Dr. John isn't sure exactly where he was in late August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina descended upon his hometown of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast region.
“I'm always on the road,” says the veteran singer/pianist/songwriter, who was born Mac Rebennack Jr. “I can't remember if it was upstate New York or Minnesota. But, wherever the hell I was, I saw it on the TV screen, and the eye of that hurricane was so humongous.
“I was calling everybody I could, 'Get the hell out of there!' ” he recalls. “You could tell it was going to be bad news, man.”
His memory is more precise about Katrina's aftermath, however, including the botched attempts at evacuation, the levees breaking, the lack of aid and the devastation caused throughout the city, but mostly in the Ninth Ward. Dr. John “got everything I could get my hands on to read” and soaked up all the details to inform his new music – first “Sippiana Hericane” (2005), a benefit EP he released to help raise money for hurricane relief, and this year's “City That Care Forget,” an angry diatribe that points fingers, names names and still manages to sound pretty sublime in doing so.
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Dr. John and the Lower 911, Janiva Magness
When: Tomorrow, 9 p.m.
Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach
Tickets: $37-$39
Phone: (858) 481-8140
Online: bellyup.com
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The new album features unabashedly angry songs such as “My People Need a Second Line,” “Promises, Promises,” “Save Our Wetlands” and “Time for a Change,” the last-named of which puts a generation of politicians directly in his lyrical cross hairs as he sings, “If you find somebody who loves the world and people / Vote 'em into office, look just a little deeper.”
“I was just so pissed off,” Dr. John says. “I feel like we've been lied to. We've been hustled. We're still being hustled. I did this little 'Sippiana Hericane' thing in a rush after the storms, but that didn't say anything about the issues going down. So I tried to start making some statements and bring out points and stuff.”
It's certainly no surprise that perceived wrongs against his hometown would inspire Dr. John's vitriol, musically or otherwise.
He began his musical career as a session player during the 1950s, but not playing piano. A Jesuit High School graduate, he played guitar until his left ring finger was shot during a fight in which he was defending longtime friend and fellow musician Ronnie Barron. Unable to play guitar with sufficient dexterity, Dr. John then picked up the bass, but soon switched to piano, studying at the feet of Crescent City legend Professor Longhair (Henry Byrd).
He took the name Dr. John from a 19th-century Louisiana voodoo devotee, adding “The Night Tripper” to his billing for some additional show-biz grease. After playing on records by Hank Crawford, David “Fathead” Newman, Huey “Piano” Smith and others, he released his solo debut, “Gris-Gris” (1968), and caused a sensation strong enough that, decades later, it was included in Rolling Stone's list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.”
He made his mark by blending an array of indigenous New Orleans and Louisiana styles with rock, R&B, blues and jazz conventions, hitting the Top 40 only once with “Right Place Wrong Time” (1973), while his song “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” (1968) has been covered by several artists, including Humble Pie and Oasis.
Dr. John's list of credits includes appearances in several films – The Band's “The Last Waltz” (1978), the misbegotten “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1978) and “Blues Brothers 2000” (1998). He remains busy as a collaborator, too, and his own work continues to thump the drum of where he's from, though he has also saluted influences such as Johnny Mercer on “Mercernary” (2006).
“I'm pretty much open to anything that's in music,” says Dr. John, who also has published a frank, revealing autobiography, “Under a Hoodoo Moon: The Life of the Night Tripper” (1995). “There's so much music that came out of New Orleans and spread itself around the world, it's not hard for me to find a way to play in just about anything, you know?”
For “City That Care Forgot,” which Dr. John recorded with his latest band, the Lower 911, he teamed with fellow music vet Bobby Charles to write five songs. He also invited a number of guests to be part of the proceedings, including trumpeter Terence Blanchard on two tracks, Eric Clapton on three, Ani DiFranco, Willie Nelson and zydeco star Terrance Simien.
“Everybody that's on this record is connected to the thing,” Dr. John says. “Ani DiFranco offered to do it before we'd even started recording, and I think she did a gorgeous job on what she did. Willie came in and put a vocal on 'Promises Promises.'Bobby Charles has been trying to get me to record that one for a long time, so it was easy to get Willie to do that one.
“And then Eric, he came in there and really did just what I was hoping for,” Dr. John continues. “I thought he might do one track or two tracks, and he did three. I was like, 'Wow, that's really cool.'
“He was pretty free and easy with it, and that's what I liked with everybody. I don't like people to feel handcuffed to anything. I just want them to play what they feel like. If music feels handcuffed, then something's drastically wrong.”
“City That Care Forgot's” songs cut a swath through a wide range of issues, from offshore drilling and political corruption to the fate of the money targeted for New Orleans' post-Katrina recovery.
“I think Fortune magazine said it better than I could: 'Where did all the money go?' ” says Dr. John, who recalls getting cell-telephone calls during the hurricane from friends who eventually drowned when the levees broke and their homes flooded. “The $80 billion sent to help New Orleans from all over the world, I don't think anybody I know got any of that.
“It's not a New Orleans thing to not ask what happened to it. In New Orleans, we ask the questions.”
If he's angry about what he views as neglect, however, he is heartened by the concern for New Orleans that has been shown by the people he's played for around the world and by the reaction to “City That Care Forgot” since its June release.
“I see little things coming from places every now and then, 'Thank you for writing that,' stuff like that,” Dr. John says. “That makes me feel like somebody else cares.
“You know, that's how we got the title. I took the term, the meaning that (New Orleans) is the city people go to to forget their cares, to the city that care actually forgot. I thought that was a good title for the record.”
He and his team actually wrote many more tunes than were used for the album, Dr. John says. He's not sure about making a sequel himself, but does say that he'd like “to get some of the songs that we didn't use to other artists. They don't have to do what I did, but maybe they can make statements about what they see, whatever applies to them.”
Meanwhile, he's moving on with his own projects, including a collaborative album with New Orleans singer Aaron Neville of “songs we used to play when we were kids.”
He also took some time off during the summer to address health issues – “just some liver problems I have to deal with,” he says – but plans to be back in action in the fall, returning to what he started doing more than five decades ago.
“I figure, if I ain't alive to do the gigs and to do the music, nobody's going to pay attention to a lot of this stuff I'm talking about,” Dr. John says. “I think I have more work ahead of me to do, or the good Lord wouldn't have me out there doing the things I'm doing already.”
Gary Graff writes for the New York Times Syndicate.
