Michael Patrick Welch - New Orleans: The Underground Guide

In this wonderfully quirky music-and art-focused book, Welch concentrates on his New Orleansthe New Orleans that he and his friends know. There is plenty of information on many aspects of artsy New Orleans: Mardi Gras festivities, literary New Orleans, art galleries, burlesque clubs, theater, comedy clubs, thrift stores and costume shops, record stores, as well as a discussion of the Mardi Gras Indians, profiles of local musicians, and even a chapter on family fun.

Chicago Tribune

Ive been friends with Michael Patrick Welch for a number of years, and in New Orleans he seems to have really found his place. On my first visit from New York, before the flood, he took me on an epic bike ride tour of the city. We saw everything from grand mansions to beautiful bombed-out neighborhoods, and no matter where we went that day, Michael knew someone. Michael obviously loves New Orleans very much, and on my visits there he has shown me so much that I never expected, and would have not seen otherwise.

Jonathan Ames, creator of HBOs Bored to Death and author of The Extra Man and The Double Life Is Twice as Good

Michael Patrick Welch is a true community light.

Chuck D, Public Enemy

Your boyfriend is very, very talented.

Ray Davies of The Kinks to Michael Patrick Welchs girlfriend, Jazz Fest 2003

THIRD EDITION

MICHAEL PATRICK WELCH
with Brian Boyles

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZACK SMITH AND JONATHAN TRAVIESA

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE

Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright 2014 by Louisiana State University Press
First and second editions published by the University of New Orleans Press,
2009 and 2011
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing

Designer: Barbara Neely Bourgoyne
Typefaces: DubTone and Helvetica Neue, display; Ingeborg, text
Printer and binder: Maple Press

Maps are by Morgana King.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Welch, Michael Patrick, 1974
New Orleans : the underground guide / Michael Patrick Welch with Brian Boyles ; Photographs by Zack Smith and Jonathan Traviesa. Third Edition.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8071-5606-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8071-5607-0 (pdf)
ISBN 978-0-8071-5608-7 (epub) ISBN 978-0-8071-5609-4 (mobi) 1. New Orleans (La.) Guidebooks. 2. New Orleans (La.) Description and travel. I. Boyles, Brian, 1977 II. Smith, Zack, 1975 III. Traviesa, Jonathan. IV. Title.
F379.N53W44 2014
917.633504dc23

2013033661

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

We would first like to acknowledge that any attempt to comprehensively document every one of New Orleans music and art communities would be impossible. Further editions of this book will fill in any embarrassing holes we may have left this third time around.

We would like to thank Benjamin Simmons and Katrina Arnold for two of the cover photographs and Morgana King for the neighborhood maps.

Most photographs for this edition were taken by Zack Smith and Jonathan Traviesa. Other photo contributors were Katrina Arnold, Rachel Breunlin, Mark Caesar, Paul Cheenne, Geoff Douville, Alleyn Evans, Sierra Hudson, Katja Liebing, Gary LoVerde, Louis Maistros, Benjamin Simmons, Scott Stuntz, Matt Uhlman, Taslim Van Hattum, Robin Walker, and Kim Welsh.

We also want to thank those we interviewed and those who gave recommendations, favorites, or otherwise contributed to the text: Mark Caesar, Geoff Douville, Otis Fennell, Jonathan Ferrara, Brian Greiner, DJ RQAway, Juicy Jackson, Catherine Lasperches, Walt McClements, Leo McGovern, Alex McMurray, Justin Peake, Katey Red, Matt Russell, Veronica Russell, Jason Songe, Nick Thomas, Andrew Vaught, Paul Webb, and Mike IX Williams.

Special thanks to Alison Fensterstock, Dirty Coast, Creighton Durrant, and also Edward Jackson, Katie Hunter-Lowery, Gambit Weekly, OffBeat, and Antigravity magazine.

Its Not What You Think!

We wrote this third official edition of New Orleans: The Underground Guide to counter the incomplete image of New Orleans that you have in your head. Its not your fault. New Orleans is marketed, largely from within, as its old self. New Orleans does still sound like brass bands, Mardi Gras Indians, and trad jazz. But New Orleans old-school image has been a marketing template the tourist industry is loath to relinquish. New Orleans is marketed as if the French Quarter is still bursting with culture, when really it has turned into a beautiful shopping mall where almost none of the citys important modern-day music is made, or even played (Bourbon Street in particular is more than happy to accommodate your outdated notions of the city). New Orleans past should be glorified, its amazing traditions kept alive, but not if it means the world ends up thinking New Orleans most important artistic days are behind us! There are things happening here, now, that have the power to change the way the world views music and artagain, as New Orleans always has.

We continue making these music-focused guidebooks partly to show that new-millennium New Orleans sounds pretty damned different, and that our artistic communities are still as unique and vibrant, and conjure up as many important new creations as ever. We made New Orleans: The Underground Guide for tourists who dont want New Orleans marketed to them. You want natural adventures! Though all guidebooks purport to be street-level accounts of where the locals hang outwell, our writers and photographers have lived in New Orleans for many years, participating wholeheartedly in its music, art, journalism, and publishing scenes, and when we scribbled down hundreds of places where we regularly go hang out for the music and art, few of our awesome, historic, truly popular, New Orleans culture defining choices could be found in almost any other guidebook.

As you see, something needed to be done.

And we figured that the best thing we could do would be to act as friends of yours who live here, who want you to meet our wild, artistic local friends and to truly understand how much fun we have, and why we love living here. And that reason, mainly, is music. Even our extensive food section features, almost exclusively, eating spots that also host live music.

As for how to read our guidebook, we hoped that New Orleans: The Underground Guide would be, even for a local, a somewhat enjoyable read from the first page to the last. Within the listings we pause for short informative essays and interviewscalled N.O. Momentsabout the New Orleans places and people we like best. Rapper Katey Red suggests where to go and where not to go to hear bounce rap in New Orleans, while Mike IX Williams of EyeHateGod lets you know where to go in New Orleans to throw the goat. The books crown jewel is its music sections, wherein we describe over one hundred of New Orleans best modern, nontraditional bands, solo artists, rappers, and DJs musicians who sound like New Orleans, without playing old New Orleans music.

Weve practiced this same ideology with all our choices here, hoping to prove, to you, that New Orleans is not what you think.

Michael Patrick Welch