Egg Yolk Jubilee
Brunch with Rocco Fancypants
(Spatula Productions)
Schatzy
Macaroni & Bees
(Independent)
An album, to me, is a lot more than a little metallic disc with some music on it. An album should be a collaborative work of art realized by musicians, songwriters, producers, engineers, graphic designers and various spiritual forces—a project not unlike a movie.
It’s a total experience. Based on research, impulse, recommendation, chance or the weird picture on the cover, you purchase the shrink-wrapped album, intrigued by what secrets lie inside. You slit it open, listen to the music, study the photographs and illustrations, decipher the lyrics, read the liner notes and credits—as a professional reviewer, I would like to note that about three-quarters of all musicians, after thanking their parents and second cousins, usually give a nod to God.
Nowadays, everyone has a CD. Somebody has a kid who’s a wizard on the triangle and they let him cut an album. Bands used to print business cards, today they burn CDs. There is no quality control. Reviewers receive CDs with “Office Depot” printed on them and the band’s name scrawled in felt-tip marker. This is not a total experience.
It is a happy occurrence when two CDs as thoughtfully created as the new albums by Egg Yolk Jubilee and Schatzy arrive. Both of these albums are local New Orleans productions and both are as professionally rendered—sonically and artistically–as any release manufactured by a major (or minor) record label. Tim Stambaugh engineered both recordings at Word of Mouth Studios and he is credited as co-producer (with the band) of Brunch with Rocco Fancypants. Humor, always a prime ingredient in the best New Orleans music, plays a large role in both albums.
A very handsome rooster, photographed by David Halliday, struts across the front cover of Egg Yolk Jubilee’s album, designed by graphic artist Jeanne Ducote. Egg Yolk is an ensemble of eight musicians—saxophonist/guitarist/vocalist Paul Grass, guitarist/vocalist Geoff Douville, bassist Steven Calandra, trumpeter/vocalist Eric Belletto, tubaist/saxophonist Glenn Barberot, saxophonist/trumpeter/trombonist Mike Joseph, clarinetist Ben Schenck and drummer Ron Bocian. The band’s music has often been characterized as a modern version of Dixieland. But Dixieland connotes corny straw hats and candy-striped blazers. If Egg Yolk is Dixieland, then it’s a very hip Dixieland well-versed in the prematurely deceased New Orleans trumpeter George Girard, Minit Records, King Records and Frank Zappa, performed for dancers with Bettie Page bangs and Satanic tattoos. Dixieland was Walt Disney’s favorite music but I guarantee you’ll never encounter Egg Yolk Jubilee playing for the wholesome families visiting Disney World.
For example, the album’s swinging masterpiece is “Requiem for an Asshole.” Commencing with a cool organ rumble, punctuated by distorted electric guitar and propelled by a shuffling beat, the massed brass and reeds slink along like snakes charmed. There’s starts and stops, blasts and blurts, morbid tributes to the “Asshole”—“The stupid mofo got out-of-control and now he’s dead…” Then a careening blare of horns on a elephantine rampage—wham!—into a stucco wall and that distorted guitar still hanging in there and without realizing it, you’re deep into the next selection, “Brown Noise,” pitter-pattering on your leaky roof. The “Brown” in question is James and the “Noise” is every funky riff the Godfather of Soul ever invented re-invented by Egg Yolk Jubilee.
Dost thou seek pathos? Listen to “Bogul U.S.A.,” the hyperactive tale of the fair Prunella, a Southern belle first encountered at the Omelette Festival in Abbeville, now residing in the “Northernmost part of Southern Louisiana,” in a city with “a certain odor”—Bogalusa. If you’ve ever been in the vicinity of Bogalusa, where the surrounding scent is dominated by the emissions of the town’s paper factory, this song will ring extremely true, which is the basis of all great comedy. The beauty of Egg Yolk Jubilee is that their songs shake all your bones—including the funny one.
Schatzy, the side project of Deltabilly Boy bassist Gregory Schatz (playing a variety of instruments), is likewise wacky. Instead of Egg Yolk’s poultry theme, Schatz and associates (guitarist Jeremy Lyons, drummer Paul Santopadre, vocalist Sarah DeBacher, bassist Dave Stover, vocalist Fredy Omar and saxophonists Joe Cabral and Clint Maedgen) opt for honey bees assaulting macaroni and cheese (exquisitely captured in designer Steve Winn’s faux-’50s cover). Schatz proves his artistic integrity and devotion by costuming as a winsome bee, complete with yellow face-paint and Maybelline eyeliner that Tammie Faye Baker would die, or at least buzz for. And what does Schatz sing? “Be My Honey Bee,” followed by “(Another Helping Of) Macaroni & Cheese,” followed by—11 songs later—“Macaroni And Cheese.” In between are odes to horrible rock bands (“Bad And Loud”) and consumerism (a Sinatra-esque “Shopping Song,” wherein Schatz is so distracted by his beloved’s beauty that he accidentally slips into a pair of pantyhose).
One of Schatzy’s tastiest selections is, surprisingly, inedible. “You Gotta Jump,” a duet performed by Schatz and DeBacher, has a jaunty reggae beat and the best advice any musician can offer: “Let’s get stupid!”
