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Allen Toussaint claims to have always written "in the moment," but in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the work of one of New Orleans' greatest living musicians has taken on an added resonance. With the help of an unlikely champion, Toussaint's music — and its message — are re-emerging just as the music scene in his hometown is bravely making a comeback.
The River In Reverse — a collaboration with Elvis Costello, the one-time leader of English new-wave band The Attractions — is the first album to bear Toussaint's name in nine years. For most of his 50-year career, the pianist and sometime singer has operated behind the scenes, composing and arranging songs that have become hits for artists as diverse as Lee Dorsey, Three Dog Night, Patti Labelle and Glen Campbell, who made his "Southern Nights" a smash. Given the sheer number of people both Toussaint and Costello have worked with, it was perhaps inevitable their paths would cross.
Sitting in a Yorkville restaurant during a promotional stop in Toronto, the dapperly-attired Costello, whose plastic-rimmed shades are the only visible reminder of a career flouting convention, recalls the first time he met Toussaint and recorded in New Orleans in 1983.
"For outsiders," he says, "it's quite hard to break into that town. I used to get my agent to book me in there, because I'd be pretty confident that the concert would be cancelled for lack of ticket sale and then I'd have a couple of days off. On this occasion I got to record with Allen."
The experience stuck with him, even if the result (a cover of Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice") vanished quickly into his cluttered back catalogue; the two would work together again in 1988 for a song on Costello's album Spike, and they found themselves sharing stages for Katrina benefit concerts last year. Costello, ever the musical explorer, approached the pianist to do an "Allen Toussaint songbook."
"I knew there were a number of songs that I felt strongly about," he says, "several of which I thought there was no finer moment than now for them to be heard."
He picked out early '70s numbers such as "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get Further?" and "Freedom For The Stallion," both of which deal with race relations in America. Costello was spending a lot of time in New York City, and since Toussaint was living there in exile after his New Orleans home was flooded, the pair began writing together, inspired by current events. "I never had looked for as much as what happened in this collaboration," explains the serene (and equally dapper) Toussaint. "Usually an artist is sent to me, in a way 'nekkid,' and I'm to take it from there. That's a totally different element from what happened here. To have this much real collaboration, I must say, was a luxury and a blessing."
Together, the two penned five song, which evoke sorrow, anger, determination, jubilation and human weakness. Perhaps the most memorable new composition is "The Sharpest Thorn," which sounds like a drunken but rueful waltz. "Although we know we must repent," sings Costello, "We hit the scene and look for sins / That haven't even been invented."
Says Costello, "It's a simple tale about somebody who goes out, full of pride, to join a parade, and comes home at the end of the day with confetti in his hair and his pocket's been picked and [he's] a little wiser and humbler."
Other songs also evoke evil and judgement; Costello attributes this, half-jokingly, to his and Toussaint's Catholic upbringing. In "Broken Promise Land," he sings "There's a place where infidels and showgirls meet." Costello sees this lyric as a key to this aspect of the album. "There are some people who will tell you that what happened to New Orleans was some sort of divine retribution, because it's a sinful place — where's the charity in that remark?"
Of course, there was a time where the last thing anyone would expect from Costello was charity. In 1977, he told the New Musical Express that all he knew of emotions were "revenge and guilt."
"I'd drunk 14 Pernods when I said that," recalls Costello rather sheepishly. "There was a degree of bravado in that remark. I might have been trying to clear a little space around myself to get on with my job by saying something that would be like, 'Wow! Get over that!' I realized after a few years that you couldn't base your career on one view of music or one narrow set of emotions."
The River In Reverse was recorded partially in New Orleans last December, just as the city was slowly opening back up for business. It features both Costello's band, The Imposters, and Toussaint's Crescent City Horns, and ends with a succession of upbeat songs reflecting how Toussaint sees the post-Katrina period as one of new opportunities — this collaboration being one of them.
"There's loads of great things coming out of Katrina," he affirms. "The small things I see, moving slowly but very surely, will become more obvious and glorious as time goes on. It's going to take a while, because New Orleans always is a bit slower than the rest of America, even in tragedy. That's one of the things that we live with, and which comes from the soul and the strut and the syncopation of the music, as well as the shrimp po'boy and gumbo."
If the reception to the duo's performance at this year's New Orleans Jazz Festival was any indication, many people in the city share his optimism.
"The crowd was just wonderful," enthuses Toussaint. "It was more than I've ever seen at one time. I was expecting the best, because I always do, and the best came and said 'Here I am.'"
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