Photo by Vernon Webb
The funky Meters asked Brian Stoltz to rejoin for Tipitina’s 33rd birthday party in January. What led to the decision to bring him back into the band?
Ian Neville has some conflicts with his dates, and I told management that they had to settle whatever led Brian to leave in the first place. I wanted to keep the band intact as a Louisiana, New Orleans-based band with all members being from Louisiana or New Orleans. So I told them, “You have to make this happen.”
The Meters pretty much opened Tipitina’s. I believe that Professor Longhair played the first Friday night, we played the Saturday and the Radiators played the Sunday night. That was the first weekend of Tipitina’s being the Tipitina’s. Originally it was 501. We played all of us together [as The Meters] at the club when it was the 501. But it was only about a month later the 501 acquired the name the Tipitina’s. Then we had a big throw-down that weekend. The original Meters. I mean, the original Meters before Cyril Neville came in the band. Cyril came in the band about mid-70s.
Besides Brian, Russell has been your most regular collaborator over the past decade. You played with his father David, who was a member of the Meters for a few years. When did you first approach Russell about playing with you?
Well, I heard Russell at JazzFest close to 20 years ago, playing with his dad’s band. At the time I was playing a gig with Charmaine Neville, a Monday night hit with her little gig. And she was suffering with drummers, and I told her, “You know, you need to call this kid Russell Batiste up ‘cause I think he could play your gig really well.” So she called him. So me and Russell played with her for a while. That was only when I was available that I played a gig with her—it wasn’t all the time. And Russell got to play the gig with her for quite a while. When I came home off of the road and started reorganizing my Runnin’ Pardners band, I called Russell to come in to play that so Russell started playing with Running Partners and then the idea of putting the Meters back together. At the time Leo Nocentelli was still in New Orleans, and it would have been Leo, Art, myself and we asked Zig, but Zig declined. And they said, “Who we gonna get for a drummer and I said, ‘let’s get Russell Batistse’ and we brought Russell in and everybody loved him.
Being in so many bands, what are your top priorities for 2011?
Pretty much Runnin’ Pardners, 7 Walkers and—if funky Meters and 7 Walkers front offices can pull it together—I think that it would be a great idea to combine those two bands and move us out of smaller rooms and into larger capacity rooms. I think both bands will cross a platform of people who like both bands. I think that we can help each other a lot by doing it. It would mean me playing two gigs every night but I don’t have problem with that. I’m still feeling healthy enough.
Speaking of long shows, you recently celebrated your birthday with a New Orleans jam session that nodded to all your different projects.
The birthday party was killing. It was killing. The second set—the first set Runnin’ Pardners set of the night—was close to a 90 minute set. And then the second set was all of my friends that came out to play and we just kind of jammed. Three and half hours later we realized I had been on stage almost four hours.
When we spoke last year you mentioned your lifelong desire to make a jazz album. Have you gotten any closer to achieving that goal?
No, I haven’t. It’s still something that I really am wanting. I mean, I talked about it earlier today. It’s on my bucket list. It’s actually close to the very top. I think my dream band would Branford Marsalis, David Torkanowsky, Herlin Riley and John Scofield.
You and John recently toured together…
John has so many different music ventures that he does, it’s hard to kind of narrow him down to any one thing because he records different projects, and he puts bands together to fit that project. He goes out and he works that for as long as he can. I believe that the Piety Street band as we know it, unless we go and do another record, we probably have seen the last of it.
You mentioned the Runnin’ Pardners is one of your priorities this year. Do you plan to record an album with them?
I’m mixing a Runnin’ Partners record as I’m out here on the road. I have a rig set up in my room and I am mixing an album I made of 16 Meters songs that were never played played by the Meters.
Will listeners be familiar with any of these songs?
No. A couple of them might have been picked up by other artists. Since I had put the word out that I had done this a couple of groups like Dumpstaphunk have jumped on the song “What’cha Say.” That’s probably the only one out of the 16 that is out there—and the Runnin’ Pardners have performed “I Need More Time.”
Were most these songs written in the ‘60s or ‘70s?
All these songs were written in the ‘60s. Pretty much out of the first three records. As a player, I wanted the original band to address some of this music. Bands can get in a rut where they just keep playing the same songs over and over again. I’m at that point where I think that if you want to keep the shit interesting, you got to keep changing. Even though we may play those same 20 songs differently every night, it’s still the same songs you know. So I think that it’s always in our best interest to keep adding some songs. I mean it’s not like we didn’t have the music to add. We recorded 128 songs as The Meters and we only played maybe 25.
Right and you’re still playing those 25.
Yeah.
And the, I guess the players on the album is the current Runnin’ Pardners lineup?
Yeah. The five piece band. It’ll be the five piece—bass, drums, saxophone, guitar and keys. Two of the guys are the old guys from the original Runnin’ Pardners band: Mike Lemmler on keyboards and Brent Anderson—Mike’s been in the band almost 19 years. Brent’s been in the band almost 21 years. And two younger players, Terrance Houston, the drummer, 22 years old. I think he, I think he just maybe be turning 23 this year. And Khris Royal, who’s 23 turning 24 this year.
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