As Mardi Gras Rages, New Orleans' Music Scene Struggles to Recover

She has been trying to put money together to record a follow-up album to her solo debut, Just Believe It, but as a renter, most of her income goes to basic living expenses. Fortunately, she has connected to Threadhead Records, an organization of New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival fans from around the country who met online in the festival's forums. Threadhead loans musicians money to record, and is responsible for three albums last year and six that are scheduled for 2009. She has finished basic tracking for a second album, which Cowsill hopes to release later this summer. This weekend, though, she is singing on a rolling bandstand in Mardi Gras parades with the all-woman punk rock band, Pink Slip. Rose Royce never imagined their version of "Car Wash."

The city has never been a particularly good market for indie rock, though, so life after Katrina hasn't changed that much for Big Blue Marble. Lead singer and songwriter Dave Fera worked to support the band before and after Katrina, and like so many indie rock bands based in other cities, Big Blue Marble is a money-losing proposition. "It's a tax write-off," he says, but he saw cause for hope in the development of the New Orleans Indie Rock Coalition. The collection of bands, club bookers and supporters emerge from Loyola University's music program, and it organized a three-night festival of local indie bands and put out a compilation of New Orleans indie rock, Rock Beats Paper.

There are people around the country helping New Orleans musicians, whether it's the group behind Threadhead Records, or 2006's "Philly to New Orleans" effort, when Philadelphia jam bands played benefits and sent the money to the Tipitina's Foundation. Some of the musicians who took part in the FMC/ATC benefits have made significant contributions since visiting. OK Go and Bonerama cut an iTunes-only benefit EP for Al "Carnival Time" Johnson's house, and the Indigo Girls auctioned off an opportunity for a fan to sing with them onstage, with the money and proceeds from a sold-out show at Tipitina's going to SHNO. Matt Nathanson wrote about his experience in New Orleans on his blog, and a fan donated $10,000 to SHNO. Morello's experience in New Orleans prompted him to route the Axis of Justice tour through New Orleans last spring. As they helped one family reclaim its backyard, Morello was attacked by red ants, and a member of the crew was bitten by a brown recluse spider and had to be hospitalized in Boston days later.

Many musicians who've come to help New Orleans found causes for optimism, despite the city's condition. For J. Tillman, "The care and pride that the people of New Orleans tend to their traditions and culture with made me reevaluate how I can make more of an effort to preserve and embrace the things that make up my own community." Ounsworth was impressed by Brad Pitt's "Make it Right" project in the Lower Ninth Ward, where the devastation created the opportunity for greener, storm-resistant housing. Almost to a person, those on the recent retreat found the spirit of the city inspirational. Hank Shocklee recalls Leah Chase, the aging chef at Dooky Chase's talking about rebuilding as if it's no big deal. "If she can have that kind of attitude, there's nothing we can't do," he says. "Hope is the new currency." Ounsworth agreed. "I felt they were breaking new ground in such a way that other people would do well around the country to take as an example for how things can move forward."

One development that stayed with them was the Roots of Music, a grass roots after-school music education program. The Soul Rebels' Derrick Tabb was teaching a drum line in someone's living room one afternoon during the recent retreat. "The teacher was making kids who messed up run laps around the block," Ounsworth says, laughing. "This was a perpetuation of that mystery and brilliance of the city of New Orleans. People find a way to do it." The Roots of Music students have come far enough to parade twice this Carnival Season, once with the Krewe of Pontchartrain and once with the irreverent, all-women Krewe of Muses. The program inspired Nicole Atkins, who sees parallels between New Orleans and her home of Asbury Park, New Jersey, which has never fully recovered from race riots during the 1960s. "I'm going to get a lot more involved in my own community," she says. "It would be cool to start an after-school music mentoring process."