One Note at a Time

During the storm, when the levee bust,

the water started coming in to the Treme area,

getting higher and higher.

I used my drum just to hold in front to kick.

And I floated to a higher ground.

When Katrina came, I was playing outside there

with a four-piece overture and the man come out.

He switched off the fan.

And I said don't switch the fan,

what the hell's the matter with you.

It's hot as Hades.

It was a day like this.

And he said ain't you heard?

The hurricane's changed course,

it's coming right up the river.

So, I'm low, wow, I'll be damned.

Go out fellows.

Pack, the weatherman said get the hell

on away from here.

So there was three men in that band besides me

and it took me almost a year,

took me 11 months and a week to find

all of those three was still alive.

This painting is a rendition

depicting Merci Ray Nagin.

And he was the mayor that experienced the devastation

and the chaos and the turmoil

and the helicopters that flew at night

in search of victims.

Katrina was not the problem.

It was when the levees were defeated.

It was a man-made incident.

1,800 people died that was documented.

And plus they have other people that were undocumented

that are still warehoused now that has

not been identified.

Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

And like this guy here.

He's got a nice yard, got a nice pool.

Never speak to me.

His kids speak, his wife, but we ain't speak.

I could be out doing yard

and he'll never say a word

and the day before the storm,

he told me say, hey, man,

what you and the wife gonna do?

He stopped and spoke to me, I was shocked.

I said we splitting.

Hey, you welcome to come and stay over here,

we got an upstairs.

I said man, I'm not staying back here

from the storm, man.

I don't care if I had five floors.

I said I'm not saying back here.

He said well, you're welcome.

I said the first time you gonna speak to me, you know.

I said no, man, uh-uh, you could stay back here.

He stayed, boy, he wish he never done it.

Buddy of mine stay over there,

he was stuck on his roof for like three days, you know.

When the water start rising,

a door that I can normally open with my finger,

I couldn't open with all of my might just

I mean I just got so exhausted trying

to get the door open.

And I had about a terabyte of hard drive

with hundreds of songs that I had spent

countless of hours recording and mixing and producing.

So my head was just pounding

once I realized that it was gone.

My older son had a whole lot of equipment,

you know, at his house and that got flooded

and ruined everything.

And he had to move up to West Virginia.

And I think that because of the storm,

he passed away because of what he lost, you know.

My second son, second oldest son died

almost the same way.

-I mean a lot of musicians that is from New Orleans

can't get back.

They have no way to get back and nowhere

to go home to.

I've seen guys places like Baltimore, Maryland

to all over this country.

I saw somebody in New Mexico recently

and they were saying about I can't get used

to living in this desert.

Or the ones that be in places like

they don't, they older guys

and they not used to being in the cold.

Some of them are just, they don't know how

to talk to people there.

When I came back, no music, no birds, no bees,

no tearing, no nothing and that is why

I put all the junk out that I did

and now that I decided to, you know, support music,

I support music all the way

and I didn't realize that until I got to Houston, Texas

and I found out that it's not the same, you know.

Nobody really cares about music,

they don't care about talking to come in,

they go in the house.

And see like now I decided that I would try

and let people know that hey, this is New Orleans.

Ain't nothing like New Orleans and we love music.

WWKFM New Orleans.

It's beautiful music, amazing music.

So this is where we come to get cured.

I don't know what I would have done without it.

Probably wouldn't have done anything, but died.

-The Musicians Clinic is an access to healthcare.

We offer primary care and also preventative services

and specialist referrals.

We have a very full market basket of medical services

to help musicians who never have insurance.

-The thing that will bring them into the clinic is

they can't play the horn because they have

an abscess in their tooth.

But in the course of diagnosing the abscess,

we find that they have diabetes,

they have asthma and many times they have hypertension.

We have healthcare statistics that rival

third world countries.

And so to me, when one member of a band

who've played together for 30 years

is risking death because he is not taking

his medication so he doesn't have a stroke,

that's a blow to our culture.

This is a portrait of my ancestor

and it used to hang up over my parents' fireplace

when I was growing up in Mississippi.

And the poignant thing about this portrait

is that it was painted a few weeks before

my ancestor and his son and 11 other members

of our family were killed at the resort they owned

on one of the barrier islands, called Il Denier.

And I actually wear this gold coin around my neck

that he gave to his baby daughter right before he left

and it's really one of the few things

that we have left from him.

Because they'd had a big dance that night

with an orchestra and then tidal wave

and hurricane hit

and over 300 people were killed.

And it always struck me that they knew

the names of the slaves

because they were property,

but they never documented what happened

to the musicians.

We don't know their names,

we don't know where they came from

and it always stuck with me.

I grew up in New York City,

went to a very exclusive private school,

next to the Guggenheim Museum,

watched them build the Guggenheim Museum

and everyone else's family were business people,

lawyers and business people and politicians

and I was there on a scholarship

as their token artist child.

We were very different and everyone was very

envious because I could go home on my own.

There wasn't a limousine waiting for me.

But growing up in an artist's household

was very, very different from what was usually

seen in America.

And that gave me the background to understand

what the need was for a musician's clinic,

that artists are not thinking in that direction,

that they're using a different part of their brain

and if you want to talk bad about them,

which some people do, oh, they're druggies

and irresponsible individuals.

Tell me what symphony you've written today, sir.

It was a blessing to come home

and watch people work all day.

They may come to the little bars at night

and hear us play and kind forget for that time,

it's like spiritual healing.

I mean I felt it, I know they felt it

and that's going on till today.

I mean you wouldn't believe`.

I came to New Orleans,

I was playing rock and roll,

so I had to learn how to play R&B.

And once I got into it,

I started gigging and it was great.

I bought a BMW motorcycle and in August 2008,