00:00:00 - 00:00:21 Speaker 1

For me, the music was a passport to the world and just, you know, dreaming about it and, you know, pretending I was playing music, but a a brush in a continuum for, you know, for a microphone or whatever. And, you know, behind the hog pen or.

00:00:21 - 00:00:28 Unknown

Like, I, I do.

00:00:28 - 00:00:55 Speaker 3

Zydeco accordionist, park ranger, and former NFL Chief, Bruce 'Sunpie' Barnes on Soul country number seven, recorded in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I'm Ric Stewart, a community radio DJ since 1986 and an award winning filmmaker, adding some real life podcasting to get deeper into Soul Country to where we cover tales from the intersection of countrified R&B and bluesy America.

00:00:55 - 00:01:24 Speaker 3

Listen in as we revitalize our cultural roots in Western blues and variety. Now, a word from our sponsor is productions documentary Blues Rock hits. Soul country is chock full of exclusive performances and interviews from Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and Grammy winners. It's the origin story for Soul Country. Check it out at Soulcountry.com. Well, stumpy played piano, harmonica and accordion and chatted about tours with Paul Simon and Sting, as well as his stylistic development.

00:01:24 - 00:01:31 Speaker 3

Here's how it all went.

00:01:31 - 00:01:44 Speaker 4

And then.

00:01:44 - 00:01:46 Unknown

By the way.

00:01:46 - 00:01:55 Speaker 4

Open up the steam house. Shovel in the coal. Look out the window to see the blue smoke roll. Casey Jones gone to meet Frisco. Casey Jones.

00:01:55 - 00:01:57 Speaker 1

Gone to meet Frisco.

00:01:57 - 00:02:07 Speaker 4

Casey Jones got to meet Frisco.

00:02:07 - 00:02:31 Speaker 1

And, that's something my father used to play. Used to play, though, Casey Jones. So he. You know, he was, he mostly played the low tongue blocking style. You know, stuff like that. But he played, you know, he played. He liked, you know, a lot of stuff. He loved blues, period.

00:02:31 - 00:02:36 Speaker 3

So that counts as a blue song and like, a railroad kind of song.

00:02:36 - 00:02:38 Speaker 4

Yeah, a little West. Yeah.

00:02:38 - 00:02:53 Speaker 1

It wasn't really so far west as what people would play. You know, we had railroad men all around us when we grew up. And they, you know, they did songs like that is what people would call country music now.

00:02:53 - 00:02:58 Speaker 3

I never I've been trying to discover where the line of all the Western things are since David erase that name.

00:02:58 - 00:02:59 Speaker 1

Oh, Western tunes, I.

00:02:59 - 00:03:04 Speaker 3

Guess because it was like at the movies, obviously. And then you had the places that out West.

00:03:04 - 00:03:06 Speaker 1

Created a lot of confusion.

00:03:06 - 00:03:13 Speaker 3

You know, Hank Williams, they were the Drifting Cowboys. He's really from Alabama, but it's just culturally was huge, that Westerns were a bigger piece of everything than anybody talked about.

00:03:13 - 00:03:35 Speaker 1

Yeah, it's commercialization sort of going forward. That's what I was, this morning, I was on one of those Texan thrillers with my brothers and sisters, and they were playing, Mule Skinners blues. So my sister sends a text. Sharon is is Dolly Parton, and she does a great job on a beautiful, you know, music in in number eight and,

00:03:35 - 00:03:36 Speaker 3

Blue yodel number.

00:03:36 - 00:03:44 Speaker 1

Yeah, blue yodel rather. And, there's Jimmie Rodgers, but he was thinking I'm the guy who did the, singing cowboy.

00:03:44 - 00:03:45 Speaker 3

Who do you have.

00:03:45 - 00:04:04 Speaker 1

Gene Autry I said, I said, yeah, well, they all we're doing. I said, But Jimmie Rodgers is the one that was from like Meridian. And he, he heard those songs and he, you know, that's where like I father love Jim Jimmie Rodgers. They really loved him because he yodel and I and he said, oh yeah, that came from Switzerland.

00:04:04 - 00:04:12 Speaker 1

I said, yeah, but the people that he heard it from didn't come from Switzerland. They were like railroad men, and they were working and they were mule skinners and they yodel also.

00:04:12 - 00:04:13 Speaker 3

He made it into something more.

00:04:13 - 00:04:33 Speaker 1

So he did well. He, you know, he had a he had great success because he did get to go to Hollywood also. And, and, you know, he didn't fit the same bill that they wanted him to. So, even though he was like a kind of superstar on the radio, they didn't really want to turn him into the cowboy that they wanted.

00:04:33 - 00:04:53 Speaker 1

So it was Gene Autry, and it was those folks that had been in Roy Rogers. Now they moved it up, but they yodeling that they were doing came from, like, what music is what do also and what you do with cattle herding. I mean, you can go in South Africa and you will hear people doing these whistles and these calls.

00:04:53 - 00:04:58 Speaker 1

They've been doing that for like 40,000 years. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're Khoisan people.

00:04:58 - 00:04:59 Speaker 3

There's nothing really new.

00:04:59 - 00:05:16 Speaker 1

There's nothing new like that. But it's amazing to see the trends of, places where it came. And I think a lot of it also is, human archetype, you know, like these are just things that people do. But, you know, the blue yellow was, he was tough. Yeah, he could do.

00:05:16 - 00:05:20 Speaker 3

It if he it became a centerpiece of blues, you know, in the evening and,

00:05:20 - 00:05:22 Speaker 1

Oh, yeah, Howlin Wolf, all these cats.

00:05:22 - 00:05:25 Speaker 3

He had Howard Wolfson. Yeah, they they people took it and they made it their own.

00:05:25 - 00:05:47 Speaker 1

And they loved him because he was doing it, but they already knew something that they did because, I mean, they used to do well. Oh, that's what you do to call a mule. You got to make them to come to you to do the work. Right. And he was a long line with call a long line, skinner.

00:05:47 - 00:06:07 Speaker 1

So as a person who hooks up 14 to 16 mules on a long line, and you got to talk to him, you got a customer out, tell him who's boss every morning and say, hey, here's what we're about to go and do. And then you got to sing to him to entertain him because they're not going to do the work if you don't.

00:06:07 - 00:06:25 Speaker 1

They're extremely smart, so they're not going to do the work unless you sing the stuff they want to hear, and then you sing the task to them and they'll do it if you sing it, tone, because that's how they talk. You sing it, tell them they'll do it if you don't. They shake their head right in your face and say, I ain't doing it.

00:06:25 - 00:06:32 Speaker 1

And, And they'll also try and kill you. They're gonna do something dirty to you. Sing my song. I ain't doing nothing.

00:06:32 - 00:06:35 Speaker 3

A field holler of type of type.

00:06:35 - 00:06:42 Speaker 1

Yeah, that's what it was. And so, you know, there's, there's many different platforms over not to, you know, when into them.

00:06:42 - 00:06:46 Speaker 3

But like as things evolved on you know even Aaron Neville talks about how he's getting it off of Gene.

00:06:46 - 00:06:47 Speaker 1

Oh yeah. You know it.

00:06:47 - 00:06:50 Speaker 3

Becomes it becomes part of the musical you know, flow.

00:06:51 - 00:07:17 Speaker 1

Oh it's the flow because he, he's he's the flash point for it's always like that. It's like somebody who can, spark the imagination of the people. He's going to strike it. And he was. It was the best at that doing that, that style right there. The full belly was, was playing all these amazing tunes like Pan American Blues and all that stuff like that.

00:07:17 - 00:07:40 Speaker 1

You know, he was like the head at the opera also. But, you know, Roy Acuff, all these cats or, you know, the everybody just angular piece of pie. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they became the godfathers of it in a, in a large way. So and it's, you know, country music is just kind of taking, bluegrass, hillbilly music, blues, jazz.

00:07:40 - 00:07:41 Speaker 1

He just.

00:07:41 - 00:07:55 Speaker 3

Devours things. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a very large genre in the sales. Yeah. And then Western just kind of got gobbled up and there's called country. I was upset by that. But I like the Westerns now. Have you, have you watched any of the, since you were a Ranger? The bass Reeves show?

00:07:55 - 00:08:14 Speaker 1

Yeah, I saw the bass show. I like, most of it. It was intriguing, you know, some of it. You know, some. Since I'm a little bit of a history buff, too. Like, I like straight lines sometimes around. And frankly, it just got caught up in the, the strike. So they only got eight episodes out of it.

00:08:14 - 00:08:25 Speaker 1

Oh, he's in Fort Smith, you know, in Arkansas. He keeps going back there, but he, he's just going to quote unquote, Indian territory.

00:08:25 - 00:08:28 Speaker 3

So that type of ranger is somebody who has to cover a huge distance. Oh, yeah.

00:08:28 - 00:08:36 Speaker 1

He's covering huge distances. Absolutely. They have to pair it down. They're doing 43 minute episodes and.

00:08:36 - 00:08:44 Speaker 3

You know, how did you end up touring with Sting and Paul Simon and, are you going to do more, you know, joining other people's bands in the future?

00:08:45 - 00:08:47 Speaker 1

I don't know if I'm joining other people's band in.

00:08:47 - 00:08:47 Speaker 4

The future.

00:08:47 - 00:09:16 Speaker 1

Or not, but, you know, I, I just got a call from Paul Simon. He was going, getting ready to go out and do a tour. I met him through Quint Davis, actually, some years earlier. Quint, in 2002, we had a record called just. It was called Sun Pi, and I kind of synthesized what I thought was like this Afro Louisiana sound, so had a lot of music that I was kind of paying homage to some.

00:09:16 - 00:09:48 Speaker 1

I was around zydeco, blues, and then African music. I did a song for Ike Darrow, called Congo Kinshasa because he had a song that he'd done around Congo Kinshasa. But, you know, I met Paul Simon at that time. He put us on back to a stage at that time right before they played. And I was taking him out canoeing, and he heard his back, like right before, like pool tweaked it out or something.

00:09:48 - 00:10:08 Speaker 1

So we cancel that. But, you know, I met him then, fast forward another 12 years and I just get a call out of the blue from him. The. I thought it was out of the blue, you know, come up and maybe audition for his band. He was getting ready to do that tour that he he did. So, you know, he sent me some music.

00:10:08 - 00:10:46 Speaker 1

I sent him some. And I went up there as 2013 and, spent a weekend playing music with him and his band, played with and they recorded some music with, Spanish flamenco dancer and a guy playing cajon. And, well, went back. I was like, well, that was fun. And, this was like early October. And he called me back in November and asked me if I wanted to come up and do some rehearsals and do a tour with him.

00:10:47 - 00:11:03 Speaker 1

So I did, so we started the tour in January of 2014, and then, you know, I thought it was just his band at first, but then it was Paul and Stan. We played 30 songs. Sometimes I played harmonica.

00:11:03 - 00:11:04 Speaker 3

Yeah.

00:11:04 - 00:11:12 Speaker 1

I played sting songs and harmonica played some of Paul's songs. You know, he's got, you know, he loves harmonica. And he was, you know, he's a, you know, he was in all kinds of folk.

00:11:12 - 00:11:17 Speaker 3

Cause I was remembering that. Yeah, he's got kind of be very experimental of which direction he's going to take it, I guess.

00:11:17 - 00:11:28 Speaker 1

Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I love Paul Simon's music because he did do all that. He had imagination for all those things. And he, of course, is his, literary skill.

00:11:28 - 00:11:28 Speaker 3

Just writing.

00:11:28 - 00:11:30 Speaker 1

And writing is, you.

00:11:30 - 00:11:38 Speaker 3

Know, so he has the one kind of zydeco song on Graceland, but the rest of the album is really, you know, South African. And that was your mother.

00:11:38 - 00:11:41 Speaker 1

He had that song, but, you know. Yeah, he's.

00:11:41 - 00:11:44 Speaker 3

He's playing a lot of this,

00:11:44 - 00:11:51 Unknown

The the bourbon Bourbon.

00:11:51 - 00:11:56 Unknown

The bourbon.

00:11:56 - 00:11:58 Unknown

That,

00:11:58 - 00:11:59 Speaker 1

You know, so it.

00:11:59 - 00:12:01 Speaker 3

Really was a focus instrument there on the record.

00:12:01 - 00:12:24 Speaker 1

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's got a lot of accordion music. He incorporates the, music from these accordion players in Soweto. And I really liked his music. And I had. Well, I going to South Africa the first time I went down and played was in 2003. And I went down, played for Awesome Africa. Then terribly, invited me down.

00:12:24 - 00:12:47 Speaker 1

And, you know, I think I was the only American there, but it was just amazing concert kind of life changing for me music wise, because, you know, I had a dream that had this imagination of going to these places like that, and they just started happening. You know, I've never really had a booking agent or manager. Guess I'm too hard headed.

00:12:47 - 00:12:49 Speaker 1

But I always had fun doing it myself also.

00:12:50 - 00:13:01 Speaker 3

Yeah. How do you compare that? Like the way that they sort of run a band and then go after it with a compatible kind of the way you run a band, do you take anything away from the learnings from like somebody who's at that level?

00:13:01 - 00:13:34 Speaker 1

Oh, you know, they work real hard. They've got giant machines of production. You know, when you going out on the road with a band that has 100 people in production, seven tractor trailer rigs of equipment, a couple of Learjet, four travel busses at the same time, some different. That's different than when I was getting my F1 at 50, you know, with the whole band and but, you know, I had some great talks with sting about, you know, he did the same thing when he started.

00:13:34 - 00:13:58 Speaker 1

He was like, no, man, we came to America, know we were all in a station wagon. We drove all over the country and just like we loved it so much, we just kept doing it for like two years, you know? So I had a great time talking, just hanging with him. I had breakfast with him every morning, probably for like two months, and he'd come knock on your door and, you know, we'd sit and play blues or something like that.

00:13:58 - 00:14:22 Speaker 1

He loved to play and was, you know, really a real player. And he's own it every day on the, you know Paul his the difference was the rehearsals. You know he had they had to go and get Paul every day. We rehearse 14 days in a row, at least 12 hours a day. He changed the songs every night.

00:14:23 - 00:14:46 Speaker 1

He would change those notes. You. He get you into the space where it's rote memory. Then he changed the parts. And he changed parts all the time. And he might change only three notes. And so you better play those three notes that he changed. And you have to, like, really think on your feet, because, staying, you know, once you got it down pat.

00:14:46 - 00:15:00 Speaker 1

And, I mean, it's just observation and you can really, you know, really playing it the, the way it should be. You know, it's just more like you saying, like, you know, because he's so feeding, reading the crowd and doing.

00:15:00 - 00:15:03 Speaker 3

More of the improv element. Yeah.

00:15:03 - 00:15:11 Speaker 1

Yeah. Exactly.

00:15:11 - 00:15:22 Unknown

That, that I mean it the paper.

00:15:22 - 00:15:35 Unknown

May be standing on a corner maybe be right out in the fall and rain.

00:15:35 - 00:15:40 Unknown

Oh I'm standing on the corner.

00:15:40 - 00:15:50 Speaker 4

We're down in New Orleans.

00:15:50 - 00:15:54 Unknown

Where you know I got the blue.

00:15:54 - 00:16:01 Unknown

With all my love don't mean nothing.

00:16:01 - 00:16:03 Unknown

To me.

00:16:03 - 00:16:04 Speaker 4

If you didn't.

00:16:04 - 00:16:08 Unknown

Love me. Baby.

00:16:08 - 00:16:10 Unknown

Why in the world did you.

00:16:10 - 00:16:16 Speaker 4

Tell me so?

00:16:16 - 00:16:30 Unknown

Everything. If you didn't love me, baby. Why no one in you tell me so.

00:16:30 - 00:16:36 Unknown

I will I got another new Creole I.

00:16:36 - 00:16:39 Speaker 4

To live with down in the Caribbean.

00:16:39 - 00:16:43 Unknown

Throw.

00:16:44 - 00:16:54 Unknown

Baby. Live in the river. Oh.

00:16:54 - 00:16:57 Unknown

Up.

00:16:57 - 00:17:26 Unknown

And having to bird be. Baby. Believe baby me, me, me. The map of the river. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Better for the baby, the.

00:17:26 - 00:17:28 Speaker 4

Lord I'm standing.

00:17:28 - 00:17:33 Unknown

On the corner.

00:17:33 - 00:17:37 Speaker 4

Right on Martin Luther King.

00:17:37 - 00:17:40 Unknown

The.

00:17:40 - 00:17:52 Unknown

No. That's driving on the corner. Baby, baby, I know that. Nothing on the car. I meant for me.

00:17:52 - 00:18:06 Unknown

Made me when I, you know, I, I got to be from within the call to my loved. Oh, man up baby.

00:18:07 - 00:18:17 Unknown

Oh, number.

00:18:17 - 00:18:34 Unknown

Up I ha ha ha ha ha. Wherever the.

00:18:34 - 00:18:40 Unknown

Problem.

00:18:40 - 00:18:53 Unknown

Baby with the baby. Baby.

00:18:53 - 00:19:01 Speaker 1

Check that one. Now stand on the corner. I did that with the, class. Get my brown back in 2004.

00:19:01 - 00:19:05 Speaker 3

When? When did you come up with the Afro Louisiana concept?

00:19:05 - 00:19:36 Speaker 1

I came up with the Afro Louisiana concept. Here in New Orleans. You know, when I, you know, moved here, I was coming down excited to see some blues and experience. And, you know, I had left to what I would call a rural woodlands, Arkansas. And, I'd been there, you know, all my life, although my relatives were here in Louisiana and, my father's family's from northern, no, north of there.

00:19:36 - 00:20:13 Speaker 1

Maroons. Which is, you know, all my folks are right off the river, but I came down, to dive in there trying to be a musician and, a park ranger. And and when I got here was, you know, it was a trip, but having saw a bunch of African musicians here in town, like, Ike Darrow, sunny day, Maynard the Bongo man, Fela, all the all these folks were coming down to play in New Orleans.

00:20:13 - 00:20:42 Speaker 1

And they had something at Tipitina's called, Africa in August, you know? So Diarra was the one who really bit me, so to speak. He came out on the stage playing accordion and guitar, and he had nine drummers. And that was it was him playing these, these riffs and chords and singing and a bunch of different African languages.

00:20:42 - 00:21:06 Speaker 1

But he's done a lot of praise music and the talking drummers just like, blew me away, you know, for a few years I was, you know, deeply in them, you know, and, piano music for sure. You know, the Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Harlem people like that. And I was playing harmonica still, you know, I was like, I want to incorporate this music into my whatever it is Imma try and do.

00:21:06 - 00:21:30 Speaker 1

I got to put this in it because it's it's just like straight up so much, like, sounding like The Godfather kind of New Orleans music. And I didn't want to ignore it, in the context of what I thought it was historically. So, I was like, wow, this is really like Afro Louisiana music because I wanted to play some.

00:21:30 - 00:21:56 Speaker 1

I was playing rebel with the harmonica and, Furnace Arsenals band. Zydeco musician and, Jocky Etienne, drummer. Now we're good friends, and he and he started a band, probably a couple of years later called a Creole Zydeco farmers and so, I was going around them playing music, also playing with a lot of people. But that stuff right there was like something I kept in mind.

00:21:56 - 00:22:23 Speaker 1

I said, Sonny, are day play an arcade band also. So, Darrow had a band called Ike Darrow and the Blue Spots Sunny Day when he started his band, start his band, it was sunny a day in the green spots, you know? So to honor those people was like sun pan Louisiana sunspots. And so I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to do this.

00:22:23 - 00:22:57 Speaker 1

And, you know, most people thought I was crazy, but, you know, that was like, well, live by the sword. That by the sword. I'm gonna try and mess this stuff together and make it happen. So still working on it, you know, many years later. But it was the thing that struck me about having, something that spoke to all these different folk styles of music, whether it was in the city or was rural music or wherever it came from, because it still had all those, strong trace elements, to me of Africa and many different voicings and ways and layers and levels.

00:22:57 - 00:23:27 Speaker 1

It's just real, real thick around here. And it pops up in so many ways. You know, when I was come off the farm. So, you know, we, you know, we was we had hogs and chickens and all that stuff. Then I know what a farm looks like. And to me, New Orleans was the absolutely the farm, you know, for this kind of thing around music and the phenomenon where people, come here just to be on the farm and soak it up, you know, because they, they heard about it does have that mystique.

00:23:28 - 00:23:51 Speaker 1

And it's true, you know, and it was true around, you know, that kind of music also African music because at that time there was a lot of, you know, somebody like Fela come to town, man, he'd come and camp out at Tipitina's for a week, got 8 or 9 of his wives with him, whole entourage. The cooking goats.

00:23:51 - 00:24:15 Speaker 1

You know, you're 23, four years old, 23. When I came here and, you know, I just had dreamed of being a musician. I had taken advice from a cat up in LA Rock, which was, you know, Blues was doing still doing good in little Rock, but, you know, small town. But the main people I would go and see was Larry Davis, who was a guitar player.

00:24:15 - 00:24:35 Speaker 1

He wrote that song called that record Floating Down in Texas. So he's the one who told me I would go to the blues jazz. I was teaching high school biology, and I just got to. I decided I wasn't going to try to continue a career in pursuing professional football, because I wanted to be an old blues man someday.

00:24:36 - 00:24:58 Speaker 1

My example for what what, adulthood looked like was my father and his generation. You know, if you. That's the closest thing to you. Right. So, you know, my old man was born in 1909. So. And I'm, as a while back and those things like that and, and I did want to be, still physically able to move around.

00:24:58 - 00:25:09 Speaker 1

Well, and I knew having been up in Kansas City and playing on that astroturf at the time, which was like a piece of shag carpet stretched over concrete, that.

00:25:09 - 00:25:12 Speaker 3

Would shift positions were positions where you.

00:25:12 - 00:25:15 Speaker 1

Played outside linebacker. So, you know, that.

00:25:15 - 00:25:16 Speaker 3

Position has changed a lot.

00:25:16 - 00:25:16 Speaker 4

Right? Yeah.

00:25:16 - 00:25:37 Speaker 1

They have them moving around a lot. And I came up in the Lawrence Taylor era when there was, definitely straight up, Buck wild. And you could you could do all that stuff also like you would, they would have you drop back in the hook or to curl zone when you were covering passes or you, but you could forget all of that if you saw opening to sack the quarterback, you know.

00:25:37 - 00:25:57 Speaker 1

So I was more like a second expert also. And everybody else is in the 3.4. position and, and you stand up looking straight down the line. So you're looking right dead in the quarterback's eyes. You're right. Same level of height for him. And you can kind of read the block and scheme and figure it out real quick. Cos you're not down with your head down.

00:25:57 - 00:26:03 Speaker 1

You're standing up there saying, hey man, if I was you. He said, oh yeah, so I'm 20. He said.

00:26:03 - 00:26:05 Speaker 4

Oh can I trade places with you?

00:26:05 - 00:26:21 Speaker 1

And he said, man, if I was you I would go to New Orleans. Cause in New Orleans if you go down there he said, I got blues, but ain't like our blues. They use all these horns and everything. But if you can make it, being a musician there, you can go everywhere you want to go in the world.

00:26:21 - 00:26:38 Speaker 1

He's like the New Orleans musicians are the most travel in the world. So. So I'm gonna do that, and I. Hey, I had a job. I was here 11 days later, on the scene. So that's kind of where I started with that. It's. Most people don't even know what the delta is.

00:26:38 - 00:26:40 Speaker 3

Which goes on and on up into Arkansas.

00:26:40 - 00:26:59 Speaker 1

Arkansas, Tennessee starts up there, you know, and and, you know, there's a ton of blues up there. I wouldn't say the blues didn't didn't jump out the ground right here and in close proximity to this place in the forms that people know it. Because it's this has always been a town. It's synthesized so many.

00:26:59 - 00:27:02 Speaker 3

Other cultures so long ago. It's hard to tell it.

00:27:02 - 00:27:03 Speaker 1

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to tell.

00:27:03 - 00:27:08 Speaker 3

Or they had the terminology of blues, which was like 1900. They were doing something similar in 1800, you know.

00:27:08 - 00:27:10 Speaker 1

Oh, they were playing that in New Orleans.

00:27:10 - 00:27:19 Speaker 3

Absolutely. So that's it's the mishmash of all the migration people follow the boat. There's the Italians, the Jews, the Spaniards, the French.

00:27:19 - 00:27:20 Speaker 1

They're all here.

00:27:20 - 00:27:21 Speaker 3

In the Native Americans.

00:27:21 - 00:27:43 Speaker 1

Native American people, all these different African cultures. And so you have to like, take that stuff out to really understand, to get us separated out and, and, and then put it back together, you know, like a jigsaw puzzle. You can't get good at putting together no 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle unless you take that sucker apart and pay attention, put it back together 4 or 5 times, trial and error.

00:27:43 - 00:28:24 Speaker 1

But that music was going on around here, and it was being done in many different flavors and ways and very sophisticated also. And, you know, so that's what the world paid attention to. It paid attention to how this music coming out of this town, which used to be known as a big city in some ways, but it's not really so much that now, how it handled, hybridity, hybridization and hybridity and synthesizing music from many different cultures, taking all the good parts of it, forgetting the rest, trimming the fat and make it work for for here.

00:28:24 - 00:28:48 Speaker 1

Whereas in other places you have 1 or 2 singularity things that are going on. That's not how this city was ever put together in small five terms everywhere. So those things helped. And that was things that I noticed. But, you know, when I was working across the river down, in Crown Point Lafayette, and I noticed all the culture, there that was kind of far from what was going on in New Orleans.

00:28:48 - 00:29:13 Speaker 1

But, you know, almost all all the people spoke some form of French. We know the native people and Native American people speaking, what I would call colonial French, probably the most correct. And then you had Creole and Cajun France were, which were, you know, things that people had created and, and, and put together in and borrowed from many different sources as well.

00:29:13 - 00:29:41 Speaker 1

That's, kind of made a conscious decision when I got here around culture in general, since I was, you know, like a kid in a candy store. When it came to, I wanted to relearn, what I was in front of. And since I was in front of all, I had all these things available all the time, I learned learn to speak French.

00:29:41 - 00:29:57 Speaker 1

I didn't I wouldn't say it was textbook French at all because it wasn't learned to speak it, you know, from people that were around me, because I wanted to know, how do people talk? I don't talk like a book. I want, you know, in terms of, like, what was going on in Louisiana and then out into that world.

00:29:57 - 00:30:17 Speaker 1

And that does help to be able to read and write French. But but in terms of like the forms that were here, I wanted to study that. I figured that was my job, was my gig. I was a park ranger and I was an interpretive park ranger naturalist. So I wanted to interpret culture and incorporated and everything I was doing in that way.

00:30:17 - 00:30:36 Speaker 1

And that's what I did, you know, so, you know, learning from folks like that, planning bands, you know, like Furnaces band and Creole Zydeco. I was a ten piece band. Everybody in the band spoke Creole. So, you know, just it straight up I would go and hang out with Fats Domino. He spoke Creole, you know, lot, a lot of people around him.

00:30:37 - 00:31:07 Speaker 1

My father was a harmonica player and, you know, had the music in the church. And there was some country music around. Definitely. Or country music. We didn't think of them as stars, but they were stars until you start seeing him on TV and stuff like that. And, you know, but my father was my earliest, memory of some music just being 2 or 3 years old.

00:31:07 - 00:31:38 Speaker 1

So he'd be playing the tune I was playing over there early, the 44 Blues, which was something that they all would play him. Oh, man, love this song also. So they would around Christmas, especially when they would get together, play music, blues all night long, just all night eggnog and all the whiskey, and, you know, so they would make us stand in front of the living room floor and dance while they played and stuff like that.

00:31:38 - 00:32:04 Speaker 1

You know, we'd go to bed at 2:00, they would still play. And we lived, you know, in the old black area to come gravel hill across the tracks. We had three sets of tracks, the rock Island Line, Missouri Pacific and the Santa Fe. And, so I was our little all black community, which was kind of composed out of a bunch of folks, some old people who had been there from the 1880s and 90.

00:32:04 - 00:32:26 Speaker 1

Some had moved off the plantations, like, my folks did and moved up that, and start to move them in. But I was in number ten and 11 in his, in his ring children. So he quit giving lessons, said he wasn't giving nobody, no lessons, no more having to play because they wouldn't play it. They wouldn't do anything with it.

00:32:26 - 00:32:53 Speaker 1

He wanted them playing stuff like 44 Blues, but it was a standard reason song he was. My dad was raised up on these plantations with, Roosevelt sites and people like that, like Bill Bronson. They were all on the same plantations, with these big plantations. Now, at that time, you know, the general American farm and, all these places like that and, but, yeah, 44 Blues was like a regional thing.

00:32:53 - 00:33:09 Speaker 1

It was it was played all around the Delta. Everybody had different versions of it, as far as I know. And, you know, I like the way my uncle played because it sound like what was going on in New Orleans. I didn't know that until I got here. You start hearing the syncopation of what people like Professor Longhair was doing.

00:33:09 - 00:33:29 Speaker 1

The main thing that was heard and talked about in our house was, Sonny boy, you know, like my father knowing him and my older sister knew him and he would play this song. Her nickname was Sugar Baby. So he would play the song, Sugar Mama, Sugar Baby found on the radio.

00:33:29 - 00:33:48 Unknown

Of love, love, love, love la. Hey hey hey hey hey. No no no. Let me,

00:33:48 - 00:34:15 Speaker 4

Coming up. Yes. You have in your good time now. Under the sky. Just like the flowers that come to me, like, Yeah. I buy you a bouquet of roses. Love the Lord on every declaration.

00:34:15 - 00:34:34 Unknown

Ding ding dong dong dong ding. Hum, hum hum hum hum hum Yeah.

00:34:34 - 00:35:00 Speaker 4

Lord, you have in you good time now. And hum, hum, hum. Just like the flowers that comes in make. Me well, I'd buy you bouquet of roses on the lawn on every decoration.

00:35:00 - 00:35:08 Unknown

Ding dong. La la la la la la la la la la la la la.

00:35:08 - 00:35:34 Speaker 1

So when we were talking earlier about the Afro Louisiana sound, I had kind of homed in on a few things that I thought were like people who would capture, just like what we're talking about now, like the basic elements set up, thought we're like the strongest in, in, in music that I had seen, like been in front of and witnessing.

00:35:34 - 00:35:58 Speaker 1

And that was like, okay, are all well, I had a couple of them in New Orleans, and that was fats, Professor Longhair, and then Clifton Junior, you know, having seen him play at like Tipitina's and out there to Zydeco Festival right before he passed away, that was, the stuff that I thought was like I would incorporate.

00:35:58 - 00:36:04 Speaker 1

So, I started.

00:36:04 - 00:36:27 Speaker 1

Playing in the zydeco band, playing Rimbaud. This thing is, this one holds a lot of power. So in the concert, accordions. But, you know, so Clifton and that was it, you know. Oh, man, I got to give me some of that. I had a series of dreams in 1989, a dreamed that I was playing accordion five nights in a row.

00:36:27 - 00:37:03 Speaker 1

So, my God, I went in the were lines on a Friday or something, and, right beside on Canal Street, right beside the US custom House, which is where a bank that at the time the U.S. Customs Credit Union was. And, you know, so you go cash a check in there, whatever. And I went in there and, got the money, pay my bills, pay my bills, and went to where lines get a harmonica and accordion that I kept dreaming and I was playing was hanging on the wall.

00:37:03 - 00:37:28 Speaker 1

It's a little horn, a band master piano, accordion. I was like, wow. He's exactly verbatim the accordion. It was in the dream. It was just so vivid. I end up getting it. Then I was, I ask him how much was, and he was like 1450. I was like, what? It was like $1,450. I'm looking at the harmonica in my hand.

00:37:28 - 00:37:52 Speaker 1

Well, I'm really making my money at. So I end up getting a thing and financed it, which was something I had never done, not even with my car that I bought. I never bought a car and financed it really like that. And I got that thing and had it on like it had some high interest, like 18% for 20 months or something crazy.

00:37:52 - 00:38:20 Speaker 1

21 months. Took it home, didn't know how to play it. I'm just looking at it, sitting there trying to figure out what all these buttons are on it. And my friend call me Luno. He was the Cajun guy. We did some, comedy and commercials and stuff together, and we're not commercials, but we were doing local routine for like, conventions, you know, had the speakerphone on, you know, answering machine.

00:38:20 - 00:38:39 Speaker 1

And he said, man, what is that noise in the background? I can hardly hear you. I said, oh, man, about accordion. And he had just asked me to come to an audition for a commercial sprite commercial. So I was like, what? And he was. I had never done an audition for a commercial, and I said, yes, a court.

00:38:39 - 00:38:40 Speaker 1

He said, oh man.

00:38:40 - 00:38:43 Speaker 4

They love those. They can love that. That's I don't know how to play it.

00:38:43 - 00:39:11 Speaker 1

I just bought it today. So, you know, stayed up all night, called in sick to work and, went to that audition. There's like 700 people there. I stayed up, and, you know, I could figure out some stuff on the piano side, but I didn't really know that side of it at all. And I get my turn finally, after waiting like 3 or 4 hours and I go in there, there's four people sitting at a table and they guy's like, okay, let's see what you got.

00:39:11 - 00:39:26 Speaker 1

And, right before I went in, there's a dude on a unicycle. He's juggling a bowling ball, a pencil, and an egg, and he's on like a a unicycle. It's like 12ft up. And I was like, what the hell am I doing down here? And it's.

00:39:26 - 00:39:28 Speaker 4

Just like, he go get.

00:39:28 - 00:39:29 Speaker 1

The gig, whatever it is.

00:39:29 - 00:39:30 Speaker 4

You know?

00:39:30 - 00:39:33 Speaker 1

So I go play my little harmonica to and I get about 30s. Then he's like.

00:39:33 - 00:39:35 Speaker 3

Okay, thank you.

00:39:35 - 00:39:38 Speaker 4

So mix. See? See you.

00:39:38 - 00:39:57 Speaker 1

Later. And I turn around to leave and I tripped over the accordion. I had it in the case and he thought it was like a routine or something. So he said, what is that? I said, oh, it's an accordion. He said, well, let's hear it. And so, you know, got that thing on. And I was scared to death in that.

00:39:58 - 00:40:20 Speaker 1

I mean, I made the squeaky his worst little notes out you could imagine. He looked to me. He said, what are you doing tomorrow morning at 5 a.m.? I was like, making the sprite commercial. And he said, that's right, and don't be late. And so I was like, what the hell? So I leave out of there. That's how it started.

00:40:20 - 00:40:38 Speaker 1

Got paid two grand and paid the accordion off. Didn't. And the same next day and, and and when I was on the set, there's two little kids, you know, young guys told me, I said, man, you need an agent. You don't know what you're doing. And so they said, here, go call this lady called Claudia Speicher, a New Orleans mandolin talent.

00:40:38 - 00:41:04 Speaker 1

So go to pay pay phone and call her and told her what I was doing. It was like you had to tell her what you're doing. So she said, well, you're already on the gig. I can't help you now, but I'll keep in mind. So we do the commercial that was on a Tuesday. She called me back the next day and said, I got an audition for you with a McDonald's commercial.

00:41:04 - 00:41:21 Speaker 1

So I, go do the audition for a McDonald's commercial. And that that day, and I got the part. So I do the McDonald's commercial the same week on the Friday, and all of a sudden.

00:41:22 - 00:41:24 Speaker 4

I'm out of that.

00:41:24 - 00:41:28 Speaker 1

I've done two national commercials in one week. And so I was like, wow.

00:41:28 - 00:41:32 Speaker 3

Did you keep you still have that, recording? I do have it. Okay. Yeah.

00:41:32 - 00:41:46 Speaker 1

You don't think you should send it closer? I say, yeah, I'm gonna keep that one. I've gotten rid of plenty of them before, but not that one. So that's how I started. And then I went down and, as I got to learn how to play this thing is being too nice for me. It just got me out of that.

00:41:46 - 00:41:57 Speaker 1

I had no bills at it, you know, I got rid of my bills. Basically. They weren't big bills, but they were, you know, you know something, you want to get rid of it. So. So, you know, I made like four grand that week.

00:41:58 - 00:42:06 Speaker 3

So talk to me for a second about how zydeco incorporates blues or if it just is a format. How do you see them like working together?

00:42:06 - 00:42:37 Speaker 1

I think, zydeco music is one of the formulas I would best describe it as, kind of an amalgamation of those Creole music, but it's based off of, Creole blues, French blues. But not only. Yeah, because it incorporates rhythms from, really from quads, reels from mazurkas, from blues. Absolutely. But they're kind of done in a blues format.

00:42:37 - 00:42:42 Speaker 1

I just played one like this in.

00:42:42 - 00:42:57 Speaker 4

00:42:57 - 00:43:03 Speaker 1

Group.

00:43:03 - 00:43:05 Speaker 1

Right.

00:43:05 - 00:43:11 Speaker 1

So instead of.

00:43:11 - 00:43:25 Speaker 1

Let's get the and 123 which and that's a, that's if you plan it. Right. You really doing that with your bass drum?

00:43:25 - 00:43:53 Speaker 1

And then have bass bar, which also is just like one of those forms that, is not a two step, but more like a one step, you know, in that that form is another kind of Creole realize. And so when you hear those, you know.

00:43:53 - 00:43:53 Unknown

And, but.

00:43:53 - 00:43:58 Speaker 1

They got their little passage in the.

00:43:58 - 00:44:12 Speaker 4

By, by sharing my mom. Bye bye baby bump. Bye bye. Have more Frank and Michelle happy to.

00:44:13 - 00:44:20 Unknown

Be heard by.

00:44:20 - 00:44:26 Unknown

The.

00:44:26 - 00:44:32 Unknown

People be.

00:44:32 - 00:44:34 Unknown

The.

00:44:34 - 00:44:59 Speaker 4

Ones who live your dream or my life, man. Why don't we open our up Michigan and tell Detroit. Oh dear customer heck under domain. What about on Sunday? Marvin? On me? De la on.

00:45:00 - 00:45:12 Unknown

And beep beep beep beep boop boop boop boop boop boop boop boop.

00:45:12 - 00:45:24 Speaker 1

You hear that rhythm in the Caribbean? You might hear it. And these are, like, things that are flipped around. They come from waltzes and they come from quadra reals, which were, you know, pretty popular. And it's still popular in the Caribbean.

00:45:24 - 00:45:32 Speaker 3

So zydeco also, you know, not considered a kind of country music, but it is from the country as opposed to being like an urban type of music, really. I mean.

00:45:32 - 00:45:51 Speaker 1

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see that's real music, you know? So it's out in the there's some music that comes from, sugar cane, industry comes from the ranching industry that people were doing here. A lot of early cowboys definitely came out of Louisiana. So just like the song, the.

00:45:51 - 00:45:54 Speaker 3

Guy's got some interesting stuff too. Yeah, yeah.

00:45:54 - 00:45:56 Speaker 1

Well, that's, Yeah.

00:45:56 - 00:45:57 Speaker 3

The cowboy lifestyle.

00:45:57 - 00:46:17 Speaker 1

Yeah. It's cowboy lifestyle. So cowboy lifestyle comes from many different places. Across the border from Mexico, of course. You know, you had cowboys there. The culture here, you know, was like a lot of Creole cowboys also, that were here in Louisiana.

00:46:17 - 00:46:22 Speaker 3

How would you describe, like, New Orleans music impact on popular music?

00:46:22 - 00:47:06 Speaker 1

Still, the farm. It's it's the farm. Some of the people that I would was mentioning, you know, people come here for inspiration and, just experience it and see, like, what is the mystique? And, you know, they, they can, you know, come to realizations and understand that, you know, how the place has changed a lot, but it's still very special in the context of what, it has to offer, because there's not as many places where you can go and hear this canon music and drive that people have or go to, parade, go to a second lot on the weekend and they like it just started happening ten years ago.

00:47:06 - 00:47:32 Speaker 1

Now with the y mo, you know, done in 143 years straight. Yeah. No. And long before that, you know, people were making the music for this reason. So, you know, it has a influence on it is that's why I lemonade and things like that were done here, you know, because they recognized the culture, and that like something to tap into.

00:47:33 - 00:47:51 Speaker 1

They want to reshape. And it's the same thing when Beyonce was doing it to me, you know, she did it. She was able to like I mean, she already had a wonderful career, but but it just kind of elevated her into a whole different stratosphere and consciousness still, you know, when she did that record here.

00:47:51 - 00:48:05 Speaker 3

James Brown was like at the at the forefront of a lot of changes. The emphasis on the rhythm and the drum. But he has the line kind of before he gets into that phase where he's like, don't forget New Orleans, home of the Blues. Then later on, he's like having three drummers in the band at the same time.

00:48:05 - 00:48:11 Speaker 3

And it's like every instrument has a drum. And this is just kind of like is going back to square one, right? Just absolutely reduction to the.

00:48:11 - 00:48:15 Speaker 1

Yeah. And he used some New Orleans drummers talking about. So the Michael.

00:48:15 - 00:48:18 Speaker 3

Jackson they all do that Ray Charles came right here you know.

00:48:18 - 00:48:20 Speaker 1

Yeah. He came from a while.

00:48:20 - 00:48:22 Speaker 3

You don't have to be from here. You just have to get it.

00:48:22 - 00:48:54 Speaker 1

Yeah yeah yeah. They you know what I mean. You know. So it's still the farm in terms of, that thing. So that's, you know, that's a just a head nod to the fact that, people have miraculously kept things going because the New Orleans music is all about the spirit transfer. And once you have that part of it, it's a springboard into just, like, a whole nother different way in language of how you approach music.

00:48:54 - 00:49:15 Speaker 1

And, tonality of it is different. It's just a different accent. The beats and rhythms that you have, those are different accents also than the standard down the middle stuff that you hear in other places. So the Louisiana thing is, is deep, like the Mississippi River is deep and wide. You know?

00:49:15 - 00:49:38 Speaker 3

So, pipe burns. Thanks for coming by, Soul Country. Thank you. Well, Soul Country number seven is in the books with special appreciation to film delicious Sunpie Barnes and Reed Mathis for our theme "We Ride" seven was brought to you by Ace Production in the Blues Center with funding from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. Tune in again for more roots music, culture and laws.

00:49:38 - 00:49:48 Speaker 3

Season two rolls on with jazz rock author and pianist Ben Sidran and find trailers, highlights and playlist, as well as a full archive of episodes as soul country Icon.

Sunpie Barnes

Soul Country #7

Airdate Aug 27, 2024

Podcast 49:54

Recorded in New Orleans, LA

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Description

Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes is the ultimate jack of all trades - a revered musician, cultural historian, former NFL'er and National Park Ranger who has become a pillar of New Orleans' vibrant music scene. Sunpie demonstrates a dazzling array of styles in Soul Country #7 on harmonica, accordion and piano, playing key songs from his wide-ranging repertoire. He learned blues from his father in Arkansas, a contemporary of Sonny Boy Williamson, and later from legendary New Orleans masters. His music thusly is a powerful blend of blues, zydeco, gospel, and Afro-Caribbean influences, reflecting the diverse cultural heritage of the region. Exploring world music took Sunpie to Africa to get deeper into the roots and learn styles of South African accordion playing. That expertise caught the ear of Paul Simon and Sting with whom Sunpie has toured on multiple continents. Host Ric Stewart and Sunpie discuss the fusion of different musical traditions in the South and how these sounds have shaped the cultural identity of New Orleans and beyond. With live performances and in-depth conversations, this episode offers listeners a rare glimpse into Sunpie's Afro-Louisiana sound which maps uncharted terrain in Soul Country. Production made possible in part with grants from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.

More about Sunpie Barnes

Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes is a powerhouse in American music, celebrated for his mastery of blues, zydeco, and gospel. Hailing from Arkansas, Sunpie has carved out a distinctive place in the music scene, blending traditional Southern sounds with his own innovative flair. Over the years, Sunpie has shared the stage with music legends like Sting and Paul Simon, highlighting his versatility and reputation. His discography includes standout tracks like "The Alligator Song" and "Liza Jane," which showcase a unique spin that he terms Afro-Louisiana. Beyond music, Sunpie is a cultural ambassador. His commitment to preserving and promoting the rich musical traditions of Louisiana and the broader Southern United States has taken him around the globe. Whether through his performances, recordings, or cultural outreach, Sunpie Barnes continues to inspire and influence, staying true to his roots while pushing the boundaries of his craft.

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