MMW’s John Medeski and Dirty Dozen Brass Band alum Kirk Joseph reflect on the sounds of the city that first brought them together.

This article is part of our 50 Years of Jazz Fest celebration and appears in the special Collector’s Edition April/May 2019 issue of Relix. Subscribe here using code NOLA50 and get 20% off.

The New Orleans music scene has long encompassed both novelty and tradition, honoring cultural antecedents while also redefining genre boundaries. Sousaphonist Kirk Joseph clearly embraces these dual impulses. The son of a trombone player, he grew up in the Seventh Ward, steeped in the Crescent City’s musical history. However, with the formation of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band in 1977, Joseph and his fellow co-founders sought to expand the repertoire of a traditional brass ensemble, while also retaining some familiar elements.

Keyboardist John Medeski appreciated this sensibility and signed on to produce the group’s 1999 album, Buck Jump. He remained in touch with Joseph, who had moved on from the Dozen, inviting him to participate in one of the annual late-night Jazz Fest jams that the keyboardist had organized with guitarist Will Bernard. Fellow DDBB alum and drummer Terence Higgins also received an invitation to join what eventually became more than just an annual endeavor—the quartet now tours and records as John Medeski’s Mad Skillet.

“With the Skillet, there is a lot of spontaneity going on,” Joseph declares. “No show is ever the same. There’s nothing programmed with what we’re doing. I guess you’d say that’s off the beaten path, which is a great thing because it lets us as artists be creative as we’re doing it. The grooves and melodic lines that John and Will produce, with the solid pocket that Terence provides, results in music that could be played in the streets, on the stage or in a symphony.”

John, your relationship with Kirk began during the recording of the Dirty Dozen’s Buck Jump record. What drew you to that project?

JOHN MEDESKI: I had produced a few records, but I don’t do it a lot. I like to do stuff I really love or believe in. I’d seen the Dozen a few times in the ‘80s and, when I first heard their music, I felt the tradition of it, but I also heard the originality, the pushing forward and the keeping it in the now, which was what we were attempting with Medeski Martin & Wood. We were finding a way to keep the spirit of improvisation that I love about jazz—because I would never have called Medeski Martin & Wood jazz—alive and in the now. We were trying to find a way to improvise and bring this open-ended experience to younger people through the rhythms that they related to. That was our idea, and it’s not exactly what the Dozen was doing, but it’s not that far off.

The Dozen was keeping this tradition alive in a way that is really important. So when someone asked me if I would be interested in producing the record, it just felt so right to me because I heard that they were adding a drum kit and a keyboardist to the band, and I felt what they wanted to do was to keep moving forward and keep doing what they’ve been doing. Maybe I’m wrong, Kirk, but that’s what I felt was happening.

KIRK JOSEPH: That was the goal. From the beginning, we were aware of the older songs and traditions, but we also wanted to branch out to keep it going. We wanted two drummers who could play keyboards and play a drum set, too. As the Dirty Dozen, we incorporated a lot of the older hymns, a lot of the older traditional songs, some Dixieland songs and some of the marches as well. We still had a connection to our older generation. We were aware of the traditions and we were trying to be a traditional brass band but we also went with what we were listening to as kids at that time. We wanted to put that on the street.

It wasn’t always easy. We caught a lot of flack for what we did because some of the older musicians would tell us, “Do not do that.” In certain ways, we were the first to be doing what we were doing but, in other ways, we weren’t. Before the Dirty Dozen, there was Olympia Brass Band. That was pretty much the strongest brass band from the ‘60s into the ‘70s. They also grew up with all those traditions and played the older songs, but they were aware that music had changed. It had gotten more electric, and you had pedals and different sounds being brought into the equation. These were things that average listeners would hear on the radio. The Olympia Brass Band were aware of this, so they could also be a little more rock-and-roll. They were playing traditional songs along with things like “Hi-Heel Sneakers” and “Red Dress Lady” and “Rock Around the Clock,” which were the songs of their generation.

Kirk, when you were growing up, how involved were you with the second-line parade tradition?

KJ: I knew of it as a child , but I really experienced it when I started playing. I thought it existed all over the country and all over the world. Then, I came to find out that it didn’t, but I was told by my father that, at one time, brass bands reigned supreme around the country. But New Orleans kept it going, so it became part of our way of life. It became part of the church and the benevolent societies—which is what they called social clubs in New Orleans. If a family had issues, the benevolent society would jump in and help.

This is what kept the brass bands alive because it was work for us to do. When the rest of the country went more to stages and abandoned the brass bands walking the streets, New Orleans kept it going. This is what I believe makes New Orleans original because we never abandoned it. Although the music has changed, we never abandoned creating in the streets. That is part of our culture.

JM: Kirk, can you explain the difference between a second line and a first line?

KJ: The first line is whoever is being honored. It might be the deceased and the family, or it may be someone celebrating a birthday. That’s the first line of people that has the right to be inside of what’s going on, leading in front of the brass band. The band’s included in the first line, and everyone else becomes the second wave, the second line, who are there to pay tribute. In the second line, you have the other participants who, by chance, walked up on it, or the procession passed by their house, and they just joined in.

Can you remember the first time you participated in a second line?

KJ: It was my first official gig. I was 13 and it was in the Tremé area, which is known as one of the oldest black neighborhoods in the country. I was from another community. Tremé is Sixth Ward; I grew up in the Seventh Ward, which was more subdued and laid-back.

It was mind-boggling to me at first because I had never experienced it in that sense, where people come to the door with their curlers in their hair or their pajamas on and just start second lines. I’ve gotta say, coming from my neighborhood, I thought, “Woah, this is wild.” But that was New Orleans; and, as I got older, I understood it. It was beautiful because where else in the world could that happen? And it’s fun, it’s great. It’s a beautiful thing to experience.

JM: Kirk’s just starting to open up the question of the wards, and you can get deep into that. Each one has its own appeal and it’s one of these things that’s really hard to understand and appreciate if you’re not there. I bet whoever you talk to will have a slightly different take on it. That’s the most beautiful thing about culture—when it’s so deep and rich, it just keeps going and going on its own. There are a lot of people in my generation and Kirk’s generation who grew up in a much more homogenized situation, and New Orleans, at that time we’re talking about—the ‘60s and the ‘70s—was really unique. We don’t realize, with all this media now, how regional everyone’s life experiences were back then.

KJ: You just touched on something when you mentioned the 1960s. There was still segregation. That’s the thing you have to understand about the wards. I grew up in the Seventh Ward, where you had a mixture of colors. It wasn’t popular there to be second lining. Some people didn’t want to associate with it. I hate to say this, but some of them thought it was too black-ish and they didn’t want to associate with those things. Again, that was a different era.

JM: What I’m realizing more and more is just how deep it all is. I grew up in South Florida, which was a completely different world, but there was a lot of Caribbean, Cuban and Haitian influences down there. That was a vibrant part of what was happening—it was in the air and in the music scene.

I started listening to music from New Orleans because I was asking myself: “What is this jazz? Where does it come from?” So I began checking out everything that was available on records from New Orleans, from Africa. We’re talking the ‘70s, so it wasn’t like it is now. There were only certain things available, but I would just get everything and anything.

I had to go back to figure out what was going on, like the difference between New Orleans jazz and Dixieland and ragtime. Then, when I was in my early twenties, I finally ended up in New Orleans. That was my first taste of going out and seeing music and feeling how the music was so entwined with the culture there. You can experience that even now with food and music. It might not be like it once was, but it’s still more connected than other places I’ve been.

KJ: Yes , it still is. Although some things have changed. They stopped having music classes in middle school and that has had an effect. I also worry that some of these traditions that have withstood the test of time could slowly be going away. I hope they can be revitalized, although a lot of young musicians are looking for a faster way to get a dollar, which is OK, but you still need to have your ties to where all of this comes from. People need to recognize there’s something that has to be preserved.

This article originally appears in the April/May 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.