'Colors Changing Color' of LOUISIANA STORIES. Musicians Talk about Becoming "like One Person" in Their Playing.
Kirk Joseph, Louis Michot, Roger Lewis, André Michot, Alexey Marti, Don Vappie, and Justin Tocket relate their experience after "what just happened" inside Dockside Studio of Maurice, Louisiana.
August 14, 2024
A rare thing. Immediate responses to how a wholly spontaneous Track came to be.
Louis Michot and André Michot had never played with Roger Lewis, Kirk Joseph, Don Vappie and Alexey Marti of Rivers Answer Moons before the afternoon of July 31, 2024. The brothers from Lost Bayou Ramblers and more warmed up for less than an hour and then we somehow arrived at the “It” of immersion in ‘Colors Changing Colors’, a poem about Louisiana and its ‘men of crossed races’ that I first wrote in 1977 while a roughneck offshore and in Morgan City.
The Listening-Party of August 9 in the EVOLVE Space of Angela King’s Gallery in New Orleans’ French Quarter played this all of ‘Colors Changing Color’—13:53 minutes it extends. Afterward, Shaka Zulu, Big Chief of the Golden Feather Hunters tribe of families and a superlative maker of transcendent Black Masking Indian suits, said: “This is how music is supposed to be. Everyone playing what they feel.” "Don Vappie, who played electric guitar on this Track, said: “Democratic. Like the music we call Jazz is supposed to be democratic.” Kelly Love Jones, leader and co-producer of the 2024 Album SURRENDER, said: “I could listen to Tracks from this Album (LOUISIANA STORIES) all night. It’s like hearing the rain and imagining what’s outside.”
First, today, we’ll offer opening and closing minutes of ‘Colors Changing Color’
‘Colors Changing Color’, opening
‘Colors Changing Color’, closing.
Next, our talk, as recorded by Don Vappie on his iPhone.
0:37 KIRK JOSEPH: “It was so beautiful, it was so spiritual…. Whoever listens to it, I hope they can feel what I felt, be part of it.”
1:12 ROGER LEWIS: “We all said it was like we were one person.”
1:22 LOUIS MICHOT TO DON PAUL: “Your words were bringing us all together.”
1:28 LOUIS: “You couldn’t tell who was playing what. Almost to the point of what I was playing.”
2:19 ROGER: “Whole lotta stuff going on up in there.”
2:22 DON: “It just kept happening more and more.”
3:20 ANDRE MICHOT, responding with laughs to Kirk’s recollection of a “Train” passage that André also “caught” and sounded: “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”
3:28 KIRK on ALEXEY MARTI: “Through it all this man never lost … one beat.”
3:42 DON on DON VAPPIE as “the source of our form.”
3:58 DON VAPPIE to KIRK; “Broh, I thought you was going to get into something like it was like were all born together at the moment.”
4:28 JUSTIN TOCKET: “I think I was levitating.”
We look forward to bringing out LOUISIANA STORIES very soon this year!
