Blame It On New Orleans (narration)

Listening to these tracks brings up a lot of memories about

the source of the lyrics of these early songs

Most of them come from the fact that when I returned to Mobile

after several years of living and playing in New Orleans

I had started writing songs

New Orleans will do that to you

Though my first recordings were done in Mobile

the songs that I carried into the

studio had their origins in New Orleans

When I landed there in 1968 I was just a year behind

being a Jesuit alter boy

I was still a virgin and I wanted

not to be either of those things anymore

So to borrow from a recent song title by Mack McNally,

Blame it on New Orleans

Sounds fair, I do

New Orleans to all of us who grew up on the Gulf Coast

is a place where, if you had any eccentricities

And you weren't thinking the way other people in the South were

in those days

New Orleans was the place to be

It had made its mark on me long before I even picked up a guitar

in my freshman year in college

I had family roots that ran deep from Pascagoula to Gulf Port

to New Orleans to Mobile

So when I left there and returned to Mobile to continue playing

clubs for a living,

I was armed with old childhood memories and a fresh

French Quartered venture that I had turned into lyrics and songs

that wound up being the material that interested Milton and Travis

and when I got back to Mobile

And I think these early recordings clearly show my evolution as a

performer and a song writer

You start emulating someone, like I did Gordan Lightfoot

and then you open up to other inspiring singers and songwriters

Who's music was the sound of the 60's

Dylan, Tim Harden, Bobby Charles from Abbeyville,

Alan Toussaint from New Orleans,

Judy Collins, Joan Baez and Fred Neil down in Miami

They were now the roadsigns on my song line

All those wonderful adventures I had in New Orleans as a 20-year-old

became my musical roots

Yeah, blame it on New Orleans I say

I'm not sure New Orleans wants to take the blame

Many of the ingredients in that big pot of musical gumbo

I was cooking up would eventually be served up

In 2011 I was given the unique honour

of being the Jazz Fest poster boy

in a painting that depicted my busking days

on the corner of Royal and Charter streets

When I saw the painting for the first time

I thought it pretty much summed up things because

From 1967 through 2011 and still to this day

New Orleans has had the most effect on me

as a songwriter, performer and novelist as any place

I ever lived or travelled to during my time on this planet

Oh with maybe the exception of that week I spent

in Timbuktu and in Mali in Bamako with the Bucktooth Brothers

exploring the musical culture of West Africa

And someone says, What about Key West?

That's a whole 'nother story

We'll get to that one later

But right now, here's another story that was simmering in my pot

for a longtime and finally is getting served up on Buried Treasure

This is called Rickety Lane