Galactic singer Theryl “Houseman” deClouet wrote and sang as many songs on the band’s new “Late for the Future” disc as he did on the combined one-two punch of its predecessors: the 1996 debut, “Coolin’ Off,” and the 1998 follow-up, “Crazyhorse Mongoose.” A much more integral part of the New Orleans-based jazz-groove outfit, Houseman and his R&B band, the Rewards, will release an album in the fall on Rounder called “The Houseman Cometh.” The singer hopes Galactic’s success also spills over for his Motown-like vocal group Hollygrove, who sang back up on “Late for the Future.”
Like deClouet, many New Orleans music veterans appreciate the overnight success of Galactic, a band that consists mainly of musicians not originally from the Crescent City. The group formed in 1994 after Washington, D.C.-raised childhood friends Robert Mercurio (bass) and Jeff Raines (guitar) fled to New Orleans to respectively attend Tulane and Loyala universities. But the real reason they went down there was to soak and partake in the diverse city’s fertile music scene. One of the places they frequented and eventually played was Benny’s, where the deClouet gigged with the Rewards every Sunday.
With New Orleans drummer Stanton Moore and fellow Crescent City enthusiast Richard Vogel on keyboards, Mercurio and Raines absorbed The Meters’ repertoire and played a series of shows in 1994 as the Ivanhoes, naming themselves after the first place the legendary Crescent City band played. Upon regrouping as Galactic with The Houseman and saxophonist Ben Ellman, the funky fold recorded its self-propelled, Dan Prothero-produced debut. By 1998, the band was signed to Atlanta-based Capricorn Records, which reissued the debut and released the follow-up, also produced by Prothero.
By tapping into the jam scene at the invitation of such New Orleans-loving acts as Medeski, Martin and Wood, Widespread Panic, The String Cheese Incident and to a lesser degree, Phish, Galactic has shone a national spotlight on the city’s insular funk scene for the first time since the 1970s heyday of The Meters. Like deClouet, many New Orleans musicians have been performing in the city since before most of Galactic was born. Some feel overlooked, deClouet says. Almost all are thankful that Galactic’s success looks like it’s going to be contagious, the singer says.
With “Late for the Future,” the jazz-groove outfit’s leanest, most lyrical album to date, the spotlight should grow stronger and more influential. In the meantime, Galactic will headline a tour that will bring them to the Northeast and Midwest until late April and early May, when the band will play highly anticipated hometown gigs at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, House of Blues and Tipitina’s. Fellow jam bands that will play the festival include String Cheese Incident, Medeski Martin & Wood, Deep Banana Blackout and many more. Galactic also will share the stage with New Orleans legend Dr. John on June 6 at New York’s Central Park Summerstage.
Right before “Late for the Future” was released on April 4, I spoke with deClouet about his enlarged role in the group that has given his long career a big boost. We also discussed the musical trim “Late for the Future” producer Nick Sansano (Sonic Youth, Manic Street Preachers) gave to the band, the way in which the jam scene has helped the group’s audience grow swiftly, the improvisational nature of deClouet’s lyrics and vocals and the funky fun his hometown has provided for him and others.
Where does the nickname ‘Houseman’ come from?
Ivan Neville gave me that name. He just blurted it out when he was in my house and I made him get out. I told him I was the Houseman so he just called me that from then on.
You were described as Galactic’s permanent special guest. What did that mean and how did that role change with ‘Late for the Future’?
The people are demanding me to do more than just a couple of songs.
How do you feel about that?
I feel all right, but I wish I had my own career. Galactic’s just one dimension. They’re funky and we all love ‘em, but I’ve got this other shit in me too that I’ve got to get out. Galactic is funky. I’m R&B/blues. I’m learning how to do funk. I’d like to get a little R&B.
With Galactic or your own thing?
Well, Galactic too, but my own thing had to come out sooner or later. Rounder is going to put it out some time in the fall. Galactic’s on two songs. It’s called ‘The Houseman Cometh.’ We come to jam. It’s my band, the Rewards. Everybody but (co-founder) Michael (Ward). He died so he can’t be there, but he’s there in spirit. We’re doing the record for him. He was a conga player.
That’s where Galactic saw me, with the Rewards at Benny’s. It’s the same songs, we just updated the arrangements and the beats.
Once that record comes out, will you continue to perform with Galactic?
Yeah, I’m not going nowhere. I’m just exercising another part of me that’s been there all the while. It was always in the plan for me to do me. That was the deal with Galactic. ‘Hey, help us, and you can do as much of you as you want.’ So this is just the beginning.
Do you think you would have been able to put that record out anyway or did working with Galactic make it happen?
Working with Galactic. I probably would have eventually been able to do something, but Galactic escalated everything. What we did with Galactic in the few short years that we have been a band, I’m sure that prompted Rounder and just made everybody love the Houseman a lot more. Galactic hasn’t done anything but help me period. And they’re very aware of wanting me to be wider exposed so much love goes out to them.
I’ve been recording and Robert and everybody else has been there every night. It’s kind of like a family thing. They would say, ‘Come on over, Houseman. We want you to do some singing on our CD.’ But shit, there was a lot of singing done before the CD, a whole lot of gigging. That’s where that special guest comes in because I was always planning to do my shit. They knew they couldn’t keep me from that. Galactic is my thing, but it’s more like my new baby. The Rewards is my grown child.
And what’s Hollygrove, the R&B vocal group you have that sang back up on ‘Late for the Future?’
That’s my wife (laughs) because I started out in that. Hollygrove’s been instrumental since the beginning all the way to singing backgrounds for ‘Late for the Future.’
Comment on how your vocals can be as improvisational as the rest of the band’s music during a show.
When we write songs, we kind of structure them with an outline. What I do is just take whatever verses I come up with and try them out on the people live so a lot of things change from night to night. I guess it’s improvisation. I’m doing different verses every night just trying to work the song into a groove where we can get it to a place where the people can digest it because we come pretty hard sometimes. We’re always uptempo. It’s not like with my band where we break down and go slow and do the ballads for the ladies. Galactic is an improvisation thing for the Houseman most every night because we form the songs at sound check while we’re on the road. They say, ‘Houseman, whatever you got for the songs, just come with it.’ I stick a verse somewhere where it might work. A lot of nights it don’t work so we just try to keep it as free form. That’s why we got together. I wanted to get away from the constant singing (with Hollygrove) and work on my tones and stuff like that. So I figured I worked with some guys who weren’t spoiled by the music business and were just getting into the music business.
It’s just a good thing, man. I can’t say enough about Galactic. I get mad at them. I curse them out because we got this generation gap. They run off sometimes like children. Good children though. They’re neophytes in the business. They’re young and very impressionable and very deep dudes. On a whole, these cats … I don’t know, I must have weaned them right. They always say I taught them right. It’s just a good thing I met Galactic. I’m saying that every day, every night. I pray that it can stay together and I think it will because they’re very level-headed dudes. It’s a tough, tough business and you gotta be for real. So hey man, it’s Galactic all the way. We’re going to try to conquer a lot of things.
Did any improvisational vocals make their way onto the records?
The first one was ‘Everybody Wants Some’ on the first record. Everybody requests that song so we’re going to start doing it more live.
As you become a musician and you start to grow, you want to structure your shit in song form. Everybody in the band writes. We’re just trying to experiment more with the song form to write a great, solid song. The improv has been more for the live thing. The record company wants less improv and more so the people can get to it. What we’re trying to do now is show people that we can write decent things, good, solid songs. But we’ve been talking about the next record being a live thing, more free form like we do it live. So I don’t know.
I think ‘Late for the Future’ is a better record than the first two because the jams and grooves are a little more focused, yet there’s still the funky free form jazz of the closing ‘Two Clowns’ and the tasty jam of ‘Hit the Wall.’
Yeah, we went to Japan and everybody was like, ‘Jam bands, jam bands.’ Everybody was getting headbutted with, ‘What is a jam band?’ with the interviewers. I think we wanted to show that we’re not just a jam band. We can write songs and we can jam too. When we have meetings, that’s what comes out, ‘Houseman, we want to show people that we can do what it takes in the business. We can write great songs and do some good funk.’ It’s just a matter of development.
You contributed the souladelic ‘Century City,’ the jazzy philosophy of ‘Running Man,’ the southern-fried funk of ‘Vilified’ and the spirited love song ‘Thrill,’ but what’s ‘Actions Speak Louder’?’
That’s a cover of Chocolate Milk. They were a ’70s, ’80s band in New Orleans that was really popular. They were produced by Allen Toussaint. They were the band that took over the house band role with Allen Toussaint when The Meters left his studio. They’re friends of mine. That’s one of the first songs Galactic learned. And the other was ‘Mind Is Hazy.’ We did that too but it didn’t make it to the record.
But ‘Black Eyed Pea’ made it, which was the first song Galactic wrote, but it didn’t appear on ‘Coolin’ Off’ and ‘Crazyhorse Mongoose.’ Why?
They always told them ‘Two Clowns’ and ‘Black Eyed Pea’ couldn’t be captured on record. So when we got with the producer, Nick Sansano, it was different, more detailed and straight to the point. Dan (Prothero) was really great for a starting band because he would let you find your own voice. But this time what we really wanted to show with Nick was better sonic quality. He wanted us to play all the songs we wanted to do for this record, and we let him pick what he thought would be good. He picked that one. That was just the result of him trimming the fat off the arrangement and just really going in and trying to nail the songs. Nick’s a great guy. I think we’re going to be working with him again on our next record.
Nick’s a musician from New York who’s worked with Sonic Youth and rappers. So he brings all this experience, plus he’s a great piano player. He comes with that ear and looking at it from a musician’s pit. It was like he was in the band.
This is the shit we’re going to concentrate on and this is where the people are going to really get what you’re doing. He was like, ‘Get this out of here. It’s just fat sitting in the middle of some good food. We’re going to trim this fat and bang, the people will get to this a lot faster.’ We learned how to do that with Nick. Nick was invaluable at this stage of the game. We needed a Nick Sansano, somebody to put a little interest in the game still for these boys. Show them how to shape it a different way. It was a big album for us, and we got the right guy in Nick Sansano to come in and do the right album at the right time. I think we did capture the band right this time. Sonically the mix is right. It was just a joy working with Nick.
We’ve had one or two naysayers here because they love us live. This is a live town so everybody wants you to sound like you sound live. They had a review in Offbeat, the local music magazine. The chick must have been a Galactic fan. She said, ‘Well, you can’t put one-hour sets into a CD’ and all this kind of shit. She was like, ‘We want to know when we can get a live record.’ So that was how she summed up, ‘We want a live record.’ I know her. She comes to all the gigs when we we’re here. It’s kind of a little backlash, but we love it because we love New Orleans and the people. The people have been so great to us as a band that we overlook it, but some people don’t get what we’re doing. And that’s cool. But they all come out because they know we’re going to have a party and we going to play all night when we play here. So they be waitin’ on us.
We’ve seen it go from 20 people to 2,000. In four years, that’s pretty good I think. We started out at the Elbo Room in San Francisco and now we can’t play no place but the Warfield. We sold the Fillmore out so many times, they bought us jackets. The jacket was a tradition of Bill Graham’s. Four sellouts and you get the jackets. So we had like five, six in a row. We did the Warfield and they quit buying us jackets. They bought us traveling bags engraved with Galactic 2000 on them. So we had to move to the Warfield, which is a great thing.
It’s just good right now. We’re seeing everybody come out and get with Galactic. It’s just one of those good things. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now
On ‘Late for the Future,’ the guitar is up front more and the band uses drum loops for the first time. How else does the album sound different from the first two to you?
It’s just a better-sounding record. We had more time. We were really able to do something vocally. I was able to get Theresa Andersson in there and Hollygrove came in and really stomped the background. It was just a better planned project. And we have me out there more because the people who come to the shows always complain, ‘Houseman, we don’t see enough of him.’ So we tried to do that. And then I knew I was going to do my record so we’re going to have enough of the Houseman for a while. We’re going to have too much of the Houseman in a minute.
How did it feel to be able to bring Hollygrove into ‘Late for the Future’?
It felt great after all the years we’ve been in it since ’69. They’ve been a big part of everything I’ve ever done. We grew up as children, as friends. Hollygrove will always be responsible and a part of what I do because they’re such great singers and we had such a blend together and we know each other so well. So they’re on my record. And we got nine songs by them that’s laying in the can that we never finished.
Hollygrove got quite an interesting story. The dude who started it with me, Sullivan Wallace, had two strokes in January. Now he’s coming back from that.
And Hollygrove is on the Rewards record too. Next it’ll be time to finish up those tracks in the can.
Well, we’re hoping to get some interest on it and everything. If not, we’ll just take our little money and do it a little bit at a time. But I think they going to be a little interested after we finish these nine songs. We hoping because it’s just too much good singing going to waste if we don’t. So I think we’ll finish these nine songs and people will love that too.
When did you start the Rewards?
About 1987. It was just me and Michael Ward at Benny’s on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The Neville Brothers took off so that left the Sunday night open for the Rewards. So it was every Sunday.
It’s cool that you also got Roger Lewis from Dirty Dozen Brass Band to play sax on ‘Baker’s Dozen’ and ‘Hit the Wall.’ Now who’s Theresa Anderssen?
She was married to Anders Osborne. (Call waiting interrupts). That was Glen Gaines, the manager of Wild Magnolias and Marva Wright. She’s our resident blues queen. Our Aretha Franklin. She really puts down some great blues with the BMWs. Marva wants me to do a duet with her on her new record. She’s covering ‘Written All Over Your Face’ by the Rude Boys, and me and her are going to do a duet on it. It feels good to be the Houseman right now, bro. Lord, I been here so long underground, helping everybody. And now everybody’s like, ‘Man, come on. We want you on this and we want you to do that.’
So Theresa Andersson was married to Anders Osborne. She’s classically trained in violin and voice. And she’s sexy as a son of a bitch.
Every year the Jazz Fest has a contest for the last few local bands they need. The people out there are judging it and they put the first two bands on Jazz Fest. That’s what we used to do. Rewards was an outlaw band because Mike was very in-your-face. So we used to get a lot of backlash. Hence, we were in this contest. So we met Anders and Theresa. They wound up winning and going on to Jazz Fest. And I fell in love with Anders’ music. They always compare him to Little Feat because he has that funky, swampy sound. And he writes these conscience lyrics.
They were on Sony 550. They split about a year or two ago, but I kept in touch with Theresa. So when we were writing ‘Vilified,’ I was thinking of a way we could work together. She’s going to be on my record on a song called ‘If That’s What It Takes.’ I’m going to do it acoustically with her on violin and harmony vocal. Theresa’s somebody to watch in the future because she has many great original songs and she’s a great singer and a very proficient on violin and fiddle. She knows a lot about American music. And she’s just very tasty and very sexy. Be on the lookout for her.
Have you ever played Jazz Fest?
Oh yeah, a bunch of times. Now Galactic is annual. They’re starting to put Galactic in the advertisement.
Being a New Orleans native, does all this success ever feel weird being in a band made up mainly of guys who aren’t originally from New Orleans?
Yeah it does.
Is there any resentment from New Orleans musicians?
Well, we’re getting a little backlash because of all the popularity and everybody talking about what a great band Galactic is, and here, they’re just neophytes. It’s kind of funny to look at it because everybody sees me as the old, grizzled veteran who’s never going to be nothing but New Orleans. It’s kind of interesting. People aren’t resentful, but Galactic is still neophytes. Everybody here takes so long and then finally, they’ll bloom. And it looked like Galactic came from college, frat boys, and just blew up overnight. But that’s the greatness of what was happening. That’s how I think we kind of changed what was happening in New Orleans ‘cause we did a different kind of business. By Robert and Jeff being from D.C., they did a different kind of business. And that’s all New Orleans was lacking was marketing and being incorporated in a commercial way where the people could stomach it. I think that’s where we’ve been most successful in bringing New Orleans music to the world.
So on that level, New Orleans musicians are appreciative that they opened the door?
Right.
But do they feel that they should have opened the door first?
Right. They feel appreciative and resentful, I think, because they’ve been around a long time and here’s these young, upstart cats that’s comin’ along. Who are they? But they’re very appreciative of the exposure and the eyes that Galactic has put on New Orleans. They’re very appreciative of that.
Galactic shares a lot of influences with New Orleans funk, like James Brown, Booker T & the MGs, a range of jazz and the Mardi Gras Indians. But where the paths diverged was when Galactic hooked up with the jam scene after Medeski, Martin and Wood, Widespread Panic, The String Cheese Incident, Gov’t Mule and Phish got turned onto them. You mentioned you went to Japan and everybody was like, ‘What’s a jam band?’ What’s your take on Galactic’s role in the jam scene?
They define us as one. Being a veteran in the business, I say thank god they’re calling us something. But we’re more than just a jam band, and we know it. It’s just funny for me coming from a controlled group like Hollygrove with choreography to being in Galactic and seeing how every night we get over with these instrumentals and a few vocal songs, and the people just can’t get enough of them. It’s almost spiritual (laughs).
We just basically got together to make some good music and have a fun time. That’s the basis of everything in New Orleans, the fun time. So as long as we can keep it basic and where the people can get to it and have fun, shit, we gonna be rolling, man. We gonna roll because it does a lot for us as humans to get out there and just have a lot of fun together.
We like to have fun together. They was hangin’ with me on my gigs before Galactic even started. We’d a have a bunch of fun. Nobody cardin’ ‘em, nobody foolin’ with ‘em. They’d come hang out when the musicians were on a break, and we’d just laugh. Robert and Jeff, I met them the first night they came to college. They was at my gigs every year. They didn’t start the band till the last year when they was seniors. They had three years of me every Sunday. ‘Houseman!’ I’d be like, ‘Man, these little Tulane guys again.’ But I always did talk to them when they come on the gig. They’d want to know about this and that.
There were so many people coming uptown after The Neville Brothers broke out. It’s kind of funny when The Neville Brothers broke out. We used to call them The Never Brothers. ‘They’ll never make it,’ you know. But it was kind of funny to everybody because all this interest started and everybody wanted to know where Aaron lived. It was kinda nice. It still is nice.
I love the attention New Orleans musicians are getting now because we have so many great cats, man, that been here just as long or longer than The Neville Brothers that are still vibrant and have a fresh voice and something to say. So it’s a good thing, man.
Do you think the jam scene has made the difference for Galactic and, therefore, the rest of New Orleans?
I think it has made the difference in terms of the hippies and the people who follow us. It exposed us to a whole new audience. Then all of a sudden when we opened for Medeski and then Medeski told Phish and Widespread Panic and all them. John Medeski, Chris Wood and Billy Martin, they were instrumental in exposing us to the jam-band crowd. Now Phish plays our record. Widespread Panic took us on tour and jammed with us. John Bell had me up there every night. He loves to sing with me. It’s been a love affair, man. Gov’t Mule and Warren Haynes. String Cheese, we can’t say enough about them. When we went on our first tour, they were like, ‘We love this shit.’ They wrote the song ‘Galactic.’
We just got a love affair going with those guys, but we don’t look at it as jam bands. Musicians just look at the shit as other musicians. The people put the label on it. But we love the so-called jam bands, and the people love us. We love the people.
The main thing about us is we’re out to reach as many people as possible so we’ll take the jam crowd, the hippies. Now we’re going for a more urban-type thing. We want the brothers to come on in. They hear it and see it and like it. We’re just trying to get more exposure across the board. We’ll see who’s who and what’s what.
It kind of rankles the younger cats when you say jam bands, especially Ben Ellman. He hates the title. He doesn’t like labels. They would rather be known as a solid, good band than a jam band. But they’ll take that because we love that genre. If jam means improv, well then, yeah, OK. They love the freedom of playing for the hippies and that crowd that follows jam bands. I guess you could say we stuck with the jam band title ‘cause we got the jam-band people (laughs). We got to do things to keep our fanbase, but we’re just a good, solid band, man. We try to be.
When got together the first meeting, Jeff said, ‘Houseman, we gonna bring you to the world. You should have been exposed to the world. If the world knew about you, you’d be so big, you couldn’t stand it.’ They keepin’ true to their promise. We really have knocked down some barriers, but we’ve got a lot more to do. I think our best shit is going to be our next record. We have begun to write a bunch of great songs already that are really slammin’. I think the best is yet to come from Galactic.
They’re neophytes and when I’m with them, I treat myself as a neophyte too. For the young babes, I just say, ‘Yeah, I’m a neophyte too.’ It’s easier to take that way. It don’t run you as crazy that way, a spoonful at a time.
