Home is, of course, where the heart is. In the case of nouveau hillbilly multi-instrumentalist Mike West, home is "Da Nint’ Ward" and Home is the title of his sixth CD, co-produced by West and his heart’s desire, songstress wife Myshkin.
Through West’s neighborhood flows the Industrial Canal, a waterway the U.S. Corps of Engineers wants to widen. The problem is that the expansion would eat up part of the neighborhood and furthermore, many citizens feel that the project is totally unnecessary. As West sings on his latest album, "There just ain’t that many ships since the oil boom left its slick and the port of New Orleans begging on her knees."
"We’ve been there about seven or eight years," West explains. "It’s a fun neighborhood, kinda mixed, white folks, black folks, people who have been there for years and years and years, people who have just moved in–just a nutty bunch of people who love and hate each other.
"It’s an old neighborhood and the Corps of Engineers are masters at spinning that very sensible-sounding line of bull. The neighborhood managed to fight ’em back with the help of Holy Cross School and got it declared a historic neighborhood. Initially, the plan was to take out several city blocks of houses. The neighborhood managed to stop them from doing that and now the plan has changed.
"I’ve spoken to people who work on the boats and they’re like, ‘We don’t use that channel anymore–we don’t really understand what it’s all about.’ There really doesn’t seem to be a need for this project. I walk my dogs up on that levee and I know–there’s less barges going through that than I remember from three years ago."
Born in Australia and raised in England, West chose to live in New Orleans "maybe because it’s a port city. It’s kind of like a place with a real beat culture of its own that’s sort of welcoming to strangers. It’s very good at incorporating foreigners and making them sort of a part of the culture, which I find very nice. As a foreigner–an immigrant–coming into a situation where people are oddly accepting of you and whatever your background is. They’re not too nosy about it. They’re interested, if you want to tell them, but they’re also quite happy if you just do what you do and we’ll get along. Which I find really refreshing because in England, if you move like half-a-mile in an English city, they know that you’re not from around here. It’s refreshing to come to a place where you’re so obviously a foreigner but who cares?"
Conversing with West reveals no particular accent, English, Australian or whatever. He blames it on the banjo: "Singing over a banjo really helps to get that kind of weird nasal/lung valve voice and it naturally flows over into your speech–it’s the only way you can be heard above that instrument, it’s so loud. It’s where the high, lonesome sound comes from, hollering above that banjo.
"I played guitar until I was 30 and then Myshkin lent me my first banjo. The first banjo I ever heard I was probably 18-years-old and I was playing in the street in London, playing guitar really terrible. There was a guy playing banjo and I’d never heard a banjo before and I was like, ‘What is that sound?’ It was everywhere, you couldn’t get away from it. Ever since I heard that, I was always like, ‘I wish I could get one of them things!’ I waited until I was 30."
One of the more gastronomically intriguing songs ever recorded in New Orleans is West’s "Squirrels," inspired, as are most of West’s compositions, by an incident encountered on the road: "I’m a vegetarian actually. One time, we were playing in Tallahassee and we often sleep in people’s yards, in our truck. There was an old fellow stealing pecans out of my friend’s yard. My friend called him on it and he started talking about squirrels for some reason. He said he’d shot 30 squirrels in this yard. A little skinny old man shooting 30 squirrels–that got me thinking. After that, everybody started giving me recipes for squirrel. Squirrel brains are the part everybody likes the best. It’s like I’m a vegetarian but if you’ve got to eat meat, I think it’s much better if you laid hands on it yourself–you gut it!
"I became a vegetarian because all my stock’s Australian and it’s unpatriotic not to eat beef. Australia’s like Texas. Somehow you’re undermining the country if you don’t eat two steaks a day."
Currently, Mike West can be heard performing every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at Margaritaville, and at venues across America on weekends. Devoted as he is to the nation’s highways, West is truly enraptured by New Orleans: "I love it for the clubs and I really like it for the musicians. Relative to other music scenes, it’s not nearly as clique-ish or as segregated. Like jazz players here will play in rock bands. Working Bourbon Street guys will also have some weird, side punk rock project if they want. I find that to be really healthy and really helpful for me, playing basically country music in New Orleans. Like Matt [Perrine], a jazz and blues player, playing tuba on my hillbilly tunes. And he’s into it. He’s a great musician, one of those guys who says, ‘Sure, I like it–I’ll do it.’ He played on all of Myshkin’s albums.
"I never thought I was a musician until I came here. People were like, ‘You sorta play guitar–go on, take a solo.’ People would really be supportive. Anders Osborne was tremendous to me, Gina Forsyth–people I thought were amazing musicians. I was just amazed they would have the time of day for me. That gave me the confidence to make noise than I should’ve."
Baked Goods
Among the works recorded by Mike West at the Ninthward Pickin’ Parlor is the latest EZ Bake Organs mini-CD (eight songs in a package the size of a lady’s compact), entitled Flaky. Comprised of strange bedfellows Kathleen Kraus, Helena Shoh and Myshkin plus three organs, the combo plays vaguely French circus punk rock close harmony girls’ summer camp "Kumbaya" ironic Nico/Lesley Gore music. I was thinking of Lesley "It’s My Party" Gore because on my recent birthday, Barbara Hoover invited me to appear on her WWOZ radio show, and as Fate would have it, hours beforehand, Kathleen Kraus telephoned to announce the birth of the Flaky CD. I urged her to rush to my office with a copy in hand, promising to debut it that afternoon on Ms. Hoover’s show.
As I have previously pointed out, the EZ Bake Organs, with their homicidal lyrics, are not the sort of girls you want to cross. Oh well. I went on the show and then…CHAOS! DJ Davis pinned a dollar on me. The wife of Chris Isaak’s saxophonist called me from Ft. Worth. A disgruntled listener wasn’t amused when I played Stew’s "Re-Hab." I played O.V. Wright, PJ Harvey, Olu Dara and the utterly beautiful "Color Doesn’t Matter" by R.J. "Juju Child" Williams. A black, dreadlocked casting director showed up, announcing auditions for the cinematic roles of Jelly Roll Morton and Morton’s girlfriend. In this case, color mattered and the director only wanted to see "light-skinned Creoles."
Next, a French maid named Fifi (likely story) arrived, singing "Happy Birthday" and blowing a kazoo, followed by, direct from Miami, Tipitina’s founder Hank Drevich and his new girlfriend, both of whom pinned twenty bucks on me. Excited by the great fortune of being $41 richer, I totally forgot to play the EZ Bake Organs. Uh oh!
That night, at my party in Mandeville, Ernest Scott and Coffee performed. Waitresses walked around selling daiquiris in test tubes. Friends gave me blues CDs, hip-hop CDs, opera CDs and a lascivious orchid plant. Ice Cube Slim presented me with a bunch of organic carrots and a piece of carrot cake. A brunette friend from Uptown exclaimed that she’d never been in the presence of so many blondes, but actually, the audience–like the band–was thoroughly integrated. I was reminded of Juju Child’s sublime Franco-New Orleans "Color Doesn’t Matter"–"You see me walking down the streets with a woman of a different color, you stop and stare and look at me as though I killed your brother…" Listening to Ernest Scott singing John Hiatt’s "Little Head," watching the assorted people dance and knowing the history of Louisiana, and especially the history of St. Tammany parish, I felt very happy to be alive.
