Q: What kind of outlets does the Runnin’ Pardners allow you that you don’t find in the funky Meters?

A: I guess that I can take more bass solos (laughing). Well I think Runnin’ Pardners, at this point right now in my life, allows me more writing – the chance to play more music that I actually wrote then the funky Meters and/or Meters because in the original band there was only two songs that I wrote. A bunch of stuff that was done in the late ’60s – the first three albums – there was a great deal of band collaboration but a lot of stuff that was done in the Warner Bros. years was guys bringing in songs that were pretty much prepared so there wasn’t a whole lot of collaboration. Ninety percent of the bass lines during the Warner Bros. records weren’t my own bass lines. Some one would tell me to play this bass line.

Q: What do you think the new disc, “Funk N Go Nuts,“says about the Runnin’ Pardners at this point in time? The first switch many people have noticed is the switch from a horn section to dual keyboards?

A: What does it say? Um, I’m hoping it’s saying that two keyboards is an acceptable thing. There was a good stretch in time when the two-keyboard concept wasn’t doing as well as I was hoping. Our audiences are starting to grow back up to the numbers we had horn players. The musician who replaced the horn section in this band is no longer there to replace horns. The stuff I am writing is being written for the keyboards not for a keyboard player to replace horns. This is the first project that we were focusing with two keyboard players in mind. This is a two keyboard band. And I’m not saying that I won’t ever use horns again. I think if there’s a piece of music that presents itself to horns being played – I might not ever tour section again but that’s not to say they wouldn’t cut the song.

Q: I notice that with the Runnin’ Pardners these days, especially live and on the disc, that you seem to give all the players a lot of room. Does that come from being a bass player who’s done sessions for other musicians?

A: I think so. I guess there’s a lot more that a bass player or I can do but that’s majorly not what I’m about. Musically I’ve always been part of a rhythm section. It’s never been a thing where I thought the all the music has to be generated and the bassist has to play the melody and be the pin. Although I think some of my bass lines are very strong and very dominant in the actual mix of the music. The other three guys in the band or the other melody makers, it’s their job to keep the melody and it’s my job lock in with the drummer and to keep the groove. That’s what I think my job is and hopefully my vocals will help me be the front man.

Q: You use Russell Batiste in both the Runnin’ Pardners and with the funky Meters, is it safe to assume that he’s one of your favorite younger drummers?

A: By all means. Russell Batiste is a tremendous wealth of talent and he does well as a sideman. He’s a bandleader also now. He has a solo album out of his own material that he’s been writing. As a member of the funky Meters and Runnin’ Pardners and as a bass player that has to play with the drummer the person that has to play with me and be the closest related is the drummer so I feel fortunate enough to have him in both bands and I’m very comfortable with him.

Q: Is it true that you were a guitarist before you were a bass player?

A: Yes, correct. Actually, I played piano before I was a guitarist. I wasn’t really a good piano player, I was a fairly decent rhythm guitar player.

Q: What brought you around to playing bass?

A: I think Viet Nam, most of the bass players in town got drafted. There was a serious void of electric bass players in New Orleans because of the Viet Nam War. I was a year-and-a-half too young for the draft that was going on. I was a guitar player at the time and there were less gigs available. I had been playing bass. I left from studying classical guitar to just studying guitar with a guy on the street named Benjamin Francis, his nickname was Popi. We would play a song and then he would teach me how to play the song on guitar and then he would turn around and teach me how to play that same song on bass. So I learned to play bass and guitar pretty much at the same time on the street with Popi. I was a sponge when I was kid man. I mean this guy would be playing anything his grandfather would be playing and I would just be into it: all the movements and the melodies in my head. I would go home and just practice and practice and practice.

Q: Aside from him, who are some of the other earliest musicians you remember as influences or those that you tried to pattern yourself after?

A: As a person I patterned myself behind a great deal of other New Orleans musicians that had influences – they were bigger than life. Chuck Badie, there was another bass player named Richie Payne who were just great people. I knew that somehow I would always want to be a good person. Even when I got crazy in the drug days and all that kind of stuff, I always hoped that I remained a good person and that the only person that I was hurting during all of my drug binges was myself. Of course, I was probably wrong about that. My father listened to a lot of keyboard players and organists – Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith and he loved Stanley Turrentine. That was the only music I heard in the house. Around the city of New Orleans, there weren’t that many guys that I was getting out to see. I was still young and wasn’t going to a bunch of places. And by the time I got to go to the Drew Drop Inn, that era of music was dying off. I was 16-years-old and that was already in its ‘going out of business’ stage.

Q: Is that the golden era of New Orleans R&B you’re referring to?

A: Yes, it was considered the golden era of late-night jam sessions. That was the ending of that. There was a family called the Lastie family – David Lastie, Walter Lastie and their sister Betty Ann – that I played with a great deal on the street. I think those people were great influences on me again, more as a person. They were just beautiful people. They were in this business we call music which didn’t all the time be very beautiful. There wasn’t much prettiness in how we were getting it done. If you got through a gig and didn’t die in the process of getting home afterwards or playing on the street and having to walk to your vehicle with a pocket full of change, then you done accomplished something. You actually got home with your money and that was a good thing.

Q: I wanted to ask you how you originally met Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli and Zigaboo Modeliste?

A: O.k., Zigaboo Modeliste is my little cousin. I met him when I was probably 5 or 6 years old. His brother Clinton Joshua was our piano teacher when I was eight and Zig was 7. That was a very short-lived situation because there just was not enough community between two Capricorns learning how to play piano from his older brother. His mom kind of stopped because she saw there was too much competition going on. That was the end of my piano lessons and that point I started studying classical guitar.

I didn’t meet Leo Nocentelli until Art brought us together as a band. But I had been talking to Leo Nocentelli on the phone – I had a friend of mine named Herbert Wing who was a guitar player (Popi played in Herbert Wing’s band called the Royal Knights). I moved around the corner from Herbert’s house and Popi told me about Herbert so I got to go over and introduce myself. We got to be tight and got to be friends. Herbert knew Leo. Herbert used to call Leo and they’d be on the telephone – Herbert would set the telephone down, put a microphone next to the speaker and we would ask Leo questions about chord forms and stuff and Leo would tell Herbert about those chord forms over the telephone, which was amplified over the room so I heard Leo’s comments. I never knew what Leo looked like I had just heard his voice over the phone. This was probably six or seven years before I actually got to meet him.

I met Art Neville, again, through Herbert Wing. Herbert was a guy who knew different musicians like Earl King and Benny Spellman, who would call Herbert if they needed a musician. Herbert could play bass, saxophone, guitar, piano and drums so he would get called for a lot of different gigs. If he couldn’t make one of these gigs he would send someone else to play the gig. I got to luck into playing with Earl King, Benny Spellman, Ernie K-Doe and Art Neville. So it was through a sub gig that Herbert Wing couldn’t make. The very first time I played with Art I played as a guitar player and that didn’t go very well because both Art and myself – I wasn’t a lead guitar and Art wasn’t a lead piano player. The set kind of suffered – I played two gigs with him – because nobody would take solos. So Art thought I sucked as a guitar player, which I’ll admit because I was a rhythm guitar player not a lead guitar player. And then several years later, right during the Viet Nam thing, the guy who played bass with Art got drafted in the Marine Corps so Art called Herbert up again looking for a bass player. I got the phone call from Herbert and showed up at the gig and the first thing Art does is look up at me and say, “Oh, you again?“But he was a lot more pleased with my bass playing because after he came back off the road with his brother – playing piano and tour managing Aaron on the “Tell It Like It Is“project – he went around looking for musicians to put together his own band, which eventually became the beginning of the of the Meters a year-and-a-half or two years later.

Q: And you were originally called Art Neville and the Neville Sounds?

A: That was originally called Art Neville and the Neville Sounds and there was only one Neville brother in that band.

Q: Sobriety has obviously played a huge in fulfilling your long-term musical vision. What advice could you lend to younger musicians and do you think they’d even listen?

A: (Laughs). I did a session a couple of weeks ago with a group of young musicians who were all sober. It was a great honor to be around these guys. They were basically a garage band – songwriters recording a couple of sessions and they called me up and asked if I’d consider doing it. This is five days after Jazz Fest. I said, “I ain’t got nothing to do this weekend“so I went up there to do the thing. It was good songs and all these guys were sober and I was encouraged by the fact that not all musicians are thinking that the glamour of the music world is the drugs or alcohol. So I was real pleased to see that. Although I think that any young player that comes up thinking that drugs is how it’s going to work and how it’s going to happen is seriously mistaken. It may work for a few years and may last 20 years like it did with me. It was 22 years before I decided I had to get out of it and made a change. The last two years of it was like working my way into the bottom or working my way through the bottom because I had already been down there for a couple of hours.

Q: Any last words?

A: Well, you know what? It’s great. I’m loving it. I’m playing right now with two very good bands that are a great deal of fun. I’m recording with one and hopefully the other will be recording very soon and give something to the world.

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