Alive and Kickin': Life After Hurricaine Katrina
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By bill komissaroff
Courtesy of Threadhead Records
Book Review: Paul Sanchez's Pieces of Me
About two minutes into our initial and to this day only conversation, Paul Sanchez looked me in the eye and implored me to alter the direction of my life. His advice was sincere and earnest; it touched, inspired, and persuaded me. Sanchez can have that effect on people.
In his new book Pieces of Me: Essays on Life, Love, and Music in the New New Orleans, Sanchez reaches out from the pages and talks about experiences so personal and so real that he may persuade and inspire you as well.
Paul Sanchez is a master storyteller. He has been telling stories with his guitar and voice for his entire life. Pieces of Me, which is a collection of essays and blog entries chronologically presented and written in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, is a story about loss, heartbreak, anger, and frustration. It is the story of a man trying to survive in post-apocalyptic conditions who was stripped of his home, his possessions, and eventually his livelihood. Ultimately, however, Pieces of Me is an uplifting story about love and redemption. Love for the woman that obviously means the world to him, and redemption by way of a solo career that might not have ever happened.
There are many reasons why Paul Sanchez could be bitter, and his book could have just been an angry diatribe. He and his wife Shelly lost everything in the flood. He saw first hand how the city he loved became a shell of its former self. He experienced first hand the ineptitude of the government in the immediate and the ongoing aftermath of the storm, and to make things worse, Cowboy Mouth, the band that he co-founded and had been playing with for over fifteen years, essentially tossed him aside by forcing him and his wife out in a cold, calculated, and unfeeling manner.
Cowboy Mouth is a touring rock band that had achieved a mild amount of success and had built up a following over the years. Reading the accounts of Cowboy Mouth in Sanchez’s book, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the fictional band Stillwater from the movie Almost Famous: “a midlevel band dealing with their own limitations.” For better or worse though, Cowboy Mouth was Sanchez’s life, his living, and someday would have provided his retirement money.
With no home and now no band, Sanchez looked within himself and started writing. A friend showed him how to blog on the internet. As anyone who has done it knows, you have no idea who or for that matter if anyone is reading what you write, but that is not why you do it. Sanchez, as he writes, had reached the bottom professionally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. He needed an outlet, and needed to feel connected. He thought that there must be others out there with similar feelings of pain and loneliness in the wake of Katrina. He was right.
As Sanchez found his voice through his writing, others began to notice including Tanya Younger and Chris Joseph of Threadhead Records, a non-profit organization formed to help New Orleans musicians who were victims of Katrina. Younger and Joseph approached Sanchez about turning his blog into a book.
In the book, Pieces of Me, the stories are rich and textured providing a unique perspective on New Orleans and life in the music industry. One great example of this occurs when Sanchez is in the studio working on Exit to Mystery Street his first solo record since the storm and his departure from Cowboy Mouth. Sanchez tapped famed Soul Asylum front man Dave Pirner to produce the record, and he assembled an impressive lineup of New Orleans musicians to contribute.
Photo by Denise Sullivan. DLS Music Photo. Used with Permission.
Something was missing, however, on the song Ride With the Devil, a rocker which Sanchez had reluctantly agreed to include in the mix. Out in back of the studio during a break in recording, Pirner suggested that what they needed for the song to work was “some ripping lead guitar”. Wondering who they could get, Pirner looked next door where, coincidently, Alex McMurray was doing yard work.
Even though McMurray had built a great reputation in many different New Orleans bands over the years as a song writer and guitar player, he and Sanchez had never met. That didn’t matter to McMurray who agreed to put down his shovel, grab his guitar, and join them in the studio, poison ivy and all. McMurray then went on to, as Sanchez describes, transform the song, “From something that was just wood and wire into a live fire-breathing dragon of which [McMurray] was the master.” After just a couple of takes McMurray unplugged his guitar and went back next door to his house to continue his yard work.
That, in a nutshell, is New Orleans. People helping people. Musicians helping musicians. And dragon-slayers masquerading as gardeners.
Photo by Denise Sullivan. DLS Music Photo. Used with permission.
If all you know about New Orleans is Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street, then you really don’t know New Orleans. I first discovered New Orleans music in 2003 when my friend dragged me reluctantly to Jazz Fest. My eyes and ears were opened and I have been going back every year since for either Jazz Fest or French Quarter Fest weekend, but I do not pretend to really know the city. The truth is for people like me who are tourists in New Orleans one or two weekends a year, the city really hasn’t changed that much post-Katrina, but for people like Sanchez and McMurray, it will never be the same.
I doubt he would remember, but I met Sanchez last year when a mutual friend introduced us. He had just finished an incredible show at a small venue called D.B.A. on Frenchman’s Street with Shamar Allen who is a talented young trumpeter. We chatted briefly, and he shared a bit of his amazing journey with me. The journey that he chronicles in Pieces of Me. He also inspired me by imploring me to take a chance and make a major change in my life. In a way, he demanded it. I took what he said to heart; it stayed with me, and now a year later, while not doing exactly what he suggested, I have taken some big steps in the right direction.
Paul Sanchez has that effect on people.
Bill Komissaroff
May 2009
(Thanks to Paul Miller, Bill Brakefield, and Denise Sullivan)
New Orleans comes around Decatur
I have an interest in New Orleans and a few weeks ago I found another source by which to experience New Orleans - albeit from a distance. At the Decatur Book Festival, held three miles from my home, there was a book reading by a New Orleans musician, and author by surprise Paul Sanchez. He came to read from his book Pieces of Me and to play his music to other New Orleans worshipers,owners and, like myself perhaps, other proud borrowers of the city.
It’s hard to own something that you’re not so sure you if really own it. If you are not a native of a town, you don’t live there, and don’t plan do more than visit, then just how much interest should you have in the place? Does simply adding up a place’s significance in one’s life give you some degree of ownership? I struggle with my ownership of New Orleans. I have been a visitor there since I was about was about three years of age. My parents owned it in their hearts as they met there where when they were in college; could it be I owe my existence to the place? With the availability of news from the Crescent City on the internet and a growing list of books, on not only the recent disaster of Hurricane Katrina, but on the culture of the place, it has become easy to become a devotee of the place with one real visit each year. This book festival event was probably full of true New Orleanians, many of whom perhaps remain in therapy because of Hurricane Katrina, and so this event with Paul Sanchez was spiritual to many in that room.
Sanchez is a native New Orleanian and he was chased away, at least for a time, by the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. As a musician in a fairly well known New Orleans band, Cowboy Mouth, he can draw crowd just for his songwriting, guitar and voice, but the storm made him an author. Displaced from New Orleans he started an internet blog. In time someone who could get him published took notice of this blog. Between songs from his career on this day, Sanchez read from his book Pieces of Me and held his audience with his stories of place, displacement, and being home again. The audience joyfully responded to his narrative about people owning a pet goat as if it was another dog in the French Quarter’s urban setting, he has a story about a fruit and vegetable vendor who creeps through the streets of the city in pickup announcing his products in cadence over a loudspeaker, only occasionally forgetting to turn off the microphone when he takes a call on his cell , and then there is a hard story for Paul to tell, about his changed life after being hit by a taxi cab while riding his bike while on tour in Chicago,which for months caused him to black out at unexpected times.
People around me at this event were rattling keys and clicking their fingers to the stories he told. I heard yeses uttered as he spoke, almost like it was a lively church service on a Sunday. These were human stories with a sense of place that many recognized as they could only take place in New Orleans and sadly some of these stories could only be after Katrina almost washed the place away.
I bought Paul’s book and CD called Stew Called New Orleans that he recorded with another New Orleans musician, John Boutte, and I went back outside. I ran into someone I knew at a book booth out on the street. I related to them the story of this book event with Paul Sanchez and just talking about it seemed to be oddly poetic to me.
I remember days after Katrina defending this city below sea level with its contrasting mix of wealth and extreme poverty. At times New Orleans seems to have only have history and culture on its side in a country conflicted in a constant debate of worthiness. I will stand by my understanding of the place and my awkward ownership like the people with me at this book reading. I told Paul Sanchez after he signed my copy of Pieces of Me, thanks for coming here,yes thanks for bringing a piece of New Orleans in yourself to Decatur, GA for an afternoon.
Steve, Atlanta Ga.
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