Jon Pareles, NY Times music writer, says, "Mac Rebennack, the 67-year-old New Orleans pianist, guitarist and songwriter better known as Dr. John, carries the city’s lore in his fingers, his scratchy voice and his memory. He has lived in New York City and on Long Island since the 1980s, but when he revisits his birthplace it’s as if he never left. New Orleans culture, he said in his ever-surprising vocabulary, has “wacknosity” — things only New Orleanians do."
In New Orleans style, the bad news arrives with a backbeat. Dr. John and his band of New Orleans musicians, the Lower 911, come up with easy-rolling grooves: funk, blues, gospel, even a tinge of zydeco.
Dr. John wrote five of the album’s 13 songs with Bobby Charles, the elusive South Louisiana figure who wrote “Walking to New Orleans” and “See You Later, Alligator” and whose hometown, Abbeville, La., was smashed by Hurricane Rita. Most of the album was recorded in a studio in Maurice, La., Dr. John said, “sitting on one of the most polluted bayous in the state of Louisiana.”
Sample 4 of the new album's tracks at the NYTImes.
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