AM's Guide To New Orleans

Melodic popster and current king of what’s being touted as ‘lounge-indie’, songwriter AM spent last year touring with Air, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Minus the Bear and still found time to write an album, ‘Future Sons and Daughters’, which delves into a wide array of melodic Americana, influenced by AM’s upbringing in the historic musical melting-pot of New Orleans.

Clash caught up with him to chat about the album, his love for his hometown city, and how the hippies know their stuff when it comes to composting.

When did you first begin writing and recording?
It was in Louisiana and New Orleans when it really started to take shape. I was working in a music store while I was in high school and selling guitars. I’d get lots of bluegrass guys coming in, from all outside the New Orleans area, and they would come through and have these epic bluegrass jam sessions in the store. I didn’t play bluegrass, I was a rock kid, but that was really what first opened my eyes to producing music – seeing these guys just throw down and play.

Shortly after that I got my first acoustic guitar. A couple of years later when I was really digging into New Orleans proper, that’s when I really started to get influenced by all the funk and soul and jazz because I was right in the city, just going out all the time. It’s so easy to go out and see amazing music there, seven nights a week.

It’s a very festive city and music is a big part of that – it’s everywhere. I’ve never been to Brazil but it kind of reminds me of what carnival might be like. For instance, Halloween in New Orleans, is unlike any other place you’d experience it. The costumes are crazy and people are everywhere out on the street. There’s a sort of tropical vibe there that a lot of people don’t touch on – it’s at the bottom tip of the US, it’s really hot and humid, and the attitudes of people are really laid back.

What was it like to grow up in New Orleans?
It’s a crazy place. When I was growing up there, the legal drinking age was much lower than in the rest of the country and so was the drinking age. They still operate on the Napoleonic Code [an old French Civil Code that governs some aspects of law-making] in New Orleans, so its legal system is actually different from the rest of the country, which is pretty cool.

Historically, the city’s music scene is renowned for being based around jazz, blues and funk, etc. Are these styles still as popular today?
Oh yeah! New Orleans is known for those styles and you can go there and experience them in a way you can’t in a lot of other places. There are pop and rock bands coming out of the city, but I’d say the jazz, blues, funk and soul is something that’s more unique to New Orleans. There’s an effort to hold on to those styles there.

Has the city directly influenced your own music?
Yeah, it has. I’ve always been more of a pop and songwriter kind of person, and I don’t play jazz or soul proper, but I think that stuff all seeped in to what I do. I knew early on that what I do best is indie songwriting and melody writing in a pop kind of arena.

I listen to a ton of different music, but I would hope that you can hear some of those influences on my last record. There’s some Brazilian influences, some soul and funk influences, some jazz influences, but it’s all still in a pop context.

Tell us about your latest record.
I made it when I wasn’t planning on making a record, which is a good way to go because you don’t put any pressure on yourself. I had a summer where I thought I was going to be on the road and wasn’t, so I had a few months. I met Charles Newman, the guy who does a lot of Magnetic Field stuff, who lives out here and we decided to start hooking up very informally. I would bring in a song and we’d produce it up a little bit, then I’d go back and write more. By the end of the summer I had a finished record.

The album has a summery sound to it, because at that point I was listening to a lot of Brazilian tropicala, samba and bossa nova, and also digging Italian soundtracks, a lot of those late sixties Western scores, as well as surf music. That’s where my head was, and that definitely crept in to what I was writing.

But lyrically, the record definitely has a darker side, and I think anybody who spends a lot of time exploring the lyrics will see that. It’s a juxtaposition of light and dark – it’s presented lightly but lyrically it’s a little heavier.

What are some of your favourite places in New Orleans to eat, drink, catch some music and generally be merry?
Coop’s Place: it’s a bar – kind of a dive bar – but it does amazing food and it’s open late. It’s usually the first place I go to get a drink when I land back in New Orleans. That place is just epic.

Willie Mae’s Scotch House: not a liquor place, it actually does fried chicken. It’s down in the Treme neighbourhood, which is kind of a dangerous area. They’re only open for lunch and they do the best fried chicken in the world.

There’s also a late night place there called Snake and Jake’s which I’ve been to for many years. It’s a tiny little bar in uptown New Orleans, right smack down in the middle of a neighbourhood. Unless you know where it is you’d definitely never find it. It’s just one tiny little room with couches and super dark red light that you can barely see in, and it’s got the coolest, most badass jukebox. It’s like your last stop, 4am kind of place. It’s not like in the rest of the US where places generally close at 2am – in New Orleans they close when people stop coming in.

PJ’s Coffee: I think that place came up just before Starbucks. Somebody quoted it on Yelp, saying “PJ’s did coffee before coffee was cool.” And it’s true – before all this coffee shop stuff started exploding they were already making great stuff.

Then, of course, you have some of the greatest music clubs. One is called One Eyed Jacks, right in the French Quarter. It’s where all these new rock bands will play, and is kind of an old, small theatre with this circular bar right in the middle. It’s really cool.

Has Hurricane Katrina damaged the city to an extent where some things can’t be fixed?
I would say no, because the personality of New Orleans is always there. There’s areas that still aren’t rebuilt, but the average tourist that visits the city wouldn’t know what happened.

I was really championing everybody to go to the city afterwards. People thought you couldn’t go to New Orleans a year after Katrina because it was all screwed up, and it was, but you could still go down there as a tourist and help the economy. That’s when the city needs you most. I don’t want to minimise the effect the hurricane had, but I don’t want to take it to a point where it discourages tourists. But the whole experience was devastating for everyone in the city.

Restaurants had to get their seafood shipped in from other places, which is a drag because New Orleans always prided itself on its seafood. The whole thing was a major disaster. Hopefully it’s enough to make us realise that the oil business is an archaic business. We should have been moving on years ago – the hippies were right! They’ve been right for a long time! It’s like the whole idea of composting – 20 years ago you saw people doing that and you were like ‘oh, man! There’s no way I’m doing that!” I compost now and it’s one of the smartest things you can ever do.

Your band name – AM – isn’t the easiest thing to search for on Google. Did this occur to you when you picked it?
No, not at all. I didn’t really think about it. It’s caused me a lot of problems! I remember when it first came to light that I’d probably made a colossal error – it was when I’d had a song on a TV programme. The song was featured at the end of the episode, in a big emotional moment, and people were freaking out about the song and I would get emails from people saying that it had taken them an entire day to find me on the internet. I was amazed. I could only imagine people putting in an hour, before saying ‘fuck it!’

But it’s gotten easier over years. The Wall Street Journal did a piece about how difficult it was to find me on the internet, and after that came out, all of a sudden I was a little easier to find, because then I was known as the guy that was hard to find!

‘Future Sons and Daughters’ is out now on Naim Edge.

Words by Tristan Parker