Weathering the Pandemic with New Orleans Jazzman, Don Vappie
In any normal year, Don Vappie, a New Orleans band leader and renowned banjo player, would have gone on tour to promote his then newly released album, The Blue Book of Storyville. As we all know by now, 2020 was anything but a normal year.
So, a year ago, on March 21, 2020, Don began to improvise, having coffee on his porch each morning at 8:00 a.m. with whomever wanted to join him via his Facebook musician’s page. Don also does an afternoon session on banjo, guitar (sometimes acoustic, other times electric) or, once in a delicious while, bass. In the process, Don has grown a community of devoted fans and friends (the porch people or porchies). It has been something to behold in these challenging times.
To be clear, I have become one of the porchies. Like many of us, I established a new morning routine after the pandemic hit. Mine involved settling into a meditation practice, going for a walk and, on a tip from a friend, tuning into Don. I rarely miss a day.
What is it about Don that hooked me? At first, it seemed like an extension of meditation. Some mornings, sunlight dances on tree leaves as birds chatter amiably in the background. Other mornings, a gentle rain falls or, it being southern Louisiana, there’s a real soaker. Don comes outside with coffee he has made in his Bialetti and maybe some peanuts. He settles into his rocking chair on the porch and begins talking about one topic or another in his soft Creole drawl.
Once in a while, Don’s wife, Milly, joins him. Others who have visited include an artist friend, Peggy, and her husband, Mark, who brought by a beautifully crafted bird house to celebrate Don’s 200th consecutive day on the porch; and the jazz saxophonist Victor Goines, who was in town from Chicago where he heads Northwestern University’s jazz studies program. Don’s old blue tick hound, Bella, hung out on the porch until she passed. The five cats, like cats everywhere, tend to stay on the periphery except when they don’t.
But, mostly, it is just Don on the porch, talking about his life and wide range of musical projects, the nature surrounding him and important issues of the day, all while adroitly scrolling through the comments and having something akin to real, live conversations with the porchies, who join him from across the U.S. and abroad. There are porchies from Louisiana, of course, but others hail from Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Utah, to name a few. There are also porchies from Denmark, England, France, Italy, New Zealand and other places I am surely missing who participate from a mind-boggling array of time zones. Other musicians, including Tricia “Teedy” Boutte, Evan Christopher, Michael Doucet, Quiana Lynell, George Porter, Jr., and Mem Shannon, have tuned in, as well.
Don could entertain the porchies simply by talking about his life. And what a life it has been! He grew up in New Orleans in a storied neighborhood among musical families. He started by playing horns, fell in love with the electric bass and developed, over the course of a long career, as a masterful (and eloquent) banjo, guitar and bass player. He performed with bygone Hollywood stars, including Carole Channing, Barbara Eden and Peggy Lee. (Don has a sweet story about a note from Peggy Lee, who seems to have been as enamored with him as the porchies are). He has repeatedly shared the stage with modern luminaries Wynton Marsalis and Victor Goines at Jazz at Lincoln Center and has one heck of a story about restringing his banjo while beset by a case of vertigo and then having the strings break one by one while he was doing a solo, giving new meaning to improv. He has played at a dizzying number and variety of venues from local spots in New Orleans to Carnegie Hall in New York, Massey Hall in Toronto and clubs across Europe. He has built a multi-faceted career as a bandleader and respected musical colleague, written musical arrangements and made numerous, well-regarded recordings. He teaches for the Jazz & Heritage Foundation school, among others.
But Don does more than regale the porchies with his life stories, as interesting as they are. It’s become a relationship. By the time he comes out on the porch, Don has typically read a few newspapers and articles from a myriad of publications; he often says, without fanfare, that he is a banjo player who reads. The porchies are also well-informed. Conversation ensues, about discrimination against people of color, the deadly toll of guns, the separation of migrant children from their parents, the failure to address climate change and so many other pertinent issues of the day, as well as the underlying cruelty of it all. Don and the porchies are on the same page that the discussion must be fact-based and respectful; critical thinking is the coin of the realm.
As with any good relationship, Don and the porchies rely on a healthy dose of humor. While one morning might have a heavier mood given whatever is going on with politics or the virus, the next might be lighter, with a hilariously eclectic mix of topics. Types of guitars (or strings or amplifiers), medical procedures endured or upcoming, regional foods or expressions, Shakespeare or the Bible translated into modern vernacular, and TV theme songs, are just a few of the topics. On the same morning, the conversation may jump from politics to, let’s say, grits, and back again. Because Don is a bandleader, an arranger and an improv master, with all the intuitiveness that implies, he seems to be able to plumb the depths of whatever is confronting us and then help us find our way to joy, a conversational flow that, perhaps unsurprisingly, is like music.
When it got cold, Don would have coffee with us from his living room. And there have been occasions where he had to go to a rehearsal or shoot, and we drove with him 24 miles on the causeway across Lake Pontchartrain to Esplanade Studios near the fairgrounds, or home with him through the French Quarter or by Audubon Park, getting a guided tour along the way. But he’s been there for the porchies, one way or another, for a full year now.
Some things need to be celebrated. Building a community based on critical thinking, mutual respect and humor and nurturing it day in and day out through an otherwise incredibly trying year is one of those things. Cheers to Don Vappie. May we all learn to listen and share like a musician.
