Feature

Radiators see decades of NOLA changes

The Radiators established their reputation when the New Orleans music scene was turning out bands such as The Meters, The Neville Brothers and Professor Longhair.

This founding band of the jam scene is currently celebrating 30 years of spreading their sound with an unchanging line-up, which is a rarity in the music world.

To celebrate their anniversary, they have put out “Wild and Free,” a collection of rarities and B-sides handpicked from keyboardist/lead songwriter Ed Volker.

I recently had the chance to chat with Volkert about 30 years of rocking and what went into creating “Wild and Free.”

SC: In a few words, how would you describe the time you’ve spent in this band?

EV: Hot damn!

SC: Y’all are old schoolers when it comes to the New Orleans music scene. How would you say it has changed over the years?

EV: I ain’t seen a music scene around here in a long time. I don’t get out much. You really have to not just read what the writers are writing but also be out on the street soaking it up, and I haven’t really done that since 2001.

I can tell you what was going on then as far as like around the lower part of the Quarter going into the Fauborg Marigny going into the Bywater section of town where there’s a lot of little cafés and a lot of different coffee houses and stuff. About half of the people were from out of town and living in New Orleans and jamming with New Orleans musicians.

They wanted to get some of that New Orleans magic, or whatever, communication stuff, and they were jamming with musicians from New Orleans down here. A musician might be in four different bands, and each band might play two or three times a month, maybe. I saw a lot of that, and it was all good stuff. A guy would play in a jazz band, a surf band and a Latin band. It was an active melting pot.

SC: One thing that I have noticed is unique and really cool about your band is that you’ve kept the same members the whole time. How did you manage to do that when a lot of other bands seem to fall apart in months?

EV: I really don’t know how to answer that. The feeling is like when you don’t have a choice, but it’s a good feeling. So, it’s something like that. I guess all of us want to stick around and see what the other guy is gonna do. Everybody wants to know what’s gonna happen next, and we’re sticking around to see.

SC: I read where you called your music “Fish Head” music. Could you explain the concept behind this term?

EV: You know, we wanna be together for around 30,000 years and became a new geologic era on the planet and call it the “Era of the Fish Head Band” or the “The Radiocraphine Period” of life on the planet, but we’re gonna have to see. Trying to go for the geologic thing is kinda ambitious. Maybe that answer was a cock-eyed spirit of what Fish Head is all about. I’m the main writer, and I concocted something for you right there. That’s what Fish Head is all about: an imaginative play.

SC: Tell me about your latest CD “Wild and Free.” What’s that all about?

EV: It’s about two hours and 44 minutes, and it goes all the way from June in 1978 when we had only been together for five months to March of 2008. So, we cover just about all 30 years. It’s a hodge-podge. Have you heard it yet?

SC: No, but I hear that you’ve really gone into the vaults and handpicked some rarities. What was the selection process like going through 30 years worth of music?

EV: I drove myself crazy! One of the things that helped launch the project was coming home with a buddy from a steak house down the street and having a bottle full of red wine and bemoaning the fact that in ‘95 I had all my live Radiator reel-to-reel tapes in a box in my mom’s basement that got flooded in the May 9th flood of ‘95.

I didn’t have the heart to throw them out, but I knew they couldn’t play. I had enough wine in my belly to say, ‘You know, I never tried to play them.’ They were decrepit. They had mold all over them, and you couldn’t read what was on the listing on the boxes anymore. They played great. I listened to everything that I could listen on the reel-to-reel.

I started burning CDs and picking out what I thought was interesting tracks and started going through other sources. I finally just had to stop, because I was driving myself pretty batty. So, I burned about 10 to 12 CDs of all the stuff from tapes and cassettes to CDs from studios that don’t exist anymore. So, there were sources all over the place. Everybody in the band got called, and we listened and came up with what it is. It’s wild and free. I gotta admit that some of it is kinda raw, so we tried to put that at the end of the second CD.

SC: Sometimes some of that raw stuff is the best stuff you can put out.

EV: That’s the thing! Finally! We’re hearing what the real stuff is!

SC: So, what else do you have going on besides this tour? Any new music coming out?

EV: We don’t really tour. We just work. We’re actually home most of this month besides Mobile and a wedding in Mississippi. We just work, you know. We look for work, we find work, and we go do work. Every now and then, it’s maybe more of a tour where you wake up in a bunch of cities, and you may be out there for two weeks or so. Usually, we just do the weekend. We have an older crowd now. People of whatever age demographic, they come out on the weekends now. We’re not gonna get people in their late 30’s to late 50’s out on a weekday night all that often.

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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