pt at large

New Orleans In June: Rebirth Brass Band at The Maple Leaf Bar

The Maple Leaf Bar
The Rebirth Brass Band’s regular Tuesday night gig
8316 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 866-9359
Open Daily 3pm-3am

Sardines in the can have more elbowroom than I have pushing my way into the Maple Leaf’s music room adjacent to the bar. “Hey, Pops!” I’m merrily greeted by the guy at the door collecting cover dough. The average age of these sardines is about twenty-five.

The rhythmic organic swaying to the beat is the same as Bullet’s minus the dancing. Trumpeters hit impossibly high and sustained notes that stoke the writhing beast of a crowd, then trombones fire away, the whole sound underpinned with tuba and drums.

The music pins my ears back. I don’t know if the silly grin on my face is due to the fabulous music or that the tiny bones in my eardrums just broke and my sense of hearing will never be the same. I should care about this. I don’t.

One of the last songs they play before the break has words. Everyone in the room knows them. They go something like this (you add the appropriate rhythm cadence here...) "If you... don’t fuck with me ...I won’t fuck with you.... and that's the truth..." The lyrics here on the page look stark, perhaps foreboding. When uttered with the music, they're sort of an urban version of the Golden Rule, sung with a smile, not a frown.

Kermit Ruffins just played a version of this at Bullet’s Sports Bar without the words. I’ve been humming it for several days. I have to be careful where I am when I add the lyrics. People in the aisle of Stop and Shop might take it as hostility if I happily sing the verse in the frozen food aisle.

Midnight, Break time.

A wave of sweaty people empties onto Oak Street. Another anomaly around here is that street vendors are sort of like camp followers. They set up shop outside places like Bullet’s and the Maple Leaf, a symbiotic relationship with a Louisiana flavor. The Grill Guy has his huge black smoker running full tilt. He stands on the sidewalk taking orders while his assistant keeps loading burgers, sausages, and chicken onto the red-hot charcoal. The motto on back of his T-shirt: Hot Meat For Your Mouth - With All the Juices.

Another vendor named Gary is sautéing  “gourmet bacon dogs” his specialty laden with onions, peppers, garlic mayonnaise, jalapeno peppers, pickles, or okra, take your pick. If you survive that impressive assault on your stomach, he sells generously sized home made triple chocolate whiskey caramel brownies and sour cream chocolate chip banana bread. He’s known as The New Orleans Chocolate Devil for a reason. Each one priced at $5.

“What’s with the camera and notepad?” he asks.

“I’m a retired teacher. This is what I do,” I answer. Turns out Gary has friends in Brookline, MA, where I taught for 34 years. He chills. I’m not from the Board of Health and we have something in common.

This feels like a street fair under the stars on a sultry Louisiana night. A hundred people sitting on benches, smoking, drinking from plastic cups, eating, and talking up a blue streak or standing in a daze produced by the tiny bones in your inner ear being temporarily shattered or the Bud Light having hit bottom.

Maple Leaf Bar owner Hank Staples not only tolerates the vendors here but also sees the advantage of their presence. He lets Gary run an electric line inside for his bacon frying pan.

“Lots of these people stay here for hours. If they have food, they’ll stick around longer and go back inside for the next set, and drink more. The staff comes out here for food, too,” Gary says.  The New Orleans Chocolate Devil sets up here every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. Everybody’s happy.

I'm living a dream. Happy doesn't even begin to describe this.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

The Rebirth sound can knock you down...
 
 

Break time - most of the crowd is outside

New Orleans In June 2010: Kermit Ruffins at Bullet's Sports Bar, Video2

June 22, 2012 Bullet's Sports Bar, 2441A. P. Tureaud Street, New Orleans

 

Kermit Ruffins sings a loose version of "Africa" (also known as Skokiaan) with some Louisiana references blown in for local color, and riffs happily along while the crowd lets loose…see for yourself!

http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/06/new-orleans-in-june-kermit-ruffins-at-bullets-sports-bar.html

New Orleans In June: Kermit Ruffins at Bullet's Sports Bar, Video1

 

Tuesday June 22, 2010

Kermit gets into an extended version of Boutte's "Treme Theme Song", actually every song he plays is an extended version, plenty of improvising with dance moves and hollering' in the crowd matched by Kermit and whoever's playing with his Barbecue Swingers in their tiny corner of Bullet's just inside the door.
The story -
http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/06/new-orleans-in-june-kermit-ruffins-at-bullets-sports-bar.html
http://www.johnboutte.com/

New Orleans In June: Kermit Ruffins at Bullet's Sports Bar

Kermit Ruffins
Bullet's Sports Bar
2441 A.P. Tureaud Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
June 22, 2010

The WWOZ schedule online listed trumpeter Kermit Ruffins at 8:30 pm. Ruffins is one of the local icons Tom Piazza writes about in his book, “Why New Orleans Matters.” You might have seen Ruffins playing himself in the HBO series “Tremé.”  Tonight, he’s playing at Bullet’s Sports Bar on 2441 A P Tureaud Street in New Orleans. Having grown up in the Lower Ninth Ward, playing music is as natural as breathing for him.

“That’s a rough neighborhood,” the airport shuttle driver tells me when I ask him if he’s heard of this bar, “I wouldn’t go there if I were you.” 

As crazy as I am about this city, I know it can be a dangerous place if you’re careless.

The young man at the desk of my hotel, The St. Peter Guest House, agrees with the driver’s assessment of the neighborhood. He also knows about the club. “If you take a taxi there and back, you should be ok,” he says.

For me, coming to this city - the state, for that matter - is not a vacation. It’s a pilgrimage. I have a short target list of destinations for my three night, two day experience and chunks of time for New Orleans to take me by the hand and show me the way.

By the time I finished dinner at Liuzza’s, it was pushing 9 P.M. Not to worry.  Musicians never begin on time.  About fifty people were milling around, smoking and eating outside when my taxi pulled up to Bullet’s. Hmmm.

  “He just took a break. He’s been playing since around 7 pm.,” says a man with a Bud Light and a little time on his hands. “Don’t worry, he’ll play one more set,” he adds when he sees the disappointment on my face.

Just as easy as this, we begin talking for twenty minutes.

“You’re from Boston, huh”, he says. “I worked up there, union job, good wage. Went to an Irish bar in the middle of town and stood at the bar waiting to order a beer. I noticed several guys who came in after I did got served right away. I asked the bartender for a drink and two guys down the bar said, ‘Get the fuck out of here.’ I was taken aback. I showed my hands so they wouldn’t think I was going to pull a gun and backed out of there.”

It was an awkward moment. I felt embarrassed. “I’m ashamed of that. Boston’s come a long way since the 1970s but there are still some pretty mean pockets of racism,” I said.

New Orleans isn’t color blind either but it is the most matter-of-factly racially mixed place I’ve ever seen. I suppose there are places where I’d not be welcome. I just haven’t been to any of them yet.

After leaving Boston, Thomas plied his trade in Atlanta for a few years before coming to New Orleans four years ago. Tomorrow he begins a new chapter. “I’m leaving for Ashville, NC tomorrow. I was born there. My brothers and sisters are inheriting a house up there. I’m going home.”

I wished him luck and headed inside. One of the best places to feel New Orleans is inside a bar where there’s live music.

There’s a very mixed race crowd inside Bullet’s Sports Bar tonight and no one is so much as looking at me sideways. This is not the way it is in Boston.  Even when the ratio is the same, the vibe is not. The party mood crowd ranges from twenty somethings to seventy somethings. Aaron, a retired UPS driver, a music lover and tango dancer introduces me to his friends. Between us, we are white, black, and Chinese!

Around 10 PM, Kermit makes his way back inside and jockeys through a pack of people to a tiny space just inside the front door.  This is so New Orleans. No fancy stage, just a small corner from which some of the sweetest music this side of heaven is born.

We’ve been either outside eating po’ boys or smoked sausage sandwiches from the two vendors or inside listening to a killer juke box and ordering drinks from the very busy bartenders and waitresses. We are soooo ready. So, it turns out, was Ruffins.

He lit into a swinging version of ‘Closer Walk With Thee’, then an extended version of “Tremé” which turns the place upside down. This is a hometown crowd. They’re proud of the TV series that has put them on the media map. They see themselves depicted as characters not stereotypes and they appreciate that their music is the unseen but very much heard presence of the national HBO series Tremé.

This train is rolling, brother, get outta the way or get on board.

Bullet’s becomes an organism swarming rhythmically, lustily, deliriously happily, that keeps right on going through an extended version of “Africa, ” with the audience enthusiastically singing the choruses. Men and women, in pairs or solo, are dancing in front of the bandstand a trombone length away from Ruffins, and in the crowded spaces right where they’re standing. Someone is shouting, “I can’t believe I’m here. I love this!” It is me.

Kermit blowing, his Uncle Percy Williams swapping him solo for solo on the trumpet, and the bass, drums electric piano on overdrive, finish the set with a pedal to the metal rendition of a popular Brass Band song (you add the appropriate rhythm cadence here...)  "If you... don't fuck with me ...I won't fuck with you.... and that's the truth..." 

This is somewhat of an anthem around here. If New Orleans has a philosophy, this is it.

Oh yeah somewhere in the middle of this, a twenty something who’d been working her way through the jammed room serving drinks from the bar steps up to the mike belts out a rap version very loosely based on “What It Means To Miss New Orleans” that you’re not likely to hear even on WWOZ.

The regulars know Baby Jaye and her fiery, edgy, big-hearted, proud, chippy song. They join in some of the choruses. Once again, I feel like Dorothy. I’m not in Kansas any more.

It’s near 11 pm. Most of the people have been here since 7 pm. Tomorrow’s another day at work. In twenty minutes the place has emptied out. The DJ is spinning some very funky songs and bantering with the dancers who aren’t ready to leave.

As for me, my New Orleans connection has told me that Tuesday night is Rebirth Brass Band night at the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street. I’ve called United Taxi.

Joy in the house...Rules of the house

Kermit on TV while Kermit is live twenty feet away
 
   
Vendors outside sell home made grub from trailers and smokers outside Bullet's Sports Bar in the Seventh Ward

Time to head for The Maple Leaf Bar...

but not before meeting the man himself, Kermit Ruffins

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

New Orleans In June: Liuzza's, The Dorseys, and Katrina

Liuzza’s Restaurant and Bar
3636 Bienville Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
504-482-9120

Part 3

“Excuse me,” I say to the couple sitting right under a photo Michael had shown me of Liuzza’s under water after the storm. "I'd like to take a flash photo of the picture of this restaurant right after Katrina."

“We were underwater, too, “ says the woman. “This neighborhood wasn’t the only area that was flooded.”

Irony abounds. The couple hadn't eaten at Liuzza's since the storm. Here they were sitting under a photo of the restaurant under water.

Gail Dorsey and her husband Lee were forced to evacuate their home in the Lakeview section of New Orleans when the storm intensified.
 
“We headed for the city when we were ordered out. By nightfall, we heard our neighborhood was being flooded by one of the three breaches of the industrial canal,” Gail says.

Her husband Lee, a contractor, got worried about their home and their two cats. He commandeered a bike and headed north for the ride of his life.

When rising water thwarted his effort, he flagged down a man in a kayak. Close to his home he grabbed some two by fours, held on for dear life, and paddled to his house.

 “I broke a window on the second floor and crawled in.” Lee says. “I found the kitties and hunkered down.”
 
People died trying to return to their homes or remain inside to protect them. Lord knows, some of them may have died protecting their pets. Dorsey was lucky. Two of his neighbors died in their houses over the next two days.
 
Gail, frantic because Lee hadn’t returned, had to evacuate and aimed for Baton Rouge, where their son attended college. Lee eventually made his way there.
 
“We spent the next few weeks living third world style in my son’s college suite, 22 people, three cats, and two dogs,” she says, shaking her head.
 
“When we finally got back home, there was a mountain of refuse in the street. Ruined furniture, rugs, appliances, beds, chairs, sofas, tables, everything.”  In other words entire contents of people’s houses and all the memories that were attached to them.
 
“The neighborhood will never be the same,” Lee says. “ The seventy year olds who lived there all their lives don’t have the heart and they’re too overwhelmed to come back and deal with the damage. Some of them have died from broken hearts. But younger families are starting to move in.”

Gail Dorsey has sat on this story for five years. Our chance meeting reopened the floodgates of her experience. She was animated and her voice still had an edge of horror that will likely never go away any time she retells the story.

They are renting an apartment for now. Lee’s still busy working on rebuilding other people’s homes, reminiscent of the story of cobbler’s kids going without shoes. The Dorseys will rebuild their house, put it up on stilts, mandated by the new building code and wait for the next storm. Move? Hell, no. Their home, their roots, their friends, their lives are all here.
 
When you’ve lived here, living anywhere else is a dim alternative.
 
“I knew about the Lower Ninth,” I said, “but not about Lakeview.”
 
“Yes,” she said, “and it’s time our story was told.”
 
Her sense of frustration is clear. People like me, outsiders, still have no idea of the magnitude of the storm’s aftermath.
 
Recounting the story to me helps her to unburden but I know she’s far from complete with this. Closure is a long way off.

There are thousands of people  in this city who have storm stories to pass down. This is my small contribution to getting Gail Dorsey’s ball rolling.

Top photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Bottom 2 photos from web

New Orleans in June: Liuzza's Part 2 - Michael Bordelon's Storm Story

Louisiana is a land of storytellers. I don’t know if it’s because of shared hardships or the amalgam of historic influences including music, food, and culture but they’re the friendliest people you ever want to meet. While having dinner at Liuzza’s last Tuesday, I met three  people who recounted their stories about “the storm,” a Louisiana code word for Katrina. Michael Bordelon, an owner of Liuzza's Restaurant and Bar, resuscitated his business after the storm. He’s one of the lucky ones. Here’s his story.

Liuzza’s Restaurant and Bar
3636 Bienville Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
504-482-9120

Around the time I’m washing down the last of my shrimp poor boy sandwich with a chilled goblet of Abita Amber beer, a fellow I’d seen eating at another table comes over for a chat.“Are you a reporter or a food critic?” he asks with a wary smile.

“Nope, I’m a retired school teacher and was born with a pen in my hand. I've been dying to eat here since I read about it in Tom Piazza’s book “Why New Orleans Matters.” Since his first visit in the mid 1970s, New Orleans kept calling him back. In 1994, he packed his bag for the last time in New York City and has lived here ever since. I’m not packing yet but if I keep finding places like this, you never know.”

The fit, energetic-looking man in the black T-shirt extends his hand. “My name is Michael Bordelon. That's a French name. I’m one of the owners.”

“I love the atmosphere here. I feel like I stepped all the way back to 1947 when I walked inside." I'm eager to tell him how much I've enjoyed the food and atmosphere here and find out more about his restaurant.

Michael Bordelon smiles.

“Did you see this?” He walks me over to a photograph in the corner - a photo of a man in a motorboat cruising by the restaurant with water halfway up the side of the building.

“This is what it looked like a few days after the storm,” he says. Practically no one down here utters the K word.  A particular kind of New Orleans “diss” to the out of control meteorological renegade who spat on New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

“We had water up to your chest in here. Not long after things calmed down, the girls asked me when I was going to open up again so they could come back to work, “ he says, extending his arm toward Lola breezing out of the kitchen with an order of fried catfish. "My customers said, ‘When you fix everything up, don’t change anything,’”

Bordelon knows one thing from being in business this long. You don’t mess with a great recipe - and you pay attention to what your customers want.

My jaw dropped. My sentimental observations about the sepia tinged history of the interior were my own fairy tale that ended one day in the summer of 2005.

The man is proud of his restoration effort and he’s proud of the place in which he spends most of his life.

“We had to start all over.”

Virtually everything inside has been replaced. Lovingly. Over the past five years, the new wainscoting, floors, tables and chairs have had a chance to absorb the aroma of bacon fat, butter, frying sausages and all the other mouth watering smells wafting from the kitchen, scents that apparently have given the whole place the patina of its former incarnation.

“There are only a few things we could save,” he says as he walks me into the bar, “the top of the bar and that piece of molding way up on the wall under the new TV.” The ledge he points to is lined with pre- and post-storm memorabilia.

It was hard enough to deal with the wholesale gutting of the neighborhood after the storm. Unwelcome change was being shoved down New Orleaneans’ throats but by god they didn’t want it to happen to places like Liuzza’s, familiar outposts that defined their way of life. It would have been more than they could bear to have the place go under, consumed by that bitch Katrina.
 
Liuzza’s is a shrine its clientele considers an extension of their own kitchens and porches. Rebuilding it was as nourishing to the spirits of the customers as Liuzza’s Gumbo has been to their stomachs for generations.

“Excuse me,’ I say to the couple sitting under another picture Bordelon had pointed out of Liuzza’s with water up to its windows, “I’m not being rude but want to take a flash photo of that picture right over your table.”

Part 3 of dinner at Liuzza's begins with the next story. For the next twenty minutes, Gail Dorsey, sitting with her husband Lee, pours out the  story of being driven out of their home in Lakeview when the levee was breached and an unimaginable surge of water became the enemy.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. and the photo of pt and  Michael Bordelon by waitress Lola

Liuzza history on the walls

 
H.B. Wheeler introduced himself to me while I was talking to the Dorseys at the next  table. "I'm 94  years old, have been eating here all my life. I live nearby, still drive, and can take care of myself," he says with a twinkle in the eye and not a small amount of pride. Liuzza's home style cooking is apparently good for longevity. 
 

 

New Orleans In June: Part 1 - Liuzza's Restaurant and Bar

New Orleans today is different from New Orleans before August 29, 2005. Some of the houses on the two-mile taxi ride up Bienville Street from the French Quarter are still boarded up, some have been repaired and repainted, and some are brand new, rebuilt from the ground up.

My first knowledge of Liuzza’s came from reading Tom Piazza’s elegiac book “Why New Orleans Matters”, written in the months after Katrina. Some of the places he lovingly describes are gone forever. Some are still here. Liuzza’s is one of them. New Orleans has the same tuning fork effect on me as it did for Piazza except mine extends west to places like Lafayette in Cajun country. Once I'm here, my DNA begins to hum like it does in no other place on earth.

Liuzza’s Restaurant and Bar

3636 Bienville Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
504-482-9120

I've just spent three days and nights in New Orleans. My first stop was Liuzza's Restaurant. Wielding a pen, a pad, and a smile can produce amazing results. I left the restaurant with one review and two unexpected stories that go back to August 29, 2005. To find the twist to the first tale, read on to Michael Bordelon’s story in Part 2. Which leads to Lee and Gail Dorsey's story in Part 3
 
Part 1
 
The taxi rolls up to a small white washed building with a red and green neon sign wrapped high around its walls. Three people sitting on a bench smoking and drinking from plastic cups outside nod hello.

I have to digress right here and say that this is another particular thing about New Orleans. People look at you and say hello when you pass them in the street. It took me a day to shed my Boston reserve and begin reciprocating. Starting a conversation with just about anybody is not a problem.

Standing outside Liuzza’s, in this moment, I realize this is another reason I decided on a whim to come down here for three days and three nights in the first days of fry-an-egg-on-your-car-roof summer. The people here are different, good different.

 
Inside the front door, several customers sitting on chrome legged bar stools to the right are watching world cup soccer on the small plasma TV, a couple of others sit at a few small tables crammed into the small room. A big jukebox sits silently in the corner to my left, surrounded by a gallery of faded framed photos. I smell food and head under a brick arched entryway straight into the dining room.
 
If Norman Rockwell were a Southerner, he would have immortalized a place like this. College kids, families, batches of friends, couples of all ages, two of New Orleans’ Finest, and a few single gentlemen are enjoying their suppers at the fifteen wooden tables covered with thick green plastic tablecloths. The wood backed, green cushioned chairs make a piercing screech on the polished brown and white tile floor when you move them to sit down. The whole place has a sepia tone that has the aura of a mid twentieth century rural American cultural artifact.
 
The menu has the usual enticing dishes involving oysters, shrimp, catfish, several of which may be topped with sautéed shrimp remoulade or Louisiana Crawfish Cream or Artichoke and Shrimp Cream Sauce.
 
The daily specials are Grandma’s Cajun Crawfish and Grits ($12.50), Fried Green Tomatoes Topped With Shrimp Remoulade ($10.50), House Special Eggplant Casserole , meatball, Cole Slaw, Garlic Bread ($13.50), and Shrimp Merliton Etoufee Soup ($5.50-$8.00). All this fare may sound foreign to someone north of the Mason Dixon line but here it’s everyday grub.

I order one of the specials - a half Poor Boy fried shrimp sandwich and Liuzza’s Gumbo. In a few minutes. Lola, a middle-aged, dark-haired, easy-going woman returns with food and a smile. Is everyone easygoing around here?
 
I spoon in the first mouthful of gumbo and OMG. The silky texture can only mean one thing. Those olive green bits floating inside are okra. Normally, I’d rather be water-boarded than taste the slimy vegetable.

Sara Roahen in her book “Gumbo Tales” writes admiringly about gumbo made with okra. As good as she made it sound, I’d never order it voluntarily. But here, the velvety smooth texture is tempered by the smoky flavor of andouille sausage, with shrimp, mushrooms, and rice packed into the cup. My goodness, I’ve been converted.
 
Lola, my waitress, who’s watched the conversion, tells me that the woman in the kitchen during the day has been making this gumbo for years.
 
The place opened in 1947, says Lola and by now I’m thinking the cook might have been born back there. Close.
 
“Everyone here has been here for years,” Lola says. “I’ve worked here for 24 years, one of the other cooks has been here for 17.”
 
The atmosphere has the feel of a backyard family picnic. If it weren’t for the attire of tonight’s customers, this could still be 1947.
 
The waitresses don’t try to shoo you out the door after you scrape your plate clean. This is not a food factory. People actually come here to relax and to eat and the staff obliges.
 
In the midst of it all, a recorded version of Happy Birthday is piped in and Lola comes around the corner with cupcake alit with one candle to present to one slightly mortified teenager eating with his parents.  He lightens up when everyone applauds.
 
Liuzza's is the kind of place that defines New Orleans in particular and Louisiana in general. There are scores, perhaps hundreds, of bars, restaurants, and juke joints like this in every neighborhood in every section of the city, from Treme, to the Garden District, Mid-City, Esplanade Ridge, Lakeview, Gentilly, the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny, Central Business District, and Warehouse District. I would love to live long enough to get inside as many of them as I can.
 
My first knowledge of Liuzza’s came from reading Tom Piazza’s elegiac book “Why New Orleans Matters”, written in the months after Katrina. Some of the places he lovingly describes are gone forever. Some are still here. Liuzza’s is one of them.
 
PS
Louisiana presents nearly insurmountable phonetic challenges to Yankees like me. When I asked the taxi driver to take me to Lee’ ooo zahs, accent on first syllable, my interpretation of Liuzza’s, he had no idea where that was. I asked him to take me to 3636 Bienville Street.

Lola (seen taking an order in photo above) kindly advised me I was dining at Lie use’ ahhs, accent on second syllable. More examples will follow for Yankee readers contemplating a trip here. You’ll certainly make a better impression than I did if you write down some of these proper pronunciations.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

New Orleans: Quick Trip To The Land of Dreams

New Orleans, Louisiana
French Quarter, Midtown, Uptown
Tuesday night, June 22, 2010

Q Why does pt at large need a Louisiana fix this week?

A He misses the people, the music, the food, and the culture.A few photos now, stories later. I arrived at the St. Peter House Hotel at 5:30 pm. By 6:30, I was on the way to Liuzza's, a restaurant I've wanted to visit for over a year.

 
Tom Piazza lovingly chronicled Liuzza’s Restaurant in his brilliant ode of a book about New Orleans: “Why New Orleans Matters.” The place was full of surprises. The first was my initiation into gumbo made with okra that has altered my opinion of okra forever.

Owner Michael Bordelon, who chatted me up when he saw me taking notes, told me another, which lead my meeting diners Lee and Gail Dorsey of the Lakeview neighborhood. All of them told me stories of Katrina and their recovery since then. Gripping tales about losing everything and making it through dark hours, doubts and slow rebuilding processes. Then there was Mr.H. B. Wheeler,  a 94-year-old gent who’s been eating here since the place opened in 1947.

Two hours and several pages of notes later, I hopped a cab for 2441 A P Tureaud Avenue to hear Kermit Ruffins play his horn at Bullet’s Sports Bar. He brought the house down with an extended version of Treme and sang and played like the extraordinary musician he is for the whole set.

Last stop, The Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street, to catch one of The Rebirth Brass Band’s last sets. Both places were packed with a multi racial crowd that had much in common - love of music and high regard for the respective places they love to hear it being played being two commonalities. I repeat, I feel right at home here.

Stories will get in the pipeline as soon as I get on a plane to return Friday.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Fenway Park: Who But W.B.Mason

Fenway Park
June 16. 2010
Red Sox vs. Arizona Diamondbacks
W.B. Mason Suite 22, Sweet Luxury From Above
 
Forget about getting to Fenway Park early to watch batting practice. Hit Yawkey Way around 6:30 PM when torrents of fans jam through the cordoned off street. This is where the action is. The vendors selling programs, peanuts, hot dogs, Italian sausage sandwiches, are barking louder than Dustin Pedroia in the Red Sox dugout.
 
If you’ve never heard the Boston-ese language in all its glory, this is your language lab for the night.
 
“Prograaams heeyaaah, get yooah programs heeyahhh, 2 dohllaahhs heeyaahh,  5 dohllaahhs inside…”

”Get ovah heeyah, we got quality heeyah, the cheapest items in the paahk, we gottem, we gottem, we gottem, fresh roasted peanuts heeyah…”
 
The Red Sox Nation drops more dough here than Dominoes Pizza. Red Sox caps, jerseys, T-shirts are flying out of that souvenir shops that line Yawkey Way. Anthropologists would love the sight, a field study in attire, social status, age, race, political leanings, and class all funneling down Brookline Avenue and into the old ball yard.
 
Scalpers with slick backed hair and dubious bona fides stand like rocks around which a river of humanity streams from the Kenmore Square T stop all the way to the park.
 
“Wanna ticket, need-a-ticket, wegottaticket” The supply siders, tickets clutched in their fists, make their pitches. Wary passersby keep their distance.
 
Tonight I am joining the likes of John Henry and Linda Pizzuti in the rarified level of luxury boxes above the field. A friend has tickets to the W.B.Mason ("Who but W.B. Mason?") box along the left field line. I shall be in baseball heaven.
 
No matter how many times I’ve been here, coming up a ramp from the dark bowels of the park and into Fenway borders the surreal. The expanse of emerald green turf set off by the red clay tone of the infield, dotted geometrically with three white square bases and home plate, the batter’s box bordered with dense white lime, is so perfect my mind can't take it in at once.
 
The piece of little boy heart that never matures inside the grown man beats harder. The field I’ve dreamed of standing on, waiting for the 3-2 pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, my team down one run, comes into focus and reactivates every baseball fantasy I’ve ever had.
 
“Jaysus…” is all I can muster. It’s enough. He’s never run on those base paths - but he’s walked on water. He’d understand.
 
The W.B. Mason luxury suite is the last box down the left field line. The left field foul pole looms to my left and the three tiers of fans in the Monster seats perch happily just beyond the pole.

No sooner had I walked to the our seats just outside the suite, I heard the classic “crack” of a white ash wooden bat slamming into horsehide sphere, looked straight ahead and saw the trajectory of Dustin Pedrioa’s hit arc past me, bounce off the top of the Green Monster's ledge, and lazily drift down to the playing field for a home run.

Thirty seven thousand and something fans went wild. I just shook my head, pinching myself to be certain I was  witnessing  the game from a vantage point I’ve dreamed of having some day. This was the day.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. 

"Programs heeyaaahhh..."

   

Show and Tell outside souvenir store

Photo opps galore on Yawkey Way

Suits and jeans...

 

Where you sitting?

Rule 1: Eat a Fenway Frank

   ...or an Italian sausage

 

W.B.Mason Suite 22...watch the game on plasma or...

step outside and sit in cushy seats  - how sweet it is!

 

Christopher Huggins, Business Manager of The Learning Center for the Deaf in Framingham, MA and W. B. Mason client ... and my benefactor for this grand evening at the paahk.

   

pt and Helene Sullas Huggins enjoy the memorabila on the EMC level

Hallway around EMC level on the way to the luxury suites

  

Whether in Green Monster seats atop the left field wall or the bleachers in distant center field, you'll feel the magic of the venerable ball park.

View from the top row of the Monster seats. Kevin Youkillis crushed a home run right over my head and into Lansdowne Street a few minutes after I made my way here in the sixth inning.

The 16th Positive Spin for ALS: Powered by "Wheels"

16th Positive Spin for ALS
The Longfellow Club
Boston Post Road
Wayland, MA
Sponsored by the ALS Association MA Chapter

The 16th Positive Spin for ALS kicked into gear on Sunday, June 13. One hundred fifty seven participants biked from the Longfellow Club in Wayland through some of the most picturesque countryside in eastern Massachusetts.

They rode for their fathers, their mothers, their sons, daughters, neighbors, friends, colleagues - all of whom are among the 5600 people diagnosed every year with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS .

For the riders, pedaling one of the 10, 25, 50, or 70 mile courses today was a personal salvo against the cruelest of all neurological diseases.

ALS, also known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive, fatal disease that attacks motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord that control functions such as walking, talking and breathing. Symptoms include muscular wasting, loss of speech, and eventual total paralysis. Identified in 1869, there is no known cure for it...yet.

The ride raised money to support research for a cure for the disease and for the ALS Massachusetts Chapter’s outstanding programs for patients and caregivers in the region.

The special wrinkle in this year’s event was the arrival of a sea of riders in orange T shirts. The fifty Orange shirted men and women all had a connection with the late Pete “Wheels” Farricker, who died of the disease ten years ago.   

Pete Farricker was an Ultimate Frisbee legend whose fame crested on his athletic ability, big-hearted nature, goofy sense of humor, and life-affirming personality. His fierce competitive spirit at the highest level of the sport was matched to a sense of fair play that is the bedrock of this highly charged, fast paced game. 

If the General Mills Company had any sense at all, they would have stuck Pete’s face on their Wheaties Box for a season honoring his membership on National and World Ultimate Frisbee Championship teams.

“We were devastated when Pete emailed us to tell us of his illness in 1999.  We were in our late 30s, not really at that time in our life when mortality was in the lexicon,” former teammate Phil Adams said.

“We mobilized. We organized a reflection/celebration of Pete's life about 6 weeks before he passed, and from that we launched the Peter Farricker Foundation to do two things.  Name Ultimate's “Spirit of the Game” trophy after Pete (kind of like Hockey's Lady Bing trophy) with an endowment to fund it in perpetuity, and raise money for ALS.”
 
The Pete Farricker Spirit Award is given to the player in the open division of the USA Ultimate's Club Championship Series adjudged to have exhibited personal responsibility, integrity, and fairness combined with a high standard of playing ability.
 
Phil Adams, one of six members of the board of directors of the Peter Farricker Foundation, has been the spark plug in the foundation’s engine for the past few years, nudging Pete’s friends to ride in the Positive Spin for ALS. Last year, as about 20 former Ultimate Frisbee jocks huddled around the BBQ after riding the 2009 PSALS, Adams nudged a little harder.
 
"This is great that we can get people to ride in Wayland, but can't we also have our buddies who can't make it to Wayland ride "with us" wherever they are?  Can't Fin ride in Boulder, and Jimmy in San Diego and Gus in Jacksonville, and Kent in Park City?" Adams asked.

Never underestimate this group. Pete Farricker was family to these guys who competed with him when they were twenty something and invincible. Now the guys are family men, businessmen, and immersed in their disparate communities. They’re older, have lost their fleetness afoot but not their fond memories of a man who played hard and made the game fun. They showed up with their checkbooks.

Sunday afternoon, Phil Adams presented a check for $10,000 to ALS Association Massachusetts Chapter President Debra Sharpe.

Photo: T.J. Reilly, Partner at New York Life Insurance Company, Providence, RI and Chairman of the ALS Association MA Chapter Board of Directors; Myke Farricker, key event organizer and co-owner of the Longfellow Clubs; Phil Adams, Chairman of the Peter Farricker Foundation; Debra Sharpe, President of the ALS Association MA Chapter; Paul Tamburello, founder of  A Positive Spin for ALS

Pete’s former team mates are spread across the country. The Positive Spin for ALS in Wayland wasn’t the only place they gathered to raise money and honor his memory. Pete Farricker “Spirit Of The Game” events took place all across the land. Ten years after his death, Pete’s shadow has stretched way beyond the 70 by 40 yard dimensions of the regulation Frisbee field.

“We had over 125 people in 19 locations riding or mountain biking or playing ultimate or walking or playing disc golf or doing Yoga - in the name of Pete… and Ultimate's "spirit of the game" Adams said.

Transforming grief into energy to find a cure for ALS and to support patients and caregivers was what I had in mind when I founded the Positive Spin for ALS in 1995. Pete Farricker's team mates are putting their own spin on the concept.

Photo: Steve Mooney and Myke Farricker of the Peter Farricker Foundation and Paul Tamburello

Pete’s brother Myke Farricker is co-owner of the Longfellow Clubs in Wayland and Natick. Since 2003, Myke has been on site from dawn to dusk on the day of the Spin. A master at event logistics, he has arranged to have his crew set up tents for registration, medical staffing and food, and cook hundreds of burgers and hot dogs for hungry riders. All done with a smile and trademark Farricker wise-ass humor.

The “Wheels” are already in gear for next year. Those orange T shirts will be visible again in 2011. Whether they’re riding in the Positive Spin for ALS in Wayland or creating their own mini events across the country, they’re taking the “Spirit Of The Game” to a higher level.

 

 Zoe Farricker, Myke Farricker, Paul Tamburello, Ian Polombo, who completed the 25 mile ride ("Pete's Ride")
 

Myke Farricker and veteran volunteers Pat Gill and Donna Cook, who baked 300 cookies for the event.

Blithe Spirit: Heavenly Noel Coward at the Lyric Stage

 "Blithe Spirit"
A play written by Noel Coward
The Lyric Stage Company
140 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA
May 7- June 6, 2010
Running time 2 hours 45 minutes with two brief intermissions

This play was a ton of fun. Let’s review. Here we have American actors streaking through dazzling British dialogue faster than thoroughbreds at Kensington and not dropping an indiscreet vowel anywhere on the page - how swell!  A cast with some serious Boston stage royalty sent this production of Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" to its heavenly reward in the stretch limo of a production I witnessed in its final weekend of the run.

Charles and Ruth Condomine (Coward has such a flair for creating names) invite Dr. Bradman and his wife Edith for dinner and a funsie séance to be conducted by Mme. Arcati, the local kook. Mostly for entertainment, we’re to understand it’s also grist for content a book Charles is planning to write. Unexpected things happen, deliciously.

Charles’s late wife Elvira materializes, “ectoplasmically,” after Mme. Arcati’s séance, and is visible only by Charles, a terrific device Coward dreams up to make the play really work. Charles's sparring dialogue over unfinished business between him and Elvira is understood by his very alive wife Ruth to be directed toward her. It’s a tribute to Coward that he can wring so much humor from this simple ploy.

 The writing for many American sitcoms is full of zingy lines but the humor fired back and forth between Charles, Edith, and Elvira is as dry as Charle’s famous martinis. This is the kind of repartee you’d give your eye teeth to have the presence of mind to fire off spontaneously. When it gets rolling, Charles (Richard Snee), Ruth (Anne Gottlieb), Elvira (Paula Plum), and Mme. Arcati (Kathy St. George) play their roles sublimely over the top.

They mine the biggest bang out of small gestures, non-verbal interplay, and facial expressions. As brilliant as he is, Coward couldn’t write this stuff into the script. The actors have to be able to calibrate from subtle to farcical, and you can almost feel them hooting internally as they romp through some of the fabulous turns of action.

Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle Coward has been slyly assembling for the play's first two hours begin to coalesce at the end of Act 2. By the end of Act 3, Coward tidies up all the loose ends, taking aim at the British upper class drawing room fascination with crystal balls, psychics, and séances-as-party-games while he’s at it.

Thanks to the fun-loving actors who relish playing to the back of the house, Noel Coward gave us two hours and forty five minutes of sparkling dialogue and pitch perfect acting… a blithely spirited finale of Lyric Stage’s 2010 season.

Photo courtesy of Lyric web site

Fred Griffeth's Fandango-lous 70th Birthday Bash

Fred Griffeth's Birthday Bash with Fandango
Toad
1920 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02140-2101
Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The luminous glow orbiting Boston Wednesday night wasn’t the space shuttle Endeavor. It was the little Cambridge bandbox known as Toad, which lifted off at 7:30 with local legend Fred Griffeth and his crew Fandango at the controls. By the time Toad returned to earth at 9:30, the party-hat wearing crowd was still in zero gravity mode. Having been launched by Griffeth’s infectious energy, they had no intention of unbuckling their seat belts.

The occasion was Fred’s alleged 70th birthday party, a milestone he may not have reached but has been rehearsing for several years. Cupcakes and rich chocolate birthday cake were circulating on one side of the bar and celebrants on the other were drinking Cosmos, Johnny Walker Black and draining the beer and ale kegs in the middle of Toad’s bar. Fred’s Fan Club “Prez” Susan Sullivan emailed invitations. A nation of FOFs showed up.

Fred’s entry at 7:18 evoked adulation and cheers that made Caesar’s victory parades through the streets of Rome seem like a garden party. Toad was up to fire code occupancy specs by 7:30. Lollygaggers stood in line for an hour wishing they hadn’t answered those last few emails. People love this guy. 


Fred fills a room with energy that can’t be found on a lyric sheet. Tonight he’s singing with Fandango, a loosely organized group of musicians his friend Steve Cuoco put together for Fred’s last "70th" birthday. They had such a good time, they’ve been playing a Wednesday night gig at Toad ever since. Even Fred’s not sure who will show up on any given Wednesday. No matter. What they’ll have in common is that they’ll be able to blow the jambs off the doors at will.

“This is my birthday I can sing whatever I want, right?” Fred asks rhetorically. What ensues is a rich stew of ballads and blues that range from Tom Waits to Ray Charles to Bob Dylan to gospel, and the occasional doo-wop recalled from the street corners of his youth.

“This was my mother’s favorite song,” he says. “She sang it so much I thought she wrote it.” The tone is set. Fred’s going to make a gumbo of his favorite songs and “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” is the roux he slowly starts to stir.

After Fred’s bluesy rendition of “Lonely Avenue,” the Mass Whole Notes caught the audience by surprise with a gorgeously layered a cappella version of Simon and Garfinkel’s  “Celia.” One of the group’s singers loves the vibe at Toad. During one of Fandango’s gigs, Fred asked her if she’d bring her crew of Mass Whole Notes to sing at his birthday. Great idea.

A cappella singing resonates with Fred.  “When my friends would gather on the street corner for some impromptu a cappella singing at 3 AM, we were so good the cops would come to listen.”

Songs like “Sitting Here In Limbo” by Jimmy Cliff don’t come from Fred’s head, they come from his heart. Fred’s not in limbo but, like most of us, he’s been there and he knows the way out. His voice rumbles, coos, and cracks and in the last verse explodes with patent Griffeth gutty emotion. The audience bounces his energy back like a hard-hit baseball caroming off Fenway Park’s Green Monster. In case you had any doubt, you were in the midst of a love fest.

Griffeth sings in the moment. He doesn’t worry about making a mistake. When he occasionally wanders off key, he finds his way back in the most imaginative and endearing way, sort of like the lyrics of the song he just sang…“But I know my faith will lead me on.”

By the time Fred got to Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got To Memphis” and “Take A Woman Like You…To Get Through To The Man In Me” by Bob Dylan, themes of love, faith, pain, reflection, and redemption were all in play. In my mind, here was Fred pinning his heart on his sleeve and offering it to Gail, his wife of 24 years sitting a few feet away.

Fred gets into his Ray Charles groove and croons, “You Don’t Know Me” with the soulful wails in all the right places. His voice can carry joy, heartache, and everything in between. When I looked up from taking notes in the middle of Fred’s rocking version of “It’s All Right,” all I could see was the top of his white cap as he waded through the packed bar, occasionally offering the mike to a patron to add a chorus.

Fred’s deliciously slow version of Tom Waits’s “Come On Up To The House” had the whole bar full of karaoke rockers singing along languidly on the last verse, fueled by a peel-the-paint-off-the-wall solo from sax man John Donohoe who, like a few other FOFs, materialized like prizes in a cracker jacks box near the end of the set.

Tonight’s Fandagoers, Dononhoe - fiddle and sax, Andy Cormier - trumpet, Cliff Spencer - keyboard, Jimmy Scopa - guitar, Chris Anzalone - drums, and Steve Cuoco - bass, added enough firepower to melt Fred’s cake.

By the time Fred’s wife Gail Nickse and Kit Holiday (two singers with serious pipes) of Booty Vortex joined Fred to put the voltage into “This Little Light Of Mine,” Toad was rumbling through the ionosphere to complete the first set. When the trio segued into “Amen,” Toad officially transformed into a rollicking gospel tent and Fred, Gail, and Kit were preaching to the choir.

The second set descended like a fireball from the heavens. Fred and Kit Holliday wailed on Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers To Cross” and a young black woman with lungs of Kevlar nearly set the place on fire with a supernova fire-breathing Aretha turn at the mike.

A saucy-soft landing was achieved with Hank Williams’s “Hey, Good Lookin'." Moments after the band took Hank for a walk with a sunny New Orleans rumba rhythm, the entire congregation spontaneously began to wave paper napkins in the air with the gusto of Crescent City second line paraders. 

You only get to be 70 once, or in Fred’s case, several times. If this is the view after seven decades of living life, bring on the birthdays.

Set List First Set
“Just A Closer Walk With Thee” Traditional gospel
“Lonely Avenue” Ray Charles (with backup from Mass Whole Notes)
“Celia” Simon and Garfinkel, sung to Fred by Mass Whole Notes
“Sitting Here In Limbo” Jimmy Cliff
“Take A Woman Like You…To Get Through To The Man In Me”  Bob Dylan
“That’s How I Got To Memphis” Tom T. Hall
“You Don’t Know Me”  Ray Charles
“Come On Up To The House” Tom Waits
“It’s All Right”  Curtis Mayfield
“This Little Light Of Mine” Traditional gospel, Fred with Gail Nickse and Kit Holliday

Set List Second Set

"Hard Times (come no more) Stephen Foster
"Work Song” from Nina Simone album "Forbidden Fruit"
"Many Rivers To Cross" Jimmy Cliff - Fred, Kit Holliday, and a young black woman at the bar who seized and shook a chorus for all it was worth. (Just identified by Kit Holliday as Dana Shellmire)
"Hey Good Lookin'" Hank Williams - that erupted into a glorious second line paper napkin wavin' finale.

Fandango personnel tonight
Fiddle/sax player: John Donahoe
Trumpet: Andy Cormier
Keyboard: Cliff Spencer
Guitar: Jimmy Scopa
Drums: Chris Anzalone
Bass: Steve Cuoco (who Fred always introduces as his "Brother from another mother")

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Scratch tickets were the presents of choice. If we don't see Fred and Gail next month, one of the tickets was a big winner.
 

Griffeth's fan club "Prez" Susan Sullivan and Fred
Fred often sings with "The Family Jewels" at Sally O'Brien's in Somerville on Saturdays at 5 PM (check Sally's music schedule).
Fred and his wife Gail recently formed the dance band Soul Picnic