Galactic Feels the Spirit of Carnivale
New Orleans funk ensemble Galactic never sticks with the same formula. The skillful combo mix it up with every recording session and every tour. Earlier this year, the core five members — bassist Robert Mercurio, drummer Stanton Moore, guitarist Jeff Raines, organist Rich Vogel, and saxophonist Ben Ellman — invited an international roster of guests from Louisiana, the Southeast, and South America to work with them on a lively conceptual album titled Carnivale Electricos.
Released in February, Carnivale Electricos is a collection of celebratory jams, brassy blues, and exotically syncopated rhythms. Guest players include Big Chief Juan Pardo and the Golden Comanches Mardis Gras Indians, singer Al Johnson, singer/percussionist Cyril Neville, singer/multi-instrumentalist Ivan Neville, singer/guitarist Moyseis Marques, rappers Mystikal and Mannie Fresh, David Shaw and Maggie Koerner (both of the Revivalists), and others.
Metronome spoke with keyboardist Rich Vogel this week about the sounds and flavors of the new album.
Metronome: How did this latest studio album take shape? Was it pretty tough to collaborate with all of these musicians and singers for one recording project?
Rich Vogel: With each album — especially our last few, where we’ve had a lot of guests involved — they’ve come together piece by piece. There are times where you are kind of scratching your head, wondering if it’s actually going to work. We’ve learned to trust the process because we’ve been through it so many times now, so it works out. We’ve learned that if one thing doesn’t quite work out, it’s not the end of the world. It came together naturally.
Metronome: It doesn’t seem odd for a New Orleans group like Galactic to create a thematic album like Carnivale Electricos.
Rich Vogel: We’ve had the idea of making a Carnivale-themed album for a while. We’ve never had any specific Mardis Gras music or references, but being a long-standing New Orleans band, and having played through so many Mardis Gras events, we figured it was something we could take on and put our stamp on it. At the outset, we didn’t want to just limit it to New Orleans Mardis Gras; we wanted to reach out and pull anything in from the Carnivale world. In the end, we end up with the northern and southern poles of the Carnivale sphere: New Orleans and Brazil.
Metronome: Geographically, those places are far apart, but culturally, they have a lot in common.
Rich Vogel: Right. We think of New Orleans as the source of so much American music, and it is, but a huge part of that story is that New Orleans is so well connected to the Caribbean and parts of South America. The way that European and African musical elements came together is a big reason behind why things are the way they are. The Carnivale is embedded in the DNA of New Orleans in the same way that it’s embedded in the DNA of the Caribbean and Brazil. We’e talking about the sphere of real Carnivale, so we delve into that just a little bit.
Metronome: Did you and your bandmates have to immerse yourselves in the various traditional styles of Brazilian music?
Rich Vogel: We’re weren’t trying to go out and play authentic Brazilian music as Galactic. That wasn’t the intention. We just wanted to work with some people and draw from what they do into what we do and present it all in the spirit of Carnivale.
Metronome: As the keyboardist, what challenged you the most during the making of Carnivale Electricos?
Rich Vogel: I definitely played traditionally in the sense of the New Orleans funk band tradition, like some of those first Mardis Gras Indians-meet-funk band records of the early ’70s. There was funky clavinet, organ, piano, and other stuff. There’s not a lot of synth, per se, on the record, but we messed around with some nontraditional, organic sounds and tones where someone may not even know if it’s a Wurlitzer or a synth or an affected guitar.
Metronome: The instrumentation of the band has always created a dense sound overall. There’s more going on in the songs on Carnivale Electricos than usual. There’s even a 140-piece high school marching band on the song “Karate.”
Rich Vogel: Yep, that’s the Kipp Renaissance High School Marching Band. Well, you couldn’t do a Carnivale record without referencing a high school marching band. They’re a huge part of Mardis Gras in New Orleans, where the best bands get hired to march in all the biggest parades. And they rock the parade. They are really the energy and the rhythm of Mardis Gras. They play funky beats. High school marching bands in New Orleans are cool and funky, and it’s hard to explain that to people who aren’t from here.
Metronome: You won’t have a local marching band with you at the Music Farm this week, but you still have a few special guests on stage, right?
Rich Vogel: We still stack the deck with Corey Henry [a.k.a. Boe Money of Rebirth Brass Band] on trombone, and he’s one of the best New Orleans brass bands going. He helps us cover the brass side of our recent records. We also have Corey Glover of Living Colour with us, too, and he’s an amazing singer. We try to get both of those guys to do every gig with us that they can do.
Metronome: We wonder if Glover will handle some of Mystikal’s wild rhymes on the song “Move Fast,” the stand-out hip-hop track on the album?
Rich Vogel: That’s one that’s really hard to do, and no one really wants to approach Mystikal’s stuff. That song was a lot of fun, and it was great how it came together in one long night in the studio. It was a thrill for us to get Mystikal to work with us.
Metronome: That’s the only hip-hop track on Carnivale Electricos, but it doesn’t seem out of place at all [see video below].
Rich Vogel: If you go back and listen to Mystikal’s records, he always used more organic-sounding musical stuff than most rappers of the era. Think about tunes like “Bouncin’ Back (Bumping Me Against the Wall)” and all of the horns being such a signature part of that; he seems like the perfect rapper for us to work with. It was easy to match it all up.
Metronome: What’s next for Galactic in 2012?
Rich Vogel: We finally get to slow down just a little bit from touring in September, so that will be the time when we get cracking on the next big project. What it’ll be I can’t tell ya.
Galactic performs at the Music Farm on Wednesday, Sept. 12. North Carolina funk-rock act Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band opens at 8 p.m. Admission is $25 ($20 in advance). Visit musicfarm.com and galacticfunk.com for more.
About the Author
Ballard Lesemann is a musician and writer. Born and raised in Charleston, S.C., he spent years playing in bands and working for Flagpole Magazine in the bustling music town of Athens, Ga. He returned to his hometown and served more than seven years as the Charleston City Paper's music editor. He's better at drumming than he is at playing guitar.
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