TalkBack with Clint Maedgen

By John Swenson

Clint Maedgen is a busy man. The impresario behind the Brechtian New Orleans musical theater group The New Orleans Bingo! Show is also the front man for his own groups, a frequent collaborator with Morning 40 Federation, and newest full-time member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has become one of the central figures in Voodoo Fest, where the Bingo! Parlour tent show became Voodoo’s signature venue last year. This tent was the centerpiece of an alternative midway where the Maedgen’s Barnum-esque genius took full flower. It was a constant churn of trapeze artists, burlesque performers, clown acts, a ringmaster deft at inducing audience participation, and, of course, Maedgen’s trademark bingo games. The music in the Bingo! Parlour was also some of the most intense. The Zydepunks conjured a raucous dance party, Quintron played the best set I’ve ever heard from him, and Morning 40 Federation created absolute pandemonium as fans sang along to the lurching, drunken choruses of the band’s songs and crowd surfed off the stage. “This ain’t your father’s festival, fuck you!!!” rasped Ryan Scully as the 40s, augmented by a full horn section including Maedgen on saxophone—with Quintron playing keyboards on the side—brought on special guest Andre Williams.

Photo by Zach Smith

Maedgen will also be performing in the Preservation Hall Tent as part of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The group’s director, Ben Jaffe, has incorporated the Bingo! concept into some of the Hall’s presentations to great effect, especially on the iconic video of “Complicated Life,” a song by Ray Davies of the Kinks that has proven to be a near perfect vehicle for the collaboration of The Bingo Show! and Preservation Hall.

You went just to see the festival before you actually performed there, right?
Yeah. Any time a major rock and roll festival is going to happen in New Orleans you’ve got to go check that out. I’m just really happy that Stephen Rehage has stuck by New Orleans and continued to be a part of New Orleans. It’s a courageous and really important thing to do. I’ve got a lot of respect for him.

When did you meet him?
Two years ago. We did the tent last year, but we had done a show in the Preservation Hall tent the year before that.

He saw the show and talked to you afterwards?
Yeah I think that’s what it was. He saw that gig, then he came out to a couple of other gigs in between Voodoo fests. He showed up to a couple of Morning 40 gigs, Happy Talk gigs, and saw the whole family vibe we’ve got. It’s a really infectious thing. It has been for all of us, and I think he got into the spirit of it.

Whose idea was the Bingo! Parlour?
Me and all the members, as well as Ben Jaffe. We have a lot of blueprints going, and we come up with ideas all day long. One of the oldest ideas is fielding some sort of tent show or any sort of venue to showcase the whole scene that we’ve built over the last 10 years, and that we’ve been a part of and that all our friends have contributed so much to and helped build as well. This cross-pollination of bands—I’m sure it happens in other cities—but it’s one of my favorite things that happens in our city, that fact that you can see somebody sing for one band and play trombone in another band and play drums in yet another band, be a backup singer in another band—you know how it is.

It seems like what you’re doing, along with Quintron and Morning 40 and other New Orleans bands in that scene, they all reflect the whole history of New Orleans music in different ways, where elements of New Orleans R&B, gospel music and even traditional jazz are interwoven into some pretty intense rock ’n’ roll. I don’t think you find that anywhere else.
I couldn’t say, but that’s definitely what’s happening in New Orleans and has been for quite some time. I love it so much. It’s great to have a chance to play for all of our friends and at the same time have an international audience coming in and joining the fun. It’s the way it should be.

What was your reaction to the way the audience responded to last year’s event?
I guess the word is euphoric [laughs]. It was a big party with all of my friends. I saw all my friends perform. I’m looking forward to seeing all these other shows at the festival, and it’s really cool that they come to see us as well. It’s just the family thing, being backstage with our crew.

Everybody really stepped up with their performances last year. I was pleasantly shocked at the way the crowds took to the whole thing.
Well the crowd is 50 percent of it, man. For me, it would be a totally different show with a different audience. There’s something about that New Orleans audience, and the people who come in from other places get caught up in it because our New Orleans crowd is part of the show, too. The music and what’s going on stage really extends out to right where you’re standing. Those people know the words. They’ve been listening to it for a long time.

It was pretty moving when Andre Williams came on. I thought that might be the last time we would ever see him and yet here he is again this year.
I’ll tell you, Andre Williams is the real deal. I love being around that guy. I don’t do a lot of talking; I just do a lot of listening.

How much of the Bingo! Show is improvisational, especially the theatrical side of it?
I don’t know. At this point I’m concentrating so much on playing and singing, I don’t even really know what those cats are doing half the time. We’ve been doing this thing for I guess eight years now. We’ve done so many things and there’s so many other things we want to do, I guess it just comes down to time, time to practice and get stuff down. We haven’t really practiced in five years. We’ve been so busy just doing the gigs.

A lot of it is improvisation; it feeds off the audience, what the audience brings. Sometimes it’s a matter of trying to resurrect a sinking ship. Sometimes something will go terribly wrong, amplifiers will break or something and we’re always able to work around it, and I think that’s probably our biggest strength, trying to make something good out of something that went wrong. That’s a lot of fun.

What’s going on with Liquidrone?
I’m leaving Liquidrone in the basement this year. I thought I’d leave it alone for awhile. We might unleash it this year some time. It’s this crazy wild card in my pocket that I can pull out if I want to when it makes perfect sense. But I don’t feel like I’ve got to.

I’m going to do something with my big band, Clint Maedgen Plus Nine. We did it last year, too. It’s an orchestral band; it includes some people I used in Liquidrone a long time ago.

And you’ll be working as an MC as well.
I don’t know. That stuff just kind of happens organically.

That’s great. There aren’t many people approaching a big stage rock show with the attitude of just winging it.
My friends don’t allow me to take it that seriously. They’re like, “Oh wow, you’re getting kind of severe on this, man. Just relax and have a good time.”

Did you learn anything from last year that you’ll apply to this year’s festival?
Personally, I would have to say a couple of less performances. I really kind of went for it last year. I think I did eight performances in three days. It was great to perform that much music and god knows I love it, but at the same time I didn’t get to see what was going on around me as much as I wanted to. I pushed myself to see if I could do it. I feel like I pulled it off. I was really happy with it. That being said, I feel like I don’t have to do that again. I’ll do five performances in three days instead of eight.

It really is a showcase of the new face of New Orleans music over the last decade. New people coming to town, new bands forming and a kind of new aesthetic to New Orleans music.
We’ve all been hanging out together so long, we’re starting to look alike, y’know what I’m saying? It’s just people having fun, people being in four or five different bands. You can see that they’re having fun. You can see that they love each other. You can see that it means something to them because they’ve done it 50 times before when there wasn’t anybody there. Like at the Dragon’s Den in ’98 and there were 13 people there and about 10 of them were on stage. So it’s a real thrill for all of us to be able to do it in front of a big audience. We haven’t changed. Now we’re doing the same thing with some people in the audience.

You’ll also play with the Preservation Hall band.
I’ll be playing clarinet with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. I’m a full time member of that band now. I’ve been playing with them for four years, but now I’ve got a seat playing the clarinet which is such an amazing, amazing honor for me to have an opportunity to do this. I’m really excited about it and I’m really excited about that performance at Voodoo as well.

Does playing in the Preservation Hall band raise your game?
Oh my god, yes. Hanging out with anybody who has that much experience will make you better. I don’t talk a lot; I do a lot of listening. I’m on tour with the hippest uncles in the entire universe. They don’t let me slide, y’know? It’s like, okay, we’re going back to the piano on this one, man. I spent a lot of times with Mr. John [Brunious] before he passed—he would sit with me at the piano. I don’t think a lot of people even knew he played piano, and he would say [affects a dignified, low register voice] “Sing it again, Clint. Let’s get it right. This is the melody.” He was an incredible teacher. Working with him, I kept learning all these new tunes all the time. And that’s just the music, man. That’s not the life lessons I learned.

The stories, unbelievable stories about the Dew Drop Inn back in the day, Walt [Walter Payton] played bass on “Tell It Like It Is” and on “Working in a Coal Mine;” he had all those Cosimo Matassa stories. Not to mention all the Percy Humphrey stories, and Sweet Emma, George Lewis—they knew all these people. They are New Orleans and their family is New Orleans, some of them are fifth generation musicians. Lucien Barbarin, his great uncle Paul Barbarin wrote so many of those tunes. It’s just an amazing education. I’m really excited about it. For my friends and my audience to get to know these cats and see them perform and realize what an incredible history these men carry, this heritage, this music. They are New Orleans. We need to treasure that and sit down and listen to what they have to say. I want to document some of these stories because if we don’t pass the stories along, there’ll be nobody to tell them. Nobody will know the stories because they won’t be told anymore.

Danny Barker did a lot of work like that with his era of musicians. He went around with a tape recorder and took down the stories in addition to being a musician himself.

I’d like to fit into that category as far as someone who might help document that history. If these cats will allow me to do it.

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