here's my dr. john story
The termites came out that night. This happens a few times a year in New Orleans, usually late in the springtime, when the climate is transitioning from "warm blanket" to "brick oven." A daytime shower will conjure thousands of formosan termites after sundown- swarms of winged alates clouding around streetlights and stealing through cracks in window frames, scouting locations suitable for colonization. The first termite night in a new house is always a battle, and I had just finished stuffing paper towels into the cracks in my bedroom window to keep the interlopers at bay.
It was 2010. I was about a year out of college, working part-time in a sandwich shop and playing with this fledgling rock band. I was living in a huge rental house with four friends that often served as a hub for group activities. It would have been obvious to any casual observer that we had been reluctant to let go of the wild, reckless days that brought us together, which was why we were in the middle of a power hour on a Thursday night when George sent me a text message that just didn't seem possible. I actually blogged about this a few days after it happened. I can't link to the original post because it was on Myspace (we're old), but I always back up the text from these entries, so I was able to dig up the transcript of our brief conversation:
Thursday, 5/27/10, 11:04 PM - George Gekas: Dr John performing at cafe prytania
Thursday, 5/27/10, 11:05 PM - Rob Ingraham: What the fuck?
Thursday, 5/27/10, 11:06 PM - George Gekas: Yea right now
There's a spooky atmosphere to termite nights- something I could almost appreciate if not for the overwhelming nuisance. The sky takes on a weird color. It feels a bit like an alien invasion. One of the guys in my house was sober, so we piled into his car and drove a short distance through the low-hanging fog and swirling insects.
Café Prytania was a neighborhood dive where George tended bar when we weren't on the road. We arrived within minutes. Sure enough, there was Dr. John. It was unbelievable. The man was an absolute legend. He would be voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame within a year. But that night, he was hunched over the keyboard, humbly jamming with an old buddy (blues harmonicist J.D. Hill) like it was no big deal. It was, to this day, one of the coolest things I've ever witnessed. I snapped a picture on my phone to commemorate the occasion. It did not come out well:
(Remember, this was 2010, before mobile devices became self-aware.)
I think Mac played for about an hour. When he was done, he stood up from behind the keyboard, gave J.D. a handshake and a pat on the shoulder, and eased his way out into the dense midnight. As soon as he left the building, the power went out on the whole block. Suddenly, all of it- the dark, the music, the termites, the fog- percolated into one of those rare instants when a magician performs a trick so baffling that, if only for a fraction of a second, you forget that you know magic isn't real. I am not a superstitious man; the rational part of my brain knows that it was probably all just a coincidence. But for the rest of the night, as the bartenders lit candles and poured complimentary power outage shots, everyone at the bar agreed: Dr. John had killed the lights with hoodoo magic. I was a true believer. Even now, I can only say it was probably a coincidence.
A lot of people (including some of my bandmates) would have more intimate memories to share. I've heard a lot of them, and they invariably paint a picture of an offbeat genius with the heart of a lion and the vocabulary of a space alien. I trust all of those stories implicitly. I know there was a lot more to Dr. John than what I got to see. I know there was a real person behind it all. But to me, the Nite Tripper will always be this looming, mythical figure, out on the periphery of tangible reality- a wild anecdote here, a colorful studio outtake there, the occasional neologism: "do we need to play that one again, or can you fix it with tricknology?" Less a man and more an element on New Orleans' periodic table, he lived and embodied all of the intangible things that give the city its character- the mystique, the danger, the vernacular, that rough-around-the-edges affability. A quote of uncertain origin springs to mind: "You don't 'have' a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." Dr. John wasn't a magical person. He was magic. I'll miss him for the music, but even more for the mystery.
Here's to Malcolm John Rebennack. In his own words:
