Sunday 11 Feb 07.Got up at 5am to get to South Station at 6am. Train leaves for DC at 6:40am. Amazingly everyone made it in time. The redcap at South Station loaded our gear onto two large carts, and he and I pushed them down the platform in tandem, making a very interesting clip-clop rhythm together. I would have liked to have recorded it, or maybe had the guys join us in the groove, but it was over before it started and we loaded our gear onto the train. We met
a reporter from Boston's NPR affiliate, who traveled the first leg of our trip with us. Not wanting to disturb other passengers at that early hour, the Amtrak crew let us use an empty car where we got things going with a horn & percussion jam (our bass player will join us in DC), and did some interviews with the reporter. Now sleep is in order, since we are all running on about 5 hours or less last night, and we have to perform at 6pm tonite at the Kennedy Center in DC. Don't want to fall asleep on stage!
Monday 12 Feb 07.
The Kennedy Center gig last night was a gas. We had a very full house, and people loved it. No one fell asleep on stage. We marched in from the back of the hall onto the stage. There's a great video of the performance on the Kennedy Center website, archived in perpetuity, according to them...
Talked a bit on stage about the points we are trying to make with this trip, including the need to keep the New Orleans situation in people's minds, the need to support the city by traveling there, and our interest in encouraging support of Amtrak and NPR. Our minor-key arrangement of Down By the Riverside, dedicated to the city of New Orleans, was very well received.
After a day of sightseeing at the American Indian Museum in DC, we got to Union Station at around 5:30pm for our 6:30 departure on the Crescent. We ate dinner in the dining car as soon as the train departed, and then played a set in the snack car to a great audience of passengers. Down By the Riverside was again very well received, as were the more uptempo and funky tunes, and an improvised jam that turned into a cool thing we post-announced as "The Crescent". It was a bit of a challenge to not get knocked around as the train jolted left and right, but we managed. I'm very happy with how the band is sounding these days, and the Kennedy and Crescent sets reinforce that. Now for a good night's sleep on the train in preparation for a full day of travel tomorrow, and then a gig tomorrow night at the Circle Bar in New Orleans.
Tuesday 13 Feb 07.
Up at 6:30am to have breakfast on the train before our arrival in Atlanta. Our waitress in the dining car last night and this morning was Jackie from Brooklyn, the mother of Tyler, a ten year old boy who joined us on drums when we played on the train last year. We got some great photos of him playing with us then, and Jackie looked extremely happy when we asked for her address so we could mail her some copies of the pictures.
We arrived in Atlanta where the train had to end due to track work between there and New Orleans. We are now in a 14-passenger van instead, on our way on I-20. We heard that a tornado touched down in the western part of New Orleans at 3am this morning, killing a women in a FEMA trailer and doing some significant damage in the Carrollton part of the city. Haven't those people been through enough??! We're in Alabama, and it's pouring rain.
Wednesday 14 Feb 07.
We arrived in New Orleans yesterday after a long drive, and a stop in Meridian, MS for lunch (where we met a Nashville music publisher named Bill, and the father of the new keyboardist with Wilco). We had time to stop at our New Orleans base of operations, the uptown home of our friends Steve & Tamarin. The Circle Bar gig was fun and intimate, and a good warm-up for what will follow!
Today we wandered around a bit on Magazine Street, which is where much of the commerce has settled post-Katrina. It is an area that was up-and-coming, but somewhat marginal, in the past. Since it did not suffer significant damage, though, it is now quite desirable. We stopped at the gallery that shows the work of the late folk artist Nilo Lanzas, run by his wife and daughter. He painted images of many iconic New Orleans musicians and events, and captured the energy, color, and chaos of the culture extremely well.
After a Valentines Day dinner with friends, the band headed to WWOZ, the most amazing radio station (some would say the best) in the country. After Katrina there was a national effort to get the station back on the air, playing music that represents the unique musical output of the city. They are now in a new studio, and we were honored with an invitation to perform live on the air. We picked some material that we hadn't been playing so much recently, including the gospel pieces Peace in the Valley and I'll Walk With God. Just for conceptual contrast, we followed that with Sun Ra's A Call For All Demons...
Friday 16 Feb 07.
Yesterday was the Big Day. In the early afternoon we found an amazing mask workshop in the Bywater section of the city, and bought a few great headdress pieces to wear in the Muses parade. Then we situated my rental car and the car of a local friend near the end of the 6-mile parade route. I went back to our home base and did some more preparations, including costuming, going over the music with some of the local guest musicians who were marching with us, and grabbing some quick dinner.
We assembled at the parade location, near Tipitina's Uptown, at about 6:30pm. It's quite a scene at parade lineups, with high school marching bands warming up, Elvis impersonator krewes riding around on their scooters, small brass bands like ours running through some tunes, and just an overall air of excitement. We were positioned near the end of the parade, the last marching band in fact, so we got to watch all the other floats and bands go by, which was really great. On the other hand, it was cold for New Orleans, around 30-35 degrees and windy, so we were glad to finally start moving and playing. We started with our new arrangement of Liza Jane, with the A section in D, the B section up a half step in Eb, and an improvised interlude up another half step in E. Works well, and I like it when it goes back down a whole step to the A section. We had a guest trombonist and tubist, as well as two drummers, from New Orleans. The groove really got going right from the outset, and we did a few more second line pieces. Then we launched into A Call For All Demons, which I suspect no one has ever heard a brass band play in a Mardi Gras parade before. The interesting thing about playing in a parade is that you can really extend a single piece a long time since you are playing to different people every 2 minutes or so. We stayed with Demons for a good 15 minutes, moving back and forth between drum & percussion grooves and horn lines, and alternating between the composed snakey melody line, large improvised chords from all the horns simultaneously, and single and group improvised lines, sometimes in rhythmic unison and sometimes as layered contrapuntal interweaving lines. The crowds loved it, and egged us on with cheers and dancing as we passed. We also had acquired a group of dancers who marched with us, and that got the crowd going even more.
It's a LONG parade, and with the cold, and the fact that it was the 3rd of 3 parades that evening, the last section was somewhat sparsely attended. So instead of masses of screaming people, there were single lines of people lining the latter part of the route. And did I mention that it was cold? Our chops were pretty wasted by the end, particularly because, according to our friends, we played much more throughout the parade than most marching bands do.
After the parade we made our way to our strategically located cars, and got home. Despite our absolute dead-tiredness, and the fact that I had to give two of the guys a ride to the train station at 6:30am the next morning for their 2-day trip back to Boston, we went out to Tipitina's to hear the last set by the Rebirth Brass Band. They were really in good form, and there was a huge crowd of mostly college-looking clean-cut kids there. Finally got to sleep just a few hours before we had to get up again this morning.
Wednesday 21 Feb 07.
After several more days of music, parties, parades, and street celebrations, we are on the train heading back home. Our stay in New Orleans was inspiring and heart-warming. New Orleanians love their city and its culture, and despite all of the hardships, frustrations, and difficulties over the past year and a half, they were just itching to have some measure of release through the celebrations of the past few weeks. The Mardi Gras parade and party rituals seemed to reassure some people that things were indeed heading back to normalcy. And the strength of music, particularly the brass band music that has so heavily influenced RSE, to bring people together and inspire joy was demonstrated again and again. Sometimes we were honored to be the source of that music. We heard inspiring sets by the Rebirth Brass Band, the Hot 8 Brass Band (who have been in the news recently due to the tragic gun murder of their snare drummer), and numerous other small and large bands in parades and street parties all over the city. It was a great trip, and we look forward to returning next year, if not before.