Royal Flush Fest ’10: Coals to Newcastle

Leeds is a hipper city than you might think. Home of the first European music college to offer a jazz degree, it has attracted talented students from around the continent, many of whom have stayed in town. As a result, it has a fairly happening music scene that can more or less support a band like the New Mastersounds. Still, it’s not New Orleans, so naturally the band jumped at the chance to play Jazz Fest, post-Katrina. Appreciating the band’s journey to the birthplace of all funky sounds, filmmakers Marca Hagenstad and Aaron Dunsay documented their mini-tour in Coals to New Castle—The New Mastersounds: from Leeds to New Orleans (trailer here), which screened last night at the 2010 Royal Flush Festival, New York’s annual celebration of film, music, and attitude, newly relocated to the Brooklyn Knitting Factory for extra added swagger.

The New Mastsersounds might have scratched out an even larger following in the States than in their native Britain. In fact, their 2007 New Orleans gigs generated a lot of heat and American goodwill for the band. A jazz-influenced instrumental funk jam-band, the NM’s blur genre distinctions in way that makes them feel quite at home in the Crescent City club circuit. Wisely, Hagenstad and Dunsay focus on their three big gigs: the venerable House of Blues, a free outdoor porch concert (literally on their host’s porch and probably their biggest show in NOLA), and at the Blue Nile on Frenchmen Street. (I’d just like to take a moment to give a shout out to the Blue Nile, whose staff was quite welcoming when I caught Kirk Joseph there nearly three years ago).

Sweet Georgia Brown, the music of Coals is funky. The NM’s are a groovy band and they had some killer NOLA musician’s musicians sitting-in with them in 2007, including the likes of Stanton Moore (of Galactic) and Ivan Neville (founder of Dumptaphunk). Though the music drives Coals, the bandmembers, particularly drummer Simon Allen, offer some interesting insights on the sociological differences between the British and American scenes. Indeed, the very NOLA tradition of sitting-in was something that took some getting used to for the NM’s. They clearly warmed to it though.

Obviously, Katrina’s wake was an all too fresh reality when they played Jazz Fest, but Hagenstad and Dunsay smartly resist over-playing that card. Instead, they just let the band and their guests chug away. The results are just a rollicking good time.

With their retro-1970’s graphics and some energizing concert footage, Coals looks cool and sounds great. Frankly, it is more than entertaining enough to merit a legitimate theatrical life. Unfortunately many distributors probably will not understand the New Mastersounds’s knack for packing houses. Thoroughly satisfying, Coals next screens on October 24th at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas, while the 2010 Royal Flush Festival continues at its new BKLN home through the 18th.

The Wetlands Preserve Preserved

There was an interesting time in the 1990’s when elements of rock and jazz were reaching towards each other through the jam band movement. Rock bands like Phish and Widespread Panic, inspired by forerunners like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, were exploring similar musical territory as were jazz jammers like MMW and Soulive. More than any other venue, the Wetlands Preserve incubated the rock side of the jam band scene and celebrated its hippy roots. The life and times of the club are chronicled in Dean Budnick’s entertaining new documentary Wetlands Preserved (trailer here), opening in New York this Friday.

The Wetlands Preserve was the unlikely brainchild of sixties holdout Larry Bloch. He had no prior nightclub experience, but envisioned a unique venue in which the club would support a center for political activism as a given cost of doing business. During the Tribeca club’s life, from 1989 to its closing soon after September 11th, the Wetlands booked a number of acts poised to explode, including Blues Traveler, Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Spin Doctors, and Hootie and the Blowfish. To his regret, Bloch never did book the Dead—the band that inspired his club—but Robert Hunter played their final night, which was almost close enough.

There is some great music to be heard in Preserved, thanks to live performances recorded in the club from artists including Matthews, Blues Traveler, Robert Randolph, and Ben Harper. Together with some animation appropriate to the club’s spirit, it is definitely the reason to see the documentary.

However, the behind the scenes stories of Wetlands are also surprisingly entertaining—some even laugh out loud funny. We learn that Bloch’s green sensibilities insisted the club only use paper straws, not plastic, which according to his ex-wife worked about as well as you would expect. Many of the employees have great anecdotes too, like a bar worker who started on the night an uncharacteristically hardcore band played. (The story depends on his expressions and it is a tad scatological, so let’s save it for the film.)

(As for the politics of Wetlands, they tended to be a juvenile mix of environmental and anti-corporate street theater. Frankly, the coordinator of their activism center comes across as a terrible on-camera spokesman, so it is easy to tune out his clichéd rhetoric.)

The music is indeed what the club did best, and it is the best part of Budnick’s film. In addition to improvised rock, Wetlands also booked ska, hip-hop, hardcore, and jam-based jazz. For instance, jazz artists like Charlie Hunter and Soulive played the club. Although these artists are not represented on Preserved’s soundtrack, Jazz listeners will find much of interest in the film, including interviews with John Medeski, Soulive’s Eric Krasno, and briefly Branford Marsalis (who should know something about hippy music having toured with the Dead).

Bloch deserves a lot of credit for creating a great venue and dealing with the City’s red tape and regulations (one amusing sequence pokes fun at the club’s “legal” maximum occupancy). Budnick’s documentary collects some cool grooves and real laughs in a film that should appeal to those of us who went to school during the Wetlands years and associate vivid memories with that music. It opens in New York this Friday at the Cinema Village.