Vendredi

by Brad Rhines

Better stock up on Honey Nut Cheerios, New Orleans, because Omar is coming. On Friday night Tipitina’s features a Treme vs. The Wire Battle of the Bands, co-hosted by Wendell Pierce, who plays Antoine Batiste on Treme, and Michael K. Williams, who played Omar Little on The Wire. In this corner are hometown favorites Galactic and the Stooges Brass Band, and in this corner, from Baltimore and Washington, D.C., are Lafayette Gilchrist & The New Volcanoes and The Backyard Band, which features Anwan Glover, better known to fans of The Wire as Slim Charles.

Tip’s website has a preview of the event, hyping Friday night’s Battle of the Bands as an epic showdown. Organizers state (tongue-in-check, we think): “Musicologists familiar with the groups involved are already saying that the throw-down could rival epic band battles such as the Muddy Waters-Howlin Wolf imbroglio at the Checkerboard Lounge in June 1954, or the famed Savoy Stomp between the Benny Goodman Sextet and Chick Webb’s Band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in 1937.”

While the show may or may not go down in the history books, it’s most certainly a chance for locals to see a couple of great New Orleans bands and to check out the particular jazz, funk, and hip-hop hybrid specific to the Baltimore/D.C. area and rooted in the go-go tradition, a regional blend of music most associated with D.C.-based act Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers “If Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers are the equivalent of the Dirty Dozen,” explains George Pelecanos, a Treme and Wire writer-producer and D.C. native, “then Big G and the Backyard Band are the Rebirth. These guys are go-go royalty.”

In addition to great music, Friday’s event is for a great cause, as proceeds will go to the Tipitina’s Foundation and the Roots of Music.  General admission tickets are $20, but for $100 fans get access to the V.I.P. lounge, an opportunity to hang with cast members and musicians, and an open bar.

For more information and to order tickets, visit the website.