If you missed Galactic, you missed out

By Josh Werner
Entertainment Staff

Friday night's Variety Playhouse show featuring Galactic was a hit from the start. Galactic hit the stage in full force and had the crowd in a funk mood within minutes. Some highlights of the show include the performance of saxophonists Jason Mingledorff and Ben Elman, two musicians who rarely with the band together, save gigs in New Orleans. These two along with keyboardist Rich Vogel provided for some powerful instrumentals.

Next, it was vocalist Theryl DeClouet's turn to impress. He provided for a great change of pace and helped highlight the band's ability to accommodate his talents onstage. He seems to be integral to the audience's connection with the music and most certainly among the young musicians themselves due to his experience and stage presence. After he makes his graceful exit (not without thanking all the ladies in the house, of course) Galactic moves back into their jammy funk jazz without skipping a beat.

Being a relatively new band is tough in any town, especially so in Atlanta. But there was no doubt in the house as to Galactic's ability to bring the people in, entertain them expertly and make everyone there hope that they will be back soon.

Recently I had a chance to talk with Stanton Moore, drummer of Galactic. Here's some experts from the interview. JOSH WERNER: What is the music scene like in the Big Easy? STANTON MOORE: It's really fertile. For a while there were about 15 musicians that made up the happening music scene. Everybody plays in like five different bands. For a while some cats would kid each other over who was getting who for upcoming gigs. I was playing with the Klezmer All Stars (another big New Orleans outfit) and Galactic and it got to such a crazy point that they wouldn't even call me anymore. Klezmer's manager would call Robert, our bass player, and say something like, "Well, you can have Stanton on these days and we get him these days . . ." There's a lot of happening and interesting bands in the New Orleans area. It's a good scene right now. JW: Tell me about your musical influences. SM: I think we started off as a group with the [Funky] Meters and James Brown. More recently we've been getting into Bluenote stuff like Lou Donaldson, Ray Green, Bernard Curtie, those kinda cats. As a group, we all see eye to eye on that, and of course we listen to so many different kinds music. I try to bring in different things. Like the other day, I just went out and bought all these CDs like stuff from West Java and Japanese percussion ensembles. I'm bringing in Indian music and some Aruba and African drums. I try to bring that element into things, too. My musical influences span just about anything I can get my hands on. I've always dug the New Orleans scene, but along with that I'm trying to go even further beyond and find the stuff that's not real well known. JW: Tell me about your recent tour. Where did you find people most receptive to your music? SM: It was about our fourth time on the West Coast and it finally clicked in for us. We sold out the Great American Music Hall and L.A. was finally a good show. We did a bunch of festivals around the bay area and it was just totally a blast out. Our plan was to do a small club and then two festivals, so by the time we did these shows, it would be raging for the Great American Music Hall. It totally worked out, but when we showed up to the smaller club, it held about 180 people and there were over 400 in a huge line out the door. So I guess the only problem we had is that we totally underestimated our influence out there. The plan worked almost too well. By the time we made it to the music hall, the show was beyond sold out and there were hundreds of people outside waiting to get in. We've been having some really great experiences lately. JW: Speaking of recent experiences... you played in New Orleans on Halloween night with Widespread Panic. What was that like? SM: It was very cool. There was a lot of hype leading up to the show. The guys in Widespread were very cool. JoJo Hermann (from Widespread) actually came out and sat in with us later at a sort of "after secret" show. Everyone was real positive about us playing with Widespread and the crowd dug it. [UNO Lakefront Arena] was probably the biggest venue we've played so far. It was a really great experience. JW: Any big plans for the future for the you or the band? SM: We're just going to keep trying to truck as far as we can. Right now things are going really well for us and we're really grateful for that. We've worked hard to get where we're at. JW: Hell yeah. You've been touring everywhere almost non-stop. SM: Yeah. I think we just plan to keep doing it. We've got a new record that we recorded and managers working for us now, shopping the new recording around to some people. The first album (Coolin' Off) hasn't gotten around to as many listeners as we'd like because to put it out we had to start our own label. When that happens, it's real hard to get distribution right off the bat and we're still struggling to get the record out. Hopefully we'll get the new record out to a label that can get some distribution established. Then as long as we keep touring we can get our sound out to lots more people.

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