Q: Leo, tell me a little about the lineup for this leg of The Meters Experience tour. The core of the band is you, of course, along with Bill Dickens on bass. Then you’ve got something of a rotating cast of players on drums, including Jamal Batiste and Stanton Moore, two of New Orleans’ best. And with some truly special guests like Bernie Worrell on board for other parts of the tour. How did it all come together?
We’ve been doing this thing for a while now with me and Bill Dickens on bass, and I am very excited about this lineup. Bill Dickens is a Hell of bass player and he plays the seven string bass. He’s an unbelievable player, man, and I think when people see him they’ll know what I’m talking about. And we mesh pretty good musically. So far as Stanton and Jamal, Stanton has played with me sometimes on special occasions, but Jamal is my basic drummer I try to use every time I play according to availability. And of course Bernie is a great addition for this band and for this club date. So I’m really happy to have this ensemble together for this date.
Q: I know you and Bernie have played a number of gigs together in the past. How far back does that relationship go?
Oh, we go back years, years… maybe 20 years now. Playing with Bernie is always a pleasure and the people, the fans, are going to get two iconic players from two iconic bands -- me from the Meters and Bernie from P-Funk, and anytime you get that kind of mixture together it’s always a positive sound that comes out. I love Bernie, he’s a very cool dude, he’s very vibrant and he plays his butt off. So what they gonna’ hear is both iconic band sounds -- Meters and P-Funk together – so I think that’s the most unique thing about using Bernie.
Q: It seems like the acts that Bernie is most often associated with -- Parliament-Funkadelic of the early to late 70’s and The Talking Heads of the late 70’s-early 80s’ -- really reached their creative heights when he became a part of the lineup, certainly in their live performances. What do you think it is that Bernie adds to the mix that brings out the best in other musicians?
Experience. More than actual playing, ‘cause there’s a lot of great players out there. But I think Bernie’s musical experience and his unique style, if I may say, he’s a very unique player. You can tell by the stuff he did with Parliament, all the bass Moog synthesizer parts, because they very seldom used an actual bass guitar, they used Bernie on the keyboard bass on the Moog.
Q: Will Bernie be playing any B-3, any Hammond organ when he’s playing with you, or will he just be playing his keys and synth?
He’ll be playing the B-3, he’ll be on a regular keyboard and he’ll be playing his Moog synthesizer. So I think it’ll be pretty special and something that people will want to come out for.
Q: Tell the folks what they can expect if they come down to your show at Brick and Mortar in San Francisco on January 20th? Will they be treated to all Meters tunes or will you sprinkle in some covers as well? Some P-Funk would be an obvious crowd-pleaser.
Oh yeah, no doubt. You can’t have Leo on the stage and not have him play the songs that he wrote like “Sissy Strut” and “Fire on the Bayou,” and you can’t have Bernie Worrell on the stage without having him play “We Got the Funk,” you know? So I really think that this is something that people should not miss, ‘cause you might not see this again.
Q: Leo, your guitar playing is really one of kind – with a percussive, rhythmic picking and strumming style that is really the trademark of most of those classic Meters recordings like Cissy Strut, Tippi Toes and Look a Py Py. Who were some of your early influences and how would you characterize your style?
It’s kind of hard to say, man, because I don’t try to pattern myself behind anybody. I listened to a lot of people, of course, like Hendrix and others, but basically I started out being a jazz guitar player. And I think I developed my style through my songwriting and that happens to a lot of musicians, be it guitarists or keyboard players or whatever. Personally, I was a very prolific songwriter and by being a diverse songwriter you write songs about a lot of things, you play a lot of different grooves, so I kind of incorporated my songwriting into my playing as a rhythm player. And I did that with the Meters. I wrote about 90 percent of the Meters’ songs, they’re highly rhythmic, guitar-wise, not a lot of soloing. And I think that stuck with me in the different types of music that I play. I’m going to be doing some original material also, but I guess for obvious reasons, even the original stuff, you might not be able to distinguish the original stuff from the Meters stuff and the reason for that is, I wrote the Meters music. It’s me.
Q: When you and the rest of the original Meters agreed to get back together after your long hiatus it was for a show at the Warfield, which I was fortunate enough to attend. And last year's club date at The Independent during Outside Lands was one of the best shows in San Francisco in recent memory. I think us San Franciscans like to think that we provide visiting musicians with some of their most appreciative audiences. Do you have any special affection for San Francisco, and if so, what is it about San Francisco that makes it a special place to play? Or do all the tour stops just seem to run together after a while?
San Francisco is definitely special to me and always will be. I remember the first time we came to San Francisco, with The Meters, was in 1970, I believe. We used to play a club called The Boarding House, sometimes two or three times a year. Look it up man, there’s a lot history there. [The Boarding House was located at 960 Bush St. on Nob Hill and was one of the top nightspots in San Francisco until it was torn down in 1980 to make way for high rise condominiums]. They were one of the first clubs -- about a 400-500 seater -- that would take a chance and hire bands without a lot of notoriety. And I think it opened up the door for a lot of other clubs in San Francisco to start doing the same thing. The thing we did in 2000 [the Original Meters reunion show at The Warfield theater took place on 11/11/2000], was really the start of something and it’s still eventuating today. We did Outside Lands, we did Voodoo [Fest], we’re doing a date at Jazz Fest at the Howling Wolf on the 5th of May. And it just kindled up thoughts about continuing to do it - everybody felt like they still had the passion to want to play together and to play the music, so I’m looking forward to the Original Meters getting lots of more work in the future. It’s always a special thing to play with Art, George and Zig. The music that I play on my gigs, I get guys together that can duplicate them. So when the Original Meters play together, to get the actual guys to play the songs, that’s really, that’s Utopia. You can’t beat the original.
Q: Do you listen to much contemporary music? Which artists or bands are in your heavy rotation these days?
Not really man, I listen to everything. I listen to a lot of contemporary gospel. People like Smokie Norful. People like that. Stevie Wonder, his stuff I admire, his songwriting. It depends, I listen to different groups for whatever particular thing I’m looking for. Stevie Wonder I listen to for his songwriting ability. Smokie Norful I listen to for the way he controls his voice. I try to listen to everybody. There’s no band in particular that stands out right now. There’s a lot of people out there doing some great music.
Q: Anybody out of New Orleans, anybody that’s particularly impressed you out of New Orleans recently?
It’s a funny thing, man… people might think it’s weird, but I never did care too much for brass bands, for more than them playing music after they come back from burying somebody, for the second line. But there’s quite a few brass bands that are coming up that are changing the way I thought of brass band music. And the Soul Rebels are one of them and I’m fortunate enough to have had them record my song, “Say Na Hey,” for their new CD that’s out now [Onlock Your Mind, in stores on Jan 31st]. So in New Orleans, the Soul Rebels stick out in my head as one of the groups that are coming up that are really giving some specuality [sic] to brass band music. And I’m doing a few dates -- as a matter fact, in San Francisco in June -- with the Soul Rebels. And I’m doing the Playboy Jazz Festival in LA with them as well. So I would say the Soul Rebels really stand out as one of the top new bands out of New Orleans these days.
Q: You’ve been living down in Southern California for some time now. What do you miss most about New Orleans and are there places in LA where you can get a decent Po’ Boy or some quality red beans and rice?
I miss everything about New Orleans. Everything. But I’m fortunate enough to have good New Orleans food cooked in my house. My wife is from New Orleans so… But the longer you stay away from New Orleans the more you realize how special that place is. And I’m always ecstatic to go down there. And believe it or not I’m getting ready to head down for Mardi Gras, because Gibson Guitars, who I endorse, asked me to be the Master of Ceremonies for the Krewe of Thor, so I’m really excited about that. And I think they have about 50 floats in procession there and I’ve never done that before, so it’s going to be interesting looking at Mardi Gras and the parades from the other side. Usually I’m on the streets howling, “Throw me something mister.” But this time I’m going to be the Mister, throwing something.
Q: One of my favorite Meters albums is Struttin’, but I always wondered who was doing the cackling at the end of the song “Chicken Strut” -- was that you, or did everyone get a chance to try out there rooster calls?
Well believe it or not, that loud boisterous sound that opens up the song is me. The rest, we all pitched in making cackling noise in the studio. But the loud chicken sound -- well it really just sounds like someone screaming -- at the beginning, that’s me.
Q: What are some of your earliest musical memories of New Orleans or of making music in New Orleans?
The fact that there were so many places to play. So many great musicians to play with and so many great musicians to learn from. When I was younger and I came up, I learned from the best. I was fortunate enough when I was 13, 14 years old I had enough talent to play with these guys, the better players, the older players in New Orleans and that time sticks out for me because I’m one of the few people that’s still around that has performed with some of these great players that’s not here anymore. People like Nat Perralat(?), Smokey Johnson, Pat O’Reilly, Red Tyler, Lee Allen. All these guys were great players. A few of them are still around, but most of them are gone. My favorite memory is playing with those people. And that’s where I got my musical education from, from them.
Q: It seems like in New Orleans -- back before a certain time – it was just its own little universe and they might’ve been the best players in the world, but they wouldn’t have been heard of outside of New Orleans.
Yeah, the music of New Orleans, the New Orleans’ music industry when I was coming up, was almost unheard of by the outside world. It was kind of a self-contained situation. If you weren’t in the Fats Domino Band, or Louis Prima, or Al Hirt, people at that level, if you weren’t in those bands you weren’t nothing. As far as the people in the general public, nobody knew who you were.
Q: Who were some of the local musicians that you looked up to when you were first coming up? Cats that you looked at and said, “I like that’s guys style,” “Or I like how that guy goes about his business.”?
Well, a guitarist by the name of George Davis. He’s no longer here now, but we wound up being very good friends. I would say that listening to George Davis gave me -- not to say that it gave me my style because I don’t play nothing like him -- but it gave me the inspiration. I tried to get inspiration from people like that, and it didn’t have to be guitar, it could be horns it could be a drummer. I would say the people that stuck out that gave me the inspiration to say, ‘Man I could take the guitar and take it to another level,’ would be people like George Davis… Smokey Johnson, a drummer, a very great, great drummer. He’s still alive. As a matter of fact that’s where Zigaboo got his drumming… where he cut his drumming teeth was from Smokey Johnson who started all that funky drumming down in New Orleans. To give you a specific example, that’s Smokey Johnson playing the drum part on “Big Chief,” by Professor Longhair.
Q: You guys played on the Wild Tchoupatoulas session. One of the first big recording sessions that introduced the Mardi Gras Indians to the world. What do you remember about that session?
Well the Wild Tchoupatoulas came about through our association with Big Chief Jolly, who was Art Neville’s uncle and he was the like the Big Chief of all the Indians. They went out and paraded every Mardi Gras, but they never… the thing that really brought the Indians out was when they started recording. The first Indian group that put the Indians on the map recording-wise was a group called the Wild Magnolias that featured Big Chief Bo Dollis. And so I think Big Chief Jolly got the idea to say, ‘Let’s record some songs too.” So he got the Neville brothers, Art, Aaron, Cyril and Charles, and then they got the actual four Meters in the studio as well and we recorded that album and it’s one of the most talked about albums in the world, The Wild Tchoupatoulas, and it’s really basically the Meters and the four Neville brothers and Big Chief Jolly.
Q: How do you feel about the way artists are compensated in the digital age and do you feel there is more or less potential for exploitation now than when you were first coming up?
I think the music today is definitely more exploited today then it ever was. I don’t really care about people recording me on stage though. You see it all the time. There’s so much stuff on YouTube that people recorded at my shows that I didn’t even know was happening. But it’s a new age man, and you have to be able to change with the times, musically and business-wise. And I’ve been fortunate enough to put a community together online, so even if it has some negative effects, I try to think about it in a positive way and try to get something out of it. So I like the way things are going now.
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