Second line’s second life

New Orleans brass bands’ long march home

Efrem Towns carries around what he calls his “just-in-case bag.” As the trumpeter and flugelhorn player for the well-traveled Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Towns knows what it’s like to live his life on the road. Hurricane Katrina took that life to the next level.

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“I’ve pretty much been living the life of a nomad,” says Towns, who was on tour with the legendary New Orleans group when the storm hit. His wife gathered their things and evacuated to upstate Ruston. They eventually reunited in Washington, D.C., where they have stayed ever since.

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“For a while,” he says, “we didn’t know where we were going to be settled.”

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Not that their house in the otherwise inundated Gentilly neighborhood was damaged by water; it was high and dry. It’s just that Towns has let his relatives take over the house as a sort of compound until they can return to their own homes that got flooded. Considering how often he’s on the road, for now, missing New Orleans might not register as much as it would for other musicians.

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In fact, for the Dirty Dozen and its younger brother in the New Orleans scene, the Rebirth Brass Band, Katrina has been almost as much a blessing as a curse. Despite most of their members suffering from flooded-out homes, the city’s two most successful bands have in some small way capitalized on the disaster. Bookings for the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth have surpassed previous years: Both have played in countless clubs, benefits and festivals across the country over the past year. Drummer Terence Higgins, who relocated with his wife and family to Norcross, is still learning the area thanks to the Dirty Dozen’s touring schedule. The Dirty Dozen even has a new CD to promote, its reworking of Marvin Gaye’s classic album What’s Goin’ On, conceived before Katrina yet prescient nonetheless. No strangers to Atlanta, both groups make what now feels like their regular pilgrimage to Smith’s Olde Bar over the next couple weeks.

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While the two bands most credited for helping revive the dormant scene in the 1970s and ’80s are once again thriving in difficult times, it’s hard to tell how the rest of the brass bands will fare. There are encouraging signs for brass-band musicians. Most of New Orleans’ live-music venues have been back up and running for months, gigs are plentiful and the fall’s second-line parade season is in full swing. This can present a skewed perception of the realities and challenges that face the city’s most indigenous music culture. It is the brass-band scene, after all, that was born in the city’s neighborhoods, and helped give birth to jazz. (Most of those neighborhoods remain vacant.)

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That’s partly because no one’s really sure about how many of the musicians have returned. Some say most are back, others wonder if it’s half or fewer. It’s hard to tell because band membership is fluid, and several members make gigs in town by traveling in from wherever they evacuated. Most members of the Soul Rebels, for example, have to make long drives into the city for their weekly Thursday-night gig at Le Bon Temps Rouler in Uptown. Several members of the Stooges brass band remain in Atlanta. Even a group as fortunate as the Rebirth has to do some tricky juggling. The band just completed a West Coast swing then hustled back into town for its Tuesday-night stand at its home, the Maple Leaf Bar. The next morning, drummer Keith Frazier, who co-founded the band with his brother, tuba player Philip Frazier, caught a flight back to Dallas. While the rest of the band has returned from its exile across the country, Keith Frazier still hasn’t been able to get his New Orleans home fixed. He makes about three-quarters of the band’s gigs.

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“Everybody has families, and they’re learning to adapt to it,” Philip says. “But they want to be back here and do what it takes. They don’t like the situation and want to be back in their old situation. But either you deal with it or you don’t.”

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Bill Taylor is worried that the brass-band musicians won’t be able to adapt. As the head of the nightclub Tipitina’s nonprofit foundation — one of many that reinvented themselves post-Katrina — the brass-band devotee has worked tirelessly to help musicians get back on their feet. The Tipitina’s Foundation has helped raise about $150,000 (in cash and matched funds) for instruments and gear for the brass-band musicians alone. More help is on the way. But the two greatest concerns — housing and health care — remain.

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“Housing is still a bitch,” says Taylor, who soon hopes to form Sweet Home New Orleans, a consortium of nonprofits specifically dedicated to providing housing solutions. “Right now, there’s nowhere for anybody to turn.”

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Initially, Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians’ Village, the brainchild of New Orleans musicians Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis, was seen as a panacea for musicians looking for a home. But considering the fact that the village is for prospective home buyers and that most brass-band musicians are perennial renters with fluid means of income and credit, the Village can only help so many. (At last glance, no brass-band members had qualified.)

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Still, Rebirth’s Philip Frazier sees signs that the scene will rebound and flourish, mainly because he already notices the next generation emerging.

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“It’s growing because there are a lot of younger bands who have a chance to flourish — the True Brass Band, which has a bunch of high school kids across the river, and the Li’l Soldiers, I don’t even know where they’re from. It’s like I gotta go back and learn a new history all over again.”