Bridging the gulf
Jazz performers join to help other musicians survive tragedy
Award-winning singer-songwriter Paul Sanchez of New Orleans was ready to bring a celebratory spirit to
his debut performance at the Provincetown Jazz Festival.
It’s been five years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged his city, “and things were starting to come along nicely,”
Sanchez says. “You could see neighborhood kids playing on the street.”
But then the gulf oil spill happened.
Now his performance can’t help but be “tinged with sadness….A much bigger battle is being waged. It’s such
a kick in the guts.”
Post-Kartrina “was a tragic time, but we bounced back,” Sanchez continues. The gulf spill “is not something
people can rebuild from. It will kill the wildlife and put thousands of people out of work. It will last.
Generations of fisherman and shrimpers have...
Bridging the Gap
Shamarr Allen is a born front man, the kind of artist who embraces a showy star turn. Throughout his career performing and recording with brass bands, jazz ensembles, and his recent funk-rock projects, listening to Allen perform has meant hearing his sensibilities and his powerful trumpet drive a band’s rhythms and shape its sound. On Bridging the Gap, his collaboration with veteran New Orleans singer-songwriter Paul Sanchez, Allen’s charismatic musical presence is uncharacteristically subdued.
In its style, arrangements and rhythms, Bridging the Gap is primarily governed by Sanchez’s whimsical roots-rock. It doesn’t feature many star turns at all. The CD’s 10 tracks highlight the duo’s mutual influence and the fun Allen and Sanchez obviously have making music together. The ideas they...
Paul Sanchez on Shamarr Allen
- by Paul Sanchez -
I met Shamarr at an in-store in Louisiana Music Factory Jazz Fest 2006. I was still with the Mouth and he was still with Rebirth. They were playing after the Mouth set, and during our set I sang Randy Newman’s “Louisiana, 1927,” and Shamarr got up and joined me on that song. I said into the mic, “I don’t know who that young trumpet player is but that was beautiful.” I asked him to play on Exit to Mystery Street and hired him for as many gigs as I could.
(THR added: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMP9iEg99es)
“Recording Bridging the Gap was Shamarr’s idea. He called me up one day and said, “Unc, I just saw a video on YouTube of Johnny Cash and Louis Armstrong playing together; we got to make us a record.” I said cool and he said, “We’ll record old people’s music...
Various Artists: Nine Lives: A Musical Adaptation
This wrenching adaptation of journalist Dan Baum's book about nine intersecting New Orleanian lives spanning Hurricane Betsy through Katrina represents the sound of the city in a way that's never been tried before. Screenwriter Colman deKay teamed up with former Cowboy Mouth front man Paul Sanchez (and on many tracks John Boutte') to retell the story.
The story is not an easy one to tell, rendering numbers like the emotion-drenched opener, "Fine in The Lower Nine", more complelling than the toungue -in-cheek "King Of Mardi Gras." The theatricality of the latter, with it's harpsichord and booming Harry Shearer contribution, would border on cloying without the context of the full album. But the scope of the project is so impressive that combing through the story lines becomes part of...
THE BEST OF THE BEAT 2009 WINNERS
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.”
Evidently, we’re not the about the album. It was nominated for a Grammy, and you selected it as Album of the Year and Toussaint, Artist of the Year and Best Piano Player.
We presented these and all of the Best of the Beat awards January 20 at the Harrah’s Theatre and January 22 at the House of...
NEW ORLEANS MUSIC NEWS
Music critic Keith Spera sounds off on the best local CDs of 2009
South Louisiana delivered yet another bounty of CDs in 2009. None shined brighter than Allen Toussaint’s "The Bright Mississippi," his jazzy collaboration with producer Joe Henry and an all-star cast of modern jazz musicians.
Keith Spera/The Times-Picayune
Allen Toussaint’s “The Bright Mississippi,” a jazzy collaboration with producer Joe Henry and an all-star cast of modern jazz musicians.
Threadhead Records, the nonprofit label founded by a federation of Jazz Fest fans, had a big year. The best of Threadhead’s ’09 releases was "How to Be a Cannonball," by man-about-town guitarist and songwriter Alex McMurray. His lyrics are populated by his usual assortment of vivid, eccentric characters in the tradition of Tom Waits and Randy Newman.
Also on Threadhead, the New Orleans...
Farewell to Storyville
The Threadhead Records phenomenon has reshaped the profile of the local recording industry, allowing veteran musicians to make albums that might otherwise not have happened, giving deserving new artists a jump start on their careers and even producing such delightful one shots as this year’s Christmas release. No musician has benefited from this breakthrough more than Paul Sanchez, who has established himself as an important solo artist since leaving Cowboy Mouth with no small help from the label. This is the third Threadhead-financed album Sanchez has made,
and each has been remarkably different.
Sanchez has been preparing to make Farewell to Storyville his whole career. It’s an impromptu,
mostly solo session in which Sanchez tells stories about each song before singing it, a...
PAUL SANCHEZ- FAREWELL TO STORYVILLE
Singer-songwriter Sanchez' offers up more than most on this autobiographical musical journey, as he tells stories about the inspiration behind the music, and mesmerizes the listener with his heartbreaking voice and heartfelt words. Each song is an engrossing slice of life and Paul Sanchez welcomes you into his world with the warmth and grace one expects from the great people of the great city of New Orleans.
My Friend - Paul Sanchez
My intentions for today were simple. To commemorate the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I would create a "Weekend Mix" of some rare live music from the artists and clubs of New Orleans, I would share some thoughts about my favorite city, and with a little luck, singer-songwriter, author, poet, friend and mensch Paul Sanchez would honor my request with a short paragraph sharing his thoughts on the whole mess. At 8:48 A.M., yesterday morning, the music mix was created and while giving it a test run, Paul Sanchez e-mailed and agreed to write something up. At 9:13, the music stopped, my computer went blank and after 2 reboots had realized my entire hard drive had been wiped out. Every photo, every song (about 70,000 of them,) all my writing, GONE! (oh, the irony) We will save...
Community Tied By Strong Threads
Fan-subsidized Threadhead Records keeps the music and money in New Orleans
Singer/songwriter Susan Cowsill points toward a clutch of people sitting and chatting in a backyard in New Orleans' Marigny neighborhood.
"See that woman? The one with the flowers in her hair, waving a fan?" she asks. "She's my record company executive."
Cowsill could have pointed at any one of the 250 or so people in attendance at the annual Threadheads Patry (yes patry, playing off the local patois) in late April. The gathering took place in between weekends of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell and convened people nationwide who connected due to their love for Crescent City culture via Internet chat boards operated by the festival itself. They participate in various discussion "threads," hence the name, and are partners in Threadhead Records — a uniquely
