Tag: New Orleans

WATCH: Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Rhododendron”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Hurray for the Riff Raff
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Song: “Rhododendron”
Album: Life on Earth
Release Date: February 18, 2022
Label: Nonesuch

In Their Words: “[‘Rhododendron’ is about] finding rebellion in plant life. Being called by the natural world and seeing the life that surrounds you in a way you never have. A mind expansion. A psychedelic trip. A spiritual breakthrough. Learning to adapt, and being open to the wisdom of your landscape. Being called to fix things in your own backyard, your own community.

“[The video] is really far out and fun. I got this bodysuit that just looks like the inside of the human body. It looks like you’re skinless. It’s in a scene where I’m playing to an audience of plants. Just really absurd, but I put that suit on and I was like man, this feels really good. It feels like, ‘This is who I am. Let’s just take the skin off.’

“With this ‘Rhododendron’ shoot, something clicked in me where I was like, ‘All I have to do is be myself.’ I had been thinking that I had to be something bigger than myself. I felt like I was just never quite making the mark and then something clicked where I was like, ‘I just gotta be me. I could do that. I could show up and be me. And if people don’t like it, then I don’t know what to fucking tell them.’ It was like a brain shift of, ‘Oh, this can be fun. It doesn’t have to be suffering.’ With so many videos and photo shoots before, it really felt like suffering. I felt so uncomfortable being perceived. I didn’t know who I was.” — Alynda Lee Segarra

Photo Credit: Akasha Rabut

LISTEN: Gina Leslie, “I See You Everywhere I Go”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Gina Leslie
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Song: “I See You Everywhere I Go”
Album: No, You’re Crying EP
Release Date: February 11, 2022

In Their Words: “This song comes from a small bedroom in a yellow house in New Orleans, where I was nursing my heart back to health after a never-ending ending. Surrounded by the photos on the walls, dead flowers and love letters, I was spinning in my heartbreak. This song came to light as a call to letting go, even when I know there’s no forgetting. I had all the pieces of the song swirling around for some time, and my good friend Elise Leavy helped me finish the puzzle.

“I started recording my EP just a few weeks before the lockdown, and the project got stalled for months, so I holed up in that same room and recorded my own harmonies to stay busy. The most sparse track on the EP, I wanted to keep the raw and intimate feeling that song was born from. I sent it to my friend Alex Hargreaves and he added a ghostly and melancholy string section that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.” — Gina Leslie

Photo Credit: Noe Cugny

LISTEN: Loose Cattle, “He’s Old, She’s High”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Loose Cattle
Hometown: New Orleans / New York City
Song: “He’s Old, She’s High”
Album: Heavy Lifting
Release Date: June 4, 2021
Label: Low Heat Records

In Their Words: “It’s great when your friend gets you. But when the friend who gets you is also one of New Orleans’ most celebrated songwriters, can he maybe get you too well? When Loose Cattle’s longtime friend Paul Sanchez (multiple time NOLA songwriter of the year and ex-Cowboy Mouth) told us he’d written a song for the band, we pondered that for half a second. But by the end of the first listen, we threw our arms around him and the song, and turned it into something that we hope would make Porter & Dolly, Johnny & June and John Doe & Exene all equally proud. Even though Kimberly and Michael stopped being a couple years ago, they’re still odd. This one is for all the perfectly mismatched people out there.” — Loose Cattle

Photo credit: Zach Smith

BGS 5+5: Riley Downing

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Riley Downing
Hometown: Kansas City, MO
Latest album: Start It Over

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

It is hard to pick just one artist that has influenced me the most. I am a fan of all kinds of music and genres as well as underdog musicians, current and long since lost in time. It might sound cliché, but if I had to pick one who influenced me the most it’s gonna be Woody Guthrie. If it weren’t for finding Woody Guthrie in high school, I never would have started to appreciate folk, blues, and roots music that made me think the same way that punk rock did at the time. I also never would have ventured out to Okemah, Oklahoma for the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival when I was 18 and met the guys that eventually would form the Deslondes. Woody is an American hero who tried to save the world with a song that gave people hope, morals, an education, a good laugh, and thoughts to chew on to get them through lean times. Woody, as simple as some of his music seems, was much, much more than just a musician. I never stop finding more and more meaning and inspiration from his life’s work. I always loved his copyright law, too. He basically said, warning, if you sing these songs you might just be a friend of mine, which I do and I am.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I have a lot of good memories of being on stage, whether late at night in a small club or a backyard or opening up for and getting to hear some of my favorite musicians every night. But I will never forget the first time we got to play the New Orleans Jazz Festival. That was kind of an epitome of all the hard work and hard traveling the band had done in the previous years all leading up to that one moment. It felt good to be accepted and supported by the New Orleans music community all those years and finally playing the biggest show you can really get down there. It was a surreal honor and never stopped being or feeling like it.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

The first moment I knew I wanted to be a musician was probably when I learned how to finally tune the guitar. Ha ha. I got my first electric when I was 13 and would just smash my fingers all over the strings and thought to myself, this almost sounds like I’m shredding. I thought all strings must have different sounds and tried out different kinds until my cousin finally showed me how to tune the guitar. Then came the power chords and once I was able to put a few together, I knew I needed to write words over them and attempt to sing them even though I didn’t know how to do that either. I did it anyway. Then came the buddies who also wanted to play music as well as different instruments and the realization that this is what we really love to do. I have been hooked ever since and honestly the process of doing that and the joy I get from it hasn’t changed much.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

The elements of nature that I spend the most time in that affect my work are in the rolling hills of Missouri. I love small town life, sitting in the sun fishing all day, or on a back deck BBQing and taking my time driving slow through the backroads that I don’t have to look up GPS, or listening to music or just making up songs and singing a line over and over until I have to stop and write it down. It is true, there is no place like home. I traveled all over the US and world, wide-eyed and wondering where I should end up, but Missouri is home and I always feel a great weight lifted off my shoulders when I’m there. Even when I’m not there I can always write a song that takes me back. I am sad I missed morel mushroom season this year though, but hopefully that means there will be more to find next year.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Food and music do go hand and hand. If I had to make a pairing it would be a small BBQ festival that all my friends bands could come play at and ‘lightheartedly’ compete for who does it right. My Alabama buddies will tell you it’s all about the white sauce and my North Carolina friends will argue that it’s all about the hot pepper vinegar or Carolina Gold sauce. I grew up with a BBQ squirt bottle in my hand and it’s one of my favorite pastimes and meals. Whenever people ask me where to get the best BBQ in Kansas City I have a hard time answering that question because the answer is at my house. I’m not sure who invented the red sauce but I first had it in South Carolina and pick it up any chance I get. I am loyal to KC, but South Carolina definitely gives us a run for our money. KC is spoiled though with wide variety of BBQ sauces and seasoning selections at grocery/hardware stores. I have almost successfully left or sent a bottle of Head Country, an affordable Oklahoma dry rub, to all of my friends’ houses all over the US so when I visit it’s always within reach.

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

The Show on the Road – Samantha Fish

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on The Show On The Road, we jump in our podcast time machine for a face-to-face interview (remember those?) with acclaimed blues and roots guitarist and singer-songwriter Samantha Fish.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • SPOTIFY • STITCHER

Now based in New Orleans, the SOTR caught up with Samantha Fish at the Sugar Magnolia Music Fest in Mississippi before the world shut down — and to be real, until recently, the very idea of airing this interview seemed inappropriate. Two songwriters speaking into one mic at close range? With everyone crammed into a little trailer? No sanitizer in sight? Indeed.

And yet, as in-person interviews are set to recommence and venues are reopening at last, it felt good to remind ourselves what a real Show On The Road conversation feels like. There are no Zoom glitches or quick edits needed here. We talk about favorite restaurants in New Orleans, dream festival lineups, and guitar solo self-esteem pep talks. We question if Elvis’s ghost is watching over us as we record — and you’ll notice the sound is not pristine, but maybe that’s the best part. You can hear the squeak of the seats, the grit in the voices before they are warmed up for an upcoming set. There’s a band warming up in the background and you can hear Samantha tuning her acoustic guitar just off mic before playing her favorite forlorn love-song, “I Need You More,” near the end.

For folks who are not familiar with Fish’s work, she’s been one of the hardest touring bandleaders on the blues and Americana circuit since she started recording out of her hometown of Kansas City a decade ago. She was still slinging and delivering pizzas then, but now she’s an award-winning veteran of various music scenes and a headliner at music fests from the Crescent City (where she played her first Jazz Fest) to jazz and blues gatherings across Europe and beyond. With seven albums and counting under her belt, including her Memphis brass-embellished latest, Kill Or Be Kind, and her standout rocker, Belle Of The West, (created with Luther Luther Dickinson, which we discuss at length here) Fish is proving again and again that she is in it for the long haul.

One of the more moving moments of the episode centers on Fish’s memories of growing up playing the drums and jamming with her musical family. Even then she didn’t see many girls like her taking the lead guitar as their destiny. She had to believe in herself before anyone else would, and here she is. Representation matters and Fish is showing a whole generation of young players that despite Rolling Stone barely mentioning women in their ongoing “greatest guitarists of all time” lists there are new people who walk and talk and look a little different taking up the mantle of guitar god (or goddess).

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

LISTEN: Carsie Blanton, “Mercy”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Carsie Blanton
Hometown: Philly (via New Orleans and Virginia!)
Song: “Mercy”
Album: LOVE & RAGE
Release Date: April 30, 2021
Label: So Ferocious Records

In Their Words: “I wrote ‘Mercy’ for my husband Jon, who I’ve been with for thirteen years. My early experiences of love were a mixed bag; what seemed like love was often more about control. Through Jon, I found out that love can be a gentle force that allows us to become more ourselves. Once I discovered that, I was able to envision a whole world of love; a world that’s less about control and more about compassion.” — Carsie Blanton

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

LISTEN: Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma, “My Resting Place” (Feat. Danny Barnes)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Song: “My Resting Place” (Feat. Danny Barnes)
Album: The Triumph of Assimilation
Release Date: June 1, 2021
Label: Rubinchik Recordings

In Their Words: “‘My Resting Place’ is an old-time bluegrass number inspired by the drive of Jimmy Martin and yet based on a 100-year-old Yiddish poem by Morris Rosenfeld. Known as the ‘poet laureate of the slum and the sweatshops,’ Rosenfeld’s ‘Mayn Rue Platz’ was written to commemorate the tragic events of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in NYC in 1911. The original Yiddish lyric brought to mind the Harlan Howard songs I grew up with as a kid, so the match seemed like a natural. My Bad Livers bandmate and acknowledged five-string banjo master Danny Barnes came in to seal the dark mood to match the lyric. If I’m being honest, I wrote it with Del McCoury in mind as the thought of a 100-year-old Yiddish labor ballad sung on bluegrass stages cheers me to no end.” — Mark Rubin

Photo credit: George Brainard

WATCH: Cha Wa, “My People”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Cha Wa
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Song: “My People”
Album: My People
Release Date: April 2, 2021
Label: Single Lock Records

In Their Words: “The message I am trying to send with the ‘My People’ music video is based on ancestral recall. This is a phenomenon where people consciously or subconsciously draw on the experiences and lives of their ancestors to perpetuate a certain lifestyle or culture. I am also trying to give the viewer an idea of the different spirits that dominate New Orleans. These are represented by the various elements of New Orleans culture shown, such as the Skull and Bone Gang, the Mardi Gras Indians, and the brass band.

“In this video, I juxtapose the origin story of the Mardi Gras Indians with the present day representation of our Black and Native American hybrid culture. Historically, many Black people who escaped slavery in South Louisiana were taken in, guided to safety, and hidden from slavecatchers by sovereign Native American tribes. From the natives, they acquired new customs, language, and dress, and meshed them with African masking traditions. This not only provided immediate freedom from captivity for the people who escaped, but also would eventually provide an avenue for the Black people of New Orleans to feel free on carnival day despite not being allowed to participate in the official Mardi Gras celebrations. (Read more below the player.)

“Brass bands in New Orleans also represent freedom, as they are the centerpiece of second lines. Second lines are long parades that involve high-energy dancing and music, free of cost to anyone who wants to show up. They happen every Sunday, and for many people, no matter how terrible their week might have been, second lines provide a space where they can dance, rejoice in the music, forget about their troubles for a little bit, and feel free. This is a tradition that dates back to the days of the drum circles at Congo Square, where only in New Orleans, Black enslaved people were allowed to play drums, sing, and dance however they wanted.

“The Skull and Bone Gang’s purpose is to warn people of impending danger to their lives. The idea is that they are there to remind people to lead a good and safe life, or they will be the next to die. What better spirit is there to relay the message than a dead man walking? All of these spirits, plus many more are constantly working in New Orleans to make it what it is. Mardi Gras day is just when they all come out to play.” — Aurelien Barnes, video producer/vocalist, Cha Wa

“In a society that is divided by so many things, ‘My People’ reminds us that no matter who you are — rich or poor, big or small — we’re all in this together as humans. Cause one day we gon’ all be in the same boat.” — Joseph Boudreaux Jr, vocalist, Cha Wa

Photo credit: Zach Smith

BGS 5+5: Esther Rose

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Esther Rose
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana, and sometimes Taos, New Mexico
Latest album: How Many Times
Personal nicknames: Dayfire, Wild Rose

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Seeing as how there haven’t been any stages as of late, my favorite recent performance was singing “Handyman” with my nephew Cedar. Cedar is three years old and he knows every single word.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

The moment that I knew I wanted to be a guitar player/songwriter was on my 28th birthday when I wrote a song called “The Game” on piano. ‘Til then I had been a supporting member of my partner’s band, but that morning I wrote a breakup song. I remember thinking I need to learn how to play the guitar immediately and I did.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

In the studio I set up a good-luck altar with little treasures from the past year; pretty rocks from significant places, jewelry, photos, whatever has been close to me for the past year of songwriting I will take off and turn it over to the altar. It is grounding to look over and be reminded of why I wrote the songs, or where I was, or who I was with. I keep a candle burning the entire time. It gives me great satisfaction to blow out the candle at the end of a long day, signifying that the work is over.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Writing “When You Go” was tough. My songwriting golden rule is “no bullshit.” I will write and scratch out lines to get closer to what’s really going on. With this song, I wrote the first verses and then froze. The song starts as this kind of self-assured, “I’m getting over you” song. I was scared to go to the no bullshit place to see what was below the surface. I sent it to my best friend and songwriter soulmate Julia and she urged me to finish it. The next day I wrote the chorus and I remember crying, crying, crying and then crying some more. It’s a very primal feeling; please take me with you.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I want to have a glass of wine and a cigarette with Joni Mitchell. I don’t even smoke anymore.

Photo credit: Akasha Rabut

LISTEN: Alabama Slim, “Someday Baby”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Alabama Slim
Hometown: Vance, Alabama / New Orleans, Louisiana
Song: “Someday Baby”
Album: The Parlor
Release Date: January 29, 2021
Label: Cornelius

In Their Words: “‘Someday Baby,’ well, I tell you, when I first heard the record, it was Muddy Waters that did it. I play it the way I want to play it and sing it the way I want to sing it. That’s it.” — Alabama Slim

Photo credit: Jed Finley