PREVIEW: LIFE IS A CARNIVAL: LAST WALTZ TOUR ’24 at Proctors Thursday
The eternal songs of The Band and Allen Toussaint’s horn charts meet onstage Thursday at Proctors in a Mississippi-mighty flow of sound and feeling.
Mark Mullins, the New Orleans trombonist and leader of Bonerama, leads the horn section in “Life Is a Carnival: Last Waltz Tour ’24,” latest iteration of an all-star tribute that’s celebrated The Band since 2016. Garth Hudson, sole surviving member of The Band, played with them at Albany’s Palace Theater in 2017 when guitarist-singer Warren Haynes and singer keyboardist Michael McDonald were featured players. Then as now Mullins runs the horns, speaking in Allen Toussaint’s very distinct arranging language.
Mark Mullins. Kevin Stiffler photo
“I was always a huge Allen Toussaint fan,” Mullins said from the road last week, after the tour kicked off in Los Angeles with guests including Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and Trey Anastasio.
“Being from New Orleans and knowing what Allen was and what he did for New Orleans music is immeasurable,” said Mullins. When he’d learned Toussaint wrote the horn charts for The Band’s live “Rock of Ages” album, he found them “brilliant,” deceptively complex. Learning to play them, he said, “It sounds simple…but then you realize how complex it is.” Mullins marveled, “It’s very complicated stuff but it doesn’t sound complicated. That’s the beauty of how Allen was able to write.”
Mullins said. “As a trombone player growing up in my teens, being in a school band I would still go home and listen to Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan and everybody that you were supposed to be listening to at that time.” (His band Bonerama released the hugely entertaining “Bonerama Plays Led Zeppelin” in 2019.) Mullins listened to New Orleans styles; but “I would always go back to the Bruce Springsteen records and play trombone along to Clarence Clemons’ saxophone solos or Pink Floyd albums that didn’t even have horns,” Mullins recalled.
He couldn’t remember when he first heard The Band. “Their stuff was sort of around forever…everywhere,” he said. “As I got into Bob Dylan and started learning more about who The Band was, then it was like, ‘Oh. There’s this whole other thing that started to blow me away.” While he played some of their songs in high school groups, learning their songs for the 2016 Last Waltz tour opened his ears.
As he learned with Allen Toussaint’s horn arrangements, “complexity that sounds simple” describes The Band. When Trey Anastasio chose “Unfaithful Servant” for the recent tour kick off show, “Of course, Trey would pick the hardest song,” Mullins laughed, “so fragile and so delicate, quiet and exposed…probably my favorite Band song.”
…a bunch of cool, wacky things going on at the same time…
“Life Is a Carnival” – title of the tour that hits Proctors Thursday – is another. “When you listen to it, you try to find where the downbeat is, where ‘one’ is,” said Mullins. “Its got a quirky cool intro, the way The Band has it, and then Allen (Toussaint’s horn section) comes in on top of it with this very cool layered, structured, unorthodox horn part. Almost everybody is playing something kind of different….the whole song sounds like a carnival…like a bunch of cool, wacky things going on at the same time. It really paints a picture. That’s one of my favorites to play every night.”
Playing every night with the all-star crew bassist Don Was assembled and leads “seems just infinite,” said Mullins. “There’s so many songs,” and they may change each night.
“With the version that we’ve been doing on the tour, with Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers and Ryan Bingham, Jamie Johnson – we’ve still brought some stuff in that we haven’t done on previous Last Waltz tours so that’s a really cool thing about this version of the group.”
“It’s a full-blown rock band with Mike Campbell up there,” said Mullins. Citing his guitar sound, Mullins said, “I’ve been hearing it on the radio since I was a kid on all those Heartbreakers hits. There it is right in front of us and it just sounds so great.” He said, “Ryan Bingham, I’m a huge fan already,” also praising Jamie Johnson who “brings the house down every night.” All the players share “the same mutual respect for The Band and (main songwriter) Robbie (Robertson) and the compositions and that really makes it special.”
New Orleans, in The House
Many also share New Orleans backgrounds with Toussaint: Mullins and the three other Levee Horns, singer-percussionist Cyril Neville, singer-guitarist Dave Malone (the Radiators) and drummer Terence Higgins. The Levee Horns are Mullins, trombone; his Bonerama bandmate Matt Perrine, Sousaphone and euphonium; Ward Smith, baritone, tenor and soprano saxophones and clarinet; and Bobby Campo, trumpet and flugelhorn.
The band also includes singers Ryan Bingham, Jamey Johnson and Shannon McNally, keyboardist John Medeski and leader and bassist Don Was, who also runs Blue Note Records and plays in the house band for the Americana Music Awards.
Mullins said, “Some of the songs we’ve been doing that just work so well – ‘The Shape I’m In,’ of course ‘The Weight,’ ‘I Shall Be Released’ – all the ones that you’d expect, and some of them change from night to night.”
Mullins also recognizes how important The Band’s fans are to the show.
“The audience is right there with it because the songs have such an emotional connection,” he said. “You see people crying, smiling and they’re standing up and they’ve just got this expression of joy on their faces.”
Show time: 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $219.50 – $40.50. www.proctors.org 518-346-6204
BONERAMA – Future File
Mark Mullins hopes to record new Bonerama music soon and looks to live shows.
“We have a really cool New Year’s Eve gig,” he announced, noting they seldom play that night. “We’re going to play in Jackson Square…with Tank and the Bangas…right in the heart of New Orleans to ring in 2025, so that’s going to be exciting.”
Bonerama also sets sail on The Big Easy Cruise, “a New Orleans-music-themed cruise,” Mullins explained. The week-long January run out of Fort Lauderdale features Trombone Shorty, Papa Gros and others, “a whole lot of really cool New Orleans acts. So we’re excited about that.”
As for Jazz Fest in New Orleans this spring, Mullins said, “Everyone thinks that we’re always going to be there, but I never take Jazz Fest for granted.” Noting the profusion of new young acts available (and laughing when I included the Rolling Stones among them), Mullins said, “I sure hope so, because it’s so much fun.”
Bonerama has played several area venues, graciously inviting young Schenectady trombonist (natch!) Alex Slomka to sit in at the Parish Public House in a 2017 Halloween show. Mullins is shown at left; Slomka, right.
Bonerama at the former Parish Public House, now Ophelia’s; Mullins is second from left
Hoke's Jukebox 