New Orleans Radiators: The Last River Run

Minnesota Fishheads bid a fond farewell to New Orleans' finest in a three-night run at the Cabooze

By Karl Bremer

Riverview Supper Club. Union Bar. Payne Reliever. Moby Dick’s. Mr. Nib’s. The original Wilebski’s Blues Saloon. The original Guthrie Theatre. Glam Slam. The Quest. Trocadero’s. The names come calling back like some lost radio. They’re gone now, ghosts along the Mississippi, but the Radiators played them all—and many, many more—in the 29 or so years they’ve been plying their Fishhead music in Minnesota waters.

Now, after a long-playing 33-1/3 years, the New Orleans Radiators are calling it a career. Keyboardist and prolific songwriter Ed “Zeke Fishhead” Volker announced his departure from the Rads late last year, and the band has been playing to packed and tearful houses ever since. Their last Minnesota shows are tonight, Friday and Saturday at the Cabooze, the venerable West Bank institution that is the longest-standing club in the Radiators’ storied Minnesota history.

The close-knit Radiators Fishhead family was spawned chiefly from two sources: students of Tulane University and other New Orleans schools who moved back home after graduating to spread their New Orleans groove through bootleg tape-trading circles; and the taper-friendly Deadhead community of the Grateful Dead, which immediately latched onto the jam-based Radiators vibe.

As the tapes spread, so did the fans, and when the band started to hit the road, they found a ready-made audience waiting for them in the most unlikely places.

One of those places was Minneapolis, on the other end of the Mighty Mississippi from the Crescent City. A confluence of like-minded souls eventually found each other in the mid-1980s and formed the Krewe of DADs (Druids, Alchemists & Dervishes), which became the first away-from-New-Orleans Krewe to coalesce around the Radiators. More would follow—San Francisco, Florida, Colorado, Philly, Chicago, SoCal—all loosely based on New Orleans’ notorious Krewe of MOMs (Mystic Orphans & Misfits).

Little did we know that this would be the start of a decades-long relationship with a band that would become the soundtrack of our lives as it created bonds among fans that would last a lifetime. The Radiators have seen us through fires and floods, cancer and catastrophes. We’ve seen them through hurricanes and high water, stolen equipment trucks and stolen hearts. We’ve shared pain and joy, life and death, misery and happiness, but most of all, the music.

The Krewe of DADs did whatever it took to make the music happen. We put them in cornfields, coulees, clubhouses and churches, every hotel ballroom or roadhouse that would have us—even our living rooms, barns and backyards. And when we couldn’t get enough of them at home, we traveled to see them.

The Radiators were our gateway drug to New Orleans. They not only provided us the roadmap to the musical mecca of New Orleans, they were an integral part of it. Professor Longhair, Earl King, James Booker? Name-check all of ‘em on these cats’ resumes′.

Extended weekend forays to see the Radiators in their hometown in the ‘80s led to more than two decades of Jazz Fests and countless trips to Frenchmen Street, Tipitina’s and points beyond to see the band. We rang in the Millennium with the Radiators on New Orleans’ West Bank of the Mississippi, and raged at MOMs Balls from Arabi to Algiers.

We followed them from the San Francisco Bay to the Red Rocks of Colorado, from the rolling Mississippi to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Twice we sailed the High Seas with the Radiators as our musical skippers, zig-zagging across the Caribbean from the Dominican Republic to Guatemala and tropic isles in between.

Along the way, we’ve made friends for life from all corners of the country. Like a sweet magnolia tree, every year, more branches were added to the trunk, and more blossoms added to the branches. That magnolia would shade St. Charles Avenue now.

So the boys wit’ da noise are gonna haul it on up Highway 61 to grease our skillet one last time, and then we’re gonna close that old speakeasy down. Fishheads from a dozen or more states will be flying in for what promises to be an epic six sets of music with no song repeated. This is a band that’s going out at the top of their game. Their sold-out four-night run at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall last month left fans wondering how can they stop now? Their star-studded closeout of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest last Sunday was the talk of the Fest.

When the last dog is hung Saturday night at the Cabooze, grown men will cry and fine ladies will weep. Heads will shake, and then we’ll look at each other and ask what’s next.

This long, twisted road isn’t coming to a dead end, but rather, a fork. After all, New Orleans musicians—and their devotees—never really retire, they just shift gears, change lanes and keep moving.

Radiators bassist Reggie Scanlan’s side project the New Orleans Suspects is gearing up to hit the road after the Rads’ Last Watusi three-night run at Tipitina’s in New Orleans June 9-11 (sorry, those sold out in about 20 minutes). Keyboardist Volker plans to hang around New Orleans and get back to playing piano. Guitarist Camile Baudoin will have an acoustic CD out with friends in June, and guitarist Dave Malone may do some work with his brother Tommy. It’s possible a “Radiators 2.0” could emerge with a new keyboard player, but that’s nothing more than wishful speculation at this point.

As the page turns, we’ll be there. But in the meantime, to Camile Baudoin, Frank Bua, Dave Malone, Reggie Scanlan, Ed Volker, and krewe members Kenny Samuels, Josh Abelson and Phil Frank, thanks for the memories. Our lives would be much less richer without you. The community and music you leave behind will last forever. And while it may be time to change the record, it’s still not time to stop dancing.

Photo: The Radiators in our living room, Easter Sunday, April 2009.

I Got the Fish In the Head:
A Radiators Retrospective by Jay Mazza

If you want to hear the Radiators' story from someone who was there from the beginning, pick up my pal Jay Mazza's new book on the Rads. It's a great tale through the eyes of one of New Orleans premier music writers, with a fine cover illustration by New Orleans artist and friend Mike Williamson. Find it here.

Stirring the pot with James McMurtry

Austin singer/songwriter blazes a trail through the North Country.

By Karl Bremer

James McMurtry wields words like a double-edge straight razor. He’ll take it right to the jugular if you’re on the wrong side of him--cut you once and you’ll bleed twice. Hunter S. Thompson with a guitar.

Ask George W. Bush, who’s been in fellow Texan McMurtry’s sights more than once.

 

 

“You’re the man show ‘em what you’re made of
You’re no longer Daddy’s boy
You’re the man
That they’re all afraid of
But you’re only Cheney’s toy”

--"Cheney’s Toy," from Just Us Kids

McMurtry takes the former president down verse by verse in a powerful indictment of his warmongering. After that song came out, McMurtry lamented as he pulled out of a KFC somewhere in Illinois, “I got tagged as a political writer, and that’s all they wanted out of me.”

Can’t imagine why.

“It also got me in trouble,” he adds. “Some people though I meant the soldiers were Cheney’s toys.”

Governor George W. Bush was the unnamed subject of another haunting McMurtry song of political intrigue on the same record.

Does the Governer know who killed the fishermen
On the lake last night?

Was the cigarette boat comin' 'round the point like a bat out of hell

Wasn't burnin' his lights?

The cigarette boat is not even legal

The lake's too narrow to be goin' that fast

Two fishermen sat in an old green Jon boat

Makin' one more cast

Full moon rising big and pale

That cigarette boat didn't even slow down

It was throwin' up a big old rooster tail

And it ran right through 'em with a sickening sound

Does the Governor know who killed the fishermen?

 --"The Governor," from Just Us Kids

Although he says “The Governor” is a fictional song, “There was a similar event to that happened when Bush was governor of Texas." The perpetrator was never found.

McMurtry’s drummer lived on Lake Austin at the time, which is just a “backed-up stretch of the Colorado River.” No place for cigarette boats. After the accident, he says, it was rumored that “the lake cops were told never to look into that.”

Muses McMurtry: “It really would be easy to hide a boat there. There’s a stretch of the river just lined with boat houses and you could just pull in there and hide it or sink it …”

WE CAN'T MAKE IT HERE

McMurtry began stirring the political pot a few years earlier. In 2004, he wrote a song called “We Can’t Make It Here,” an anthem about the loss of jobs, social injustice and corporate greed.

“I got a lot of real angry reaction. This was in 2004, when Bush’s numbers were really soaring. But it’s not specifically anti-Bush,” he says.

“I had a solo acoustic version of it so I took it down to the morning DJ at KGSR in Austin.” He spun it fresh over the air and, says McMurtry, “I had some pretty angry emails before I even got home.”

There’s a Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign

Sitting there by the left turn line

Flag on his wheelchair flapping in the breeze

One leg missing and both hands free

No one’s paying much mind to him

The V.A. budget’s just stretched so thin

And now there’s more coming back from the Mideast war

We can’t make it here anymore

That big ol’ building was the textile mill

It fed our kids and it paid our bills

But they turned us out and they closed the doors

We can’t make it here anymore

See those pallets piled up on the loading dock

They’re just gonna sit there ‘til they rot

‘Cause there’s nothing to ship, nothing to pack

Just busted concrete and rusted tracks

Empty storefronts around the square

There’s a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere

You don’t come down here unless you’re looking to score

We can’t make it here anymore

--"We Can’t Make It Here," from Childish Things

The song was a lot more popular on the East Coast and in the Northeast. “Union states where they’ve lost a lot of jobs to outsourcing,” says McMurtry. “The song showed me the power of the internet,” he adds. He put it online as a free download during the 2004 election and it surpassed any CD he had ever sold.

“We hadn’t even made the rest of the record yet,” he laughed. “This was six months before the record was released.”

Author and McMurtry fan Stephen King said it “may be the best American protest song since (Bob Dylan's) 'Masters of War.’” A lot of other folks agreed. It helped catapult Childish Things to the top of the Americana charts for six weeks and launched McMurtry’s somewhat reluctant role as a folk hero among the pissed off and politically disenfranchised.


“I don’t think anything’s changed” since Bush left office, says McMurtry. “I really don’t know who’s pulling the strings. But most of the horrible things that were going on under Bush as far as outsourcing started under Clinton anyway.”

It’s a little harder to write political songs now, says McMurtry. "Without Bush, there’s no one to focus on. And I can’t really get a handle on what Obama’s about.”

Somehow, I think he’ll find enough material.

It would be selling James McMurtry short to pigeonhole him as a political protest singer. But then, that rap never seemed to hurt Dylan’s career.

Besides political and corporate scoundrels, McMurtry’s lyrical landscapes are littered with grandmas and ghosts, lost loves and lowlifes, spun out in a bourbon-smooth voice that’s as comfortable as old leather. He’s a blistering guitar player to boot, and can lock into a blue highway groove like J.J. Cale’s at the wheel.

Go see for yourself. America may not make a lot of things here any more, but we’ll always make great music. And this is some of it.

James McMurtry is appearing at Pizza Luce in Duluth Thursday, March 31, and Friday, April 1, at the 400 Bar in Minneapolis. He’s co-headlining with the Bottle Rockets, who open both shows.

Photo courtesy of Cary Baker's conqueroo.

Remembering Dave Ray at Thanksgiving

By Karl Bremer

It’s after midnight, and as I peer over at the stack of recently played CDs below the stereo, I notice a preponderance of Koerner, Ray & Glover and Dave Ray discs strewn about. Oh, that’s right. Thanksgiving’s coming up.

Dave “Snaker” Ray left us on Thanksgiving Day 2002 after a ferocious battle with cancer (is there any other kind really?). So just as new constellations come into the rotation of the night skies with each passing month, Dave Ray goes into heavy rotation in the CD player every November.

I got to know Dave through decades of seeing him play in West Bank Minneapolis haunts—the Triangle Bar, the Viking, the 400, Coffeehouse Extempore—and those intimate Ray & Glover Thursday night sessions at the Times downtown. We’d get treated to an annual reunion of the legendary folk-blues trio Koerner Ray & Glover with Dave’s erstwhile bandmates “Spider” John Koerner and Tony “Little Sun” Glover. But throughout the rest of the year, you could almost always count on finding Dave playing somewhere at least once a week. Solo, duo, trio, full band, it didn’t matter, Dave would be out there mining obscure blues and other rare gems from his big black songbook, keeping that West Bank flame kindled.

Dave had an extraordinary baritone voice that was as big and black as that songbook of his; it could fill a room without a mic. And he could rip off some of the most dazzling fretwork you ever laid ears on. In 1999, I wrote in the liner notes to “By the Water,” a CD recorded in our living room that featured Dave, Tony and Radiators Camile Baudoin and Reggie Scanlan:

“Dave’s raw, honey-dipped voice shifts effortlessly from gut-bucket blues shouter to crooning balladeer, while he picks notes off a 6- or 12-string like sweet cherries from a tree.”

Always ready with a twisted joke, Dave had a deep belly laugh that shook his whole body, and a sardonic, stiletto wit that he exhibited in full glory in his online rants. Dave Ray was a blogger before there were blogs, and fortunately, his ruminations are archived here.

In one online entry, after offering some driving “tips” to an unidentified driver with whom he had had a recent road encounter, Dave concluded with some friendly counsel:

“If you choose to ignore this advice (and the sundry other suggestions hailing down on you in numbing quantity from everyone unfortunate enough to share your vehicle while you’re driving) then at least accept this final suggestion: put a bag over your license plate before you leave your driveway in case the next guy you infuriate decides to plunk down his five bucks at the DMV, get your home address and blow both your godammed cheeks off so you’ll never sit behind the wheel again.”

We had the good fortune to have had Dave play for many of our house parties. He and Tony performed for at least a half-dozen of our fundraisers for political candidates. And although every one of them lost, we still had candidates begging us to throw parties for them every election year.

I was thrilled when Dave got the trio—Koerner, Ray & Glover—to play for our 20th anniversary in 1998. But when it came time to pay Dave for the gig, he inexplicably refused to take any more than 1/10th of the price we had agreed on. He muttered something about “Well, you know, Happy Anniversary” and that was that.

Dave kept performing right up until the end. Koerner, Ray & Glover played a gig on the East Coast six days before he died. A planned KR&G show at First Avenue the following month turned into a massive memorial for Dave, with an empty chair and Dave’s hat sitting on stage with Koerner and Glover. There wasn’t a dry eye in the joint that night.

There’s some good news for Dave Ray fans in all of this. Koerner, Ray & Glover’s last filmed performance from First Avenue in January 2002 is going to be released on DVD December 15 at First Avenue’s 40th anniversary party (available also at the Electric Fetus and Cheapo Records). Dave’s first two solo records, “Snaker’s Here” (1965) and “Fine Soft Land,” (1967) have been re-released on CD on Wounded Bird Records. And another 2002 recording session featuring two songs Dave laid down with Eddie Kirkland is being readied for release in 2011.

So this Thanksgiving, I’ll give thanks for Dave Ray and all the other fine musicians that make us smile and dance and laugh and cry. The best ones do it for the music and not for the money. Concludes Tony Glover in the terrific documentary “Blues, Rags & Hollers: The Koerner, Ray & Glover Story”:

“Music’s one of my oldest friends. We don’t expect to get rich off old friends. You just figure they’ll be there when you need them. Music usually is.”


Top photo of Dave Ray by Missy Bowen.

Middle photo of Dave Ray with the Radiators by Glenn Kincaid.
Bottom photo of Dave Ray by Chris Bremer.

The New Orleans Radiators celebrate 25 years of Halloween in Minnesota

By Karl Bremer

It’s not uncommon for casual observers of the Minnesota music scene to assume that the Radiators are a local band. It’s not altogether surprising, though, when you consider that this New Orleans quintet has spent 28 of their 32 years plying their “fishhead music” in these upstream waters.

This weekend, October 29-30, the Radiators return with their swampy amalgamation of New Orleans-drenched rock, blues, hoodoo and funk to celebrate 25 years’ worth of Minnesota Halloween masquerade balls with two shows at the Fine Line Music Café in Minneapolis.

“I don’t know what it is about Minnesota,” says Radiator guitarist Camile Baudoin. “I know we’re at both ends of the river so we can always use that as a connection. From day one it felt good there.” So good that Baudoin eventually married a gal from Minnesota, and keyboardist/songwriter Ed Volker moved to Minneapolis for several years in the ’90s.

The Radiators or its parts also have recorded three live records in Minnesota: 1992’s Bucket of Fish at the then-World Theatre (now Fitzgerald) in St. Paul; Volker’s Lost Radio Hour, recorded at the dearly departed Riverview Supper Club in North Minneapolis in 1993 with Peter Ostroushko and Mick Labriola; and By the Water, by the Back Porch Rockers, a 1998 collaboration of Radiators Baudoin and bassist Reggie Scanlan, and Minnesota blues legends Tony Glover and the late great Dave Ray, recorded in a local living room on the St. Croix. Ray sat in with the Radiators on a number of occasions and became fast friends with them over the years.

“He really liked the band and thought that we ‘got it,’” said Baudoin. “I don’t think he thought that about a lot of bands.”

32 YEARS OF FISHHEAD MUSIC
Long before jam bands or roots rockers had been dreamed up, this greasy concoction called fishhead music came percolating out of New Orleans juke joints and roadhouses, served up in heaping three-set helpings by a chops-seasoned band of misfits called the Radiators. Steeped in the rich musical heritage of the Crescent City through their schooling with some of the city’s legends—Professor Longhair, James Booker, Earl King—the Radiators wasted no time in becoming a part of it themselves.

The Rads morphed out of a merger of the Rhapsodizers (Volker, Baudoin and drummer Frank Bua), Earl King’s erstwhile backing band in 1977, and a combo dubiously called Roadapple (guitarist Dave Malone and Scanlan). Their sets quickly became legendary as much for their head-shaking variety as for their sheer intensity and length.

“Krewes” of the band’s fishhead fans were spawned around the country in the ‘80s, the result of Tulane University grads spreading the gospel like a virus: first Minneapolis’ Krewe of DADs (Druids, Alchemists & Dervishes), then San Francisco. More followed in the ’90s and into the 21st century—Colorado, New York, Florida, L.A., Chicago, Pennsylvania—all modeled loosely on New Orleans’ notorious Krewe of MOMs (Mystic Orphans & Misfits).

Today, the Radiators are the longest-running band to ever come out of the City that Care Forgot, touring relentlessly and closing out the renowned New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Fest every year. In 1998, New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial presented the band with the 1998 Big Easy Mayor’s Award—the equivalent of the Keys to the City—as the city’s way of saying thank you for their years of spreading the joyful noise of Louisiana music worldwide.

Keyboardist and de facto bandleader Volker, soaks up images like a sponge and regurgitates them in songs by the boatload. Throw in more covers than a boil has crawfish and you’ve got a songbook that reads like a Rand McNally road atlas to the blue highways of American music.

Where else can you hear a band seamlessly merge one of its own songs into a swirling medley of Michael Jackson, Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello? Or a marriage between the Meters and the Magnificent Seven?

Get behind the wheel with the Radiators and go careening down the blue highways, back roads and byways with reckless abandon but always in control. Slide off the road, get some dirt under your wheelwells, pull it back to the centerline, pedal to the metal and down the road you go.

“And what is a fishhead you ask? The arms flapping like fins, the eyes bugging
out, the endless imbibing of vast quantities of liquids. Fishheads shun the
daylight and frequent dark, wet places and wait for it all to gleam. Fishheads
may have the appearance of human beans, but they got the fish in the
head.”—Fishhead Manifesto, Ed Volker, 1984.

Fishhead music is organic—it breathes with a life of its own. When the Radiators are popping on all cylinders, it’s like the Grateful Dead said: “The music plays the band.” And like any great band, the whole of the Radiators is larger than the sum of its individual members.

MUSICAL MECHANICS
Under the hood of the Radiators is a turbocharged combo loaded with natural talent and an innate ability to make anyone’s music their own. In their hands, songs are deconstructed, retooled, greased well and reassembled. When the Radiators get a song out of the shop, it’s theirs to drive.

Need Beatles? The Rads have got a bucket of ‘em. Dylan or the Stones? A score apiece. Professor Longhair? Another dozen on the half-shell there.

It’s been said by at least one guest guitar player that the rhythm section of Scanlan on bass and Bua on drums isn’t in the pocket—it’s more like a hammock. Scanlan, who describes his tenure with Professor Longhair in the ’70s as nothing short of graduate school, has never met a gig he didn’t like playing. And Bua, a former Mandeville, LA, restaurateur by trade, is simply the best second-line rock and roll drummer in the bidness.

The double-barrel lead guitars of Baudoin and Malone track each other like they’re joined at the brain. Pull the trigger on them both at once and stand back. Baudoin’s dazzling luminescence is the perfect complement to Malone’s searing, straight-ahead precision firing. Comparisons to other two-guitar titans like the Allman Brothers are redundant—these guys are the gold standard.

Then there’s Volker, the man behind the wheel. Radiatin’ the 88s to leaven the guitars, Volker shifts gears from barrelhouse to B-3 in the bat of an eye. His boundless imagination fuels the Radiators’ own thick songbook with rich images painted in colorfully detailed strokes that turn simple melodies into sensory experiences:

“A little carnival in your hips,
a little garden on your lips,
a little sunshine in your eyes,
Oh, oh your smile, little paradise.”

His penchant for the obscure turn of a phrase or twist of a word recalls the sly wit of Tom Waits:

“It’s good to be alive, just don’t get caught.”

But always the Crescent City is lurking back there in the shadows of his mind:

“It’s a dream, dream, the devil’s dream,
When it’s midnight in New
Orleans,
We do a dance that’s so obscene,
listen once again to the
devil’s dream.”

The Radiators prowl the back streets and alleyways of their own town with a passion and depth known only to musicians who love to play—a living soundtrack of New Orleans music from Jelly Roll Morton to Mac Rebennack. Their roots run deep in the musical wetlands here, intertwined with that jive-ass, syncopated Louisiana rhythm and blues that snakes through their sound.

“When the rhythm meets the blues,
the rhythm eats the blues.”

New Orleans is where it all began for the Radiators over 32 years ago, but they’ll always have one fin in Minnesota. When the Radiators swim up the Mississippi this weekend for their annual Halloween hoo-hah, expect a feeding frenzy of the fishhead faithful masking in their finest regalia, “the arms flapping like fins, the eyes bugging out.”

Radiators, Ed Volker and Reggie Scanlan photos above by Karl Bremer, from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, April 25, 2010.

"By the Water" CD art by Mike Williamson, New Orleans.

RADIATORS HALLOWEEN WEEKEND

Friday, October 29, 2010
The Krewe of DADs presents
The Radiators

Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis
Doors: 8 p.m. Music: 9 p.m.
Two Sets of Fishhead Music
Tickets: $25 adv/door

Saturday, October 30, 2010
The Krewe of DADs presents
"On The Shoulders Of Giants" Masquerade Ball
with The Radiators

Fine Line Music Cafe, Minneapolis
Doors 8 p.m. Music 9 p.m.
Three Sets of Fishhead Music
Tickets: $30 adv/door