By Michael Swanger michael@dmcityview.com

Legendary singer-songwriter-pianist to release new album to benefit the Crescent City

There's so much passion for New Orleans in Dr. John's fingers that every time they touch the piano it feels like Mardi Gras. But ask him how he feels about the way the Crescent City and its citizens and environment have been treated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and you can feel the darkness of its back alleys and floating graveyards rise through the hoodoo-voodoo king's voice.

"My friend the Reverend Goat said New Orleans didn't die of natural causes. It was murdered, and I agree with that," he says. "I'm mad at the city, the state and the federal government. I've been mad since the beginning and I'm madder still.

"There are people in New Orleans that are trying to keep the peoples' spirits up that I'm really proud of. They're trying their hearts out, but it's a struggle. People have no idea the amount of devastation and how nobody's addressing the problems. It's a very emotional issue with me."

Widely celebrated as the living embodiment of New Orleans' rich musical heritage, Malcolm "Mac" Rebennack started his musical career in the 1950s, writing and playing guitar on some of the greatest records to come out of New Orleans by Professor Longhair, Art Neville, Joe Tex and Frankie Ford. His unique sound, which encompassed African, Native American and Creole influences, made him an in-demand session player. But while attempting to break up a fight at a gig, a gun went off and nearly severed his index finger, forcing him to give up the guitar and focus on the piano.

Troubles with drugs and the law sent him packing to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s where he changed his name to Dr. John, a.k.a. The Night Tripper, and found session work with Harold Battiste, the musical director for Sonny & Cher. He soon joined the duo's backing band, but Battiste encouraged him to develop his Dr. John persona, which was inspired by a 19th century Bambarra prince Dr. John Montaine, who lived in New Orleans and practiced voodoo.
Dr. John seemingly embraced Montaine's spirit when he released his landmark debut album, "Gris Gris," in 1968. Chockful of voodoo mysticism, psychedelic rock and New Orleans-style fonk 'n' roll, its cover featured The Night Tripper adorned in a Mardi-Gras Indian feathered head-dress and a long colorful robe, quickly launching his star.

His 1971 album "Sun, Moon and Herbs" featured cameos by Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, and 1973's "In the Right Place" netted two chart hits, the title track and "Such A Night." And over the years, he has recorded with the Rolling Stones, The Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Art Blakey, won four Grammy Awards, headlined major festivals, recorded numerous commercial jingles and explored his musical past and future while becoming the world's foremost statesman for New Orleans music.

His unflappable love of New Orleans not only informs his music, but it also spurs his role as an environmentalist, fighting to preserve Louisiana's ecology, namely its eroding wetlands. This week, Dr. John released "Sippiana Hericane," an album that's proceeds will be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, the Jazz Foundation of America and the Voice of the Wetlands.

"This is the best way we can make people aware of the devastation and keep it in peoples' hearts because a lot of our homies have been evicted from their places and dumped all over the USA," he says. "A lot of them have no way to get home and the ones who get there have no place to stay. It creeps me out."

Twelve weeks after the hurricane, Dr. John says, it appears as though officials have no idea how to rectify the problems New Orleans is facing. About 400,000 residents have been unable to return home and an estimated 80,000 homes are uninsured.

The 65-year-old pianist says it's unfortunate it took a disaster like Hurricane Katrina to bring attention to the problems facing Louisiana's environment. He says officials ignored eroding wetlands for 50 years, and that if they were preserved and levees and dikes were built it would have lessened the catastrophic effects of Katrina.

"The problem is nobody wanted to spend the money," he says. "But now there's nothing to protect us, and New Orleans could be gone in the next hurricane season. Even the amount of pollution going into the Gulf of Mexico right now is horrendous.

Eventually that's going into the Caribbean and Antarctic Ocean, which won't help the planet at all. I pray people learn a lesson from all this."

Dr. John says several people have returned to the French Quarter and parts of Jefferson Parish, but most of the city's ninth ward is uninhabitable. He says recovery efforts have been slow because its residents are poor, though it also was home to Aaron Neville and Fats Domino, and he is critical of officials for not helping those who need the assistance the most.

"People say that's where all the thugs live, but a lot of people live where they love and where their roots are," he says. "I lived in the ninth ward part of my life and I loved it. I still love it and it's gone and I feel crushed."

He credits small churches and non-profit groups for trying to help people rebuild their lives, noting that people from around the world have offered to help.

"They've been the backbone, but they can't do everything," Dr. John says. "I'm so disturbed by the big groups that haven't helped. It's very inhumane, to put it bluntly.

"I know when we tour all over the world people respect New Orleans for all the joyous music and original foods we've given them. This is affecting them, too."

Though Dr. John says New Orleans won't be the same to him as it was before Hurricane Katrina, he's confident its citizens will try to restore its magic.

"We aren't the kind of people who throw in the towel," he says. "We're proud to call ourselves coon-asses. We fight for what we believe in. We're coming back and we're going to do the best we can to make it better." CV

Watermelon Slim picks low-down blues

Bill Homan, a.k.a Watermelon Slim, has spent years on the road earning his living, but he seems to be at home pickin' low-down blues. For 18 years, he hauled industrial waste and dry goods, but now he drives his band, the Workers, to blues ports around the country.

"The band I'm playing with is responsible for my success," the 56-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist says. "They're the reason I'm getting anywhere 'cause they help people take me seriously."

Though there's no denying the important contributions Michael Newberry (drums), Ike Lamb (guitar) and Cliff Belcher (bass) have made to Slim's music, what makes his sound so unique and authentic by comparison to most blues acts today is that it reflects his colorful life. His primal sound, an extension of his influences like John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Elmore James, is a reminder of the days of yore when bluesmen actually sang about their rough-and-tumble lives, as he often addresses themes of work, relationships and mortality.

"William Faulkner said the writer does his best work when he writes about what he knows," he says. "And what I know is work, frustrated expectations, two failed marriages and near brushes with death."

Though Slim says the maid who worked for his parents first exposed him to blues music, he has led an otherwise underprivileged life. He learned to play guitar in the early '70s while laid up with an illness in Vietnam, where he purchased a homemade balsa wood instrument for $5 and used his U.S. military-issue Zippo lighter as a slide. In 1973, he became the only Vietnam veteran to record a full-length album during the war, a protest album entitled "Merry Airbrakes" that provided material for Country Joe McDonald. And though he could have signed that year with Atlantic Records, he wound up leading the life of an itinerant bluesman, working blue-collar jobs like operating forklifts, farming watermelons (hence the name) and driving trucks while moving from town to town and continent to continent.

"Have you ever heard of a Vietnam veteran rock star?" Slim says. "Never have, have you? That's because Vietnam didn't put anybody in the mood for singing."

Over the years, Slim developed friendships and musical bonds with singer-activist Barbara Dane, roommate Henry "Sunflower" Vestine of Canned Heat and Chicago blues harp master "Earring" George Mayweather, who he cites as his greatest influence and fishing buddy. He's shared the stage with Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Champion Jack Dupree and Hooker. And at one point in his career, he even played with a group of inmates on furlough from MCI Concord Prison in Massachusetts called the MCIs.

Not bad for a guy with college degrees in journalism and history and a former member of MENSA International, an exclusive society limited to those with genius-range IQs. Some say he is the most literate bluesman in the world.

"I certainly tested the best," Slim says. "But Taj Mahal has a master's degree in my field, too."

Despite his academic pursuits, Slim considers himself an old-school man of the world. The more he thinks about things, the more it leads him back to the truths of the blues.

"There's a no-frills approach to it," he says. "That's why I'm still trying to keep the music sounding really real and without any technological intermediary to it."
Slim almost didn't get the chance to express his blues, but a near-fatal heart attack in 2002 gave him a renewed perspective. In 2004, he released "Up Close & Personal," which received rave reviews, and earlier this year, he was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award for Best New Artist Debut.

"Everything I do now has a sharper pleasure to it," Slim says. "I've lived a fuller life than most people could in two. If I go now, I've got no regrets. I've had money to dispose of, I've been in a war, I've fought against war, I've got a good education, I've lived on three continents, I've had lover experiences that go beyond what any good ol' boy could bullshit about sitting around the campfire and I've been the bad guy. I've seen an awful lot and done an awful lot." CV

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