NO RETURN?
NINTH WARD UNDERGROUND MUSICIANS DISCUSS WHETHER OR NOT TO GO BACK

Photo courtesy of Lefty Parker

John Henry: I am now in Los Angeles trying to rebuild my music and my life. Heather and I are reforming the band Black Caar under the name Static Static which pretty much describes our situation at this point. Detonations have broken up, all the members have scattered across the country. I know some musicians who are returning to pick up the pieces but mostly for reasons like taking care of property and so forth, not for music. Los Angeles has been very receiving. We've gotten lots of offers to play shows but we still have an equipment dilemma, as in - we have none. The label I am on in LA hasn’t offered shit for help so we're just saving our money and buying things slowly.

Miss O: On our tour, Walt, Jay and I would sadly joke about every city we passed through, “Nope, this isn’t the city, I could never live here.” The truth is, the last remaining threads of our lives in New Orleans seem to be better than any other home we could imagine in the states. But in the near future I think we’ll think about New Orleans as a base to travel from, instead of home. And the feeling that we are homeless, in constant search of the city we adored passionately, I think will continue for years to come, if not for the rest of our lives. Despite all of this, there is a shred of hope in my heart that things won’t turn out as bad as our minds imagine... After all, the world is a crazy place.

Kid Twist: While we wait for things to return to normal we’re planning a tour back to New York and the east coast in March, and we’re writing a new record, hoping to draw on what difficult beauty we find in the twisted version of home we’re living in now. We got some money from FEMA and some money from other places and we’re making a new studio in the house. We’re gonna record our new record and a new record with our other band, Crooks and Nannies, sometime before summer… We’re staying in practice with pick-up shows at the Abbey on Decatur, but until we get the Dragon’s Den back, we won’t be truly excited to play here... The city is growing, but people are hesitant to believe things are really gonna be okay. Our governor’s in the Netherlands looking at new flood control ideas (and getting a much needed vacation), and people come back on the weekends to work on their houses with the hope of someday returning from Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Memphis, or wherever they’re staying right now.

E.P.:The political catastrophe, for me, brought to a head all the things that I hated about the GNO. The lackadaisical attitude (the curse of the south) that does nothing for governing, burst like a bottom boil on a lower demon's ass and landed right on the unfortunates face, as it always has here; poor schools, shitty roads, corrupt utility services. I said, "Fuck it, I'm movin’. I knew I'd never raise kids there, so It was time to move on. So the wife, dog, cat, and lizard loaded up the truck and headed west... I'll be going to New Orleans to work on a film that is working the whole Katrina angle, get my things, finalize the divorce, do something with the house and see my family for last time for a while. The irony is I'll miss Mardi Gras (which is OK since last years was really perfect) and I'll have to be staying in the same town where the prison guy was in imprisoned!!!? That shit is too funny.

Ratty Scurvics: here was still so much uncertainty. In short the city didn’t sound very inviting with the blackouts, military enforced curfew, scarcity of basic supplies and pollution. Impulsively I moved out of the co-op with the plan to return to New Orleans.

Continue to read Ninth Ward Underground musicians discuss their future in New Orleans, the Ninth Ward, and its music scene.

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