Battle stars

Galactic cook up their New Orleans stew

by Don Fluckinger

In the beginning, guitarist Jeff Raines and bassist Robert Mercurio started a funk band, Manuel's Galactic Prophylactic, in DC. But when they moved south, drawn to New Orleans by the intoxicating grooves of the Meters and Dr. John, everything changed.

"We were definitely playing that northern style of funk -- a lot of it's put on the one [downbeat]," says Mercurio, who brings the sextet to the Iron Horse this Wednesday. "It's totally different. If you just listen to just Parliament and James Brown, when you come down here it's like `wow, this is totally different funk.' We just soaked that stuff up."

Unlike most other cities, New Orleans works its way into your pores. There's the heat and the humidity slowing everyone and everything down most of the year. Huge barges and tankers lazily drift down the Mississippi, making even high-volume commerce happen at half-speed. There's a dark voodoo vibe permeating the night. Yet there's no bigger party scene on earth than Bourbon Street, which over the years has fostered a diverse musical climate with players like Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Fats Domino, the Neville Brothers, and even wildly uptempo, colorful brass bands who crop up everywhere from Mardi Gras to the traditional jazz funerals.

So when Raines and Mercurio moved Manuel's Galactic Prophylactic to town, New Orleans took over: jazz, R&B, and brass-band sounds seeped into their music; local musicians joined the band (they now account for two-thirds of the line-up); and scenesters truncated the name to "Galactic," which eventually became the band's official name. They gave in to the city's pace, playing midnight-to-dawn gigs at Benny's, a now-defunct club on Valence Street.

Although funk jams remain the backbone of the Galactic sound, many elements of the New Orleans musical stew have been worked in, appealing to jazz junkies, the neo-hippie crowd, and fans of '60s and '70s New Orleans funk. With his frantic snare drumming and lots of high-hat cymbal, drummer Stanton Moore anchors the sound with a style that traces its roots to the brass bands; Rich Vogel adds a Hammond B-3 sound that jacks up Galactic's soul factor 100 percent; saxman Ben Ellman also moonlights in another popular group, the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars.

And, while the majority of Galactic's songs are instrumentals, several feature lead vocals by Theryl de Clouet whose New Orleans soul pedigree goes way back with the Neville brothers (lower-case B) before they formed their famous band. His sound and his socially conscious lyrics solidify Galactic's appeal among the old-time fans of Dr. John and the Nevilles.

Taken together, all these musical flavors attract a colorful audience to Galactic gigs. "We get urban hipsters into the DJ stuff and rap, all the way over to the Grateful Dead hippies who dig that aspect of us, and then you also get older people like my parents who like New Orleans music," Mercurio says. "In Portland [Oregon], we played the Shake and Bake, this total hippie fest. Right in the front row there was this guy, who must've been 55, just getting down, going crazy. Then we saw him the next night in Seattle. It was wild to see this mixture of people hanging out together."

Galactic have been blessed not only with musical talent, but also with good recording deals. Their debut, Coolin' Off, was picked up by San Francisco label Fog City. It featured 14 music tracks and a beautifully designed multimedia CD-ROM section with videos, interviews, and bonus tracks. This year, Capricorn Records added Galactic to a big-time jam-band roster that includes 311 and Widespread Panic. Their second record, Crazyhorse Mongoose, was released in September.

The two albums sound different; Coolin' Off, although performed with great facility and featuring some killer beats that will knock funk fans for a loop, sounds a little homogeneous with mostly midtempo tunes. In addition to those staple Galactic grooves, Crazyhorse Mongoose features upbeat jazz, including the Lou Donaldson tune "Hamp's Hump" featured in the opener slot. De Clouet's vocal tunes, "Start from Scratch" and "Change My Ways," have a streetwise '70s soul vibe. This ability to mix styles, Mercurio says, was influenced by the recording atmosphere.

"Coolin' Off seemed to be a certain mood that we captured in two days in the studio . . . it was recorded in the middle of summer in New Orleans, so it came out really laid-back and tired," Mercurio says. "With [Crazyhorse Mongoose] we were finally in an air-conditioned studio -- in San Francisco -- so it's a different mood for sure."

Galactic play at 8:30 p.m. on October 14 at the Iron Horse, in Northampton. Tickets are $8. Call (413) 584-0610.