Brian Stoltz

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Brian Stoltz’s playing is a perfect fusion of virtuosity, emotion, and instinct, and the combination has helped him to develop a reputation as one of New Orleans’ most sought after guitar players. Stoltz originally made a name for himself with the Neville Brothers, then later the Funky Meters with Batiste and Porter. He’s done session work with some of music’s best, including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Daniel Lanois, Dr. John, Edie Brickell, and Linda Ronstadt.  But in addition to his instrumental work, Stoltz has also worked as a singer-songwriter. With the release of his two solo discs, East of Rampart Street and God, Guns & Money—both efforts in the rock and pop vein—Stoltz has added skills as a songwriter, lyricist and melodicist to his repertoire. He even received a Grammy nomination in the Traditional Blues category for a track he contributed to a Mississippi Fred McDowell tribute in 2004. “For a long time I had been stereotyped as a funk guitarist,” he says, “But I’ve always been about songs as opposed to groove or guitar.”

For Stoltz, PBS is a breathtaking departure from the Funky Meters’ routine. Despite its legacy, that band refrained from creating much original material. Porter Batiste Stoltz is diametrically opposite to that; it’s a wellspring of spontaneous creativity, a canvas upon which all three of its very talented members can dabble with color. And often those colors combine to create gorgeous pictures.

“When we play together, there’s one mind at work,” says Stoltz. “It’s scary sometimes. In the middle of battle, we can be doing some fierce jamming, and George and I will go to the wrong chord together. How does that happen? It only happens when you’re of one mind.”

Casandra's father, Wayne, an accomplished guitar player in his own right, was her greatest supporter in her desire to play music. He bought Cass her first bass after she fell in love with the Fender Precision left at the house between rehearsals by Wayne's bassist. She developed a great ear and instinct for following other musicians at after school sessions with her dad and his musician pals. Not long after this, as a teenager, she started playing with Wayne's band in the rough and tumble bars and music halls in her home town of Thunder Bay, Ontario.

By the time she graduated from high school, Cass felt that she had gotten the most from her on the job training in T-Bay, and decided to pursue a formal music education at the highly respected Humber College in Toronto. After completing her studies at Humber, Cass was lured to the Caribbean by the opportunity to play gigs six nights a week. She spent the next several years, sailing the seas, backing up headliners, and playing Vegas style shows, all the while enjoying a climate completely opposite from the dreaded winters of Canada. The versatility demanded on those gigs, as well as the technical training she received from Humber, helped form her unmistakable professional presence on the bandstand.

1998 marked the year that she would start calling New Orleans home. It was at that point that Cass no longer felt she could keep growing as a player on the cruise ships, yet, she still wasn't ready for Canadian Winter. Her travels in the Gulf had introduced her to the infectious sounds and greasy beat of the Big Easy. Intrigued by the city's mystery and charm, she decided that New Orleans would be more than just a port of call. It is here where she honed her solid, supportive, grooving style, hooking up with the Crescent City's most esteemed drummers, players such as Johnny Vidacovich, Herman Ernest III, Stanton Moore, Gerald French, Allyn Robinson, Kevin O'Day, Jeffrey "Jellybean" Alexander, and innumerable others. Today, you can find her gigging in a wide array of settings almost every night of the week, from straight up funk to low down blues. If you keep your ear to the ground, no doubt you'll be lured into the deep pocket of Casandra Faulconer.

Casandra proudly endorses Moody Leather Straps. She is an exclusive user of DR strings and Mesa Boogie amplifiers, and would like to acknowlege both of those companies for their continued support.

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As a member of one of N'awlins legendary musical families, Russell Batiste Jr. knows his way around a sound stage. He's played multiple instruments, and has been at the drum kit since the age of four. Even before that, Russell recalls watching his daddy, David Batiste (of the city's seminal funk band David Batiste and the Gladiators), jam with an endless array of the city's most talented musicians. That band hosted a virtual "Who's Who" of '60s musicians. One of Russell's earliest memories is sitting on Jackie Wilson's knee listening to him sing "Lonely Teardrops"!

Russell joined the Funky Meters in 1989 and, like Porter, has played with a wide variety of performers, including Harry Connick Jr., Champion Jack DuPree, Robbie Robertson, and Maceo Parker. An industrious artist and creator, the busy Batiste also manages to put time into his own projects, too, like Orkestra from da Hood, who released their debut The Clinic a few years back. "I believe music is in you naturally and you just have to tap into it," he says. "It's got to be an emotional thing. When we play together in Porter Batiste Stoltz, what we do touches all three of us emotionally. That's music to me."

Dr. John

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When a BBC interviewer recently asked Dr. John, “What is the secret to musical longevity?” the legendary New Orleans artist had a ready answer. “Living,” he replied. Through more than half a century of music making, Mac Rebennack Jr. has been doing just that as he’s rolled with the highs and lows that come with being a working musician, and these days he finds himself in an extended stretch of being in the right place at the right time. Now 65, this American icon, whom fellow legend Jerry Wexler once described as “the blackest white man I know,” continues to take all that life has to offer, crisscrossing the country and spanning the globe with his band of virtuosic veterans, the Lower 911, and recording whenever the spirit moves him, which is frequently. More than ever, it seems, Dr. John’s head is brimming with ideas. 

The latest one, which comes to glorious fruition on the Blue Note album Mercernary, came from his daughter Tina, who pointed out that “Personality,” a 1946 hit for Johnny Mercer, would be a perfect fit for her dad’s down-home style. In fact, Tina suggested, why not do a whole album of songs written or popularized this giant of American popular music? That got Mac thinking. Mercer was a fellow Southerner and workaholic—the Savannah-born artist wrote the words, music or both to a good 1,500 songs, a remarkable number of them classics, as well as spending decades as a performer. He could relate. “Personality” was one Mercer-associated standard the great man didn’t write himself, although the wry Jimmy Van Heusen lyric was a perfect fit for Mercer’s knowing vocal style. “I just loved the way Johnny sold that song,” Mac says. “It was so much out of the old burlesque thing, and you could tell he knew that stuff, and he always appeared to me to have that Southern something about him. He just hit the lines in songs that was like the real McGillicuddy. He was a great singer, a great A&R man, a producer, and he even started Capitol Records. So we started looking at some Mercer stuff.”

After running the idea past Blue Note and getting an enthusiastic response, Dr. John got down to business, poring over Mercer’s massive songbook. “I wanted to pull as many of the ones that people weren’t as familiar with, but it was impossible,” he says. “One thing about Johnny Mercer’s stuff is that even the songs that aren’t that well known are well known from something.” Rebennack had a handful of songs in mind from the start, including “Blues in the Night,” “Lazy Bones,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Save the Bones for Henry Jones” and “Tangerine,” and he looked forward to seeing what would go down when Mercer’s perpetually hip material made contact with his own brand of N’Awlins funk—or fonk, as he calls it.

As usual, he demo’d up the tunes he’d chosen for his band. “They get what I’m thinking about from that, and then they play it for real,” he says. Sure enough, a chemical reaction immediately occurred in the studio whenever the players—guitarist John Fohl, bassist David Barard and drummer Herman Ernest III— locked in on their leader’s line through a given song, sometimes completing the thought, at other times refracting it in provocative ways. Pretty much every track on Mercernary is a first or second take, and in some cases, “We hit it and quit it, and we were on the next song,” says Mac. “My band, when they lay this stuff down, it’s kickin’. They ain’t flapping in the wind.” Most of the horn parts, from the likes of trumpeter Charlie Miller, tenor sax man Herbert Hardisty and other renowned Crescent City veterans, were cut in subsequent overdub sessions.

Meanwhile, Dr. John was reading Mercer’s autobiography, giving him further insights as well as deepening the sense of kinship he felt with the artist. “Dream,” for example, “is a song that Johnny Mercer wrote the words and the music to that is not like Johnny Mercer’s music,” Rebennack points out. “I like it because it doesn’t really fit. That’s why I think of him as a mercenary—he was a hustler; he knew how to survive out there. He always wanted to write Broadway shows, but because he wasn’t from New York, they wouldn’t let him get in the clique. So the next best thing he could make a hustle out of doing was to go to Hollywood and write songs for movies; he had some success doing that. But it was always kind of sliding on a Tin Pan Alley guy’s coattails, whether it was Harold Arlen or, later, Henry Mancini. I love going from ‘I’m an Old Cow Hand’ into ‘Dream’ on the record, because that’s what a real hustler of a songwriter can do—he can dream up some stuff and write a song quick. I do this—and appreciate Johnny Mercer for being able to do that.”

What Rebennack didn’t want to do was anything obvious. On “Dream,” he was determined that it not “sound like your regulation VFW hall geriatric-squad dance,” while he wanted to take the ubiquitous “Moon River” “to the Johnny Mercer area,” he says. “Henry Mancini wrote the hell out of the changes on that, and I used to love the Jerry Butler version, and I was just trying to keep it way away from all of that.” Mac says he had no intention of covering “Moon River” until he discovered that an eight-bar intro he’d composed for another song fit beautifully into the middle of the Mancini-Mercer standard, so he went for it. “That just shows you how the accidentalness of this record transpired,” he points out. “We just cut the thing, and it feels real organic.”

One of the biggest challenges Dr. John faced was coming up with an original that would both sum up the album’s personality and sit comfortably among his interpretations of Mercer’s songs. “My tribute to Johnny Mercer,” he says, “is ‘I Ain’t No Johnny Mercer,’ which I ain’t. But I took a lot of words from a lot of his songs that I would have never thought to use. I never in my life would’ve thought to use a word like ‘apoplexy’ in a song. I took some lines from ‘Pardon My Southern Accent’ and messed that up, too. Even took my favorite word he used in ‘Moon River’—‘my huckleberry friend.” But what I tried to do was take some Johnny Mercerisms, and just do them the way I would do them to make a little riff at Johnny, with him and about myself. I figured if I’m coppin’ on Johnny Mercer, I might as well cop on myself while I’m doing it. I may not be as good of a mercenary as Johnny Mercer was, but, whatever way you wanna break it down, I’m a mercenary in my own right.”

Mercernary was recorded at New Orleans’ Piety Street Studio in the spring of 2005, a few months before Hurricane Katrina hit. The facility, located in the Bywater (once referred to by locals as the Upper Ninth Ward), escaped serious damage, and it’s back in business now. Despite these and other pockets of activity, says Rebennack, “Every time I go back, I get weirded out by how little or nothing is going on. Sippiana Hericane [an EP he recorded and released last fall in response to the devastation of Katrina] was a labor of shock. This record was a regulation recording, and I hope it’ll do something in some way to help New Orleans .” Sippiana Hericane was released on Blue Note Records November 2005, with all proceeds from CD sales divided equally between three charities—New Orleans Musicians Clinic, the Jazz Foundation of America and the Voice of the Wetlands.

Ultimately, then, Mercernary honors not only the great American songwriter/performer whose music provides its content but also the great American city in which it was created. Every note played by Dr. John and his fellow musicians is the sound of living New Orleans. May they keep on keepin’ on.

Galactic

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With the release of their sixth album, From the Corner to the Block, the five-man group GALACTIC - drummer Stanton Moore, bassist Robert Mercurio, saxophonist/harmonica player Ben Ellman, keyboardist Richard Vogel, and guitarist Jeff Raines - reaffirms their standing as one of the funkiest outfits in the known universe. Featuring a cherry-picked guest list of some of hip-hop's most dynamic lyricists - including Juvenile, Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), Lyrics Born, Ladybug Mecca (Digable Planets), Mr. Lif, Chali 2na (Jurrasic 5), Vursatyl (Lifesavas), and Boots Riley (The Coup), From the Corner to the Block exposes GALACTIC's organic grooves to an urban ear while still maintaining their essential funk aesthetic.

The band started out over a decade ago as an instrumental act in the tradition of the Meters, the JB's, and Booker T. & the MG's - bands equally comfortable recording their own material or working with vocalists. From the Corner to the Block grew out of GALACTIC's experiences touring with artists like the Roots, Jurassic 5, Triple Threat DJ's and Gift of Gab. Though it features cameos from a "wish list" of fan-favorite MCs, this isn't a typical hip-hop album per se, but a contemporary funk record that just happens to feature hip-hop vocalists. "We never set out to make a rap record," explains Ellman, who produced the record with assistance from engineer extraordinaire Count (Halou, Quannum, DJ Shadow). "We wanted to kinda modernize the New Orleans sound," adds Mercurio.

The New Orleans legacy echoes throughout the album, indeed. The brassy "Bounce Baby" (featuring DJ Z-Trip) stirs up wah-wah guitar, a horn-driven melody, syncopated beats, and turntable wizardry into a potent rhythmic instrumental. "Tuff Love" (featuring Trombone Shorty) offers a taste of some of New Orleans' hottest young talent. "Second and Dryades," (featuring Big Chief Monk Boudreau), evokes the spirit of the Wild Magnolias - it's a percussion-laced Mardi Gras anthem for the digi generation, on which Boudreau relates the story of being an Indian on Mardi Gras day. The song sure to raise eyebrows though is the title track and first single, featuring the Soul Rebels Brass Band and platinum rapper Juvenile (who tapped GALACTIC to back him on the "Jimmy Kimmel Show"). Mercurio, for one, is happy with the outcome. "It sounds like it was all supposed to be there, this track was meant to happen" he says.

The rest of the album features a diverse array of funky arrangements, vocal deliveries, and musical expressions, from sexy downtempo jams like "Squarebiz," featuring the ever-delectable Ladybug Mecca and singer Nino Moschella; to uptempo party-starters like "What You Need" with Lyrics Born, and "Hustle Up" with Boots Riley (which Mercurio calls "a total rock tune" dressed in funky threads); to semi-autobiographical tales of urban street life by Mr. Lif (".And I'm Out"), Vursatyl & Ohmega Watts ("Find My Home"), Lateef the Truth Seeker ("No Way"), Gift of Gab ("The Corner"), and Chali 2na ("Think Back").

Even with all the different vocalists, the songs maintain a sense of thematic consistency. As Ellman explains, this was by design: the rappers were each asked to write about a corner. "It could have been any corner," he says. "Everyone had a different perspective." Many contemporary all-star collaborations are purely commercial exercises, yet From the Corner to the Block stands as a labor of love, connecting GALACTIC's hip-hop jones and their guests' fervor for funk aesthetics. The result isn't just the grooviest, funkiest record of 2007, but perhaps the finest post-Katrina album to come out of New Orleans.

George Porter Jr.

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Few bass players in the history of modern New Orleans music are as storied as George Porter Jr. During the course of a career spanning four decades, Porter has not only made a deep impression with his work in the Meters, but he’s notched sessions with artists as diverse as Paul McCartney, Jimmy Buffett, David Byrne, Patti LaBelle, Robbie Robertson and Tori Amos. Early in his career, Porter worked with seminal New Orleans artists like Allen Toussaint, Earl King, Lee Dorsey, and Johnny Adams. Back in 1965, Porter joined on with the Meters, considered by many to be the ultimate fusion of rock, funk and R&B, and gained recognition as one of the scene’s elite bass players. 
Porter’s rhythmic work in the Meters in lockstep with drummer Zigaboo Modeliste was epic. Those pockets, the long notes and fat holes, provided the cushion for Leo Nocentelli or Art Neville to play or sing over and created some of R&B history’s most memorable grooves.

Today, Porter features that epic bottom end in his latest collection of Porter Batiste Stoltz tunes. “It’s the ultimate jam band,” Porter says, “one that actually is more musical than just playing everything you know in every song. This band slaps people in the face until they see how good the stuff is!”

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Leo is the lead guitarist, composer, innovator and the musical originator of the syncopated funk-style that won international acclaim for him and the band known as the "Pioneers of Funk", The Meters, the Grammy's 2001 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners.

In the two decades plus, Leo's sound and styles, ranging from Funk, Blues, Jazz, Hip-hop, Rap to Rock, have added to the creation of his own unique brand of blazing musicianship. He has accompanied and collaborated with artists as varied as his style.

As the sole writer of such hits as (to name a few) of Cissy Strut, Look A Py Py, Same Ol' Thing, Rigor Mortis, Funky Miracle, 9 to 5, Ease Back, Lonesome and unwanted People, The World Is A Little Bit Under The Weather, and Cordova (and at times generously sharing credits with a vehicle he called The Meters), Nocentelli gained early recognition amongst his peers.

Over the years, Leo has continued to write well over 200 songs individually, as well as collaboratively, adding to an already charted list of hits such as, People Say, Ain't No Use, Fire On the Bayou, and the Mardi Gras anthem, Hey Pocky Way (the last two songs were recorded by the Grammy Award winning Neville Brothers).

In the recording studio, Leo has identifiably proven that his original innovation in mastering his sound has gained the respect and demand that has led him to become a "featured" guitarist. In addition to recording with a distinguished list of his peers, Leo has recorded with a list of Grammy Award Winners such as, Stevie Wonder, Bonnie Raitt, The Winans, The Supremes, The Temptations, Paul McCartney, Dr. John, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Robert Palmer, George Duke, The Dells, Jack Bruce, Manhattan Transfer, Bobby Womack, Al McKay, (Earth, Wind & Fire), and Robbie Robertson. The list continues with Academy Award winner Robert Mitchum. Other artists Leo has recorded with include, Mavis Staple, Etta James, Maceo Parker, Professor Longhair, Willie T, James Black, Lee Dorsey, James Booker and Jesse Roden.

Papa Grows Funk

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Hurricane Katrina fragmented the New Orleans music scene, but after the storm passed, the waters receded, and the devastation was surveyed, “Papa” John Gros made a commitment to his band, Papa Grows Funk, to keep its funky New Orleans music pumping.

I just made a commitment to everybody,” Gros said. “If everybody is in, I am putting the band to work. I am going back to New Orleans. That is home, that’s all I really know. We’re a New Orleans band. If we are going to be a New Orleans band we are going to be in New Orleans.” 
The band said yes, and it hasn’t looked back since. The essence of Papa Grows Funk is built upon the rich musical tradition of the Crescent City, where musicians flow in and out of local haunts, vilified by the anything goes, collaborative musical environment.

Papa Grows Funk developed from a series of Monday night jam sessions helmed by Gros at New Orleans’ Maple Leaf beginning in 2000. Gros would invite some friends down to play, and the impromptu jams became a common bond for a handful of musicians, including guitarist June Yamagichi, sax player Jason Mingledorff, bassist Marc Pero and drummer Jeffery “Jellybean” Alex-ander, who now make up Papa Grows Funk.

After about six months, the phone began ringing, with callers seeking to book the quintet known for its New Orleans roots style and loose, innovative approach. Since then, Papa Grows Funk has wowed crowds across the United States, Europe and Japan. Each calender year is marked by approximately 200 performances by the band, and they have ramped up touring, playing nearly three times as many gigs than they were prior to the storm.

Gros said that coming off of Jazzfest in 2005 was one of the peaks for the band. It’s summer tour culminated with a successful month in Japan, from which the band returned home in a good financial situation raring to hit the road that fall and preparing to enter the studio to record its third studio release, a follow up to 2003’s acclaimed sophomore album, Shakin.’ As soon as the members could get there, the bandreconvened in New Orleans. It has only been recently, Gros said, that Papa Grows Funk has beenable to regain the momentum it was experiencing in the pre-Katrina months. It released a live album this year, culled from three performances before Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Entitled Live at the Leaf, the live offering boasts 72-minutes of Papa Grows Funk in their birthplace: The Maple Leaf. The quintet is also preparing to enter the studio to lay down a new album, one that Gros said will include some road-worn numbers and some new compositions.

In the mean time, he is confident that their home, New Orleans, and the music industry that has become its calling card, will recover. However, Gros’ concerns lie in the future. “Our school system has always been in shambles,” he said. “Now it is non-existent. The kids that come up and go hang out in the French Quarter and listen to the musicians there, the kids in the young brass bands .... All these families are now out of New Orleans. We’re fine right now, but what’s going to happen in 10 years? Where’s the next generation ofmusicians going to come from?” Papa Grows Funk plans to continue the to keep the legacy of New Orleans alive well into the future, and will inspire the future of New Orleans music in the process.