Brass Band Van Donated And Gone Again

When Cayetano (Tanio) Hingle applied for transportation from the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund, a family in Baton Rouge had just decided to donate their used minivan so the timing was perfect.

The family gave the brass and drummer their Ford Winstar through NOMRF, and it helped get him to gigs in the French Quarter from his post-Katrina location an hour outside of the city. It also helped transport his two children where they needed to go. On Sunday, the van was stolen from in front of his home.

It was hard enough for our small, grass roots nonprofit to be able to provide a van to a brass band drummer. Doing it twice is going to be daunting. If you're shooting for that warm holiday feeling, skip to the next blog.

"With the music, we're getting by but you know it's the housing and paying the bills that's real, real hard right now," Tanio said about the current economic climate.

Traditional brass bands survive on French Quarter tourism, which is down 40 percent at last estimate, and locals are supporting the music scene as well as they can given their ongoing Road Home challenges.

Tanio's New Birth Brass Band recently lost founding member Kerwin James. After suffering a stroke, Kerwin was in a coma for months out of state. He never was able to move back permanently. At his memorial second line in New Orleans, brass band musicians were arrested for marching without a permit and disturbing the peace.

There are positive stories like 11 year old friend Jake who lost everything to Katrina but still collects toys for his fellow young musicians. As he says, "We're not Katrina victims, we're Katrina survivors."

But overall the economic condition is desperate on this third post-disaster holiday season. Our Fund has been able to send out hundreds of grants, and has helped out with housing, transportation and instruments. Friends like Dr. John, the dB's (Jeff's former band), REM, Ian Hunter and many others provide benefit download tunes and moral support, since it takes someone in the public eye to keep this ball in the air. Case in point, Brad Pitt with his pink houses on Larry King tonight.

Even with all that help, awareness is rapidly dying down. Two steps forward and one step back is the best description for many in the Crescent City right now. Leah Chase, Jr.'s first FEMA trailer was stolen from the front of the historic restaurant Dooky Chase's. It was home away from home for Martin Luther King, Jr. and Freedom Fighters.

Leah sang a stunning "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" at our first Anti-Versary Commemoration, and sings The Kindness of Strangers Has Been My Salvation in Harry Shearer's MyDamnChannel Crescent City Stories linked below.

New Orleans musicians are some of the strongest people you'll ever met. The hardest part of interviewing many of them is knowing it's an uphill climb. Musician Timothea Beckerman made it to the Northeast and used to call to talk about a film score she hoped to finish. "I've been an independent woman all my life and I want to continue it. But you can't if you have 10 dozen worries on your mind. I'm homesick like everybody else, but I can't go home. I've got to stay inside. And I don't have portable oxygen anyway."

We tried to reassure her, but she died in 2006 at the age of 55. We are losing too many from the birthplace of jazz. On the surface the causes are medical, but it's important to factor in the heartbreak of waiting too long to come home. It is still possible to help these musicians any way you choose. Just please help them soon.

(Write the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (nomrf.org) if you have a good used van you're tired of.)

Harry Shearer's My Damn Channel Crescent City Stories:

A Good New Orleans Note to Come Home To

Music is an irreplacable part of of New Orleans and depending on which Anniversary headline you read last week, the music is dying or it’s coming back better than ever. As could only happen in New Orleans, both are true.

First are the statistics. The local musicians union says New Orleans housed more than 3,000 musicians before Katrina, and about 1,800 are back. Some estimates are twice as high, depending on who you consider a full time musician, but there are no official tallies from the city. And “coming back” is an amorphous term among musicians who worked full time before the storm.

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund just donated a van to help New Birth Brass Band’s Tanio Hingle out with transportation. He drives in for gigs, but is a commuting musician home?

NOMRF also offers an apartment for musicians like Jerome Jones of the Hot 8 who lives too far away to drive home after gigs. But is a musician home when he stays in a charity apartment while his family still lives out of state?

For those who did come back over the last two years, we’ve noticed a boomerang effect. Musicians like Dave Malone of The Radiators have come home only to have to leave again. It stands to reason that a town barely over half its original size can only support half as many musicians, but it hurts to be one of them.

In a New York Journal News article he says, "I really, really, really, really applaud musicians and others from there who are able to say: 'Oh yeah, we're coming back,' with this completely annoying, glass-half-full attitude," says Malone. "I'm bitter. I'm really heartbroken, and I'm bitter about it. I never thought in a million years I'd ever say the sentence, 'I don't live in New Orleans anymore.'”

The article concludes with Malone explaining why the groove of New Orleans is unlike anywhere else. "(There) is not only the ability, but the likelihood, of any person in the city to throw a party or have a parade at the drop of a hat," says Malone. "It's really true. It's like, 'Oh my god, the world's (screwed) up.' Pardon my French. 'Let's have a parade.' It's really probably the most laid-back city, certainly in the country, maybe in the world. It's not like any other U.S. city. It's more like kind of a Caribbean town with U.S. laws. ...There's something about the town. All of that adds to this laid back kind of feeling. I think that somehow transfers somehow into the rhythmic feel of the music."

Magdalene Kellett of the Columbia City Paper describes this rhythm in “Crescent City Rising”:

For generations, New Orleans has captivated writers, musicians, artists and everyday people all over the world with its rhythm, its beat, the music floating out of every barroom door. Or maybe it’s the smell of hibiscus and night blooming Jasmine in the early mornings on Barracks Street, the romance of a history drenched in pirates, kings and blood. It’s the sexy laissez faire attitude. It’s the coffee. It’s the way people pass you on the street and say “alright” or the way you get called “baby.” It is everything that strikes a note in the heart of people when they visit The City that Care Forgot.

Hometown hero Harry Shearer recently explained why he stays. "I had no damage to my home and I felt that when you love a city, you don't walk away from it at a time when it's battered and bruised; you help to bring it back to good shape."

That’s a good note to come home to.