It wasn’t really that long ago that Eric Lindell was doing scattered gigs at the Old Point Bar near his house in Algiers and playing every Monday night at the Circle Bar. On many nights during the early days of the Circle Bar gig, the audience was still sparse enough to make even the tiny confines of that Lee Circle hideaway feel a little empty. Regardless of whether the crowds were there or not, Lindell’s warm vibe and soulful voice proved to be a magnet for musicians, and many of New Orleans’ finest made there way over to jam with him and his band. After a while, the word spread and those Monday nights became a hotspot. The local media started to take notice, and Jazzfest head-honcho Quint Davis dropped in for a visit. And it all started to roll from there.

Now Eric Lindell is signed to the prominent blues label Alligator Records, after years as an independent touring bandleader and recording artist. His debut for the album, Change in the Weather, is in stores now.

“What I did was license 14 songs to Alligator and they remastered them in Chicago in a nice studio,” Lindell says. “Stuff that I had produced and put out myself. So it’s cool to see it go to use because a lot of that shit was on six-song EPs. I’d put two CDs out in a year and they kind of slipped through the cracks.”

While his recordings may not have hit nationally, his prolific output — four CDs in three years — was readily received in the New Orleans area. By Jazzfest 2003, his sound was well known around town through his live performances and his CDs, which were spun regularly on WWOZ and barroom jukeboxes. It had taken four years of hammering it out in the local bars, but Lindell had finally started to establish a New Orleans fan base comparable to the one that he had left behind in his native California. West Coast runs that capitalized on his Cali draw had helped support Lindell while he built up his new musical home down south. New Orleans, though, was also becoming viable moneymaking territory for him.

Alligator came knocking last summer, and Lindell’s deal with the label was still being worked out when Hurricane Katrina hit. He was out on the West Coast with his band, which includes guitarist Chris Mulé and bassist Aaron Wilkinson. They all lived in New Orleans and they were, like hundreds of thousands of others, stranded. They joined forces with another displaced musician, and in doing so brought one of the great masters of the modern New Orleans groove into their fold.

“Running into people, it’s just awesome,” Lindell says. “Kirk [Joseph] was out there with his wife Vanessa right after the hurricane hit, I guess doing some stuff with Anders [Osborne]. They were just stuck there, so we said, ‘Come on man, get on with us!’ We had Aaron on bass, Kirk on sousaphone, and we did a string of dates down southern California and it’s been just a lot of love.”

Being on the road under the flag of the Crescent City in the immediate aftermath of Katrina exposed Lindell and the band to an outpouring of emotion from supporters of New Orleans and music lovers around the country. Lindell kept a positive message front and center.

“I came back (to New Orleans) at the end of October. That was the first time I was back,” Lindell says.

“I’ve been telling everybody it’s going to come back strong. The people that love here are great, all of the people that are from here and the people that always come here and love New Orleans for music. The support is unbelievable from everyone everywhere. A lot of people are just returning what New Orleans gives. People are so grateful for the music that comes out of here.”

In the post-Katrina world, many New Orleans musicians have been the beneficiaries both of an outpouring of support around the world and a financially revitalized scene at home. Lindell and his bandmates have felt the shift as more love is being focused on New Orleans and its music. “Like Kirk was saying to me, even though it’s terrible, it helped a lot of musicians out,” Lindell says. “Everybody I know right now is working so much.”

As Katrina’s floodwaters receded, Lindell cemented his deal with Alligator. With his first label contract in his pocket and a tight road band under his wing, Lindell has his sights set firmly on the future.

“I’ve been writing songs like a madman, so that’s something in the long run that I plan on doing for Alligator, their other artists, is writing for them,” he says. As for recording his band under his new contract, Lindell wants to bring the whole process home to New Orleans. “We’re excited to do that, to actually get in and get everybody involved in writing and crank out a brand new record,” he says. “I’d like to go back to Piety (Street Recording studios) if possible. There’s just such a good vibe over there.”

After so many years in the business as an independent, what he desires from his newly acquired status as a signed artist is what almost everybody else wants — “Mainly to get us more comfortable,” he says.

“The basics, man. You know what I’m saying? To have a van with insurance!” he says, laughing, “and a trailer!

“Having the pieces of the puzzle together is going to help things run a lot smoother because we’ve been out there. When you’re out there plugging away and you got an agent but you don’t have a label, anybody working press, you don’t have merch (retail merchandise) sometimes — there’s no point of doing a show opening for somebody in front of a few thousand people and having no merch, and that shit happens.”

While Lindell has his core band of Mulé, Wilkinson, and his longtime west coast associate Jake Brown on drums, he still loves to mix it up with other musicians in the way that no other city besides New Orleans really affords. His full time band can handle the big gigs and the festivals, while spur-of-the-moment combinations can create great one-off moments.

“That’s what the beauty of New Orleans, that we can do that here,” marvels Lindell. “We can throw different things together and make it different and be able to still do Circle Bar.

"We did a show at Tip’s the other weekend and had an awesome show with our core band together, and it was great, man. The next weekend I played with (New Orleans drummer) Allyn Robinson, and (veteran guitarist and walking blues encyclopedia) Jack Cole, who’s my — he’s like probably what [Johnny] Vidacovich is to Stanton [Moore], to me — and (sought-after R&B keyboard stalwart) Marc Adams. That’s the beauty of New Orleans, being able to do stuff like that.”