Although Anders Osborne has been releasing albums since 1995, his latest, American Patchwork (Alligator), is a career topper. Like his adopted hometown of New Orleans, it’s a mix of funk, rock, blues, and ballads about healing, rebirth, and redemption. He rolls into the Parish tomorrow, backed by the Stanton Moore Trio.
Moore, Galactic’s drummer and an Austin favorite, co-produced American Patchwork with Osborne and Corrosion of Conformity/Down guitarist Pepper Keenan, so the pairing is a natural. “Stanton is a really inspiring guy,” Osborne asserts. “He just works his ass off. He’s very positive and he’s got a great energy about him. He’s normally the drummer in my band, but we don’t always have the Trio.”
Katrina was a turning point for the songwriter/guitarist. He had been in rehab for drug and alcohol addiction earlier this decade, but the devastation of the hurricane caused him to revisit bad habits. “I didn’t jump back into my use after Katrina,” he admits, “but I definitely stepped it up several levels and within a year I had hit rock bottom again.” He re-entered rehab in January 2009, where some of the songs on American Patchwork began to take shape, a double metaphor for rebuilding his life and city. “It goes kind of hand in hand,” he agrees.
Osborne points out the entire New Orleans music community went through a change that made it stronger. “I don’t think much about how it was,” he claims. “You get to a certain place and there’s only post-Katrina. I don’t really know how it use to be. I don’t mean to be esoteric but the fact is that after you have about 85 percent of an entire city wiped out, and I really mean wiped out, it’s such an ordeal that what I remember is the beginning, the five weeks after Katrina when me and Walter Wolfman Washington were the first music that came back. We played on generators the first weekend. That’s all I remember. Anything that happened before seems like a distant dream to me.
“I just remember that’s when we started and that we have created what I consider maybe a better music community. There’s more of a camaraderie and respect and love amongst each other now than I, if possible, have ever felt. I’ve always felt it, but it’s a gang of brotherhood right now. We love each other and we made the decision to stay there and I think it shows. It was pretty strange for a few weeks after. We didn’t know if we could come back. But once that decision was handed to you that you can come back, there was never another option.”
This article appears in December 3 • 2010.