Raymond Weber (August 2006 Issue)
New Orleans Social Club

When Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans native Raymond Weber was on tour in Brazil playing drums with Ivan Neville. But his family was home; in fact, his wife was casually cooking a pot of red beans and relaxing when the storm struck. “I called her and said, ‘Are you crazy?’” Weber recalls. “I told her to get the kids and head towards Houston.”
    After his South American tour, like thousands of others Weber retreated to Texas, where he re-joined his family. And while he still had his touring kit, Weber lost half a lifetime’s worth of gear. Drums, keyboards, recording equipment, and speakers were ruined by the muddy, black flood waters.
    But the displaced drummer quickly found a purpose in his temporary home. As the beat of the New Orleans Social Club, a collective of legendary New Orleans musicians, Weber has helped to create the album Sing Me Back Home, which was recorded in Austin just six weeks after the hurricane. Weber had some heavy cats to impress–the Social Club features members of The Meters, The Neville Brothers, and The Subdudes. But for a drummer of Weber’s talent, it wasn’t difficult to fit in.
    As the drummer on the Social Club project, Weber got to represent all the great New Orleans drummers he grew up in the shadow of, like Joseph “Ziggy” Modeliste and Fred Staehle. “Any time I do a record or play live, I feel like I have to represent my city’s sound,” Weber says. “You can hear the New Orleans beat on this album clearly on the Creedence Clearwater Revival cover, ‘Fortunate Son.’ It’s kind of uptown New Orleans, a second-line beat but in a funk-type way. It’s all New Orleans.”

Jed Gottlieb

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