NEW ORLEANS (Billboard) - At a pizza joint in the Lower Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans, writer-producer David Simon is talking about his newest TV series, "Treme," which premieres Sunday (April 11) on HBO.
"On one level," he says, "it's a celebration of American music." He interrupts himself, pausing in appreciation of a J. Geils Band blues cover playing on the radio, wondering about the song's source: "Is that Jimmy Reed?" Simon is a music lover, pure and simple, his ear grabbed by whatever moves him, his mind moved to explore its history and context. That's no secret to fans of Simon's critically acclaimed HBO series "The Wire": During its five-year run, the show employed five versions of Tom Waits' "Down in the Hole" as themes, yielded two compilation CDs (one drawn exclusively from artists based in the show's setting, Baltimore) and nearly always positioned music as more than just a soundtrack bursting forth from a car speaker or jukebox.
With "Treme" (pronounced "truh-may"), Simon ups the ante, moving music to the foreground. Set in New Orleans, "Treme" picks up three months after the floods that resulted from the levee failures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Culture -- which in New Orleans means a tight braid of music, cuisine, dance, visual art and street life -- is the primary focus of the series, as indeed it was and is the defining element of the city's identity and its recovery. Familiar faces from Simon's troupe of actors show up as fictional cultural fixtures: Wendell Pierce (detective Bunk Moreland on "The Wire") plays Antoine Batiste, a trombonist we first encounter subbing with the real-life Rebirth Brass Band. Clarke Peters (detective Lester Freamon on "The Wire") plays the Mardi Gras Indian Chief Albert Lambreaux, chanting some of his best lines while beating a tambourine.
The true-life heroes of New Orleans music figure prominently too: In addition to Rebirth, the list of musicians making cameo appearances, often in performance, includes trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, pianist/singer Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack, saxophonist Donald Harrison and Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews. If Simon's new show is a fictional depiction of what truly drives life in New Orleans, as he explains, it's also a loving expression of what captured his attention decades ago and kept him coming back to the city through the years.
Billboard: How did Jazzfest affect your musical immersion in New Orleans?
Simon: When I first went to Jazzfest, I'd check out the national acts, the ones I knew. But then I started to make one discovery after another -- the guys I didn't know, should have known, wanted to know better. I heard Eddie Bo play by himself at a Piano Night at Tipitina's. Funky, soulful. I didn't know much about him, but I went over to Louisiana Music Factory the next day and copped some CDs. That's always the way it works, right? I discovered how much I loved Snooks Eaglin by walking into a club and hearing him taking requests and just killing everything. Human jukebox, indeed.- (complete article)
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