12:16 PM PT, May 2 2009
The music lovers have evolved from an online chat room group into a nonprofit record label.
Like a lot of out-of-towners who came to New Orleans in the years after the levees failed, Chris Joseph found that the singers John Boutte and Paul Sanchez spoke to the city's post-Katrina trauma better than almost any other artists.
Like his fellow visitors, Joseph felt frustrated that he couldn't buy a CD of the cathartic songs the duo was singing in the city's nightclubs -- numbers such as the infectious original "Good Neighbor" or the radical rearrangement of Paul Simon's "An American Tune" as part folk confessional and part gospel hymn.
Unlike the others, though, Joseph did something about it.
Joseph, a Santa Monica resident who prepares environmental impact statements for a living, was a member of the Threadheads, a group that already had proved that music fans could be proactive. The Threadheads met in the chat room on www.nojazzfest.com, but they evolved into an organization that put on shows at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Beginning in 2005, the annual Threadheads Party booked Louisiana bands for a backyard soiree, and post-Katrina, the party morphed into a fundraiser for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. It was after Boutte and Sanchez's set at the 2007 party that Joseph approached Sanchez and asked when the duo was going to release an album.
"It was an innocent question," says Joseph today. "Paul said, 'We would if we had the money.' This light bulb went off in my head, and I said, 'How much would it take?' I expected him to say $100,000, but when he said $10,000, I told him, 'I could raise that.' I knew all the Threadheads had been touched by the show, and I figured if they had enough money to go to Jazz Fest, which is not a cheap vacation, they would kick in some money for this."
The concept was simple: Fans usually pay for records after they've been made by purchasing them in stores or online. But if the fans put in the money upfront, they could make sure that the records they wanted to hear got made.
Joseph, 52, sent out an appeal to the Threadheads' e-mail list and before long he had raised $12,000. He contacted Sanchez and said he was sending a check to finance the next record. All he asked in return was that the money be repaid within a year of the album's release and that the 10% interest be paid as a donation to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic.
"Everything's a gentleman's agreement," Joseph emphasized. "We don't sign any contracts, we don't make any artistic decisions, we don't own the masters. It's fun, because musicians usually don't work with people like us. We're raising money for a good cause, and we're bringing records into the world that might not otherwise exist. Other than raising my children, this is the most gratifying thing I've ever done."
"He doesn't really know the music business," Sanchez marvels, "so he does the right thing. He hasn't learned the industry standard, so he treats artists with respect. We kept waiting to see what the catch was, but there was no catch. Musicians are so used to being insulted by the industry that when we encounter this kind of trust, it's amazing."
That initial investment of $12,000 bankrolled Boutte's 2008 album "Good Neighbor" and a good chunk of Sanchez's 2008 disc, "Exit to Mystery Street." The two musicians delivered their last repayment check to Joseph on Tuesday.
The model proved so effective that the nonprofit Threadhead Records was born, with Joseph giving himself the job title of "head honcho." The seed money provided by the label has led to 2008-2009 albums by jazz-gospel trombonist Glen David Andrews, jazz-hip-hop trumpeter Shamarr Allen, jazz-rock singer-guitarist Alex McMurray and the brass band the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, plus the first disc credited to Boutte and Sanchez as a duo, "Stew Called New Orleans."
Coming later this year are new albums from Susan Cowsill and Marc Stone. These albums are available at Amazon .com, iTunes.com and Thread headrecords.com.
This year's Threadheads Party was held Tuesday in the Marigny neighborhood in New Orleans. It was one of the city's wonderful backyards -- sealed off from the outside by a high hedge studded with morning-glory and magnolia blossoms.
On the back lawn, beer, crawfish and jambalaya were being served, and on the temporary stage Boutte and Sanchez were sitting in folding chairs, backed by some of the city's finest jazzmen, playing the songs from their recent Threadhead releases.
On "An American Tune," however, they stripped it down to just Sanchez's acoustic-guitar picking and Boutte's supple tenor. When the latter added his hometown lilt to the lines, "I don't know a soul that's not been battered; I don't have a friend who feels at ease," the echoes of the city's flooded homes and wandering refugees was unmistakable.
The note of anguish he added to Simon's vision of the Statue of Liberty drifting away to sea was a painful reminder of ideals that have been compromised. In the end, though, Boutte offered hushed words of reassurance, "It's all right, it's all right."
"We loved the songs we were playing live," Boutte, 51, says, "and Paul said, 'We need to document these tunes.' But I wasn't willing to let the standards of my records go down, so I wasn't going to do it until we had the money to do it in a real studio with real musicians.
"If the Threadheads hadn't come along, we might never have captured those songs, because Paul didn't have the money and I sure didn't have the money. And it's so important to capture songs when they're ready, because every moment is fleeting. You may never feel that way about a song again. So many of my friends who were musicians in New Orleans have passed this year -- Snooks Eaglin, Eddie Bo, Danny Barker, Willie Tee -- that it reminds you how quickly time goes by. If we don't capture this music, it will be forgotten."
-- Geoffrey Himes
Photo: Chris Joseph, left, Threadhead Records’ "head honcho," and musician Paul Sanchez. Lee Celanto / For the Times
Musician, Heal Thyself
Offbeat Magazine
By Alex Rawls
“I hadn’t tuned a guitar in years.”
For years, someone handed Paul Sanchez a tuned guitar when he walked onstage with Cowboy Mouth. If it went out of tune, there was someone there with another ready to go, and went he left the stage he handed it to that someone. That sort of treatment spoils a man. “The first time I played d.b.a. on my own I wasn’t even sure where to plug my amp in.”
Paul Sanchez traveled in some variation of that style for most of his 16 years in Cowboy Mouth. It was rarely easy; his relationship with singer/frontman Fred LeBlanc was complicated, and once they hit some variation of the big time, things got harder. “We got signed to MCA,” he says. “Hootie and the Blowfish were hot, and they wanted us to make a record that sounded like Hootie. For Mercyland, Sister Hazel was hot and they wanted us to make a record with a slide guitar that sounded like Sister Hazel.” Still, it was tour buses, roadies and a lot of things done for them.
The band was in the studio in Atlanta finishing Voodoo Shoppe when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. That prompted them to write and record two more songs—Sanchez’ “Home” and “The Avenue”—then they set out touring again, this time to remind the world that New Orleans was still there and it needed their help. Never mind that Sanchez’ house was catastrophically flooded when the London Avenue Canal breached; it was time for the road. Still, the sense of purpose brought the band together, Sanchez says. “I got to be friends with them again and feel like a family again. We hadn’t for a long time.”
In late 2006, the band’s lawyer asked him to lunch. Sanchez joked, “This is kind of funny. Last time I got taken to a private lunch like this, I was told I was being let go from the band. Is [former manager Jon] Birge coming back?” He was, it turns out, and the lawyer was there to tell him that. Sanchez’ displeasure with Birge’s return combined with seizures he started having since he was hit by a taxi in Chicago led him to quit the band he had been with more-or-less since its inception in 1990. He was a free agent and could stop trying to cheerlead America and deal with his own loss. “Like everybody in New Orleans, it seemed like my life had piled up on me and I had to make a break.” He did so first by avoiding it, moving to Belize. Then the son of a working class family from the Irish Channel started the process of immersing himself in New Orleans. “You’ve got to go back to your roots to reinvent yourself,” Sanchez says.
Like so many New Orleanians after the storm, Sanchez was in denial about his own status, something he now realizes. “I didn’t know how in shock I was,” he says. “In my mind, I was too busy helping other people. ‘I don’t need help; other people need help.’” He wouldn’t deal with his flooded house. He knew it was totaled, but it took Craig Klein of Bonerama and the Arabi Wrecking Krewe pestering him before he agreed. When it happened, Sanchez wasn’t involved. He couldn’t face it and didn’t want anything from the house, though he was touched when Klein saved an undamaged ceramic milagro with the word “Rejoice”.
Things started to change for Sanchez when he came home for Jazz Fest 2007. “I was rudderless, more than I was aware of at the time,” he admits. While home, he and friend John Boutte played a party for Threadheads—Jazz Fest fans who met through the Jazz Fest message board—and people enjoyed their set so much they suggested the two should record together. Sanchez said he’d love to if they only had the money. Before he knew it, Threadhead Chris Joseph had spearheaded an effort to raise the money he needed; he and Threadhead Records were in business. The result wasn’t a Boutte/Sanchez album, though. Instead, they made Good Neighbor, the Boutte album that Sanchez shepherded from conception to completion. “I had to pay some dues; I had to find my own feet,” he says. “I knew that making the record together probably wasn’t the right time for either of us.” Despite their friendship, it wasn’t easy. Boutte was in a dark place himself, and the album became Sanchez’ obsession.
Though the process of making the Good Neighbor and his own Exit to Mystery Street was exhausting and challenging, the effort started moving him the direction he wanted to go. “It was [producer] Dave Pirner’s idea to hire Raymond Weber and Matt Perrine, and that made a huge difference in the fact that I was able to pull off a very New Orleans-sounding record with a rhythm guitar player—me—finding places to play rock rhythms in a New Orleans feel.” It also connected Sanchez to a battalion of New Orleans musicians including James Andrews, Big Sam, Fredy Omar and David Torkanowsky.
Sanchez started to rebuild a community of musicians around himself, and when he started to play d.b.a. regularly, he invited people to perform with him—not just professional musicians but amateurs and poets. Consciously or not, he seemed to want to surround himself with people, and he sat in with others including Susan Cowsill. Slowly but surely, he accumulated a new musical circle, one that involved old friends including former Cowboy Mouth bassists Mary Lasseigne and Sonia Tetlow, along with Alex McMurray, Shamarr Allen, Craig Klein, Russ Broussard and Glen David Andrews. They became part of a loose collection that played with him, and from the start, he made sure that the band members got time in the spotlight to showcase their songs. “I just wanted to heal me, and their songs charge me,” he says. “Then people started coming back, ‘That’s what I always expected New Orleans would be like—a real community.’ People shouldn’t walk away from the Rolling Road Show saying, ‘Man, that Paul Sanchez is great.’ They should walk away saying, ‘Man, New Orleans is great.’”
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As he found a new musical circle, another challenge arose—how to fit in. He had lived much of his musical life in Powerchordville, where a minor chord is as exotic as fugu. He didn’t have the chops to accompany Boutte, Allen or Leroy Jones in the manner to which they were accustomed, an awareness Torkanowsky reinforced when he told him in a friendly way, “You know, you hear a lot more complicated than you’re able to play. You should think about that.” The musical language the players spoke—jazz—was one he realized he needed to acquire for his musical and social ambitions. When John Rankin approached him intrigued by Sanchez’ thoughts on songwriting during a Tennessee Williams festival session, Sanchez said, “’I’ve wanted to take lessons from you for 20 years but thought I innately sucked.’ We started trading lessons. I learned how to make the chords follow the melody like you do in traditional jazz.” Boutte admires him for taking that step. “I’m proud of him,” Boutte says. “How many musicians will get guitar lessons so they can change their styles?”
One byproduct of the lessons is “Two-Five-One,” a song from A Stew Called New Orleans, his new album with John Boutte. The song draws its name from the bedrock chord progression that is to jazz musicians what 1-4-5 is to rock ’n’ roll musicians. He makes it a song about a phone number that starts 2-5-1, a number that seems to be the key to a mystery. “She kept slipping me her digits / but I left them on the bar. / Now the band wants me to remember / but I can only get this far. / I got 2-5-1 “. Sanchez deftly merges the song’s narrative and its creation’s context, writing the amusement jazz musicians had with him into the song without signaling the significance with a big, theatrical wink. “I could hear the fellas laughing. / I said that’s fine by me / And if you get to the last part, remember / that the first part is safe with me.”
The Threadhead experience was resonant for Sanchez, one he celebrates in the new song, “Be a Threadhead.”
“There are people who are unemployed and donated $5, some donated five thousand,” he says. “These are people who can’t swing a hammer, and suddenly, they made this record just for the sake of helping. That’s real community.” He in turn tried to help Threadhead put out albums with other musicians in need. “Through Paul, we got to Susan Cowsill, and Craig Klein and the New Orleans Nightcrawlers,” Threadhead Records’ Chris Joseph says. “Through Paul, we got to Alex McMurray. Paul’s very generous with other performers. He wants other people to shine and he wants other people to succeed.” From Sanchez’ perspective, it was just a matter of passing on a little wisdom. “Having been on three major labels and had seven different managers, I had a lot of different kinds of insights into the music business. I could tell them how to treat folks, how to spend money that makes sense and where you’re just spinning your wheels.”
Sanchez is earnest when he talks, though he doesn’t sound like he has to hang on as tightly to keep things together as he did when he first returned. For him, the process of dealing with Katrina was slowed by the insulation of the road with Cowboy Mouth, and there were days in 2007 when he came in theOffBeat office feeling a little behind the curve. “He didn’t have the security of the whole infrastructure,” John Boutte says. “I said, ‘Be strong, lad.’ I’m proud of Paul making the transition from a rocker to a solo artist; it’s not an easy step. It’s very hard, and I saw him go through some changes with his health and his confidence.”
He now has a house in the Treme and has received the sort of reassurance that has steadied him. The Eli Young Band had a Top40 hit on the country charts with his 1992 song, “Jet Black and Jealous,” and Good Neighbor andExit to Mystery Street found audiences and critical acclaim. Still, it’s hard not to think of his music as a combination of art and therapy. “I felt desperately a need to reinvent myself,” Sanchez says. “I felt desperately a need to make a big band-sounding record that was a New Orleans record to authenticate myself.”
A Stew Called New Orleans continues that effort though in a smaller, breezier way. Instead of making the album a big production, he recorded it live in one day with Boutte, Leroy Jones, Todd Duke and Peter Harris. The results are intimate and swinging, and though they alternate songs, the album feels like a conversation between friends. Slyly, Sanchez assigned most of the pop songs to Boutte and tackled the jazz tunes himself. The two most political statements, “Hey God” and Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” are sung by Boutte. “I’m glad Paul introduced that tune to me because even yet, it still has a lot of significance,” Boutte says.
Sanchez points to the numerous shout-outs on the album—references to Threadheads, to Glen David Andrews, even to Peyton and Cooper Manning. The title track is self-consciously in the tradition of celebrating New Orleans in song along the lines of “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?” and Shamarr Allen’s “Meet Me on Frenchmen Street,” a song Sanchez played live after hearing it. That blend of the artistic and the social makes the album feel slightly therapeutic and personal, but not in an oversharing way. The album stands alone as a smart, engaged songwriter’s album, but it’s also easy to hear it as another step in his journey and wonder if he’d make the same album a year from now.
“I was sitting with somebody and laughing about old road times, and after I walked away, I said, ‘Wow, it felt good to laugh about Cowboy Mouth again,’” Sanchez remembers. That was a milestone of sorts because he says he hasn’t received a writing or publishing royalty check in 16 years. When he approached a lawyer about working on this problem, his advice was, “Let’s work on getting you over your anger so you can deal with this”—advice Sanchez later thanked him for. That doesn’t mean he’s over it, though. “It would be nice if I could just remember the fun parts and have it be so dirty by business, but sadly, I don’t have that control.”
Still, separation from Cowboy Mouth has allowed him to rediscover his identity as a songwriter and explore opportunities he likely would never have had with the band. He worked with Boutte on a song for the next Galactic album. He has mentored and written with Shamarr Allen and Glen David Andrews, and he talks like someone excited by the possibilities the next day may offer. “I’m so grateful that I didn’t end up doing the same thing for the rest of my life. I get a chance to evolve and create different kinds of music with other kinds of people. It’s exhilarating. I haven’t been this exhilarated about being a songwriter since I was 19.”
Published April 2009, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 22, No. 4.
Arts Beat
Culture News and Views
New York Times May 3, 2009, 1:29 AM
Jazzfest: Behind Threadhead Records
By JON PARELES
 Threadhead sounded like an odd name for a record company when I mentioned Glen David Andrews’s gospel album, “Walking Through Heaven’s Gate.” And there’s a story behind it. Threadheads are members of an online social community born out of message threads on the forum at nojazzfest.com; after Hurricane Katrina they started donating money and time to charitable projects. Naturally, musicians played at fund-raising parties, and two of them, the guitarist/songwriter Paul Sanchez and the singer John Boutté performed at one in 2007. “Afterwards one Threadhead,(Chris Joseph), came up to me and said, ‘That was great, you guys should make a record.’ And I said, ‘Well, we would need money,’” says Sanchez. “He asked how much? I gave him a figure and he said great.”
A Threadhead named Chris Joseph, now president of Threadhead Records, asked what the album budget might be: $10,000. Then he raised the money and loaned it to Mr. Boutté to make the album, on the condition that the loan be paid back within a year, plus a 10 percent donation to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. Threadhead doesn’t own the master recordings; the musician does. The loan has been repaid, and Threadhead used the same model for Mr. Andrews’s album and albums by Mr. Sanchez, the songwriter Alex McMurray, the trumpeter Shamarr Allen and the New Orleans Nightcrawlers brass band, along with projects in the works for Susan Cowsill, Marc Stone and Rick Trolsen. Music fans as non-exploiting patrons — what a concept.
Stereophile
Let It Roll
Paul Sanchez and New Orleans' Rolling Road Show Review
by Robert Baird
Could anything top a visit to Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge? I mean, what on earth-let alone the great but still reviving city of New Orleans, Louisiana-could one possibly best the experience of seeing, hearing and, God knows, smelling S&J's, one of America's more piquant fire-water soaked dumps (see http://blog.stereophile.com/musicroom/robertbaird/new_orleans_matters/).
The answer was Carrollton Station, a much more upscale club, where we went to see and hear Paul Sanchez and The Rolling Road Show. To a big-city newcomer the idea sounded too wide-eyed and optimistic to be believed: musicians from various genres, black and white, jazz cats and rock dudes, getting together to play each other's songs. In theory, it would be a mixing of the many styles and influences that have made New Orleans music famous. Onstage, it would be NOLA trad jazz followed by loud guitar rock; second-line rhythms preceding Cajun-flavored dance numbers; trumpets and arch top guitars; trombones and washboards. it would be, so the story went, a generous collaboration with egos in check-all of it worth aspiring to, but something that rarely ever happens.
Most of the crowd at this brave experiment were members of a group called the Threadheads. Once it was explained to me in detail, their mission seemed even less likely then the concept of the Rolling Road Show. united by their love of New Orleans' annual Jazz and Heritage Festival, this group of strangers originally pitched in to establish a sort of trust fund for New Orleans musicians who'd suffered because of Hurricane Katrina.
The Threadheads i saw that night were fairly straight-looking, upscale white folks obviously determined to get philanthropic in their own, collectively idiosyncratic way. Most clearly knew each other, and nearly everyone was dancing. There was a table full of sandwiches and munchies, and booze and beer were available at discounted prices. While several musicians mentioned to me that they were at first suspicious of the Threadheads motives, all had now grown to love this well-meaning group, offering shout-outs from the stage, and even singing "Happy Birthday" to one man festooned in beads and a feathery hat.
With an admirably easy grace
and lots of joyous music making,
Paul Sanchez's Rolling Road Show
was working like a charm.
Halfway through the first set, after a stretch that included a gospel workout, a bare-bones "St. James infirmary" that was funky as hell, a susan Cowsill-led guitar-pop success, and a loud, almost prog-eock guitar instrumental, I was having trouble keeping my lower mandible from going sleepy time down south. More surprising juxtapositions were to come. A Latin-flavored number was followed by a loosey-goosey version of "Do You Know What It means To Miss New Orleans," a song that, since Katrina, has become infinitely more poignat for may in that night's crowd. A hush descended, but there were smiles all around as Andrews gruffily crooned:
"Miss the moss covered vines, tall sugar pines
where mockingbirds used to sing
I'd love to see that old lazy Mississippi
hurrying into Spring"
With an admirably easy grace and lots of joyous music making, Paul Sanchez's Rolling Road Show was working like a charm.
"It's not like i have any magic ingredient," Sanchez says from his new home in New Orleans. at first musicians would come to shows because I was paying people what they wanted. they came expecting to be backup players and backup singers and they were happy with that. Then I'd say, 'okay, here's a set, and here's where you sing your song,' and their eyes would get big, and they'd be like, 'what do you mean, "my song"? I'd say, 'Well the band learned it, and it will be your turn to be the centerpiece.' people just couldn't believe it.
"I make sure they understand to bring their own stuff to sell and that we're going to be doing their songs, and they're encouraged to act however they would like onstage. And then you basically have a stage full of frontmen who are pretty happy and inspired by what the other people are doing."
Several cataclysmic events in Sanchez's life have inspired his forward thinking. The first two were genuinely life-threatening. In 2006, in Chicago, Sanchez was struck by a vehicle while riding a bicycle. He says the resulting injuries caused some health problems that continue to this day.
Then, like so many in New Orleans, musicians or otherwise, Sanchez lost his previous house to Katrina. when the nearby london Canal was breached, the house-which had been built by his wife, Shelly's, grandfather in Gentilly-ended up with water up to the ceilings. Sanchez says that for months, he couldn't even think about the ruined house. Finally, Craig Klein, one of five trombonists in the new Orleans band Bonearama, who after Katrina formed a volunteer group to gut the houses of his fellow musicians, offered to dismantle Sanchez's eyesore before the city and state seized the land for being abandoned. He said Sanchez didn't even have to show up for the work to begin.
"I went over there and expected to be emotional, and there were these young kids taking a lunch break. They were in the middle of the street, bowling down their water bottles with my old bowling ball. craig and music fans from around the country showed up and gutted the houses of musicians who either couldn't afford to do so, or, in my case, were too emotionally frozen to do so. they did something that i didn't have the stomach to do, and still really can't talk about all that much."
Finally, in 2006, Sanchez split from his longtime musical endeavor, the cultish New Orleans band, Cowboy Mouth. the singer-songwriter, who often wears a crushed fedora on stage and has written a variety of slogans on his guitar in Magic Marker a' la Woody Guthrie, was raised in a family of eleven children in New orleans' Irish channel section. Although his brothers had been in drum-and-bugle corps while growing up, Sanchez is the only member of the family to have become a professional musician. After a stint in the local band, The Backbeats, and time spent in New York in the anti-folk scene honing his songwriting craft, Sanchez formed Cowboy Mouth in 1990 with another former Backbeat, drummer and singer Fred Le Blanc. Sanchez stayed with Cowboy Mouth-named after a Sam Shepherd play, aka the Mouth-for 16 years, 12 albums, and two EPs before abruptly quitting in 2006. Although the band, which by turns played a rootsy, poppy, NOLA-tinged version ofcrowd-pleasing rock'n'roll, gained cult status in what Sanchez calls "pockets" of the US, widespread fame eluded them. A by-product of being stuck at a certain level in the music business is emotional fatigue, which forces change. Sanchez however, claims his leaving was harmonious.
"I left at a time when I felt we were making good music and I cared about the other guys. I didn't care for the new business direction they were taking, and I told them so. I didn't leave because of anything unfortunate. it would have been such a drag to have fifteen years of faith into something, and then leave because one of the guys made me angry, it wasn't like that."
Usually when a band breaks up, there are no facts per se, only widely divergent versions. The truth almost always lies somewhere in the middle. It can be a mystery train to ride through the forests of ego and come out with even the barest understanding of what really happened. the breakup of Cowboy Mouth clearly involved some enmity, however. Look up Fred Le Blanc on Wikipedia, for example, and you'll find a rah-rah enrty that makes no mention of Sanchez as having ever been a member of the group.
Later in our conversation, Sanchez is more specific about his former band. "Two years prior to signing us, MCA bought a small publishing company in Nashville that owned all of Fred's songs. When they signed us, they gave us a list of songs they already owned and said this is what the album's gotta be, along with one or two other ones." It restricted the flow for the rest of the band's existence-got to people's egos, where somebody thought, 'Oh, it's really about my songs,' and then it became about someone's songs as opposed to the song."
In the end, let's say that when Paul Sanchez left Cowboy Mouth, it wasn't particularly pretty. The more poetic, metaphysical side of his personality spins it best; "It seemed like life was pointing to a new path to the waterfall, and so I took it."
After Katrina, back in New Orleans and out of Cowboy Mouth, Sanchez listened to longtime NOLA jazz pianist David Torkanowsky, who advised him to "mix it up." Two of the first people he enlisted in his new and still fuzzy concept were trumpeter-singer Shamarr Allen and Susan Cowsill, a former child star turned singer-songwriter.
"Shamarr, I happened to really love his song "Meet Me On Fenchmen Street", and I love Susan's stuff, so the first time we played, I said, here's a set, make sure you know the other people's songs,' People got so tickled. My rock'nroll friends were just tickled that they were playing New Orleans stuff. And the jazz guys were really fascinated with rock and how it felt to be a part of that power which is very different from jazz."
 "You're playing this person's song and they're playing your songs," says Shamarr Allen in a low drawl, "so you're always on the edge of your seat. It's more of a learning experience for me. it only makes your playing better in what you do. It's making me stretch as a musician, and that's a beautiful thing. If you're easily brainwashed, then maybe you can't open your ears [ enough to play in something like a Rolling Road Show]. But in New Orleans, people don't care. Today you can do a gospel record, and tomorrow you can do a country record, and you'll still have the same fans."
"Meet Me On Frenchmen Street" became an overnight anthem and has given Allen premier place in the pecking order of musicians who've returned to NOLA post-Katrina. At 27, he remains shocked by the reception that this tune about the musical variety to be found most nights on Frenchmen Street, has received in his hometown.
"It doesn't seem real, not to me, "Instant Classic" that's what they're calling it. It's crazy. I never expected that at all. I wanted my first cd to be traditional, because that's the kind of teachers that I had. If I ad hurried up and done a rock record or something like that, it might have seemed like a smack in the face. i just tried to jump into the past and see if I could make the people who taught me the music happy."
Like nearly every trumpeter in New Orleans, allen also sings-very well.He and Sanchez have tapped into the truth of Louis Armstrong that hangs over all NOLA musicians. Sanchez, for example, signs his e-mails with Pops' archetypal signoff, "red beans and ricely yours." Allen says that, since Armstrong, all New Orleans trumpet players almost have to sing.
Meet Me On Frenchmen Street
"If you ever come down to New Orleans
and you want to enjoy that music scene
Everybody's drinking having a good old time
Let someone teach you how to second-line
We got jazz bands and trad bands
funk bands and brass bands
whatever your hear desires
if you can take that southern heat
then you can party with me
Meet me on Frenchmen Street
"Whether you can or not, we all sing," he says with a deep chuckle.
A student of horn players Edward "Kidd" Jordan and Alvin Batiste, Allen grew up
in the now infamous Lower Ninth Ward, site of Katrina's worst destruction. He, too, lost a house in the storm. After years of playing with a variety of brass bands, including Treme', Hot 8, and Rebirth, Allen recorded Me Me On Frenchmen Street, named for its most famous Allen original, in 2007. Guests included drummer Herlin Riley, clarinetist Dr. Michael White, Sanchez, and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, who sings guest vocals (and scats a' la Armstrong) on the title track. Like that song, the rest of the album is traditional New Orleans jazz, which years ago became the basis for a more bastardized version knows as Dixeland.
Allen's local celebrity has now spread far enough to have landed him a spot on a mid-winter Willie nelson tour, and he's about to release a second album, Box Who In?, on the new Threadead Records label. He says that the new record will feature work from his funk band, The Underdawgs, as well as a short guest list that includes Galactic drummer Stanton Moore, Ivan Neville, and the Soul Rebels, a funky New Orleans brass band. He particularly like what he calls a "fonky, fonky, fonky, version of 'A Night In Tunisia' where I'm rappin' over it. Although Box Who In? is not slated to be released until April, Allen has already heard good things about it.
"A lot of people, like writers and everything, they've said if Jimi Hendrix and Miles were still alive and recorded the record they were supposed to make together, that it would sound something like this. I was like, 'OOOOkay, now that's some big ol' shoes to fill."
Paul Sanchez, too, is working on a new record, Stew Called New Orleans, one that's a direct result of his friendship and musical partnership with a sometime Rolling Road Show participant, singer John Boutte'. Sanchez's latest record, 2008's Exit To Mystery Street, uses a pick up band that contains many musical forms that makes The Rolling Road Show so unusual.
"When I asked[co-producer and Soul Asylum vovalist] Dave Pirner to help me with Exit, he asked what kind of record I wanted to make, and I said I wanted it to be like you're walking down Frenchmen Street and you're sticking your head in every bar, hearing different bands and different styles of music. He just smiled and said, 'Okay, we can do this.'"
The Rolling Road Show concept has proved so successful at home that Sanchez, Boutte' Allen and Cowsill have begun taking it on the road, for Threadheads and general public alike, to venues in Florida, New York and Los Angeles.
what was most impressive about The Rolling Road Show gig at Carrollton Station was the spirit, both in the crowd and among the musicians onstage. instead of being rattled by being forced out of their comfort zone-as Sanchez describes it, "stepping outside of their own thing"- the musicians seemed to thrive on the expansiveness and the exploration.
"Like thousands and thousands of people, I go to Jazz Fest every year, and when you walk from stage to stage, that is your experience. You don't hear any one thing. You don't hear any one thing on Frenchmen Street. for musicians, I want it to be about being surprised-a real honest, and sincere exchange of energy; about how cool it is to play with somebody who's got a different feel. For the crowd, it shouldn't be people walking away saying 'Paul Sanchez is great.' It should make people think, 'Wow, that is exactly what I thought the New Orleans music scene was.'"
Trumpeter Shamarr Allen doesn't wish to be pigeonholed
 Jennifer Zdon / The Times-Picayune
Shamarr Allen, a former member of the Rebirth Brass Band, recently spent time on the road as a member of the Willie Nelson's band.Trumpeter Shamarr Allen apprenticed with the Rebirth Brass Band, traditional jazz drummer Bob French and, improbably enough, Willie Nelson.
Now he's ready to step out on his own.
He devoted his first CD to traditional jazz. But as the title of his new "Box Who In?" implies, he won't be pigeonholed. Rock, modern jazz, funk -- "Box Who In?" runs the gamut.
In the summer of 2005, Allen and his sister lived in a house their parents owned on North Prieur Street, around the corner from his mother and father's home on Jourdan Avenue. The houses faced the section of Industrial Canal levee that ruptured during Hurricane Katrina.
He and his family evacuated before the storm, but the destruction of their homes made for an especially compelling story. Allen appeared in documentaries and articles. That attention, he believes, did not sit well with some bandmates. In 2006, he and Rebirth parted company.
"Before the storm, everybody was content with their situation musically," he said. "After that, I saw that anything could be gone in a day. I had to figure out a way to set myself up to where, if it happened again, I'd be able to take care of my family."
To that end, he and his band, the Underdawgs, released "Box Who In?" on Threadhead Records. His trumpet, run through an effects pedal, often mimics a guitar on 10 original songs and covers of "A Night in Tunisia, " Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and War's "The World Is a Ghetto."
Branching out, he also toured with nouveau funk band Galactic and joined singer-songwriter Paul Sanchez's Rolling Roadshow.
"Shamarr is one of the most exciting and charismatic musicians to emerge from the New Orleans music scene since the flood, or at any time in recent history, " Sanchez said. "When he plays his horn, heads turn. He has a natural and engaging stage presence.
"I also like to hire him because he is young and sexy, and I get to be old and sagelike and leave the young and sexy to him."
In February, Willie Nelson launched a monthlong tour in support of "Willie and the Wheel," a collection of Western swing songs. He wanted a New Orleans trumpeter for his 12-piece backing band. When someone from Nelson's office called around, Allen's name came up.
As a bonus, he already knew the Nelson canon.
"That dude writes great music," Allen said. "You can tell he has a lot of fun and puts his heart, and stuff he goes through, into his music. I try to take that same approach."
With Nelson, Allen graduated overnight to tour busses, nice hotels and sold-out theaters.
"It was more like a dream than a gig to me," he said. "If Willie called and said he wanted me to play for free, I'd go. That's how much respect I have for what he does."
Nelson encouraged Allen to solo during concerts, engaged him in lengthy conversations on the bus, and even offered to share a smoke with him. The trumpeter declined. "The only thing he said," Allen recalled, "was, 'That's more for me.' "
Their collaboration continues. Nelson invited Allen to a recording session in Austin, Texas, that was to start today. The trumpeter was willing to cancel his Jazz Fest gig to make it, but Nelson wouldn't hear of it.
"He's like, 'Don't miss the festival. That's your band. That's your stuff. That comes before anything' "
So on Monday, Allen travels to the Texas capital to make music with Nelson.
But today at Jazz Fest, he'll make it for himself.
Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune.com
PREACHING TO THE CHOIR
Billboard Magazine
March 14, 2009
A New Orleans Trombonist And A Savvy Nonprofit Label Rebuild
LARRY BLUMENFELD
 Two years ago, trombonist Glen David Andrews could scarcely look up as he described his months "in exile" in Houston and the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer he shared with relatives after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his hometown. "I feel ground down," he said then. But at last year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, he bounded from the stage, gazed up and gleefully announced, "It's my time."
It may well be. Andrews' renewal is evident on his new album, "Walking Through Heaven's Gate" (Threadhead Records), which was released Feb. 24. These songs, mostly hymns, reveal the same fire Andrews brings to street parades and bandstands throughout New Orleans, and they open a window into an important piece of the history that defines Andrews and his close clan of powerhouse musicians-the church roots of their music.
One track, "I'll Fly Away," is related to a particular strand of Andrews' story within the musical history his CD references.
After he sang the hymn during a memorial procession for a fellow musician in late 2007, he found himself in handcuffs. The charges, eventually dropped, included parading without a permit and "disturbing the peace in a tumultuous manner." Andrews performed the same hymn in Spike Lee's 2006 documentary "When the Levees Broke," changing up the final verse to state, "New Orleans will never go away."
The new album was recorded in concert at Zion Hill Baptist Church (where Andrews was baptized) in Tremé, which many consider the oldest black neighborhood in this country. It's filled with songs that Andrews "learned while sitting in the third pew back."
The album also reflects Andrews' collaboration with song writer Paul Sanchez on the title track, Walking through Heaven's Gate, which the two co-wrote.
"I heard Glen David's voice before I saw his face," Sanchez says. "It grabbed me by the throat and made me listen. He's got a massive presence and a massive sweetness that comes through despite his troubles."
Sanchez and Andrews have produced albums with the help of Threadhead Records, a nonprofit label created by a group of local music fans who initially gathered informally through a Web site. In 2006, they began organizing raffles and fund-raisers for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic (NOMC). In 2007, they decided to start funding the music itself, beginning with the singer John Boutté's "Good Neighbor."
"It was never really our intent to develop a label per se," label head Chris Joseph says, "just to do whatever we could to support these artists and get these CDs made." Yet, as a label, Threadhead has begun supporting its projects with local New Orleans performances and print advertisements and label-sponsored industry showcases in Los Angeles.
The formula is simple and sincere: Threadhead loans a production budget, to be recouped through proceeds, along with another 10% as a donation to the NOMC. According to Joseph, the loans the label made for the first two CDs are 90% paid off, including the charitable contribution. Among Threadhead's spring projects are two new CDs from singer/songwriter Susan Cowsill and an album by trumpeter Shamarr Allen.
"It's the least we can do," Joseph says. For Sanchez, who has had a CD and a book, Pieces Of Me, funded by Threadhead Records, "it's a way to rebuild, one song at a time."
Paul Sanchez exits at City Park Avenue instead of Mystery Street
 Keith I. Marszalek / NOLA.comPaul Sanchez performs at Voodoofest Friday, October 24, 2008.Fronting his Rolling Roadshow at the WWOZ/SoCo Stage, Paul Sanchez let it be known he knew exactly where he was. He rolled out "Exit to Mystery Street," the title track of his most recent CD and a reference to an entrance at that other big festival staged in the Esplanade Ridge neighborhood.
"That's for a different fest on a different day," Sanchez said. "Today it's all about Voodoo."
Later, in a set marked by guest turns from trombonist Glen David Andrews and guitarist Alex McMurray, Sanchez noted that his song "Sedation" was written in honor of the anti-anxiety medicine and anti-depressants that have helped New Orleanians get along since Katrina. "We're rebuilding New Orleans one pill at a time," Sanchez joked.
Preservation Hall
ALL ABOUT JAZZ
- NOVEMBER 16, 2008 -
VOODOO EXPERIENCE 2008 (THE HIDDEN VOODOO), NEW ORLEANS, LA
By: MIKE PERCIACCANTE
 Paul Sanchez and The Rolling Road Show
Voodoo Experience: The Tenth Ritual
New Orleans City Park
New Orleans, Louisiana
October 24-26, 2008
Billed as the 10th Ritual, The 2008 Voodoo Experience in New Orleans featured top-shelf headliners Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails, and the festival closer, REM—each a chart-busting superstar act that ostensibly delivered what the crowd expected and came to hear.Lie," and "Echoplex" as well as the best of their old and new catalogue.
Although the performances by these bands realized the potential of which each is capable, setting inspiring examples for the shows by Dashboard Confessional, Panic! At The Disco, Joss Stone and Lupe Fiasco, it was the less heralded acts that made this year's Voodoo especially memorable. Away from the big stages in City Park, off to the sides of the festival area and located on the WWOZ/SoCo Stage and in the Preservation Hall Tent, less visible acts such as former Cowboy Mouth guitarist Paul Sanchez with his Rolling Road Show Band, The Iguanas, Ivan Neville's Dumpstafunk, The Old 97s, Bonerama, The Leo Trio featuring Leo Nocentelli, John Boutte, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Irma Thomas plied their trade to dancing, screaming, smiling and enthusiastic fans. In fact, among the best performances at The Hidden Voodoo were those by Sanchez, John Boutte, Bonerama, and Dumpstaphunk.
| “Away from the big stages in City Park, off to the sides of the festival area, less heralded acts plied their trade to dancing, screaming, smiling and enthusiastic fans.” |
Friday's performance by Sanchez featured new songs from his latest CD Exit To Mystery Street and old songs like the incendiary (pun intended) "Light It On Fire," which was introduced as a song he performed at his very first Voodoo Fest and was guaranteed to not be the last time it would be heard at the festival. Featuring former Cowboy Mouth bassist Mary LaSeignne, Glen David Andrews on trombone, Andre Bohren pounding the skins, Alex McMurray (of the Tin Men) on lead guitar and Sonia Tetlow on mandolin and guitar, the band was tight, fluid and clearly enjoying themselves. Their best performance was "Door Poppin,'" a song about a New Orleans tradition of popping one's nose into a neighbor's screendoor to just say "hello" and quickly socialize. Co-written by Sanchez, Vance Vaucresso and John Boutte, the song, as Sanchez explained after the performance, was about his big sister, the famous jazz singer Lillian Boutte, who is something of a neighborhood gadfly. Also of note was the always relevant "Hurricane Party" and the rollicking yet poignant "At the Foot of Canal Street," which Sanchez introduced as a story about the similarities he and John Boutte shared while growing up in New Orleans in the Irish Channel (Sanchez) and in the 9th Ward (Boutte) during the 1960s.
Boutte's performance on Saturday was, as is every performance he gives, stunning. Born into a musical family, he's an accomplished singer whose work has been featured on compilations as diverse as Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens: The Big Ol' Box Of New Orleans (Shout! Factory, 2004), a 4-CD set, on which he appears with Sanchez, which details the history of music from the Big Easy, andMardi Gras Mambo: Cubanismo! in New Orleans (Hannibal, 2000). Additionally, Boutte has won numerous Big Easy Awards as best Male Vocalist. His performance was both electric and eclectic.
Paul Sanchez's "Jet Black and Jealous" finds new life in Nashville
Paul Sanchez's 'Jet Black' surprise
Fifteen years after local singer-songwriter Paul Sanchez released his solo debut "Jet Black and Jealous, " the title track has found new life in Nashville. Unbeknownst to Sanchez, successful country songwriter and publisher Travis Hill, who writes under the pen name Scooter Carusoe, had rewritten "Jet Black and Jealous" with a country flavor.
The Eli Young Band, a popular contemporary country quartet from Texas, heard Hill's demo and recorded the song as the title track of its major-label debut for Universal Records South; Sanchez is listed as co-writer with Carusoe.
"The version is lovely, very different, but still has bits of my melody, imagery and of course the tag line, " Sanchez said. "I had heard since I was a kid how tough the Nashville music business could be, but my experience with these fellows has been positive and uplifting. They sent me the required documents and we signed the deal."
The Eli Young Band's "Jet Black and Jealous" recently entered the Billboard country album chart at No. 5. "It's kind of surreal to go online and see these young, handsome boys with the words 'Jet Black and Jealous' all over their artwork, " Sanchez said. "But it makes me smile every time."
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When Allen Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi was released, we said, “(Producer Joe) Henry treats these recordings not as pop, jazz nor R only ones who feel that way &B but as art song—an elevated, sophisticated thing that draws from vernacular traditions. As an American treasure, it’s the sort of treatment Toussaint merits, and it’s a treatment that is sympathetic with his piano playing. He is relentlessly tasteful and elegant, choosing notes with care and sensitivity to space and context.”
