[Rhodes22-list] Slim! Better keep your current gig a while longer

brad haslett flybrad at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 7 06:18:41 EST 2006


It doesn't look like the Big Easy is ready for your
act yet.  Brad

---------------


Sad reality sinks in for New Orleans music scene By
Todd Martens
Sun Feb 5, 5:44 PM ET
 


Like nearly every house in New Orleans, Bethany
Bultman's home has holes in its roof. Buckets to catch
rainwater surround her desk, and she is hesitant to go
out at night. Much of her neighborhood is still
completely without power.

She is one of the lucky ones. Leaky roof aside, her
house suffered little damage, and she has a second one
in Massachusetts, a world away from the devastation
Hurricane Katrina inflicted last August. Bultman
admits to missing her Cape Cod getaway, but she cannot
bring herself to abandon New Orleans. There would be
the guilt of leaving behind the city and those who are
suffering, but more important, there are checks to
write.

Bultman inscribes upwards of 70 per week, each for
$100, each given to a New Orleans musician. To date,
her efforts have been funded largely by donations from
Pearl Jam and nonprofit organization Jazz Aspen
Snowmass; she recently was promised $250,000 from
MusiCares, the Recording Academy's charitable arm.

The checks Bultman writes are allocated only to those
who work, which these days in New Orleans can mean
performing at a club in front of a handful of Federal
Emergency Management Agency workers.

On many nights, money from the door is minimal or
nonexistent. Bultman hopes her $100 subsidy is enough
to dissuade someone from taking a gig in another city.
If instruments and artifacts from the city's musical
heritage were washed away, then New Orleans' soul --
the musicians who define it -- must stay.

"As the time wore on," Bultman says, "more and more
musicians who were dumped all over the country wanted
to come back. We soon realized that this is really
about giving people instruments and giving people
hope, and that's when we started paying the gig fees."

Two months ago, Bultman, a writer/historian and the
co-founder of the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic, was
urging displaced musicians to return to the city. She
started the clinic with her husband in 1998 with the
assistance of Dr. Jack B. McConnell, the developer of
Tylenol tablets whose son, Page, played keyboards for
the band Phish. With a mix of pride and a dedication
to preserving a music culture that she says
"percolates out of the ground," Bultman hoped all New
Orleans' evacuees would soon be returning.

'NEW ORLEANS IS NOT A HEALTHY PLACE'

Reality, however, soon sunk in, and now she is not so
sure. "The goal was to get everyone we could get back
to New Orleans," she says. "Now that we're back, we've
moved away from that. We've moved away from the
fantasy that everything would go back to the way it
was. New Orleans is just not a healthy place for
everyone to come to."

Eight of the city's ZIP codes are still without full
power, according to the January 24 status report from
the mayor's office. The area affected most by Katrina
-- the Ninth Ward -- remains under curfew, and 911
emergency availability is scattered. Few hospitals are
open, and the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic, which had
free use of the Louisiana State University School of
Medicine in New Orleans, has lost such privileges, as
much of the facility needs extensive repairs.

And for many, life was not all that great before
Katrina. One in four of the city's residents lived
below the poverty line, and a great number of its
working musicians relied on a steady influx of
tourists.

Bultman stays in touch with the national organizations
providing relief to New Orleans musicians, including
MusiCares, which announced its pledge in support of
her efforts January 25.

She is heartened by the outpouring of generosity of
her top donors and has nothing but praise for
MusiCares. But five months after Katrina, Bultman
feels that little has been accomplished. Nearly all of
the 200 musicians she helps lack a place to live. She
worries the situation will only get worse with a
dearth of health care and tries to communicate to the
national associations that the effort to restore the
music community in New Orleans is one that will take
years -- and one that will happen one saxophone at a
time.

RETURN TO SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Pianist Joe Krown was playing 12 gigs per week prior
to Katrina. His wife, who worked at Tulane University
Hospital, was laid off after the hurricane. He filled
out the paperwork for nearly every charity dedicated
to helping musicians.

"I have a mortgage and a rent and no income, and
before I said anything more to a couple of them, there
was a check in the mail," Krown says. "That happened
with MusiCares and the Musicians' Clinic and the Jazz
Foundation."

He also benefited from the New Orleans Musicians'
Relief Fund, which was started by one-time dB's member
Jeff Beninato and his wife, Karen. Along with Chicago
rock group Wilco, the couple brought Krown and such
musicians as Leroy Jones, George French, Craig Klein
and Cranston Clements to Chicago for a benefit show
that raised more than $100,000.

Beninato says he started the charity two days after
Katrina hit New Orleans, and a few days after that he
heard from MusiCares. He began working with the
national organization, providing names of musicians he
knew were still in New Orleans. 

Beninato is re-outfitting the New Wave Brass Band,
hoping to get the big band in marching form for Mardi
Gras. Providing instruments for working New Orleans
musicians has become a group effort, and MusiCares is
at the forefront. Wick says the charity has helped
more than 600 musicians get new instruments, and he
says MusiCares receives between 30 and 80 applications
per day. 

MusiCares has partnered with Gibson and the Guitar
Center chain and launched its Music Rising replacement
initiative in New Orleans with U2's the Edge. While an
unknown number of musicians still need a place to
live, they need the instruments to make a living. 

Krown, for one, says he was able to replace some
equipment thanks to MusiCares, and the program has
made it easier for him to be self-sufficient. "It was
starting to feel like I was begging, and I have too
much pride for that," Krown says. 







__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 


More information about the Rhodes22-list mailing list