For this week’s Throwback Thursday, I spoke to Better Than Ezra bass player Tom Drummond about one of the earliest BTE gigs more than 20 years ago. Drummond, who says he’s shocked to think he’s now been in the band for longer than he hasn’t, recounts the first time BTE played in New Orleans:
Kevin Griffin, Tom Drummond, and Travis McNabb.
“I grew up in Shreveport, and then the band started when we were all at LSU in Baton Rouge, so I can remember one of most exciting moments was when we played in New Orleans for the first time.
WTUL (Tulane University’s radio station) used to have this thing they called the ‘Toolbox’ on Mondays, and it was a live radio broadcast of the show at Tipitina’s. We got offered the Toolbox very early on in the band’s history, probably in ‘89 or ‘90.
This is when we first decided that we were going to play all originals, and we were so excited that we were going to play the Toolbox, and there’s a tape of that show that someone made that night that’s still out there and still circulates, so that’s pretty cool.
That’s one of my first memories of New Orleans. The Toolbox was like the thing on Monday nights at Tipitina’s. They should really bring that back. We were one of like three bands that night, but for us it was like a huge achievement. It was probably the first radio play we ever got.
For us, it was the ultimate achievement to be on WTUL on a Monday night.”
