LOUISIANA STORIES, all 12 Tracks, mixed at Dockside, mastered in New Orleans, this October 2024. Six Tracks whole from Rivers' Answer Moons' Album and Stage-Show. Six in excerpts. 'I LOVE IT!'

Early listeners' responses to the DPRAM Album also say: 'Wow!'

October 26, 2024

Today, 10 days before the U.S. Presidential Election, we of RIVERS ANSWER MOONS offer you six whole Tracks and six partial Tracks from our Album and Stage-Show LOUISIANA STORIES.

The opening two Tracks, “Louisiana Days, Louisiana Nights” and “The Bands Are Bringing Everyone Home”, are here below whole. Drummer HERMAN LEBEAUX contributed the found sounds that themselves play like music.

“Louisiana Days, Louisiana Nights”

“The Bands Are Bringing Everyone Home”

Above: André Michot, Don Vappie, DP, Roger Lewis, Kirk Joseph, Louis Michot, and Alexey Marti. Photo by artist-engineer Justin Tocket. This current generation Michot brothers added immeasurably to all four Tracks on which they played accordion and violin!

Early responses to LOUISIANA STORIES are very gratifying and heartening. They date, on the Card below, from the last day of our recording at Dockside Studio, Wednesday July 31, in that swelter of Mid-Summer Acadiana that’s lightened by the branches of Oaks and their Spanish Moss—from musicians LOUIS MICHOT and our DON VAPPIE. They quote too from our Listening Party in the upstairs Evolve space of the Gallery of our “tree-mendous” friend ANGELA KING. There the artists and musicians quoted are KELLY LOVE JONES and BIG CHIEF SHAKA ZULU of New Orleans.

Next, opening parts of the portrait Tracks, ‘Marsha’s’ and ‘Jack Groves’. These two magnificent Individuals delivered to me inestimable goods from their worlds, between 1977 and 1981, Jack on our Offshore drilling-rig and on drives through Rivers Parishes and Marsha in her household “where all of the apartment sleep” and at Tipitina’s and everywhere we visited.

“You’re very lucky to work with these guys,” David Farrell, an artist-engineer with five Grammies and over 500 Albums to his credit, said yesterday as we finished the DDP for CD manufacturing of LOUISIANA STORIES.

Another artist-engineer, JUSTIN TOCKET of Dockside, says in the video of KIRK JOSEPH, ROGER LEWIS, DON VAPPIE and ALEXEY MARTI of Rivers Answer Moons discussing with our guests LOUIS and ANDRE our experience in our first-and-only Take of ‘Colors Changing Color’ … Justin says: “I was just levitating.”

Next, two Tracks, “Something You Got” and “My Mother’s Spirit Speaks To Me”, that the band recorded at Dockside on July 31. I added the voice to “Something You Got” with Justin on October 8.

Next, our celebration of the brave Athletes in ‘The Dreamers and the Believers’

Responses we’ve gotten this past week reflect EXACTLY our intentions for the Album and Stage-Show. We’re so glad the work worked!

KATE SMITH of Chicago, Texas, North Carolina, Argentina, … an artist whose passion over the past 30+ years is promotion of creations over Radio, wrote: ‘I LOVE IT … The quality of the sound, the change-up of instrumentation, … and the stories are m a r v e l o u s. This album should get an Award in the New Orleans Hall of Fame and go into the Historical Archives of Louisiana…. The musicians have r e a l l y listened and own this project as a cohesive oneness. The instrumentation is colorful and poignant as the precious lives of those whose stories you tell … The tangible hopes and dreams, the viable presence of memories, angelic and ancestral…. It’s all so rich you can taste the colors and smell the sounds.’

Film-Director MELISSA GREGORY RUE wrote: ‘Wow! Talk about a Mix! Sounds terrific. Look forward to hearing the whole thing.’

Show-Host PEARL MCDONALD of New Orleans’ WHIV wrote: ’The production blew me away! Love the way the music makes it all relate as one work […] “Trains Keep Comin is so rich in sound. I drift far away with the opening […] All so great. Love it. What an undertaking […]’

HOBART TAYLOER, Director of Jazz and Classical Music for KUCI of the Uniersity of California at Irnive and a Show-Host for All About Jazz, wrote: ‘Soon as I get a Downlaod it’s on my show. Also I’ll do an interview.”

“Some Rain Tonight”  features our guest LYNN DRURY with the intrinsic soul in her melodic voice. You may remember the ‘BP Oil Spill’ of April into May and beyond of 2010.

Nest, opening and closing Parts of ‘Colors Changing Colors’ and its 14 minutes of evoking and traveling Louisiana and States-of-Mind. Ancestors with us always! Angels winking through the lights strung like free necklaces in Trees.

Now, an expanded “Get Your JAM On!” with ALEXEY MARTI and DON VAPPIE adding their grooves and accents and with HERLIN RILEY, MICHAEL TORREGANO Jr., and MARIO ABNEY strong in the mix and with ERICA FALLS brilliant as usual. “They’re there!” Erica sings about “God and Gods are in our blood”.

“Get Your JAM On!” (Thanks forever to this Song’’s inspiration, JENNIFER MAXWELL and her Team’s JAMBARS!) The ‘Organic, Artisan Energy’ already has 19 beneficiary Partners across North America and in Haiti!

LOUISIANA STORIES’ closing Tracks, “Our Trains Keep A-Coming” and “Every Child Is Born To Be Child Of Dawn”, bring together scenes, characters, and themes raised earlier. The musicians’ SYMPATHY toward Lyrics’ expression is steadily wonderful and marvelous … as folks have said earlier, too, in this Post.

Louis and André, the current generation of Michot brothers. guests, were so welcome. “Dang!” Louis exclaimed after the last note rang out. “Dang! Magic.”

We look forward to seeing you in some form SOON!

The Album as CD in a 4-Panel DigiPak, with a 16-Page Booklet and a Poster, will be a Physical Product, ready to Shift Units, by December 1. You can write to us at stickingupforchildren@gmail.com (we choose to be openly surveilled) if you’d like to have LOUISIANA STORIES, whole and in CD full-fidelity, for yourself and/or for friends in the Holidays.

Please let us know, too, if you want Digital Downloads. We’ll be able to send those along by November 1.

We’d love to see you at our Album-Release Party, December 7, 2024 in New Orleans! We’ll return to Angela’s high and fine EVOLVE Space, above her Gallery at 241 Royal Street, across from the Hotel Monteleone. We’ll have Thai dishes and desserts from the GOOD CATCH Restaurant and we’ll have Wines—Wines Organic and Biodynamic—Wines that are praised for their freshness and depth by the scholar and writer IBRAHIMA SECK of Senegal—from our friends at FREY VINEYARDS.

We’re very, very glad to offer LOUISIANA STORIES and we hope that you enjoy its musicians’ generous and spectacular gifts. Thank YOU ALL!