Sounds of a Seasoned Friendship

In 2005, the year Katrina ravaged the Big Easy, good friends Patty Carpenter (singer and piano player) and Verandah Porche (poet and scribe), carved out time to write songs together. We created a waltz for New Orleans and the churning war in Iraq and dreamt up a title, Alibi/Lullaby. The lyrics folded in street names like Piety and Desire as well as Shakespeare, and they floated on the song’s grim, lilting music. We also turned the song into a video.

A few years later, we produced Come Over, an album of a dozen original tunes performed by The Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band. The group consists of Patty, her ex-partner, their daughter, her son, and friends. The songs of love, trouble, sudden death, and seasoned joy begin in water and end in wind, shot through with earth and fire.

Since then, we have penned about fifty songs, “one for each year of our friendship.” We returned briefly to the studio to record Tweeting from the Tower and Paper or Plastic, a song about money. We’ve played together for audiences who appreciate the interplay of image and music and REALLY miss the dynamics of live performance.