A Sit-Down with Roger Lewis, Band leader of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Bocephus “Bo” Brown, Music Columnist for  Bozeman Magazine

Bo: My name is Bocephus Brown and I’m here today with a guest, Mr. Roger Lewis of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. How are you doing today, sir?

RL: I’m doing fine. Everything’s lovely. Another day in paradise.
(laughter)

Bo: Alright, well I’m super excited for your return visit to Bozeman, Montana on Wednesday June 29th at The Zebra Cocktail Lounge. I understand that you sold out The Filling Station last time you played here.

RL: Yeah. People seemed to like what The Dirty Dozen do so we aim to please. We want everybody to come out and have a good time. Get baptized in this good New Orleans music. New Orleans music in your soul.

Bo: Nice. I like that. Actually, it takes a lot to sell out The Filling Station. Not very many bands do that so I’m looking forward to your show.

RL: I’m looking forward to being there, trust me.

Bo: Do you remember your very, very first influence? Your favorite horn player who made you pick up the instrument?

RL: Well actually, the guy who made me pick up the instrument was my cousin, Alvin Bailey and he played the alto saxophone. He was the first one that I knew about that played music in the family. He gave the saxophone to another cousin of mine, Leonard Bailey. Leonard played it for a little while but he had other interests. I used to pick up the old horn up and toot on it. And eventually, my first instrument was piano, of course. My mother sent me to take piano lessons because she wanted me to play for church.
I took lessons for a while. Of course, I didn’t keep it up. It was the biggest musical mistake I ever made by not keeping up the piano. ‘cause it’s such a complete instrument. It’s the mother of all instruments. I didn’t know that at the time because I was
a kid.

I didn’t have any guidance for this. Somebody says, ‘Well man, you got a piano thing going. I got a saxophone.’ About the piano and I got a saxophone when I was ten years old. My cousin was the one who really influenced me to play the saxophone.
And later on down the line, you know, like, I come up listening to rhythm and blues and stuff like that. Listen to all these cats [like] Domino. Recordings with the great Lee Allen and Herbert Hardesty, two tenor men who played all the saxophone solos and I used to try and sound like that.

You know…that kind of music: rhythm and blues. Then as I got older I started listening to other music. My biggest influence in music came from New Orleans. Listening to all the cats who played around here. Ray Tyler was probably the first saxophone player I heard that played jazz on the saxophone.

And listen to people like Edward ‘Kid’ Jordan playing baritone. He was the first baritone player I heard in New Orleans. And the list goes on and on with guys by the name of Rufus Gold, better known as Nose. Mars Bashman. All these guys were New Orleans musicians and they were great musicians.

These were great, great saxophone players. I mean, these guys, man, People like Ralph Johnson and Eddie Williams. These are names you probably never heard of before, but these were some great, great saxophone players, man. They just didn’t get their just due.

Bo: Or if they do, sometimes it takes a long time for that to happen.

RL: Well, not only that…a lotta guys don’t like to leave New Orleans. To get world recognition, you have to leave. Most people don’t leave because it’s such a nice city.
People don’t want to leave their families and go on the road and go with all of that.

They didn’t do it extensively. They didn’t leave home, go on the road and came back. You gotta leave like Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Mahalia Jackson. They left to get that recognition.
You gotta leave, man. Like Dirty Dozen. We got recognition at home, but had got world recognition import the music to other countries, other cities. You can’t keep it in one little box. You gotta move with it.

Bo: Not so much musically, but personally what’s it like living in the heart of jazz: New Orleans? Everyday must be amazing.

RL: (laughs) It’s just a way of life we never think about it like that. You just, you know, play music and you practice and just, well you know…just move.
I don’t know, I mean I never thought about it (laughs)

Yeah, I never thought about “what it’s like.” You get up in the morning and I practice and practice throughout the day. You know, sometimes ALL day. You know, different times I might practice a little bit. Take a break. Chill out, come back, practice some more. Go make a gig, come home after the gig, practice some more. You know?   (my laughter)

Bo: I read this little story in this book called ‘From Satchmo to Miles’ written by Leonard Feather about the early development of jazz and bebop in New York City. They had these stories about how people would get done with an all night jam session and go to another person’s house at 6:30 am, wake them up just to start playing again.

RL: Yeah, back in the 60s couple of friends who were saxophone players used to call ourselves ‘The Boys.’ We were all tight. I played saxophone. I had this little pad on the top of a drugstore and we’d get together and practice all day to real early in the morning. Sometimes we’d crash, pass out right there.

Wake up, start practicing again. We got used to doing that EVERY day. I mean ALL day. As a matter of fact, this one guy whose name was Frederick Kemp. He was experimenting with a lot of different harmonies. He was harmonizing all sorts of solos before I learned super sax. We were doing stuff like that back then, back in the 60s man.

This guy was harmonizing. He wasn’t thinking about recording all this stuff at the time. We just practiced when we should’ve been recording. We should have been documenting what we were doing, but nobody wasn’t thinking like that. On a business level part of it, you know. We just playing music and having fun.

Bo: Feelin’ the love, exactly.

RL: And practicing, you know, I mean that’s what most guys do. They go by each other’s house and share their ideas and they practice, you know, pretty much what musicians do. ‘Course you have to have a life too, you know, especially if you got family.
Everybody in my house will play music. My wife is a very accomplished pianist. Her name is Marie Watanabe, she’s Japanese. She plays with all the cats around here. Everybody in my family plays music. My sister plays music, she’s a music teacher. Well, there’s exceptions. My brothers, they don’t play but, you know…

Bo: You’ve done an album where you pay tribute to Jelly Roll Morton and also been featured on a compilation where you did a song for Fats Domino. If you did another tribute album, which artist would you pay tribute to?

RL: (Thinks) I kinda like Duke Ellington. I like Ellington.

Bo: He just had a birthday. It’s the same birthday as mine so double reasons to celebrate that day.

RL: Yeah, I play in his big band with Delfeayo Marsalis. Big band every Wednesday when I’m in town. We do a lot of music of Duke Ellington. That music is very, very special. Very hard to play, by the way. Maybe a tribute to Duke. Or maybe a tribute to Louis Armstrong. I would like to do something like that. Well, you know I would like to pay a tribute to everybody. But there ain’t that much time.

Bo: And there’s so many great musicians out there.

Bo: A friend of mine had this question, he’s asking about what it’s like to play at different venues. His question was: Do you find the same kind of energy at music festivals compared to, say, churches?

RL: Well, yeah you have a tendency to play where you play festivals because you have other musicians on the festival so you have a tendency to try to play the best that you can play. Anytime you show up with other musicians, you gotta bring it. Like if you play in a club by yourself you still try to bring it, but there’s a difference when you’re playing with other people on the same bill with you, especially if you’re a headliner. And if you play New Orleans, you gotta really bring it. If you wanted to play, New Orleans is one of the hardest places to play in the world. When you play New York, you gotta really bring it. Certain places make you play different.

Bo: Well, let’s see here on your album Voodoo, this probably is a normal thing for you but for all of us fans we’re curious about what it’s like hanging out with Dr. John, Dizzy Gillespie, and Branford Marsalis.

RL: Well, let’s start with Dizzy. Dizzy loved the band. Dizzy said the band reminded him of when he was a youngster comin’ up. He loved some Dirty Dozen, man. He didn’t want to play none of his music. He just wanted to play the music that we were playing. He said, “No I don’t wanna play that. You
start. I wanna play what you cats playin’. I wanna play that.” We wind up doing one of his tunes called Oop Pop A Dah.
Well, Branford he’s a homeboy, so you know, he’s just like family. Branford’s always cool. He’s a real nice, laid back dude. No trippin’, he ain’t trippin’
Dr. John, he’s just a regular old New Orleans dude. Mac Rebennack is his real name.

Bo: Considering how many people you’ve played with so far ranging from Modest Mouse to Chuck D to all these people you’ve mentioned before…Is there anyone you still want to play with?

RL: I’ll play with all of them, you know? Modest Mouse, Widespread Panic. We do things with Widespread Panic. We just did a gig with Widespread Panic not too long ago. We recorded with Widespread Panic. We recorded with Dave Matthews. When we did a tribute to Marvin Gaye, we had G Love, Guru, Betty LaVette. On Medicated Magic, on that CD we had Norah Jones. Norah Jones recorded with us before she got big. She did a song called Ruler Of My Heart. Beautiful rendition of it.

Bo: Alright, well I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule. Good luck on your tour and thank you for sitting down with me today. Well, I will see you at the show on June 29th at the Zebra Cocktail Lounge and this is Mr. Roger Lewis of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

RL: We got music for your mind,
body, and your soul. World’s greatest party band.