Tag: Ms. Tee

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3/20/2010: SXSW Day 4 Where They At Bounce Exhibit at Birdland Gallery Austin TX

On the fourth day of South by Southwest, I drove down from the hotel to a place called Cafe Java in a North Austin industrial park, listening to a CD of early works of the American composer Marc Bliztstein which I had bought at Waterloo Records the day before. Although I am usually a fan of Bliztstein, I cannot say I enjoyed these highly-dissonant early pieces where the young composer was trying to shock the world. Cafe Java had a decent and inexpensive breakfast, and afterwards, I drove down toward East Austin, to a conference event which had caught my attention in the daily schedule.

Unlike Memphis, New Orleans made a big splash at this year’s festival. DJ Jubilee, Anders Osborne, The Stooges Brass Band, Partners-N-Crime and K. Gates all performed a couple days ago at the Only in Louisiana day party in Brush Square Park. But today’s event seemed even more exciting—a bounce music photo exhibit called “Where They At” which had started in New York and was now being shown at the Birdland Gallery in East Austin.

I expected an exhibit of bounce-related photographs and flyers, and that was there, of course, but I had not expected there to be a DJ, or for bounce artists to be performing. I noticed that a female friend of mine, Ms. Tee, was prominently featured in the exhibit; I wasn’t sure she was in Austin at all, but I decided to call her and tell her to come over to the exhibit because people were asking about her. As it turned out, she was in Austin, and I agreed to come and pick her up from her hotel and take her to the gallery.

DJ Jubilee was performing when we got back to the gallery, and I don’t know if Ms. tee had originally been scheduled to perform, but they allowed her to, and she was of course a hit with the crowd. My fun afternoon could have taken a turn for the worse, however, after I bought a brownie from a sales table. I noticed that it cost $5, but I didn’t think much of it; everything is expensive in Austin during the festival. But after I sat down and started eating it, a boy sitting next to me said, “You know those are special brownies, right? That’s why they’re $5.” I grew alarmed, and said, “What do you mean, special brownies?” He looked at me like the greenhorn I was at that moment and said, “They’ve got weed in them.” I was devastated. Not that I had any moral qualms about eating something like that, but I didn’t know, and I had to speak on a panel or mentoring session in an hour back at the Convention Center. And I had my car, and was going to have to drive it over there. I started praying that the brownie wouldn’t have any noticeable effect, and, to my surprise, it didn’t.

I managed to get through my mentoring session fine, and then headed out for dinner. But violent rainstorms came down, followed by absolute bitter cold. New Orleans artists were supposed to be closing out SXSW with a New Orleans Block Party, but the weather would not co-operate, and it was moved into a night club near the Convention Center called Submerged. Magnolia Shorty was performing, and it would have seemed to be the kind of event I couldn’t help but enjoy, but the temperature had dropped into the upper 30s. I had brought no clothing of that type, as Austin is usually bright, sunny and in the 70s during South by Southwest, so I shivered. The rain had ended, but the northern winds were cutting like a knife, so I made my way back to the car and headed back to my warm hotel room.

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8/27/09: Nuthin But Fire Records, Snowballs and Preservation Hall


Restaurants in the Quarter are expensive, so I drove out to a place called the River Cafe in Harahan that had received good reviews on one of my iPhone apps, but when I turned down the street into an industrial park I thought I might have gotten lost. However, the restaurant was indeed in an industrial park, and the breakfast was good. Riding the River Road back into New Orleans, I came to a flea market that I stopped to browse through, and then came into the Uptown area, which seemed to have some intriguing clubs, restaurants and shops. Oak Street was closed for some sort of reconstruction, and St. Charles was also torn up from Carrollton Avenue back toward the Quarter, so past Tulane I turned northward toward Claiborne Avenue, partially to escape the construction, and partially to locate the Ted’s Frostop and Bud’s Broiler where I hoped to eat at some point during my trip to New Orleans. I found them on the corner of Calhoun and Claiborne, and then began heading back downtown on Claiborne, passing through beautiful neighborhoods and devastated areas back and forth. Down one street, I noticed a large wall mural of a man in fatigues withe legend “SLACK” painted above it, and I wondered if it was a picture of the Slack I had once known who was the CEO of one of the old New Orleans record labels.
I had called Miss Tee, and she had agreed to meet me at Nuthin But Fire Records on North Claiborne beyond the quarter, so I continued through Treme, an area that had been devastated long before Katrina by the high-rise lanes of Interstate 10, although there were still neighborhood landmarks like the late Ernie K-Do’s Mother-In-Law Lounge, which someone seemed to be maintaining. At the record store, I met the owner Sess, who I had talked with on the phone but never met, and an employee who turned out to be Miss Tee’s brother. She soon arrived as well, and then the rapper Kilo came through as he was promoting his artist Euricka. The heat was unbearable, and Miss Tee offered to walk me down the street for a snowball, but on the way we were joined by a junkie named Melvin who kept hitting us up for money. After he walked away, Miss Tee explained that Melvin was addicted to heroin, and that Governor Jindal had cut funding to the clinics and drug treatment programs. When we got to Elysian Fields, we learned that the snowball stand, which was mobile, had not appeared, although it was one of the hottest days of the year, so we walked back to the studio, and she decided to drive me in her car over to one of the best snowball stands in the city near A. P. Tureaud Avenue. It was indeed one of the best snowball stands in the city, and I soon learned that a snowball in New Orleans is not a snowcone. There’s something different about the way the ice is shaved, so that it soaks up the syrup, and I was still enjoying mine 15 minutes later when Miss Tee had driven me over to UTP Studios, where she hoped we would meet Partners-N-Crime. They had gone on a food run, but they soon came back, and I did get a chance to meet them and remind them about the Cutting Edge conference. After that, we rode back to my car, which I had left in front of the record store, and then I drove back into the Quarter and parked near the Faubourg Marigny, because I wanted to see where the evening showcases would be held.
Frenchmen Street had the gingerbread architecture and brilliant colors of a Caribbean street, and was primarily clubs and/or restaurants, with an occasional bookstore or residential building. Beyond Snug Harbor, my favorite jazz club in the city where I used to go to see Lumark Gulley play, there was a coffee bar called the Rose Nicaud Cafe, and I ducked in there to get a cappuccino, and then I drove back to the other side of the Quarter near my hotel. While browsing in the upstairs of Louisiana Music Factory on Decatur Street, I was startled by Memphis musician Scott Bomar, who came up behind me while I was browsing. He had been on the conference with Jody Stephens, the former drummer of Big Star, who was also involved with Cutting Edge, but sadly, their conference responsibilities were over, and they were driving back to Memphis the next morning. Walking further down into the Jackson Square area, I had hoped to come upon a brass band or some street musicians, but I didn’t. I did hear the boom of bass drums coming from somewhere behind the Cabildo, however, so I attempted to follow the sound, but was soon disappointed, as it was coming from some rehearsal from inside the Cabildo itself, but I noted the location of Preservation Hall, where the New Birth Brass Band would be playing later, and then walked back to the hotel. The American Federation of Musicians was sponsoring a reception for us on the third floor of the hotel, and I ate so much roast beef that I didn’t need to go out to dinner. Instead, I walked down to Peaches Records and Tapes, and had intended to go to the Cafe du Monde, but I was out of time, so I made my way to Preservation Hall, and got inside, but all the seats had been taken. The New Birth Brass Band was a curious mix of old-timers and youngsters, with a good steady beat and a great repertoire, mostly of standard New Orleans material. On one song, the singer from the better-known Treme Brass Band joined them. The hall looked as if it hadn’t changed in 30 years, which it probably hadn’t. When not playing, the musicians hung out in a beautiful courtyard, from which occasionally emerged a curious cat, who would nuzzle our feet before growing bored and reentering the courtyard. Afterwards, I did walk over to the Cafe du Monde, and enjoyed the usual coffee and beignets before walking back to the hotel.

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8/26/09: Lean Times In Fat City


Breakfast was at Panera Bread, and then I headed out to New Orleans for the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference, but I stopped in Jackson to have lunch with Charlie Braxton at Majestic Burger, and to pick up the new Ned Sublette book about New Orleans at Lemuria Books.
All the time I had spent in Jackson had me running behind schedule, but I got so sleepy south of Jackson that I had to stop in Brookhaven for a cappuccino.
The New Orleans rap artist Ms. Tee had wanted to meet with me, so when I got across the swamps and past Manchac and LaPlace, I called her from the outskirts of Kenner, and she suggested that we meet at Copeland’s Social City in Metairie. I had no trouble finding it, but, unfortunately, the menu had changed since the last time she had been there, and it was not only expensive, but just weird. mostly small plates, the tapas menu that’s so trendy nowadays in places like Los Angeles or New York. This was New Orleans, however, so we decided to drive further down Veterans to the Copeland’s Cheesecake Bistro, which was a much better and more diverse menu. We talked, some things about the city’s rap scene, and some about her career, and then went our separate ways, me out to the part of Metairie that had once been called Fat City in search of beignets.
Tucked behind the Lakeview Mall, it was hard to see how the nondescript strip malls facing each other had ever been intended to rival the French Quarter, but that’s what the developer who built them had bragged back in the early 1970’s when school integration had started in earnest, and whites began pouring out of Orleans Parish into Metairie like water flowing through the broken levees. Businesses flowed over the line as well, one of them the venerable old Morning Call coffee stand that had proudly stood in the French Market for 103 years, a block northeast of its more-famous competitor, the Cafe Du Monde. When it left the Quarter for Metairie in 1974, people began to realize that something was truly going wrong in New Orleans. Officially the move had been due to “street construction”, but the truth was, most of the place’s long-time customers had probably moved already. Nowadays, Fat City was a garish warren of outdated strip malls with old-fashioned neon signs, and the only thing that seemed “fat” about it might be the beignets at Morning Call. But the coffee stand still proudly advertised that they were open”24 hours”, and they were crowded (with locals, not tourists). The prices were slightly cheaper than the Cafe Du Monde, and I noticed that they didn’t dust the beignets with powdered sugar, but had canisters of powdered sugar on every table for you to do it yourself. From there, I took a spin through West End Park, where I had eaten on an enjoyable promotional trip back in the summer of 2005 before Hurricane Katrina. Although the Joe’s Crab Shack had been rebuilt and opened as a Landry’s Seafood House, the rest of the area was still strangely desolate. Peculiarly, the sand volleyball courts were still there and apparently had been rebuilt by the city, but there was not a trace of the four or so restaurants that sat in a circle at the western end of West End Park the last time I had been there. I felt rather depressed as I headed down Pontchartrain Boulevard and into the city, whose broad expanse of downtown towers suggested a place of infinite wealth and possibility. Any illusions were soon shattered when I exited onto Canal Street, passing an abandoned hotel, three abandoned movie theatres and a vacant office tower with shattered windows, although the street had been planted with rows of beautiful royal palms, and the street’s condition seemed to improve with each block as I drove nearer to the river. The hotel where my conference was being held was the Westin Canal Place at the very end of the street, and after I had checked in, I decided to call it a night. My room featured a window with a broad expanse of the city, looking eastward toward the Faubourg Marigny and across the river toward Algiers. Off in the distance to the east, I could see the flash of radio towers, maybe out at Michoud, and nearer, I could see a big boat negotiating the Mississippi, perhaps an oil tanker. I left the window open on the city and fell asleep on the plush bed.