Among the multitudes of events and innumerable shows and late-night affairs that make up New Orleans’ annual Jazz and Heritage Festival, the meat of the celebration comes with the various sit ins—both planned and spontaneous—that occur throughout the festival’s two weeks. George Porter Jr. is no stranger to both kinds of collaborations, having lend his bass to countless supergroups, one-off jams and impromptu musical get-togethers throughout his storied career—not to mention his work with legendary NOLA funk godfathers The Meters, plus the offshoots Funky Meters and Meter Men, along with his current band Runnin’ Pardners.
This year’s Jazz Fest was no different for the Crescent City native, as Porter kicked things off with a show with all four original members of The Meters featuring special guests Warren Haynes, Grace Potter, Ivan Neville, Trombone Shorty and more before joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers onstage for their encore with fellow Meter Zigaboo Modeliste. We caught up with Porter to reflect on those two experiences, to describe how he feels about the current state of Jazz Fest and his upcoming plans in a career that shows no signs of slowing down.
You performed a Jazz Fest set with the original Meters quartet and all those guests. What was it like to be back up there again with the original four guys?
With that band, at the end of the evening, it’s always like, “Wow. We did it again.” [Laughs] You never know. This time, Leo couldn’t make the rehearsals, because he was off rehearsing for his solo performance for Jazz Fest this year. So, because one of the primary players wasn’t there, everything’s subject to change. And it did. One of the things this band seems to do very well is land on its feet when things happen that isn’t planned. That’s kind of like our history as a band. We never was an overly rehearsed, well-rehearsed band at all. Back in the older days we played so much that we just knew each other, you know?
When you guys do reunion shows like this, do you try to get several rehearsals in now?
No, we just do one rehearsal and that’s mostly to rehearse heads and tails—how we gonna start it and how we gonna end it.
So you get done with a show like that and you say, “Wow. We did it again.” Do you think you guys will ever stop doing these kind of one-off reunion shows?
I never say never. You just never know. It’s a complicated thing. I wish there was a simpler answer to why we just haven’t been able to, say, pull off a run of dates or something like that, or take three months and do as much work as we can in three months. It’s just never been able to happen. Some of that is my schedule doesn’t allow for it, because Runnin’ Pardners play a lot. Also—have bass, will travel—I play with tons of other bands. I’m kind of the busy, busy, busy one in the band. To pull off a successful three-month run, I would have to knock a hole into my schedule. It wouldn’t be something that I would feel bad about doing, but, you know, I got four other guys who’ve been in my band for 20-plus years, so I don’t like putting them out of work for three months. It could happen, and more than likely if something like that were to happen, I would definitely go out and do a Meter tour if it was to come around.
Do you think the other three guys would be into it as well?
That’s the question that I never attempt to answer for them [laughs]. That would be something that you would have to ask each one of those guys.
Speaking of playing in different bands, you followed up the Meters show with a Funky Meters gig a week later at Tipitina’s. What are the differences between playing with the original four Meters guys and then doing a Funky Meters show?
I think Funky Meters isn’t strictly a Meter band. We get off the reservation and play other stuff. We have Brian Stoltz, a wonderful guitar player, songwriter in his own right, so we tend to allow him some space, some liberties to show his worth as a member of the band. And after Russell Batiste left the band a couple years ago, we replaced him with Runnin’ Pardners drummer Terence Houston, who’s also very musical and a showman sort of a drummer but very, very precise and we let him show his worth. None of the Meter bands do stuff like that but the Funky Meters. We tend to go from song to song. We start our set and the gig is over when we stop playing. It’s not like we play a song, end it. Play a song, end it. Play a song, end it. There’s not a whole bunch of chatter in between our songs, because we go music to music. That comes from being able to ad-lib your way into the next piece of music. With the original Meters—and the reasoning behind it is because we don’t play that much together—we have to start and finish songs. That’s natural.
More on Jazz Fest—you came onstage with Ziggy during the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ set and played “Give it Away” for their encore. How did that come about?
I was about to leave my house to go out to stage call, and I got a call from my manager asking if I had anything immediately after my set, just making sure I had nowhere else to be. I said, “No, why?” He said, “Well, the Chili Peppers’ management reached out. They wanted to see if you and Ziggy wanna come out and sit in on the encore.” I said, “Oh, cool.” Their drummer had been at two different gigs last weekend. He was at a Meter Men show, which is Zigaboo, myself, Ivan [Neville], and Tony Hall, at the House of Blues, I also saw him at Trombone Shorty’s show. So, we had touched base with him twice. We actually got to play that Sunday. So he might have been the one instrumental in making that happen.
Had you met the members of RHCP before?
Yeah, the first time they played New Orleans at the Voodoo Festival like 10 years ago actually. The buyers of the festival were instrumental in putting that together. The original Meters played on one stage and they were headlining on the big stage. At the end of our set, we were told that the Chili Peppers wanted the whole Meter band—all four of us—to come over and sit in on the encore of their set. But that particular day we played a Meters song, “Hand Clapping Song.” That’s the song they wanted to play. That was a fun jam session. I think you can find that out there on YouTube somewhere.
What was it like when two bands like that come together—from different generations, but both pretty steeped in funk?
When a host band invites another whole band to come sit in, now you’ve doubled the number of players on stage, except for the guy in front. What makes it happen and makes it magical is when well over two-thirds of the band is paying attention to each other. Everybody is playing off of each other and stuff. That jam session had a few train wrecks, but it was the kind of wreck that didn’t damage any of the engines. It was a couple of musical clashes, just because of some players that wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around them. That happened in our camp more than in their camp. I’m always the kind of player where, if I’m going to sit in on somebody, I’m not going there trying to take the gig. I’m trying to plug into whatever it is they’re doing and be a part of what it is they’re doing. I don’t need to bring my ego to the table.
In that vein—as opposed to sitting in with other people, what about when it’s a supergroup that comes together? Kind of like with the Voodoo Dead show, with Steve Kimock, Jackie Greene and Jeff Chimenti from the Grateful Dead world along with you, Papa Mali and Cyril Neville from the New Orleans camp.
I’ve played with Steve and John Morgan [Kimock] many times before. We sort of have a feel as a rhythm section. I did a few songs with them last year when Bill Kreutzmann was in town with his band. The music that they’re going after—and there’s a bunch of songs I didn’t know— it’s sort of like, “Pay attention.” We are going to have a somewhat of a rehearsal, but it’s going to be more like rehearsing how the songs are going to begin and how they’re going to end. With the Dead jam songs, you know, it’s going to be exactly what it is. It’s an open jam song. You have to pay attention and play.
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]
