By JANE STEVENSON, TORONTO SUN
Shelter from the storm
New Waver , R'nB icon reunite for collaboration
Brought together musically by Hurricane Katrina, Brit Elvis Costello, left, and New Orleans resident Allen Toussaint collaborated on the 13-track The River in Reverse. (Greg Henkenhaf SUN)
AT FIRST glance, a British New Wave pioneer and a New Orleans R&B legend -- the latter 17 years older than the former -- might not appear to have much musically in common.
Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, whose new inspired collaboration, The River in Reverse, hit stores yesterday, worked together twice in the '80s.
Last year's life-changing Hurricane Katrina led to the musicians crossing paths again, in New York City, where Toussaint had temporarily relocated and Costello spends time with Canadian wife Diana Krall.
"By this time I'd heard that Allen had made it to New York and I said, 'There wouldn't be any better thing than to ask Allen to play (Toussaint's) Freedom for the Stallion with me," recalls the 51-year-old Costello.
SECOND BENEFIT
The first benefit led to a second, The Big Apple for the Big Easy, a televised event from Madison Square Garden in which Toussaint's band backed up several artists, including Costello.
"Definitely, at that point, I thought there were some songs of Allen's that could be heard in this moment that had particular resonance for the circumstance," says Costello.
The River In Reverse became seven Toussaint songs, five Toussaint-Costello collaborations and the title track written solely by Costello in a burst of 10 minutes.
The collaborators arrived in Toronto in early May, fresh off a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
It was clear Toussaint, a Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductee who's arranged horns for The Band and Paul Simon, produced huge hits for Dr. John (I Was in the Right Place) and LaBelle (Lady Marmalade) and whose songs have been covered by Glen Campbell, Boz Scaggs and Devo, was buoyed by a return to some normalcy in his beloved Big Easy.
"It was a wonderful spiritual feeling to see so many people saying, 'Yes!' " Toussaint says with a smile. "And I mean on stage and in the audience as well, so it was quite rewarding and the people who put the fest together, they were almost teary-eyed to see such a turnout."
Recording The River in Reverse also brought Toussaint and Costello back to New Orleans about a month and a half after Katrina.
They'd initially begun their work -- with Costello's Imposters bandmates and Toussaint's four-man horn section and guitarist Anthony Brown -- in Los Angeles.
Costello felt the move to New Orleans was important to Toussaint, even if the Englishman wasn't quite prepared for the scene.
"The signs of destruction were everywhere, but specifically in the most badly affected areas, it's a pretty devastating experience to see with your own eyes," says Costello. "A television picture won't prepare you for it, when you're actually at eye level with it, and see some personal belongings just hanging in a tree."
http://www.ottawasun.com/Showbiz/Music/ ... 6-sun.html
Wed, June 7, 2006
Fleeing Hurricane Katrina no easy task
By JANE STEVENSON, TORONTO SUN
Like other New Orleans natives, Allen Toussaint was determined to ride out Katrina.
"I thought I'd be able to stick it out," he tells the Sun.
"So the Sunday before, I went and checked into the Astor Crowne Plaza on Canal, on the fourth floor. And even a day or two after the hurricane, even though there was a lot of wind damage, the water hadn't begun to rise.
"But when that happened, I knew then that I wouldn't be going back home and it wouldn't be business as usual. So I had to find a way out of town and managed to do so, in a roundabout way."
Toussaint waded through a foot of water out the back of his hotel in the French Quarter and bought a bus ticket for Texas that never came after a five-hour wait.
"I saw many acts of kindness," he says. "I saw people helping each other who looked like they would have never spoken to each other before. I saw real rugged, thuggish looking guys helping a little old lady get in and out of her wheelchair. I saw a lady braiding little girls' hair and this was across racial lines and all."
FLED ON SCHOOL BUS
Toussaint was eventually offered a lift by a man driving a school bus to Baton Rouge, where he spent the night at the airport before flying to New York City.
So, when will Toussaint finally return to The Big Easy?
"I like the word 'soon,' " he says. "My neighbourhood is still sort of sleeping, you might say. There are trailers on all the lawns, meaning people have come back in and moved into those trailers.
"They go into their houses daily and try to do what they can to fix them up and hiring carpenters whenever they can get them. Because the workforce is really hard to deal with right now. There's not enough to go around to rapidly rebuild something that took a couple of hundred years.
"So it's slowly, but surely, coming."
