Paul Sanchez

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.'"