Monday, June 4, 2007

14 U.S. Soldiers Killed Over The Weekend

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Fourteen U.S. soldiers were killed by bombs and small-arms fire in Iraq over the weekend, the U.S. military said Sunday, as factional violence continued to ravage soldiers and civilians alike.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Unedited Alex McMurray intro and interview

I didn't know New Orleans music before Alex McMurray, just like I didn't know rock before Nirvana. I had heard it, of course, at parades and various private celebrations, but it wasn't until I dug in with him and other ubiquitous musicians on the blooming '90's scene like Jonathan Freilich, Kevin O'Day, and Rob Wagner, that I understood how loose, colorful, funny, and genre-boundless it could be. Whether it was playing with All That at The Dragon's Den, Tin Men and Royal Fingerbowl at The Matador, or by himself at the Circle Bar, McMurray was a large part of my local awakening.

Over the years McMurray has established himself as the most talented songwriter in New Orleans. Like any poet McMurray is adept at describing the cracks in between the human experience, but his empathy for eccentrics and fuckups is really where it's at. Through his heartbreaking character studies he's been able to expose the beauty in people's imperfections and the way they disintegrate. Luckily for us, he peppers his songs with wry humor and is also able to celebrate the bouncier aspects of life, an example being the song "Cabral."

Those of you that enjoy his wicked lead guitar playing as much as his lyrical and compositional talents will love to know McMurray has more outlets than ever for soloing. Since sought-after performers like Freilich and O'Day have lost some of their bands to Katrina, I think I can confidently say that McMurray now plays with more groups than any other local musician--solo, Tin Men(the most genre-defying and unique local band), The Geraniums, 007, Happy Talk, Schatzy, and the Folk Rock Trio.

All this from a guy who isn't even supposed to be here. McMurray moved to New York in October of 2004, but after being encouraged by recently deceased Royal Fingerbowl record producer Keith Keller to return to New Orleans, McMurray and his wife, Kourtney, did just that in February of 2006.

"'Cause we're crazy," said McMurray over the phone recently in his half-serious, half tongue-in-cheek tone. "If you could do the stupidest thing you could think of, that would be it. Keith said 'you gotta be a part of the rebirth, blah, blah, blah,' and then the fucker croaks on us." Something to know now before we get into the mid-May interview I had with McMurray at his Bywater home is that you have to learn how to listen for the sentimentality that trickles through his grizzled veneer. Since returning he and his wife have become cultural leaders, creating Chazfest and the Fifth Season Summer Tuesday Nights, wherein the couple has and intends to continue showing movies on a screen in the beautiful backyard of The Truck Farm.

During the interview we focused on his new album, Guano and Nitrates, officially credited to The Valparaiso Men's Chorus. This is the chorus of local men he put together to sing as his band recorded sea chanties in November of 2004 at The Mermaid Lounge. The genesis for the idea came when McMurray sang sea chanties as Cap'n Sandy at Tokyo Disney in late 2002. Since the CD Release Party for the album at The Saturn Bar was such an out-of-control, drunk, rollicking success, look for more performances from the chorus in months to come.

Thanks to Kourtney for entertaining me with water, books, NPR(Andrei Codrescu!), footage of the CD release party, and a tour of the backyard while I waited for McMurray to join me for our interview.

AG: Kourtney told me you have a really interesting story.

AM: It's not that interesting. It's just that I was at Freedom Fest Sunday at the Circle Bar. I was standing there on the sidewalk. We had just played, with Luke(in The Happy Talk Band). This guy turns around and punches me in the face.

AG: Outta nowhere?

AM: He just wheeled around and clocked me.

AG: You hadn't been talking to him or anything?

AM: No. I've seen the guy around. I don't even know his name.

AG: In cold blood?

AM: He thought that I had spit on him.

AG: Oh.

AM: He said, "Dude, why'd you spit on me?" Well, there's people out there with water pistols. They had a water balloon launcher and water pistols and all sorts of shit like that. The guy, I guess, got squirted and he thought that I spit on him, so he turned around and fuckin' clocked me. Look at my lip. He turned my head all the way around and really fucked up my neck.

AG: What'd you do?

AM: I just stood there. I didn't fall down. I was in such shock that I was like, you know, "What?!" I guess most guys would have hit him back or something. After I thought about it for about thirty seconds I was, "Wait, I should go kick this guy's ass." It was the weirdest...

AG: He didn't apologize or anything.

AM: He did, of course. He apologized profusely, and all this. I still think it was a little bit overreacting, don't you think?

AG: Yeah, to not even ask, "Hey man, why'd you spit on me?"

AM: He just turned around and...

AG: The life and times.

AM: I was afraid you were gonna come over with some photographer or something.

AG: Are you still at the point where you get nervous onstage?

AM: Yeah, only if I'm singing. If I'm not singing, it's no problem. But, if it's songs I wrote, yeah.

AG: Even at the Wednesday night Circle Bar gigs that you do a lot?

AM: Yeah, I do.

AG: Cause sometimes you look detached.

AM: There's a lot of different factors involved. Who's in the audience? I get more nervous when there are people I know there. If it's people I don't know, I'm more relaxed.

AG: That makes sense.

AM: I get uptight when there are people there who are there every week. I'm like, "Oh, man, I have nothing new for these guys." That's a drag.

AG: Maybe they don't want anything new.

AM: But I feel like I owe it to them to at least have one thing that's different. That's the good part about that gig. It should force you to always be working on something new...

AG: Honing.

AM:...but unfortunately, the way I arrange my life, normally the first thing to get jetisoned is my own thing. There are all these other things that I'm doing. What kind of an idiot puts on a musical festival during Jazzfest? You're a working musician and you play, in like, six bands, and then you put on a festival?

AG:(laughing) You're trying to make it easy on yourself, obviously.

AM: What's the matter with me, you know?

AG: I think it's great. It seemed like it really worked out.

AM: Yeah, it worked out, but the night before Chazfest I was at my gig Wednesday night and I was looking at the clock, wondering when I could get outta there. I was operating on two hours sleep. And I had Joe, Doug, and Jonathan there. My mind was somewhere else. This was the Jazzfest gig. This was the gig I've been doing for years, and it should be a big night in my musical career, but it was the last thing on my mind. At that point, there's no point in bitching.

AG: It's already in motion.

AM: It's already happening. Make the best of it, that sorta thing.

AG: I wasn't there the year before, but there must have been more people this time around.

AM: There was a bigger turnout. Not by a whole lot, but there was more. The first year we had rain for four hours. As soon as it started, it started to rain. It didn't make people leave. It just made people not come. People had a great time, though. There was a lot more stress the first year. This year, it seemed like more of a machine. We switched it on, and it just sorta ran itself.

AG: So, next year, it'll be that much easier.

AM: (Laughs)Yeah, you'll see. Next year. Yeah, OK.

AG: Oh, no? Is that it?

AM: It could be. If we're gonna do it again--it's too much work for no money. It would have to be profitable. The amount of work that Kourtney did. The graphic design. Designing the postcards and the t-shirts and the ads and the signs. She works on that for months. It's gotta be done months in advance to get in the publications. The website and all this stuff. You spend a lot of time on the phone. Like me, I get the stage together, the sound together, book the bands, and you know, get the toilets. Stuff like that. We both work on it. It's a pretty tough racket.

AG: Even with the door, were y'all still in the red?

AM: If we lost money, it was insignificant, but if we made money, it was also insignificant. To do it next year...

AG: Maybe some real sponsors.

AM: Real sponsors and legit permits and we gotta make a lot of money. It's too much work. It was a great time and a great party, but I kinda need money(laughs).

AG:(laughs) Well, if people liked it enough, maybe you could raise the admission next year and people'd be willing to show their appreciation by paying it.

AM: Yeah, and maybe less bands. We gotta raise the profile of the thing, and that means corporate sponsors, which makes it kinda ugly. It's kinda tacky. Maybe we could get Abita to provide the beer.

AG: That's not so bad.

AM: That's not so bad, except a lot of people don't like the taste of Abita beer. Maybe Southern Comfort. Somebody was talking to me about some local company--New Orleans Rum. Things like that. We gotta know how to walk the fine line between solvency and tackiness.

AG: Why did it take you so long to release the sea chanty CD?

AM: Well, we recorded it right after I moved to New York. I moved to New York in October of 2004, and then we came back for Thanksgiving, and there had always been this talk of doing a sea chanty record, and Henry Griffin had this film project on me at Disney--interviews with me about this job. Out of the movie came the idea to record--I had had the idea in Japan to record these songs, but with the New Orleans thing, like with Carlo Nuccio playing drums. Get 20 drunken guys. I know exactly the guys I need for this job. They all showed up, and they all were great. So, it was basically a film project that begat a CD project. So, we did the recording at The Mermaid right before it closed, right before Thanksgiving '04. Jeff(Treffinger) did a mix, Clint(Coker) did a mix. There were these mixes, and the guys in the chorus were bitching at me because the chorus wasn't loud enough. I played it for Jonathan(Freilich), and he said(McMurray doing an amazingly spot-on Freilich voice imitation), "Oh, man, what is this? There's not enough chorus." I wanted more chorus, too. Anyway, at this point, The Mermaid was gone, and we had these mixes that weren't really happening, and, of course, August of 2005 rolls around. After that the sea chanty record went on the backburner. I was in New York, Jeff was in Texas, and Clint was somewhere, and we don't have a mix that people are happy with. It was all on analog tape--half inch tape. We had two rolls of tape. It was the last tapes e could get and the last tapes for purchase in Orleans Parish in 2004.

AG: How could it be the last tape?

AM: We got it from this store that was the only place you could get it, and it was closing down. We wanted to get six, but they only had two left, so we had to do only one take of every song. We had to decide then whether this was the take.

AG: Maybe it was better that way because you were more focused.

AM: Yeah. As you could tell by the record--very focused.

AG: I heard the record release party was less focused.

AM: The record was a testament to mayhem. But, it got done. It was great. Anyway, we had to do a transfer from analog to digital. We were gonna mix it on the machine, but the machine was mechanically flawed. It changed speeds, it had noise in it. Over here we transferred it to digital. After that we started doing mixes over here with Jack Neely, who runs the studio, and Ben Mumfrey. Ben did most of it. Then, it's gotta be mastered and artwork.

AG: Yeah, that makes sense. Everybody took a year after Katrina just to get back on track, so it makes sense.

AM: To me--it is a long time--but to get it done any faster, it would have to been done before Katrina, and I would have had to have been living down here because the mixes were coming in the mail, drips and drabs.

AG: How important was alcohol to the recording? I have this image of you plying the chorus with alcohol so you would get more of this drunken, all-for-one feel.

AM: It was definetely part of our focus. You can't have the yo-ho-ho without the bottle of rum. The overall gestalt was that we were gonna do it at The Mermaid, we were gonna be in a bar. It's gonna take the greater part of the evening. We're gonna start around five and then go 'till we're done. The guys would be able to come and go. It would be very loose that way. We'd learn the song and do it until we figured we got a good take, and then we'd move onto the next song. Meanwhile, there's a film crew, and everyone's drinking. The last tune we did was "Rio Grande." It was one of those moments where the chorus had had it. Half of them were outside...

AG: "When is this gonna be done?"

AM: Yeah.

AG: Or were they just too drunk?

AM: They were just too drunk and just worn out. I'll never forget that. There was a buzz, this terrible buzz. One of the microphones that was picking up Jonathan Freilich. He played a guitar solo on it. The mic on his amp had such an audible buzz, but nobody caught it.

AG: Because the voices were so loud?

AM: No, because, I guess because Jeff was wasted in the control room(laughs). There was so much mayhem that it got overlooked. That was like a nightmare, trying to get the buzz off the track.

AG: How did you decide to augment the way you traditionally see a sea chanty performed with more of this New Orleans sound?

AM: It's a natural thing. Me, Chaz, and Matt, The Tin Men, we were performing so much, we were sick of each other. For a sea chanty record--first of all, electronic instruments almost can't do it, even though I played an electric guitar. The tuba is a natural fit, the washboard seems like a natural fit, even though it's probably something you'd never see on a boat. We had pennywhistles, Rick Trolsen on trombone. The sea chanty purists would want nothing to do with this because trombones are way out, but we have bass drum and tuba, so it's kinda like a brass band approach to things. We also had accordion, fiddles, which are very traditional. We just wanted to get all these different flavors together and let it rip. When I was in Japan, I remember walking around, doing my job, which was walking around this restaurant playing "Drunken Sailor." One day I was playing it really fast, 'cause nobody's listening. I'm walking around in costume. They're all Japanese, and they don't understand a thing I'm saying. I'm playing with a swinging feel, the way it is on the record. I was like, "Man, when I get back home, I'm gonna get Carol Nuccio on this, and Matt Perrine, and we're gonna do this." I guess that was the genesis of the idea. The impetus was to do the songs with New Orleans instrumentation.

AG: I think it's much better than just doing the thousandth traditional sea chanty CD. You put your own slant on it.

AM: We're waiting to see how it fits into the sea chanty canon.

AG: There are webpages. I've seen webpages devoted to sea chanties.

AM: I've been to those sites.

AG: When I picture you performing in Japan, for some reason I picture you performing onstage, but no, you performed in a restaurant?

AM: I worked at a Donald's Boat Builders--was the name of the restaurant. No, it was called The Cape Cod Cookoff. The show was in a big, big dining hall with picnic benches, and on the stage was this half animatronic, half live action show. It was two shows alternating. One was Donald's Boat Builder's. It was Donald, Goofy, and Mickey trying to build a boat with all this mayhem going on around them. The shows were about seven minutes long. The other show was the Chipmunks doing something up there. There was a big boat on hydraulics with steam piped in and music--the voices were piped in. The people would get in costumes and just go up there and move around.

AG: Was it good?

AM: I never got to see it. Cause I would do five minutes in the restaurant between the Chipmunks show and The Donald Duck show. It was five minutes exactly. You had to time your set to be done exactly at five minutes. There were these audible cues you could hear. The boat was righting itself, preparing for the next show, and you could hear this hydraulic sound. You knew you had about fifteen seconds, so you wrapped it up. I was walking out the door as the music hit for the next show. You did it six times a day for six months. For the next fifteen minutes, I'd walk around outside in front. I was what they called an "atmosphere musician." When you go to Disneyworld and you see Mickey...

AG: Engaging the people.

AM: Yeah. I'm out there to be atmosphere. I'm in character. I had the sea captain costume. The boots, string tie, vest, pea coat, and hat. After fifteen minutes--I had a stage manager who would follow me around--he'sd say, "It's time to go in," so we'd find this secret passageway that led to the backstage.

AG: Were you familiar with the sea chanties on the record before you left for Japan?

AM: No. I tried like hell to find sea chanty records. This was in 2001 that I first became aware of the job. It was Adam Shipley(from Tipitina's) that put me in touch--he's from Florida, so he knows the guy who books for Disney. He called Adam and said, "I need a guy who can play banjo or guitar and sing sea chanties," and Adam called Glenn Hartman(from The Klezmer All-Stars). He said, "Glenn, who do you think we should get for this?" Glenn said, "Why not Alex," and after Adam stopped laughing, Glenn said, "No, really. Call Alex. I betcha he'd do it. It's just weird enough." So, there was a website called songsofthesea.com. I went to that. It's still up. It's got a different name, now(contemplator.com/sea). They had these MIDI files. If you took a Casio keyboard and played "Blow The Man Down" through it, that's what it would sound like(McMurray imitates it by singing the "Blow" melody like a Wizard of Oz munchkin). You could read the lyrics and hear the tune, so you could pretty much tell how the line goes, though there's no singing. Just the melody. So I went through all these tunes, and I went to amazon.com and found one record--it's called Men's Corral. It was Burl Ives corny. It's lovely in a weird way. I liked the record. It's the only one I could find. It's really not folk music. It's like something for a recital hall.

AG: Was it a little bit too put together?

AM: It sounds like a 20-to-30 man chorus with four parts--basses, baritones, tenors...Very clean, refined, spohisticated arrangements of these tunes. I'm in the dark here. I ask Shipley to ask Disney, "Please, what are the tunes?" They're like, "Oh, don't worry about it."

AG: You wanna do your research. You wanna do a good job.

AM: I'm freakin' out. They didn't give me hardly any time. They hired me, and then I became nonplussed, and they were like, "We don't need you." Three months later, they're like, "DO YOU WANNA DO THE DISNEY JOB?! CAN YOU DO IT?! WE NEED TO KNOW NOW." Ok, but can you give me 24 hours? "OK, BUT 24 HOURS." Less than a month from then, I was on a plane. So, I'm trying to do all this research. They're like, "Don't worry about it. They'll show you what to do in Japan, on the other end." And I'm like, "That sounds fishy to me. That doesn't sound right." I gotta find--there's no sea chanty records on amazon.com. In 2002, none. At least, I couldn't find any. I looked everywhere. Then, I did this MIDI thing. I tried to learn--I did a video audition. There were three that I knew. I got the job, so those three weren't that bad. I did all this crazy preparation, visas and what not, get on the plane, get to Japan. Orientation meeting, and then finally I meet with the director of the show, who's Japanese. There's a translator and the other Cap'n Sandy, John, a 64 year-old guy from Gainesville, Florida, who knows over 350 sea chanties.

AG: There you go.

AM: Yeah, but--I sit down and they say, "Play a sea chanty." John is chomping at the bit to play a sea chanty, and I'm like, "I gotta make something up." I played the three that I knew, but I hardly remembered those. I was playing my own tunes.

AG:(laughs)

AM: I played a song that I wrote.

AG: Did you pass it off as a sea chanty?

AM: Well, Cap'n John, he knew I was full of shit, but he didn't say anything. He was like, "Well, I never heard that one before."

AG: You're like, "Shut up, Cap'n John."

AM: No, I said, "I must have different records than you." So, anyway, it was struggle, but I got a twenty minute show together. I got five minutes for the inside, which needed to be gangbusters, and then I got six more shanties for outside.

AG: Let's talk about the record a bit more. On the song, "All For Me Grog," there's a breakdown in the middle, where things fall apart and you say, "C'mon motherfucker!" Was that planned?

AM: Yeah. Our arrangement included this tuba solo. In the tuba solo, Matt(Perrine) pretends to fuck it up by doing it a half step sharp or flat, I forget. And he catches himself. So, it's a gag.

AG: And you yell at him.

AM: Yeah, me and Chaz scream at him. In the full-on Valparaiso Men's Chorus arrangement, we did that. It was very effective.

AG: Did the chorus know it was coming?

AM: Of course. "Ok, Matt's gonna fuck up the solo. Scream at him."

AG: That's great. Why are you called The Valparaiso Men's Chorus? Is it because of Valparaiso, Chile?

AM: Yeah, Valparaiso was a famous, some would say infamous, Chilean seaport. It was a major port of call for sailing, merchant, whaling ships. What they exported there was bat shit, guano, to get the nitrates out of it to make saltpetre(potassium nitrate).

AG: Now I understand the title.

AM: Yeah, Valparaiso is mentioned in a lot of sea chanties. "We're off to Valparaiso/Around the horn." When you go around the horn, you're inevitably gonna end up in Valparaiso.

AG: I'm gonna completely get off the sea chanty topic. I love what you do with The Geraniums and the color you add to their music. I know Jeff Treffinger(of The Geraniums and The Saturn Bar and Truck Farm) made your solo record, and he's played on your songs, as well, but how did your collaboration with The Geraniums come about?

AM: The Geraniums have had a couple of color guys throughout the years, whether it be on harmonica, fiddle, or trombone. I'm not sure how I got picked to do it, but one day Jeff said, "Hey man, would you come play with The Geraniums?" And I've always been a huge fan. I said, "Of course." I jumped at it. They used to play at the Circle Bar on Sunday nights when I used to bartend there. For a coupla years. They'd play, and there'd be no one there. I could sit in with them because there was no one to serve.

AG: So, you already knew the songs...

AM: No, I had heard them, and some of them I still really don't know. I kinda mess them up. I don't really know the titles to them or anything. It helps that they're all in D. There are a couple that aren't in D. It kinda hurts, in a way. Like, "What am I gonna do with D this time?" I love Jeff and Brendan's songs.

AG: There's still no one that shows up. How do we get more people out there?

AM: They don't do anything to promote themselves. They do nothing. I think it's a gag with them, that they do so little. They get their Tuesday gig, and that's the end of it. They show up, and they play.

AG: They don't really care, or...

AM: I guess...they do care. I've seen them when there's been people. Not a lot of people, but people. They get pumped and excited. Why don't you do something about it? Why don't you get a MySpace page? I don't know. It doesn't help that the tunes are kinda offbeat and dour. But, they are one of the unique things in this town. No one does anything like The Geraniums. It's really good. The songs are rich lyrically.

AG: When are you gonna come out with another solo or Tin Men record?

AM: That's the $64,000 question. I guess I've got enough tunes that I could do a record. It's also a question of money. There was talk for a while to get a label like Yep Roc to finance it. They didn't bite. 'Cause financing a record by yourself--it's doable because I did it, but you amass credit card debt doing that. I'm still paying it off.

AG: So, why would you do it again if you're still paying it off?

AM: Yeah. Money's a big factor. I'd like to get something by the end of the year. If I don't have something by the end of the year, then I've lost the plot.

AG: Seems like Tin Men is more of a every-two-years type of group.

AM: Yeah, but the Tin Men haven't been playing much. Matt's really busy with Bonerama.We've got a couple ideas for records. We might do a record that's all by one composer, or we might do one record that's all composed by us. We always have a record that's originals and unoriginals. We have moxie. We'll put our heads together one of these days and figure it out.

AG: Y'all perform Dirty Dozen's "Blackbird Special" live. That's my favorite song y'all do live, probably because the way y'all do it has such a concentrated anxiety to it.

AM:(laughs) Yeah, for me it is. It's a very difficult song to play. It's one of the most taxing tunes, for me, anyway. And there's not even any singing.

AG: Did you have any specific approach when covering it? Are you more of a traditional person when covering songs, or are you more of a non-traditional person, where you can veer off the beaten path a bit?

AM: The arrangement we do is the All That arrangement, the Davis Rogan version. That's a tune we used to do with that band. Me and Matt were in that band together for a while. I guess when The Tin Men got started we had all the Fingerbowl stuff, 'cause Matt was in that band, and we had songs of mine that weren't Fingerbowl tunes that we knew. We had all this Washboard Chaz stuff, and we had All That. We used to play a few brass band tunes that we knew from All That. It was like, "Ok, it'll be funny, we'll take this brass band tune and do this weird, not so fat instrumentation."

AG: Kinda like doing "Immigrant Song," like y'all do. You get everybody to turn their head and go, "Are they doing what I think they're doing?"

AM: We have performed Motorhead's "Ace of Spades."

AG: Nice.

AM: We're gonna get together and practice that again. We did it once during the Kids Camp at The Big Top. It was great.

AG: That's gonna be a hit. I've talked to you in passing about getting Royal Fingerbowl back together, and you've said people don't care, but the people I've talked to say differently.

AM: Well, you know, those 14 people are still around.

AG:(laughs) That's exactly what you said last time.

AM: Whenever someone asks me about the Fingerbowl, I always talk about those fourteen people. And the fourteen people really loved it.

AG: (laughs) But, that's not enough to make any money, is it?

AM: Whenever I feel like making that seventy bucks, we'll go out there and do it. We could probably get those fourteen people out to Carrollton Station. Or, maybe we could fill up the Circle Bar.

AG: You know, you might find those fourteen people brought one friend each, and then all of a sudden, there's 28.

AM: But, you see, these fourteen people are like those guys in the army jackets.

AG:(laughs) The curmudgeons?

AM: The guy in the army jacket at the end of the gig that wants to ask you about your gear. "What year amp is that? '64? That's what I thought."

AG: And, you're a little creeped out?

AM: Well...

AG: I got it.

AM: We did a party a year or two ago uptown. Becky Lloyd said, "I really want the Fingerbowl." I said, "Ok." It's not impossible.

AG: Are you able to make a living as a musician in New Orleans?

AM: I have. For ten years I didn't have a job. Since we've been back we've been kinda--we did a little work for Jeff on this house here. We painted that place--me and Kourtney. My friend has a rental property on Congress Street. It had Katrina problems--lost a lot of the roof. It needed to be gutted, blah, blah, blah. He's living in New York now. I supervised that for him. I don't know if I can make a living. The last month has been--I've made a living this month.

AG: So, it's month to month?

AM: You talk to guys, you know that summertime's gonna be slow. You gotta line up your ducks so you can make it through the summer, which is the slowest time. It's good to get out of town.

AG: Is that what you're planning on doing?

AM: Jonathan is kinda arranging for a trip up to the Northwest. He's got some contacts up there. He's gonna play some shows with Skerik. I've been invited to go up there with Kourtney. She's got this class she's been teaching, and she would have some time between them, before the next one starts. We might go up there for a couple weeks. I might do something in the northeast. I normally go up there once or twice a year, do some solo shows. There's this party I play every year. My father's up there. We can stay with friends, stay for free. Duking it out down here can be really demoralizing.

AG: I could imagine. You've been playing for so long, and I'm wondering if you've ever gone through lulls where, out of frustration, you've thought about giving up writing and performing and recording?

AM: Sometimes you get frustrated. Never to the point where I've said, "Fuck it, I'm gonna get a straight job." Sometimes you say, "Fuck it," but you don't really mean it. The good times are really great, and the bad times are really bad, but overall, it's a good life. I have no other skills. I dropped typing my freshman year of high school to take music theory. The first job I tried to get outta college, working for Tulane, was installing phone lines. I had to take a typing test. And I was sitting there taking this typing test, pecking and pecking. I was an English and Philosphy major, so I had to write a hundred papers...

AG: But you still didn't know how to type properly. I'm the same way.

AM: Typing a paper was like an hour a page. And that was going as fast as I could. That irony. I'm reminded of that all the time.

AG: Recurring players in your songs are drink and water, patrons of which tend me to be misfits or lonely. I was wondering if you have a soft spot for curmudgeons or the unwanted.

AM: Yeah, I think everybody can relate to that as a romantic notion. Loneliness, sentimentality, ne'er do wells, drinkers, brawlers, people in the bar. Saloon society. Sometimes I make up my mind not to write about these people anymore, but it's sort of inevitably goes back to that sphere.

AG: Because you live in that atmosphere, as well?

AM: I don't know. I work in bars. I used to go to bars a lot, more than I do now. I used to live at the R Bar. I'd get done playing and go to a bar. I could never go straight home.

AG: Wind down?

AM: Yeah.

AG: Just like everybody else.

AM: Yeah, but I don't do that anymore. I used to spend a lot of time at Markey's. I got outta that group, ya know. I haven't written too many songs in the last year, and the ones I have written really have nothing to do with it at all. I wrote a song about Cabral, Otis, this recurring guy, the two Katrina songs. I'm working on a song for Chaz to sing in The Tin Men. I'm trying to write a dance number. It's baffling to me.

AG: Do you think New Orleans is more forgiving of the socially inept?

AM: Absolutely.Yes. This town's got its own social code. People tolerate lateness. They know you can't be expected to do things early in the morning. Half the people you know are in bands or work in bars or restaurants. The bon vivant factor is high. You've heard the expression, "If you can't make it here, don't leave"?

AG:(laughs) That's great.

AM: New York has their saying, and we have ours.

AG: Eccentrics are celebrated here.

AM: Yeah. What's gonna happen to all the guys that hang out at stores, drinking Busch beer all day? I see these guys floatin' around town, waitin' for the bus. You can do it. The people that float around the Circle Bar--the homeless guys. The train station is right there. It's a pretty forgiving town...There's this couple that's been going through my songs, and they're still together, but they're terrible for each other.

AG: You can't figure out why they're still together! They've been through things and stood by each other.

AM: They just get into so much trouble together. There's something primal about their love that I find fascinating.

AG: It doesn't make any sense.

AM: This couple, they should really get out the bars and go take care of their kids. These beautiful losers--Leonard Cohen.

Dylan's "It's Alright Ma(I'm Only Bleeding)" Live from 1965



Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

"I Am The Walrus"

Friday, June 1, 2007

Muse's "Take a Bow"



Corrupt
You're corrupt
Bring corruption to all that you touch
Hold
You behold
And beholden for all that you've done
And spin
Cast a spell
Cast a spell on the country you run
And risk
You will risk
You will risk all their lives and their souls

And burn
You will burn
You will burn in hell, yeah you'll burn in hell
You'll burn in hell
Yeah you'll burn in hell
For your sins

And our freedom's consuming itself
What we've become
It's contrary to what we want

Take a bow

Death
You bring death, and destruction to all that you touch
Pay
You must pay
You must pay for your crimes against the earth
Yeah hex
Feed the hex
Feed the hex on the country you love

Now beg
You will beg
You will beg for their lives and their souls

Now burn
You will burn
You will burn in hell, yeah you'll burn in hell
You'll burn in hell
Yeah you'll burn in hell
You'll burn in hell
Yeah you'll burn in hell
For your sins