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Stealing the Show

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LeBlanc's youngest son is with the family and attending school at Mount Carmel High School, but his oldest son returned to New Orleans to live with his mother's family and finish high school. Next fall LeBlanc hopes his oldest will enroll at his own alma mater -- Texas Southern University, where he served as a drum major in that school's Ocean of Soul Marching Band while he was studying to obtain a degree in social work. "When I had to evacuate, Houston was an easy choice for me because I was used to the city," he says.

Although they were stricken with the dual tragedy of Katrina and the debilitating stroke of tuba player Kerwin James, the New Birth has probably had their best year from a financial and visibility standpoint. They had more gigs than they could handle here in Houston -- both in the clubs and at high-dollar private functions -- and on their return to New Orleans, the shows got even bigger. At this year's Jazz Fest, U2 guitarist The Edge joined them on stage, and at the reopening of the Superdome this year, the band performed on stage with both U2 and Green Day in the nationally televised pregame festivities on ESPN's Monday Night Football.

LeBlanc says that something similar has been going on with the Soul Rebels. "The music has been more in demand than ever," he says. "People look at it as some of the last authentic culture from New Orleans that wasn't washed away by the storm."

Only they haven't been playing in Houston much. LeBlanc believes that the city's infrastructure is better suited to his family than to his band. He is very happy with his son's schooling, and his wife was able to get a medical job that was comparable to what she had pre-Katrina. "I think that Houston's a much safer and better place due to what's been stripped away in New Orleans. We're going to settle here." But as of right now, LeBlanc has played most of his music on the road.

New Orleans's tourism industry was in many ways his lifeblood, along with much of the rest of the city. "We're always being asked to play for dignitaries or corporations that come to New Orleans," he says. LeBlanc says the city's compact layout makes life easy for tourists, conventioneers and musicians -- the party places are a minute's walk away from the attractions and convention halls. His band has serenaded visitors at the airport, convention centers and at parties, sometimes all in the same day, with minimal driving.

LeBlanc is leery of trying to start out in the clubs here. "I know how the club circuit is -- it's a hustle," he says. "And if you don't have a big following, clubs aren't gonna be able to stick with you to build a following. But in New Orleans, the clubs will stick with you for weeks and weeks, because they know that eventually people are gonna start coming." LeBlanc also echoes Mitchell's words about the late-night-loving, hard-drinking nature of the New Orleanian. "In New Orleans, you have the 24-hour drinking, so you might have people come into the club at 12:30, gettin' the party started and staying until 2 or 2:30."

What he's hoping for is that the powers-that-be in the city's infrastructure -- the Greater Houston Convention Center and Visitors Bureau, the big money folks on the River Oaks gala circuit, the people who book the high-dollar spring and fall festivals -- will give him a call. (Indeed, the Houston International Festival has already done so.) "I haven't got that consistent flow yet," he says, and adds that bands like his are logistically simple to book. "We have all our instruments on us," he says. "We're like a miniature version of a marching band, so we're able to set up easy and do performances in the smallest or biggest of spaces with no hassle. The music really gives the people a home feel."

Indeed. "A home feel." Houston is now home to this kind of music, just as much as New Orleans is. And this is not the first time large numbers of black Louisianans have migrated to Houston. The 20th century saw rural Creoles from southwestern Louisiana come to Houston by the thousands, bringing with them gumbo, crawfish, jambalaya and the rural music called "la-la" that would evolve here -- when it fused with the blues and R&B of the locals -- into zydeco.

We're at a similar cultural crossroads right now. And the pot is simmering, even though Kermit, the New Birth and dozens of other New Orleans musicians have returned home. At the Orange Show gala earlier this month, Hingle played with a version of the New Birth he slapped together through a few phone calls to various members of other brass bands living here in Houston.

And LeBlanc has done some work in the schools -- "Not a plethora of things, but I would like to do more," he says. Also, the New Orleans-style jazz funeral could be starting to catch on here with the local black community. "A while back a string of funerals came along for a string of families that were from New Orleans," he says. "We got another gig out of it -- the minister at one of the funerals was a man from Houston, and he liked that we knew the spiritual hymns. He took our card."

In order to play more local shows, he's thinking about training some local musicians -- possibly kids from the TSU Ocean of Soul band -- to fill in here for the Soul Rebels who have moved back home. "Sometimes the gigs I get don't pay enough for me to ask the guys in New Orleans to travel to Houston. But the ones who are here, like me, the bass player and the lead trumpet player -- if I could find like a sax dude or a trombone player who would do the gigs with me here, that's a whole quartet or quintet right there. We could make magic, you know."

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