"I don’t have any gold records on my wall, but I’m proud of my music," said one of New Orleans’ underrated musical treasures, Bruce Daigrepont. Daigrepont’s Sunday Fais Do Do at Tipitina’s Uptown is one of the city’s longest-running gigs. "I guess I must have played about 550 gigs there," he said. "Even when we’re on tour, I’ll try to fly back after a Saturday night gig in New York or Canada and do the Tipitina’s show."

Like all of his albums, Daigrepont’s latest release, Paradis, is filled with original material, all sung in Cajun French. "I guess I’m about the only guy in Cajun music that hasn’t tried to cross over in some way," said Daigrepont. "But the way I look at it, if you’re not singing in French, how can you call it Cajun?"

Daigrepont is also proud of the fact that he doesn’t play the obvious hits that seem to turn up in most Cajun acts. "I think this is a living, growing tradition, so it always needs new songs," he said. "If everybody plays the same songs over and over it becomes a museum piece. I try to write songs with topical themes. Like this song, ‘Paradis,’ it’s saying that we all end up the same way whether we’re Donald Trump or a homeless person. You can’t buy your way into heaven."

But you can dance your way into a little slice of heaven every Sunday from 5-9pm at Daigrepont’s Tipitina’s Fais Do Do.

Same name, different Warehouse

The proprietors of New Orleans’ newest 24 hour music club/eatery, the Warehouse, have been getting a number of puzzling phone calls since opening for business at 7838 Earhart Boulevard in August. Calls along the lines of "Hello, is this the place where my mother used to go to see the Doobie Brothers?" The confusion stems from the fact that many New Orleanians fondly remember the legendary rock dance hall of the same name on Tchoupitoulas street, where the heroes of 1970s rock plied their trade and the Grateful Dead were playing when "busted on Bourbon Street."

The owners of the new Warehouse didn’t realize they were referencing history when they came up with what seemed to be the obvious name for their 10,000 square foot club. "The building used to be an air conditioning warehouse, so we didn’t think twice about calling it that," said booking agent Melvin Walker. "When I told my mother about it she remembered the old Warehouse. We’d really like to get in touch with the original owners and find out more about the history."(Editor’s Note: A book on the Warehouse is currently being written under the auspices of Beaver Productions, owners of the Tchoupitoulas Street Warehouse.)

Walker has promoted bounce concerts around the South but is looking to book more mainstream acts into the Warehouse. "When we get underway we might slip in the occasional hip-hop show but we are not aiming at the 18-to-25 audience," said Walker, who is looking to book "everything from acid jazz to zydeco. For the first month we are concentrating on local acts. Nicholas Payton, Deacon John and Henry Butler are some of the artists who will be performing. We’re going to have a free music happy hour featuring local bands from 5-8pm every night, a featured concert from 9-12 and a club setting with DJs late night."

Several high-profile music clubs have gone out of business this year, making the prospects for new places appear daunting in the highly-competitive New Orleans environment. "We felt we had an edge being outside of the central business district," said co-owner Amaniel Tewelde. "We want to appeal to the locals, and we’re confident that the tourists will want to find out the places where the locals hang out."

The club’s secret weapon is the excellent and inexpensive "Italian Cajun" menu surpervised by the Jamaican-born chef Garfield Mortley, who developed the highly-popular menu at the Westin during his four-year stay there. "I have engaged in an extensive study of the hospitality industry since 1968, working in London, Edinburgh, New York, Toronto, Jamaica, where I owned my own restaurant, and here in New Orleans," said Mortley as he grudgingly took his attention away from the pan of spicy chicken wings he was preparing. Mortley is a hands-on chef whose motto is "I believe in all aspects of cooking. Whether you’re a chef or not, you have to be a cook first."

Weird Al’s zydeco fantasy

Comic rocker Weird Al Yankovic knows what it means to miss New Orleans. Literally.

"We’ve never done a show in New Orleans, ever," said Yankovic during a break in his current tour. "That’s the largest American city that we’ve never played."

And why is that?"I really don’t know. It seems like we have a tough time booking shows in the South in general. So far, we don’t have any Texas dates and no Florida dates, and a lot of fans are a little upset about that. I love New Orleans, I love Louisiana, I’ve gone to Mardi Gras many times, and it’s one of my favorite places to visit."

Yankovic’s affection for Louisiana shows through on a track from his new album, Running With Scissors, "My Baby’s In Love With Eddie Vedder," done zydeco style.

"I’ve always wanted to do a zydeco number because I play the accordion and it seems like a real natural thing to do," he said. "And I guess the obvious thing to do would have been to do like a Pearl Jam soundalike for the Eddie Vedder song, but I thought, I’m all about not doing the obvious. so I thought that that would be one of the more unexpected choices to just go in a completely different direction and do a zydeco song.

"For every genre that I do, I do research. I got a number of zydeco albums right out of a wonderful compilation series called Alligator Stomp. I listened to a lot of those for days and days and days, and just tried to immerse myself in the culture and in that kind of music before I even wrote the first note of the song, because I just wanted to really learn about the style before I even attempted to write something like that."

Maybe Weird Al should come down and referee a zydeco battle at the Rock ‘n’ Bowl.

Bobby Sheehan dead at 31

Blues Traveler bassist Bobby Sheehan, who moved to New Orleans in 1996 and bought a house in town last year, died at his home August 20. "Despite the fact that Bob Sheehan was respected, loved and revered by all who knew him, or knew of his music, he was easily the most underestimated member of the band," said John Popper, lead singer and harmonica player for Blues Traveler. "The best friend I’ve had in the world has just died and I don’t want to talk about it." Sheehan, who grew up with Popper in Princeton, New Jersey, was an avid fan of New Orleans music. "He chose New Orleans because he loved the city," said Blues Traveler publicist Steve Karas.

Louisiana musicians invade France

As part of the tricentennial celebration of French settlement in Louisiana, several regional groups are going to Note, France to participate in the Festival de l’Erde from September 2-4. The local contingent includes Kermit Ruffins, Los Hombres Calientes, Mahogany Brass Band, Tricia (Sista Teedy) Boutte and festival headliner Zachary Richard.

Dese, dems and doseHarold Brown, an original member of War, has announced that he will re-unite with Eric Burdon, who found the group playing in a Southern California bar and formed a partnership that produced the chart-topping hit "Spill the Wine" and several classic cult albums. The group will also feature other members of War and will be called the SOB BandMuleBone will debut newly-written material at Carrollton Station on September 2Caught John Gros at the Bulldog one Thursday and he was joined by surprise guest Jake Flack from $1000 Car (Car bassist Steve Watson tends bar there). Gros and Flack turned into a Homer and Jethro act, wowing the packed and not slightly inebriated crowd with Flack’s country ballad rendition of "Like a Virgin" alongside such standards as "Folsom Prison Blues" and "There Stands the Glass" New Orleans-based New Age pianist Richard Carr is hosting a record release party for his third album, An American Quixote, on September 19 from 7-9 at Le Chat Noir. The party is open to the publicLouisiana Red Hot Records continues its aggressive acquisitions campaign with a major coup, signing the great ReBirth Brass Band album The Main Event: Live From the Maple Leaf, which sold out earlier this year when it was issued as a limited-edition release. The label will also release the debut album by former ReBirth saxophonist Roderick Paulin, The Funk Is AliveBalance Recording Studio has started two new label imprints in support of projects that are ready for September release. The first is Nocturnal, which will issue a live album by the hot local rockers Invisible Cowboy. The other label, Fulcrum, will release a record by the North Shore adult contemporary band Entre Nous.