Members of New Orleans' Hot 8 Brass Band chat with MSJ

By: Ian Black, MBA 1

Posted: 1/30/06

"How many souls hip hop has affected, how many dead folks this art resurrected, how many nations this culture connected, who am I to judge one's perspective?"

- Common

Certain characteristics of American culture, apple pie, the Norman's (Rockwell and Mailer), and backyard barbecues, provide insights into our culture and people. More complex and tangible artifacts include places like Ellis Island, things like the Model T, and the art of jazz. On Friday night, a brass band from New Orleans came and showed us a reflection of our country as it stands now, after Hurricane Katrina; one grieving and in disarray and screaming to be heard, and all the while, holding a steady beat and rockin' the groove.

All nine members of the Hot 8 came to Michigan Theater and blew the roof off. On a surprisingly warm night in Ann Arbor, this band of twenty-somethings took raucous New Orleans jazz and mixed it with hip hop and reggae, and added a little foot-stomping Michigan Fight Song in to make the perfect concert gumbo. I was not sure how the handful RSBers who attended were going to react to a high-energy group like the Hot 8, but somewhere between the time when the entire crowd, including pregnant women and several couples in their sixties, started dancing in the aisles and when the band led a procession into the lobby, playing to chants of, "Ho-o-o-o-o-t 8, We got that Fi-yah!!!" I stopped worrying about it.

On Wednesday, before the gig, I had a chance to interview the band leader, Benny Pete, two horn players, "Doctor Rackle" Williams and "Wolf" Anderson, and the snare drummer, "Dick" Shavers about their reception on the road, their own musical tastes, favorite New Orleans food, and what jazz means to the city of New Orleans post-Katrina:

MSJ: What gave you the opportunity to go on a national tour?

TH8: Katrina really opened the door for our tour. Most of the band members were evacuated after the storm, and cities around the country started asking musicians to come and represent the city.

MSJ: Some groups were put together from a hodgepodge of artists who barely knew one another. How long before Katrina did the Hot 8 start playing together?

TH8: Most of us have been playing together since grade school. Wolf and Doctor Rackle are the only two not in their twenties, and they joined up about four years ago. Our youngest member, Joe Williams, who wrote most of the music on our last album, was shot and killed by the New Orleans police [in 2004].

MSJ: I'm sorry to hear that. How has the band gone on, since Joe's death?

TH8: How does the band go on after Joe's death, or Katrina? You just do. We haven't had much chance to grieve since the hurricane, because we just got back together as a band and started touring, so we grieve by playing.

MSJ: That must be hard, since most people seem to grieve in different ways?

TH8: Brass band music starts with a vision in one member's head, and it is shared through the melody or rhythm [depending on whether a horn player or drummer has the vision] to the rest of the band, and gets enhanced by each part. It isn't sheet music. Everyone is talking at the same time [with their instruments], trying to step up and beyond everyone else. That competition is good, and lifts everybody up.

MSJ: Is that how funeral processions in New Orleans work?

TH8: Yeah. Brass bands are used for everything in New Orleans; funerals, parties, even political campaigns.
MSJ: Really?

TH8: Yeah. We played for Nagin while he ran for mayor. Once he got elected, we never heard from him again.

MSJ: How does that relate to others' respect for the band playing the music?

TH8: The people love band members, and treat us with the utmost respect. But the city of New Orleans doesn't want us around. Police love to harass musicians, and while the city is really selling the music and the food of New Orleans, they make rules and regulations that keep the musicians away from Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, so most musicians are dirt poor.

MSJ: Is that why The Hot 8 has nine or ten members?

TH8: Yeah. Most of us have day jobs. Dick used to work at the city morgue.

Shavers: I was the only member of the band who didn't leave the city; I was stuck in one of the hotels. When I got out, I was helping pick bodies up throughout the city.

MSJ: Now that you've all been back, how is New Orleans doing?

TH8: Depends which neighborhood you're talking about [laughs]. The barge that broke through the levee is still sitting in the middle of the street in a poor neighborhood, covering two or three blocks of houses. Our families have lived there for so long [Dick's grandmother's home is almost a century old] that we just want to have a chance to go back and restore everything. After [Hurricane] Betsy, New Orleans rebuilt, we can't understand why people don't want us to rebuild now. That's our home, let us rebuild.

MSJ: What does music mean to the rebuilding of New Orleans?

TH8: New Orleans is music; music is the backbone of the city. People, and clubs like us and want us to play, but the city doesn't respect us. [Wynton and Bradford] Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. are supposedly building a community for artists [with Habitat for Humanity], where we'll have places to live, and that's great.

MSJ: Before we go, can you guys tell me a bit about how brass bands came about, and why the tuba features so prominently?

TH8: Well, brass bands come from military and school marching bands, where there is no bass in the rhythm section, so the tuba is substituted. During Second Lines [four-hour street marching concerts, like in the movies] you've got to have a rhythm section, so you have a single snare and bass drum, and the tuba to anchor it. As for New Orleans, the Spanish, French and Caribbean influences account for the dancing and the singing, and the good times we have.