Meeting Musicial Needs Everywhere: Mikey Junior and His Stone Cold Blues Part 1

As a teen-ager, while waiting tables in a Bucks County, Pennsylvania restaurant, Mikey Jr.’s primary aim was to take care of his customers.

“I worked every single Friday and Saturday night from the time I was 12 to the time I was basically 22. And worked at Italian restaurants,” recalled Mikey. “And by the time I was 15, I was a waiter …I had nothing but requests from Friday and Saturday night because I was really good at anticipating people’s needs and taking care of people.”

These days, he is still anticipating needs—but as a harmonica player of rising reputation in the blues world. As leader of Mikey Jr. and the Stone Cold Blues, Mikey tries to give blues fans the music they want. 

Mikey tries to please his fans through albums, through a heavy touring schedule that these days is taking him more and more frequently outside of the Pennsylvania-to Baltimore corridor he has--up until now--been best known in; and through his role as house musician and booking agent at the Twisted Tail, Philadelphia’s newest blues venue.

Mikey is always busy—he frequently had to put me on hold during our hour and a half phone conversation to handle business.  But that's what comes with having such a love of music that you decide to pursue making a living at it full time.

“You’ve got to be able to work, and you’ve got to be able to get the stuff done,” he said. “You know I do all of the booking, I do all of the promotion, right down to my web design, and designing flyers and posters.”

Born Andrew Michael Hudak in Trenton, N.J., Mikey was heavily exposed to music as a youth through his father, a full-time harmonica player and pianist.

 

 “My dad took me to see James Brown in 1984 when I was four years old at the Trenton War Memorial Building--that was my first concert—and it was great,” he recalled. “I just always loved rhythm and blues, but it wasn’t until I was older that I found blues. I found what I liked so much and a lot of the influences of music that I was listening to, whether it be rap music or even Pink Floyd for that matter. I just fell in love with the blues and Sonny Boy Williamson and B.B. King and Buddy Guy and then, later on, Little Walter and George Smith. And then all of the way down to people like Gary Primich, of course, William Clarke, you know, people like that. “

Mikey lived in Trenton until 1989, when his mother, in search of a better school system, moved him to Bucks County.  He moved back to Trenton at age 20, into a house left to him by an aunt. He has since moved back to Bucks County, into a condo he purchased.

Growing up, he frequently went on gigs with his father, liking best the fifties-themed parties the band hosted at campgrounds throughout the area.

Industrious from a young age, Mikey joined the staff of Salvatore’s restaurant in Morrisville, Pennsylvania as a busboy at age 12.  “And then......(near Morrisville) also was this place called Café Antonio’s,” he recalled. “And a waiter from Salvatore’s went to work there and he liked the way I took care of him so much because I used to really take care of my waiters when I was a busboy. ..(he) liked me so much that when he got a job at this new restaurant that was opening, he called me up and said ‘hey, I can get you a busboy job at this restaurant.’ Well, I only bussed there for a couple of weeks, until they said ‘Hey, if you want to wait tables, you can wait tables.’ And they let me start waiting tables.”

 At 19, he added another trade—real estate—to his repertoire by earning his real estate license. Then, his work days consisted of a nine-to-five job as a real estate assistant, followed by evenings waiting tables.

But the music continued to call to him, and eventually he dropped the waiter’s gig. The real estate job soon followed, and in 2002 Mikey Junior went to music full-time. He starting performing shows; the instinct for customer service that had served him so well as a waiter compelling him to play songs he sensed his audience really wanted to hear instead of dryly spitting out a set list.

Mikey also began to release a series of CD’s, all under a label he created, 8^th Train Records. In 2003 he released The 420 Sessions, an album recorded at a studio in Tarpon Springs Florida and produced by Danny DeGennaro, a Philadelphia area guitarist known for his work in Kingfish, a group that also included Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir. Other notable musicians DeGennaro had worked for over the years included the late Clarence Clemons and Parliament Funkadelic guitarist Michael Hampton.

 

DeGennaro, who died last December after he was found in his Levittown, Pennsylvania home with a bullet wound to his chest, also played on Mikey's album along with bassist Gary “Bubba” Balduzzi, drummer Kenny Suarez and keyboardist Pete Kane.

DeGennaro also produced and played on Mikey’s second album The New York City Sessions, released in 2005. The CD also featured Balduzzi on bass but included a different keyboardist, Glen McClelland, and alternated between two different drummers, Adam Stranburg and Dave Mohn.

Mikey’s present band began to take shape with 2007’s Look Inside My Pocket, including Stranburg, now his current drummer;  and Matt Daniels, a guitarist from New Jersey who had shared the stage at various times with Sonny Rhodes, Walter Trout and Rod Piazza and who had been lauded by a critic from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper as a guitarist whose instrument “crackles especially hard.”  Mikey also brought on bassist Jimmy Pritchard, known for his work with Rhodes and with Randy Lippincott, a Philadelphia-area guitarist who had once played bass for Johnny Copeland. (If you want to know more about Pritchard, check out the post: Jimmy Pritchard  ) 

For his next album, 2009’s  Mikey Likes it, Mikey  brought in Upright Bass Player Mike Lampe, Piano player Bill Heid and guitarist Dave Gross to round out his core band of Daniels, Pritchard and Stranburg.

Mikey and Daniels then decided to branch off into a solo project. The result was 2010’s Pocket Full of Money, an acoustic album that showcased Mikey’s take on more traditional styles.

The Stone Cold’s latest venture is It Ain’t Ours to Tell, released in 2011. A song from that album, “The Cheapskate,” was part of a three-way tie that won Big City Rhythm and Blues Magazine’s “Coolest Blues Song of the Year” award in 2011.

The band also was a finalist in the 2012 International Blues Challenge, held in Memphis in February. It was Mikey’s first time to the finals in four visits over seven years.  He had previously attended the IBC  in 2005, 2007 and 2011.

Mikey said he will soon release a collection of “original Mikey Junior” material. In addition, he and Daniels will travel to France next year to perform.

We began our interview by asking him about the very first time he picked up a harmonica:

BBP:  I know you grew up in Trenton. Tell me how you got into music. You know, the first time you ever picked up an instrument, and especially the first time you ever picked up a harmonica.

Mikey:  Well, I always loved music….I mean you know my dad was a musician, that’s why they call me Mikey Jr. He still is a full-time musician in the Trenton area. He lives in Browns Mills, New Jersey and he taught me how to play piano at first—he always played harmonica and piano. I’d always try to pick up the harmonica as a kid, but never really took it seriously until I was 17. I started being able to make sense on it and then I started to study it, and that’s how I got into the harmonica.

BBP:  So you play the piano in addition to the harmonica?

Mikey:  Yeah I play the piano but very much not professionally (laughs). But I do dabble. I know some songs on both the piano and the guitar and I love music and I play a little bit of piano and guitar as well.

BBP:  What style of music does your dad play?

Mikey: Well he does everything now because he specializes in doing nursing homes these days. He does two or three a day. And I also do them during the day as well too.  That’s what pays my bills for day work. I do between three or four a week; he does between two or three a day. I just got into it a couple of years ago. He’s been doing it for the past ten years. So he works a lot steadier than I do doing that, but I also try to go out on the road and do touring. So I try to work at them sporadically. But anyway, my dad—when I was younger—had a seven-piece, fifties rock n’ roll band where they did “Runaround Sue”  and “Secret Agent Man”  and “the Wanderer,” which is pretty cool because I had a chance to be on a Blues Cruise with Dion this year and talk to him and get my picture taken with him. My dad was real proud of me. My dad used to do all kinds of stuff. He was quite the showman. He used to do “Leader of the Pack” and drive around the bar on a tricycle—a little kid’s tricycle—and my dad’s like six-three. He had a routine where he used to do “Secret Agent Man” and come out in this trenchcoat with a suit on and basically do “Secret Agent Man.” He’d be hamming it up. In his later years he slowed down a bit. He just does a duo show with my stepmom—who I introduced him to—and they travel all throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania doing nursing homes. And they work a little bit of the clubs at night as well, but they mostly do nursing homes during the day.

BBP:  Okay. Now when you were young, did your father take you with him when he did his shows?

Mikey: Oh absolutely!  Absolutely. I remember when my father—I remember distinctively, there’s a picture of me and my dad outside of one of the places he used to work at—that I work at now—in Tuckerton, New Jersey. My friend bought a bar in Tuckerton called Doyle’s Pour House.

(Mikey has to put me on hold to take a phone call, and we resume a short time later)

BBP:  So your father used to take you out and do shows with him…

Mikey: For instance, I got a picture of me at this place Doyle’s Pour House in Tuckerton, New Jersey—it used to be called Cock’s Tail and it was a strip club where my dad and I had our picture taken out in front of there with one of the strippers, of course fully-clothed when I was really young—but yeah, I used to go to his stuff.  He used to do campground gigs where the whole band would go to the campground for the weekend and they’d have a fifties revue party where everybody would dress up in old fifties clothes and stuff and of course it was great because everybody knew that I was the son of the lead singer, you know. So I was a little bit of a superstar in my own right. And I used to sing, and, like you know, my dad would bring me up. I was real into Guns N’ Roses at that time—I think it was like 1989, I was probably nine years old—and he got me to sing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” with the band and stuff like that. So yeah, my favorite times was probably going to the campgrounds to see his band perform and being able to camp out all night. Because needless to say, my dad and his band would be partyin’, so I’d pretty much be unsupervised to do whatever I wanted, so it was pretty fun.

BBP: Wow. Did your father actually take you aside and show you how to play the harmonica?

Mikey: Oh absolutely. My dad taught me a lot about the music business, both musically and businesswise. And yeah, he taught me how to play the harmonica; he bought me my very first Sonny Boy Williamson CD. He bought me my B.B. King CD. And yeah, absolutely taught me how to play the harmonica and the guitar. Other teachers of mine are a guy named Dick Davy in Bristol, Pennsylvania; Big Daddy Lambertson; and I listen to a lot of Steve Guyger. Steve Guyger is one of my heavy influences, as well as some of the people I mentioned earlier, you know. Little Walter. Sonny Boy II probably goes down as one of my favorites as far as the whole package of singing, songwriting. But yes, my dad did have an influence on my music and my career. Another person who was like a musical father to me was a guy named Danny DeGennaro. He just passed away December 28. He was actually murdered in his house from a home invasion, unfortunately. I performed a couple of his songs—one of his songs—in Memphis, Tennessee. I co-wrote a couple of songs with him—he was on my first two albums playing guitar, producing my first two albums, and he taught me a lot about the music business. He was on a record with Jerry Garcia because he was in a band called Kingfish, which was a take-off of the Grateful Dead’s band, with Bob Weir. He also toured with Billy Squire, James Montgomery, I think backed up James Cotton at one point in time. And he also recorded with the late Clarence Clemons—who just passed away—from Bruce Springsteen’s band. He had Clarence on a saxophone on one of his recordings and he was another one who taught me about the music business and stuff like that too. And then I just try to pick up as much as I can, because people a lot of times forget how hard it is to make it playing music full-time and not have another job to support yourself. Which is what I’m doing and I just have to learn everywhere I can from everybody and take what I can learn from each and every person in this business so that I can try to do it to the best of my ability. Because at the end of the day, it’s make or break on the bills, and you’ve got to be able to work, and you’ve got to be able to get stuff done. You know I do all of the booking, I do all of the promotion, right down to my web design, and designing flyers and posters, I do it all. So it’s kind of weird, because people forget that it is a music business and there’s a business side to it that must be tended to or else it’s going to hurt your music career.

 

BBP: Getting back to that, did you ever talk to your father about wanting to be a full-time musician like he was?

Mikey: Actually, yeah.  He told me to quit waiting tables and play music full time.

BBP: Your father encouraged you to play music full time?

Mikey: Yeah.

BBP: That’s kind of unusual..

Mikey:…He told me to quit waiting tables and play music full time. He said you might not have a bunch of money but you’ll be happy. I’m very similar to him and very much like to be my own boss and very much like to do things myself so that they’re done right as well. And to want to be your own boss means that you’re also good at taking orders and following orders and pleasing the boss. Because how can you be your own boss when you can’t please someone else that’s your boss? So I like to think that I’m pretty good at working, because in the music business you have many microbosses; from festival promoters to club owners, they’re all your bosses, so you have to be able to please all of them and get along with all them and put on a good show. Because that’s what we’re here for, we’re here for the music. The music is the most important thing….the music part involves a lot of work and a lot of business. I’m on my computer and I’m on my phone for hours, every day, to promote and for book and for work on tours or whatever I have to do.

BBP:  What your father said, that sounds kind of unusual—I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong about this—you would think that most parents would try to talk their children away from a competitive career like music.

Mikey:  He also told me that I have to be smart and work really hard at it. It takes one to know one and my dad has a house that’s paid off from playing music, so it can be done. But what he also said was, I’d be working just as hard, if not harder, but I’ll be doing something that I love.  So even though I won’t have a lot of money, I’ll still be happy because I’ll be doing something that I love. However, it can be done and you can make a decent living out of it. However it’s a lot of hard work. But if you love what you do and you love communicating with people and you love doing that kind of stuff, then it’s not going to be a problem for you. And it’s been great: this is my ten year anniversary, I quit being a waiter in 2002 to be a full-time musician. So it’s now 2012. In 2002, I was living in Trenton, New Jersey. I bought a house across the river in Pennsylvania—I bought a condo in Pennsylvania—and I now have another house that I live in that I bought at a sheriff’s sale because I have a real estate license. Because when I was 19, before I got into music, I was supposed to be the first in my family to go to college. I wasn’t into going to college. So instead of going to college, I went and got my real estate license at the age of 19, started doing real estate nine-to-five being an assistant for a real estate firm, and then go to do a waiter job from five o’clock at night. And then what I did was quit the waiter job, started playing music full-time while I kept my assistant job at the real estate firm nine-to-five. And then I was making enough money to the point where I was working enough where I was coming into the office very tired. So I had a real good relationship with the firm that I was working with and they believed in me because they would come to see a lot of my shows, and they said “go ahead and make a go at it” because I told the man “I’m probably going to leave the office, starting to do this music thing full-time.” And I’ve been doing it full-time ever since 2002. I think I stayed at the real estate office until 2003. I dabble in real estate as a hobby of mine. My friends, they want to buy a house. I’m not a real estate agent to the point where I take people out that I don’t know to see houses. A few of my friends, if they want to go look at a house or one of them tries to buy a sheriff’s sale property or an investment property or something like that, I’m into that kind of thing. I put down real estate and waiting tables to do music full-time.

(Mikey then puts me on hold again, returning a short time later)

BBP:  Are the calls that you’re answering, are these potential bookings for your band?

Mikey: Yeah, absolutely. And I book a club in Philadelphia. My friend, who’s a theatre actor—one of my friends that used to come see me play all of the time—bought a club in Philadelphia and turned it into a blues club on Second and South Street called the Twisted Tail. The website is thetwisted tail.com…

BBP: Yeah, I noticed that when you sent me a schedule of your shows. I used to live in Allentown and I used to go to Philly all of the time. And I didn’t remember that place so I figured it must be new.

Mikey: Yeah, it’s a new place. It’s right in South Philly. It’s a great place; I’m the house band there. And I handle the bookings for all of the other bands. I’m really trying to make it a national spot for national acts. So that has my phone ringing as well. And it also helps me to talk with these agents to let them know who I am and say: “Hey, if you can ever get me something, if you have all of the people in your roster already working and you’d like to get me something,  you know I’m available.”

BBP: Okay, so there’s a double benefit to that…

Mikey: Yeah!

BBP:  Now I understand you had an extensive record collection when you were coming along and that that kind of influenced your tastes.

Mikey: Well  that’s another thing talking about me spending money—my dad has a very big record collection that just got legacied to me because my dad had basically no room for it and it was at his sister’s house and like I said, I bought this house at a sheriff’s sale so I used to have a little condo, now I live in a full-sized house. You know single family home or what-have-you. So I was able to get my dad’s record collection, so yeah growing up I always had tapes and CD’s . I bought all kinds of blues box sets and all of that stuff, and yeah, I still have it, I still have my record, CD and tape collection. Now I have my dad’s. So yeah it influenced me big time, you know, records that you know will—I call them the “island records:” If you can only take ten  records and they put you on an island. You know they’d definitely be B.B. King, Sonny Boy, Muddy, Little Walter, (Howlin’) Wolf, Steve Guyger and a couple of killer guitar players too. Buddy Guy, Junior Wells. So these are guys that I heavily find myself—if I call out a cover song—because I like to do my originals, but I love to do covers too. And if I call out a cover song by some people that I just happen to want to play and want to perform their music straight off the top of my head, those are the people who have heavily influenced me, you know what I mean?

BBP: The harmonica. What made you gravitate towards that as an instrument?

Mikey: Well one night I was jamming with my friends, my friends were all jamming together and there was no piano. And I saw that there was this harmonica on the table and I picked it up and started playing it. I was 17, and it just seemed all of a sudden to make sense to me. And the next day I went out and bought a whole set of harmonicas because, like I said, I always worked and I like to spend money.  I told my dad it was a real harmonica. That day, he showed up at my house with a B.B. King CD and a Stevie Ray Vaughn and a Sony Boy Williamson CD, and he’s like “these are the three blues CD’s that I really like. Listen to these and try to play along with them. “And that’s exactly what I did. I played along with the CDs and he would show me some pointers. Mostly I taught myself by listening to CD’s, playing along with CDs, but when I say people are my harmonica teachers, they’re the people that “here. Let me show you this trick. Let me show you how to do that better.” Because usually they build on something that they see, which is how I teach harmonica now. Because that’s another thing that I do, during the day on Tuesday and Thursday I give harmonica lessons.

BBP: Okay…

Mikey: So I have a student on Tuesday and a student on Thursday. And of course I do nursing homes, I between three and four of them a week.

BBP: You do those alone—by yourself—or with a band?

Mikey: I do them by myself with tracks. Like I’ll get karaoke tracks with the vocals taken out of it and then I’ll go sing and play harmonica. I mean I don’t want to cheapen it by saying karaoke tracks, but I mean basically they’re the tracks without the vocals on them, and I go and I go and I perform. And I do almost the same kind of material that I do—you know it’s a blues show. I book it as “Mikey Jr.’s Blues Show”  and I go in and I do some of the songs that are blues songs and some oldies stuff too. And then, you know, if they request it, what I’ll do is, I’ll go home and learn it. I had a guy request some Dean Martin and some Frank Sinatra, so that’s what I did: I went home, I went on the computer , I got the tracks to do the Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Because I mean I  know the songs because of growing up as a waiter in Italian restaurants, I know the words to the songs. So, you know I’ll do them too. And those are kind of the older, older ones, you know. Sometimes you do the nursing homes that are not as old. But then sometimes you do the nursing homes that specialize in like 80- or 90-year-old people. And they’re the ones like “Hey, we want to hear this. You know Louis Armstrong, you know this, you know that?”

BBP: So you kind of have a fan base? You play the same nursing homes and within those nursing homes you have people, they hear you regularly and…

Mikey: Yeah. They live there and absolutely, yep. And I’m part of their entertainment and they’ll hear me play and they’ll say “hey, next time can you do some Dean Martin?” And I go “Yes sir!” And I’ll show up and have that Dean Martin ready for that guy. There’s the one guy in this nursing home, he loves Dean Martin.

BBP: Do you ever use the nursing home as sort of a sounding board for new music that you might want to do with your band?

Mikey: Oh yeah!  There’ll be stuff that—yeah! That’s another thing: me and my band, we work so much….I used to have this every single Wednesday night gig in Lawrenceville at this place J.B.’s. For five years straight we played there every single Wednesday night. And we don’t rehearse. We work together so much that we very very seldom rehearse. Even for the IBC, there was no rehearsal. We just do the songs that we do, and because we’ve been doing them together for this many years, because we do them together every week or whatever, we very seldom—I mean I can count on one hand whenever we had a rehearsal, and it’s always before we go to record. It’s just because we don’t want to waste time in the studio, we just want to get a quick rehearsal down, and we only rehearse when we go to record really.

 

 

Zac Harmon

A few weeks ago I ran across a sight that seemed totally incongruous: a concert by bluesman Zac Harmon that wasn’t filled to capacity.

It’s not that any musician can’t have a poorly attended gig; it just seems it’s a shame when the musician is as good as Harmon.

I caught him August 3 at a show organized by the D.C. Blues Society at the American Legion Post 268 in Wheaton, Maryland. As you can hear from the videos I shot, the problem certainly wasn’t his performance.

And the D.C. Blues Society worked hard to promote the event, as they do on everything they put together.

If Zac Harmon is a well-kept secret, he shouldn’t be (I don’t really think he is; it’s just that I can’t figure out what cosmic forces led to the event being so poorly attended). I’m here to say that, whether you’re a fan of the blues or no, you need to pay attention to Zac Harmon, either through his live performances or his recordings, the latest of which, Music is Medicine, was released in July on Urban Eagle Records to very positive reviews.

First, the guy has a pretty interesting background. He’s a person who, at least professionally, split away—but eventually returned—to what he loves:

According to his website, Harmon was born in Jackson, Mississippi, home of the Farish Street district, which nurtured blues legends like Elmore James.

In high school, he played gigs with Z.Z. Hill, Sam Myers and Dorothy Moore.

But he had to follow a more pop-oriented  course after moving to Los Angeles in the 1980s, becoming a writer and producer for rhythm and blues acts such as the O’Jays, the Whispers, Karyn White and Alexander O’Neal.

Still, the blues in his blood continued to call, and in 2002 he recorded his first blues project Live at Babe and Ricky’s Inn. Two years later, he and then-band the Mid-South Blues Revue won the title of “Best Unsigned Band” in the International Blues Challenge.

The rest is blues history, with perhaps one high point being his involvement in the 2008 Bluzapalooza tour which brought top blues talent to Iraq and Kuwait to perform for U.S. service personnel.

I interviewed Harmon just outside the door of the American Legion hall: you can actually see him graciously opening the door for folks who passed us as we talked.

He talked about how Music is Medicine is dedicated to his father, George “Doc Harmon” Harmon, who passed away May 29 and whom he described as “the most important man in my life.” George Harmon was also important to the history of the city of Jackson. Known as the city’s first African-American pharmacist, he owned a store on Farish Street for over 60 years, according to his son.

Harmon also talked about his friendship with the late guitarist and fellow Bluzapalooza alumni Michael Burks, who died in May and with whom he was supposed to tour this year:

Well, can’t let you get away without hearing some of the show. He starts this one off by introducing the band:

And here he is with his 2008 release “Hattie Mae:”

Anyway, the point of all this is that if you have a chance to hear Zac Harmon, take it. With him on stage, there shouldn’t even be room to dance...

Sugar Ray Norcia Part 2

Here is part 2 of our interview with Sugar Ray Norcia:

BBP: What harmonica players do you like or what blues players overall do you like? I know you did an album in 1999 with several musicians-- Billy Branch and… I believe it was called Superharps? Charlie Musselwhite…

Sugar Ray: …And James Cotton.

BBP: Yeah…

Sugar Ray: Those are the kind of players that I like. And of course I like other traditional kind of players like Rod Piazza and Kim Wilson and Mark Hummel. These are guys that are thinking the same way I do.  But there’s really not a whole lot of them these days.  I sued to be able to go out and see Muddy Waters, Otis Rush and work with these people.  Now, of course, they’ve passed on, so now it’s tough to hear the real deal.

BBP: So you don’t like the new guys who are coming along?

Sugar Ray: I wouldn’t want to name anyone specific. It’s just that sometimes feel that, when I’m at a blues festival for example, I feel almost like I don’t fit in. Because we’re so traditional.  Then when the audience hears us, they’re like “Wow! I haven’t heard anything like this in a long time!” So hopefully that will continue.  But, uh, if I want to listen to reggae, I’ll listen to reggae. But  if I go to hear a blues band, I want to hear blues.

BBP: Speaking of reggae, it mentioned that you actually shared a bill with Bob Marley.

Sugar Ray: I hardly remember that, but yeah, that was in Europe on some TV show that was actually a variety show, like an Ed Sullivan kind of thing.  And he was one of the artists on it. We didn’t hang out or talk or anything, but I do remember that.

BBP: How do you feel about other kinds of music? You said you like country. Are there other types of music that you like as well, besides country and blues?

Sugar Ray: Yeah, absolutely. I like good music.  You know that old saying, there’s two types of music, good music and bad music. What makes me relax, say when I’m around the home—I live in a rural area, I really do live in a cabin in the woods.

BBP: In Rhode Island?

Sugar Ray: in Rhode Island, yeah.

BBP: Outside of Providence?

Sugar Ray: It’s south of Providence but it’s surrounded by 14 thousand acres of state land.  Sort of like state forest, so it’s a very nice place to live for me.

BBP: Yeah. Sounds like it.

Sugar Ray: Yeah. When people think of blues artists, they think of Chicago or the big cities.  But not necessarily so, so..

BBP:… It gives you inspiration?

Sugar Ray: Yeah, my inspiration is being out here in my cabin and having solitude.  And listening to the birds playing and writing the blues. But I was going to say that I listen to classical music. I have friends who have a home in Hawaii. I really love Hawaiian music, that’s why I like a lot of the old country recordings with the steel guitar or the lap guitar, which is incorporated into Hawaiian music, so it really soothes my soul. Same thing with classical. I like a little reggae and ska music. It depends on what mood I’m in, you know.

BBP: Right. Right. I understand.  You know also I read somewhere, you apparently had some interaction with Roosevelt Sykes.  I’ll tell you why I asked about that.  Actually when I went to college—I went to college in Connecticut; I went to Wesleyan in Middletown.  And back when I was there, they used to bring all kinds of jazz and blues people in.  And they brought Roosevelt Sykes in and I had no idea who he was. I guess he’s been dead for many years now, right?  He played harmonica, right?

Sugar Ray: Well, he sang and played piano. ..

BBP: Right..

Sugar Ray: And he always wore an impeccable suit with his big, kind of 1950’s top hat.

BBP: Yes!

Sugar Ray: …And he had an eight-inch cigar; you know one of those big cigars.

BBP: Uh huh! He was a very large man. I do remember that.

Sugar Ray:  A very large man.  He was actually the first guy—at the end of the night,  one night—he played great guitar as well—we were sitting around and he said—this is before we ever made a record or made any kind of studio recording to speak of, and he said “You guys are really good, and you need to start recording.” So that was like a catalyst, you know, to get the nod from a guy like Roosevelt Sykes, that’s a great thing.

BBP: How did you connect with him, though?

Sugar Ray: The same way we did with Big Walter and J.B. Hutto and all that. Make a phone call.  We used to play at a place called the Speakeasy Café and it was a famous place for blues artists to perform. And a lot of the time—most of the time—these blues artists, like Roosevelt and like Jimmy Rogers, Big Walter, they needed a band to back them up.  We were the band in those days, we were actually the house band at the Speakeasy, me and Ronnie Earl  and the rest of the Bluetones. So that’s how we got hooked up.

BBP: Tell me what’s the next move for you. Where do you see yourself going now?

Sugar Ray: Well, I’m under contract with Severn Records down in Maryland to do another record. This is a three-record deal so I’ve got one more to do for them. Hopefully I’ll sign up for more after that, but—we’ll probably go in before the end of the year and make another Bluetone record. I haven’t definitively decided the direction, but I think it will be sort of the same as my last record, Evening. Just do some songwriting, keep it simple and keep it true to ourselves and our hearts and make another damn good record. That’s the next thing. And then in the meantime, I do a lot of gigs on my own as a solo artist, performing with other back-up bands, just as we backed up Big Walter, just as we backed up Roosevelt, or Otis Rush. These younger  bands all over the world now that we connect with through the Internet, they ask me if they could back me up, so I’ve kind of come full circle in that way. So two weeks from now I’ll be in Frankfort, Germany being backed up by a German band, a blues band. I have bands in Italy, I have a band in Latvia, the Baltics, I have a band in Norway, it goes on and on. I’ve got a band in Finland, so I’m able to get on a plane and do three or four dates with these bands in other countries, so that always keeps things interesting, keeps me on my toes.

BBP: Wow. I guess it’s a good way to learn too because you learn what other people are doing, maybe run into styles that you haven’t encountered before…..

Sugar Ray: I have to adjust. I have to do some adjusting.  But the thing is, like I say, with the beauty of the Internet and Youtube and all that, these bands are prepared when I arrive in their countries. They know my songs, they know my material, they know my approach, otherwise they wouldn’t ask me in the first place. So we’re kind of on the same page, whereas years ago you couldn’t communicate quite so easily. So now, as we speak, this band in Germany is preparing a 90-minute set to back me up. I’ve given them the songs that I want to do and they have them, and they’re rehearsing them. So it’s kind of cool.

BBP: What’s the name of the band in Germany?

Sugar Ray: Blues Blend.  I’ve never heard of them. When a band I’ve never heard of asks me to play with them, there I go. I can go on Youtube, I can check them out, see them, hear them. Sometimes—it doesn’t happen too often—but a few times it’s like “Uh, no, I’d better not do this. It is not a good fit.” But most of the time, they don’t contact me unless they’ve been fans of mine and my recordings. So it works.

BBP: They’ve done their homework on you already when they approach you.

Sugar Ray:  Yeah. Exactly. And a lot of times it’s—I hate to say kids—but I’ll be approaching 60 years old in a year-and-a-half and a lot of these guys that contact me are 22, 23 years old.  It’s a real thrill for them to be playing with the old man (laughs), so to speak.  It’s what we used to do. I used to think that Big Walter or Jimmy Rogers was an old man, but if I sit down and think about it, do some math, they were like the age I am now.

BBP: Is playing with kids different than playing with people your own age?

Sugar Ray: My observation is, years ago, there weren’t many players who could grasp the blues, the American roots music of the blues. Well that’s changed in a good way, you know.  There are guys all over Europe and Scandinavia who can really play, I mean they got it. I’m floored with some of these guys that I work with: they’re really good.

BBP: Do the foreign bands play better than—I won’t say “better” than the American bands—do the foreign bands play different than the American bands? I mean is their approach different?

Sugar Ray: It used to be different in a bad way. They didn’t grasp the “feel” of the music.  But all that’s changed: they really play well. I’ve played with a lot of them. I’m Italian myself, even Muddy Waters told me “Italians got soul.” (laughs)

BBP: How did that feel when he said that to you? You felt vindicated I guess.

Sugar Ray: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes “and that pasta you guys eat? Soul food!” It really comes around, there are great players out there now, around the world.  We got a recording from a guy named Hoppin’ Joe, I think? Anyway, he’s Japanese, harmonica player, who’s a big fan of mine and of Big Walter, too.  So he sent me a couple of tunes that he recorded, that I’ve written, you know. So he covered a couple of my tunes. He sang in Japanese. What a trip that is to hear, you know!

BBP: Did you like it though, did you like what he did?

Sugar Ray: I did, yeah. He sort of like played my solos and copied them not-for-note and I always have not been a fan of doing that. But it’s a wicked compliment, you know. I grew up listening to records of Sonny Boy and Little Walter and stuff, and I know a lot of harp players will just work for hours and hours to play the exact Little Walter solo from the record. You’ve got to be good to do that but it doesn’t mean much to me. It’s already been done. I think if Little Walter were alive, and he were playing that song, he would play a different solo than he did on the record. I’m sure of that for the most part.  So to copy something verbatim is not always the best approach.

BBP: Yeah, I guess it isn’t.  Well another thing I was curious about was, I’ve read you apparently had some distribution problems with JSP.

Sugar Ray: Oh yeah. It was a bootleg record. It was recorded at the Knickerbocker in Rhode Island that I was speaking of earlier. So that was totally put out without authorization and obviously without payment to Walter and his family, or to anybody…it just wasn’t a cool thing.

BBP: Right. So they never made good, they never paid royalties to you guys for what you did?

Sugar Ray: No. No. We did meet up with the guy at one point, it probably says that in the story, I don’t remember—and he said “yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll be taking care of you guys.” But we never saw nothing. It’s one of those classic blues stories where the musician gets taken advantage of.  You read about it in books, but here it is. It happened to us.

BBP: Yeah, that’s why I asked you about it because it does seem to be kind of a longstanding problem with  blues musicians. There are some record companies that are more honest than others. Are there a lot of unscrupulous people in the business?

Sugar Ray: Yeah, you know, yeah. As in any business,  I can imagine. Just watch the news.  But it’s so hard out there to make a living. I hate to see fellow musicians being taken advantage of.

BBP: Yeah. I mean what do musicians do these days for health insurance? I mean that’s a big issue.

Sugar Ray: I know I don’t have it.  And I’ll go to places like Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Norway..these people really have their shit together when it comes to—they pay higher taxes, but they have free universities, education. Their health benefits…are provided for them. When I tell them I don’t have health insurance, they almost fall off the chair, like “What?” It doesn’t even compute. They say “That must be a heavy load on your shoulders.” And (I say) “Of course it is, yeah.”

BBP: Wow. You’re almost 60 years old, so…..

Sugar Ray: Yeah, it’s a terrible thing.  That’s why you see so many benefit concerts and whatnot for musicians, because they probably don’t have insurance.  We had to put together a special show to pay for Big Walter Horton’s gravestone. There was no money for that. That goes to show you.

BBP: Well, I know you have a lot to do. I just want to ask you one more question.

Sugar Ray: Sure…

BBP: Of all the musicians you ever played with—and I understand you played with Pinetop (Perkins) too—what was he like?

Sugar Ray: Pinetop, he was a sweetheart.  He was an example of like the Eveready Battery type of thing. You know that commercial?  I’ve seen him in so many different places . Probably Europe…I’ve seen Pinetop everywhere at one time or another, and he’s usually the life of the party. Staying up late, playing the piano, having cocktails and just enjoying life. Obviously, it worked for him, didn’t it?

BBP: Yeah! He lived for a  long time, didn’t he?

Sugar Ray: Yeah.

BBP: And it wasn’t time spent in a nursing home, either. He was actually out there performing. …

Sugar Ray: …Right up until the end….that’s right. That’s amazing.

Sugar Ray Norcia Part 1

These days, harmonica player Sugar Ray Norcia gets invitations from young musicians all over the world that want to play behind him.

“Two weeks from now, I’ll be in Frankfort, Germany, being backed up by a German band, a blues band,” he said. “I have bands in Italy, I have a band in Latvia, the Baltics, I have a band in Norway, it goes on and on. I’ve got a band in Finland, so I’m able to get on a plane and do three or four dates with these bands in other countries, so that always keeps things interesting.”

This current trend in his life reminds Norcia—now about a-year-and-a-half away shy of his 60^th birthday—of his own time as a Young Turk playing behind blues legends of the past. Over the years, Sugar Ray Norcia and the Bluetones, which will headline the D.C. Blues Society’s annual concert at Carter Barron in Washington, D.C. on September 1, have backed Roosevelt Sykes, toured the Midwest with J.B. Hutto and played in a New York City revue that included Hutto and Big Walter Horton.

A native of Stonington, Connecticut, Norcia first started to make his mark on the New England music scene in the late 1970’s through the band Sugar Ray and the Blue Stompers.  He soon joined forces with guitarist Ronnie Earl to form the Bluetones, and the group began playing Sunday nights regularly as the house band at the Speakeasy in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The band took its talents on the road as well, playing clubs such as the No Fish Today in Baltimore, The West Virginian and The C&O in Charlottesville, Virginia and the Childe Herald, Desperados and Columbia Station in D.C.

In addition to its own shows, the group started to form the team-ups that would make it famous, including with Horton, whom it backed in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts; Providence and Westerly, R.I.; New York City and Pennsylvania. A performance at the Knickerbocker Café in Westerly with Big Walter was turned into a recording on JSP Records.

The group also took its talents to more faraway venues, including two separate month-long tours of Spain, and the Midwest tour with Hutto, who had first encountered the Bluetones while looking for a band to work New England with. 

One time during the tour with Hutto, the performers actually thought they saw a U.F.O. while driving on an Illinois highway.

In 1991, Norcia started a seven-year stint in Roomful of Blues. His time followed that of Ronnie Earl, who had played for the group from 1979-88.

In 1999, Norcia teamed up with harmonica players James Cotton, Billy Branch and Charlie Musselwhite for the Grammy award nominated album, Superharps.

With the Bluestones, Sugar Ray has released eight studio albums over the year, the latest, Evening in  2011 on Severn Records.  The album garnered four nominations in the 2012 Blues Music Awards, including Album of the Year.

We started our interview with Norcia talking about the early days of the Bluetones:

BBP: Sugar Ray! I understand you’re from New England, the Rhode Island area, and that way-back-when you used to play with Ronnie Earl. You guys were together in the Bluetones?

Sugar Ray: In the early days, a long time ago. That’s how I met the ‘Tones really, is when I started playing with Ronnie Earl and Mudcat Ward, the bass player. I graduated from high school in 1972 so it wasn’t long after that when I met Ronnie and the boys.

BBP: And I read you guys once did a concert in Spain. You were there for a month. Or actually it was two tours.

Sugar Ray: Yeah that was in the early days too when a lot of American bands and our contemporaries were not traveling to Europe. Mudcat’s brother was going to school there and he hooked up a month-long tour twice back in those days. And you know we were really green back then. We didn’t know how to go about travelling with equipment, and so we brought all of our drums with us on the airplanes, and amps. It was kind of crazy: you don’t really do that. But we did it…we used to carry all of our equipment  gig to gig. It was crazy. Those were great memories.

BBP: That’s incredible. So tell me how you and Ronnie Earl first got together.  How did that happen? I understand he was playing up in the Boston, Massachusetts area and he needed someone for his band? Well, I’ll let you tell the story…

Sugar Ray: Well, yeah, I’d been playing for years and years before I met Ronnie in various bands here in Rhode Island. I live in a bordertown; I grew up in Stonington, Connecticut, which is right next to Rhode Island on the coast. I was in school, yeah, I had been playing blues, always have been playing blues, (laughs slightly) always will be playing blues. But...my drummer was called in to play with Ronnie Earl at this club in Providence, Rhode Island, and yeah, Ronnie was looking for a singer. And my drummer said hey, I’ve been working with Sugar Ray for years and to give him a call. And the rest is history..I went up there and we joined forces and what a force it was. We had a great band, great tours, ‘til Ron was called to play in Roomful of Blues years later.

BBP: And you went on to play with that band yourself after a while, I think…

Sugar Ray: And I went on to play with that band a few years after Ronnie left it. I grew up with Roomful of Blues here in my hometown of Rhode Island.  A little place called the Knickerbocker Café, where Roomful played every Sunday night, I would go down there, even though I was underage at first. When I used to sneak into the Knickerbocker and see Roomful, they would bring in guest artists. And by artists I mean like Eddie ”Cleanhead” Vinson, Joe Turner,  Helen Humes, Joe Houston and all of these great players. So I really got an education.

BBP: Well tell me how you got your start way-back- when in music. Were your parents musicians?

Sugar Ray: Yeah. I came from a musical family. I grew up with a band rehearsing down in the basement of my house. That would mean my two uncles, who played guitar and bass, and my brother played piano and sang. And they would rehearse down in the basement when I was just a youngster. My father was a music teacher. My mother was a jazz singer. So yeah, I was surrounded by music and once I started listening to blues when I was in high school and friends would bring me some of their blues records, that was it—I never  turned back. I fell in love with it.

BBP: Wow. Tell me your father’s name? Your mother’s name?

Sugar Ray: Yeah, my father was Albert Norcia and he even wrote a book; it’s out of print now, but it was called “The Voice.” Obviously, he was a voice teacher in the public school systems and also privately at home, where I would sit in on his lessons—that’s how I got my tips on how to sing correctly. My mother, Louise Norcia, she’s still alive, God bless her. She’s 93 years old.

BBP: Wow…

Sugar Ray: Yeah…

BBP: And she lives in Rhode Island?

Sugar Ray:  Lives at home in Rhode Island, and she tells me that she has a tough time singing now (laughs). But she can still sing. She’s got a sweet voice.

BBP: What made you choose the harmonica over other instruments?

Sugar Ray: Well again, my father was a great singer, but he also was a great harmonica player. From as far back as I can remember, you know, he had a Hohner harmonica in his pocket and we had a lot of picnics, family gatherings back then.  Because we lived in that area where it was all aunts and uncles—Italian community—everybody  built their houses close together in the same neighborhood.  And so at parties and get-togethers, he would play the harmonica and everybody would just have a great time whenever he brought the harp out and I always noticed that he was like the head of the party playing around the campfire. I just wanted to do that someday. So when I took it up, I started learning from these records I was getting, I started learning how to bend notes and play blues on the harmonica, which he was not doing. He was playing straight harp, country kind of tunes, campfire tunes. So I brought it to another level.

BBP: Right. So what was his reaction when you followed in his footsteps, but in a different way?

Sugar Ray: He was all for it. He was very supportive of what I did. He was sort of living the dream through me because he never played out except for maybe his school performances with the glee clubs and the choruses. But he never got to go out and play with a band and travel musically. He warned me that it was a tough life, but he was very supportive of me. He came to my shows. He used to give me hints. It was very cool. It’s nice to have the support of your parents.

BBP: Yeah. Definitely. Wow. I understand that you were very friendly—or you had a good relationship with—Big Walter Horton. That you guys were actually playing together in Indiana, Chicago.

Sugar Ray: Yeah, that’s true.  Yeah that’s one thing Ronnie did back in the early days when I was working with Ronnie. We would also, as Roomful of Blues did, feature artists that we would fly in, say from Chicago, Big Walter being one of them. And we did that quite often; we actually recorded two live CD’s with Big Walter. So it was a wonderful experience for me. I would normally start the set off playing a couple of songs, playing harp and then call Walter up and he would finish up the set.  Some nights we’d play duos; that was a real treat. But we would share hotel rooms, and yeah,  I got to know him quite well. Great guy.

BBP: And also, J.B. Hutto. Is that the same J.B. Hutto that’s Little Ed’s…

Sugar Ray: Yes, that would be his uncle.

BBP: Yeah, I thought that was the same person.

Sugar Ray:  Yeah. Uncle J.B.  We considered him a Bluetone, a member of the Bluetones at one point, because he worked with us just about every gig we did for quite a while. Hubert Sumlin was another example of someone who played guitar for us—with us—for quite some time.  So we had some great—Otis Rush, we backed up quite often, Jimmy Rogers—so that was our school.

BBP: When you say “back up” you were actually playing with them on stage?

Sugar Ray: Oh absolutely, yeah.  That’s another one that I did. Jimmy Rogers, we did a live recording with him, in Bremen, Germany, which you can find on DVD and also on CD. It’s a great recording.

BBP: I think you’re on your seventh or eighth recording right now?  Last one was released I think about three years ago?

Sugar Ray: Yeah, something like that. No, our last release was called  Evening, last year.. That’s the one that won five nominations for the Blues Music Awards this past year.

BBP: Yeah. Wow. One thing I was also curious about was: you used to tour a lot, you were on the road a lot, back in the day. That was one thing that struck me when I was doing my research about you. And there was one incident, well I wouldn’t call it an incident, but it was an encounter with the police. I think it was, you, with J.B. Hutto in the back, and there was another guy in the car, driving.

Sugar Ray: Yeah. Our drummer, Neil.

BBP: ..And the cop apparent was…you had just seen a UFO or something like that?

Sugar Ray: Yeah. Obviously you read some of Mudcat’s story there on the website.

BBP: Yeah, I did.

Sugar Ray: Yeah, that was just one of those funny things, stories. Late at night, they did think they had seen a UFO, and the funny thing was this cop stopping this car in the middle of the night and swerving all over the road….drinking wasn’t the issue, so he says “You’re all over the road.” And he (the driver) says “I swear I saw a UFO” and the cop shined the flashlight in the back seat and there was J.B. Hutto,  and he was a very dark-complexioned man and he’s just sitting there with this big smile on his face. And the cop said, “Did you see the UFO, sir?” And he was like “Uh-huh! Yes sir! I saw it!” (laughs). I’ll just never forget stories like that.  There are many more that we probably forgot. J.B. was quite an entertainer. He would play on his back, kick his feet up in the air. He was the one who started that tall, stovepipe type of hat that he wore. He made them himself. Homemade hats.  I notice L’il Ed does the same thing, so he’s taking after his uncle.

BBP: Yeah, I have an interview with him on my blog. It’s kind of funny when you hear him talk about that.

Sugar Ray: My father used to wear a paper bag on his head, you know. He was quite a character too.  When he worked in the garden or something, he’d take a paper bag that you would go grocery shopping with, and after grocery shopping and he’d throw it up and wear it as a hat. And it’d look like J.B. Hutto’s hat, to tell you the truth (laughs). It was just one of his little quirks, being funny.

BBP: You used to do that too. You wore a cowboy hat or something?

Sugar Ray: I’ve worn a lot of hats through the years. One short story: we played in New York City, Central Park—big show—I remember. And we got a picture in the  New York Times, but it wasn’t a picture of the band. It was a picture of our sound man wearing a paper hat. So he got the publicity: “Sugar Ray and the Bluetones soundman wears paper hat,” and he had a picture in the New York Times.

BBP: But over the years, you’ve done a lot of touring. It must get exhausting after a while, right? Do you like to do that?

Sugar Ray: Yeah, we’ve done it quite extensively when I was young and 1991 and Roomful of Blues—I was with them seven years for the better part of the nineties—that was like 251 nighters  per year. That’s a lot. That’s traveling back and forth across the country. And then the Bluetones are traveling a lot less now as we speak, but in the past years we kind of slowed down a bit. I couldn’t take that 250 days a year thing anymore. So I don’t know how many days we travel now, but these past few months, if you looked it up—our tour schedule—we would have been all over the place. Oklahoma City, California, Canada, Florida and everywhere in-between. So with this new recording that we did for Severn Records, it got quite a bit of attention.  So we wanted to follow up on that—hit the road—and  it’s harder now than it ever was for me. I  think  for a lot of people, because of the economy and that, but we are still out there doing it. It’s what I do.

BBP: Tell me a little about the new recording.  Tell me about the concept you had before you put it together, changes that concept may have gone through..

Sugar Ray: The previous record we did was called My Life, My Friends, My Music and that also got nominated for Blues Music Awards.  That one there, it was sort of like a Roomful of Blues alumni reunion kind of thing.  I called in all of my old playing buddies from Roomful of Blues and got them all back together in the studio and did a killer record. I wanted to bring it back to the basics of what the Bluetones really represent, Chicago Blues and gutbucket blues, original ideas, original lyrics. It really was kind of an unrehearsed session, I just had lots of lyrics and ideas and just let them flow in the studio. And it seemed to really work, because we were just ourselves, we weren’t trying to be a horn band, a swing band, or a jump blues band. We were just what we’ve been doing mainly through the years and that is a four or five piece Chicago blues band. And I find that these days, it’s harder and harder to find a band that plays in such a traditional way, and so it’s almost like we have our own niche. Again, because we’re so traditional; you know I play a lot of blues festivals but I don’t see much blues…

BBP: What are you seeing?

Sugar Ray: Well I’m seeing some blues-influenced kind of singing.  I’m seeing a lot of rock-blues. It reminds me on the level of something—I don’t know—but  it reminds me of country. I’m a big fan of country—the country music of Hank Williams and George Jones, Merle Haggard. But country has gone, you know, to another place. And so I can’t stand turning on a country radio station. The music sucks. (laughs) I think the blues is sort of going that way too. It’s watered down—people lose focus of where the blues really came from. And that’s just one thing that we don’t do. We don’t forget about Big Walter and Little Walter and Sonny Boy and Howlin’ Wolf and these guys that created this music that I so love.  So I’m just carrying that on.

We'll have part 2 of our interview with Sugar Ray Norcia tomorrow.

A Graphic Look at the Music Industry

This graphic was sent to me by Sarah Thompson of MusicProductionsSchools.net. It offers a very interesting take on the current music industry:
Created by: MusicProductionSchools.net Wow. A lot of that really makes you think, huh?

Pictures that are Worth a Thousand Words....

We always like getting things from readers at Beldon’s Blues Point. And the following pictures are real special. They were sent by Officer J.D. Downs, a member of the police force at the University of the District of Columbia, where I now work. In addition to keeping us safe over here, Officer Downs likes to photograph musicians. And he gets great angles. See for yourself: a picture—especially one taken by Officer Downs—is worth a thousand words.

Here's J.D.'s picture of a performance by the Atlanta-based funk/metal/rock group Mother's Finest. On stage, playing at the Kentland Park Community Center in Landover, MD are singer/co-founder Joyce "Baby Jean" Kennedy and bassist Jerry "Wizard" Seay:

And here's J.D.'s picture of the late, great, Garry Shider, long-time guitarist and musical director for George Clinton's P-Funk All-Stars:

And the next two are of Philip Bailey, singer for Earth, Wind, & Fire (as if you didn't know):

Like I said, a picture is worth a thousand words. We'd like to hear from other readers as well. Contact us at beldonsbluespoint@yahoo.com

Sweet Sounds in New Orleans

Since I’ve started this blog, I have had chances to visit Chicago and Memphis, two cities that are viewed as “music cities:” And I just recently came back from a third: New Orleans. The so-called Big Easy has music in its blood. There, you’ll see impromptu groups of teen-age boys playing horns on street corners. The city’s famous brass bands play picnics, carnivals, street fairs, parades, even funerals. Considered by many as the “birthplace of jazz,” the city was home to many of that genre’s most famous figures: trumpeter Louis Armstrong, saxophonist and clarinetist Sidney Bechet, cornet player and bandleader King Oliver, pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton and, more recently, the Marsalis family.

And not just jazz. Fats Domino was a key figure in early rock-and-roll. The Meters were important trailblazers in funk music. And Master P and Lil Wayne have helped give the Crescent City a hip-hop heritage.

The city is also known as the birthplace of “sludge metal,” a slow-tempo, pessimistic form of heavy metal played by groups such as Acid Bath and Crowbar that draws from southern sock, hardcore punk, grunge and stoner rock, among other forms. And the trumpeter-trombonist Trombone Shorty is mixing several genres to present a New Orleans style sound that is becoming more and more popular around the country.

With all of these different genres, what makes up the New Orleans sound? I figured that New Orleans saxophonist Khris Royal of Dark Matter could answer that question better than I. I talked to him in the city’s Frenchman Street music district: But the first music I had actually heard on this trip to New Orleans was not from a local performer. It was from Toronto-born rhythm-and-blues singer Melanie Fiona, who gave a private, up-close-and-personal concert to the National Association of Black Journalists, then holding its annual convention in New Orleans. The conference was the reason I was in town. Fiona whetted my appetite for live music with performances like this: and this: A few hours later, I learned from locals that you can find a venue for live music practically anywhere in New Orleans. Still, the city has certain districts that are literally packed with clubs frequently so close together that often music from one bleeds into another. My hotel was in walking distance of Frenchman Street (well, a fairly long walk to there!) and Bourbon Street, another popular music district.

Part of the French Quarter, Bourbon Street attracts tourists who like its bars, restaurants, souvenir shops and wild,seemingly out-of-control atmosphere.

Located just outside of the French Quarter, Frenchman Street is a somewhat more subdued two-block concentration of music clubs, restaurants, shops and bars that stretches from Esplanade Avenue to the Gentilly Neighborhood. Two of the city’s better known performance venues, Snug Harbor and the Maison, sit on Frenchman Street, which in general seems to attract a college-age crowd.

Drummer Walter Allen, whose Wa Wa Band regularly plays The Beach nightclub on Bourbon, said Bourbon clubs in general pay better than those on Frenchman Street. However the Bourbon bands are under more intense pressure to attract customers, he said. “Once the register stops ringing they’re going to put someone else in your place who makes the register ring,” he said. Keeping tourists in mind, Bourbon clubs encourage their bands to stick to popular cover songs, he said. And over the years , certain genres have come and gone. First, it was rhythm and blues and Motown, he said. In the air now is contemporary rock.

Musicians playing Frenchman Street earn a living—but not as much of one, he said. Still, he said, they have more artistic freedom. “On Frenchman Street, you can play your music,” he said.

Like a lot of New Orleans residents, many musicians found themselves unable to return home when Hurricane Katrina hit in August, 2005. Russell Batiste, Jr., drummer for the Funky Meters, was wrapping up a long tour and anticipating the trip home when the hurricane hit. He ended up living in Dallas for a year. “I was on tour with this band Bonerama (a funk/rock brass band based in New Orleans), we were out for about a month or so, something like that,” recalled Batiste, part of a well-known New Orleans musical family. “And the hurricane hit just about the end of our tour, about the last few days of our tour, and I’m sitting in my hotel room looking at the TV and seeing people stranded and all of that stuff they kept showing over and over—it was un-fucking-believable—and that’s when the panic may have started setting in. ‘Where’s my family? Where’s my mom. Where’s my people at? How am I going to see them? How am I going to get back to my family?’ That didn’t happen for a while. Until they cleared things out in the city of New Orleans, we weren’t able to come back.” Allen recalled that, after Katrina struck, many musicians evacuated to the Louisiana Superdome (now known as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome), infamous during those days for harrowing conditions suffered by hurricane survivors. Afterwards, many traveled to Austin, Texas, he said. Allen fled Katrina for the Texas-Arkansas border for a couple of days, then traveled to Tallahassee, Florida where he received word of how flooded New Orleans was. He lived in Tallahassee for eight months, he said. Allen said he wishes he had gone to Austin. “They gave a lot of guys work,” he said. In contrast, Tallahassee was difficult for a musician who favors blues, R&B and classic rock. A college town, it was full of musicians who played gospel or "progressive" rock, he recalled. “We don’t play Green Day and Nickelback and stuff like that,” he said. Moreover, getting the help he needed—vouchers for food and clothing and other assistance—was a “slow process” in Florida. Many musicians returning to New Orleans found life difficult, he said. Rents had doubled and sometimes even tripled from what they had been before Katrina. And there were not that many gigs, he said. Some musicians died from strokes and heart attacks, said Allen, attributing the deaths to post Katrina stress. “These were guys that I knew, that, before Katrina, they were fine,” he said. “They were here one day and gone the next.” But he said he was glad to see some people making special efforts to help musicians. For example, a group of displaced New Orleans musicians formed the New Orleans’ Musician’s Relief Fund, which provided grants, instruments and other assistance to musicians. And, buoyed by support from native musical celebrities such as Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., Habitat for Humanity created Musicians Village, a development of 72 homes anchored around a multi-million dollar performance/musical education center named for jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis. “It was a good idea, ‘cause they’re helping musicians own homes, not just rent a place,” Allen said of Musicians Village. Allen said the current trends he sees on Bourbon Street--the extra pressure on musicians to draw patrons, the emphasis on rock covers over other forms of music--have nothing to do with Katrina. He said his Wa Wa band plays everything. When I saw the group, it was playing the R & B oldie “Drowning in the Sea of Love” by Joe Simon: Other bands on Bourbon were also playing rhythm and blues. Up the block, for example, the Ka-Nection band was playing Tom Browne’s “Funkin’ For Jamaica” to a packed house at the Fat Catz music club: And at Bourbon Live, the group BRW was performing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” Elsewhere on Bourbon Street, a 61-year-old trumpeter who calls himself Steamboat Willie was playing a more traditional style at a club called the New Orleans Musical Legends Park. What I heard from him was like this video someone else recorded of him about two years ago: Like Royal, Steamboat Willie talked about the New Orleans sound and what made it unique. He also spoke with me about his own life as a musician: Steamboat Willie also talked about the workings of New Orleans music communities, including Bourbon Street and Frenchman Street: Allen said that the musicians who regularly play Bourbon frequently test themselves by sitting in with bands on Frenchman. “I pretty much use Frenchman to gauge my individual talent,” he said. “’Where am I with this guy? Where am I with that guy? I like this guy’s style. Can I incorporate this guy’s style?’ And that’s what I do.” Keyboardist/guitarist David Stocker frequently plays clubs on Frenchman Street. In this interview, among many other things, he talks about what it’s like to play the district on a night when there's a band playing almost every ten feet. We also talked about "Treme," the HBO show that depicts New Orleans' musical community after Katrina: One of the better known clubs on Frenchman Street is the Blue Nile. It was there that I met Khris Royal. Being from Washington, I was tickled to hear his band play a set of D.C. Go-Go music: At the Maison—also located on Frenchman Street—Ashton Hines and the Big Easy Brawlers appeared to be generating a lot of excitement in a near-capacity crowd made up of college-age kids: From a musical point of view, my only disappointment was not catching a zydeco show. Well, maybe next time....