New Orleans

Tuba Skinny of New Orleans, Louisiana has played traditional Dixieland Jazz and Old Blues songs under the name Tuba Skinny since 2009. They're cousins of Loose Marbles, as is Baby Soda in NYC. These groups have interchangeable players and it is a joy to witness these youngsters spreading the word about the New Orleans music. They have three albums, 'Tubaskinny' (2009), 'Six Feet Down' (2010) and 'Garbage Man' (2011), all of which can be streamed for free and are also available for download on their Bandcamp page.

A respected session and sideman, British blues pianist and composer Jon Cleary has worked with rock, blues, and soul artists like Bonnie Raitt, D'Angelo, Maria Muldaur, Taj Mahal, and Eric Clapton. Originally a guitarist, Cleary began playing at age five, and started his first band at 15. Raised on blues, jazz, and soul records, his love of new orleans blues and jazz in particular took him across the ocean after he graduated from art school.

If “gay rapper” is an oxymoron where you come from, how to get your head around the notion of a gay rapper performing in a sports bar? What in most cities might seem plausible only as some sort of Sacha Baron Cohen-style provocation is just another weeknight in the cultural Galapagos that is New Orleans. Sometime after midnight on the sweltering Thursday before Memorial Day, the giant plasma-screen TVs at the Sports Vue bar (which “proudly airs all major Pay Per View events from the world of Boxing and Ultimate Fighting”) were all switched off...