Venues damaged, performers exiled
by Keith Spera • New Orleans Times-Picayune • September 8, 2005
It is one of many tragedies within the greater Hurricane Katrina tragedy: The exodus and disruption of New Orleans' fabled music community, possibly for a very long time.
Marquee acts based in New Orleans - such as the Neville Brothers, Better Than Ezra, Cowboy Mouth, the Radiators and Nicholas Payton - will continue to make money on the road, even if their hometown is uninhabitable. Major touring acts can return once the New Orleans Arena and other large venues are repaired.
But the working musicians who populate the neighborhood clubs, second- line parades and jazz brunches are more vulnerable financially; many often live gig to gig. Katrina's floodwater has swept away cheap housing along with club and convention jobs.
And New Orleans will be unplugged for months, not weeks. Preservation Hall's Web site says the venerable jazz club, open since 1961, is closed "indefinitely," even though the French Quarter sustained considerably less damage than other areas of the city.
Musicians must find work, and assistance, elsewhere. For now, the backbone of New Orleans' close-knit music community is shattered and scattered. How it will reassemble in Katrina's aftermath is anyone's guess.
Will brass bands ever march again through the historic Treme community, which was inundated?
Will Vaughan's, the ramshackle little jazz joint in the devastated Bywater neighborhood, ever resume its Thursday night barbecue with Kermit Ruffins?
Will the street musicians that once populated the French Quarter ever return?
And will the Neville Brothers, New Orleans' first family of funk, ever call the city home again?
Aaron Neville, who appeared alongside Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis for a hastily organized Sept. 1 storm relief telethon, is resettling in Nashville, Tenn., with his brother Art. Sibling Cyril is in Austin, son Ivan in Los Angeles.
Aaron Neville has heard reports of bodies floating in his eastern New Orleans neighborhood. He can't imagine when he might return.
"Right now, it doesn't even look possible," Neville said Tuesday. "They've got to clean that place with a fine-toothed comb. People walking through that water are getting sick. And I don't know if I want to go back, because it could happen again. If they don't build it back above sea level, it's still vulnerable."
Wounds and woes
Two days after Katrina passed, Tipitina's, the city's flagship music club, largely was unscathed on its swath of high, dry ground along the Mississippi River. A few blocks away, the only damage to Art Neville's meticulously restored home was to the wooden fence that surrounds it.
But many others weren't so lucky.
Iconic jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain lost homes in New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, Miss., as well as Casino Magic, which had become his primary venue. Fountain rode out the storm in a Mississippi Day's Inn, and he has since sought shelter in Winnsboro.
Singer Charmaine Neville, Aaron Neville's niece and the featured Monday night act at jazz bistro Snug Harbor, survived a brutal attack by marauders. As floodwater surged into Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductee Fats Domino's memorabilia-filled home in the lower 9th Ward, he finally was rescued by boat.
Guitar legend Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 81, already battling emphysema, lung cancer and blocked arteries, now has additional woes: His home on a Slidell bayou was destroyed. A photo depicted his trademark black Cadillac parked in a pile of debris, including a sodden guitar case. Brown escaped to Texas before the storm hit.
In the short term, other regions will reap the rewards of this musical diaspora. Trumpeters Irvin Mayfield and Ruffins, and singer/songwriter Theresa Andersson landed in Baton Rouge. Rhythm and blues pianist Eddie Bo was in Paris when Katrina struck, and he is now staying in Lafayette. Clarinetist Michael White retreated to Houston.
Keyboardist Jon Cleary is in California, preparing for a tour with Bonnie Raitt. Guitarists Eric Lindell and Chris Mule, saxophonist Tim Green and sousaphonist Kirk Joseph joined forces for an impromptu gig recently in Hermosa Beach, Calif.
Benefits planned
Several individuals and organizations are staging benefits to assist displaced New Orleans musicians.
Proprietors of the Howlin' Wolf club in the Warehouse District are organizing benefits with club owners in Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas. Preservation Hall also has established the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief fund through its Web site, www.preservationhall.com.
In Houston, a new organization called NOAH, New Orleans and Houston, has set itself up as an "employment and relocation aid" for musicians. Houston pianist Paul English has invited New Orleans musicians to fill in for his standing gig at the Magnolia Hotel. John "Papa" Gros, leader of the hard-working funk band Papa Grows Funk - the sort of dependable, instantly accessible band that populated New Orleans clubs pre-Katrina - is optimistic that he and his fellow musicians one day will return.
Gros concluded a month-long Japanese tour just before Katrina struck. Instead of orchestrating a triumphant homecoming at the ramshackle Maple Leaf bar, home for his band's weekly Monday night gig, he resettled in Lake Charles, where his kids are now enrolled in school. His band mates are in Dallas, Montgomery, Ala., and Lutcher.
But they will reconvene this week on the West Coast for a tour. He says Papa Grows Funk will tour as much as possible in the coming months and establish weekly residencies in Houston, Lafayette and Baton Rouge.
"We have New Orleans musicians in all these places, and they all need work," Gros said. "If I can put money in their pockets and play some New Orleans music, that's what I can do."
'New Orleans is in us'
Gros is only marking time until he can return to New Orleans.
"Hell, yes, the city will come back," Gros said. "It's New Orleans. No matter how bad it is, the pride that New Orleanians take in the city is so strong. As long as politicians don't steal the money for the rehabilitation, the city will come back.
"(The revitalization) will start in the neighborhoods. Neighbors helping neighbors again. The neighborhood bars, the neighborhood groceries, will come back. People who live in Uptown take pride in Uptown. Treme takes pride in Treme. Mid-City takes pride in Mid-City. It's their pride, their life. That's all they know.
"And I can't wait for the songs that will come out of this."
How many musicians eventually return once New Orleans is back on its feet will determine the future character of the city's music.
Harry Connick Jr. has praised his fellow New Orleanians' "freakishly strong" spirit. And even if the Nevilles and hundreds of their peers live in exile, Aaron Neville is confident they will maintain some sense of community and continuity.
"New Orleans is in us," Neville said. "That's all we know. We might be relocated somewhere else, but New Orleans is always in our hearts and souls and minds.
"Especially the music."