#next album is going to be about dancing and celebrating mardi gras as hurricane katrina rages around us

[holdoncallfailed]

50 people literally died.

[myyearofgivingdaily]

Tying New Orleans’ Threads

Today’s donation: The Threadhead Cultural Foundation

(photo by Kim Welsh)

She was known among the Threadheads as rowEN, arguably a more intimate name than her real one, Michelle Bannister. That’s how it’s been with the Threadheads, people known to each other by their screen names, sometimes more than their real ones, though it’s not exactly a secret identity. Many Threadheads have met each other in real life. Well, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the event around this social group coalesced. So not really real life.

Michelle’s Facebook page reflects that, a world as we’d want it, full of all that color, a vivid collection of music, friendship, vibrant clothing and flowers and hearts and blue skies.  But no matter how hard we hold onto that, the real real world intrudes. Floods happen. Illnesses. And deaths. Michelle/rowEN died earlier this month of liver disease. Threadheads mourned around the globe, from her Alabama home to Australia and the U.K., people with whom she had shared the joys of New Orleans, the love of music, the love of life. Tributes and notes of sorrow came on Facebook and on the JazzFest online forum, where the Threadheads came together in the first place and continue to commune. The very name of this community refers to the discussion “threads” on the site.

Well, rather than let the intruding real world mute the colors of Threadheadville, Threadheads work to brighten that outside world. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours on a conference call with a few Threadheads, poring over and assessing dozens of applications for grants to be given by the Threadhead Cultural Foundation. The applicants range from musicians — funk bands, jazz bands, singer-songwriters, a soul-gospel chorus — to dance troupes to filmmakers to authors to arts education camps and school programs to Mardi Gras Indians preparing for the next season’s parades and song battles. The grants aren’t huge, a maximum of $5,000 each to a total of $40,000 awarded. But each award represents a seed to the growth of New Orleans’ vital cultural landscape, a brick in the foundation of the city’s future, an act of faith and hope. And love.

It’s a manifestation of the spirit this ragtag bunch of people have had since they first started sharing tips on the forum about music, hotels, restaurants, life, from the first time nearly 20 years ago on a Tuesday between the JazzFest weekends they had a backyard party — “Patry,” as they came to call it in their own curious patois — at one of the local’s houses, getting a New Orleans brass band to play and collecting cash at the gate to pay the musicians. The Patry grew into a real thing, bigger each year. And so did the group’s purpose, with a broader view of support for the city, its attributes and its people.

Then the 2005 flood hit, and everything changed. Threadheads stepped up in various ways, with the foundation’s grants and even a record label — a pioneering micro-loan, fan-funded endeavor that allowed dozens of artists struggling to regain their lives to record and release music. Among the initial artists were former Cowboy Mouth guitarist Paul Sanchez (one of the city’s finest songwriters, who has become a mentor to many younger musicians), jazz-soul singer John Boutté (who became internationally recognized via his boisterous song “Treme,” used as the theme of the HBO series of the same name) and Susan Cowsill (yes, of the Cowsills). Sanchez even wrote a song, “Be a Threadhead” (see below), extolling the spirit of the community, and his and writer Colman DeKay’s songcycle based on journalist Dan Baum’s book “Nine Lives,” portraits of nine New Orleansians in the time from 1964’s Hurricane Betsy to 2005’s Katrina, expanded the Threadhead musical reach. (I connected with this as a journalist writing about the label and then became part of the label’s advisory board, and now serve on the grants screening committee.)

The label faded as crowdfunding grew (and CD sales fell), but the foundation is going strong. Funding comes via Patry tickets — the event has gotten big, with some top local acts and great food — and a related raffle of various items contributed by local business and Threadhead regulars, and of course just good ol’ regular donations to the cause. In recent years there’s also been a pre-JazzFest Threadhead Thursday concert in City Park. And at JazzFest itself, there’s a spot designated for (or commandeered by) Threadheads to meet up, to hang out, to connect the secret identity with the real one. Whichever’s which.

But, arguably, it’s what happens the rest of the year that gives this group meaning, as they share about their lives and loves, mark birthdays (and births, of kids, grandkids, great-grandkids), ask for healing wishes when there’s an illness and, yes, mourn deaths. And if you know New Orleans culture, you know that deaths are mourned but the lives of those gone are celebrated with verve and vigor, memories not allowed to fade, and works done in their honor. Death is greeted with singing and dancing and parades — the famed second-lines.

It’s with that spirit that the Threadhead Cultural Foundation every year makes one of its grants specifically for a live musical event, the award established in honor of a dedicated Threadhead, Buddy Mann, a musician himself, after his death, and in memory of all Threadheads who have passed on, rowEN just the latest in that august number. There are several candidates this year eminently worthy of those we know by their Threadhead names.

Oh, and speaking of: Call me Baconwrapped.

- Steve Hochman

About this blog: 
Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily, was started in 2013 by entertainment and culture journalist Melinda Newman, who made daily donations to a wide variety of non-profits and wrote about her experience. USA Today music writer, Brian Mansfield took on this monumental task in 2014. Since then, various writers have taken turns with stints, as the effort comes to a close at the end of 2017.  

About Steve Hochman: Steve has covered popular, and unpopular, music for more than 32 years, most of that time as a key member of the Los Angeles Times’ music team. He is currently music critic for Pasadena station KPCC’s morning magazine “Take Two” and a regular contributor to BuzzBandsLA and to his own Make Mine Baconwrapped blog. He hosts interview-and-performance sessions at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and at New Orleans’ annual Jazz and Heritage Festival. His byline has appeared in an array of major publications, including Rolling Stone, Billboard and Entertainment Weekly and New Orleans’ Offbeat and he’s written liner notes for a range of projects, from an elaborate book in Disney’s award-winning box set of music from the Howard Ashman-Alan Menken animated musicals to reissues of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s first four albums. He’s thrilled to be sharing this month’s C&E with Geoff Mayfield.