The 60-Second Interview
A bracing, fiercely creative—if all too infrequent—voice on the New Orleans music circuit is a native Wisconsinite named Paul Cebar. Locals know his longtime band as the Milwaukeeans, but he has recently changed its name to Tomorrow Sound.
The web site cdbaby.com describes Cebar’s latest record as “the best batch yet of an endangered strain of fortified, intensified, fully jacked-up, roaring, cooing and exceedingly personal music-making fro a singular midwestern master.”
I could not say it better myself. Paul Cebar and Tomorrow Sound are playing gigs Feb. 29 (leap day!) at Rock N Bowl and then again (for free) on Mar. 1 at 5 P. M. at the Louisiana Music Factory in the French Quarter.
This I will tell you: I’m a fan. A big fan. We chatted by e-mail earlier this week.
You keep coming back, and keep coming back, to New Orleans. What’s the draw?
It’s the capital of rhythm culture in these raggedy states. Unlike virtually every other American city, it has its own food, its own music, its own architecture; its affinities with other grand musical hubs that I’ve had the pleasure to visit (Havana, Salvador-Bahia, Port of Spain, Veracruz) are fascinating and seemingly inexhaustible. The sense of the coexistence of many disparate cultural eras in lively dialogue with each other is present like nowhere else that I know stateside.
Are the audiences here different than elsewhere?
If you’re already dancing in the street, getting folks to let the juices flow on the dance floor is not much of a stretch. Louisiana in general has that marvel of marvels, a thriving couple dance scene. It is implicit that the ones dancing are the one’s having the fun. Bands are inspired to meet the dance floor with all their bells on.
Is the audience different since Katrina?
We’ve only played a couple of gigs as a band in New Orleans since the storm and those were during the Fest season last year. Maybe not the best vantage from which to judge. I know that the combination of the aftermath of the storm and the abysmal national nightmare from which we still don’t get to wake up has made me an even more grateful fan, aware of the rarity and preciousness of culture, humor, intelligence et al….
The Jazzfest thing. Why don’t you play there every year?
As for Jazz Fest, I’ve been attending each year since ’81. (My friend Rick Steiger,a grand musician from Detroit claims that he met me at the Fest in ’80). It’s simply my high holidays. We put in an application each year in hopes of being included in the festivities but we’ve been invited only once, in 1997. (Michael Tisserand also invited me to give an interview in the Heritage area a year or so later.) I thought we acquitted ourselves rather winningly but what do I know. It’s not like we’re asking for money or anything.
Your music: Can you describe it in 50 words or less?
It’s original dance music rooted in Rhythm and Blues traditions with a pronounced emphasis on Latin, Caribbean and African inflections and a wildass regard for the flow of language. It’s an increasingly full-blooded emulation of much of what is best in the music of your town with it’s own cocked hat on.
Tommorow Sound Now For Yes Music People. Just what the hell does that mean?
A friend of mine (Paul Finger) while on a recent trip to India somehow happened upon a circus banner painter by the name of Salim Khan in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. He commissioned him to paint a banner from a photo of me that he’d hurriedly taken just prior to his departure. We’d often joked about just what kind of music I played. In the tightly formatted, rigidly marketed present day record world, my pal asserted that we offered TOMORROW SOUND NOW FOR YES MUSIC PEOPLE. Mr Khan ran with it bringing his exuberant misspelling gifts into the bargain and thus, TOMMOROW SOUND NOW FOR YES MUSIC PEOPLE. All you No Music People out there, we’ve got something for you, too. In the immortal words of Sonny Boy Williamson, “You can call it your mammy if you want to”. It’s also a little nod to Nick Lowe’s PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE. Incidentally, the grand Nick chimes in on background vocals on one of the tunes on the album.
Speak to me of the magic and allure of New Orleans music.
We had the great pleasure during this past Mardi Gras week of seeing the inestimably musical Allen Toussaint not once but twice (With a small band in Milwaukee and solo in Green Bay) and everything that has set me afire through the years about New Orleans music came welling on up. By the time he launched into Prince Partridge’s HOW COME YOUR DOG DON’T BARK I was definitely where I need to be. (Do you remember that record on the juke at Buster Holmes on Burgundy? I’ve only seen one other copy!) From my first visit in ’78 when a vague notice in the Picayune led me to the human parade that was the old Tipitina’s to witness an army fatigue- clad, fully eyepatched James Booker in the middle of the floor commandeering a Hammond organ ( with no accompaniment as I recall) through my last visit, the music has hit me where I live. Boundlessly humorous, sly, ingeniously relaxed, insouciantly rambunctious.
Jessie Hill’s four tambourine attack (which I tried hard to emulate on the new record), Earl King’s sartorial and tonsorial resplendence, the offhand back-alley majesty of Dave Bartholomew’s imperial stage presence (and that phrasing, oh that phrasing!), Danny Barker’s deadpan night people hijinx, Irma’s ability to fill the room with glory without even opening her mouth all the way, the Dozen at the Glass House where everything was reborn, David Lastie, Smokey Johnson, and Alvin Robinson on a dirt floor in the back room at Jerry’s up the street from Chez Helene, Snooks throwing his fingers at the strings and playing anything and everything with some very rough semblance of a fraction of the lyrics and the very essence of the tunes, Lil Millet at Le Bon Temps Roulet , Tom McDermott and Evan lightly lilting out the connections, the return of Betty Harris, Willie Tee singing DEDICATED TO YOU…. Ah, the wonders!
Mid City Lanes: It’s a magical place. Tell me about it.
An improbable haven from the ghosts of the rats running through the hardware store down below at the very least. Boozoo, Beau Jocque, Snooks with George whispering in his ear and reaching around to tune his guitar, impromptu zydeco dance lessons ,intrigue, romance……Mooney inventing intensity all over again.
Why don’t you live here?
Each visit some time has been spent mulling over the delicate yet rugged allure of your dear, dear town and how I might fit within the panorama. Most of my major relationships have begun and/or ended in New Orleans. At each juncture when I’ve entertained making a move your way, I’ve had a fine band which I’ve been keen to sustain and see through. I’ve felt a loyalty to the hardy souls who’ve stuck out the thin with me to ride toward the thick. My sweet parents are more in need of my dubious snow shoveling skills…I don’t have a definite answer
You changed your band name from the Milwaukeeans to something else and weird. As someone who used to live in Wisconsin, I’m mildly miffed. What was that about?
Duke Ellington’s first band was called the Washingtonians but His Jungle Orchestra ended up bringing the dancers. I’ve spent 24 years proudly laboring under a mock provincial moniker. The idea was to present an almost impossibly cosmopolitan brand of musical derring-do under the banner of a little known, politically progressive,immigrant built, hard laboring Midwestern working man’s city. Years of “I thought you were a polka band so I didn’t come” “You must not really want to be taken seriously as a contemporary musical force with a name like that”, or ”Oh, that’s cute” ensued. As my most recent group of Milwaukeeans has coalesced, I thought we might want to shake the wagon and rustle the bushes to somehow assert that we’ve got something new, vital and powerfully fonky to bring to you……TOMORROW SOUND We’ve got no grand branding machinery at our disposal so we can still be your Milwaukeeans, Chris.
Note: This version of the article includes Cebar’s full responses to Chris’ questions. If you’d like to read the version that actually ran in the paper please see: www.nola.com