Cowboy Mouth is a band from New Orleans who has been around so long that an introduction isn’t really necessary. By phone, the band’s singer and drummer Fred LeBlanc recently discussed the band’s performance at the 50th edition of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the revival feeling of a Cowboy Mouth show, songwriting, and his children’s book.
You recently played Jazz Fest again. How many times have you played that?
Fred LeBlanc: That was our 29th show.
Did you have any notion that the band would last that long?
I didn’t even think it would last six months. A rock and roll band isn’t always the best bet for longevity. We’ve kept it going. We’ve had our fair share of players who have come and gone. They’ve all been great and brought their unique thing to us, but the lineup we have now is really strong and solid. Being in a rock and roll band is never an easy thing, but I find a lot of rewards in doing this still, more so now than I ever have. Being in a rock and roll band in 2019 is a dicey proposition to be sure, but our fans still love us. We still kick a lot of ass. When people leave a Cowboy Mouth show, they usually leave feeling a lot better, which is a great thing to put out into the world.
What makes Jazz Fest such a special event?
It’s called Jazz Fest, but it’s more of a celebration of New Orleans culture: music, food, everything that is New Orleans culture works its way around Jazz Fest. It’s the pinnacle show every year. It’s on a par with, if not greater than, Mardi Gras as a New Orleans cultural institution. So many people come in to revel in what’s great about the city and the state from every creative angle you can think of. I think that’s what has made it special and made it last so long. We have a tendency to celebrate the fact that we exist. We try to find unique ways to do it, whether it’s food, or whether it’s music, dancing, writing, partying. There’s definitely a celebration of life that comes from being a creative individual in New Orleans. Like a celebration of life against the odds. We went through Katrina, and there was real, honest talk about New Orleans not being able to come back. Not the geography, not the government – the thing that really brought New Orleans back to life is the spirit of the city. The spirit of the city is the people and how we deal with living our lives in terms of being creative, being celebratory, being that unique, weird life-against-the-odds people that we are.
You wrote a children’s book not long ago called Fred, The New Orleans Drummer Boy. What inspired you to write a children’s book?
Honestly it was my Aunt Dottie’s idea. She’s kind of the matriarch of our family. She’s one of those southern women who gets psychic premonitions. She thought that would be a good idea for me, and the whole thing came together really oddly and quickly. It did pretty well for me. The odd thing was that it brought a lot of attention back to the band, which was totally unexpected. It kind of started the revitalization the band has been going through. It’s like the distillation of a Cowboy Mouth show. A Cowboy Mouth show is like a celebratory rock and roll gospel experience. I had a fan tell me a couple years ago – and I really love this description – he said, “Man, I love you guys. You’re like a gospel tent revival without the religion. That’s pretty awesome. It’s not about us onstage, prancing around and trying to be rockstars. It’s about that part of yourself and using the music and the show to encourage the audience to let go, to celebrate that moment. To celebrate that they’re having a great time in that moment. If they want to do it by having a few drinks and dancing to a kick-ass rock and roll band, that’s great. If they want to go completely bonkers, that’s fine. If they want to just stand there, that’s fine, although I’m not too patient with the audience looking at us like a TV show. We’ve been doing this pretty consistently for damn near 30 years. We’re still doing pretty well at it, so we must be doing something right. I think it comes down to the idea that when people leave a Cowboy Mouth show – more often than not – they have that feeling that their troubles have been relieved even if it’s just for a little while. That feeling of release. Yes, you can go completely crazy here because no matter how silly you think you might look or how self-conscious you might be, nobody’s going to look any sillier than the drummer at the front of the stage, sweatin’, screamin’, and shakin’ with the rest of his kick-ass rock and roll band.
Which is more challenging? Writing a book or writing songs?
Writing songs comes a lot easier and more natural to me. Writing the book was a challenge, but it was a challenge I was up for. My editor Scott was helpful. I was just trying to distill the whole Cowboy Mouth experience in children’s book form. We have a lot of people who bring their kids or grandkids to see us. A lot of it is trying to find that essence. In the book, the character Fred is a drummer. He has a little band. My two kids are two of the band members and they’re looking for somebody. They find this kid, and he’s scared and nervous to play the show. The idea is to take that nervous energy and turn it into being excited. It’s the same energy, but you have to put it in a different direction. Don’t get scared, get excited. I can’t tell you how many kids have told me they had to do a play at school who told themselves, “Don’t be scared. Get excited.” Parents send me emails saying the same thing. It’s great. That’s basically the whole Cowboy Mouth thing. Be who you are. Celebrate who you are. We’re happy to be the vehicle to help people find that ability to celebrate themselves.
Tell me about the EP you have coming out this year.
We’re working on it now. First of all, we were trying to figure out how to release music to benefit us and our fan base. The idea of doing an album – grinding out 12, 14, 16 songs – the cost was getting to be prohibitive. Even if you’re one of the big acts, it’s rare that an album has staying power in the public consciousness. Unless you’re with big media, and they’re shoving the songs down your throat. If you put out an album, it’s “here today, gone later today.” Instead of figuring out how to put out an album every two years or so – because we tour constantly and writing and recording songs takes a lot of time – what’s the next step? With Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora, there’s literally almost no royalty payments. Music has become a loss leader. What do you do? We thought we could just release singles from time to time. Press is not going to review a single. They just don’t. The idea came upon us. Why don’t we just start releasing EPs? That way we can have a more steady outflow of new material. At the same time, we’d have the benefit of putting something new out every nine months to a year. There’s continuous outflow. It’s qualitative. We’re not married to the drudgery of trying to get an album out all the time. That’s such a long and laborious process. Doing four or five songs every six to nine months or a year is a piece of cake as opposed to doing an album. We’re going to start doing EPs. This first one will be a little experimental to combine everything that Cowboy Mouth is. At the same time we’ll try new things because you don’t want to re-invent the wheel all the time. You want to go in different directions than you’ve done before for your audience. We’re just trying to figure out what the new normal is.
What would you be doing if you weren’t making music?
I’d probably be in jail. The way I acted as a child always got me in trouble in school. Now it’s the way I act onstage, and I get paid for it. I always try to keep in mind that, whether you’re KISS or a Holiday Inn band on a Tuesday night playing Jimmy Buffett covers to one or two drunks in a room, there are millions of people that would give their left arm to be us on our worst night. I always try to keep that in the back of my mind because I want to keep that joy, that freshness about what we do. I think that’s important. There’s a lot of music in the world. There’s a lot of experiences sold to people these days that have the mental effect of dragging people down. I want Cowboy Mouth to be uplifting, not like religious or Up with People or things like that, but I wanted rock and roll to do for other people what it did for me when I was a kid listening to The Clash, Bo Diddley, or REM, or Howlin’ Wolf. All that music spoke to me emotionally and made me think there was a different way to go. It gave me hope for my life. It made me feel alive. That’s what I’m trying to do with this band and our audience: the redemptive healing power of New Orleans-flavored rock and roll. It’s a good feeling to be a part of putting something like that out into the world. These days life is so cynical. Everyone is so divided, so opinionated, and everyone is a victim in some way, shape or form. Instead of having that “poor me” mindset, why not have the mindset of “awesome me.” The trick is to find a way to enjoy life and spread that. Even just incremental ways. I had to learn how to enjoy playing music again a while back because it had gotten to be such a grind. It wasn’t about the audience. It wasn’t about making money because I don’t make any money. It was about the sheer joy of sharing a feeling or an idea while playing drums, guitar, and singing.
