When people mention Kermit Ruffins, they rarely use his last name. They just say, “Hey, we’re going to hear Kermit tonight” or “We’re heading to Kermit’s place later.” Like one of the trumpeter’s and vocalist’s mentors, the late bass drummer “Uncle” Lionel Batiste, Kermit makes folks feel like they are a part of his family. [...]
Tag Archives: Tim Laughlin
OffBeat’s Concert Picks of the Week: March 21-27, 2013
March 20, 2013 – 4:59 pm
Louisiana Music on Tour Full Concert Calendar THURSDAY, MARCH 21 Chickie Wah Wah: Creole String Beans (RB) 8p New Orleans Arena: Alicia Keyes (RB) 8p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: John Boutte (JV) 6p Alicia Keys plays the New Orleans Arena on Thursday. FRIDAY, MARCH 22 Carrollton Station: Jimmy Robinson, Cranston Clements [...]
Seva Venet presents the Storyville Stringband of New Orleans, My Bayou Home (Independent)
February 1, 2013 – 12:52 am
It’s refreshing to hear a record of traditional New Orleans music not stuffed with the old warhorse tunes. I love to hear “Muskrat Ramble,” but nobody needs to record it any more. Seva Venet’s Storyville Stringband’s My Bayou Home is chock-full of mostly Venet’s originals with a couple rare tunes from the first 30 years [...]
Thomas W. Jacobsen, Traditional New Orleans Jazz: Conversations with the Men Who Make the Music (LSU Press)
January 1, 2012 – 12:21 am
There are few listeners in New Orleans who’ve devoted themselves as fervently to the cause of covering traditional jazz as Tom Jacobsen. Traditional New Orleans Jazz: Conversations With the Men Who Make the Music is a unique oral history of a subject surprisingly neglected: the lives of people who’ve made their living playing trad jazz [...]
Tim Laughlin featuring Connie Jones, If Dreams Come True (Gentilly Records)
May 1, 2011 – 12:57 am
During the summer of 2010, clarinetist Tim Laughlin asked cornetist Connie Jones to imagine a “dream band”. The list included—among others—John Sheridan on piano, Ed Wise on bass, Danny Coots on drums, and Larry Scala on guitar. Unbeknownst to him, Laughlin was planning a recording session. He brought in that very fantasy rhythm section, adding [...]
A Half-Fast Walk With Pete Fountain
April 1, 2011 – 12:16 am
Dawn arrived on Fat Tuesday 2011 with a gray, windy bluster and a forecast of heavy rain. But nature could not throw a wet blanket on the smoldering fire of revelers gathering along St. Charles Avenue waiting for the parades to roll. Outside of Commander’s Palace, Pete Fountain readied himself to lead those parades downtown, [...]
Pete Fountain and Tim Laughlin: The Fat Sound
May 1, 2010 – 12:19 am
Once away from the strip malls and family businesses that alternate on Highway 90, the road to the Hollywood Casino in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi winds through the swampy woods until it rises at the back of a parking lot. For a casino, it is a modest one with a hotel on one side and [...]
YouTube du Jour: French Quarter Festival 2009
February 23, 2010 – 12:28 pm
Here’s the French Quarter Festival’s official look back at last year’s event, starting with the kickoff second line. Keep your eye out for a glimpse of Consulting Editor John Swenson.
Tim Laughlin, A Royal St. Serenade (Gentilly)
August 1, 2009 – 12:01 am
A common criticism of reviewers is that they’re too caught up in the pursuit of the new, cool thing to get beauty anymore. The thing that’s hard to tell the artist that made the beautiful piece he or she made is it’s often beautiful like a soap opera star is beautiful—in a conventional, familiar, unspectacular [...]
It Takes Two
April 1, 2009 – 12:01 am
New Orleans Duets, Tom McDermott’s new album, was over five years in the making. The album is a collection of duets with people you might expect—Evan Christopher, Matt Perrine, Tim Laughlin—some that make sense—Helen Gillet, Michael Skinkus, Anders Osborne—and some you didn’t see coming, Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton included. “I wanted to do [...]
