You start tracing back the roots of the New Orleans Suspects and, no matter which direction you go, there’s some serious funk.
Take the band’s powerful rhythm engine: Willie Green drummed for the Neville Brothers for over three decades, which is about the same length of time that bassist Reggie Scanlan drove the beat for The Radiators.
And then there’s pianist CR Gruver, whose resumé includes tours of duty with Leo Nocentelli and Outformation. Suspects’ guitarist Jake Eckert is a veteran of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
And do they come any funkier than James Brown? No – no, they don’t … and hornman Jeff Watkins was the Godfather of Soul’s bandleader for a dozen years.
Veteran players all, the New Orleans Suspects approach their music with both a nod to their pedigrees and a look to the future. Their new album Ouroboros is testimony to that: when you listen to it, there’s no question that this band is from the Big Easy – but at the same time, they’re breaking new ground and exploring the far reaches of funkiness.
We recently had a chance to talk with Reggie Scanlan and Jake Eckert about the music on Ouroboros and the resulting conversation demonstrates the band’s love for where they come from as well as excitement over the music they’re creating – walkie-talkies and all.
We begin with a health check-in on Reggie Scanlan, who underwent a 16-hour surgical procedure for pancreatic cancer back in 2012. Scanlan is living proof that you can’t keep a good man down: he left the hospital after a month-long recuperation to join his brother Suspects at the New Orleans JazzFest.
BR: First of all Reggie, how are you doing?
Reggie: I’m doing real, real good – I’m vertical and ambulatory, so that’s always good news. (laughter)
I don’t want to embarrass you, but I don’t know how many people I’ve told about you playing JazzFest with the Suspects in 2012 two days after you got out of the hospital. Your story – and your music – have inspired a lot of folks to keep on keeping on.
Reggie: Everybody’s going to find their own way to deal with that kind of stuff, you know? People say it all the time, but when it happens to you, you figure out a way to deal with it. You have to … you don’t have an option.
I’m just thankful to everybody for listening to our music, man. If nobody was listening, I’d be back working in a garage or something. [laughter]
Speaking of music, you all have got to be tickled with Ouroboros.
Reggie: I’m totally thrilled. It’s one of the first times I’ve ever been in a situation where you had the luxury of just taking your time and trying out as many things as you wanted to in the studio. And we all felt it came out great. Jake and Jeff deserve a lot of credit – they did the engineering and mixing and everything. It was pretty much all done in house, except for the mastering.
It covers a lot of ground as far as our influences. And I like the feel of it, you know? A lot of times, the vibe thing doesn’t translate well in the studio, but in this case, it really did.
Jake: It’s our third album but it feels like our first shot at our own voice. I think part of that comes from recording it in my studio and Jeff and I producing it. It might not be what you’re expecting coming out of the gate but that’s us ; that’s the band; that’s the sum of the parts, right there, coming from us.
Reggie: I think part of that is we’re so used to hanging out in Jake’s studio. When it comes down to recording, it’s not like you’re in some new place that you have to get used to; you don’t have to watch the clock and all that stuff.
So those sessions were spread out over …
Reggie: A year or so.
Jake: We could spread it out because it was our time in my studio. I could make the schedule. [laughs]
“Get Back What You Given” is the lead-off track on the album – and some good advice. I have to say, it carries some clout coming from a band of guys who have some time under their belts.
Reggie: A lot of the songs on this album couldn’t have been written by 20-year-old kids. Songs come from your experiences with people and things that you know and see and do … that’s what you write about.
Back at the beginning of the Radiators, a lot of Ed’s [singer/songwriter/keyboardist Ed Volker] songs were all very relationship-driven. That was the topic. As Ed got older, those things kind of branched out into … I don’t know … bigger issues, I guess you’d say. I don’t think you can write songs or books or anything until you have some experience.
You’ve got to live some life.
Reggie: Yeah, exactly – and when you’re a 20-year-old songwriter, for the most part, your experiences are, like, “My girlfriend dumped me.” Or, “I got fucked up last weekend and crashed my dad’s car.” [laughter] You know – that’s where you’re operating; you’re at that level. And nobody expects you to have any more than that, you know?
Oh, yeah: “I done got up this morning and I had to mow the lawn …”
Reggie: Yeah! [laughter] Nobody really expects you to have anything going on that’s going be along the lines of Bob Dylan.
When I hear “Cigarette Smile” I go right back to the Seventies and The Ohio Players booming out of my transistor radio from one of those old AM stations out of Boston. There’s an unmistakable vibe there.
Jake: CR came in and said, “I want to get that old lo-fi sound.” We tried different stuff and it all sounded kind of lame … until we went down to Wal-Mart and bought a CB.
A CB radio?
Jake: Yeah – like for a truck. But that broke. [laughter] So, then we went back and got a pair of walkie-talkies. And what you’re hearing is what we got by playing through one walkie-talkie, mic’ing the second walkie-talkie with a real nice microphone and sending it through a pre-amp on the other end.
Oh, man – I would not have guessed that. [laughter]
Reggie: That whole song was written on bass lines. The section where it kind of opens up for the chorus? I had some latitude to do stuff there, but because the whole song is rhythmically jerky and funky, that part just sounded better having a lot of open notes in it.
“Magdalena” was like that, too. The song kind of directed where the bass line should go.
If The Band had hung out in New Orleans instead of Woodstock, they would’ve written “Magdalena”.
Jake: Thanks, man – that’s the greatest compliment you could give us.
Reggie: You know, that song reminded me of The Band right from the beginning – the horn arrangements, the vocal – everything. You have to have experiences to write those kinds of songs … and be perceptive enough to know that something’s going on. There’s a story everywhere if you’re open to it.
Was there a real Magdalena?
Jake: Uh-huh. I wrote that tune about a church that’s in front of my house here in New Orleans. It’s about a lady who used to walk by every day to go to church.
I’m not surprised; there’s a definite gospel feel to the tune – especially the piano coda at the end.
Jake: CR came into the studio and said, “I got this cool melody to go on the end of your tune” – he’d been home mowing his lawn, thinking about the song. [laughs] He and Jeff did their mad scientist thing and made the ending. It reminds me of “Layla” – not to compare ourselves to the genius of Tom Dowd, but the idea of where it seems to end and then comes back in.
“Pocketful of Grits” feels like pulling the string and letting it go, which the Suspects are great at. In general, is there a designated traffic cop?
Reggie: Basically, whoever’s got the solo gives the nod – “I’m done.” In general, Jake plays traffic cop when we’re on stage.
Jake, there are a lot of guitarists whose response to the Latin groove of “Pocketful Of Grits” would be an attempt at instant Santana. You avoid any clichés like that in your solo, however.
Jake: Well, thanks, man. You know, the groove that Willie’s playing is really a Mardi Gras Indian groove. You gotta remember: Willie went from the practice room to the Neville Brothers at an early age and stayed there for 30 years, you know?
I know drummers who know a lot of tricks – but Willie wrote the tricks, man.
“Soothe Me” is one of those songs that could work with just an acoustic guitar.
Jake: That’s where that one came from – me on my National steel guitar in open G, playing a little riff. I wrote that song probably 10 years ago, I bet. We weren’t trying to rewrite the book; just keep that feel of sitting on the back porch – you nailed it.
Tell me about the sweet old upright piano we hear on “Things (In Your Mind)”.
Reggie: That’s an old 19th century upright that was at CR’s house. It had a sound to it that just worked for that song – it needed something like that.
Jake: Jeff and I got this recording rig together and went over to CR’s house where he had this cool old piano. It was the noisiest, nastiest thing you ever heard, you know? [laughter] But it was real: you could hear all the hammers and everything. It was one of those times: “Be careful what you wish for, ‘cause you’ll get all that and more.”
The hardest thing was, there was construction going on in the street out front, so we had to do all these takes in-between the noise outside.
“Things (In Your Mind)” is a nice measure of the depth of the band: you can take an easy listen to it and there’s that sweet melody on top …
Reggie: it just kind of goes along without you realizing it. It’s like I said before: having the time to put all the parts together and play them so that they sound like they fit … it sounds relaxed because we were relaxed, you know?
Exactly. But at the same time, dig in a little deeper and you and Willie have got some intricate shit going on. I think it’ll surprise the average listener if they put an ear to what you guys have cooking there.
Reggie: Let me tell you: having a drummer like Willie is like going to heaven before you die, you know? [laughter] Really … he’s awesome to play with and he’s always challenging me on some level with something. Willie thinks in such odd ways that you have to be ready to think along with him. It’s cool. He’s got a mean foot, man … and I love it.
Jake, I love the way you and Jeff weave around each other during the solo on “Things”. He’s playing a clarinet?
Yeah, you got it. [laughs] Jeff pulled that out and I said, “Oh no, man …” [laughter]
And he said, “Trust me: the way I play this thing you’re going to like it.”
And you obviously did.
Jeff’s definitely got some tricks up his sleeve … I’ve never heard anyone play soul clarinet before. [laughter]
“Hoodoos and Cunyans” is like a full-length feature movie … and scary as hell.
Reggie: And it’s something that you’ll never hear us play on stage.
Well, I wondered about that, with all the shifting sound textures going on – plus the suitably-weird cameo from Col. Bruce Hampton.
Reggie: We were hanging out in the studio with Col. Bruce and there was this crazy conversation going. Somebody turned on the tape and recorded it.
Jake: You can just turn a mic on and let Col. Bruce talk. [laughter]
Reggie: We were listening to it a couple of days later and Col. Bruce was talking about hoodoos and cunyans. Jake called him up and said, “Hey, we’d like to use this on a song …” – and Col. Bruce said, “Go ahead.” [laughs]
With his psychic powers, Col. Bruce probably already knew you were going to use it, right?
Reggie: Yeah, he probably dropped it and said to himself, “Let’s see if they get it, you know?” [laughs] It was fun – I never get to play upright bass with Willie and doing it on that track was fun.
And then there are some sounds that I can’t even begin to explain …
Jake: All kinds of them. [laughs] Like a kazoo going through a delay pedal and running into a Leslie cabinet – that’s what you hear that sounds like a plane crash. Or there’s my son’s Star Wars light sabre … or Jeff dragging a steel trash can across the studio. There’s like, I don’t know … maybe 50 or 60 different tracks of sounds we used. Jeff actually went out into the swamp at night and recorded the sounds around him … that’s how the track starts.
The big question for us was, “How far do we take this?” I mean, there’s a psychedelicness to it that makes the Grateful Dead seem like a walk in the park. [laughter] Jeff and I had to decide how far to take it – because after while it gets disturbing, you know? It’s a contrast to all the fun and light stuff that’s on the album.
Speaking of fun: your rhythm guitar work on “Walk of Shame” is like discovering a Steve Cropper track I’d never heard before.
Jake: Cool – thank you. That’s old school, you know. The point of that song – the whole album, really – is an ode to the rhythms you’d hear if you were walking down the street in New Orleans, hearing all these different genres. That R&B thing from the 50s and 60s … that’s another sound that came out of here. We weren’t trying to create new sounds – just trying to recreate an old one.
Jake, how much would you think out a solo like the one you play on “Yo Flambeaux!” ahead of time? That is some wild and fine picking.
Actually, I think that was the first pass. We were tracking live; I made one pass and said, “You what? That sounds okay.” [laughter]
I think we’re all guilty sometimes of trying to put out the perfect solo. I really believe that you give it, like, three passes … and if you don’t get it, take a break and come back to it another time.
When it comes to playing a solo that you’re going to play the same way every night, I don’t know much about that. [laughs]
“Carnivale” and “Yo Flambeaux!” are very different songs, but they’re both such great percussion workouts. At that point, I don’t care what anyone’s playing – the whole band’s like one big rhythm beast.
Reggie: You’re right: a lot of that music is so percussion-driven – and if you listen to it in a certain way, you’ll realize that everyone is kind of playing a percussion part.
Jake: It’s all percussion. And when you’re not playing your main instrument, you never stand still: grab a cowbell, a shaker, a beer bottle – whatever’s available.
It all starts with the rhythm, man – if the rhythm’s not locked in, it’ll never rise to the next level.
*****
Brian Robbins sits with a cowbell over at www.brian-robbins.com
