Jan 21, 2025 7:54 PM
Southern California Fires Hit the Jazz Community
Roy McCurdy and his wife had just finished eating dinner and were relaxing over coffee in their Altadena home, when he…
During two decades of performing at Tipitina’s, members of Galactic have amassed an abundance of memories tied to the historic New Orleans venue.
(Photo: Erika Goldring)But despite the jam band label sometimes ascribed to Galactic, there isn’t a lot of jamming that happens when the ensemble gets onstage—at least not in the sense of extended, winding improvisations.
“We are a well-rehearsed unit,” Falls says. “That makes it very relaxed onstage. ... And I like that because everyone knows where the train is going.”
That certainly was clear when Galactic took the stage for the first time as the owners of Tipitina’s for a New Year’s Eve show at the end of last year. At the time, they still were rehearsing songs from the new album. Ellman says in recent years, they’ve “learned the album at the end,” making changes as needed for their live take on the music, likely explaining why “Clap Your Hands” was the only new tune included in the performance.
Instead, Galactic delved into a wide range of material from its catalog, plus a handful of r&b covers that matched the vibe of the room, saying little as band members let the music speak for itself. The troupe opened with the brash “Karate” (from the 2012 album Carnivale Electricos), which saw booming horn figures shift into a funk-filled spotlight for guitarist Jeffrey Raines. As the clock struck midnight, the band leaned toward jazz with its take on “Auld Lang Syne.”
From there, the still-swaying audience of celebrants was led back to the ’70s with a cover of The Jackson 5 classic “I Want You Back.” Among the original highlights was the older tune “Heart Of Steel,” which saw Raines’ sticky guitar lines punctuated by Mercurio’s stutter-stopping bass. Finally, slowing things down in the encore, Galactic gave Falls’ voice top billing on a gorgeous finale: a rendition of Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand The Rain.”
As the sold-out crowd meandered past the bust of Professor Longhair near the front door of Tipitina’s and outside into the New Year’s Day fog, the members of Galactic started to pack up. Family and friends surrounded the musicians backstage and in the green room.
One month prior, the night after the band got the keys to Tipitina’s, Ellman and some of those same friends celebrated by relocating their long-running poker night to the middle of the venue’s main floor. The club was otherwise empty.
“It was Sonny [Schneidau] and Jeremy Smith and [Adam] Shipley, you know? Three people who are Tip’s to-the-soul, people who love the place,” Ellman says. His poker buddies’ involvement in Tipitina’s runs deep: Schneidau is one of the venue’s 14 co-founders and previously worked as the club’s talent buyer and sound engineer; Smith and Shipley each have served as the club’s general manager and talent buyer.
“That was first night I locked the place up on my own,” Ellman remembers. “I got a lesson from the GM [Brian Greenberg] on how to turn off the lights—I didn’t even know where the light switches were,” he says with a chuckle. “Usually, we play [poker] next door, but that game was here. There was a lot of emotion in it for all of us, in part with them knowing [the club] ended up in family hands, not with some corporate entity. ... Anyway, we just set up the game, fired up the PA and had a great night.”
When asked what songs the poker players selected for the evening, Ellman replies, “New Orleans music.” DB
Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.
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