Stealing the Show

In a 1975 interview with Downbeat magazine, Dr. John explained that beat like this: "See, in the basic Afro Cuban music, one is established as the beat and everything after that is basically free. In Latin music one is the hit and is always established and everybody plays around it. But in second-line the beat is four/one, and there are two accents, as opposed to the one in Latin."

A week or so after the storm, Hingle got in touch with Mitchell and asked for a gig. "It made sense to just have them play on some off night at the bar on a regular basis," Mitchell says. "There were several reasons. One was just to get them the ability to play on a regular basis. The second one was to promote that music, and obviously it was gonna benefit me, too."

At that time, some of the band's players were still in the Astrodome. Mitchell ferried them back and forth from the gigs at his bar. It was worth it. The shows were some of the best in Houston last year. "The first ones were just joyous outpourings of love from all the New Orleans people," Mitchell says. "And once the Houston people found out about it and once the word got out on KPFT and those stations, people from Houston started showing up. It was such an odd thing to see 60-year-old white women dancing with New Orleans hip-hoppers -- guys in FUBU wear with their short dreads doing those dances that are commonplace in New Orleans. It was really joyful -- that's the only way to put it. We were charging $5 to get in and then people were tipping on top of that. One friend of mine put $200 in the jar one time, and I don't think that was that extraordinary."

Mitchell says that the shows started to fizzle around the holidays. One factor was the return to New Orleans of rising trad jazz superstar Glen David Andrews, a mighty-voiced 24-year-old New Orleans royal -- the Andrews family is both numerous and famous in Big Easy music circles, and his grandfather Jessie Hill authored the R&B classic "Ooh Poo Pa Doo." Andrews fronted the New Birth with fiery, Cab Calloway-style vocals and acrobatic trombone solos, and his natural-born charisma and hard-earned ability to work a crowd drew in the more casual fans. (Andrews's rewritten version of "Stand By Me," which Andrews composed here in Houston, is the final scene in the new Spike Lee documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.)

Andrews's departure was the first of many. The other guys in the band had gigs in Europe, and then Mardi Gras season and Jazz Fest rolled around. For a time, you never knew which New Birth would show up at the Volcano on any given Wednesday. On one fateful night, the band's horn section showed up but the rhythm section couldn't make it, so an electric bassist and a kit drummer took their place. Mitchell says the neighbors complained that night for the first of many times. "They were putting up with it before that, but that was just so electronically loud that it just blew it over the top, and after that it was just any noise, they'd jump the gun."

The Volcano is on Bissonnet and in a primarily residential area, and is not normally a music venue. Mitchell had figured on some flak from his neighbors, so he always ended the shows early. That plan backfired. "The New Orleans people want that shit to start late," Mitchell says. "Even knowing my shows would start early, they wouldn't show up until ten o'clock and they would see the last 30 minutes. For them, ten was early. And even the Houstonians didn't show up until late, for whatever reason. I was just sort of flabbergasted -- I was like, man, it's a fuckin' Wednesday. Don't people have to work?"

Mitchell also believes that the local media missed out on a great story, to some degree. "The public radio stations helped, the Press did an article and Channel 26 came out, but that was it," he says. "I really thought it would get more attention than it did. I'm happy with the attention that it did get, but I guess I was thinking there might be some more people getting into it. Like maybe Majic 102 or something, but I guess those things are just so driven by advertisers and formats now..."

But by this time, the only New Orleans story the local media was interested in was crime. There was a spate of Katrina-related shootings in Houston over Thanksgiving weekend, and in late December, the Houston Police Department released figures showing that the murder rate for 2005 was 23 percent higher than that of 2004.

Houstonians felt they had done the city of New Orleans a historic favor, and many had, either through volunteering their time or donating money or clothes, and this largesse was to be repaid with senseless gang violence on our streets?