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NEW ORLEANS SUSPECTS

New Orleans SuspectsBIO

When New Orleans Suspects arose from the primordial musical soup that is New Orleans, they were a fill-in band and an occasional jam band at their neighborhood Maple Leaf Bar.

The group brought together some of the best, most highly respected players in New Orleans including Jake Eckert, Jeff Watkins, CR Gruver “Mean” Willie Green on drums, and Reggie Scanlan. When they started touring late in 2011, naysayers in the Crescent City agreed it would not last; the Suspects would be another short-lived super group that would quickly fall apart under the weight of egos and money. New Orleans Suspects exceeded expectations and some five years later they have delivered their fourth album release, Kaleidoscoped.

Jake Eckert, the guitarist and one of the principal songwriters and vocalists, is a veteran of ten years on the road with Dirty Dozen Brass Band, a former member of Larry Carlton’s band, and a Grammy Award ®-winning engineer. He has extensive formal music training and actually taught at the prestigious Guitar Institute of Technology. Not only has Eckert won a Grammy, he played on The Grammys broadcast with New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint.

Kaleidoscoped was recorded at his Rhythm Shack Studios with assistance from Suspect Jeff Watkins, a twelve-year veteran as sax player and section leader for the late James Brown, who constantly referred to him as “the ninth wonder of the world.” Watkins has a formal musical and engineering education, having attended both the Universities of Missouri and Miami. He was a long-time member of the Joss Stone Band and has performed on multiple network television shows.

Keyboardist CR Gruver, the other principal songwriter and vocalist, spent years immersing himself in the piano style of New Orleans legends like Dr. John, James Booker and Allen Toussaint and is arguably the best living practitioner of the New Orleans boogie-woogie piano style, which is an aggregate of boogie-woogie, Caribbean rhythmic patterns and second line. Gruver made a name for himself, first in Philadelphia, then in the Rockies, with his band Polytoxic, and later with Southern rockers Outformation. He also spent time in Leo Nocentelli’s band, pursuing the Meters’ groove.

“Mean” Willie Green, best known for his 35 years as drummer for The Neville Bros., has also played on albums by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Edie Brickell and The Grateful Dead. He literally invented one of the primary styles of New Orleans trap drumming for which he gets credit from musicians around the world.

Founding bassist Reggie Scanlan spent 34 years on the road as an original member of The New Orleans Radiators after stints with both Professor Longhair and James Booker. The scholarly Scanlan, one of the last living connections to the original generation of New Orleans R&B musicians, has had to leave the road due to illness. Charlie Wooton (formerly of Royal Southern Brotherhood) now fills the touring bass chair. Scanlan’s illness drove the Suspects to help fund medical care for the New Orleans music community. Scanlan, the band and its management have organized and directed numerous benefit concerts for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic, a 401(c)3 foundation that provides free and low-cost medical care and counseling for more than 2,500 musicians. The band’s work with the clinic led them to join forces with JoJo Hermann of Widespread Panic to present three versions of the benefit series “Down on the Bayou,” featuring the Suspects as musical directors and house band with guests as diverse as Dr. John, all members of Widespread Panic, Al Schnier of moe., Marcia Ball, Harry Shearer, Leland Sklar, members of Aquarium Rescue Unit and “Beehive Queen” Christine Ohlman from the Saturday Night Live band.

New Orleans Suspects are unbelievably tight on stage with their peers, press, venue owners and promoters singing the praises of their musical prowess. They annually perform in a key slot on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival’s main stage. USA Today called their Acura Stage set “Outstanding…a sound that could have only bubbled up from this city.…”

New Orleans Jazzfest founder and current director Quint Davis says, “The Suspects are deep tissue New Orleans Funk and have emerged as one of the banner New Orleans music groups; taking their place among the standard bearers of our music. And they rock! Rather, funk.” They have become a regular fixture at noted concert and festival venues in San Francisco, San Diego, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Atlanta, Birmingham, and in what has become a major stomping ground, New York City, where Village Voice called them “a seriously funky crew,” and even The New Yorker occasionally notes their passing through the metropolis. The San Diego Union Tribune called them, “a rollicking blend of funk, jazz, blues, rock and vintage N’awlins R&B, designed to fill dance floors with gyrating celebrants.” They have formed touring alliances with Tower of Power, Glen David Andrews (of Trémé fame) and Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett of Little Feat. The Barrere/Tackett/Suspects mash- up has been increasingly in demand at music festivals and has generated a track, “Dixie Highway,” that appears on Kaleidoscoped. Members of Tower of Power and “Big Chief” Juan Pardo also guest on the album on which the Suspects look at the history of New Orleans music through a brightly colored prismatic chamber and thus the album title.

The band’s first, self-released eponymous album debuted in 2011 and featured the smoking CR Gruver original “36 Cars” as well as a few other band originals interspersed with cover songs. In 2012, the Suspects produced and released Caught Live at the Maple Leaf, a loving tribute to the nightclub where it all started and a testament to the band’s increasing skills. Their 2014 studio album, Ouroboros, released on Louisiana Red Hot Records, generated substantial radio play, both in the terrestrial world and on multiple Sirius/XM channels for focus tracks “Get Back What You Given,” Soothe Me,” and “Magdalena” as well as rave reviews and features in publications such as Stereophile, Downbeat, Modern Drummer and Relix
Magazine.

Kaleidoscoped will be released digitally and on CD on September 16 th and on vinyl on September 30 th on Louisiana Red Hot Records. Headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana Red Hot Records has released over 200 albums of the hottest Blues, Jazz, R&B, Gospel, Funk, Zydeco, Cajun and Rock, and is a leader among Southern independent labels with titles by a plethora of New Orleans acts including Rebirth Brass Band, Dumpstaphunk and
Trombone Shorty.

PRESS

“The Suspects – bassist Reggie Scanlan, drummer Willie Green, guitarist Jake Eckert, keyboardist C.R. Gruver and saxophonist Jeff Watkins – are much more than the sum of their impressive parts. When they’re hitting on all cylinders, they come across like a Big Easy version of the Allman Brothers, with sax and slide guitar solos soaring over a deep-seated New Orleans groove.” – Times-Picayune

“On Friday, outstanding early sets came from New Orleans Suspects, a five-piece consisting of former members of some of the city’s top rock/funk/R&B bands…proved adept at mixing swampy rock, funk and high-energy R&B into extended jams. It was a sound that could only have bubbled up from this city, and the Suspects put their own spin on the repertoire.” – USA Today

“Think of the Suspects as the Big Easy’s version of The Traveling Wilburys or Velvet Revolver, an all-star ensemble whose members have ties to some of the biggest names in New Orleans music, including The Neville Brothers, Outformation, The Radiators and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Also, some cat named James Brown, who I hear was pretty good.” – Chattanooga Times Free Press

“During their first year on the road and in the studio, the Suspects’ ever-evolving setlist became a healthy mix of old school blues, funk standards and obscurities, as well as a slew of soul-based originals with plenty of authentic New Orleans flavor… Fans and critics have been wildly enthusiastic about the group’s bona fide funk.” – Flagpole Magazine

www.neworleanssuspects.com

RODERICK PAULIN

Roderick PaulinBIO

Native New Orleanian Roderick Paulin is blazing his own trail keeping the rich New Orleans music tradition alive in non-traditional ways. Roderick is known as being the lynchpin of The Rebirth Brass Band where he composed and arranged anthems that went outside of the ‘normal’ brass band sound with intricate harmonies, rhythms, and mainstream music concepts which attracted younger audiences. That new interest in the music was needed because at that time a lot of the older traditional players weren’t able to accommodate the physical demands of walking the long routes of second-line parades and a shift in music was happening with the younger cats. The social-aid and pleasure clubs themselves that employed the bands, reaped the benefits from this shift in the music because they were now bombarded with new members wanting to parade to this ‘new’ style of music that Rebirth was playing and Roderick was behind the scenes composing and arranging the new modal type of brass band music.

PRESS

“…Paulin possesses a chameleonlike command of his tenor, living up to his legacy as the son of New Orleans trumpeter “Doc” Paulin.”  – Patricia Myers, JazzTimes.com

 

KEVIN SEKHANI

Kevin-Solo-Promo-2013BIO

As a 20 year veteran of the Austin music scene, Kevin Sekhani has done it all. From blazing rock-n-roll to Holy Ghost Honkytonk, Sekhani never fails to entertain crowds with heartfelt enthusiasm and poignant lyrics.

Spending time in Austin working with Michael Ramos (John Mellencamp, Patty Griffin), Andrew Duplantis (Son Volt), and Austin Chronicle’s three-time String Player of the Year winner Warren Hood. In 2010, Sekhani moved back to his home town of Lafayette, Louisiana to front The Mercy Brothers, a Gospel group walking the fine line of sinners and saints.

Since the prodigal son’s return home, he has won over the hearts of Jazz Fest and Festival International audiences, landed a top 5 spot on the Americana charts in Europe with The Mercy Brothers debut release, toured Sweden, and signed his Gospel group to Louisiana Red Hot Records.

Honed from years of collaborations and jam sessions with the legendary wordsmith Bill Carter, who wrote hits for Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Counting Crows, Waylon Jennings and others, Sekhani’s voracious songwriting extends beyond Gospel into secular territory with his new solo album Day Ain’t Done. Adam Sheets of No Depression praises Sekhani’s work on the album deeming it “one of the best debut albums I have heard in years.”

Day Ain’t Done is layered with Americana staple instrumentation, taking the earthy tones of violin, mandolin, accordion and acoustic guitars to give the feel of a back porch jam on a Louisiana Saturday night. The album’s track “Oilfield Tan” has found its way into regular rotation on local Louisiana and Texas radio stations, resonating amongst an area all too familiar with the demanding industry of oilfield work.

Kevin Sekhani celebrates his Louisiana roots by signing with Louisiana Red Hot Records to help bring Day Ain’t Done to the worldwide stage. With stops at 2014’s South by Southwest music festival, Sekhani has already began to garner excitement for his solo career. Still, whether you catch Kevin Sekhani at a large festival or on a small front porch, you are guaranteed to enjoy one hell of a show.

PRESS

“Sekhani’s alternative country gumbo of guitar, Dobro, fiddle, mandolin and more can hang with the best of them.” – Herman Fuselier, Music Writer

“Hailing from Lafayette, LA but cutting his teeth in the Austin music scene, Kevin Sekhani fuses the styles of country, rock and roll, and back-porch jamming to form a vivacious sound.” – The Independent Weekly

“Kevin Sekhani Cajun singer songwriter and veteran Austin musician makes a rousing debut on New Orleans’ Louisiana Red Hot Records with this year’s Day Ain’t Done” – Chris Gray, Houston Press

“If you like music that gets you dancing, this is an album you should add to your collection” – Gary Schwind, AXS TV

“With a voice slightly reminiscent of a young Steve Earle and solid songwriting, Day Ain’t Done is one of the best albums I have heard in years.” – Adam Sheets, No Depression

“Kevin has always been an exceptional singer and Songwriter” – Bill Carter, Songwriter (Caught in the Crossfire, Willie the Wimp – Stevie Ray Vaughn, Why Get Up – The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Robert Palmer)

“Day Ain’t Done is a rich organic blend of alternative country styled Americana textured with fiddle, accordion and dobro that showcases Sekhani’s Louisiana roots both musically and lyrically” – Cody Daigle, The Daily Advertiser

“Day Ain’t Done is dripping with moss, delivering you right to the levee at Henderson swamp, while Ballad of a Lonely Clown and Jimmy would feel at home on the Grand Ole Opry Stage” – The Daily Advertiser

www.kevinsekhani.com

MARC STONE

marcStone_2BIO

It’s no wonder that New York City-born, New Orleans-adopted guitarist Marc Stone has become one of the most respected Blues and Roots artists in the Crescent City. Who else has spent the last 20+ years backing such an astounding litany of Louisiana Blues, R&B and Zydeco legends including Eddie Bo, Ernie K-Doe, Marva Wright, Tommy Ridgely, Marcia Ball, Henry Gray, Rockin’ Dopsie, C.J. Chenier, and Grammy winner Terrance Simien? When not gigging with his crackerjack band or touring Europe, Stone also hosts “Soul Serenade,” the fifteen year-old worldwide radio show broadcast on famous New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Station WWOZ, 90.7 FM.

Stone’s impressive roots-music pedigree, red-hot slide playing and outstanding story-telling are all on fine display with his national debut Poison & Medicine. A stellar cast of New Orleans guests including percussion wizard Mike Dillon, the Bonerama Horns, the late great tenor sax master Tim Green, members of Galactic, Honey Island Swamp Band, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band spice the nine soulful/devil-inside grooves, spanning the Southern musical spectrum from gospel to R&B to haunting Delta Swamp Blues.

This release on Louisiana Red Hot places Stone among a powerhouse roster that includes the Honey Island Swamp Band, Ivan Neville and Dumpstaphunk, Glen David Andrews and the New Orleans Suspects, capping an outstanding year for the artist. With two European tours and a Fall tour of the Northeast under his belt in 2015, Stone has also performed high profile gigs at home including French Quarter Festival, Tipitina’s opening for a sold out Radiators reunion show, a featured role in the All Star New Orleans tribute to Mad Dogs and Englishmen, as well as performances with Walter “Wolfman” Washington, John Mooney, Leftover Salmon with Bill Payne and Col Bruce Hampton, and Marcia Ball.

PRESS

“Poison & Medicine possesses catchy hooks, compelling introspection and songs that are simply fun to sing along to, marking perhaps a watershed moment in the already locally adored and internationally in-demand 45-year-old Stone’s career.” – Frank Etheridge, Offbeat Magazine, New Orleans

“Marc Stone deftly mixes traditional blues, gospel, R&B and blues rock into a coherent musical continuum…Stone is an excellent guitarist, especially on lap steel…not a wasted note….” – John Swenson, OffBeat Magazine, New Orleans

“A true Blues diamond in the rough.” – Where Y’at Magazine, New Orleans

“The highlight of the concert came clearly at the end of the evening with the Marc Stone Band…incredible ease and in splendid form…” – Appenzeller Zeitung, Switzerland

“[A] great record. From start to finish it doesn’t abandon the listener for even a moment.” (five star review) – Gianluca Diana, Alias Magazine, Italy

“One guitar, one chair, this pro doesn’t need more. From the first chord the crowd was rockin’.” – Kraichgau Stimme, Germany

www.marcstonemusic.com

WARDELL & HIS SLAMMIN’ BIG BAND

WQBIO

After playing with Dave Bartholomew’s band from the late 1940s and serving as an army musician in Korea, Wardell emerged as a bandleader in his own right in the mid-1950s with his Royal Dukes of Rhythm. He also worked as an arranger with the cream of New Orleans musicians, including Professor Longhair and Fats Domino.

In 1964, he formed Nola Records, and Robert Parker’s “Barefootin’” from the label reached number 2 on the R&B chart. Other artists on the label include Eddie Bo, Willie Tee and Smokey Johnson. Later, he recorded King Floyd’s “Groove Me” and Jean Knight’s “Mr. Big Stuff”. When major labels including Stax and Atlantic initially rejected them as uncommercial, Stax eventually released “Mr Big Stuff”, and it became the biggest selling, most successful release on the Stax label (currently over 3 million copies), outselling Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and the other Stax acts. “Groove Me” was released on the Chimneyville label, a huge hit (King Floyd’s biggest), and was covered by artists as diverse as Etta James and Tom Petty. Quezergue was also the keyboardist on both hits. Quezergue arranged Dorothy Moore’s “Misty Blue”, which “crossed over” and also became the label’s (Malaco) biggest seller.

At the same time, Wardell was charting, at Berry Gordy’s request, stage arrangement for Stevie Wonder and other Motown acts.

As a result of these successes, Quezergue’s skills as an arranger, and Malaco’s studios, became in demand in the 1970s, and were used by artists as diverse as Paul Simon, Willie Nelson and B. B. King. He also worked with G.C. Cameron, former lead singer of The Spinners (“It’s A Shame”) and The Temptations, the Pointer Sisters, and many more.

Quezergue also produced and arranged the Grammy Award-winning Dr. John album Goin’ Back to New Orleans in 1992. Already an award winning classical composer and conductor, in 2000 he created an extended composition entitled “A Creole Mass”, drawing on his experiences in the Korean War.[3]

In 2005, Wardell was awarded “Best Produced CD of the Year”(by the NY Blues and Jazz society) for his first sessions with singer-songwriter Will Porter. Also a Blues Foundation nominee, the sessions featured Billy Preston, Leo Nocentelli, The Louisiana Philharmonic Strings, and Nola’s best musicians. The CD was awarded 4 stars by AMG, and received what Quezergue called “the best reviews of my career”.

In May 2009, Wardell Quezergue received an honorary doctorate from Loyola University New Orleans for his selfless dedication to enhancing the careers of others, while remaining in the background; for his dedication to teaching others, especially the young aspiring musicians of the city, leading many great New Orleans musicians to refer to him as “my teacher;” and for his contributions to the sounds of the city, particularly the driving horn sounds of the 60s and 70s, for which New Orleans music became known.

On July 19, 2009, a tribute was mounted to Wardell Quezergue at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. By all standards, the show was a triumph, its concept begat from Dr. Ike and the Ponderosa Stomp crew. A nine-piece band was assembled and imported from New Orleans to back up singers like Dr. John, Robert Parker, Jean Knight, and The Dixie Cups, just to name a few. Veteran writer/arranger/bandleader/producer Quezergue showed everyone that he still had it, as he conducted the whole concert.

In 2011 Quezergue finished work on what he called his “two most important works”; his classical religious work “The Passion” and the sophomore recording for Will Porter. On August 25, 2011, Quezergue approved final mixes of 15 tracks of the Will Porter project, featuring duets with Dr. John, Bettye Lavette, Barbara Lewis, jazz bassist Jimmy Haslip, Leo Nocentelli (all multiple Grammy nominees/awardees,) with, once again, the best of New Orleans, including the 12 last recordings of the late drummer Bernard “Bunchy” Johnson, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Strings.

Wardell Quezergue passed away September 6th, 2011, at the age of 81, but his music and legacy will live on forever.

PRESS

“The stellar cast includes Warren Bell Sr., Roderick Paulin, Joe Saulsbury, Julius Hardy and Carl Blouin in the saxophone section; Tracy Griffin, Barney Floyd and Brian Murray among the trumpets; Craig Klein on trombone; the legendary Sam Henry on keyboards; Wardell’s son Brian Quezergue on bass; guitarists Leo Williams and Detroit Brooks; and drummers Bunchy Johnson and Leon Alexander. Quezergue’s crisp, juicy charts are well-played throughout, and the soloists make almost uniformly excellent contributions to the music.” – John Sinclair

 

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