Copyright 2002 The Denver Post Corporation
The Denver Post

October 14, 2002

"Crescent City can rock, too Two bands team up at Ogden"
by Eric L. Reiner

New Orleans has produced countless legends of jazz, funk, soul and heritage music. But not many Crescent City rock bands have achieved national notoriety.

Two that have - Better Than Ezra and Cowboy Mouth - co-headline a concert at the Ogden Theatre on Tuesday. BTE closes the show.

Neither group purveys an overtly New Orleans sound, although a careful listen does reveal traces of second-line rhythms. Oddly, the Big Easy music scene played decidedly different roles in the bands' evolutions.

Cowboy Mouth commanded immediate attention when it formed in the late 1980s. Over-the-top drummer Fred LeBlanc had enjoyed success in Dash Rip Rock, while guitarist John Thomas Griffith had co-written the MTV-era hit 'China' in the Red Rockers, a New Orleans band that had relocated to San Francisco. So, right away, 'a lot of people in New Orleans were interested in what Griff and I were going to do,' LeBlanc said in a recent interview.

But for Better Than Ezra, the local scene actually helped drive the band to Los Angeles early on. 'We had a tainted view of the vitality of the New Orleans scene because our first drummer had done the scene and had nothing but horror stories of poverty and dejection,' says BTE guitarist/singer Kevin Griffin, who penned the group's mid-'90s alternative-rock hit 'Good.'

'I had seen great bands from New Orleans that just came and went, and I didn't want to hit that plateau of doing the circuit of bars and frat parties and hitting a dead-end there. I was determined not to go that route, and part of going to L.A. was about that,' Griffin says.

'In '93 we wouldn't have moved back to New Orleans, which at the time was really a backwater in the (national) music scene, if we hadn't felt that we had enough connections' outside of town. Despite the divergent roads traveled from New Orleans to national recognition, BTE and Cowboy Mouth today find themselves in about the same place. Each band's last album was left for dead when their respective record labels went belly-up.

In Better Than Ezra's case, the casualty was 'Closer,' a CD of catchy alternative rock that was released last year. 'It was definitely upsetting when we found out that the entire radio (promotion) staff had been let go the day before we were supposed to go to Top 40 radio with (the single) 'Extra Ordinary,' Griffin says.

BTE feels so strongly about some of the songs on the 'Closer' album that it will rerelease several, along with about 10 new tracks, in March. 'It's every band's dream. You always have the 'could-a, would-a, should-a' from an album, and a few of the songs on 'Closer' deserve a second chance,' Griffin says.

Besides contemporary touches such as turntables and scratching, the songs on 'Closer' feature multiple layers and trippy textures, like 'Strawberry Fields'-ish keyboards on 'Misunderstood.'

BTE owns a recording studio - an old photography studio just off of famed St. Charles Avenue - so the band doesn't have to rent one at zillions per hour. 'That's allowed us to go off on tangents like, 'I wonder if this texture would sound nice, or this sound?' It's enabled us to take what we do, which is pop songs, and give them more color or make them more interesting,' Griffin says.

Cuts such as the quirky, hook-filled 'Rolling' benefitted immensely from string parts, Mellotron, irresistible vocals and compressed piano to start the song off.

Cowboy Mouth
Sharing Tuesday's Ogden bill is Cowboy Mouth, whose latest album, 2000's 'Easy,' is a rich, smart complex of varied pop-rock flavors, from passionate power balladry to bouncy fun. 'I Know it Shows' recalls 'Give 'em Enough Rope'-era Clash. 'Marianne' has a pepped-up '60s folk-rock feel.

'I don't think our music is divisive in that you have to be into a certain category' to like it, LeBlanc says of Cowboy Mouth's multifaceted rock 'n' roll. 'My favorite compliment is, 'Man, I normally don't like this kind of music, but I love you guys.''

The Mouth's reputation derives, in large measure, from its high-energy, rollicking live shows, which embody a joie de vivre that is pure New Orleans revelry.

'The way that we embrace celebration beyond anything else is definitely a New Orleans characteristic,' says LeBlanc, who graduated from the same New Orleans Catholic boys' high school as piano great Dr. John.

'So many people around the country, and the media, always find reasons to rag us a (about) unemployment, or 'it's a fat town.' Does New Orleans celebrate its own existence because the rest of the world looks down on us? Possibly,' says LeBlanc. 'Is it because there's always that element of danger that the city might disappear tomorrow if there's the wrong kind of storm? That can be it, too.'

When Cowboy Mouth's record company folded - even as the modern-rock title track to 'Easy' was gaining momentum at radio - the band decided it had tired of major labels, having been with two.

'Overall it was really a negative experience,' says LeBlanc, 'and we needed to step away for a while. So we said, 'Let's go out on tour for a year or so, have fun, make some money, make some kick-ass music, and see what happens.' That's what we did, and now labels are starting to call us.'