The Music Vibes was in the right place at the right time and had the opportunity to record beloved New Orleans radio host, Johnny Woodstock of WWOZ, interview Papa Mali, Louisiana-borne musician, Malcolm Welbourne. We enjoyed getting the inside scoop on Papa Mali’s influences, collaborations, and Equifunk experience and are certain you will, too! Read on to experience this exclusive interview!
JW- Sitting in with Papa Mali, asking him a couple of questions about what’s he’s got going on at the Equifunk Music Fest, up here in Equinunk, Pennsylvania, up in the Poconos. Afternoon, Malcolm.
PM- Good to see you, Johnny.
JW- Good to see you, as well.
PM- Usually I see you in the neighborhood, now I get to see you somewhere far away.
JW- Nice, nice. So, for those of you who don’t know, Papa Mali grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana.
PM- Correct.
JW- Now currently residing in New Orleans, again.
PM- Yes, and I will say this, too, even though Shreveport is definitely my hometown, my mother grew up in New Orleans. My grandparents are from New Orleans. My aunts, uncles, cousins are all from New Orleans. So I got to spend a lot of time in New Orleans when I was growing up, too, which was a good thing. Especially for my musical tastes and education.
JW- Nice, nice. So how many times have you performed at the Equifunk Music Fest?
PM- This is my first one.
JW- What are you thinking so far about it?
PM- I’m loving it. It’s great. It’s like funky camp for grown-ups.
JW- The headliner tonight is a project called the M&Ms and it’s kind of a superband of sorts. It’s you, Stanton Moore, Rob Mercurio, John Medeski, Marco Benevento, and Maceo Parker. How do you feel about being a part of a supergroup?
PM- Well, I played with Rob and Stanton lots of times so that’s real comfortable territory for me. We all kind of speak the same language, the funky side of New Orleans things. Playing with John Medeski has been a real thrill. I’ve always loved his music and always thought he was just a real cutting-edge player and steeped in tradition, but willing to take it outside a little bit. Which is kinda, I think that describes all of us to a certain degree. I have played with Marco a few times, but I always look forward to it because to me he’s one of the freshest innovators on the scene these days.
JW- Absolutely.
PM- And plus just having two keyboard players of that caliber, it’s gonna be real interesting to have that, uh, kinda that matrix of counterpoint keyboards going on in between … and of course topping it off is one of the masters of music, Maceo Parker. We’ve all been listening to Maceo all our lives, pretty much.
JW- Absolutely. He’s done groundbreaking stuff for over 50+ years at this point.
PM- I saw him last night with Soulive and it was just, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, you know? I’ve played with him before. I played with him, an impromptu set at Bonnaroo about almost 10 years ago, 9 years ago. Even further back than that, like 15, 16 years ago, my band, Papa Mali and The Instigators, opened for Maceo five nights in a row at Antone’s in Austin.
JW- Oh, wow!
PM- So, I got to hear him… It’s always a thrill to see him play. Watching him last night I was just reminded of what a master he is- his timing and his sense of what the audience wants and when they want it. Of course, he learned from the man, himself, James Brown, everyone who played with that man is touched by James Brown.
JW- And it shows in every way.
PM- It does,
JW- So, since this was a six piece band, how different is that opposed to playing in a trio or a full band setting?
PM- Well, you know, with a trio setting, I think , people really want to see the essence of what I do- the trio is probably the best way to see it. Now I’ve been doing a trio with Johnny Vidacovich and Casandra Faulconer and we’ve being doing that on a regular basis at Chickie Wah Wah [in New Orleans] every Thursday night. It kind of makes me realize that that’s really where my essence lays, in that sort of swampy, with lots of space, and lots of room for the guitar to kinda do its thing. In fact, I was digging just now The London Souls because they kind of got that same sound. The guitar, bass, and drums, and a kind of swampy blues rock thing. It’s very similar to what I do.
JW- Absolutely.
PM- Any time you put some other musicians in the mix, that makes me expand my own horizons a little bit, as well, which I like that, too. I like to play with other musicians who push me to go further than I’ve gone before.
JW- Nice. Last year you were touring with 7 Walkers. Would you like to tell us a little about that? How it came to be?
PM- Yeah, sure! That was three years we were on the road. 7 Walkers, it started when I was playing at the Oregon Country Fair about four years ago, five years ago. Just randomly, Billy Kreutzmann, the drummer from the Grateful Dead, he was at my show. His girlfriend at the time had been a fan of mine. She had lived in New Orleans, so she had my CDs. She said, “Oh, Bill, you gotta go see this guy,” you know? So after the show, I’m packing up my guitar and this guy comes back stage. It was Bill and I had no idea it was him. I used to be… I was never what you would call a “Deadhead” because Deadheads collect all the tapes and they follow the band around the country and stuff. I was always too busy being a musician, myself. But I was a fan of the Grateful Dead’s music. Especially when I was in high school, I was a big fan of their music, I bought all their albums. So everything from their early, like late sixties work to their late seventies work I was pretty familiar with.
JW: So, the Pigpen years up to..?
PM- Yeah, up to like when they, I guess Mars Hotel and that sort of era. I was pretty familiar with all that. I kinda lost track of them after that, a little bit. I was glad when they had the hit on the radio, Touch of Grey, all that I was glad to see. I lost touch with them, so I didn’t know what Bill looked like. I hadn’t seen a picture of him in years. He’s back there talking to me. We’re talking for almost a half an hour, I don’t even know it’s him. I just think it’s some nice guy, you know, he’s really friendly. He never even mentioned that he was a drummer or anything. We’re talking about fishing, we’re talking about New Orleans, we’re talking about Fats Domino, all kinds of stuff, you know. Just getting along famously. Then we discovered that we had the same birthday, well almost. I was born on May 6th, and he was born on May 7th.
JW- That birthday party two years back was fantastic.
PM- Yeah! Already, I like this guy. Just [talking] with him, we were getting along just fine. Suddenly I noticed that people were like gathering around him. People were starting to gather round, “Why are all these people gathering around this guy?” I noticed that he had a little Steal Your Face emblem on his cowboy hat. Suddenly I put the two and two together, he introduced himself as “Billy.” Billy Kreutzmann?! Oh! Are you… and he’s like “Yeah, man.” Actually I said, “Are you Billy Kreutzmann?” [He corrected my pronunciation and said,] “But yeah.” That’s how we got to be friends and we ended up hanging out all weekend. And we were friends and that’s how we got started, it was just us hanging out and being friends. And then pretty soon we said ooh we should play together, and then we did that a few times. Then we said, well, let’s put a band together.
JW- So how did George Porter and Matt Hubbard fit in the mix of all that?
PM- Well, I’d already done some work with Matt because Matt lived in Austin and I was still living in Austin at the time. I knew that Matt was not only a talented keyboard player, but he also plays harmonica and trombone and he’s a world class engineer who’s worked with Willie Nelson in the studio and all this kind of stuff. So I thought, you know, he would make a really good guy to bring on board. And, Bill and he got along well and then we actually had Reed Mathis on bass for the first, like, 9 months. Reed recorded most of our debut album. Then at some point we wanted to tour and Reed said, “Well, I’m committed to Tea Leaf Green.” He’d just moved to San Francisco so he could be a full-time member of Tea Leaf Green. So, he, as much as he wanted to [tour with 7 Walkers] he just couldn’t break that commitment [to Tea Leaf Green], and we understood. So I was doing a gig with George. Actually, I was doing a gig with Nigel Hall and George Porter for Mardi Gras, and Adam Deitch. I was the band leader on that gig, and just at rehearsal one day I said, “George, you ever played any Grateful Dead music?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah. I toured with Mickey Hart.” I said, “Oh really, so you know some the Grateful Dead songs?” He said, “I know a lot of them, man.” I said, “Well, you know, we need a bass player for this tour. Any chance you ‘d be available for like 2 weeks in April?” He looked at his calendar and said, “Yeah, let’s do it!” What really was surprising to me was the chemistry that evolved between him and Billy. Because I think, both of them, they had that invisible metal of experience that goes. They’re both like veterans, they’re both survivors. They’ve been through every kind of music imagined. They’ve played to stadiums full of people and they’ve played to a dozen people. And they play the same no matter what, if it’s a huge crowd or… So that was the thing that, you know, Bill actually was, when I first told him that George Porter was going to be playing on this tour, Bill was like intimated… Not that Bill’s scared to play with anybody but you could tell that he was in awe because of The Meters. The Grateful Dead were huge fans of The Meters and so he was like, “Really?! George is going to be playing with us!? Oh man, I better practice.” And I was like, I think George kinda feels the same way about you, bro. (Laughs) What was really cool was the very first gig, George flew in from somewhere else. He flew in from Canada or something, and we drove in from San Francisco. So when we got to the venue for the very first gig with George, the backline company had just dropped the drums off on the stage. We walk into the venue and there’s nobody in there except George, and he’s setting up the drum kit. Bill walks in, “Who’s setting up the drums?” I said, “That’s George.” He said, “George Porter is setting up my drums?!” He couldn’t believe it. So that kinda set the tone for their friendship and they hit it off well, which delighted everybody because, musically, the two of them created something that was brand new. It was like Grateful Dead meets The Meters. That was something that nobody had heard before, that New Orleans funk with that free style West Coast psychedelic.
JW- Wasn’t there a period where Kirk Joseph, the founder for the Dirty Dozen [Brass Band], had done some of the dates that George couldn’t do?
PM- That’s exactly right, summertime touring schedule and all that and The Meters got busy. George said he would prioritize 7 Walkers unless it was a Meters gig, and so we all understood that. Just like if Billy got a call from The Dead, he would have to go play with The Dead. We thought about it for a while and I thought Kirk would be a good choice because, first of all, any bass guitar player is not going to sound quite as good stepping into George’s shoes, but Kirk had the tradition of New Orleans and the playing with guys like Andrews, who had played psychedelic, too. He seemed like the perfect choice. And, plus he’s played sousaphone instead of bass guitar.
JW- That changes up the dynamic.
PM- That changes up the whole dynamic. So got that vibe of New Orleans meets The Dead sorta thing. That’s what we always hoped to do… as if, what if The Dead had grown up in New Orleans? What if The Meters had taken acid in San Francisco in the 60s? Which they probably did, but… (Laughs)
JW- What is it that tends to inspire you for your writing process?
PM- I’d have to say, you know, I always try to pay tribute to not just my own ancestors but the ancestors of the music that’s inspired. For instance, I’m always aware of the fact that anything I play that sounds like Mardi Gras Indian music, well that’s not me. That’s me being inspired by the Mardi Gras Indians. It’s not the Mardi Gras Indians, and it’s not totally me. It’s something that I gleaned from them and that I was inspired by, and the same thing will all music… It’s always me trying to be respectful, bow my head, and say thank you for this gift. That’s what inspires me, other people maybe get a sense… Maybe somebody hears my music and they go “That’s really cool” and then they go check out [new artists]. I’ll also say, I think that anybody who listens to me knows that one of my biggest influences is Dr. John and always has been. I got to see him play when I was about 12 years old. He was doing the Night Tripper.
JW- That was a game changer.
PM- It changed me in a big way. It made me realize that all this music that I had been listening to was created by African Americans, was within my reach because I saw another white dude do it, and doing it right. It made me realize it wasn’t a color barrier, it was just live music. And music is universal and we could all share it. Dr. John, more than anyone else, epitomized that for me, like you can actually do this music, it’s not off limits for you. So that was a good thing.
JW- What do you have for summer tour plans?
PM- Well, you know, summer’s almost over, brah! (Laughs) I’ve been pretty busy. We’ve been definitely ready to jet set a lot the past month or so. Actually, we were in Seattle, and Maui, and New York and now we’re here.
JW- All over the place!
PM- I’ve got a few more things coming up… I’m really looking forward to being back at home.
JW- It’s the best place to be.
PM- It is the best place to be. The best food, the best music, the best people. It’s nothing against anybody else’s thing, but if you haven’t been to New Orleans, come on down there and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
JW- It’s like trying to explain the ocean to somebody that’s never seen it.
PM- That’s right, exactly.
JW- So let’s go with the old-school question of if you were on a desert island, what would your 5 discs or records be that you would want to have with you?
PM- Well, I would probably have to say, definitely one of them would have to be Gris-Gris by Dr. John. One of them would probably be Wild Magnolia’s first LP. One of them would have to be something by The Meters, maybe The Meter’s greatest hits or something like that, so I could get the whole scope of that. Then there would have to be some Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin in there, too. I guess the greatest hits of both of them would probably be next in line. Of course I’m leaving out tons of other people but if there’s only 5 discs…
JW- Fabulous choices, every single one of them. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate it and enjoy M&Ms tonight, late night at Equifunk Music Fest.
Introduction by Mia Jester
Interview by Johnny Woodstock
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