el V, In His Own Words: Dr. John and John Boutté

New Orleans music thrives in old buildings. I'm so glad I got to see the Dr. John "Funky But It's Nu Awlins" show at BAM Friday night. I guess BAM felt like throwing a party to celebrate its 150th anniversary -- 1861, it was. That the building has not been demolished and the site rebuilt on is a minor miracle in a city that cannibalizes its architecture. Fortunately, I missed the night the functionaries spoke.
(Robt. Christgau's assessment of Dr. John's three-week residency at BAM is here, and Larry Blumenfeld's pieces for the Voice are here, here, and here.)
It was a wonderful show. Though it felt like a party where everybody onstage knew everybody else, which indeed they did, it was deceptively intricate. No two songs had the same feel. The show rolled from one highlight to the next. Big Chief Donald Harrison -- who is bringing his New Orleans band to Symphony Space on April 27, attendance mandatory -- rocked the house with vocals and sax on "Hey Pocky Way" and dueted with Ronnie Cuber on bari. Nicholas Payton killed it on "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans." Davell Crawford's blistering version of "Junko Partner" will stay with me a long time -- definitely one of the peak musical experiences of '12, so far, and I'd buy the record that will surely come out of this just for that number. Ivan Neville. Dirty Dozen. Tami Lynn. Irma Thomas.

It opened with Dr. John heading up a second line into the hall from the back, in a li'l parade with the Dirty Dozen blasting away. As they passed us, I saw tried-and-true New Orleansophile Bonnie Raitt second-lining her way down the aisle behind Dr. John, and I knew I was in the right place and not at the wrong time, either. Ms. Raitt didn't appear in the show, but she knows what's good. She happened to be in town in connection with her lovely new album, Slipstream (videoclip here), which I'd seen a stack of -- a depleted stack, I might add, meaning people were buying it -- at Starbuck's earlier in the day. May it sell a million or three. She was a guest on John Schaefer's Soundcheck yesterday. (JS also conversed with Dr. John earlier in the month, a true meeting of the vocabularies.)

It's been a while since I bothered to notice what albums were coming out in a given week, but this is a week to listen up, with some titles out today (Tuesday is the traditional street date, dating back from the era of record stores, something today's college students no longer remember). Jon Cleary's got an album of songs by great American songwriter Allen Toussaint, called Occapella, which I haven't heard but which I hear is great, and why wouldn't it be? The Tremé soundtrack for season two comes out on Rounder. And the second season of Tremé comes out on DVD -- if you want to support the show, says David Simon, buy the DVDs. (The third season of Tremé will air in the fall on HBO.) May they all sell a million or three.

And now we get personal.
John Boutté's new album comes out today -- available from CD Baby, or better yet go buy it from the artist at d/b/a if you're in New Orleans, or at Louisiana Music Factory. Produced by Blake Leyh (music supervisor of Tremé), it's titled All About Everything.

The title song, "All About Everything," is my translation from Portuguese of Chico Buarque's "Sobre Todas as Coisas." (Buarque's album version here.) "Sobre Todas as Coisas" is, to me, songwriting on the highest level. I translated this lyric (and others) over a period of years as a personal project, and I've sung it for years for my own pleasure. When you do something like that, you forget you didn't write it. I certainly didn't write the song, but the English version is mine, as faithful and singable a translation as I could make. So in some sense I'm personally invested in it as a songwriter, and we croaking songwriters love to hear our songs in the voice of a great interpreter. Hearing John Boutté sing this one, I feel like I've been blessed.