Worn-Out Cassettes

Page McConnell: My dad spent a lot of time in New Orleans in the ‘50s and just loved the music. He encouraged me to consider schools there, so I always had an appreciation for the town. I ended up going to college in Dallas for a bit in the early ‘80s and that’s when a friend of mine played me The Neville Brothers and I started getting into their music. We went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans— we were close enough that we could get there a few times and I had a friend at Tulane University. Then, when I was at Goddard College a few years later, another friend played me The Meters for the first time, in about 1984. I got a cassette tape of Look-Ka Py Py and listened to it over and over until I pretty much wore it out.

George Porter Jr.: Page’s father is involved in the structuring of a New Orleans version of a musicians’ clinic, so [in 1999] Page and Mike Gordon played on this Get You a Healin’ benefit CD we did. That’s how he got together with [funky METERS drummer] Russell Batiste and they started Vida Blue. A few years later, our band PBS [Porter Batiste Stoltz] was playing right outside Burlington, Vt., and Russell called Page to come hang out. He brought a keyboard and played almost the entire gig. At that time, our management and I were recording almost every gig that PBS was playing and multi- tracking them. We put it out as a record, and it made a little noise, but then we went out on the road with Page for a few dates. They went well but it wasn’t something I thought Page wanted to do long-term.

Three of a Kind

GP: We originally did The Meter Men as a trio at Jazz Fest in 2009. [Jazz Fest producer] Quint Davis thought it was a good idea to get [founding Meters members] Leo [Nocentelli], Zig [Modeliste] and myself to do a show together without a keyboardist. We did another festival after that, but then The Meter Men went away because of everyone’s schedules and nobody was interested in booking the trio at the time. It came back around again in 2012 when a gentleman from New York by the name of Howie Schnee inquired about doing some shows around Halloween.

We were all cutting our own deals at the time and Leo suggested we bring Page into the keyboard spot for those four shows. We did Jazz Fest both weekends with him after that, but Page got busy with Phish so we started bringing in different keyboardists like Rich Vogel from Galactic, John Gros and Robert Walter. With all due respect to all the keyboardists who have played with The Meter Men, the only one who was part of our musical heritage was John Gros—though Ivan Neville has said that he would like to throw his name in the hat when he is available. Originally, I was interested in using George Duke. Leo was friends with George and he was supposed to be reaching out to him but then—the next thing I knew—he had passed away.

PM: Leo originally called me about doing four shows and, almost immediately, I decided to spend the next year seeing how many gigs I could work into my schedule. We ended up playing 14 shows—finishing the next September at the Catskill Chill festival in New York. But when Leo asked me if I wanted to play those first four shows,
I had only played with him once. It was during a gig at The Howlin’ Wolf in New Orleans with a band Russell had put together. When we started playing “Cissy Strut,” Leo got up to play and took over. Russell and Leo do this thing where they play “Cissy Strut” in odd time signatures and they sort of schooled us onstage with a little tutorial in the middle of the show. Now, I am close with these guys and it is such an honor to have a personal part in their music, but nothing like that had ever happened to me before. [Laughs.] People always say, “Oh, Phish is so heavily influenced by the Dead,” or some say by the Allman Brothers or [Frank] Zappa. I think The Meters areas important as any of those bands when it comes to the way we play.

Keyboardist’s Choice

GP: The way that Zig approaches the music, in itself, is so different than the funky METERS or my Runnin’ Pardners. With the Runnin’ Pardners, I made a serious attempt to play songs that The Meters or The Meter Men didn’t play. On my last record, Can’t Beat the Funk!, I recorded 16 wonderful, original Meters songs that were never performed live by The Meters. The album only had 14 songs because I gave two of them away for free on my website but, at this point, none of my other Meters projects are touching on those tunes [Laughs.] I’m easing my way into getting the band to address some of those more obscure songs. I always ask the keyboard players who come play with us which Meters songs they know or want to play. The wonderful thing about that is, most of the time, they suggest songs that we don’t normally do, so we’ve eased some of those numbers into the songbook.

PM: I like whenever The Meter Men introduce new material or whenever we play songs that are slightly more obscure or off the beaten path. It’s always fun to play new material and, of course, we are doing that with Phish all the time. I encouraged The Meter Men to play a song called “Pungee” from Look-Ka Py Py—an obscure track that I learned with Phish at one point in the practice room but never played live—and “This Is My Last Affair.” It just got better each show as we started listening to each other more, which is what I’m all about musically. But it still took me awhile to find my way and get confident enough to play with them. It’s a different mindset when you are playing with your heroes—someone you have listened to so much. I think the ensemble element has gotten better over the past four years.

Phishy Exercises

PM: Phish used to practice along with The Meters’ music and it was educational. We all learned the parts and we would start playing along with a tape of their music. I’d reach over and turn the volume down so we’d be playing along but we wouldn’t be able to hear it. Then, we’d get to the end of the song and see how far away we got from what The Meters were doing.

We’d already been playing for a few years before we started delving into The Meters’ music. I may have been listening to it more than the rest of the guys, but what was interesting for the four of us was to say, “Here is another quartet with the exact same instrumentation—let’s listen to what they do and how they do it and what makes
them so unique.”

We have our own personalities and they have their own personalities, so it was an exercise in seeing if we could sound like them. Phish did that with a lot of different music—bluegrass, the barber- shop quartet lessons we took over the years—so it wasn’t unusual for us, especially in the past with all the Halloween albums, to try to get inside other bands. We’d learn what we could about the way they played and incorporate it into our own playing. But with The Meters, it was especially educational because the instrumentation was so similar.

The Art of Art

PM: In the months leading up to those first gigs in 2012, I spent a lot of time trying to get inside Art Neville’s parts and learning exactly what his voicing was. A lot of times, it wasn’t particularly complicated and that is one of the things I always liked about Art’s playing: I could relate to it. What he was achieving was so great, but there was an economy to it. He wasn’t overplaying and there was an attention to melody that I always wanted to emulate. You could sing along to those melodies, and you wanted to remember them.

Key Coordination

GP: We have different agencies booking all our Meters projects, so we keep a Google calendar to see who is targeting us where. If the funky METERS are in New York, then we will try to book The Meter Men on the West Coast. That, in itself, is a work of art on the part of the agencies. There has been a change in the funky METERS: Terrence Houston recently replaced Russell Batiste on drums and that has brought a fresh, new pocket to the funky METERS’ groove. He’s been playing in Runnin’ Pardners since I reorganized the band almost four years ago, so when the funky METERS drum seat came up for grabs, I immediately put his name in the hat. He pays attention to the music being played around him—he’s not leading the music, he’s leaving a pocket for us to get into.

The Original Jamband

GP: I always said The Meters were the first jamband. When we first started, almost every one of our songs was close to two minutes until “Ain’t No Use” came out—that was the first song that went into the 10-minute mark. So when we played live in the ‘60s and limited how many covers we did, we had to stretch out our songs live. In fact, a lot of songs got written at the end of other songs live—the grooves, patterns and jams made it to the next record.

PM: I would agree that The Meters were one of the first jambands. They all have such distinct personalities and they all come through so clearly in their playing. It is about the relationship, the sum of the parts, like my other band. I feel like the sum of Phish’s parts make us better than any of the individual playing—the way we communicate together and play around each other, and the way that we listen to each other. That’s what it is all about for The Meters, too, and I love it when I can sit in with them and feel like I can fit in with everything they are doing.

Meeting in the Middle

GP: When I sat down to do Can’t Beat the Funk!, I was looking at 27 different songs. So there is another album and a half of unplayed Meters songs in that catalog. I would like to see The Meters go into the studio and rerecord those songs and revisit that music. I’ve heard Leo say that music is dated so I say, “Let’s rerecord it.” Frankly, I have a studio at my house where I would love to put it on the tape instead of going into some big-time studio. Zigaboo can play on his first two sets of drums. I have them here at my house.

At this point, I am the only person who is regularly playing with all the original members of The Meters and [until recently] it seemed like everyone’s managers thought that keeping everyone apart is better for the artists. When the front offices started talking to each other about the band becoming a band again, it went south. But on Dec. 29, 2014 at 7:58 p.m., I got an email from Quint asking about The Meters playing Jazz Fest that said, “Possible or impossible?” I said, “Sounds great to me,” so then he went to the other musicians. On January 4, I was looped in with some of the other members of the band to make sure that Nocentelli, Modeliste and myself were in before he went to Neville’s management. Then, on January 5, I got a call from Art Neville’s front office wanting to make sure that what he heard was what we all agreed on before he brought it to Art. The next day, The Meters were confirmed for Jazz Fest. That is how it is with this band. Jazz Fest is special enough that, of course, we all want to be a part of it. Can I see The Meters doing more shows after Jazz Fest? I would like to see us get through this one first, have a great time and play our very best because I always say, “Never say never when it comes to this band.”