What is your relationship with The Grateful Dead—are you a fan?

I know the two drummers really well. I have a great deal of respect for what they did. I can’t say I was a fan of the band, because I never really knew the band. I knew the name, but it wasn’t music that I listened to. I learned the Grateful Dead music more when I plugged into playing with Mickey Hart the first time. Mickey was the first Dead musician that I played with. Then, I got in the band with Billy and Papa Mali with the 7 Walkers group, which, at that time, we were doing more 7 Walker stuff and eventually just leaned on more and more of the Dead stuff as we started playing longer gigs. Like The Meters—like myself even in Runnin’ Pardners, I’m always jammed up about playing Meters songs, you know? I imagine that Billy and Mickey both have to lean on their favorite Grateful Dead songs no matter what band they play it in.

With all these sit ins and collaborations with Jazz Fest, do you have any top memories or anecdotes from past years?

I saw a photograph yesterday that someone showed me that was featured out at the fair site last year. It was from 1973, from the first Jazz Fest on the fairgrounds where Stevie Wonder came out and sat in on a Meters set. That was a memorable time. He sat in on drums and on organ. That was really exciting. I remember something that Allen Toussaint told Zig and I when we were coming off the back of the stage. After Stevie had played drums, Allen said he thought he heard all the drums that could be played that day. Then Zig came back and played the rest of the gig, and [Allen] said that he realized he hadn’t heard all the drums that could be played. [Laughs]

Speaking of Allen Toussaint, this is the first Jazz fest after he passed away. What does it mean to the city to have this event without someone who is such a big part of it?

There wasn’t only just Allen. We lost two other really large portions of the jazz community, Alwyn Baptiste and Harold Battiste. The city took a hit on its music senior citizens—royalty, I should say more than senior citizens. Musical royalty. I know there’s a tribute to the works of Allen planned. I’m almost positive that both Harold and Alwyn are being honored, as well. I always do an Earl King song in my sets every year. Last year, I released a record that was dedicated to Earl King, Snooks Eaglin and Eddie Bo, “Talkin’ Bout My Old Friends.” I kind of highlighted that last year at Jazz Fest.

With the loss of these royalties, do you think there was a different feel to Jazz Fest this year?

I mean, I can’t answer for the whole, because I’m not out there every day. Also, I kind of believe that, because we’re bringing in more and more of the really large groups, there’s a real chance that a lot of the local stuff you just won’t see anymore—unless you hit the little clubs around town. Some of that stuff is missing, because there’s only so much space to put music out there. When we start plugging in those big acts—it’s a jazz festival, but it’s a festival where the investors want money to be made. You can’t just keep doing these things and not showing a plus. I understand what the foundation’s doing—plugging in bigger names and a lot of the touring bands and things like that. It’s important for keeping its survival, bringing in those bucks.

What do you think it is about New Orleans that has created and cultivated very specific and thriving music and cultural scene, with specific genres like jazz and funk, with masters coming from there throughout the decades?

We were lucky, man, however it was that it happened. I guess because it’s a port city—all of the musical heritage that came in, in the early days, developed into the jazz and the R&B and all that. We have so many different cultures in this city. Each one of them brought their music to it. Some of those cultures’ music has intertwined and created something different—a new take on a polka or something like that. It’s just a melting pot. New Orleans has always been a melting pot. I guess the way to say it is the Polish people call it a goulash and we call it a gumbo. [Laughs]

Do you have any projects coming up that you’d like to mention?

Zig and myself, we have a group called Foundation of Funk. We’ve been doing this with several different players, getting a guitar player and a keyboard player from another band to join into the band with us. For the Jazz Festival this year, we did Ivan and Tony Hall from Dumpstaphunk. Zig and I have been talking about doing some recording and possibly getting two or three or four units together to do a record. All of that is in the immediate works. I’m in the studio as much as I can right now, writing new music for a Porter trio, which actually is three members of the Runnin’ Pardners Band, our keyboard player Mike Lemmler, Terrence Houston and myself. We’ve been also entertaining asking some of the guitar players out there in the world, like John Scofield, some of those guys, to do a guest appearance on that project. There’s a lot of stuff in the works.

I think the last time I saw you was last year at Bowlive in Brooklyn, and Eric Krasno called you the “Captain of Bowlive.”I was just curious what your relationship is like with that band, specifically Krasno and Neal. How did you guys meet?

I don’t really remember the first time—it seems like we’ve been friends forever now. I wanna say probably six or seven years ago, I got invited to come to the Brooklyn Bowl to do two nights with Soulive there. It kind of flourished into doing a couple of nights with them. I think they were doing something out on the West Coast in Tahoe. I think they was calling that SnowLive. [Laughs] I don’t know how it actually came about, but we’ve been having a great time. With that band, Eric kind of lets me come in and redirect the music. We’re playing four or five songs in the list, but because there are so many different varieties of pockets that can be approached with that band, I tend to go off the reservation. I’ll just start changing stuff in the middle of the songs, and they just have fun chasing me around the stage. It’s cool. They never slap me on the hand and say, “Don’t do that no more!” [Laughs]

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