Galactic has a four night run coming up pretty soon at the Brooklyn Bowl. Is there anything special that we can expect from that?

Oh yeah! There’s gonna be lots of guests and then so yeah. We’ll have David Shaw (of The Revivalists) two nights; we got Maggie Koerner for two nights. I think they’re gonna overlap with each other. Maggie Koerner is a singer who sang on “Hey Na Na,” and we’ve done a little bit with her here and there, but we’re excited to have her now start doing some gigs with us and that will be exciting. So that will be a new element. Corey Glover will be on one of the nights and then there’s some other guests that we’re talking to that hopefully will be able to participate as well, but I’m excited that we have strong singers for all of the nights. That should be fun and I’m sure there’s gonna be a lot of other surprise guests as well.

Very cool. And speaking of Corey Glover, you guys have been touring a lot recently with him and then Corey Henry has been with y’all a while too. Are you guys planning on continuing with that trend?

We don’t see any end in sight with Corey Henry. And then Corey Glover’s got this other little band that he works with from time to time called Living Colour. I’m kidding when I say little band because they were a big influence on us as we were growing up. So to have him in the band is awesome but he’s also remaining active with Living Colour. We like to have him as much as we can, but he’s also juggling Living Colour as well. So yeah, when Corey can’t make it we have other people filling in for him. We’ve been having David Shaw, and it looks like Maggie Koerner coming up. We’ve had Cyril Neville over in the past. We have a great rotating cast of vocalists who will come with us so Corey is definitely one of many contributors. Just right now we have to see when he’s available, but we love having him when he is.

Galactic just announced a Halloween show coming up at the newly renovated Civic Theatre in New Orleans. Do you think that venue will become a staple of the New Orleans scene?

I hope so! I haven’t stepped inside of it myself yet, but I’ve seen pictures and half the band has been in there to look at it physically and they say it’s amazing. I know that there are plans to do a lot in there and it’s great because we don’t really have a room quite like that. I’ve seen the schedule and there’s a lot of great things coming up there. It looks like it’s gonna be in the rotation and hopefully it will be successful. We’re looking forward to playing there on Halloween. I mean, it’s gonna be our first Halloween in there. We’ve kind of been going back and forth between Tipitina’s and Stubb’s in Austin. So this will be a nice little mix up—a change—you know. So that’s cool too and we’re looking forward to that.

Do you have anything in the works with any of your other projects like Stanton Moore Trio or Garage à Trois?

I’ve been doing things with my Stanton Moore Trio. We still play a good bit and then what I’ve been doing a little bit more with lately is my Piano Trio, which is David Torkanowsky on piano and James Singleton on upright bass. It’s more of a jazz approach to what I do and we’ve been doing it every Tuesday night at Snug Harbor in New Orleans, which has been awesome when I’m there. Right now I’m based out of Los Angeles all of July, so I’ve been doing every Wednesday there at The Mint with Wil Blades on organ. Our first week we had Leo Nocentelli. Second week we had Mike Dillon playing vibes and percussion, which was super cool. The third week we had Ivan Neville play Rhodes and clav, while Wil was playing organ. This week coming up I’m gonna have Will Bernard,the regular trio guitar player, and then the last week we’ll have Marco Benevento. That’ll be just me and Marco as a duo. We did that at Jazz Fest and that was super fun and I’m hoping to do more of that with Marco because we have a great rapport and we have a lot of material together, having played in Garage à Trois over the years and having played with his trio. So there’s a lot of music that we have together already which is cool. So that’s the Wednesday where I’m going to be here in LA and the Tuesday residency is in New Orleans at Snug Harbor.

As far as recording with my trio or with Garage à Trois, I don’t think there’s anything right now that we’re planning on doing. I am planning on recording with my Piano Trio, so that’s exciting. Be on the lookout for that. I’m excited about that project because it really gives me a chance to dig in to more of the jazz side of my time, which I’ve always been nurturing or working on but I don’t always get a chance to do that. So now I’ve kind of created an outlet for myself and put together this trio that I have regular Tuesday night gigs when I’m in New Orleans.

Lastly here, what can we expect from this M&M’s gig coming up at Equifunk?

I’m sure it’s going to be tons of fun. I mean Maceo Parker is probably my favorite living musician right now so I’m always super super psyched to play with Maceo. And of course, John Medeski and Marco Benevento you know are two of the great organ and key players right now. So those guys are fantastic. I love those guys and to have them together on the same stage is going to be amazing! So I think it’s just going to be really exciting and really different and I’m very much looking forward to it.

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