Welcome to the NOMRF.org New Music Tuesday

Our grass roots nonprofit founded by and for displaced musicians now offers the best hour of music relating to New Orleans available, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting NOMRF's efforts. Hundreds of NOMRF grants have gone out thanks to international individual contributions. This download will help that continue. Feel free to repost this blog, with the Katrina Anniversary media focus coming around again.

International rock stars and brilliant New Orleans musicians have all come together to help save the music. This download compilation combines national and local acts because not only is New Orleans the birthplace of jazz, in the 1950's it was the rock and roll hitmaker of the world. The talent is all still there, after two years of struggling to make their way back.

Little Steven's Underground Garage is helping kick off the ReDefine 8/29 Campaign, and YepRoc Records is offering Ian Hunter's signed lyric sheet with email registration. Come on down for our 8/24 New Orleans Party next month. NOMRF will be auctioning off a Headstrong amp with guitar monsters signing it.

NOMRF.org proudly presents the following ReDefine 8/29 Download Compilation at:

(DOWNLOADS HERE)

The Anthems

Ian Hunter 'How's Your House" (With Video)
Kaiser Chiefs "Out of My Depth" (Previously Unreleased)
The dB's "Rains Around Here (Previously Unreleased)
Beatin Path "Brand New Old House (Previously Unreleased)
James Andrews "Sixth Ward Soul"
Dr. John "Wade IV - The Aftermath"
Johnny Sansone "Poor Man's Paradise"
Chicago Farmer "The Village"

The Ballads

Edwin McCain and Maia Sharp "Hold Out a Hand"
Backyard Tire Fire "Wrong Hand"
Susan Cowsill "Crescent City Snow"
Joe Topping "Lord Willing"
John Rankin "If Ever I Cease to Love"
Bryan Lee "Katrina Was Her Name"
Craig Klein "Dad's Dilemma"
Rev. Goat Carson "Waterfall"

Songs are .99 apiece and downloadable on any platform. Thanks for helping us ReDefine 8/29!

How's Your House by Ian Hunter (Song at NOMRF.org)

Add to My Profile | More Videos

"How's Your House" - New Orleans Benefit Video with Rock Star Lyric Contest!

The Mott the Hoople "All the Young Dudes" and "Cleveland Rocks," artist Ian Hunter has written the ultimate anthem for two years post-Katrina. Log in here to win a signed lyric sheet to this amazing video by Grewvia for the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund.

We also offer downloads from Dr. John to Johnny Sansone to an unreleased Kaiser Chiefs song, "Out of My Depth," all NOMRF for .99. Little Steven's Underground Garage is hosting the contest link, too, so the rockers are out in force. Mike Mills of REM has been promoting the Fund with Little Steven all summer.

Yep Roc Contest Login LINK

Little Steven's Underground Garage

New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund ReDefine 8/29 Download Project at: (NOMRF.org).

How's Your House by Ian Hunter (Download Available at NOMRF)

How's Your House by Ian Hunter (Song at NOMRF.org)

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Get Your Wierd Ass Down to New Orleans

As the years pass, we think about adding a clause to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund's original mission statement. But nothing has changed. Our social workers are still volunteers who would be helping New Orleans musicians anyway, and we still give grants to displaced musicians. We could add that the Fund promotes the culture of New Orleans, but New Orleans culture speaks for itself.

You just have to get yourself down there to see it.

And if you haven't been down to the Crescent City, nothing anyone could say or do would explain this culture to you. As a sometime artist (blocked since Katrina), the thing that struck me on my first visit was that you cannot be too weird for New Orleans. My best friend not only talked me into moving down, she talked me into singing my goofy songs acapella.

The shocker was when two women stopped me on the street and complimented that week’s set. It was 10 years ago, but when you write your song on a napkin, it's the kind of thing you remember. Acapella napkin songs are not the kind of thing that would get you two fans in most towns. The songs also introduced me to my husband, a producer who suggested I add at least one musical instrument

So get your weird self down to New Orleans with whatever you do or do not play. You will get encouragement, probably sympathy, and life will go on no matter how much baggage you think you drag into your performances.

Tennessee Williams, Ellen Gilchrist, more Midwesterners than I can name have floated downstream and thrived. And it flows both ways. Louis Armstrong was his exact self every day of his life and Chicago fell in love with him. Then the universe did.

New Orleans singer and bandleader James Andrews is known as "The Satchmo of the Ghetto," and James puts more into a live performance than any entertainer I've seen since Neil Diamond on his rotating stage. Hanging out with him is not unlike being on a rotating stage, or a blender - but in the good way.

Pre-Katrina the town did not need to solicit newcomers. One time Laurence Ferlenghetti was at a Hotel Monteleone writers convention and there was an unrelated sex worker convention the same night. We stood by the front door and tried to guess. Poetry. Porn. Poetry. Poetry. It would have made a good drinking game. That night I met Ferlenghetti, but the Andre Codrescu crowd was headed for the Carousel Bar downstairs and, well, it spins.

The Monteleone Carousel is still spinning, and it has inspired generations of artists.

So get your weird ass down there.

Going Green, Purple and Gold

This Runner Up thing is getting old. Springfield, Illinois, just lost out to some other Springfield that’s not nearly as goofy. And the Saints lost the playoff game which I had to watch in Chicago. In the snow. Near Bears fans.

So I’m getting down to New Orleans for this year’s playoffs if it’s the last thing I do. To see Holy Moses blessing the team, and Saints fans in a sea of black and gold fleur de lis. In New Orleans these days, Crescent City imagery is everywhere. We considered Fleur de Lis tattoos while first displaced, but couldn’t afford them. I now need one to match all my friends’ arms. Just like I need an evacuee-issue “Ask Me About Katrina” shirt.

You could stamp anything with a Fleur De Lis and it would fly out of New Orleans craft fair booths these days. "Third World and Proud of It” and Crescent City Water Meter tee shirts are on sale all over. Residents are fiercely holding onto their culture in case no one else does.

New Orleans not only needs tourists and volunteers, it needs converts. And it's starting to get more of them. People who come to Jazz Fest every year to hear Dr. John, who march with the Mardi Gras Indians on their Super Sunday gathering, have been writing the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund and telling us they plan to move to New Orleans to teach in her schools, or build new houses for the hundreds of thousands of residents waiting to come home.

So much waiting is still ahead. I had to miss a good friend’s wedding last year and tell her that Katrina is my busy season. That’s an odd RSVP but it’s true again this year. There will be a brief window when the focus on going green will shift to going purple, gold and green. And maybe on August 30th this year, the camera crews’ lights will stay on for an extended story.

One of my pet peeves is when people don’t tell you their kid’s age, just that he’s 23 months old and you have to mentally divide by 12 to figure it out.

But New Orleans has been ready for its extended closeup for 23 months now.

Raising Awareness vs. Razing Houses

It's not sour grapes, just a question on global awareness and if the spotlight can get to New Orleans before 8/29 this year. Extra factoid - an ISU artist baked that cake for our NOMRF poster project last year.

(Blog Post).

Amber Waves of Grain

Holidays are strange now. Aside from Halloween, costumes of any sort are very limited out here in America.

There's nothing like New Orleans Fourth of July with the bicycle crew. Everyone wears their vintage cowboy regalia - I used to borrow Jeff's hippie vest and we would follow Bicycle Phil around town with friends like Rocketman Jimmy Descant. He's now in Colorado making rocket apartments. Deb and Gary from the Sophisticats have opened Sputnick Ranch on Magazine if anyone needs get cowboyed out in time for the next ride. Katrina ate our vintage bikes.

The first year after the Twin Towers fell there was talk of increased security in New Orleans' Fourth of July Parade. It was a somber feeling and we lined up to watch the floats start rolling with flags and ribbons on our bikes. A cop turned and blew his whistle, which we thought was a signal to back away from the lineup.

"Get in there," he said, waving the bicycle crew to the start of the parade. So we rolled down Decatur with crowds lined up waving little flags, and I was mortified to only have one pair of beads to throw. A feeling of inadequate beads known only to New Orleaneans.

Dressing up for Midsummer Mardi Gras as the Olympic Drinking Team



complete with routines . . .



dressing up for the inauguration, thousands marched . . .



dressing up at the drop of a hat - it's important and I miss it.

Now we're out here in the amber waves of grain, with wind farms popping up across all the local fields. Energy independence is the only local theme I can think of this Independence Day. We've taken to dressing up the Lincoln statue. If there was a parade, I would try to come up with a wind turbine costume. If it was New Orleans I would work on a clogged up MR GO Canal costume. We saved our old costumes, just in case.



Last night was a fireworks show on a new friend's farm. It eventually turned into a kazoo, guitar and bongo jam so that helped me feel a little more at home. We talked a lot about New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund because we're now that couple at the party. And everyone's outfit was perfectly normal.

New Orleans' United Orphans of America

Reprinted from the Huffington Post

"O-r-p-h-a-n-s Orphans, Orphans we're the best. Go Orphans!"

That was my high school basketball team's cheer. We were the Orphans. To prove it, here's Lincoln dressed in festive Orphan gear for the Fourth of July. As legend goes, during the Depression our mining town's basketball team made do with donated uniforms, mismatched and ill fitting. Someone said we looked like a bunch of orphans and it stuck. redhat.jpg

Growing up an Orphan may have made me less reticent about asking for the refugee rate. In the early days after the levees blew, my husband was playing a benefit for his bandmates displaced in Boston -- they have two teenage boys with muscular dystrophy and were trying to survive after evacuating across the country. We drove from Illinois to help.

With time on my hands during his rehearsal, I called Martha's Vineyard which on the map seemed like a short drive from Boston, and asked for the refugee discount. After the resort owner considered what that would be, she offered two nights at no charge and we headed down to the island after the benefit. Plum TV invited us to go on the air and talk about the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund. It seemed like a reasonable place for fund-raising so we headed south with my husband's replacement guitar.

I sang "It's Raining," not nearly as well as Irma Thomas, showed photos of the city and when the cable show's host asked when we were going home, Jeff and I looked at each other on camera and started discussing it. We still don't know. Musicians call to talk about the factors involved in going home, and the ones who are back call to talk about what's involved in staying. Rising rent, safety, education, whether the rest of the band is back, a spouse's job, tourism, Road Home grants, insurance settlements, the factors are constantly evolving. NOMRF has given out hundreds of grants, but donor fatigue is obvious and we're shaking the same old bucket as the two-year Anti-Versary of 8/29 approaches.

As far as saving the city's culture, ". . . It is not permissible to watch its destruction, and to replace it with nothing, or by so little that a whole people deteriorates, physically and morally," Alan Paton wrote in Cry the Beloved Country. He wrote it about changing Johannesburg and having seen both cities, the book resonates.

The 100th murder this year has been committed. Drummer Dinerral Shaver's alleged killer was set free when no one would testify against the teenage boy who was accused of shooting into his car, killing Dinerral as his family watched him die. His young son sometimes sits in with the Hot 8, and his generation of New Orleans musicians are the last best hope of our city. The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music is coming along, and will be part of helping children learn about their musical heritage. Efforts like that are inspiring.

For every rumor that Jazz is dying, the answer is that the city where Jazz was born is still alive. In the early days of Jazz it was considered a scandalous word and the music was sometimes advertised as Jos, but everyone knew what they were talking about. As an orphan of New Orleans, I invite you to take a belated 4th of July vacation and go hear our music. Overtip the bands. You can look back and tell your children you helped save Jazz or Jos or whatever it's called by then because there is always a chance to turn things around.

After all, the Orphans have won more games than any other high school team in the history of the United States.

There is one only one thing that has power completely, and that is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has no power. I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men desiring neither power nor money but desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it.

- Alan Paton
Cry the Beloved Country

Happy Fourth of July.

Say You're a New Orleans Musician

Say you're a New Orleans musician. You haven't been able to move back to the city where you had a fan base built up for years before the levees broke. For almost two years your return has been delayed as your family debates your children's education, safety, health care, the rising cost of rent, whether your bandmates are back, how much of your equipment you've been able to replace – the list is endless.

Donor fatigue is setting in, Americans gave $7 billion in 2005 and $1 billion in 2006. You're not home so you qualify for help from fewer agencies. You come for weekend gigs when the car is in good shape, you can afford the gas and there's a friend's couch to stay on. Half the couches in New Orleans are still gone. You're trying to get to know the new music scene from halfway across the country. You're not a kid anymore and it's hard to establish a second life.

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund has a special understanding of displaced musicians, being founded by and for displaced musicians. These are stories we hear every day. Our board member Rickie Castrillo, voice of Tipitina's for decades, evacuated to Birmingham and sometimes plays with Taylor Hicks' old band. He's now moving on to North Carolina and is looking for a permanent home, like the rest of us.

NOMRF.ORG is an independent nonprofit, not a referral agency, so your donation will go to a displaced New Orleans musician instead of going to another fund or business. Most musicians have waited long enough for the help. We welcome yours.

When the Saints Go Marchin' Out

From The Economist
June 28th

As gigs have become more frequent, musicians have begun trickling back, but many still have mailing addresses elsewhere; the clubs have been rebuilt, but their houses remain ruined. The Soul Rebels Brass Band, a younger ensemble that incorporates funk, R&B and hip-hop into the Dixieland tradition, is now based in Houston. Only two of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's eight members have returned to the Gentilly neighbourhood, where most of the band lived before the hurricane.

And two years after the hurricane, donor fatigue is setting in. The New Orleans Musicians' Relief Fund (NOMRF), another organisation that helps displaced musicians, is preparing to release an album for the two-year “anti-versary” in August. The album will be called “Redefine 8/29”, referring to the day New Orleans was evacuated. Jeff Beninato, the musician who founded NOMRF, says that the title could not refer directly to the hurricane. “If they hear Katrina, they'll think, ‘I don't want to hear that; that's old news.’”

But spare a thought for that most iconic of New Orleans institutions, the funeral with music. A brass band playing sombre dirges leads the mourners and the body tearfully through the streets, from church to cemetery. The body goes into the ground, and the tone changes: the music becomes upbeat, and the mourners turn to revellers, celebrating the life of the departed. Neither Dixieland nor New Orleans is yet a corpse, of course, but nowhere else is quite as adept at wringing joy from tragedy.

Where You At Mule?

New Orleans’ own Al “Carnival Time” Johnson’s birthday is today, as well as World Refugee Day, and Al has achieved the ultimate musical coup - his song title in his name. New Orleans has its own set of anthems, with “Carnival Time“ as the pinnacle. Al is now an evacuee, (refugee if we take the word at its most literal meaning), among thousands labeled Katricians by Houston’s mayor. As nicknames go, that one is lousy. New Orleans is a town of quality nicknames. Griper, Barbecue Dave, Afro, and Rev. Goat.

Rev. Goat’s name stands for Go On And Try, and he once nicknamed me Foxy Lady. It involved a stalled car, a white shirt and some ass walking by in a thunderstorm yelling, “Hey, Foxy Lady!” Thankfully it never caught on, although he kept it up for 10 years. Goatey is now displaced at Kinky Friedman’s ranch in Austin after staying at Levon Helm’s place in Woodstock. A man of many talents, he just finished writing the mystery novel, “Shallow Graves.”

In 1992, Goat ran for President with the slogan “Vote Goat – We Want Our Money Back.” Joe Walsh was his running mate, and 100,000 citizens did vote Goat. His post-hurricane description of the levee failure, quoted by Dr. John, was “New Orleans didn’t die a natural death, she was murdered.”

Dr. John’s MySpace site says, "I am heartbroken over all of the displaced people from the hurricanes and the NEW ORLEANS disaster. If you wanna help send assistance to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund, or the Voice of the Wetlands."

The Nite Tripper’s continued dedication to New Orleans is a wonder. His blog also includes a link to “Where You At Mule,” which I will go out on a limb and describe as the most unique New Orleans music video of all time. Everything about it makes me homesick, especially that hat.



“Where You At Mule”’s answering refrain is: “I tell you I’m coming home.” It’s something hundreds of thousands of us would love to say before long. So buy a New Orleans evacuee a beverage today – it’s our holiday.

NOMRF Kicks Off Its Summer of Love Campaign

Our New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund is kicking off its Summer of Love Campaign. All summer long, bands are invited to pass the bucket, contribute a buck a ticket, whatever they can spare for displaced New Orleans musicians.

Forty years after the original Summer of Love, NOMRF.org's pledge drive is helping displaced New Orleans musicians around the country.

The top band supporting New Orleans Musicians will have a song added to the NOMRF Download Project, and will be invited to our Anti-Versary commemoration in New Orleans on 8/29. The NOMRF Download Project, almost ready for release, includes "How's Your House" by Ian Hunter ("All The Young Dudes"), and other amazing tunes.

NOMRF operates with no rental overhead, and keeps expenses to a bare minimum to stretch each donor's dollar. We've helped hundreds of displaced New Orleans musicians with cost of living grants since the levees broke with the 501c3 charity founded by and for displaced musicians.

Some recipients use their grants to get home, purchase instruments or replace recording equipment - others use the funds to survive wherever they are now. The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund has been supported by Amos Lee, Wilco, the dB's (founder Jeff Beninato's former band), Dr. John, Jesus H. Christ and the 4 Hornsment of the Apocolypse, REM and many other New Orleans music lovers.

NOMRF benefits continue to come from locales including Helsinki, DC, L.A., NYC, Chicago, Baltimore and London. That's how the Fund continues to help hundreds of New Orleans musicians rebuild their lives.

So show New Orleans the love! Details on the NOMRF Summer of Love Campaign are available at nomrf.org, myspace.com/nomrf, neworleansmusiciansrelief.blogspot.com or by writing jeff@nomrf.org.

Time to Face the Music - Evacuee Scanning Headlines

Reprinted from: the Huffington Post

Today's mainstream headlines are either feast or famine for evacuees. When they are bad, they are very, very bad, but when they are good, they help keep us above the bubble.

The Golden Beignet Of the Day goes to USA Today. One story was on the federal judge who told FEMA to stop trying to take evacuees' money back until the agency can clearly tell people why. FEMA is looking to recoup $485 million. I know people who got these letters. It's one more ingredient in the recipe for a nervous breakdown -- at best.

The other USA Today headline was on the fact that the National Guard is running low on local equipment and probably won't be able to help with hurricanes to the degree it did in 2005.

A third story, posted on NOLA.com, is the failing weather satellite. It means more evacuations with less certainty -- 110 degrees and 12 hours to drive 50 miles with a car full of pets and family photos, if any survived. I would like this story to bring the billionaires who fund weather satellites forward. We need a James Bond-type weather obsessed genius, but in a good way. Dr. Yes.

Fourth, and this headline is a heartbreaker for evacuees whipping out the paper in the coffeeshops of their new towns, "Katrina Evacuee from New Orleans Accused of Child Abuse." Between that and the 10 percent who practiced poor trailer maintenance, how demonized do we as a subgroup need to be by the wires?

Our New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund has received hundreds of applications from around the country, and it's sad to think that each of them is subjected to the increased climate of blaming the victim.

I wonder how residents of tornado alley would feel about "Woman Who Was Once in a Huge Tornado Accused of Something Horrible (AP) A woman, who moved away from an area which has been hit by huge tornadoes, was accused of horrible actions." As a whole, it feels like 8/29 evacuees are starting to be seen less as victims of a catastrophic levee failure and more as Katrina tax dollar talking points. The sad fact is that the Road Home Program has imploded. Thanks for sending down your money. We didn't get it.

The final headline, in Medical News Today, was that catastrophic events can affect the quality of a person's sleep. So watch for my local paper's headline, "Katrina Evacuee from New Orleans Still Having Trouble Sleeping."

In the event of a slow news day.

A Modern Stone Age Family

A few months ago while my dad was still able to leave his nursing home, the family spent an afternoon in our apartment. As Jeff and I were describing our last trip home to New Orleans, Dad spoke up.

"In the south, if you just pull over for gas and they always say, 'Aahm Gawnna Kiillll Yeeeew,' " And he made the most menacing scowl, I had ever seen. For a non-scowler, it was epic. As the the warnings got more dire, we were eventually all in tears.

More tea dad? "Aahm Gawnna Kiillll Yeeeew." My gentle dad was sharing this final cautionary tale against stopping for gas in the south. There is nothing funny about the possibility of getting popped at a gas station. And yes, crime is on the upswing. Everyone I know has been affected in some way. It was just the randomness and the enthusiasm of my dad's final advice.

He slipped away over Mother's Day weekend. This Father's Day I have his legacy of giving to remember him by. It helps inspire us to keep the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund rolling when it seem like no one cares anymore. Dad sometimes offered Thanksgiving Day dinner for anyone in our small town in the lobby of his Christian bookstore. Generally he fed little old ladies who were happy for a day to socialize. He traveled the world with mission work, every continent but Antarctica.

And at the end he fought an admirable battle against the ravages of Alzheimer's Disease. As a doctor, he could figure out all-purpose social phrases like, "How are things at the office?" no matter who he thought you were. Wherever he was, he would tell you his office was in the basement.

In the last year, Dad was finally wheeled in front of enough nursing home television sets to absorb pop culture and it offered him more conversational shortcuts. After a lifetime of reading the Bible, I found him with a People Magazine and he waved it at me angrily muttering, "Celebrity Cellulite!" Then he came across the ultimate conversational shortcut. "How's dinner Dad, do you like the chicken tonight?"

"Yabba Dabba Doo," he answered with a grin.

When the wonderful New Orleans trumpeter James Andrews second lined to dedicate his grandfather's belated gravestone, the band marched behind him playing for no apparent reason, "Flintstones, Meet the Flintstones," as they entered the cemetary. That's when I knew I would probably never see Dad again. We made it back to Illinois too late to visit with him one last time, but he gave me the gift of a lifetime learning from the finest person I have ever known.

So Happy Father's Day wherever you are, Dr. Ray. We were a modern stone age family.

New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund Suggests Direct Flight - Paris to New Orleans

We're thinking Paris Hilton needs to get to New Orleans when they spring her and start giving back.

Huffington Post LINK

NOMRF Adds A Latte Link and Thanks Little Steven

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund is adding a latte link - because this summer every dollar counts. So if you're wired enough already, skip today's latte or tea and contribute $5 to a New Orleans musician who needs help getting through a long, slow summer. With half the population still gone, gigs are hard to come by and the rebuilding funds are slow in coming.

NOMRF Latte Link.

Also, thanks to our friend Mike Mills of REM, check out this week's New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund link on Little Steven's Underground Garage.

Feel free to repost this - the $5's could add up to a lot of help for New Orleans muscians.

Why I Won't Be Invited to the State Farm Pool Party

Katrina Billboard Blasts Big Insurance in its Own Back Yard

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund, Inc., an independant grass roots nonprofit, has not taken donations from big insurance, big oil or big anything. Just amazing musicians and music lovers from around the world at NOMRF.org.

Remains of Barry Move Up the East Coast

It’s a displacement thing, that NOLA.com can still get a spit take out of me before I read the story. “Five teens killed” was today’s story, but it was a recap from last summer. And “Remains of Barry Moving Up East Coast” was not about Barry Cowsill, found last winter in the Mississippi.

We watched Entertainment Tonight’s child star coverage when Barry first went missing, and tried to identify whether he was the blurred image from the Convention Center while evacuated to a stranger’s home in Milwaukee. We would have followed the search on CNN but the stranger offering her home for a month didn’t have cable. It saved us from staying glued to cable news which probably didn’t cover the story any more than Entertainment Tonight.

Found four months after the storm, Barry was brought up the East Coast to his family home in Rhode Island for a memorial. Accompanying him from New Orleans was his sister Susan Cowsill, Barry’s equal in turning any stage into a living room and making you want to get as close to that voice as possible. She describes the strong wind that blew just as they were scattering his ashes, and Barry blew back in everyone’s face. If you knew him, you would expect nothing less.

Barry has a Wikipedia entry and if I understood Wikipedia, I would add more about his humor to balance out the child star, sudden loss of fame, suicide attempts and pseudonyms. His occasional name change was the smartest thing any child star ever attempted and Barry Scott often pulled it off. It may have bought him a few more years on the planet.

The Partridge Family was originally going to be the Cowsill family but their father pulled the plug when Shirley Jones came on board instead of Mrs. Cowsill. So he sold the rights to their life story of a traveling band and Keith Partridge got Barry’s life. When David Cassidy came to town Barry had a head of steam and wanted to challenge Keith to a rumble. After all, “He thinks he’s me but he just played me on t.v.” A little more Danny than Keith, Barry challenged everyone who loved him. You had to work at it

Like most of the lost souls who find a landing in New Orleans, he would fade away when the town no longer offered a couch, and come back when it did. When it was your turn to put him up, you started to eye the next stopover wistfully. Anyone who has a larger than life Katrina friend on their couch knows what I’m talking about. My husband Jeff, Barry’s former bandmate from The Stragglers, heard the best of Barry if the stars aligned and he hadn’t partied his voice into dust the night before.

It was easy to forget Barry’s contribution to musical history until you saw him on stage, and he would jump any stage he got close enough to. “The Rain the Park and Other Things,” (or “I Love the Flower Girl” if you know it from the commercial), got to #2 on the Billboard charts. Sometimes when he needed money, Barry would sell family photos. One was of the Cowsills all walking up the Vatican steps in their matching outfits to meet the Pope. They are so young it’s heartbreaking. It was at about the time they were singing about long, beautiful hair.

Barry was trying to get sober when Katrina hit. I hoped that he was Barry Scott again, somewhere out on the road. He probably would have liked to fade away like that, but instead was found face down in the Mississippi. Sculptor Jimmy Descant made a beautiful rocketship urn and included things found in Barry’s pocket, like his peace dove. Barry’s death was ruled a drowning from the hurricane. A plaque was anonymously placed on the Tree of Life in New Orleans, “to a true legend who died on the levee.”

We’ve posted his song, “Old Timeless,” on myspace.com/nomrf, and a podcast on nomrf.org as a tribute as the remains of Barry move up the East Coast again.

Lost Lincoln - It Was 151 Years Ago Today

"Generally, when he was speakin', he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm - but your head was workin'; but that time up to Bloomington he was like - what's that the Bible calls it? - avengin fire" - yes, sir, that's it, he was like avengin fire." Roland W. Diller, witness to Lincoln's Lost Speech.

It was 151 years ago today in my evacuation location of Bloomington Illinois that Abraham Lincoln gave the best speech of his career and nobody took notes. I went to the museum and asked if they had a copy of Lincoln's Lost Speech. Never hurts to ask. They don't.

The speech has been credited for starting the catapulting him to the presidency and kicking off the Illinois Republican Party. We know Lincoln's flatboat trips to New Orleans were part of what influenced the speech.

During one of those trips, Lincoln ran aground in New Salem, Illinois and as he figured out a way to raise the flatboat and save his cargo, locals came out to watch. They invited him to stop by on his way back through, and he ended up moving there. Lincoln probably mentioned his patented invention to lift a barge that runs aground in his Bloomington speech "Discoveries and Inventions," but the wrong date was listed in the newspaper and the location was hard to find.

A plaque next to our local cafe says so. There's something inherently midwestern about not only commemorating the site of Lincoln's "Inventions" speech, but also why it was a flop. But there is also great encouragement to be found here.

After 10 years in New Orleans, I'm back in Illinois via Katrina. The courthouse museum hosted a costume gala for our musicians' nonprofit (NOMRF). Kelly's Bakery brought the food, A. Renee brought the wine, and we helped a displaced pianist who came down from Chicago. the Lincoln statue outside was resplendent with purple, gold and green balloons.

Lincoln was encouraged here, too. His friend Jesse Fell saw him walking on that same courthouse lawn and brought him into brother's office across the street to to request an autobiography for the campaign. Fell, the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson (who also ran for president from Bloomington because there's something in the water), had been hearing the excitement out East over the Lincoln wiping the floor with Douglas, the country's best known orator at the time.

Lincoln turned him down for a year, and when he changed his mind, he asked that, "If any thing be made out of it, I wish it to be modest."

It contained the following bit of his history, " If a straggler supposed to understand latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard-- . . . The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity--"

He downplayed his oratory skills. He once acquitted a New Salem friend's son from a murder charge in the "Almanac Case," using the height of the moon to challenge a witness. Then he refused payment out of friendship.

Lincoln told Fell as to the note's briefness, 'There is not much of it, because there is not much of me."

Fell's family's office was a wall away from our apartment, so we wake up to groups of tourists with headphones peering up at our second floor window on the new Lincoln tour. They also visit the site of the Lost Speech. Of the speech, John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat said, "I shall not mar any of its fine proportions by attempting even a synopsis of it."

By all reports, the press was either too enthralled to cover the speech, or Lincoln was censored for his early and fiery rhetoric. Whatever the case, no authenticated copy of the speech exists. Bloomington author and Illinois Supreme Court Reporter Isaac Newton Phillips in 1901 discounted a version of the speech written decades after the fact and reiterates, "We do not know what he said."

Druggist Ronald W. Diller, describes it in "Lincoln's Lost Speech, by Elwell Crissey. "I never knew exactly what did happen there. All I recollect is that a the beginnin' of that speech I was settin in the back of the room and when I come to I was hanging' on to the front of the platform. I recollect I looked up and seen Joe Medill [Chicago publisher] standin on the reporters' table lookin foolish-like and heard him say, "Good Lord, boys! I ain't took a note!"

"He knew what he was doing' that night," said Diller. "He knew he was cuttin' loose. He knew them old Whigs was goin' to have it in for him for doin' it, and he meant to show 'em he didn't care a red cent what they thought. He knew there was always a lot of fools in that new party he was joining - the kind that's always takin' up with every new thing comes along to get something to orate about. He saw clear as day that if they got started right that night, he'd got to fire 'em up, so he threw back his shoulders and lit in."

This was table-jumping, string bean Lincoln. All cheekbones because he had not yet taken an 11-year old's advice to grow a beard to lend him gravitas. Possibly the first campaign image consultant, and she did a bang-up job. The Lost Speech did not survive to be dissected, and it could have referenced anything. The courthouse burned to the ground at the turn of the century, much of the Lincoln lore burning with it.

It probably wasn't a religious speech. Upon finding out most of Springfield ministers polled against his candidacy he once said, "I am not a Christian -- God knows I would be one but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not understand this book. These men well know that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all.'

There isn't much Lincoln was afraid to talk about. He shared a bed with his friend for years, as he later commented on to Congress when nominating James Speed for Attorney General. Lincoln said he didn't know James as well as his brother. "That is not strange, for I slept with Joshua for four years, and I suppose I ought to know." Historians are still arm-wrestling over the significance of the general storekeeper inviting Lincoln to share his bed when he came in to buy bedding. Don't know, don't care, but Honest Abe indeed.

A 19th Century candidate could be an acknowledged agnostic with a long-term bunk buddy, turbulent marriage, well of genius, streak of melancholy and love of poetry. But when you first ignited a firestorm against slavery, the pencils fell silent.

Some clues to the Lost Speech content may be found in this earlier letter to Joshua. "How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes"

"When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy," the letter concludes.

These thoughts were rising to the surface the year before the speech. He was running against the Know-Nothings so that part of the speech probably wrote itself. I like to think that at some point he said, "Stop owning people now," but it's all pure conjecture.

"His speech was full of fire and energy and force. It was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, and right set ablaze by the devine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath," said Lincoln's last law partner William Herndon who described it as the best speech of Lincoln's career.

"In ten minutes he was about eight feet tall; his face was white, his eyes was blazin' fire, and he was thunderin, 'Kansas shall be free!' 'Ballots, not bullets!' 'We won't go out of the Union and you shan't.'" Diller described. That last line is the only part of the speech universally agreed upon.

"Generally, when he was speakin', he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm - but your head was workin'; but that time up to Bloomington he was like - what's that the Bible calls it? - avengin fire" - yes, sir, that's it, he was like avengin fire," Diller added.

Slavery has long been abolished but every era has its elephant in the room. At the dawn of this year's hurricane season, New Orleans could use another great orator with the Mr. Go oil barge canal aimed like a bullet into the heart of our city. And hundreds of thousands of us are not home.

A New Hampshire music festival this fall benefiting the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund will be up the road from the Primaries No matter who makes the speeches this time, I promise to take notes.

Because we are long overdue for more avenging fire.

Jazzfest Pictures Worth 1000 Blogs

It took a month of Sundays, we're slow unpackers, but here's our festival season photo series. NOMRF's Gambit Big Easy Award recognition, a Katrina-delated artist's wedding reception, Jessie Hill Day, Musician Open Houses, froglegs with Wardell, it's all in there.

We welcome any summer benefits you can dream up, but first put on a festive song, pop a cold Abita and play the slideshow. It is dedicated to Richard Spector, whose friends missed him at the Fest.

New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund Slideshow.

Mother's Eye

* Reprinted from the Huffington Post


I've been meaning to compile a Mother's Day tribute, and just pulled into my Midwest evacuation location after a productive New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund month back home at Jazzfest.

My mother has always been funny, odd, unpredictable - there aren't enough adjectives. She could kick a football across our half-acre front yard. She can still kick as high as a Rockette for no apparent reason. My husband points out that I do the same thing.

Last month when I was checking mom into an Alzheimer's ward, she thought it was a girls' dorm because my dad's Alzheimer's ward is on the other side of the hallway. "I'm a basket case," she whispered. "Then you're finally going to right place!" I said and it seemed to cheer her up. Before checking into the facility, she asked for a 5 minute head start to make a break for it and run for the woods. The woods wouldn't know what hit them.

Here are four things I'd like to thank Mom for. They've instilled my values, for better or worse.

Trips to the wars.

Johannesburg and Soweto as Apartheid was ending. Jerusalem and Beirut during the Arab Israeli conflict. Rhodesia and Zambezia when they were having the war over Victoria Falls. Now it's Zimbabwe.

Most of my childhood trips involved at least one moment of thinking, 'Now, this ain't right."

Thanks for the disaster evacuation preparation.

The roller rink.

Our small town rink closed in the summer and mom stored the candy and soda in a basement freezer. For the most part, snacks were fish from our pond or whatever the farmers were planting in the side field that year - rolled wheat, soybeans or raw sweet corn. But all summer long, I'd sneak down to the freezer which wasn't grounded and get a jolt of electricity every time I reached in for a Snicker's bar.

Thanks for the diet help.

A pony.

Her name was Pepper, my dad being a doctor and a would-be gentleman farmer with 40 acres and one horse. Not unlike kids who promise to take care of a dog but don't, the winters got longer and colder, and we hated the hike through the snow. A horse can probably tell when you're over it, and Pepper trotted over to the neighbor's field one day and they kept her. She got to hang out with other horses and we all got to wave when we drove by.

Thanks for the practice in letting go.

The Eye Thing.

Mom is unlucky in the kitchen. One time she sliced through her arm cutting frozen meat and drove to the doctor with the knife still in her arm. Another time our pressure cooker blew up and scalded her eye. The eye was red, oozy, crusted over, and Mom called me on the fact that I couldn't look at it. "It's not that bad," I lied while looking down at the tablecloth.

Later that night, I heard rustling at my window. At first I thought it was tree branches outside, but eventually opened the curtain to check. Pressed up against the window was my mother's hideous eye. I screamed jumped back from the curtain to lock my door.

All she said at breakfast the next day was, "Not that bad, huh?"

Thanks for preparing me for life's surprises.