neville singing on four tunes, and doing spoken word on a fifth tune. We got a horn section of Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison, and Trombone Shorty. Then we got Eric “Benny” Bloom and Mark Holland on some other stuff. We got Mike Dillon playing on a bunch of it. And I got Kiki Philips singing on it and Erica Falls singing on it too. Ivan Neville even came by, played a little, sang a little in the background. So it’s kind of like a trio record exploded with all of these special guests.
It sounds like you’re inspired by the New Orleans tradition right now, really in conversation with it. Is there anything inspiring or influencing you right now that you think people wouldn’t expect?
That’s a good question. I mean, right now I’m really into trying to progress on the jazz side of things. I’ve been practicing a lot of brushes, practicing a lot of more of the jazz end of the spectrum. So something people wouldn’t expect: There’s this great record called Oscar Peterson plays the Music of Count Basie, and it’s got Buddy Rich on drums–but not the Buddy Rich that everyone thinks of with the super-technical, pyrotechnics from 1970s. I think this was recorded in the 50s, and Buddy Rich is playing brushes on the whole record. Except for one tune he plays sticks. A lot of people don’t realize this, but Buddy was one of the smoothest, swingingest brush players. So if you wanna listen to someone who’s got a beautifully smooth brush technique: Buddy Rich playing with Oscar Peterson plays the music of Count Basie. That’s been one of my favorite records to check out lately.
You’re kind of known for being a jack of all trades, or a drummer of all beats. You play jazz, funk, metal—and you teach. How’s the teaching going?
The teaching’s going great. I’ve been doing Skype lessons lately, which has been good. I’ve done a lot of master’s classes and clinics over the years. I do my own camps in December. I do one camp a year during December. So that’s all going really well, and I have a subscription site I’m about to launch where people will have access to a growing library of videos I’ve recorded over the years.
So I love the teaching stuff for several reasons. For one thing, you get to sit down and just talk about the drums. For me, the way I teach, people usually want to know about something that I did either on record or live, so I get to talk about it. What I love about teaching is that it helps you develop a deeper understanding of what it is that you do because you have to explain it. And to explain it, you have to understand it backwards, forwards, upside-down and inside-out. So I find that it makes me a better player and a better musician by teaching, because I understand everything that I have to do. Everything that I do and play I understand backwards and forwards because somebody has asked me about almost everything that I do at one point or another. So even when I’m traveling and I’m jetlagged, or tired or anything like that–I feel like I still maintain a level of consistency because I understand the fundamentals of everything that I’m doing on such a deep level. And I feel like teaching helps with that.
So the other thing I really dig about teaching is sharing those light bulb moments with people, where you watch what you’re explaining to them click, and they get it and understand it in that moment. And you know that you just helped enrich their musical life. There’s nothing like that. It’s an amazing experience to share that with somebody. Because I remember having those moments with Johnny Vidacovich or Russell Batiste or with any other teachers I’ve studied with—I remember having those moments and going, ‘Oh my God now this makes sense!’ And I remember those moments. They’re carried with you for the rest of your life. Those are some of the most compelling moments in your musical life. So I love being able to give people those experiences and watch that happen in real time. I love doing it. I really honestly do. It’s such a fulfilling process, in many ways. •
You can catch Stanton Moore at the River Stage and the VIP Mansion Stage on Wednesday at Fiya Fest. Both General and VIP Tickets can be purchased here.
