Interviewing Courtney “Ceaux” Buckley was a challenge. We had already done a panel together at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) this summer and he’s been an inspiration throughout my art life, but when I say, “it’s been a busy season”, I mean: the week we met up at his gallery, he was setting up for a new solo show, there were artists in the space tattooing, his kids had just gotten out of school, so they were joyfully running around the space, pausing with curiosity, to see what we were doing; I had just finished one large scale mural and I was prepping for the next, all while splitting my time between projects in New Orleans and Atlanta… It’s a miracle that we were able to meet and I’m so glad we were…

We sat down with Molly Reeves over tea and sliced bread, at a Magazine Street coffee shop, where she arrived for an afternoon interview and photo shoot, armed with an acoustic guitar and a stuffed black cat proudly displaying an anarchist pin. Reeves shared her encyclopedic knowledge of early 20th century jazz, illuminated us on the longtime relationship between comics and music, and joined us down rabbit holes about authors, venues, and musicians way too numerous to fit in this small space…

The New Orleans’ Second Line is a celebration of life, which traces its origins to the African traditions at Congo Square and the evolution of Jazz Funerals. It’s a cultural artform that is commonly misunderstood but the purest form of a Second Line can be found any given Sunday in New Orleans, when one of the 40+ Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs (SAPCs) hosts their annual parade. The 4+ hours of community inspired music, art, and movement routes its way through the neighborhood, as the club floods the streets with vibrantly colored suits, feathers, and lightning quick steps in rhythm with the band. This improvisational “footwork” is an individualistic artistic expression, in symphony with the movement and energy of the community, and no one does it better than Rodrick “Scubble” Davis, known respectfully as “The Footwork King”…

I sat down with the soft-spoken but passionate musician, Claire Givens, over coffee on a balmy September day in one of the sunny conversation pits outside The Station in Mid-City. Despite the heat, and the fact that she had been up late the previous night opening for Thundercat with her band, People Museum, she spoke to me about her newest projects, her musical upbringing, and her favorite opera…

Twice GRAMMY-nominated zydeco singer, songwriter, and accordionist Corey Ledet is the Bruce Lee of the accordion. Ledet, who grew up in Houston but whose deeply musical familial lineage stems from St. Martin Parish, LA, is on a mission to reimagine zydeco for today’s audiences, to share and preserve his Kréyòl heritage tongue, Kouri-Vini, and to ensure that his family’s story two-steps its way into history…

Anders Osborne oozes rock n’ roll. Interviewing him is like being in the front row of an intimate concert, where all the lyrics are being sung directly to you. Anders has woven the pieces of his life artfully together and found a balance of the inner yin and the yang, but to be in a room with him, asking questions, is to be submerged in a lifetime of memories: travel, festivals, adventures, lessons, births, and deaths; to be drowning in binges and recovery; to be walking barefoot down a pathway of spirituality, determination and dedication; and to be plunging headlong into experiences, and a literal swimming pool…