The New Orleans Social Club
Now more than ever, New Orleans isn’t just a geographic locale. It’s a state of mind. When a displaced musician such as Henry Butler or Ivan Neville yells, “Take me back,” he’s not talking about an airplane ticket or a friggin’ FEMA trailer. It’s a call for those who have been previously initiated to slip into their looser skins. It’s deliberate funk tossed right into the cooking pot with the rest of the usual soul-food ingredients. It’s a trumpet running red hot, as delivered by George Porter Jr. and Leo Nocentelli’s precision faucet of flavor. Austin’s Brannen Temple may not know New Orleans as would a lifelong Crescent City local, but he’s certainly hip to the swampy reality as evidenced by the drummer doing his best Smokey Johnson in place of New Orleans Social Club regular Raymond Weber. Better yet, Buddy Miles stood in with the band long enough to bestow “Them Changes” upon a crowd ravenously eager to find closure in music if not in life. Within a church that considers Professor Longhair as God, percussive piano riffs provide priceless sanctuary as they cast a positive spin upon an already twisted predicament.
This article appears in September 22 • 2006.