Here Come the Meters, Man!

“I grew up listening to mostly regional music, which was on the radio more than outside stuff,” George says. “I heard jazz, Fats Domino, Earl King, and, during Mardi Gras, Professor Longhair.” Porter began playing piano, gravitated to guitar, and in 1965 got a call from a local star, singer/keyboardist Art Neville. “Art depended on the guitar player to play solos, and I couldn’t solo. About a year later, he saw me playing bass with Irving Banister, and Art said, ‘That’s the instrument you should be playing. Do you want a gig?’ That was the beginning of the Meters.”

Guitarist Leo Nocentelli was already in the fold, and when Modeliste (who is Porter’s cousin) joined on drums, a magical chemistry developed. The Meters honed their sound in the studio backing regional stars including Lee Dorsey and Betty Harris; they worked under the direction of producer/songwriter Allen Toussaint, in similar fashion to Dunn’s experience with Booker T. & the MG’s, and Jamerson’s with the Funk Brothers. What made the Meters the Fab Four of Funk was their ability to transcend supporting status and produce their own instrumental hits, eventually growing into a songwriting team capable of writing vocal hits. It began innocently enough.

“After Toussaint left the studio one day, [manager] Marshall Sehorn said, ‘Why don’t y’all lay down some stuff?’” Porter recalls. That session, recorded at Jazz City studios, yielded the band’s first single, “Sophisticated Cissy,” and the signature hit “Cissy Strut,” both issued on the band’s eponymous 1969 debut. There were no vocals or even a lead instrumentalist per se—simply four Crescent City cats playing jams they used as break tunes in their sets at the Ivanhoe in the French Quarter. The Meters reached a broader audience with vocal tunes such as “Hey Pocky A-Way,” “Fire on the Bayou,” and “Africa,” and the Rolling Stones brought them along on their ’75–’76 world tour, which proved to be the height of Meters mania. By then, vocalist/percussionist Cyril Neville was fronting the group, but time expired on the Meters when Art Neville split to band with Cyril and his other brothers.

George continued to work as a sideman for everyone from Jimmy Buffett to David Byrne to Tori Amos. He also fronted his own bands, which eventually coalesced as the Runnin’ Pardners. To date, Porter has issued three studio releases as a bandleader and is halfway done with a fourth. His improvisational gigs with The Trio, which also includes drummer Johnny Vidochovich and a rotating third player, have become the stuff of legend around New Orleans.

All along, George Porter has been the most consistent purveyor of Meters music through various offshoots of the original band. The Meters reunited for 1984’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and they reformed as a touring unit after an informal jam during the 1989 Jazz Fest, with Russell Batiste replacing Modeliste on the skins. The band was dubbed the Funky Meters after Nocentelli left in ’93 and was replaced by former Neville Brothers guitarist Brian Stoltz. Porter, Batiste, and Stoltz continue to record and tour as PBS.

The Meters’ mystique grew through hip-hop samples and the expanding jam-band scene. In 2000, the original Meters played a single reunion show in San Francisco, and the four finally reconvened for a killer Jazz Fest set this past spring, which led to more dates. Even Hurricane Katrina (see page 39) couldn’t hold the Meters back—in fact, that tragedy makes experiencing the original Meters reunion an even more satisfying, downright cathartic taste of old world New Orleans.

In 1996 you told Bass Player that if the Meters ever got back together again, it would be “for money and money only.” What are your current feelings about the reunions, starting with the 2000 show?
The 2000 show was just stupid money, and it had to be made. I walked away from that show disappointed that we elected to play it safe. I understand that Art and I have been playing most of this music for the past 16 years, and that Zig and Leo have only been playing some of it in their projects, but none of us had been playing songs like “Pungee” and “Thinking.” I thought that would kill. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t ever have to play “Cissy Strut,” “Hey Pocky A-Way,” or “Fire on the Bayou” ever again.

Does everybody feel that way?
Well, even a hit song can be a challenge, because each of us might have played it in ten different bands, and the song takes on a new identity in each one. We have to re-learn the song the way the four of us originally played it. And we are throwing in some songs that we’ve never played live before. It’s going to take some time, because some of that stuff is pretty difficult!

Technical musicians might be able to spell it all out in print, but if the pocket isn’t there, it’s just dots on paper. This band played off Zigaboo’s grooves and Leo’s rhythms. My job as a bass player was to tie those two pieces together, so that when Art went to do his thing, he had this pocket with tons of balls! [Laughs.] It’s coming back. The more we play together, the more comfortable we’ll get with where we sat 30 or 35 years ago.

How did last year’s Jazz Fest come together? Was it simply another payday?
No, it happened because [Jazz Fest organizer] Quint Davis’s persistence united Zig and Leo. The Jazz Fest show was killer. It was worth discussing more gigs. And we’re still of creative age, so there’s still time to do another record or two. I would like to try my hand at producing, and I know Zigaboo would do the same. My approach would be less arranged, but still musical. I would roll the tape for two hours of jamming, find some musical spots, and say, “Let’s write something with this.”

How does that compare to the way things came together in the old days?
In the beginning, most of our music was written from jams. Zig or Leo would usually throw a lick on the table, and everybody would put in a line—almost like in bebop—and we’d refine it into a song. What we created later—“You’ve Got to Change (You’ve Got to Reform),” “Africa,” and “Ain’t No Use”—began as jams, and then Leo or Zig went home and wrote words. When the real songwriting started to happen, certain parts were spelled out for us to play, but it was up to the player to make the part his own and form a bind with the other parts.

Would you agree that each of you is presently playing more notes?
Absolutely. I got busier when I started doing trio gigs. I started playing a lot of 16th-notes when I did the Deepest End tours with Gov’t Mule. Allan Woody created that stuff with a pick, but I don’t use one, so I had to do it with my fingers.

How many right-hand fingers do you use when you play?
The first two fingers and the thumb.

Can you explain how the results differ with your approach?
The accents are different. Normally those 16ths would be very even, but I would anticipate some of the “ands” because I come from the syncopated school.

You switch a lot between playing with the side of your thumb and with your fingers. When do you find each appropriate?
I play with my thumb when I want a fatter sound, and I move toward the neck to get the real fat bottom end—that deep ballad sound. I move back behind the pickup when I want to get that “gonk” but still with a fat sound. My fingers are not as bottom-heavy as my thumb, but my fingers are fast—although I’m pretty quick with my thumb, too.

Do you thumb-pluck both up and down?
No, I play all downstrokes.

You don’t slap, but you pull some heavy snaps, especially during your solos.
I can’t slap because I have weak wrists. Snapping the string sort of gives you that slap effect, but it’s absolutely different. It’s not as rhythmic, but it works for accents.

You’ve been throwing some chords in your solos lately, too.
That comes from playing in trios, especially where the third person is a horn player, which makes me the only one capable of playing a chord.

Do you ever solo without a groove behind you?
Not usually, and even during my solo I’m paying attention to what Zig’s doing. It’s easy for him to misinterpret where my one is, because I’m not playing on one—I’m playing a solo, which is more or less playing in between things.

Your technique is guitar-influenced. You bend notes like Buddy Guy.
Yeah, I have fun doing that. Even though it hurts my fingers, I’m more comfortable playing those things on fewer strings. My hands are just too big for guitar necks. I have seriously thought about getting a 6-string bass to take guitar solos, though. I would tune it exactly like a guitar.

Art teases you about how your bass used to have only three strings.
It was a used Fender Jazz Bass, and the G string’s tuning peg was missing, so I just played without it. I’d never been to a music store, and I didn’t realize that part could be replaced [laughs].

You often break a string onstage. Why is that?
I usually break two—I break E’s and A’s because I dig in really hard. I don’t play loud onstage; I can’t hear myself well in certain places, and I start digging in even deeper.

Do you record and review your live shows?
I listen to almost every gig, and I usually listen to the the Trio’s gigs that very night on the drive home because there are some surprises. Those gigs are unrehearsed and completely improvised. It only works because we play off each other the whole time, and that happens with pretty much every band I play in.

When you’re playing a session, do you adjust your playing to the project, or figure that they hired you to do your thing?
I tend to become a part of the project. Sometimes I’m told, “Think more like you do with the Meters.” Then I know what they want—but sometimes I have to say, “Thinking like the Meters means you have to have a syncopated drummer like Zigaboo.” Regardless, job one is to make a single pulse out of what the drummer and I are doing. I can play with the worst drummer on the planet, and we’re going to have fun because I’m going to work with him and make him shine.

Can you see how you’ve influenced the younger generation?
Yes and no. I meet a lot of young players who ask me about how I play, so I know the music is still being played and heard.

What do you think of hip-hop artists sampling Meters tunes?
Me and that don’t get along—in fact, it pisses me off! Maybe two percent of all the samples out there are legal, and that’s fine. Then there are the 30 or 40 percent who get caught. You’ve got to fight them for two or three years, and by that time, they’re broke. Hip-hop is great; it takes some thinking, and if you hired me, I would gladly come do a session. But don’t rip off my performance from a song I co-wrote and then take me to court with a countersuit saying, “You’re creating issues with my music.” It ain’t your music, it’s my music!

Are you comfortable with your legacy, or are you a bit irked that you and the Meters aren’t better known to the general public?
I don’t need to be famous. I enjoy being able to play anywhere without having to watch my back. I don’t feel shortchanged about the business. If I had made a whole lot of money, I’d probably be dead now. I was a seriously bad drug addict, man, and there ain’t too many rich drug addicts still alive. I got dealt a hand, and somehow I had to figure out a way to make that hand play longer. I’m happy with it, and I’m not ready to quit. I’m still playing really well.

Do you feel that the Meters are back together for good?
Yeah—I mean, I hope so. Nothing is guaranteed, but everybody is getting along right now and being almost overly considerate. It’s funny, because when we would fight before going onstage, it was always a great show! But I think that everybody here came to play. I hope we can get another record done, and if the book on the Meters gets closed, then it gets closed on a positive note.