This message we received through our website is a stunning compliment in so many ways. Thank you, Bryan, Laurie, and everyone who has supported us. Our goal is to be there for you as much as you have been there for us.
New single! The song features our friend Big Sam Williams, quintessential NOLA trombone player and bandleader of the namesake Big Sam’s Funky Nation.
Fred: With good drummers, there's a dance-ability. Charlie Watts or Bill Berry from REM are not the greatest technical drummers in the world, but they have that thing. You can dance to them. Then there are excellent drummers, who have great technique, but you put them in a room full of people and nobody’s shaking their ass. They don't make people dance. I'm not great. But when I play, people ----ing dance. And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. If you can move people with your playing in a way that they can't logically understand, you've got them.
Fred: I'm a decent drummer. I'm not great, but I'm good. I'm not reinventing the art form, by any stretch of the imagination. I think I have challenged things more by being a front man who is a drummer. But I've always had the ability with my playing to make other people sound good, to bring out the best in them, to give them the solid grounding that enables them to be comfortable in their own talent. Because if the foundation isn't there, then everybody is shaky.
Fred: Putting a band together and making it work for any period of time… it's a miracle. When I formed Cowboy Mouth and John Thomas joined, we both had that understanding from experience. We had both been in bands that had had real, tangible success. We had also been in other bands that were good bands, but just didn't work for whatever reason. It's that intangible factor that Stewart Copeland called "the thing." We started playing together, the thing showed up, and we were great.
That thing doesn't always show up. You can have a group of talented players and it doesn't show up. You can have a group of people that fall together through circumstances, who aren't that good, and they can create magic. John and I had the understanding, when the band was formed, that once you find this, you don't mess with it. You do other things to satisfy yourself creatively, but this thing needs to keep going. It's one of the hardest lessons for musicians to learn. The biggest element is luck. The idea that you can get a group of people together to play in a way that meshes musically, emotionally, sonically to put across an experience and an idea and actually have that work… the odds are against it. |
Archives
February 2023
|