Cowboy Mouth

From CityFolk Press Release:

You may not know New Orleans musicians Paul Sanchez, Alex McMurray, Matt Perrine, andWashboard Chaz by name, but if you’ve been watching HBO’sTreme, then you definitely know their songs. The four will be at theTrolley Stop on August 18 with “Paul Sanchez and the Rolling Road Show”. This New Orleans party starts at 8:30 pm.

HBO’s Treme–which (in their own words) “chronicles the rebuilding of a unique American culture after historic devastation”–just completed its first season to critical acclaim. David “The Wire” Simon’s show has helped to bolster the profiles of several working musicians who continued on in the post-Katrina days. For example Sanchez–well-known in the South as a member of the band Cowboy Mouth–was featured with singer John Boutté on their song “At the Foot of Canal Street” in one episode. The show has been widely recognized as finally being a movie or television production that “gets” what real life is like in New Orleans and the role that music plays in that day-to-day existence.

Sanchez (pictured here) talks about life in New Orleans since Katrina in 2005: “Ultimately what we lost is the same thing many around the world had lost before us and many more have lost since. We lost our illusions, the illusion that we had control over levees, politics, human nature, our careers, our futures, our past. What we have is the present, which is all any of us really have… I lost all that I had but have created so much since, and stripped of my illusions, my songs ring more true to me then ever before, one more step on the road to redemption.”

He continues, “I found out that being a ‘mid-level rock star struggling with the limitations of my own career’, (like the guys in the movie Almost Famous), was not what I had aspired to when I picked up the guitar. I wanted to play and write the best songs I could while I was still on the planet–rock, jazz, country, folk, theatrical, pop, whatever the muse delivers. I found out that I am New Orleans, I love New Orleans…”

The concept of the Rolling Road Show is to feature each of these front men individually and in group sets. Each gets his chance at center stage, and according to Sanchez “…then you basically have a stage full of frontmen who are pretty happy and inspired by what the other people are doing.”

The show in Dayton is being supported by sponsors including Cityfolk, CompuNet Clinical Laboratories, Rue Dumaine restaurant, and The Trolley Stop. Tickets are $10 and are available at The Trolley Stop, Cityfolk, and Rue Dumaine. Contact Tom Perlic at 910-0806 for more information.