Every year in my Aunt’s family, instead of buying gifts for each other at Christmas time, all of the adults choose a charity that they have interest in, make a donation, and then share what the charity was about. This past Christmas, my Aunt was stumped with deciding on a cause, so she called and asked me to choose one. Without thinking twice, I chose the New Orleans Musician’s Relief Fund. New Orleans is a city I hold close to my heart for many reasons, and helping out any struggling musician is a cause I always see worthy.

 

This year at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, I met and interacted with tons of inspiring and creative musicians, but perhaps the most intriguing one I met was a guy whom I didn’t hear play one note. After a conversation with Jesse Moore, I learned that not only was he a New Orleans musician who dealt directly with Hurricane Katrina, but the NOMRF is a charity that helped put him back on his feet. “Money from people like you helped save my life.”

 

I was nearly speechless.

 

Moore is an accomplished musician who has toured all over the world. Back in the early 70s, he was even part of an R&B band in Tokyo (the first, he claims, at the time). He’s acted in theatre roles such as Dames at Sea, and Jesus Christ Superstar. His television experiences include Law & Order, As the World Turns, and the Bold and the Beautiful. As for the big screen, he’s shared it with Bernie Mac, Tom Arnold and Alan Arkin, to name a few. He also claims that he recorded the last album (More Than Life Itself) in New Orleans before Katrina and that he had the first CD release party after the storm.

 

So with a healthy resume, it’s clear Jesse Moore has been around town, but he’s also survived some pretty catastrophic events like a major earthquake in Japan, a tornado in Ohio, and most recently, Hurricane Katrina. ”I’ve had angels working in my life my entire life. I had a psychic in Houston once tell me that I had so many angels flying around and flapping their wings that she couldn’t concentrate” he says laughing. But you can hear it in his voice that he’s only partially joking.

 

After the Hurricane, Moore floated around the country and eventually returned to New Orleans. His music brought a ray of hope to many people who were suffering in the streets, however this shoulder weight began to take a toll on him and depression eventually forced him back out onto the road until he landed in Austin, TX. In Austin, Moore was able to regroup and get his mind back on track, and though he has respect for Austin, he’s ready to go back home to New Orleans and will soon be re-locating.

 

 

This sweet, soul singer speaks very fast, but he slows down to drive home strong points like declaring that he is not a conservative. Moore also uses his voice to declare his distaste for the U.S. Government, New Orleans’ mayor Ray Nagin, and foreigners who live in America that never learn to speak the English language. It’s clear that he still holds some anger deep inside, but he’s also learning how to turn that energy around to use it in positive ways.

 

Here are the thoughts of Jesse Moore:

 

On current music: I love Ben Harper, man. I think he’s the real deal. Somebody like a Mos Def or James Taylor. I love what Sheryl Crow is doing now and I’m very much into acoustic music. Kurt Cobain could have easily done all of those songs with just an acoustic guitar and a voice and it would have been absolutely incredible. But I’m not a big fan of Jack Johnson. Melodically, he’s just too sing-songy for me and I find that after 3 or 4 songs, I find it annoying. Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney. Those guys are the real deal. They’re not manufactured or processed; not filtered. With Nirvana, I felt like they were taking over where Neil Young left off. I love that “fuck you and fuck all you motherfuckers [attitude]. I’m going to do what I want and if it catches on, then fine.”

 

On the government and our future generation of youth: If you want to get into a fist fight with me, start defending this government and how great it is and I’ll tell you what it’s like to be totally abandoned by it. Because that’s what happened! I don’t believe in this government in any way, shape or form. But I believe in the American people. You should see how many kids come down there on Spring Break, gutting houses and helping to rebuild the city. That’s fucking commendable, bro. This is what gives me hope for the future of this generation: That there are still a lot of bleeding-heart, liberal kids out there helping to rebuild a city that the government has forgotten.

 

On Howard the Duck: First audition I ever did. I sat in a trailer for 3 weeks in a cops’ uniform waiting to do my scenes. I made a lot of money and they cut me out of everything and I was very happy about that when I went to the premier and looked at the movie. Lea Thompson was sitting a couple of seats down from me and she was weeping (laughs). There’s a scene in there where she has sex with a fucking duck and she pulls out a duck condom!

 

On first discovering New Orleans: Bonnie Raitt had turned me on to New Orleans. Later I was going out with a cartoonist from Seattle and her best friend was this guy named Matt Groening. I went to the Jazz Fest with them in 1988 and I fell absolutely and totally in love with New Orleans. Matt and I were dancing in the street on Bourbon Street. He was there because he was on his way to Hollywood, to do this stupid thing that he said “I’m not even selling my house man, I don’t think it’s going to do anything, but I may make some money.” It was this thing called the Simpsons. He said, “It’s a new network (FOX), but fuck it, I’ll try it.”

 

 

On New Orleans: New Orleans is not just a place; it’s a way of being. It always has been and probably always will be the last bohemia. It’s a place where you can truly be yourself. It’s where art can flourish; where music can flourish. It’s becoming more difficult, but that subculture is like cockroaches. No matter how expensive they make the city, try to keep the poor people out, try to build up all these condos, we’re still going to find a way to be who we are. It’s one of the few places left in the Western Hemisphere where ritual is really important.

 

On the morning before the storm: We had moved into a new (haunted) place in the French Quarter of New Orleans 3 days before Katrina hit (with his girlfriend).

I went outside to go get some coffee and the streets were empty. And it was a little eerie. I went to a bar on the corner, and there was Nagin (on the TV) saying there was a storm with unprecedented power; it’s coming here, get the fuck outta dodge. This was about noon, so I went back and grabbed my girlfriend and said “we’re getting out of here.” It took us 6 hours to get to Slidell (normally thirty minutes) and it took about sixteen hours to get up to Little Rock (about 3 times longer than it should take) to stay with a friend of my girlfriend. The next day we were watching people on TV dancing in the streets because they thought they had dodged yet another storm as usual. And then the nightmare of all nightmares happened and I watched it all on CNN man. And I just sat there and cried. I’ve lost a mom, a dad, a wife, and I’ve been through some shit. But this was the seminal event of my life. This was it.

 

On life right after the hurricane: I had a hard time getting in touch with my band because the cell towers were down, but we learned that we could still text message, so we began to do that. My girlfriend and I went around the country. We went up to Pittsburgh. We went up to Woodstock where I had created an Animal Sanctuary with my ex called the Catskill Animal Sanctuary. We went to New York City. Flew out to Oregon for a festival. We were out there floating around the country, kind of crazy. Did a gig in Hot Springs, AR on October the 5^th, the day they started allowing us back into New Orleans, so I came back on the 6^th. And it was a nightmare.

 

On New Orleans, post-Katrina: Margaritaville called me up and said I had a job 7 days a week if I wanted it because there were no musicians in town. My place went untouched and I had a job, but the New Orleans that I knew was dead. There was a lot of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I had a friend hang himself. Some guy strangled his wife, cut her up and jumped off the Omni hotel. The city was going crazy. I can not express to you the sadness I’ve heard come out of peoples’ mouths. Like watching their mom being lifted up into a helicopter (his voice lowers, slows and gets smoky) and watching her have a heart attack on the way up and dying. Or a guy walking with 2 of his kids on one side and 1 of his kids on the other and a wall of water taking 1 of the kids away. I mean dozens, and dozens, and dozens of stories like that and they would come to me and I would play music for them and they would sit and listen to me play. I was giving therapeutic relief to these people because they had nothing else.  

 

On leaving New Orleans on his own: After living there for a year and a half to 2 years, I ended up having to fight depression everyday. I was helping other people through my music to help uplift and inspire them through their tribulations. I had to take a break because I was going down hard, bro. I was determined to die a sad and lonely death. So I sent out emails asking for help with gigs and I left in May of 2007 and started gigging up the East Coast and to Toronto, eventually ending up in San Antonio, and then Austin.

On Austin, TX: Austin is good for twenty-year-olds who gig, and work in a coffee shop during the day, and live with 3 other guys in hopes they’ll get signed by some producer. I’m a lunch-pail musician, man. This is how I make my living. I’ve never had a regular job. I’m not going to get a job in the coffee shop during the day. It would take me years and years to become what I was and am in New Orleans.

 

 

On his future: But the angels came in the form of MusiCares and the NOMRF; helped me get together. And now I’m ready to take my place in helping out again. You know, there are no guarantees. Maybe another storm will hit and maybe it won’t. But I think one of the things that does to you is that you know that tomorrow could be your last day. But you’re a little more aware of it in a city like New Orleans. I don’t give a shit about moving up the food chain any more. I just want to go back to New Orleans, make a living, maybe buy one of those houses out in the Musicians’ Village, and sit on my porch and play Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, and Son House songs on my guitar and watch the sun go down.