HooDoo Loungers To Hold 10th Anniversary Concert At Bay Street Theater

For the past decade, the name HooDoo Loungers has been synonymous with Mardi Gras on the East End—though the New Orleans-style party band provides its rhythms at concerts, private parties and festivals year-round across Long Island and further afield.

“The band is celebrating its 10th anniversary, which is no small feat these days with a nine-piece band,” said Joe Lauro, the Sag Harbor musician and documentary filmmaker who founded the group.

The band grew out of his love for the music and the city of New Orleans.

“I started going down there, I guess around 1990,” he said during an interview this week. “My connection goes back prior to that, with phonograph records. I’ve always been a huge fan of early New Orleans music. I’m talking about King Oliver, Louis Armstrong—the Bunk Johnson era, which is the early jazz era.”

He set out in the early 1990s to find living people from that era to interview.

“When you start making films about locals, you really get entrenched in the culture, the personalities and the way of life,” he said. “And it just really got in my blood.”

Mr. Lauro produced the 1999 documentary “Louis Prima: The Wildest!” which won the audience award at the Hamptons International Film Festival. For that film, he interviewed Louis Prima’s old band members and manager in New Orleans.

“You really get to know a city when you’re driving all over town going to people’s houses and finding locations and hitting the archives,” he said.

The next film he worked on in New Orleans was “Fats Domino and The Birth of Rock ’n’ Roll,” which aired on PBS as part of the “American Masters” series.

Though he started playing the music earlier, the official debut of the band came in 2009. At its inception, the band was called the Who Dat Loungers, but that name didn’t last.

“‘Who dat’ is a colloquial term down in New Orleans,” Mr. Lauro explained. He recalled passing the Who Dat Lounge on Esplanade Avenue 20 years ago when there visiting. “Who Dat?” is also a familiar cheer at New Orleans Saints NFL games.

“About a year in, we got a cease-and-desist from a lawyer down there claiming they owned that name as a trademark,” Mr. Lauro said. Learning that the Saints had settled over use of the phrase, he decided to avoid the conflict and change the name.

The band’s lineup has also seen some changes. Some members have come and gone, and some musicians who used to sit in from time to time have become regulars.

The core has remained the same, Mr. Lauro said—though establishing that core took some doing on his part.

“The hard thing was finding the people up here that could play that music,” he said. “The first guy that I had was our keyboard player, who played in that style.”

It’s the style of Professor Longhair and Dr. John, very ragtime-based, double-handed, Mr. Lauro explained. And that keyboard player—who also plays piano and accordion and is the band’s musical director and arranger—is David Deitch.

“Most piano players these days, they don’t have a left-hand,” Mr. Lauro said. “They play leads, but they’re just comping chords. A New Orleans style is like almost a one-man band, playing the bass and everything on that left hand.”

Mr. Deitch shares songwriting duties with Michael Schiano, who is the lead guitarist and one of the vocalists.

Key to the band is the drummer, according to Mr. Lauro. “Dave Giacone is one of the great drummers on Long Island, in my opinion,” he said. “He’s the heart and soul of the band, because our band plays a lot of New Orleans rhythms. That’s not a music that’s understood around here. It’s really from a different place. It’s a very regional type of music and David has mastered those street beats and those marching band rhythms and the second-line beats and the swing that really identifies New Orleans music. People can try to play that music, but if the drummer isn’t doing it right, anyone from down there is going to know. And you’re going to know in your feet.”

And that makes Mr. Giacone irreplaceable.

“David is just—he’s a killer,” Mr. Lauro said. “He plays with everybody, because he can play with anybody. But we can’t get a replacement when he’s not with us.”

In fact, Mr. Giacone continued to play with the HooDoo Loungers while recovering from two separate accidents, one that injured his arm and one that injured his leg. Mr. Lauro said he called Mr. Giacone “the East End’s greatest one-armed drummer” when he played a whole season with a broken wrist,” and later, “Long Island’s greatest one-legged drummer.”

Mr. Lauro plays string instruments, including electric bass. The current horns lineup includes Bob Hovey on trombone, John Brierly on trumpet and Eric Kay on clarinet and tenor saxophone.

With gospel experience and influences, Dawnette Darden and Marvin Joshua are lead vocalists. “They’re just amazing,” Mr. Lauro said. “I love them. I never get sick of watching them.”

But others sing as well.

“The band is like a variety show,” Mr. Lauro said. “Basically, we feature each singer individually. They do their shtick. They get out into the audience. Then we feature them together, and then we’ll feature the trumpet player. So there’s a lot going on within the show. It’s not just one person carrying the whole thing. It’s really a lot of different flavors.”

The 10th anniversary concert will be a retrospective of what the HooDoo Loungers have been playing for the past decade, Mr. Lauro said.

That will include music from the band’s part in the Aretha Franklin tribute concert at Patchogue Theater this past November, and from the Sly and the Family Stone celebration in September during the Sag Harbor American Music Festival. The latter show was directed by Sag Harbor musician and composer Dan Koontz, who will join the HooDoo Loungers as a special guest for the anniversary concert.

“Dan is one of the most soulful piano players and singers around,” Mr. Lauro said, noting that Mr. Koontz is the HooDoo Loungers’ substitute keyboard player.

“I love playing with that band. So much fun,” Mr. Koontz said. “For the 10th anniversary, I’m bringing two new tunes to the band. An original of mine, called ‘Fast and Loose,’ which I just completed a horn arrangement for, and then the Ray Charles version of ‘Unchain My Heart,’ for which I adapted the horn arrangement Ray used.”

Also sitting in will be Morris Goldberg, a saxophone player from Cape Town, South Africa, who famously played the penny whistle solo for “You Can Call Me Al” on Paul Simon’s 1986 album “Graceland.”

“He’s played with us many times, and he’s on our latest CD, which in fact got nominated as the best self-produced album of the year by the Blues Foundation,” Mr. Lauro said.

The album is titled “Head & Heart & Hips” and it was named Best CD of the Year by the Long Island Blues Society.

Other surprise guests are planned, Mr. Lauro advised.

The HooDoo Loungers will perform at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday, February 2, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 in advance and $40 on the day of. Visit baystreet.org or call 631-725-9500.