Jazz musician, Jon Cleary, caught up with AU Review’s Simon Clark to discuss the culture of New Orleans, dream collaborations, the upcoming ‘Legends of New Orleans’ Australian Tour and much more!
Hello!
Hello there.
Good Evening, well I think it’s evening there!?
Yeah, it’s about ten to nine.
So are you playing a gig tonight, or do you have the night off?
No, I’ve got the night off actually. I’d completely forgot I’d lined up these interviews; I was going to head out and get some gumbo at this sort of restaurant in the French Quarter. Then all of a sudden I got reminded I had these interviews and things. But I’m very glad to be doing them. Fortunately, I don’t have a gig tonight, I do have a gig tomorrow night, in a little local joint, but tonight I’ve got the night off.
Well thank you for foregoing gumbo to speak to me today.
You’re very welcome. I can get Gumbo anytime.
So what was it that initially drew you to New Orleans?
Well a combination of things really. I was lucky enough to have three uncles, who were musicians, and my dad was a musician, and both my grandfathers played music. And my grandmother had been a singer in the thirties. So there was a lot of music around. And everyone dug black American music from different eras, so I got this kind of comprehensive access to Old Jazz right up to RnB and Funk right up to the seventies when I was a little kid. But the main thing everybody dug was New Orleans music, so I grew listening to New Orleans stuff.
When I was little, my uncle moved to New Orleans and lived there for a while, and when he came back he was full of exciting stories and had two suitcases full of 45s, all these great records and photographs. So I grew up hearing about this exotic place as a little kid and just thought this sounds like somewhere I wanna go. The bug never left me and when I eventually left school I was able to get on the first plane and go there. Without any real plan, I just wanted to get to New Orleans as quickly as I could. So I came here and stayed, fell in love with it. Been here now for thirty years.
With that many musicians in the family it must have seemed the obvious career choice…?
I think it would have been odd if I hadn’t really. I found pretty early on that I could understand the logic of how music works, and that was the thing that gave me the biggest thrill and occupied so much of my time. I’d spend hours and hours playing music. Then when I came to New Orleans, I was seventeen, I’d been a guitar player.
The house I’d moved into had a piano, and the music of New Orleans was really pushing all my buttons, cats like Professor Longhair, Huey Smith and Allen Toussaint and Dr John. Then I got a job in the local and nearest bar, the first night I went straight to a music bar and got a job there painting the place.
The piano player, who played there every Tuesday night, was a name I was familiar with, but has since sort of been acknowledged as being one of the greatest pianists to come out of the city, and his name was James Booker, and he was the piano player in my local. So I got to here him play almost everyday for a couple of years at a time when I was getting down every night and unravelling the mysteries of the piano. So he was the direct link to New Orleans piano music that I had access to. His name was James Booker. What a colourful character!
Well that’s sort of answered my next question very neatly. I was going to say you started off as a guitarist and moved onto piano, where there any particular records or artists that inspired you and got your really wanting to play piano more?
One record my uncle made the whole family listen to when he came back, I can remember it because I was my Grandma’s house and the only record player was up in my Auntie’s bedroom, so we all stood at the foot of the stairs while he played this one tune. It was only the introduction, the piano start that was the most important thing.
I can remember it so vividly, because I melted, I just thought it was the most wonderful thing. The piano player I later found out was a guy from here called Dr John. It wasn’t even his record, it was somebody else’s record, and he was just a session man on it. But I thought that’s it, that’s what I want to do, so it meant jumping onto another instrument. But that was the moment that was the record. And then through a series of accidents and good fortune a few years later I ended up in New Orleans a living a life here.
You’ve worked with quite a number of big names in the industry, the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, Ryan Adams and B.B King. I was lucky enough to see B.B King live a couple of months ago, what was it like working with him?
It was delightful. He was really lovely, just a very sweet, kind, very humble old gent who could get down with the best of them. I’ve played with lots of old blues guys and a lot of them are quite bitter about the way they were treated. He could probably have a lot of good reasons to be bitter if he wanted to, but he wasn’t at all. He was very friendly, immediately interested in what you were doing and let you know if he dug what you were playing.
Of course, I was absolutely thrilled to be playing in the studio with him. It was on a record where they were bringing other people in to duet with him, so I was very lucky to play at the same time as B.B King and D’Angelo who’s another one of my favourites. I mean they come from opposite ends of twentieth century RnB spectrum. But to be in the same room and getting down with those two guys is something I’ll never forget.
If you could create your own dream New Orleans band, who would you have on the billing?
People who are alive?
Anybody, whomever you like.
I don’t know, they’re all great! There are so many great players, they all play New Orleans music, they all have that in common, but they all bring something different to the table. I mean I’ve played with some of them, I’ve had those bands, I’ve played with my favourite musicians – playing with Ervin Charles and Smokey Johnson. That was liking getting behind the wheel of a very very very powerful and fancy sports car. One of them is dead and the other doesn’t play anymore; that was the rhythm section for Fats Domino.
That’s a question I can’t answer off the cuff. To answer that question, I’d have to spend a lot of time sitting down with a pencil and a piece of paper, because it would be a matter of trying to whittle it down, it would take too long, there’s too many great players here.
I can live with that answer.
(Laughs) That’s the honest answer.
You and your music have been featured on the TV show Treme – what are your thoughts on the show, and how did you feel about getting asked to be a part of it?
They feature music in every episode and they try to be very inclusive. I was very flattered to be asked to take part. I mean the reality of it is you end up being stuck in a recording studio, you’re there for eight hours, doing the same thing over and over again. So to answer your question, the actual process of doing it is pretty boring.
I’m not a huge TV fan necessarily, but I think they did a good job of trying to capture some aspects and some elements of New Orleans. Although I think to be honest, the real essence of New Orleans is something intangible; it doesn’t really come across through photographs. It doesn’t even really come across on a lot of recordings. There’s nothing quite like actually being here.
So when you’re used to living in New Orleans, any sort of representation of it is a sort of cover a facsimile. So we’re lucky we actually get to live here, everyday we can open the door and walk out into the street and we’re in New Orleans. I think the real joy of a program like that, is for those that don’t live in New Orleans, and get a little window into the city.
I must admit that’s why I like it. I haven’t managed to get down to New Orleans yet. You’re coming Down Under with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Allen Toussaint soon, have you worked with either before?
Yeah, I have. I’m friends with the Dozen and I’ve toured with them before. They sit with me and I sit and play with them. And I’ve played with Allen before. We’ve done a piano duet together. We’re part of a very small family of New Orleans musicians. It’s a small city New Orleans and the music community is comprised of individuals who’ve played in different bands, everybody free-lances, everybody plays with different line-ups here and there. So yeah it’s going to be a big old New Orleans party for us.
Excellent! What can audiences expect from the show? Is it all planned out, or is it going to be a case of seeing what happens on the night?
It’s a combination of both those, I think. I don’t like planning things out too much because it doesn’t leave you too much room to improvise and be spontaneous which is really a large part of what New Orleans music is about. But all I try to do is mix it up, I’m a student of New Orleans, a fan of New Orleans music. So I take pleasure in playing as many different aspects of New Orleans music as I can. Sometimes we’ll play some New Orleans funk and make it loud and raucous and then other times we might play a hundred year old tune that has Caribbean influences which takes you into another kind of mood. There are so many different kinds of textures and colours so I try and mix it up a little bit.
It’s really just a vehicle to show off what a piano can do as a percussion instrument really. It’s pretty syncopated, but it’s a mixture of my music that I’ve written, which comes out of my rather unique set of sources and that’s evolved from having lived in New Orleans for most of my life; and then it’s also a chance to pay tribute to those guys who have gone before, some of whom I’ve played with and some of whom died long before I was born.
But who contributed to the world of New Orleans jazz and by definition to the world of popular music, because really you can trace a lot of popular music around the world back to New Orleans in the twentieth century. A lot of important cats. It’s our chance to pay some respects. In New Orleans, we’re surrounded by the past, but it keeps evolving and generating new stuff. So it’s a chance to give an overall impression of what the music of New Orleans sounds like.
It sounds like it’s going to be a great night and tour.
It’s going to be a great night. It’s going to be a ball.
You’ve been to Australia a few times – any fond memories at all?
I’ve got lots of fond memories, yeah. I always have a great time when I come to Australia and have some great gigs. The audiences are always up for it. When you’re up on the stage playing, you’re relying on the audience to make it a good night as much as the audience are relying on you to make it a good night. So it’s always nice to play for people who know how to enjoy themselves and let you know they’re enjoying themselves. The more raucous the audience is, the easier it is for us to do our job, because we live in a city where the audiences let you know and will get down at the drop of a hat.
People born and raised in New Orleans grow up with it, and a lot of people who move to New Orleans move because of it. The people of New Orleans are all on the same page; it’s good to work in a place that’s similarly minded, it allows us to do out job properly.
All musicians I know who’ve played in Australia always come back saying, ‘Wow, we had a ball!’. Great audiences. That’s something I’m not worried about, we’re going to have a great time. My fond memories are of good gigs in Australia.
Excellent, well thank you very much for talking to me, and see you in a few weeks!
Thank you, see you there!
For more information about the upcoming ‘Legends of New Orleans’ Tour, check it out here: https://www.theaureview.com/news/the-inaugural-legends-of-new-orleans-australian-tour-announced-featuring-allen-toussaint-and-more
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