Jackson Hole Underground

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

In September 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the musicians and music fans of Jackson Hole held a benefit to help victims of the storm. The event was called “Raise the Roof,” and it raised $10,000 for the Tipitina’s Foundation and the New Orleans chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

Earlier this week, I got a chance to see how those seeds have grown.

In the Ninth Ward, Habitat is building rows of brightly colored Creole cottages in a Musicians’ Village. One of those homes belongs to Jeremy Paul “Uncle Fatty” Haydel, a 26-year-old saxophonist and keyboard player in the band Thinkenstein.

Haydel is a New Orleans native who along with two bandmates was forced out of the Lakeview neighborhood when the waters of Lake Pontchartrain breached the levees and flooded their home.

Now Haydel is the proud owner of a three-bedroom, 1,000-square-foot shotgun he spent more than 450 hours building with Habitat for Humanity staff and volunteers.

“It’s fantastic,” he says, washing dishes one afternoon before music practice. “It’s a lot of work keeping up a home.”

Habitat is building about 70 homes in the Musicians’ Village, one of a half-dozen or so projects the group is working on around the city. So far 30 families have moved in.

Elsewhere in the Ninth Ward, signs of life are returning. There has been a convergence of self-rebuilding — residents working patiently, living in trailers — with sustainable design projects notably headed by the actor Brad Pitt.

Two years ago during Jazz Fest, these neighborhoods were the scene of tremendous devastation. Eight months after the hurricane, the Ninth Ward was a Mad Max wasteland where residents calmly spoke of the horrors they had endured.

The regrowth is slow but visible, like a bud that has formed but not yet blossomed.

Volunteers have poured in to swing a hammer and erect walls. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter return next week to spearhead a Habitat build. In the Lower Ninth Ward, people may sign up for gutting and rebuilding with Common Ground.

Blighted homes remain in much of the city, and the old red brick housing projects are being demolished, hopefully to make way for more diverse housing without the crime and stigma of a ghetto. The spray-painted markings for searches and body counts, a signature of New Orleans after the storm, still stain many walls.

At the bottom of the French Quarter, hundreds of the homeless are living in a tent village beneath I-10. But their ranks are thinning; at one point there was another village outside City Hall.

My approach triggered a flurry of motion, like cockroaches exposed to daylight. Some of the men scrambled to protect their piles of possessions, as if I might steal, while others sought my help or cash.

Late in the afternoon Corchenell Washington Jones and three friends arrived at the tent village bearing 50 servings of red beans and rice. The women prepare a large meal and share it with the homeless once a month. One of their daughters, Jessica Jackson, 6, helped hand out the food.

“We decided we would try to give something back,” says Washington Jones, 35. Adds friend Theresa Smith-Sylvester, “That’s what it’s about — giving.”

That’s how New Orleans is rebuilding. People helping people, those who live there, those who care.

Jackson Hole pitched in and perhaps paid for the refrigerator in Uncle Fatty’s kitchen, or the rafters of his roof. Who knows, maybe one day the sax man will roar from the stage of the Mangy Moose Saloon.

Friend Tara McKeefry, who oversaw the construction for Habitat, says, “He’s going to be real famous someday.”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under music, funk, jazz fest, mangy moose, new orleans, festivals. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.