Thursday, November 8, 2018

Doc Hawley: The Captain at the Calliope

Photo by Greg Miles
By Bill Capo
New Orleans Magazine
The Steamboat Natchez floats brilliantly on the Mississippi River, white sides gleaming, flags waving, the 26 ton red paddlewheel churning the brown water, black smokestacks reaching skyward in celebration of her power over the giant river. And she sings, her voice a melodic cry from the calliope.
When Clarke “Doc” Hawley touches the calliope keys, the French Quarter hears the music. Few listening know they are hearing not just a musician, but a Mississippi River legend. Doc climbs to the top deck behind the pilothouse, flips the lever to send steam from the boat’s boilers into the instrument, then begins playing the 32 keys to create the bright sound from the showboat era.
As Doc plays, the hot steam swirls around him, causing the brass whistles to sweat, their shriek so loud up close that he has to wear ear protection. His fingers pound the keys, because while modern keyboards activate the steam whistles electronically, the calliopes he learned on were hand powered. His fingers had to hit the keys hard enough to pull wires that opened valves to emit the steam. On the dock, passengers in line for the cruise look up and applaud.
“That goes to my mother’s era, the music,” said Barbara Robillard of Springhill, Florida.
“I’m really excited to go on there, because I haven’t been on a steamboat,” added Moe Robillard.
Doc has been playing the calliope for 63 years, yet it was a career that started accidentally in 1952, when the 17 year old saw the steamboat Avalon arrive in Charleston, West Virginia, but her calliope was silent. When he learned the boat had lost its calliope player, he applied for the job.
“I taught myself to play the parlor organ,” Doc recalled. “When I interviewed for the job, I told the captain I don’t need music, in fact, I don’t read music.”
He got the job when he played “Mairzy Doats,” a well known song at the time, and one he still plays, along with “Alexander’s Rag Time Band,” “Here Comes The Showboat,” and other songs from an earlier time.
“I had no dream of ever working on a steamboat,” Doc said. “The Avalon went everywhere. She was like a floating carnival, a circus. In the winter, we went down to New Orleans. In the summer, we went up north. My first year, I worked on nine rivers in 17 states. I was working with guys who got their pilot’s licenses in the 1880s and 90s.”
He learned steamboat history and operations from them, and Doc was hooked, beginning a career of 13 hour workdays, six to seven days a week, becoming a deck hand, then a mate and pilot. By age 22, he was a captain. But the steamboat masters of legend were big, burly guys able to impress a crew by their size. Doc was only five feet, seven inches tall, but he was no pushover, and earned respect in multiple ways.
“On that boat we had a lot of fights,” Doc remembered. “I could duke it out. I ended up with a sore lip.”
“I had plenty of respect,” he added. “Mainly reputation. I had a good reputation in the passenger boat world, first for the calliope.”
“I worked with the crew,” he continued. “I knew everybody’s name. It’s something my father, who was a boss, told me: ‘Treat everybody like you want to be treated. It’ll make your job a whole lot easier.’”
Now Doc is welcomed like a legend, crew members and dining room staff smile and shake his hand in admiration.
“He is the most knowledgeable, has the most experience of anybody on the whole river system alive today. I’m so glad he’s around, so glad he’s here,” said current captain Don Houghton, who was hired by Doc as a deck hand 36 years ago, and worked his way up to master of the boat, with his mentor’s help.
“He was very important to me,” Houghton said. “When I first started here, I didn’t really have a father figure that taught me the ropes. I started here when I was 19, and he taught me about the ropes on the boat, and the ropes in real life.”
“He’s a fine young man, and a damn good pilot,” Doc noted succinctly.
Doc became pilot of the steamboats American Queen and President, captain of the Delta Queen, and returned to the Avalon as captain when she became the Belle of Louisville. But as he steamed across the heartland of America, he never forgot one town: New Orleans.
“I made 63 trips down here on the Delta Queen, as a mate, master, and pilot,” Doc said. “Every one of those trips left me thinking ‘This is an amazing place, this is the best town I’ve ever been in.’”
In 1975, the New Orleans Steamboat Company hired Doc as captain of their brand new steamship Natchez, the ninth to carry that name.
“I quit the Belle of Louisville, and took this job,” Doc said, “simply because I was going to live in New Orleans full time.”
Doc bought a French Quarter town home that was built in 1829, and he treasures the shady courtyard, balconies, and curving stairway. His shelves are filled with steamboat books, including some he has written, and the walls are covered with paintings and pictures of the Natchez, and other legendary boats. His hands caress nick-nacks that came from steamboats.
Doc loves the Natchez. He knows every inch of her, and he even painted the boat name on her sides in 1975. He did a lot of media interviews that spring, including one with a college student, me, for one of my very first television reports. Doc treated me like I was Edward R. Murrow, and I remember the huge excitement he had for his new job, and new boat, and it is still evident today as he mentions the steam engines that date to 1927.
“It’s a very, very maneuverable, powerful boat,” Doc said. “The engines are actually from a boat that pushed barges, just perfect for a boat like the Natchez.”
Doc points out an eddy, a giant swirl in the current close to the Natchez dock. He knows the Mississippi may look placid, but can be unexpectedly violent. He learned to master immense, unpredictable rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri.
“They’re really tough, you can get in trouble easier, especially downbound (heading down river). You are going with the current. Going upbound it is easy to stop your boat, going downbound it is hard to stop your boat. You’ve got to back up a whole lot more.
 “The Mississippi is as clear as drinking water from St. Paul to St. Louis, and when you pass the mouth of the Missouri, then you have mud from there on to the Gulf, café au lait water.”
He still feels pain about the worst day, three decades ago, when a ship lost steering and struck the Natchez where she was tied up at the dock. “She had a big hole in the hull,” Doc recalled. “She’s got 33 compartments, and just enough of those compartments had been damaged that we thought she was going to go down. We were really afraid of that. But the Fire Department helped pump her out.”
She went to the dry dock for repairs.
“The biggest catfish that I had ever seen floated out of the Natchez’ hull.”
Doc has seen so much of America up close.
“Different foods, different variations in the English language,” Doc said. “Omaha has great steak. Omaha and Kansas City are steak, that’s beef country. Get a little further north, St. Paul area, a lot more lamb, and stuff that the Norwegians, and the Swiss, and Swedish, would eat. The best chili is Cincinnati, Ohio.”
“Nothing compares to New Orleans. Nothing food-wise can equal New Orleans’ different varieties in the same city. I eat everything.”
He got the nickname Doc as a teenage soda jerk in a drug store.
“I gave my school chums lagniappe. If you were nice to me, I might give you two cherries instead of one. They called the druggist ‘Doc,’ and I was ‘Little Doc,’ that’s how I got the name.”
Steamboats are irresistible, even to celebrities.
“I’ve met President Bush, father and son, I had Gerald Ford on the Natchez, I had Ronald Reagan on the Belle of Louisville, and Jimmy Carter on the Delta Queen, and lots of movie stars,” Doc said. “On the Natchez we’ve had more than any other boat, we’ve had Muhammad Ali.”
I heard you arm-wrestled Muhammad Ali?
“Yeah, Yeah!”
You beat him?
“He let me beat him.”
But Doc still raves about the visit one star made to the Natchez for a TV show.
“Dolly Parton, absolutely my favorite person that I’ve met,” Doc recalled wistfully. “Dolly came on the boat, and the first thing I said, ‘Hello Miss Parton,’ and she said ‘Captain, there’s one thing: I am Dolly. Dolly. Don’t call me Miz Parton, that’s my Momma’s name.’ I said ‘Well you call me Doc then.’”
Doc retired as Natchez captain in 1995, but still loves playing the calliope, and living in New Orleans.
“I didn’t leave New Orleans. I’m still here, I wasn’t about to go up north. I didn’t want any more winters.”


Thursday, August 23, 2018

Louisiana Lovin'



By Paul Tamuburello

Yvette Landry had a coming out party last night. The Yvette that’s been on slow boil for about eight years, creating her singing voice, her stage persona, her style, got stoked to a full rolling boil tonight. She has sung with lots of really great musicians and been part of shows with lots of other fine voices.
She’s always sung with whatever the song called for, tender Cajun ballads and frisky two steps, classic country, Americana, dyed in the wool rock ‘n roll, a touch of rockabilly, and classic swamp pop.

couple of years ago, Yvette’s teaming up with Roddie Romero and his band to create The Jukes sparked a transformation. Roddie Romero, guitar; Eric Adcock, keyboards; Chris French, standup bass; Beau Thomas, fiddle; Derek Huston, saxophone; and Gary Usie, drums, can light up any stage with the best of them.

When they play together as The Jukes, the stage all but ignites….and they are decidedly Yvette’s band. 

“This group met at 4 PM for a sound check. We've played together at different times but not on the same stage. What ever you hear tonight is going to be the first time we’ve done it together,” she says.
You could’ve fooled us. What ensued was full-bore heavenly music that traversed genres from one end of the rainbow to the other, swamp pop in one pot of gold and southwest Louisiana rock 'n roll dating from the 1950's and 60's in the other. 

The sense of occasion is not lost on the band. Born and raised in Breaux Bridge, Yvette has an ardent following. Playing to this particular audience, they were damn well going to pull out all the stops. The solos from Roddie Romero, Eric Adcock, Chris French, Beau Thomas, Derek Huston, and Gary Usie, can always mesmerize with sheer talent. Tonight they dug in to deliver inventive, inspired musicianship that all but levitated the Whirlybird and at its peak sprinkled us with rapturous fairy dust.

The Jukes sang every song from their new album and a bunch of rock and country classics, including Yvette's rowdy rock 'n roll-y “Do Anything But Stay Offa My Cowboy Boots.” When Yvette and Roddie launched into Swamp Pop, Louisiana’s gift to the American songbook, the thermal capacity pegged the meter on the compact Whirlybird's dance floor. 

If the seven stars of the Pleiades were to form a band, Yvette Landry would be its most luminous. Tonight, in the hothouse August atmosphere inside The Whirlybird, she sang from a deep place in her core that I’ve never heard before.

I said as much as she signed the cover of “Louisiana Lovin’” after the show.

“I didn’t have to play guitar that much, it gave me time to let it all come through my voice,” she says after the show. Oh, yes.

Yvette has always had a streak of Loretta Lynn in her. Tonight she unleashed her inner Wanda Jackson. She went from singin’ pretty to singin’ gritty.

Roddie and tonight’s band were the gasoline. Yvette was the match. To my ears, this was a defining career moment, a voice and a presence whose depth that quite possibly took her by surprise, a new benchmark from raw, to raucous, to lyrical, to lonesome and back again. She’s never gonna’ be the same. And that’s a good thing.

Friday, May 11, 2018

New book explores spirit of Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo warriors

By Katy Reckdahl
New Orleans Advocate

On Saturday morning, Big Chief Victor “Fi Yi Yi” Harris and his mighty percussionists, the Mandingo Warriors, sent the sounds of African drumming and Mardi Gras Indian chants far across the Fair Grounds, site of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Red was the color of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi tribe this year. Nearly everyone on the Jazz & Heritage stage Saturday morning was dressed in Indian suits made with red feathers and marabou, including the chief’s shadow, granddaughter Calsey Harris, 10, who has masked since she was a toddler.
Calsey, a student at Arthur Ashe Charter School, summed up the artistic and political sensibility she’s gained by sewing for hours with her PawPaw. “He’s showing everyone our culture so that they understand how we live. But he’s also trying to make a change,” she said.

Harris and his tribe are the subject of “Fire in the Hole: The Spirit Work of Fi Yi Yi & the Mandingo Warriors,” a 190-page oral history published this year by the Neighborhood Story Project and the Backstreet Cultural Museum. The coffee table book includes many photos, some from archives and friends and others snapped over the years by cultural anthropology professor Jeffrey Ehrenreich of the University of New Orleans.

On Saturday afternoon, Victor Harris was interviewed by Maurice Martinez on the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage about the book and about his 53 years of "masking Indian." Since 1984, he’s reigned as big chief of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi tribe.

But on Saturday morning, the chief walked onto the Jazz & Heritage stage wearing yet another of his acclaimed suits. Harris’ suits differ from other local Indian suits in key ways: They are made entirely of layered beads and cowrie shells, without glue, staples and the sculpted cardboard sometimes used to underpin the three-dimensional Indian suits in his native 7th Ward.

Also, instead of the feathered crowns that typically frame the faces of Indian chiefs, Harris wears an African-style mask that covers his face and gives him more of a mystical look. He sews each intricate mask with careful detail, creating elaborately outlined openings for his eyes and mouth.

This unique needlework, which Harris designs and creates along with his “committee” of sewing hands, landed him a Prospect.1 retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2009.
But on stage, his shamanic side takes over. As others from his tribe chant traditional Indian numbers like “Shallow Water,” Harris preaches; he sermonizes; he calls to people’s better instincts.
That’s classic Fi Yi Yi.

On St. Joseph’s Night, when Harris roams the streets of New Orleans with his tribe, he’ll often stop under a streetlight and unleash poetic speeches backed by the beats of the Mandingo Warriors, including drummer Wesley Phillips and sewing committee stalwart Jack Robertson, who picks up a drum whenever the tribe hits the streets.

Asked how his activism fits with being an Indian, Harris gave a puzzled look. “It’s all together,” he said, describing the revolutionary and civil-rights spirit that he said fuels every Indian he knows.

That “won’t bow down” Indian mentality is what first made him into an activist, he said, recalling how he’d marched on City Hall along with others from the Tambourine & Fan Club during the early 1970s. The group demanded, successfully, that Mayor Moon Landrieu create a park from the abandoned, untended land under Interstate 10 at St. Bernard and North Claiborne avenues.
They dubbed the new green space Hunter’s Field, after the Hunters, a nickname for the Yellow Pocahontas tribe, where Harris got his start, "running flag" under legendary chief Allison “Tootie” Montana.

The new book makes clear that Harris’ ultimate focus is his community. Before Hurricane Katrina shut down Charity Hospital, he was a food-service supervisor there and the person to call whenever anyone in the 7th Ward needed to check on a hospitalized family member.

As a young man, he coached on the newly created Hunter’s Field, becoming a beloved, widely known figure whom children called Duck because he entertained them by imitating Donald Duck and waddling across the football field.

So by the early 1980s, when he formed his own Indian tribe, Harris already had a broad base of people who supported him.

In 1983, after a misunderstanding about a credit on a record, Harris was ousted from the Yellow Pocahontas. Though he later reconciled with Montana and other members of the Yellow Pocahontas, it was a rough moment. Harris had chanted on the tune, but instead of crediting Harris by name, the record producer had labeled it “Yellow Pocahontas,” angering other Indians and leaving him tribe-less.

Then, in 1984, he said, he had a vision one night and formed the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi, with a robust sewing committee to help sew his suit and a legion of children’s suits.

Over the year, deaths, sickness and arthritis have taken their toll on the committee, leaving just two. “It’s just me and Chief,” Robertson said Saturday.

Then there’s Calsey, the future of Fi Yi Yi, who plans to someday become one of the vaunted needles of the committee.

“When I’m ready, I will,” she said, with the confidence of a child who’s grown up as part of the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi.

Monday, February 5, 2018

Blaine Kern, the float maker

By Keith Spera
New Orleans Advocate

As Blaine Kern Sr. eyed the gaggle of tourists filing into Mardi Gras World’s gift shop, he flipped on his Mr. Mardi Gras grin, his calling card for nine decades and counting.
"I'm the guy who started this whole joint 70 years ago!" he announced, the opening line of his sales pitch for "A Tree in the Sea," the new children's book he created with his fourth wife, Holly.
The tourists smiled, listened politely, and moved on to the next attraction. Mardi Gras, it seems, is bigger than Blaine Kern.
Once upon a time, he might have disagreed.
What Popeyes kingpin Al Copeland was to chicken, Kern is to Carnival: a brash character who came from nothing, launched an unconventional empire in New Orleans, and lived large as a result.
Wrestle anacondas in Peru? Buy an aircraft carrier in Spain? Build a gondola over the Mississippi River? Marry a woman nearly 50 years his junior?
Kern has done that. He also almost single-handedly ushered in the modern era of Mardi Gras.
Blaine Kern Artists, the studio he founded in 1947, crafts the floats for more than a dozen of Carnival's most prominent parades, including Rex, Endymion, Muses, Bacchus, Orpheus and Zulu. Kern pioneered such parade razzle-dazzle as giant prop figures, double-decker floats, multi-unit floats, splashy lighting and animatronics. Inclusivity was another of his innovations.
Now 90, he is no longer directly involved with the studio's operation. But he still keeps tabs on the company and is still the legendary figurehead. Tourist buses still park beneath his name, spelled out with imposing, 6-foot-tall black letters on the exterior of Mardi Gras World’s massive riverfront studio/warehouse.
In decades past, his ego was just as imposing. But age has mellowed him. So, too, did several brushes with mortality, and a legal battle, resolved in 2015, that transferred full control of the studio to his son Barry Kern.
But in his reluctant retirement — and thanks in part to his wife’s gentle prodding — Blaine Kern has rediscovered who he was long ago: an artist.

Growing up poor

On Wednesday afternoon, Kern shuffled past Orpheus floats inside the Mardi Gras World warehouse, his jacket discreetly emblazoned with “Mr. Mardi Gras.” He exchanged warm greetings with artisans, tour guides and gift shop employees.
"This little girl ... she's a helluva sculptor," he said, introducing a young woman flecked with Styrofoam dust.
"Coming from you, that means a lot," gushed Alexandria McCrosky, whose mother, Tina, has painted Kern floats for more than 20 years.
In a chamber near the gift shop stood a different breed of Styrofoam sculptor: Pixie, a robot named for longtime, much-loved Kern Studios administrator Jerelyn "Pixie" Naquin, who died in 2010. A similar high-tech robot sculpts Space X rocket fuselages; Pixie sculpts Muses' float-sized rubber duckies.
Imagine if Kern had possessed such a robot when he started out.
"He was the robot,” Holly Kern said.
He grew up poor on Algiers Point with three sisters, now deceased. Their father, Roy, was a painter who liked to fish and drink. Blaine still remembers watching his dad fashion a primitive float atop a garbage wagon in 1932 for the inaugural Krewe of Alla parade on the West Bank.
Drafted into the Army in 1945, Blaine was shipped out to Korea at the end of World War II. He returned home to Algiers nearly two years later.
In exchange for medical services for his mother, he painted a mural for Dr. Henry LaRocca, the captain of Alla. LaRocca was so impressed that he invited Kern, then 19, to decorate Alla’s floats.
Recognizing a potentially lucrative business, Kern founded Blaine Kern Artists Inc. in 1947. Alla was his first steady client; he became the krewe's captain in 1957, a position he held for five decades. 
Blaine Kern Artists, the studio he founded in 1947, crafts the floats for more than a dozen of Carnival's most prominent parades, including Rex, Endymion, Muses, Bacchus, Orpheus and Zulu. Kern pioneered such parade razzle-dazzle as giant prop figures, double-decker floats, multi-unit floats, splashy lighting and animatronics. Inclusivity was another of his innovations.
Now 90, he is no longer directly involved with the studio's operation. But he still keeps tabs on the company and is still the legendary figurehead. Tourist buses still park beneath his name, spelled out with imposing, 6-foot-tall black letters on the exterior of Mardi Gras World’s massive riverfront studio/warehouse.
In decades past, his ego was just as imposing. But age has mellowed him. So, too, did several brushes with mortality, and a legal battle, resolved in 2015, that transferred full control of the studio to his son Barry Kern.
But in his reluctant retirement — and thanks in part to his wife’s gentle prodding — Blaine Kern has rediscovered who he was long ago: an artist.

Growing up poor

On Wednesday afternoon, Kern shuffled past Orpheus floats inside the Mardi Gras World warehouse, his jacket discreetly emblazoned with “Mr. Mardi Gras.” He exchanged warm greetings with artisans, tour guides and gift shop employees.
"This little girl ... she's a helluva sculptor," he said, introducing a young woman flecked with Styrofoam dust.
"Coming from you, that means a lot," gushed Alexandria McCrosky, whose mother, Tina, has painted Kern floats for more than 20 years.
In a chamber near the gift shop stood a different breed of Styrofoam sculptor: Pixie, a robot named for longtime, much-loved Kern Studios administrator Jerelyn "Pixie" Naquin, who died in 2010. A similar high-tech robot sculpts Space X rocket fuselages; Pixie sculpts Muses' float-sized rubber duckies.
Imagine if Kern had possessed such a robot when he started out.
"He was the robot,” Holly Kern said.
He grew up poor on Algiers Point with three sisters, now deceased. Their father, Roy, was a painter who liked to fish and drink. Blaine still remembers watching his dad fashion a primitive float atop a garbage wagon in 1932 for the inaugural Krewe of Alla parade on the West Bank.
Drafted into the Army in 1945, Blaine was shipped out to Korea at the end of World War II. He returned home to Algiers nearly two years later.
In exchange for medical services for his mother, he painted a mural for Dr. Henry LaRocca, the captain of Alla. LaRocca was so impressed that he invited Kern, then 19, to decorate Alla’s floats.
Recognizing a potentially lucrative business, Kern founded Blaine Kern Artists Inc. in 1947. Alla was his first steady client; he became the krewe's captain in 1957, a position he held for five decades. 
At the dawn of the super-krewe era 50 years ago, Blaine charged $5,000 per float. In 2013, Endymion's dazzling, 370-foot-long, nine-part re-creation of the Pontchartrain Beach amusement park made its debut. The price tag? $1.5 million.
Mardi Gras floats account for only half of the Kern company’s tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Under Barry Kern's stewardship, Kern Studios has expanded globally, constructing elaborate props and parades for such clients as Disney, Six Flags and Universal Studios. This weekend, Universal Studios in Orlando kicks off a 68-day Mardi Gras celebration featuring Kern floats.
Those three-dimensional, black-and-white-spotted cows that populate Chick-fil-A billboards across the country? All were born at the Kern Studios complex in New Orleans.
Opening Mardi Gras World to visitors created a major tourist destination. The facility is also leased for private functions, such as the Buku Music + Art Project each March.

Grand visionary

In the early days, Blaine got his hands dirty, drawing and painting floats. He eventually ceded such tasks to the company's growing stable of artisans, assuming the role of grand visionary.
Being Blaine Kern was its own full-time job. He started referring to himself as “Mr. Mardi Gras” after a trip to Portugal. In 1988, the Rex organization issued a proclamation making it official. “I'm not going to fight that," Kern said. Instead, he trademarked the term.
He could be loud and boisterous, and he rubbed some people the wrong way. More showman than businessman, administration was never his forte.
Not all his schemes panned out. He built much of the 1984 world’s fair in New Orleans — including the famous bare-breasted mermaids at the entrance — only to get stiffed by the fair’s financial failure.
The gondola he strung across the river for the fair never attracted enough riders to be viable. He lost money on the failed Jazzland amusement park in New Orleans East. In the 1980s, he partnered with a New York real estate tycoon named Donald Trump to develop property on the West Bank; the project fizzled.
And then there was the aircraft carrier.
The light carrier USS Cabot, known as the "Iron Woman," saw heavy action in World War II, surviving kamikaze hits. It was transferred to the Spanish navy in the 1960s and rechristened Dédalo.
In the 1980s, Kern bought the decommissioned ship for $1. He planned to turn it into a museum and casino docked at Mardi Gras World; investors included his pal Harry Lee, the longtime Jefferson Parish sheriff.
It cost $344,000 in fuel to sail the ship to New Orleans; Kern also had to fly nearly 400 sailors home to Spain. The Cabot lingered on the Mississippi riverfront for years. But, Kern said, he and former Gov. Edwin Edwards couldn’t cut a deal on a casino license. In 1999, the carrier was sold at auction for scrap.
Kern fathered five kids during the first two of his four marriages. But in his own estimation, “I was young, filthy rich, and an (expletive) of the first magnitude where women were concerned.”
But very late in life, he finally found what he was looking for.

Two 'old souls'

He and the former Holly Brown have been a couple for 16 years; they were married in 2010 in Hawaii. Now 41, she knows his stories by heart and tries to edit his more impolitic utterances.
Their conspicuous 49-year age gap, they say, is no impediment. “We’re both old souls,” Holly said.
“She was raised by her grandparents,” Blaine noted.
They met in 2002 after being seated across from each other during a Bacchus event at Brennan’s. Young and pretty, she owned a dance studio, Planet Dance, in Metairie, and was going through a divorce.
Blaine was drawn to her blue eyes and creativity. “She’s a choreographer, she dances, she sings — she’s a genius,” he said. “She’s exceptional.”
After she and Blaine started dating, he lobbied her to give up her dance studio to focus on him. For two years, she refused. "That would be like me asking him to give up art," she said.The cost of all those trips came up in the legal dispute between Blaine and Barry that first flared in 2010. Just as Tom Benson's family battled over control of the Saints, the Kerns clashed over Carnival. Their power struggle was major news in New Orleans.
“Unfortunately, what was a family issue became a very public issue,” Barry Kern said. “Everybody in New Orleans feels that they own a piece of Mardi Gras. Because of that, a lot of things that happened to us, which in other families and businesses would have been private, were public.”
The leaders of Bacchus, Rex and Endymion, not wanting the production of their parades to be disrupted, brokered a temporary truce between father and son.
In 2015, the conflict was finally resolved for good. Blaine sold his 50.1 percent stake in Blaine Kern Artists to Barry, putting the son he'd groomed as his successor firmly in charge.
More than two years later, Blaine and Barry insist, all is well.
“My relationship with my father and Holly is much better than it was when all that negativity was happening," Barry Kern said. "We’ve all had time to let things go.
“I think she cares for him, and he cares for her. When a relationship like that starts, people will be circumspect. But it’s different than what I thought it initially was. From my perspective now, they have a really good relationship.”

Creative juices revived

Case in point: The couple's collaboration on "A Tree in the Sea."
Holly had wanted to author a children's book ever since a first-grade teacher at St. Catherine of Siena School praised her writing. But Blaine initially dismissed her proposed storyline — about a friendly tree in the sea that saves fish from sharks — as "ridiculous."
She was hurt, and indignant: “The king of whimsy is telling me there'd never be a tree in the sea? This is a children’s book!"
He thought the project was beneath him: “I didn't feel like illustrating a book. My company’s worldwide. This was, like, nothing."
Holly conceded that "it was not the time. He was busy traveling the world and being Mr. Mardi Gras."
He’d also fallen out of the habit of drawing. “I’d lost confidence in myself,” he said.
In 2016, they realized one of Kern’s dreams by attending Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The trip reignited his creativity. “He was like a kid in a candy store,” Holly said.
Back home in Harvey, she encouraged him to paint an undersea scene in a guest bathroom. (He eventually agreed to cover the mermaid's prominent breasts with a seashell bikini top.)
With his creative juices flowing, she resurrected her book idea. For months, they debated the content. Finally, Kern put colored pencils to paper, conjuring up an undersea world with an older Neptune and a younger, buxom mermaid.
River Road Press published “A Tree in the Sea” last fall. The couple is already planning their next book.
Not that they lack for activities. Kern still needs to stay busy. “He hates the ‘r’ word,” Holly said. "Retired."
His father “is a lot more low-key than 10 or 15 years ago, but he’s not like many other 90-year-olds,” Barry Kern said. “His age never had anything to do with the way he thinks and feels and lives. He’s not a person that was acting his age, ever. He’s been referred to as Peter Pan many times.”
Last fall, Kern reigned over the Krewe of Boo Halloween parade. Also in 2017, he and Holly traveled to Cuba, where, in 1960, he had staged a mini-parade for Fidel Castro.
He hopes to ride in a car in several Carnival parades this week, depending on the weather.
"He's going to want to mingle with the crowd," Holly said. "For him to sit in a car and not interact with people, that's torture."
The couple realizes that time is not on their side. Before he got a pacemaker in 2008, Holly resuscitated him with CPR at least three times. "Breathing life into somebody, that really strengthens your bond," she said.
These days, they spend time at home with their five small dogs and three cats. At the gym, Blaine pedals a stationary bike for 40 minutes. He draws. Holly is teaching tap dancing again. They post wacky videos of themselves on Facebook and Instagram.
“We have fun,” Holly said. “We’re creative people, and goofy people. But we’re on a social media break right now. Our time together is limited. We need to spend time face to face.”
Still looking ahead, Blaine doesn’t spend much time on reflection. But does his Mardi Gras legacy make him proud?
“It does and it doesn’t,” he said. “Let me tell you why. People walk up to me and hug me and congratulate me. Somehow, I don’t feel like I deserve it. I’m very Catholic. God’s given me this talent, but it’s embarrassing a little bit.”
This is the new Blaine Kern talking. Ten years ago, he still craved attention.
“He’s a totally different person now,” Holly said. “I like this Blaine Kern a lot better. That (court case) changed both of us. It’s made us better people, more spiritual.”
Kern used to strut into church hoping to be noticed. Now he's more likely to keep his head bowed.
“So many people know me and they’re waving at me … it’s disconcerting,” he said. “I don’t like it. I’d hate to be a movie star.”
But being Mr. Mardi Gras? That he still enjoys.


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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Lost Bayou Ramblers win Grammy for best regional roots

By Keith Spera, New Orleans Advocate

The Lost Bayou Ramblers are having second thoughts about their planned hiatus. A Grammy win will do that.

Last week, members of the adventurous contemporary Cajun band announced that, after 20 years of almost non-stop touring and recording, they’d take an extended break starting in May.
But on Sunday in New York, the Ramblers’ eighth album, “Kalenda,” won the Grammy Award for best regional roots music album.
“We had decided on the hiatus even before we got the nomination,” fiddle player Louis Michot said Monday. “We were not expecting to get nominated, and especially not to win. Now we’ll have to reconsider.”
They may push back their break until the fall, to reap the benefits of the publicity windfall from the Grammy win.
“You can’t deny that,” Michot said. “You’ve got to do what comes naturally, and do what the universe is telling you.
“Which is what we’ve done since the beginning. We’ve been doing it naturally for 20 years. We’re going to keep going with what comes naturally. If the universe doesn’t want us to stop just yet, we can’t deny the universe. But there’s definitely a hiatus coming.”
Led by Michot and his accordionist brother Andre, the Lost Bayou Ramblers are a Cajun band that is rooted in tradition but progressive by nature. As evidenced by “Kalenda,” with its electronic percussion and other contemporary flourishes, they are unafraid of innovation. All the band members except the Michot brothers live in New Orleans.
They were first nominated for a Grammy 10 years ago. They fared better this year than other nominees with strong ties to south Louisiana.
Dwayne Dopsie lost out to the Ramblers in the regional roots music category. PJ Morton, the St. Augustine High School graduate who plays keyboards in Maroon 5 and crafts his own albums of contemporary R&B and soul, lost to Bruno Mars, the night’s big winner, in two R&B categories.
South Louisiana slide guitarist Sonny Landreth didn’t win for contemporary blues album. Arcade Fire’s “Everything Now,” much of which was recorded in the Uptown home studio of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, didn’t win for best alternative album.
The Lost Bayou Ramblers received their Grammy during an afternoon ceremony before the televised portion of the show began.
“You don’t want to get your mind set on winning. You’re there for the experience,” Michot said. When presenter Zac Brown “started to say ‘Kal…,’ I thought, ‘That’s not us.’ Then people start yelling, and you hop out of your seat, and there’s lots of action and noise.”
All five Ramblers took a turning speaking from the podium; Louis Michot delivered part of his speech in French.
They were then ushered to the press room to pose for photos. Afterward, legendary producer and composer Quincy Jones rolled up alongside them in a wheelchair.
“He gave us a nod. ... That was the ultimate Grammy experience for us,” Michot said.
He and his bandmates hoped to grab a celebratory drink before the start of the televised show. But they were told they didn’t have time. “We just won a Grammy, and we can’t leave and have a drink somewhere?” Michot said. 
So over the course of the telecast, the individual Ramblers slipped out to an Irish bar near Madison Square Garden, where they watched the Grammys on TV and toasted their win.
The celebration capped off a whirlwind weekend. They performed last Thursday in New Orleans and Friday in Crowley, then drove to Houston to catch a flight to New York. On Saturday at noon, they performed at B.B. King’s club in Manhattan as part of a showcase presented by the Lafayette tourism board, which also funded their trip to New York.
During his first foray to New York City, in 2002, Michot busked on the streets. The Ramblers’ earliest gigs in the Big Apple were “subway tours,” as they hauled drums, fiddles and an upright bass around town on the subway.
Now New York is the band’s strongest market outside Louisiana. They’ve progressed “from the streets to the Grammys,” Michot said. “It only took 20 years.” 
The Ramblers come home on Thursday to headline the “Save Our Sponge” concert, a benefit for the Woodlands Conservancy, a group that works to preserve south Louisiana’s coastal woodlands. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. benefit concert at the New Orleans Jazz Market, 1436 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., start at $25; go to woodlandsconservancy.org for more info.
Michot said he’ll likely display his Grammy atop an old cypress spice rack that he’s converted to a trophy case at his home in Arnaudville, a one-stoplight town along Bayou Teche northeast of Lafayette. “It’s not going to be on my living room table or anything like that,” he said.
“I’m still in a little bit of shock," he said. "It’s been a huge weekend. It’s going to take time to process.”
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