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Transcript

TMP311 DAVID KUNIAN: JAZZ LUNATIQUE · Troubled Men Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign listeners, welcome back to the Troubled Men podcast. I am Renee Coleman sitting once again in Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge in the heart of the Clempire with my co host, the original troubled man for troubled times and future mayor of New Orleans, Mr. Manny Chevrolet. Hopefully. Welcome man.
• 0:34
  Speaker B: Got my vote.
• 0:35
  Speaker C: Hey man. Thank you.
• 0:36
  Speaker A: Or future sheriff. We, we said that we were throwing that into the mix last week, you know, because there might be an opening over there, man. Holy cow.
• 0:44
  Speaker B: An opening about yay big or so.
• 0:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, just enough to laughs at.
• 0:50
  Speaker C: Laughs that opening.
• 0:52
  Speaker A: All right.
• 0:52
  Speaker C: Yeah, they just, speaking of that, it's, it was national news today when I was watching my, my prime newscast. The NBC there.
• 1:03
  Speaker A: All right.
• 1:03
  Speaker C: And it was the top story. They caught three more guys right in.
• 1:07
  Speaker A: In Texas somewhere around.
• 1:08
  Speaker C: Two in Texas, one in Baton Rouge.
• 1:10
  Speaker A: Oh yes. Okay.
• 1:11
  Speaker C: And what I find hilarious is the one, the two guys that are still out there, the one guy is like so recognizable.
• 1:23
  Speaker A: He's the guy with the face tattoo. Yeah.
• 1:26
  Speaker C: And you haven't caught him yet.
• 1:28
  Speaker A: He's blending, he's got one on his.
• 1:29
  Speaker C: Forehead and on each cheek and that's the guy who's still out there. And I'm pulling for him. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna pull for this guy. I don't know. He's escaped before.
• 1:39
  Speaker B: He blends in well with, you know.
• 1:41
  Speaker C: You know there are facial over New Orleans.
• 1:43
  Speaker A: All right.
• 1:44
  Speaker C: You know, so yeah, that made national news and I, I, I'm more, more, you know, those two guys. It's been 10 days now, I think or something.
• 1:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, 10 days.
• 1:53
  Speaker C: 10 days. So you know, I don't know what the over under is. I don't know. I think it's going to be 14.
• 2:02
  Speaker A: Huh?
• 2:02
  Speaker C: 14, 15 is the over under. Because I heard something today that there was a tip in Natchez.
• 2:12
  Speaker A: On the tattoo guy. Yeah, I did see that. Yeah. Right, right there. He'd been a possible guy.
• 2:17
  Speaker C: He escaped from the juvenile prison too, I think.
• 2:19
  Speaker A: Hu.
• 2:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, but that's easy.
• 2:21
  Speaker C: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, that's pretty escape for there. Well, it's easy to escape from opp you know. Apparently, apparently it's very easy, you know, but then there was this other guy who escaped in Arkansas and he's still on the run.
• 2:37
  Speaker A: Right.
• 2:37
  Speaker C: This guy was the former chief of police in this small town in Arkansas and he escaped from disguise as a prison worker. Like he, he made some kind of costume that made him look like a fake uniform. Yeah, like a fake uniform. This guy, chief of police, he murdered somebody and raped Somebody.
• 3:02
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you know, that's a bad.
• 3:04
  Speaker B: I'm not rooting for him.
• 3:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, no.
• 3:06
  Speaker C: But he's got a car, apparently, and they don't know where the hell he is.
• 3:11
  Speaker A: Well, you know those guys they caught in Texas, I did notice as they were pulling them over, they had the body cam footage, and I thought, that's a much n. That I own. Much, much nicer.
• 3:23
  Speaker C: Well, that's the thing. Did they steal it or was it given to them by an accomplice?
• 3:28
  Speaker A: Well, and then all these accomplices, they got about 10 of them in custody. And the. The bonds, the first couple. I haven't kept up with it, but the first couple of people that got arrested as accomplices had like a $1 million bond, a $2 million bond. Crazy man.
• 3:45
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And these are like grandmothers and grandfathers and stuff. They don't have that kind of money.
• 3:50
  Speaker A: Well, that seemed kind of like an excessive bond. I mean, the person's not going to offend again, you know.
• 3:55
  Speaker C: Well. Well, that's it.
• 3:57
  Speaker B: But they're sending a message.
• 3:58
  Speaker A: I guess they. I guess that's it.
• 4:00
  Speaker C: Listen, let's say 10, 15 years from now, you got a grandkid who comes up and says, can you help me out? You're gonna help them out.
• 4:09
  Speaker A: Gotta do it.
• 4:09
  Speaker C: Yeah, you gotta do it.
• 4:11
  Speaker A: Sorry.
• 4:13
  Speaker C: Here's a few bucks. Go know. I mean, you know, all right, here's the car. I'll say it's in the shop.
• 4:20
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 4:21
  Speaker C: That kind of stuff.
• 4:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker C: Just go. You're gonna do it?
• 4:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, what else you gotta do?
• 4:26
  Speaker C: Well, what else are you gonna do? You're gonna, you know, you got this kid coming up and saying, you know, nana, Papa, you know, well, and then grandpa, help me out.
• 4:35
  Speaker A: Right, right. And then the facilities again, back to that. That's the real crime. That's. That's revealed here. Apparently, like all this past weekend, they. They had the water turned off at opp, now called. What is it now called? Opsp?
• 4:52
  Speaker B: No, Maybe the Criminal justice center or. That's a different one.
• 4:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I even wrote it down. Orleans justice center. Ojc. Anyway, ojc. All right, sure. But. So they had the water turned off most of the whole weekend. So people couldn't flush their toilets, couldn't wash their faces, couldn't brush their teeth.
• 5:14
  Speaker C: Couldn'T shower, and the power went out all of. Up to a lot parts of the city, too. Did that have anything to do with it?
• 5:20
  Speaker A: I. I think that was a separate. Just coincidental Kind of thing.
• 5:24
  Speaker C: I think that was another thing was.
• 5:25
  Speaker A: Like, that was a brown out.
• 5:27
  Speaker C: Yeah. Some kind of energy just turned off power because the grid was, you know.
• 5:33
  Speaker B: Being taxed or working too hard. They didn't want it permanently damaged.
• 5:36
  Speaker C: It was funny because our friend Monica, who lives a few blocks from me, she lost power on Sunday. But we had power.
• 5:43
  Speaker A: Yeah. I didn't lose it up, up in this neighborhood, but.
• 5:46
  Speaker C: But then apparently hundreds of thousands of people and then apparently energy says this is going to happen more often. We're going to just have to shut down the power.
• 5:54
  Speaker A: Wow. Just because of the grid getting like Puerto Rico, man.
• 5:57
  Speaker C: Well, yeah.
• 5:59
  Speaker A: You have electricity.
• 6:00
  Speaker C: They need better squirrels. That's what they need. Yeah. Faster.
• 6:06
  Speaker B: Go, squirrel, go.
• 6:07
  Speaker C: Yeah. Or feed them something else.
• 6:09
  Speaker B: More meth.
• 6:10
  Speaker C: Give them speed.
• 6:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, More meth for the squirrels.
• 6:13
  Speaker C: More meth for the squirrels.
• 6:14
  Speaker A: Coming to a meeting of the mind at the Trouble man podcast.
• 6:18
  Speaker C: So, yeah, they're escaped. I think the over under is 15 days. We're at 10 days. Okay, so we'll see what happens. I'm rooting for him, right?
• 6:28
  Speaker A: Well, you're rooting for the guy with the face tattoos. The other, the other guy's a cold blooded killer. Needs. Well, that guy needs to be locked up.
• 6:34
  Speaker C: His. I don't know, I wasn't living here, but apparently in the early 90s, when. 90s, when crack was huge down here, there was a police officer who I've seen many shows about who murdered all these people.
• 6:49
  Speaker A: Well, Lynn Davis.
• 6:50
  Speaker C: Right. This kid, the other guy who's out there. Yeah, that's his grandma.
• 6:54
  Speaker A: Right, right, right.
• 6:55
  Speaker C: So there's a connection.
• 6:56
  Speaker B: Wait a sec. The guy that Len Davis killed is this guy's grandmother who escaped.
• 7:00
  Speaker C: No, no, no.
• 7:01
  Speaker A: His grandson, Lynn Davis. This is the grandson who's a convicted killer, but he was the grandson of the woman that Lynn Davis killed.
• 7:11
  Speaker C: Yeah. Good times.
• 7:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it's New Orleans.
• 7:15
  Speaker B: New Orleans. Have a nice day.
• 7:16
  Speaker A: It's all connected.
• 7:17
  Speaker C: No, because I saw, I saw my wife said, you've got to watch this show. It's one of these crime shows. And she goes, I remember this so well.
• 7:25
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:26
  Speaker C: And I watched it. I go, man, this police officer was just a brutal motherfucking.
• 7:31
  Speaker A: Oh, well, they had a whole. It was a whole of police officers.
• 7:35
  Speaker C: You know, And I was like, I remember like my brother who lived here down there. And he was like going, I said, well, I want to come out and visit. He goes, no, don't come out here. Wow, really not a good time. Not a good time. To come out because crack was huge.
• 7:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, we had record numbers of murders there.
• 7:50
  Speaker C: Yeah, that was like 95, 94.
• 7:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We were like, close to 400 murders a year.
• 7:55
  Speaker B: You know, Those are the official ones.
• 7:57
  Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah, the official count was over 400.
• 8:00
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:01
  Speaker A: Crazy. Anyway.
• 8:04
  Speaker C: Hey, what else is going on with you?
• 8:05
  Speaker A: What else is going on? Well, you know, see, it's something I meant to talk about a couple of weeks ago when I. When I came back from that D.C. trip. You know, I had to go through TSA, you know, go through the scanner, and I'm very good about taking everything out of my pockets, you know. Now, usually you can keep your belt on. It's not a problem. It's just kind of part of your clothing. You know, take your shoes off. But. So as I went through the scanner, they pulled me over to the side, and then they turn me around and show me on the little stick figure. Like, sometimes if you leave like a, you know, something in your pocket, you know, toothpick even, sometimes it'll show up as, like, a red square. So they show me, and it's a red square, like, right on my dick. Like, right in my garage.
• 8:51
  Speaker C: So you had a hard on?
• 8:53
  Speaker A: Well, not yet, but I'm getting there. But I'm like, well, I don't. There's nothing, you know, that's not me in that spot. There's nothing I can take out of that spot to say, oh, well, here. And the guy's like, okay, well, I gotta pat you down. I'm like, oh. And he goes, do you want to go in a private room? I said, no, I'm going to. I want you to.
• 9:14
  Speaker B: As a matter of fact, I don't want to see.
• 9:15
  Speaker A: I want everybody to see what you're going to do to me here. So he proceeds to give me the most aggressive pat down that I've ever had in my whole life. Where. From the front, he's touching my dick. From the back, he's touching my dick.
• 9:32
  Speaker C: Now, he was trying to get a rise out of you, the whole business.
• 9:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, he was trying to. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, get some. Some. I don't know what you would call it there, but some. Some close contact, but, yeah.
• 9:43
  Speaker C: Now, did you get his number?
• 9:44
  Speaker A: Well, actually, I did get a nice note from him and some flour, so.
• 9:49
  Speaker C: Oh, okay.
• 9:50
  Speaker B: He didn't buy you dinner?
• 9:52
  Speaker A: No, no, no. That's the thing. Maybe that's for.
• 9:54
  Speaker C: So they didn't find anything?
• 9:55
  Speaker A: No, there was nothing.
• 9:56
  Speaker C: No, it was like a frozen pubic hair.
• 9:59
  Speaker A: You know, it's, I, I, I ultimately said, well, you know, I have my belt, but the buckle, it wasn't even in the front there. And it was quite far away. It's, I don't know, I think sometimes those things just have a random, it just, it just generates that just to see.
• 10:13
  Speaker C: I always take off my belt because I want my pants to fall down when I'm walking through. I always do that just to, with.
• 10:23
  Speaker A: Kind of the Tim Conway move.
• 10:24
  Speaker C: Well, yeah, because it goes down to the ankle, right?
• 10:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker C: Walking like a, you know, you wear.
• 10:29
  Speaker A: Those loose pants so they just drop right down.
• 10:32
  Speaker C: You got to shuffle along in your boxer short them.
• 10:35
  Speaker A: It's hilarious. Like, you know, you. Who doesn't want to see that?
• 10:39
  Speaker C: Well, yeah, it hasn't gone viral yet. I haven't flown in a while, so.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: Well, they don't let anybody have the cameras there, so everybody just, you gotta, you gotta do it, you know.
• 10:48
  Speaker C: But I think cuz you were flying out of D.C. that's probably another reason why, because, you know, that's the capital and all that kind of stuff. So they might have just been like, you know, we gotta do this, you.
• 10:58
  Speaker A: Know, we gotta touch this guy's dick.
• 11:00
  Speaker C: And then of course, rest of your band, the rest of your band is just staring at you like, come on, can we go? We're boarding in a few minutes.
• 11:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, that was, that was the day we had four hours of extension.
• 11:13
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah, because. Yeah, can't land planes there, right?
• 11:16
  Speaker A: They can't do anything.
• 11:17
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 11:18
  Speaker A: Anyway, so I wanted to bring that up.
• 11:20
  Speaker C: Oh, well, glad, I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah, that's a good time.
• 11:23
  Speaker B: You're sure you don't have a Prince Albert?
• 11:28
  Speaker C: God. Way back. That's way back. Yeah.
• 11:31
  Speaker A: Definitely, definitely do not.
• 11:33
  Speaker C: Yeah. So what else is going on?
• 11:34
  Speaker A: Ah, what else is going on? I'm about to take off for Hawaii.
• 11:39
  Speaker C: And there's a volcano blaring in Hawaii.
• 11:43
  Speaker A: It's, it's very active. In fact, I was booking an Airbnb in the town called Volcano, which is just a short drive away from that active volcano. And yeah, now it's kind of a, you know, work vacation for me. And I got to say, you know, I've been on the work part of this trip probably ten times or so, and that's always fine. The vacation part of it has been stressing me the fuck out, man.
• 12:08
  Speaker C: Oh, what island is this?
• 12:10
  Speaker A: It's the big island, Hawaii.
• 12:11
  Speaker C: Oh, the big island.
• 12:12
  Speaker A: But you know, just like having to make all these decisions you know, usually I get to be baggage. You know, like, they tell me where to go. As long as I show up there when I'm supposed to and do what I know how to do, I'm cool. Now, this, this vacation thing, it's a lot of unknowns, a lot of moving parts, you know, and you have the expectations. You want it to be good, right? So, I don't know. I have a hard time dealing with these things. What about you, Manny? You don't go on a lot of vacations?
• 12:43
  Speaker C: No, I. You know, growing up in Los Angeles, I never had a desire to go to Hawaii. It was no desire at all to go to Hawaii, because I had to be. I grew up with the beach.
• 12:53
  Speaker A: Right? Beach, sunshine. You have palm trees. In la, I have all that.
• 12:57
  Speaker C: And I remember in high school, I'd have. During, like, winter break or something like that. I have friends whose families would go to Hawaii and stuff like that, and they, And I, I just said, why? You got everything right here? What are you gonna get more pineapple there, right? You're gonna get a pig on a stick, you know. You know, pig on parallel bars. That's Mary Lou Retton.
• 13:24
  Speaker A: You know, you could see that out at the beach. Muscle beach, right.
• 13:27
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 13:28
  Speaker A: Right.
• 13:28
  Speaker C: So anyway, no, I had no desire. I still have no desire. I, I, I, I, I like concrete under my feet.
• 13:35
  Speaker A: Right.
• 13:35
  Speaker C: See, I love, I. You know, growing up in la, I used to love to go to the beach. I love the water, but I never, never like the sand.
• 13:43
  Speaker A: Sand, right. Yeah.
• 13:45
  Speaker C: Sand is just, it's just like what the is. And thank goodness these places, you know, you go to Venice beach, they have these showers where you can shower off and get it all off.
• 13:55
  Speaker B: Get the sand off.
• 13:56
  Speaker C: Yeah, get it all off of you. You know, that kind of stuff. But then you got some homeless guy next to you who's taking a dump.
• 14:02
  Speaker A: And stuff like that.
• 14:04
  Speaker C: Doesn't, doesn't help you.
• 14:05
  Speaker A: And he definitely needs a shower, but he's not taking one. It's crazy.
• 14:09
  Speaker C: Oh, no, crazy.
• 14:10
  Speaker A: It's right there. They're free. Yeah.
• 14:12
  Speaker C: He's a good guy.
• 14:13
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 14:13
  Speaker C: They were good guys. Guess. I don't know. But, you know, we're all getting older. I don't know how old you are. What's your name again?
• 14:21
  Speaker B: David.
• 14:22
  Speaker C: David. Yeah. We're all getting older, and there's no alternative. My wife and I, you know, since the kids moved out and stuff, we noticed, you know, we're in our 60s, we notice that sometimes we do some senior things, you know, where you Know, we. We put the ice in our glass and we put the soda, but we forget to put the vodka. You know, things like that, you know, are. You know, we cook something and we forget about it. That kind of stuff happens. I saw a senior moment. And you always hear about, you know, dementia is a huge thing now for people.
• 14:57
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, it's getting.
• 14:58
  Speaker C: It's a big thing. You know, you gotta hear. They even have medication to avoid dementia. I just think it's called old age. I guess you just forget things.
• 15:06
  Speaker B: I mean, your brain gets crowded.
• 15:08
  Speaker C: Yeah, it gets crowded. And, you know, there's people in the brain that you want to get out, but they don't leave that kind of stuff. But anyway, I noticed I was at the supermarket yesterday because it was Memorial Day.
• 15:23
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 15:24
  Speaker C: So I had to buy something for the veterans out there.
• 15:28
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 15:28
  Speaker C: So I bought sushi. No, I don't know what that is. Anyway, I was in line. You know, the. Our local market that we go to. I see you there sometimes.
• 15:39
  Speaker A: I was there today.
• 15:40
  Speaker C: They only have. There's like 20 registers, but there's only. Only like six open at a time because they're so understaffed. And you know those. They have those machines at market where you bring your change.
• 15:52
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:54
  Speaker C: Coin Star. And they get. They take about a 2% cut, right? 3% cut. So you get, you know, if you got a bunch of change, you get like 20.
• 16:01
  Speaker A: That's what we use. That very machine is what we used when we got all the bag of loose chains too. It's here, that very machine at that.
• 16:08
  Speaker C: 20 pound box, right?
• 16:11
  Speaker A: 12. $12 of postage.
• 16:13
  Speaker C: Yeah, but.
• 16:14
  Speaker A: Go on.
• 16:15
  Speaker C: Yeah, but anyway, I'm in line, you know, and I'm like this. I'm third back to being scanned and stuff. And I saw this guy, probably, I would say early 70s. I'm gonna give him. I'm gonna be generous and say he's early 70s. And he comes up to that Coin Star machine and he's got this huge, like gallon freezer bag filled with coins. Filled with coins. And I'm watching this guy, then I notice that the Coin Star, they put this huge piece of paper with huge type saying out of order. Out of order. But this old guy, he's looking at the directions and he's pushing buttons and stuff like that. And then he actually lifts the flyer that says out of order and starts reading the instructions. He puts it down and then starts doing this and this again. And he lifts up the flyer again that says out of order. And I'm Laughing hysterically. But I'm so far back from him, I don't want to, like, say, hey, right, right, right. It's out of order.
• 17:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's not your place.
• 17:29
  Speaker C: Well, he's got to learn on his own.
• 17:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:31
  Speaker C: But then what happened was. So he. I guess he figured it out or he just gave up. So he leaves with his cart, and I guess he goes shopping. So I get home with the groceries, and my wife said, well, you forgot something, because we're doing some kind of grilling and we needed ginger, and I forgot to get the ginger, so I had to go back to the market to get the ginger. And when I'm going back to the produce section, I see that guy and he's lost. He's just like.
• 18:03
  Speaker A: He's lost in the supermarket.
• 18:05
  Speaker C: No, but I was like, I was gonna say, you know, it's out of order, but he had groceries in his car. In his. In his.
• 18:13
  Speaker A: Okay. He was making some progress.
• 18:15
  Speaker C: He was making some progress. So, you know, we're all gonna be there one day.
• 18:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:19
  Speaker C: We're all gonna be there one day. Day lost in the supermarket.
• 18:23
  Speaker A: Right.
• 18:24
  Speaker B: You know, and no longer shop happily.
• 18:26
  Speaker C: Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. Came here for a special offer anyway. I thought that was hilarious and sad at the same time.
• 18:35
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 18:35
  Speaker C: But I love laughing at people's misery.
• 18:37
  Speaker A: Well, you know, as we say in the Trouble Men's pot, Trouble Men podcast, we've said this some from the very first episodes that, you know, if you can't laugh at your problems. Yeah, we can.
• 18:48
  Speaker C: Yeah, we can laugh at you from the success. I remember that. Yeah, that was like episode four.
• 18:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my first inventions.
• 18:57
  Speaker B: That's a credo right there.
• 18:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:00
  Speaker C: All right. You want to introduce. Yes.
• 19:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get to our guest here. It's a terrific guest. Now, I will. I will say this guest was booked originally for December 19th, I believe. And he was a last minute. You know, he was kind of a. One of those weeks where we weren't sure if we're going to be able to do a show, then we can. I called him day before and he said, yeah, I can do it. And then the day of. So I started to do notes on him kind of early that day because I had something to do in the afternoon. But, like, at noon, he texted and said, I actually have a little emergency I have to take care of. I'm going to have to beg off. And I was like, okay, no problem. We got the great Clark Marty, America's guest Came and filled in on last notice. And so, so when I was preparing to do the notes a couple of days ago, I said, well, let's see, let me look at what the date that was. It's okay, it's December. I was like, okay, it must be the same notebook. So then I blindly, I didn't have the. Stick' em on here. I blindly reached into that area of the notebook and turned the page and there was his name with first try. And people say this is not a simulation. Okay.
• 20:07
  Speaker B: It's all real.
• 20:08
  Speaker A: Anyway, so, so he's a terrific guest, an award winning radio documentarian, long running WWOZ DJ with his own weekly freaknologist lunatic kitchen sink show every Tuesday at 10:00pm in fact, I wonder, are you doing a show tonight?
• 20:28
  Speaker B: I am doing a show.
• 20:29
  Speaker A: Okay. All right, well, I'll be racing over there. We'll get the show on the road here. He's also written for such terrific publications as Oxford American Magazine, Downbeat, Offbeat, Gambit Weekly, is also the one and only emcee for the entire run of Chaz Fest, the great independent festival there during Jazz Fest that ran it at the truck farm.
• 20:53
  Speaker B: I have to say, I did miss one. I think I missed one of the last ones because my day job suddenly.
• 20:59
  Speaker A: Okay, you're gonna make a liar out of me for once.
• 21:01
  Speaker C: All right.
• 21:01
  Speaker B: Just for what? Just, just, you know, we must be accurate.
• 21:04
  Speaker A: Okay. All right, well, that's, that's going to go out the window from here on.
• 21:08
  Speaker B: Plus Chris Lane will come up and punch me in the face.
• 21:10
  Speaker A: Chris Lane. Okay. All right, now he's the missing link. Okay, that makes sense. All right, well, without further ado, the great Mr. David Kunion. Welcome, David.
• 21:19
  Speaker B: Thank you, thank you. Pleasure to be here, fan of your work.
• 21:22
  Speaker A: Oh, thank you, thank you. As we are of yours, you know, I often leave this, this, you know, get done with the podcast, have my congratulatory post podcast drink and wind up at my house where my wife always has your show going on. And she has fine and discerning tastes. She does. Well, she, she loves to listen to the radio. She plays the radio all the time. Now, when I say plays the radio, does that sound old timey? That sounds like something my grandmother would say. Like, but like, like anyway, yeah, that's okay.
• 21:53
  Speaker C: Yeah, but I listen to the radio.
• 21:55
  Speaker A: Well, that's what I'm saying. But like, plays the radio.
• 21:57
  Speaker C: Plays the radio. That's weird.
• 22:00
  Speaker A: That's what I think. Sounds kind of old timey. But I'm so amazed at how much music you know, how do you know all this music, man? And. And I mean, I can't listen to that much music to even know all that stuff. And it's all great. And I'm just fucking overwhelmed at the. At the kind of show, you know. And that's just a small part of what you do.
• 22:23
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, I've been reading about it and hanging out with musicians and interviewing them and stuff like that for years and years and years.
• 22:31
  Speaker C: Are you from here?
• 22:33
  Speaker B: I am not. I moved here in 1992. I'm originally from Boston, Massachusetts.
• 22:38
  Speaker A: Well, actually, as I'm talking to you, I realize I left out a huge part of your introduction, which is that he is the curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the Men, as well as the music curator for the Louisiana State Museum.
• 22:52
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 22:54
  Speaker A: Which is his day job.
• 22:56
  Speaker B: That is my day job.
• 22:56
  Speaker A: Night job. Now, have you been working at the Jazz Museum since it first became the Jazz Museum?
• 23:04
  Speaker B: I've been working at the jazz museum since January 2016. There was. The jazz museum was open from about 1985 until Katrina, and then they had to close it. Cause Katrina ripped the roof off the Mint where it was. And also at that point, they didn't have a music curator for the State Museum. The Jazz Museum is a part of the State Museum.
• 23:29
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 23:29
  Speaker B: So they didn't have a music curator. And it took them up until 2016 to hire one and they hired me. So since then, I have been the curator in putting together the exhibits and putting the whole thing together with the help of the team.
• 23:43
  Speaker C: At the Old Mint.
• 23:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:44
  Speaker B: At the Mint. Yep.
• 23:45
  Speaker C: Yeah. Now, what do you think about the penny? The pennies? No longer. Because I still.
• 23:52
  Speaker B: I still have pennies.
• 23:54
  Speaker C: I don't think. I don't think in our lifetime we're gonna run out of pennies.
• 23:57
  Speaker B: No, I think. I think they could probably stop making them today, you know? You're still gonna pull them out of your pocket and find them on the street.
• 24:05
  Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. But you know, I just met a guy recently. Who. He's from Canada, his name is Caleb, and he just got a one year internship at the Mint.
• 24:19
  Speaker B: Okay, I think I know that guy.
• 24:20
  Speaker C: Yeah, you know that kid? Yeah, he just moved here about a few weeks ago and I met him. A few weeks ago.
• 24:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, I've met him a couple times.
• 24:27
  Speaker C: I think he should fire.
• 24:29
  Speaker B: I'll tell him you said that.
• 24:30
  Speaker C: Yeah, tell him I said I'll tell.
• 24:31
  Speaker B: Him you said that.
• 24:33
  Speaker A: Say, Manny Chevrolet brought you up last night.
• 24:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, specifically.
• 24:37
  Speaker C: You're done, kid. You're fired.
• 24:39
  Speaker A: I should fire you.
• 24:40
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker C: Anyway, he seems like Canada. I like Canadians.
• 24:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're very polite.
• 24:45
  Speaker C: They're funny people.
• 24:46
  Speaker A: They're funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have a. Have a comical.
• 24:50
  Speaker C: So Boston. And you're into music in Boston?
• 24:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. Let's. Let's go back a little bit. So you're, as Manny saying you're not. Not from New Orleans. So you grew up in. In Boston.
• 25:00
  Speaker B: I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 25:02
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 25:02
  Speaker B: Proper in Back Bay. The Prudential center falls toward the Charles River. The top of it misses my house by about 20ft now.
• 25:10
  Speaker A: Your parents academics or fishermen or somewhere in between.
• 25:15
  Speaker B: My dad. My dad was an attorney.
• 25:17
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 25:18
  Speaker B: My mom still sells real estate.
• 25:20
  Speaker A: Okay. I could see all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:23
  Speaker C: To suckers.
• 25:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's. It's a beautiful neighborhood and lots of people want.
• 25:28
  Speaker C: You know, I've only been to Boston twice, and both times I got in a fight.
• 25:33
  Speaker B: That is not surprising. It is a.
• 25:36
  Speaker C: It is a very confrontational.
• 25:38
  Speaker B: Confrontational place where fights happen.
• 25:41
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:43
  Speaker B: People are. Boston is not a place where people are particularly mellow. People are not mellow in Boston.
• 25:50
  Speaker A: Okay, so. So you're growing up there now, Cunian. Are you Armenian?
• 25:55
  Speaker B: Eastern European.
• 25:56
  Speaker A: Okay, right on. So that's a no to the Armenian.
• 26:00
  Speaker B: That's a no to the army.
• 26:01
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 26:01
  Speaker C: So how eastern are you? Russian? Eastern.
• 26:04
  Speaker B: Russian, Russian, Eastern. Polish? Eastern. German? A little. Not quite. Not as Eastern, but Okay.
• 26:11
  Speaker A: All right.
• 26:12
  Speaker C: That's pretty.
• 26:13
  Speaker A: Not beyond the pale, though.
• 26:14
  Speaker B: Not beyond the pale.
• 26:15
  Speaker A: All right. Gotcha, gotcha. So you. You go to elementary school there? Brothers and sisters?
• 26:22
  Speaker B: One brother went to elementary school there, went to high school at boarding school.
• 26:28
  Speaker A: You're a kid that pays attention in class.
• 26:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I got good grades when I was a kid.
• 26:32
  Speaker A: Were you interested in music from an early age into the Beatles or. You're younger than we are. So, like, what was the first kind of stuff that you were collecting? You remember the first records you were into?
• 26:43
  Speaker B: The first? Well, my dad played cello for a while. He listened to classical music. I took piano lessons when I was a kid. I wasn't particularly good at it. I wasn't bad. But as people say these days, do you play the piano? And I say, yeah, but not in front of people.
• 26:59
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 27:01
  Speaker B: And I'm trying to think. And I got the radio in Boston was excellent. Still is excellent. A lot of, obviously, college stations and the commercial stations were great, too, because.
• 27:13
  Speaker C: It'S not a big college town.
• 27:15
  Speaker B: Not a big college town.
• 27:17
  Speaker A: Well, had a lot of great bands come out of Boston, man.
• 27:20
  Speaker B: Continued Continue to. Like, I came up listening to. I mean, you know, the big ones were, you know, Boston Aerosmith, the Jake Isles Band, which is still one of my favorite cars.
• 27:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, Jake Isles band, yeah.
• 27:34
  Speaker B: And then there was also a great. There's a great jazz scene, there's a great punk rock scene, hardcore scene in there. So I came up, you know, and all the hardcore bands would come through. So, you know, listening to Jay Geil's band and also going to see the Circle Jerks and Black Flag at the all ages shows kind of thing.
• 27:50
  Speaker A: Right. And they also had, like, what they call Boston rock. Right. Which is. Now, what is that?
• 27:55
  Speaker B: Boston rock is a certain kind of, I want to say, just kind of, you know, for lack of a better term, working man's pub rock kind of rock and roll.
• 28:06
  Speaker A: Okay. Any famous. Any Supreme Court justices. Justices that you went to school with?
• 28:12
  Speaker B: I did not go to school with any Supreme Court justices in high school, but my high school, you know, both Bush presidents were graduates. I went to Phillips Academy, Andover.
• 28:24
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 28:26
  Speaker B: Bush presidents were there.
• 28:28
  Speaker C: What about any Kennedys?
• 28:31
  Speaker A: Just that Skakel guy. Huh?
• 28:33
  Speaker B: No, no, not the Skakel guy, but Ted Kennedy's kid, whose name I can't remember offhand, but he was a class ahead of me, so.
• 28:41
  Speaker C: Okay, but. Yeah, but there's always good chowder.
• 28:45
  Speaker B: Great, great chowder.
• 28:46
  Speaker C: Do you like the red or the white?
• 28:48
  Speaker B: Red chowder. What, are you kidding me? What do you do, put tomatoes in your gumbo? No, the white. The white.
• 28:53
  Speaker C: The white chow. Yeah, that's good chowder.
• 28:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a white chowder guy.
• 28:59
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 28:59
  Speaker A: Somehow you don't have the hard accent.
• 29:01
  Speaker B: No, somehow I escaped that. I don't know how I can. I can talk about kind of have the ad.
• 29:07
  Speaker A: It's the good high school. That's how I sound like I do. Yeah, yeah, it's Ben Franklin.
• 29:14
  Speaker C: Like that movie Departed. I remember they talked about Southies. Now, what's a Southie? Are you a Southie?
• 29:20
  Speaker B: No, Southie is the neighborhood. It's the kind of. Now it's gentrified like everything else, but it was the big Irish neighborhood, you know, kind of south of. In the south part of Boston.
• 29:31
  Speaker C: So. All right, yeah.
• 29:32
  Speaker A: So you. You graduate from this elite high school, you wind up going to Columbia University again. Now, are you. Are you involved in, like, student radio or student newspaper or.
• 29:45
  Speaker B: I did. The. Columbia's radio station is one of the better jazz stations in New York, wkcr. So I started out there, you know, my freshman year, I want to say, so you know, doing a 5 to 5am to 8:20 jazz show for a couple years and then graduating to the 12pm to 3pm jazz show my last couple years.
• 30:10
  Speaker C: So what are you playing, just your favorites or certain?
• 30:13
  Speaker B: I'm playing. I have a large. You know, I play everything from Miles Davis to Sun Ra to the kind of out stuff. I like avant garde jazz, which is. So I'm playing some of the out stuff, but also playing, you know, Stanley.
• 30:27
  Speaker C: Turntine and some jazz makes me nervous when I listen to it. Does it make you nervous? Depends on psycho jazz stuff.
• 30:36
  Speaker B: That's some of the stuff I listen to. It doesn't make me nervous necessarily. It makes me exhilarated.
• 30:41
  Speaker C: Oh, really? Okay, now it makes me nervous, some of that stuff.
• 30:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Speaker C: But we can go on and on.
• 30:47
  Speaker A: Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To each his own. You know, that's the thing. It's hard to predict how any kind of vibration is going to resonate with one person or another.
• 30:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because we all have our different resonating frequencies.
• 31:01
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah. And for many interesting, unknowable, ineffable reasons, it's fascinating. So at this point, what are you thinking you're going to be when you grow up?
• 31:16
  Speaker B: No, I. Okay, no idea. I remember when at my graduation ceremony at Columbia, the thought of what I was going to do gave me an anxiety and panic attack.
• 31:30
  Speaker C: Who was the commencement speaker?
• 31:31
  Speaker B: Who was the commencement speaker?
• 31:33
  Speaker C: Do you remember? Because we just got over commencements here in town.
• 31:37
  Speaker B: It couldn't have been that memorable. I do remember that honorary degrees were given to Katharine Hepburn and Dizzy Gillespie.
• 31:45
  Speaker A: Okay, that's pretty cool, man.
• 31:47
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's psycho jazz right there.
• 31:49
  Speaker A: Both of those people, man. Katharine Hepburn.
• 31:51
  Speaker C: Yeah, Katherine Hepburn. She made me nervous, the way she talks.
• 31:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, she. She exhilarates me.
• 31:58
  Speaker C: Oh, he's got a thing.
• 32:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:01
  Speaker A: Yes, I do.
• 32:02
  Speaker B: So I did not know I wanted to be when I grow up, but my brother had. Was at Tulane. I had come down, I'd been to Mardi Gras a few times. I had come down, another one of my best friends who still lives here was living here. So I figured I didn't want to be in New York anymore. I figured I would come to New Orleans. I would do service industry and write poetry and hang out for a couple years, and if it didn't work out, I'd move back to the East Coast.
• 32:28
  Speaker A: Okay, so you did that. You got a job down on the docks.
• 32:36
  Speaker B: I was a Steve Doerr. Yeah. No, what happened was I was. I worked at assorted restaurant jobs for a While and catering. And I kind of fell into. Walked into WWZ and started volunteering. And right about now.
• 32:51
  Speaker A: What year is that?
• 32:52
  Speaker B: That's about late September, early October 1992.
• 32:57
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 32:58
  Speaker C: Oh, wow, that's a while ago.
• 32:59
  Speaker B: And I volunteered for a while. And at that point, WWZ was only on for 20, 21 hours a day. Their license was. So they shut off at maybe 2 and started again at 5. But spring of 1993, the FCC gave them a 24 hour license. So immediately they needed folks who could do a 2am to 5am jazz show. And I immediately said, I'll do that. That sounds like fun.
• 33:28
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 33:29
  Speaker B: And you know, I was hanging out at night and, you know, curing music and, you know, partying and stuff and working as a waiter for assorted horrible jobs and was like, I could do that. And so I started doing the 2am to 5am show, which I did for, I don't know, probably seven or eight years maybe.
• 33:49
  Speaker C: And you're smoking lots of crack then because that's when crack was big.
• 33:53
  Speaker A: Crack.
• 33:53
  Speaker B: Crack. Not a lot.
• 33:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, okay.
• 33:56
  Speaker B: Crack with crack was big back then, then. But, you know, you're eating crackling though, eating crackling. But you know, as they said, crack is whack. So I really stayed away from it.
• 34:04
  Speaker A: Okay, you heard that?
• 34:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, I heard that.
• 34:06
  Speaker A: Okay. Sound advice.
• 34:08
  Speaker B: So. Yeah. And it was also the great thing was the 2am to 5am set was there was no Internet at that point, so nobody was listening. Like, nobody was listening. So I could really do whatever I want. And if I wanted to do, you know, three hours of Frank Zappa or, you know, do play five Sun Ra Tunes at once, I could do such things. And no one really. And no one would be calling up.
• 34:30
  Speaker A: What are you doing?
• 34:32
  Speaker B: And anyone who was calling up was not remembering it the next day.
• 34:35
  Speaker A: Right, right, right. Okay. So that's. So you did that forever. And I noticed, just looking over your career, you, like, also like Manny and I, you start something and you just keep doing it.
• 34:48
  Speaker B: Yes. See how far it can take me.
• 34:51
  Speaker C: Right? Yeah.
• 34:53
  Speaker A: Well, I just can't quit anything, you know, it's like you have to. You have to fire me.
• 34:57
  Speaker D: I'm not.
• 34:58
  Speaker A: I'm not going to my own accord. I'm too sentimental.
• 35:02
  Speaker B: As I said, you could get me off the radio when you pry out of my cold, dead hands.
• 35:07
  Speaker A: Right, right, right.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: To quote Charlton Heston, the other thing that Oz did was, was they got a grant in the early 90s to train radio producers. And I applied for this and became and got trained to be a radio producer. So I started producing radio documentaries.
• 35:26
  Speaker A: Now, who trained you? What did that training amount to?
• 35:29
  Speaker B: Assorted folks at oz and they also had a guy named Steve Rath, who's a fantastic radio producer out of New York who came down to work with us. And there are a couple other folks. Damon Jacob, who's still there, helped train me.
• 35:45
  Speaker C: Okay, so when you say radio documentaries, what is, is that just a documentary?
• 35:52
  Speaker B: It's kind of like. It's kind of like a long form podcast, but from the 1990s.
• 35:57
  Speaker C: Okay, so you're telling stories.
• 35:59
  Speaker B: You're telling stories. I'm telling, I'm telling, I'm documenting assorted New Orleans musicians.
• 36:05
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 36:05
  Speaker B: You know, at the. The first ones were two hours each and then they moved on to kind of being an hour or a half hour.
• 36:11
  Speaker C: These are usually dead musicians.
• 36:16
  Speaker B: I tried to alternate between. Most of them were dead. I tried to alternate between some live ones. So the first one I did was on James Booker.
• 36:25
  Speaker C: Okay. And now who is he? I don't know who James Booker was.
• 36:28
  Speaker B: The greatest pianist you will ever hear in your life.
• 36:31
  Speaker C: Oh really? Better than Billy Joel?
• 36:33
  Speaker B: Better than Billy Joel.
• 36:34
  Speaker A: I have to say, as Dr. John said, the greatest gay one eyed junkie piano pullet genius that New Orleans.
• 36:43
  Speaker B: New Orleans ever had. Yeah, yeah. James Booker was. Was the greatest pianist you'll ever hear.
• 36:49
  Speaker C: And also I heard he's helping out those escaped convicts. Do you think that's true?
• 36:55
  Speaker B: Certainly the spirit of him is okay.
• 36:57
  Speaker C: Let's hope so. And now James Booker, he was in prison, right?
• 37:01
  Speaker B: Yes, he. He was in. He was in prison for a little while and I think he was in jail, not for too long, but every so often.
• 37:10
  Speaker C: But he probably loved it.
• 37:12
  Speaker B: I don't think he loved it, but he did lots of drugs and drank and occasionally would get himself into trouble.
• 37:21
  Speaker A: But a genius. And we have recordings of his that documented. And people today, still.
• 37:29
  Speaker B: People today are still listening to James Booker and processing him.
• 37:33
  Speaker C: Right.
• 37:33
  Speaker B: And dealing with him.
• 37:35
  Speaker A: Right.
• 37:35
  Speaker B: You can't. If you are going to play piano in New Orleans, you know, sooner or later you will have to deal with James Booker in the same way you have to deal with Professor Long Hair.
• 37:43
  Speaker A: Right.
• 37:43
  Speaker B: You know, you have to get through that and figure out what he was doing.
• 37:46
  Speaker A: What.
• 37:47
  Speaker B: Even though most people won't be able to do it because it's that hard.
• 37:49
  Speaker A: But you have to.
• 37:51
  Speaker C: Are you a Harry Connick Jr. Fan?
• 37:53
  Speaker B: I am.
• 37:54
  Speaker C: Really?
• 37:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:55
  Speaker C: Because I don't like him at all.
• 37:57
  Speaker B: Why not?
• 37:58
  Speaker C: I just think he's a Pompous jerk, you know. Anyway, we're going to have him on the show next week.
• 38:04
  Speaker B: That's a great idea.
• 38:05
  Speaker A: I think that's a long shot, but who knows?
• 38:06
  Speaker B: You never know.
• 38:07
  Speaker A: Anything's possible. So. So you're. You're. You're working there at Oz. You're. You're getting trained. You're. You're. Now, man, just looking back, can you believe the progress that Oz from starting in those. Those humble beginnings there to where they are now under Beth Arroyo.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Have you been to the new studio?
• 38:30
  Speaker A: I have.
• 38:31
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 38:31
  Speaker A: So, you know, Yes.
• 38:34
  Speaker B: I walk in there still, and we've had it now for nine months to a year, I want to say. And still part of me is like, what is this? We don't deserve this. The other part of me like, oh, boy, do we deserve this. We have worked very hard for this.
• 38:47
  Speaker A: Now, is that Daryl Berger lined all that up the. He's the owner of that building or something.
• 38:53
  Speaker B: As far as I know, he's the owner of that building. And Oz had to get out of the French Market building because it was in horrible shape, and they had to do repairs on it. And they had another place lined up, but it fell through. And I think Daryl kind of. Kind of looked at Beth and said, hey, I have these, you know, places. And we. And I think he really wanted us, which is kind of bizarre because most of the places we have been, they haven't quite wanted us to be there.
• 39:19
  Speaker A: Well, I think the whole thing is like his community service to put y' all in there. So shout out to him.
• 39:27
  Speaker B: Yes. Thank you, Darrell. So, yeah, and the first thing I realized when I walked in there for the first time is like, oh, my goodness, I can walk through Oz and not, you know, put my elbows out from my side and hit the walls with both elbows kind of thing. The first time ever, you know.
• 39:46
  Speaker C: And it doesn't stink.
• 39:48
  Speaker B: No, it doesn't stink. It doesn't have mildew. It doesn't. I mean, I will say I really missed the Oz in Armstrong park just because Armstrong park was a great spot and it was right, you know, in the midst of, you know, treme back then, which is different from treme now, but still. It's treme.
• 40:05
  Speaker A: Right? But still, just. Yeah.
• 40:09
  Speaker B: Right.
• 40:10
  Speaker A: Vortex. Yeah.
• 40:11
  Speaker B: And it was. It was where, you know, the. Where we were broadcasting was before the park was there, was where St. Claude, you know, was St. Claude and Dumaine, which, as you know from the song, is where you, you know, you'll see the Zulu Queen. So it was one of those spots. But this is a great place. The views are terrific. The, you know, we have lots of room. It, it looks great.
• 40:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. Well, we, this is so fascinating. We got so much more to talk about, but Manny, I'm looking at the drinks and.
• 40:40
  Speaker C: Yeah, we need to fill up here. We'll be right back down the road.
• 40:46
  Speaker D: Come on. John Cole quad now. He was loaded Loaded s to be. He was knocked out Knocked downloaded right.
• 41:01
  Speaker A: Now.
• 41:03
  Speaker D: And he wobble and wobble all over the table. He said that six months is a heavy sentence. He said one year is a whole lot of time Whole lot of time Born. He was born on Ponderosa.
• 41:27
  Speaker B: 7.
• 41:28
  Speaker D: And one year, one year, one year and 99. One year, one year one year to 99. I say the whiskey makes me frisky.
• 41:46
  Speaker A: And water.
• 41:50
  Speaker D: Makes me dry.
• 41:53
  Speaker B: My woman.
• 41:55
  Speaker D: Don'T let me get lonely she give me hair on Hair on hard before I die she gives me hair on she gives me hair on Long before I die.
• 42:11
  Speaker A: And we're back, back with Mr. Manny Chevrolet. I am Renee Coleman, back with our guest, Mr. David Cunian. And on the break there, brother Dave Clements. The, the, the emperor of the clempire strolled in here and he was chatting us up there. He's walking away now with a electric.
• 42:29
  Speaker C: He doesn't know when to show electric.
• 42:31
  Speaker B: Drill in his hand like any other movie star.
• 42:33
  Speaker A: Right, exactly. Well, so, yes, David, as a, as a longtime listener, you, you know that the show operates without any commercial sponsorship. Not that we would reject it. It just hasn't been forthcoming. So we're still operating under a listener sponsored model and we have the Venmo Link and the PayPal link there in the show notes of every show. And we have an old friend of mine who I didn't realize was a fan of the show, didn't realize was a member of the troubled nation, but shout out to Ms. Margo Tasker, great jewelry designer and artist who bought all the cocktails tonight. So thank you, Margo.
• 43:16
  Speaker B: Thank you.
• 43:16
  Speaker A: And yes, be like Margo. You can get some skin in the game here. If you're listening to the podcast.
• 43:22
  Speaker C: She local?
• 43:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She, her, her, her kids went to school together. She's here. She had, she was at the jazz fest at the, the, you know, the craft tents out there, the art, the artist, intense. And yeah, she's terrific. I might like to get her on the show, actually, now that I know she's kindly disposed to it. She'd be a good guest. You know, a rare female who is enjoying the show and she has. She has triplets, so I'm sure she could handle us. She's. She's got a thick skin. Anyway, so shout out to Margot Tasker and you know, you can find those. Those notes, as they say in the. The show, notes of every show. And the Facebook page. Also look for the links to the Troubled Men podcast T shirts. And those are live right now. You'll get them a little bit quicker. Also, we have the Patreon page. A handful of patrons who support us week in and week out. We love you. Thank you so much for your continued support. Also, what else? Follow us on social media, Instagram, Facebook and rate review and subscribe to the. The podcast, wherever you're listening to it helps us a lot. Costs you nothing. Give us five stars, something like that. Back to our guest, the great Mr. David Kunian. Now, David. Yeah. You were saying that you had a Snake and Jake story.
• 44:40
  Speaker B: I really don't. We all.
• 44:44
  Speaker A: I would like to.
• 44:45
  Speaker B: I was thinking this because I'm looking up at the photo over the bar of Griper, the late great who. Who was a bartender here for a while. And Griper used to. Every night when he came in to start the night, he would pour a shot of Jack Daniels and put it on the end of the bar. From Michael Ward, who you probably knew.
• 45:06
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 45:08
  Speaker B: And I did, at one point, I did a radio documentary on Michael Ward.
• 45:13
  Speaker A: Wow, man, I gotta hear that.
• 45:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's. It's.
• 45:15
  Speaker A: I love Michael, man.
• 45:16
  Speaker B: Michael was a great dude and knew.
• 45:18
  Speaker A: Him pretty well too well.
• 45:20
  Speaker B: Didn't we all? And he was just a great catalyst for music and a great guy. So I figured it's one of those where if you weren't around when he was running around, you might not get it in the same way that if you were where. It'll bring back a lot of the great things about the 1990s in New Orleans.
• 45:39
  Speaker A: Right.
• 45:40
  Speaker B: And I interviewed Elaine, the bartender here. I interviewed her here in the bar talking about Michael and stuff. And at the end of every interview, I always get about two minutes of the sound of the room. In case I'm doing editing and stuff. I need to add some silence. And somehow. And I got this idea that underneath the entire documentary, the half hour law documentary on Michael Ward, I have looped those two minutes of silence as an extra track underneath everything.
• 46:14
  Speaker A: It's not silence, just the chatter of the bar.
• 46:16
  Speaker B: Well, there was nobody else in here. But we were at 5 o' clock before they opened.
• 46:22
  Speaker A: I gotcha.
• 46:22
  Speaker B: So. And I realized one Time when I was listening to it, you can't hear it, but I think it adds to the spirit of it, the air that if Michael Ward has a ghost, he's probably here. So underneath the. The entire kind of half hour documentary is Michael Ward's ghost. Okay, so that is my Steak and Jake story that I can say without incriminating.
• 46:44
  Speaker A: I wasn't expecting the story to end like that, but okay, yeah, Michael Ward's ghost story. Well, you know, in those days, you had Michael Ward and his running partners being June Yamagishi and Thel de Cluet.
• 46:56
  Speaker B: The great Tharl De Cluet and the great June Yamagishi. Yeah, those crazy guys.
• 47:01
  Speaker A: Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
• 47:04
  Speaker B: Look out when you see those guys coming. Fun will be had.
• 47:08
  Speaker A: Holy moly. So you're working all those years at Oz, you start getting serious in some way, you go back to Tulane, get a degree. Is that when that happens?
• 47:20
  Speaker B: Well, I had been funding all of these by grants from mainly the Arts Council of New Orleans and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, funding the audio documentaries and right about goodness, 2004. So I think there was the recession. Something happened that the grant started kind of drying up. And I said, okay, what am I going to do? What are we doing next? And I knew that, but Tulane had a musicology degree. So I said, you know what? It's about time to kind of. I'll go back. I'll go back to school. I'll get a degree in musicology and see what that can do. You know, maybe I can teach. Maybe, you know, I'll get better grants. Who knows?
• 48:08
  Speaker A: Right. Right.
• 48:09
  Speaker C: Right.
• 48:09
  Speaker A: Now you like being in school?
• 48:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, I like being in school. School's. I mean, it's fun. I like, you know, the graduate program was good. Of course, what happens was my first day of classes was to be August 29, 2005.
• 48:26
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 48:29
  Speaker B: Now, for those of you who don't know what that date is, the 20th anniversary was coming up. That's the day Katrina hit. So. And all of the kind of sheet music and the music stuff in the library at Tulane was in the basement.
• 48:45
  Speaker A: Oh, geez.
• 48:46
  Speaker B: So all of that stuff got flooded out because tulane got probably 7ft of water, I want to say. So I kept trying and trying to, like, I would kind of just let me back in. And they. Everyone, as you remember, you know, was shocked. No one could deal with anything. Everyone was traumatized by what is going on, righteously. So Tulane just said, we're, you know, we're canceling the musicology program. You know, I went. Oh, okay. Well, I guess I'm not getting my musicology degree, so I went back to making more documentaries. Freelance, as I call it. Freelance musicology. You know, writing stuff. You know, writing music articles, cultural articles, that kind of thing.
• 49:27
  Speaker A: Now all this writing. Sorry, just to go back. Is that you think Columbia, they must have trained you to be a good writer.
• 49:34
  Speaker B: I think I'm not a great writer, but I'm a good writer. And that's your undergrad in. It was in history.
• 49:41
  Speaker A: History. Okay. Well, yeah, you got to do a lot of writing for that, right.
• 49:45
  Speaker B: So then I continued doing that, and then I will not remember the year because.
• 49:51
  Speaker A: Year, because that's okay.
• 49:52
  Speaker B: But anyway, Tulane brought the musicology program back, and it happened to be being run by one of my best friends. Of course, it's New Orleans. That's the way it goes. But when I heard about it, that was coming back.
• 50:04
  Speaker C: Megan.
• 50:07
  Speaker B: Matt Sakakini, even better.
• 50:08
  Speaker C: Okay. And because Nagan's a good friend of mine.
• 50:12
  Speaker B: Is he?
• 50:12
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 50:13
  Speaker B: Did you go visit him in jail?
• 50:14
  Speaker C: What's that?
• 50:15
  Speaker B: Did you go visit him in jail?
• 50:16
  Speaker C: No.
• 50:16
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 50:17
  Speaker C: No, I don't want to get that.
• 50:18
  Speaker B: Did you help him break out? Oh, he didn't break out.
• 50:20
  Speaker C: He didn't break out? No.
• 50:21
  Speaker B: With all those facial tattoos, he probably would have gotten away with it. No, I'm kidding.
• 50:25
  Speaker A: Anyway, that's his kids moving on.
• 50:29
  Speaker B: So I call up bad and say, I'm in. I want this back. And so Matt says, yeah, that shouldn't be a problem. So I started getting my musicology degree again in maybe 2000. I want to say it's 2008, 2009, and I finished class. Took me two years to finish classes and another two years to do the thesis.
• 50:52
  Speaker A: Now your thesis, it's on AFO records. All for One.
• 50:58
  Speaker B: All for One records and modern jazz. Harold Batiste. Modern jazz in New Orleans.
• 51:02
  Speaker A: Now, you know, Ellis Marcellus was a teacher of mine, and so I'm very familiar. Ellis was. Was right there in the. You know, played on all those AFO records along with James Black. Now, that's a very special time in. In modern jazz in New Orleans.
• 51:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:17
  Speaker A: Talk about that a little.
• 51:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, well. But it was modern jazz in New Orleans, especially the AFO guys. It was a special time. One because they brought a certain kind of New Orleans sensibility to playing bebop and hard bop and all that kind of stuff, because the rhythms were a little more danceable, and there just was a kind of, you know, this. A New Orleans flavor, whatever that Is.
• 51:44
  Speaker A: But you can hear it in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:45
  Speaker B: And also especially Harold. Harold wanted to. He would. You know, he was a race man, and he wanted, you know, to promote black folk and stuff and not get ripped off like everybody did. So what they did was they put it together as a collective. So everyone kind of bought shares and it was. Everyone voted on what was going on and stuff. And it worked for a little while until they kind of got a little. They decided to move to Los Angeles to help. To get a little closer to the business. And it didn't quite. The collective didn't quite work out there in the same way. So a few of them moved back. Harold, I think, stayed.
• 52:29
  Speaker A: The humidity's too low.
• 52:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, the humidity is too low.
• 52:34
  Speaker C: Just the mob. It's basically just the mob. They sign you, they give you a bunch of money, and then you spend your rest of your life paying them back.
• 52:43
  Speaker B: It's a shame we don't have a real musician here at this table. Who could. Who could, you know, say that?
• 52:48
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 52:49
  Speaker B: But. Well, as someone. Lots of people said they're basically loan sharks.
• 52:53
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 52:54
  Speaker B: That's like. You say they loan you money to make the record and you end up, you know, paying it back the whole time.
• 53:00
  Speaker A: Well, AFO was trying to buck that and be an independent, successful independent and.
• 53:05
  Speaker B: Keep their publishing together. And it was. I think ultimately it was successful for the music they put out and the idea of trying to do this.
• 53:15
  Speaker A: Well, the records were great.
• 53:16
  Speaker B: And the records are fantastic. Yeah, yeah, the records are, you know, that. That Ellis Marsalis record. And a lot of their singles and stuff, they weren't just doing, you know, they were doing some jazz, but they also were doing, you know, R B. They put out. Their first single was Barbara George's. I know.
• 53:34
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 53:35
  Speaker B: You know, that's. Put that on today. And it's still great. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's still. And some of the other more obscure things are also fantastic, you know.
• 53:43
  Speaker A: And you know about all that stuff. Stuff.
• 53:45
  Speaker B: Of course, I listened to it a lot. I still do, you know, still great stuff.
• 53:49
  Speaker C: What did you call it? Mixology or music?
• 53:51
  Speaker B: Musicology.
• 53:52
  Speaker C: Musicology, yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker B: I also. I also did some mixology in my day, too.
• 53:56
  Speaker C: Now when I went to college, it was boozology, which is a whole different, you know, thing. Yeah, you know, boozology. Mixology.
• 54:06
  Speaker B: Well, mixology is when folks decided to get really fancy with it and instead of getting whatever you got, you know, boozology is when your ingredients are from K and B. Mixology is when you're growing your ingredients in the backyard.
• 54:17
  Speaker C: What is kmb?
• 54:19
  Speaker A: Cats. And best off, the great rear.
• 54:21
  Speaker B: Were you around? K and B would close. What did.
• 54:24
  Speaker A: I think K and B closed before Manny got here. Manny was working at. At. At Walgreens at one time. A lot of Walgreens bought up A lot of the K and B.
• 54:33
  Speaker B: When I moved here, was kind of the local drugstore chain.
• 54:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, I must have had 25 of them or something. They were everywhere.
• 54:41
  Speaker C: And you did a lot of drugs back then?
• 54:43
  Speaker B: No more than anybody else.
• 54:45
  Speaker A: Sure, sure, sure.
• 54:46
  Speaker B: Didn't we all?
• 54:47
  Speaker C: Yeah. Well, what was your drug of choice?
• 54:51
  Speaker B: My drug of choice really was probably, you know, booze. A little bit of booze here and there.
• 54:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Yeah. We don't need to get any more incriminating than that. Okay, so you have this thesis on afo, but then, like, you know, looking at all these, these other subjects that you've chosen to do these, these, you know, radio documentaries on, you know, like Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima.
• 55:14
  Speaker B: Those are actually the exhibits. Oh, the exhibits are. The documentaries have been Lee Dorsey and.
• 55:20
  Speaker A: Jonathan Froehlich, a former guest of ours.
• 55:24
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you had Fro here.
• 55:25
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 55:26
  Speaker B: Sweet.
• 55:27
  Speaker A: Need to have him on again. We had him on during the pandemic.
• 55:29
  Speaker B: Oh, no, you definitely, definitely. You know, he, he, he. He is a man who knows many things about many things.
• 55:34
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, no, Jonathan can talk. Jonathan. He wants to come on the podcast and start asking me questions. Of course, then he'll go, I should have you on my podcast. And I go, well, ask me. And then he never does.
• 55:49
  Speaker B: So, yeah, the. The Dog and Other Dog. You know, Guitar Slim, James Black. Those are the other documentaries.
• 55:54
  Speaker A: Right, right, right, right, right. Man, such fantastic work. And that's. Now where are those archived at?
• 56:01
  Speaker B: Those are all. My brother put them. Made a YouTube channel for me, and they are all audio documentaries on the YouTube channel. So just look up David Cunion on YouTube and they're all there. So.
• 56:11
  Speaker A: Okay, cool. Well, I'll put a link in the show notes to all of those because, you know, that, that work. You know, it's. It's no Troubled men podcast, but it's very important.
• 56:23
  Speaker B: I've always been trying to reach Yalls standard. It's true.
• 56:26
  Speaker A: Well, keep thinking. Keep reaching lower. You could do worse.
• 56:32
  Speaker B: I could dig deep.
• 56:34
  Speaker A: So fast forward. You somehow parlay this musicology degree into.
• 56:41
  Speaker B: I got this musicology degree and then they're hiring at the jazz museum at the state museum. So I become the music curator of the state museum, and they decide that they're going, you know, so they can reopen the Jazz Museum.
• 56:52
  Speaker A: Right.
• 56:52
  Speaker B: And I start doing. Putting together exhibits, which is like putting together documentaries, except they're, you know, actually physical things. And start doing ones, I guess. The first ones, I did one on women in New Orleans jazz. I did another one on Pete Fountain. And then they kind of all start rolling together. I did one for Professor Longhair Centennial. And.
• 57:17
  Speaker A: And you did some on. On some other, like, art, you know, Painters of New Orleans did one's James Nicolopoulos.
• 57:24
  Speaker B: I did another one of Emily Rees and Noel Rockmore. Ebelisa Pater in town, who paints musicians, fantastic painter, and her dad was Noel Rockmore, who did. The best way to explain it is the. The ones of all the Preservation hall musicians. These kind of dark canvas and guys sitting there. If you've been in Prez hall, they're in there you go, oh, yeah, those guys kind of thing.
• 57:47
  Speaker A: Right. And one that really caught my attention is the one that you did on the great degenerate poet Everett Maddox.
• 57:55
  Speaker B: Oh, I did a documentary on Everett. Yeah. That was a blast.
• 57:58
  Speaker A: Now, what an interesting character. So any New Orleans may know him from. There's a plaque of him at the end of the bar at the Maple Leaf. And he, for years and years, decades, had early Sunday, like, poetry reading gathering there. There at the Maple Leaf. And in fact, when I had this. This guy, Kurt Lipschutz on. On the. The podcast, who's Chuck Proffitt's songwriting partner, and he's a poet by training and by. By vocation, and he. He came here on the podcast, and then he wanted to go see the Maple Leaf and see the plaque for Everett Maddox. Now, Everett Maddox would substitute teach at Ben Franklin when I was a student there.
• 58:46
  Speaker B: You're kidding.
• 58:47
  Speaker A: So you could come in any day and see him nursing a hangover behind the desk.
• 58:54
  Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. So what did you learn from Ever Maddox?
• 58:59
  Speaker A: Oh, he wouldn't teach anything. No, he wouldn't try to teach. He would just like, be like, just do whatever you want. Just keep, you know, be quiet. Just. I'm gonna put my head down on the desk. Okay, cool.
• 59:11
  Speaker B: That sounds typical.
• 59:14
  Speaker A: Now, I have a great story. I'll tell you after the podcast. But. But Everett Maddox. Yeah, so. So it must have been fascinating to. To tell his story, huh?
• 59:22
  Speaker B: It was. It was great. And it also, I mean, having done ones on Michael Ward and James Booker and Maddox gets me very deep into the Maple Leaf. That was always an interesting. And the great thing about hearing Everett Maddox's stories is that one. They're as wild as any other stories of crazy artists in New Orleans. But he seemed to be such a. He seemed to be a very kind and gentle soul. And he's troubled, but, yes, definitely troubled. In fact, you could probably name a podcast after him. And the thing about him is when you read his poetry, it's deep. It has allusions and it's metaphors, the whole everything poetry should have. But you never. You always know what he's talking about sometimes. Lots of people write poetry and it has all of that.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker A: It's too opaque, but you can't quite.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker B: Figure out what they're getting at. Everett's stuff was deep, and also, you always knew what he was talking about. And his poetry about New Orleans is as good as anybody else. You know, it's good as any kind of art statement about New Orleans.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker A: And what an iconic character. You know, for those that didn't know Everett, he. You know, someone who is a heavy drinker. Let me say that. But he would always wear a Brooks Brothers suit and a white Brooks Brothers, you know, oxford shirt. And he would wear it until it would fall off in rags. And then his acolytes would. Would buy him a new set of clothes, and he would never wash it, never laundry.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker B: He'd be sleeping in this.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker A: Wear it until it would fall off his body. He was very much like a. Had a monkish sort of existence, you know, Anyway.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, one of those. Yeah, everybody go read everybody. So you're better off for it.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, man. Having someone like you on the show. And I've had a number of people recently. I had Mark Guarino, great writer, author. You know, I've had Michael Tisseran on the show before, you know, others.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker C: He's a thief.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker A: People who are excellent interviewers who have interviewed so many people. And then. Then I have them on this show. And so. So I think, well, you know, they're not. They don't have Manny, so that's. That's.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker B: That. That. The secret weapon.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker A: It's not so secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. But I think. Well, you know, is there any question that I haven't asked you that I should have asked you?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker C: Well, what about. We gotta get to Chaz Fest.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Back to Chad. Thank you.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker C: Thank you.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker C: Cause you were one of the first promoters of it. I don't know.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker A: I was the first mc.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker B: I was the emcee for almost all of them. And the first mc.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker B: For when Alex and Courtney and Daniel, all kind of. And I'M forgetting a couple of the, you know, Jeff Treffinger. Jeff Treffinger, all kind of, you know, got the idea that. That they could do, you know, they had a space and a grand truck.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker C: Which was like four backyards that were all communal.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker A: Went a whole. And went all the way in the entire block.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker A: When they first bought those, it was four shotgun doubles that faced St. Claude. And then. And then they had all the. And they. Jeff said when he bought that they walked in the back and there was a horse grazing, Right?
• 1:02:50
  Speaker C: Yeah. Chickens. They had all sorts.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker B: It was a farm.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker A: It was like a police horse because the police stables were next door.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker C: Just one.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker A: They didn't have a fence. Anyway, so.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker B: So they. They had the idea after Katrina where, you know, some of them didn't get into jazz, that they would just, you know, hey, mom, we'll put on a show.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker A: Right, right, right, right.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker B: And for some, you know, and they kept doing it. Even though I think it. It, you know, I don't.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker C: Well, it was.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker B: I think they ever made any money.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker C: It was that Thursday before they had.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker A: It was the Wednesday.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker C: It was a Wednesday between Jazz Fest, where it's Truck Farm. There was locals who didn't get to play Jazz Fest. Maybe some of them do. I don't know.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker A: Right. Mostly bands that weren't.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker B: That weren't playing Jazz Fest.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker C: And they said, we're gonna do this.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. And they got, you know, their friends who were chefs to cook stuff.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker B: Gianna Satchray came in and cook some stuff. And. And they had bars.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker A: Helena set up a bar from, you know, from. From Mermaid People.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I remember. I don't know what. What Chaz says it was, but Jeff asked me to do 10 minutes of jokes, and I said, really? Really? You sure you want me to do this? Said, yeah. It was between. I was between some circus acrobats and supergroup.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker C: And they had a big stage, and they had, like two little.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker A: One smaller stage.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker C: Yeah. One smaller stage. And I said, all right, I'll do it. And I don't think Jeff remembered my act. I don't know if he ever saw my act, but it was very offensive.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker B: Very well, it should have been.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker C: It was lots of one liners, you know, one liners this, one liners that one. That kind of stuff. And I'll never forget my wife and my child, who must have been 18 months at the time, were sitting there watching me, and my kid kept going this pointing at me. Poppy. Poppy. And I'm saying jokes like, you know, I'm I'm insulting people. Nice chin, lady. When's the last time you saw your breasts? You know, those kind of jokes, you know, I don't know. I'm getting heckled. I said, this girl's so fat, her parents took her to a fat farm, they turned it into a ranch. You know, those kind of jokes, you know? But I'll never forget Jeff, who asked me to do this after I did my 10 minutes or so, and then supergroup comes on. Jeff comes up to me and goes, yeah, never playing again. But they didn't last that much longer. I think they ended and stuff like that a few years later.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker B: A couple years. A couple years later.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, but good long run.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker C: But Jeff. Jeff did say I liked a lot of those.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker A: Okay, we got the thumbs up. Can't please everybody.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker C: Yeah, you can't please everyone. He's a good guy.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker C: We should get him on this show.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Again, Jeff's been on the show many, many times, actually. Some. Some Geraniums. That's the band that I always play with, Jeff's band, you know, and I was. We were talking before the podcast started. You know how that was. It's kind of a sacred group for me, you know, that every. Every gig we played felt like a drunken prayer to God with. With Brendan and Jeff and. And that band.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker B: Those uranium shows were. Were so. I mean, you were. You were at this small stage with all of the kind of, you know, like all of your friends and people who knew every word.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker C: Right.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker B: You know, beautiful poetry.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, we're a small stage kind of act. That's. That's where that's where we want to be. Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker B: Intimate in that good way.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker C: So when did Chaz Fest and when was the last time?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker A: Like 2019 or something?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker C: Before the pandemic or.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. They sold Truck Farm.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker C: Sold it. That's right.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker A: And then. So that's one.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker B: They did one more in 2024 at the broadside.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker A: Oh, no. So this last year, yeah, we had. We had.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker B: Tom Thayer did it.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker A: Tom Thayer from formerly of dba, now has a New Suit Productions. And yes, he did Chaz Fest revisited When Pigs Fly. Cuz. Cuz Alex, people would always. Alex McMurray would say. People would come up to him and go, when are you going to do jazz Chaz Fest again? It was so great. You got to find another space and do it. And he'd say, no, I'm not going to do it. You know, when pigs fly. So ultimately they had another one now that there's been a Couple of days. One was the. The most recent or both of them, the Mermaid reunions. But. But that Chaz Fest revisited was of the caliber where I thought, that's one of the most fun days I've had in memory, man. Where all those bands were there and all the fans that would show up to those things came out. And you were the MC this year.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker B: It was all. It was always, what, like a garden party with great drinks and your friends playing and all the bands you want to.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. And just. And. And all the weirdos who, you know, who Jazz Fest wouldn't book, but some of the coolest bands, you know, that just. It's for Chaz Fest. Not Jazz Fest.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker B: Jazz Fest for Washboard Chaz.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker A: Right, right, right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Who I run into everywhere. I was up in D.C. playing or in Norfolk playing with the Iguanas and Sunny Landreth as Double Bill, and. And I'm there at Soundcheck or I'm coming back to play the show and I'm going, God, that guy sure does look like washboard jazz. And then sure enough, it's him walking up the street because he's in Norfolk with 10 men, you know, playing the next day. And he comes and sits with it, sits in with us.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker C: Well, now, here's the joke.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker A: Our man's gonna close.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker C: All right. I remember when I was a young man, I went to my grandparents house for some kind of family activity. And then after dinner, my grandfather brought me up to the attic and I walked up there with him and he pulled down this huge case, and in the case was a mermaid. And he said, I want you to take off all your clothes and fuck the mermaid. So I did. My grandfather just watched. He just watched me fucking this mermaid. Then years later, my grandfather died and I decided to go up to the attic to find that case. I found that case. I pulled it down and I opened it and there was a dead monkey with his legs sewn together. You remind me of that dead monkey.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker A: Okay. He didn't see that one coming. All right, well, on that note, David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker C: I pointed at Renee when I said the monkey.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker A: Okay. I'm. I'm all right.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker C: Good night.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker B: Speaks his mind.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker A: Monkey speaks his mind. And thank you for all the work that you do that you're doing God's work over there at the radio and at the jazz music. Thank you very much. And as always, the Troublemaker podcast. We like to say trouble never ends.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker C: But the monkey continues for mayor.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker D: Good night Tonight Tell me everything tonight there's something sweet about the moonlight Tell me everything tonight Right. Tomorrow may not be what we had bargained for. Perhaps we should have chose the other door. I'll help you sweep up here, then you can mop up the floor with me. But tonight Tell me everything tonight.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker C: Money.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker D: What's a couple of grand between good friends for a little swindle?
• 1:11:48
  Speaker C: Should I?
• 1:11:49
  Speaker D: Friendship, Ben. But tonight Tell me everything tonight there's something sweet about moonlight Tell me everything.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker A: Tonight.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker D: I've been on something Running M to N maybe tomorrow I'll begin again but tonight Tell me everything tonight Night there's something sweet about the moonlight Tell me everything tonight.