Christmas In New Orleans.

Left: Rev. Lois DeJean, with her lawyer. You can pretty much rule out snow here at Christmas, but since I grew up in the Pacific Northwest I'm used to rain for Christmas anyway. A couple of days ago we got a doozy of a rainstorm, with three to four inches falling in Orleans Parish in a single day. The streets around Tulane flooded so bad that I couldn't get in to work until mid-afternoon, but classes are over and students have (mostly) gone home for the holidays, so all I was doing was cleaning up my office and answering e-mails anyway. Today it's sunny and beautiful, with a predicted high of 64F. Every year at Christmas in New Orleans there's a series of free concerts at St. Louis Cathdral, and Darlene and I always make it a point to catch the Reverend Lois DeJean and whatever ensemble she chooses to field on any given year. The Rev. is a feisty 70 year old African-American lady, the matriarch of a vast clan that includes children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (among them jazz and funk drummer Eddie DeJean) almost all of whom are involved in some capacity in the Reverend DeJean's various choirs and gospel ensembles. The Rev. herself is a high-octane gospel singer who never fails to 'get house,' even in a Catholic cathedral full of (mostly white) tourists. The Rev. DeJean is also a tireless community activist, and president of the Gert-Town Residents Association. Gert-Town, a poor-as-dirt neighborhood that nevertheless has spawned great musical talents like Allen Toussaint and is the home turf of Big Chief Larry Bannock and his Mardi Gras Indian Tribe, the Golden Star Hunters, was hit hard by the flood. Most of it's residents are still displaced, and as if that wasn't enough, a large chemical storage facility spilled toxic substances all over the area when it flooded out. The Reverend DeJean has been working with an Atlanta advocacy lawyer to notify displaced residents that they may have waded through dangerously toxic substances after the flood, and perhaps get the owners of the facility (based in the U.K.) to pay compensation of some kind, and assist in the cleanup. I spent last night sitting in with my good buddy, pianist Fred Sanders, at his solo piano gig at Club 528 in the Harrah's Hotel at Poydras and South Peters Street. My wife Darlene has been going nuts baking Creole Christmas Cakes, and this gave us an opportunity to deliver Frederick's cake to him. We played a few seasonal favorites ("Winter Wonderland," a way-up, be-bop-style "Santa Clause is Coming To Town") and a bunch of standards like "I'll Remember April" and Duke Ellington's Rhythm-Changes workout "Cotton Tail." As we were finishing up, the late-shift band (George French and Friends) started wandering in and taking seats at the bar. Now, you need to understand that all my life one of the most discombobulating experiences for me as a musician has been to have a bunch of super-heavy players come into a club and sit and watch me play. It really puts me on edge. But last night, an interesting thing happened. It didn't bother me. Maybe age is mellowing me, or I have less to prove, or I'm beginning to realize that these people, rather than being gods sitting in judgement, are actually my peers, but I felt totally relaxed. As I was putting my horn away, George's tenor player (long-time Dr. John sideman and old-school New Orleans Be-Bop cat Eric Traub) came over and invited me to come down and sit in on his gig at Dos Jefes this Saturday. Drummer Herman Jackson and I passed a word or two about our mutual friend, clarinetist-educator and jazz guru Alvin Batiste. And my wife was thrilled to be introduced to bassist and singer George French, the man with the most gorgeous baritone in New Orleans, now that the 'tan canary,' Johnny Adams, has left us. The vibe here at Christmas is very different than up north, but it's also the same. There's the same sense of the year coming to an end, the same urge to cleave to family or, in our case, to miss them in their abscence. The streetcars all have red bows and greenery on them, and there's some truly impressive Christmas light displays about. There a lot of different traditions, sure ( the Santa displays around our neighborhood feature black Santas, and there's a heavy French influence in things like Reveillon menus in local restaurants and the Acadian tradition of lighting bonfires along the levee so "Papa Noelle" can find his way) but it still feels just like Christmas. I'm out. See you all in the new year.

Crescent City Steakhouse Up.

It ain't all gloom and doom, apparently. I try to vary my routes to work at Tulane, the better to keep an eye on the city's glacial pace of recovery. Today I drove down Ursuline to North Broad and took a right, and noticed the Crescent City Steakhouse was open. It must be some kind of indication of severe emotional instability, but this absolutely delights me. Pre-Katrina, the Crescent was just one steakhouse among many, distinguished mostly by it's decor (old-school to the max, with beautiful, wooden John-Garfield-style private booths with a curtain you could draw if you so desired) and by it's popularity as an after-Carnival spot with a wide range of clientele; black, white, rich, poor, and everything in between. The real big-time machers, the political movers and shakers and Chamber of Commerce types, tended to gather up the street at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which remains boarded up, head office moved to Miami, not coming back etc. Crescent City joins a handful of other businesses which are gradually lighting up the strip of North Broad that runs from Ursuline to Orleans Avenue, places like the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club (a little mini-complex that contains the clubhouse, a lounge, and a gift shop) the Boss Soul Aquarius barber and beauty salon, and the F&F, a supermarket sized place that sells all manner of candles and charms (including "follow me" oil and "boss fix powder") associated with the practise of Voodoo and Santeria. My new Mid-City neighboorhood was hit hard by the flood. Not damaged on the spectacular level of the Lower 9 or parts of Lakeview, but decimated nonetheless. This hurts on a number of levels. The neighborhood was composed mostly of folks of modest means, many of them African-American, and these are people who often don't have the financial resources to rebuild and return (the guy in F&F told me that none of his regulars from the immediate neighborhood have returned) and, from an aesthetic point of view, this is one of the great, beautiful old New Orleans neighborhoods. Most of the housing stock is around a century old, much of it with wonderful Victorian Gingerbread detailing. Up towards our end of the neighborhood, along Bayou St. John, there are a number of old, French plantation houses that are around 300 years old. Our house itself is about 120 years old, and was probably built to house servants working in the 'big houses' fronting the Bayou. Although it is modest in size, it is exquisitely detailed, with 14 foot ceilings and cypress floors. Our block is up on a slight ridge and was spared the worst of the flooding (we have a floodline on our front steps that reaches up to the third of six steps) but the more you walk towards North Broad, the deeper the water got. At the corner of Orleans and North Broad it was chest high. It's heartening to see these businesses opening up, but for the foreseeable future it looks like it'll be a lonely walk back from the steakhouse.

Derby Down.

Pre-Katrina, there was a joint on the corner of Louisiana and Freret called the Brown Derby (in local patois, da Doibie) that for many years had been a kind of local community center and information exchange. It was situated in a cluster of local businesses, including the Soul Brothers record store, a social aid and pleasure club whose name escapes me at the moment, and directly across the street from the C.J. Peete housing projects. Over the years it went through a number of transmogrifications, sometimes more bar than restaurant, sometimes more corner grocery than bar. But it was always there. When the levees broke, Central City was among the hardest hit neighborhoods, and the Derby took 4 feet of water. Miraculously the guy who owned it had good insurance which actually paid out in a timely manner (truly the exception, not the rule, in this town in these times) and between that and a shit-load of sweat equity, he was back up and serving breakfast to relief workers a month after the flood. The grub was great (if artery clogging) and his prices were right out of 1965, with huge breakfasts for $3.98. The place was always jammed, a great score if you could handle the cigarette smoke. Then the house behind it caught fire and burned the whole corner to the ground. After months of driving by the charred ruins everyday on my way to work, they've finally bulldozed them. I suppose it's progress of a sort.

Recording Session. New Orleans,10/11/06.

Upper left, the band in the studio. Below that, left to right: Jim Markway, bass, Kevin O'Day, drums, John Dobry, guitar, John Doheny, alto and tenor saxophone, Frederick Sanders, piano. Considering the circumstances, the session went pretty well. I'd booked us for three hours, but technical difficulties ate up the first hour, and an eight p.m. curtain at the Lyric Theater downstairs put paid to the third. Amazingly, we still managed to put three tunes in the can, with the second take (the keeper) of John Dobry's ballad "Your Majesty" ending with about thirty seconds to spare before the house lights dimmed downstairs. We've got a little lull in everybody's schedule right after new years, so I'm hoping to finish up the record before the spring semester starts january 16th.