New Orleans Musicians release an album that seems tailored for pandemic: "Interesting Times"

keith spera, staff writer, New Orleans Advocate, Times Picayune, NOLA.com

April 6,2020

New Orleans vocalist Debbie Davis and pianist Josh Paxton did not set out to make the first “coronavirusalbum.” They started working on their new “Interesting Times” last year, long before the pandemic. 

But “Interesting Times” and its prescient single “Other Than Everything, Everything’s Great” sure sound like they were tailored for these strange times. 

“That was not our intention,” Davis said recently. “I didn’t use a Ouija board at any point. 

“This record was charmingly relevant a month ago. But nothing could have predicted its level of relevance now. I’m alarmed, and sad, that it’s this relevant.” 

“Interesting Times,” available in digital and physical formats via Davis’ website, debbiedavismusic.com, collects 13 intimate voice-and-piano arrangements of songs from across the pop and jazz spectrums. 

Davis and Paxton open with a percolating take on Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round In Circles.” They find fresh pathos in David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” and “Life on Mars.” They conjure a not-so-quiet storm in a full-bore charge through Joe Jackson’s “I’m the Man.” 

Some selections, such as Randy Newman’s “Political Science,” are clearly political. Others, such as “A Night in Tunisia” and “Swing Brother Swing,” are just for fun. 

“I don’t think you can have a revolution if you don’t have a sense of humor,” Davis said. “You can, but what a dreary way to make your point. Joe Strummer and the Clash tried to prepare us for this. The Skatalites tried to prepare us. Don’t just stamp your feet, but lift them up.” 

Since arriving in New Orleans from New Jersey in 1997, Davis has become a stalwart on the local scene. She’s worked with the late Leigh “Little Queenie” Harris, the Pfister Sisters, Paul Sanchez’s Rolling Roadshow, the New Orleans Nightingales and her own Debbie Davis & the Mesmerizers, which includes her husband, bassist and sousaphonist Matt Perrine. 

Singer Debbie Davis and pianist Josh Paxton, photographed on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans on March 18, 2020, after the entertainment district had been shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

PROVIDED PHOTO BY MARC PAGANI 

After 22 years as musical partners, she and Paxton, who were introduced by Leigh Harris, are simpatico. 

“There are people in your life that you understand in a way that needs no explanation,” Davis said. “We understand what the negative space means. Josh can tell by the way I breathe what I’m going to sing. If anything is close to telekinetic, that’s it.” 

She and Paxton had serious concerns about the country’s direction long before COVID-19. “We’ve kind of been f----- for a while,” she said. “This wind didn’t just start blowing. 

“There have been problems and changes and cataclysmic things happening to people who can’t defend themselves. We’re watching the most vulnerable people get taken advantage of in ways that we can’t stop.” 

Increasingly disturbed by it all, she and Paxton resolved last fall to make some sort of statement on record. They assembled a “grocery list” of songs and started recording at Esplanade Studiosand, later Marigny Studios. 

After realizing the songs fell into two distinct camps that wouldn’t mesh on a single album, they planned to release two separate albums at the start of the busy spring festival season. 

When the coronavirus pandemic postponed New Orleans’ major festivals, they shifted gears again and held back one of the albums until fall. 

But “Interesting Times” needed to come out now. 

“It took on a life of its own, and then the world changed, and this project changed with it,” Davis said. “I’m still getting used to what the record means. It means something different than a month ago, and something different than when we started.” 

On “Interesting Times,” Davis and Paxton revive “Your Racist Friend,” from brainy pop duo They Might Be Giants’ 1990 masterpiece “Flood.” The song pairs a jaunty melody with such lyrics as, “This is where the party ends/I can't stand here listening to you/And your racist friend.” 

Davis and Paxton rediscovered “Flood” while on tour. “We were just slack-jawed,” she recalled. “It was done 30 years ago and is still relevant. Not enough has changed to make any of those songs obsolete, especially that one.” 

Luke Allen, leader of local Americana ensemble Happy Talk Band, wrote “Other Than Everything, Everything’s Great” in early 2017 following Donald Trump’s inauguration. Allen hasn’t formally released the song himself; Davis first heard him perform an acoustic version on a Facebook video. 

To her ears, it “sounded like an Irish drinking protest song, like so many of the best protest songs are. It cut me to the bone.” 

Singer Debbie Davis and pianist Josh Paxton, photographed on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans on March 18, 2020, after the entertainment district had been shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

PROVIDED PHOTO BY MARC PAGANI 

For their arrangement, she and Paxton took inspiration from Allen Toussaint and Irma Thomas in the form of a 12/8 time signature that “feels like a waltz, but isn’t. It seemed like a natural cohesion of two different genres trying to do the same thing. A lot of R&B music was protest music disguised as love songs or dance songs.” 

Davis wraps her lush voice around “Pure Imagination,” Gene Wilder’s showcase in the original “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” Imagination, she believes, is critical in challenging times. 

“Not to turn a blind eye, but we have the power to create good in the world if we choose to. You can create a better world for yourself in small ways. I don’t like talking in bumper stickers, but you can be the change you want. 

“Without that, you are at the mercy of a terrible and unfair world. How you perceive the world around you is the first line of defense.” 

During the first couple weeks of the coronavirus quarantine, she kept busy by doing the graphic design for “Atmosphere,” the new album by Matt Perrine’s brass band, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers. 

She also conceived of the “Interesting Times” artwork. Initially, she wasn’t sure how to illustrate the album’s themes and the current state of the world. 

“I had some ideas, but nothing really presented itself in a cogent way. All of a sudden, when we were confined to quarters and places were shut down, I saw in my mind’s eye what our life-scape was — we were all dressed up with no place to go.” 

So on the night of March 18, she, Paxton and photographer Marc Pagani ventured out to Frenchmen Street. City- and state-mandated closures had left the normally bustling entertainment district eerily deserted and silent. 

Davis had visualized the scene, but “didn’t expect it to be as scary as it was. It was scary down there. Marc really captured what that looked and felt like. He found a way to represent the emptiness of that space. Everything we saw knocked the wind out of us all over again.” 

The “Interesting Times” photo shoot ended up being a “time capsule of Frenchmen Street. When it comes back again, it probably won’t look like that. It will be different — hopefully, different for the right reasons.” 

And, she hopes, not just Frenchmen Street. 

***