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Martin Shore received his share of critical acclaim for the 2014 documentary Take Me To The River. With Take Me To The River: New Orleans, Shore takes an ambitious and resonant look at the music that lives and breathes in New Orleans. Featuring a diverse array of artists (George Porter Jr., Snoop Dogg, Irma Thomas, Ledisi), the documentary hits New York and Los Angeles on April 29. Check out our Q&A with Shore below!
Take Me To The River: New Orleans celebrates the deep and rich music of New Orleans and Louisiana. One of the great ways to spotlight this history is to actually listen to the sounds of The Big Easy, and a multitude of artists ends up performing on the documentary.
This ambitious passion project for Martin Shore was understandably delayed a couple of years due to the pandemic. Last week it premiered at New Orleans’ The Broad Theater, and that overwhelmignly emotional experience enriched Shore’s overall journey in making Take Me To The River: New Orleans.
As a jazz fan, this movie is absolutely right up my alley. Thankfully, there are much more notes to be played in Take Me To The River: New Orleans, and Shore gives us a look into his standout documentary.
I really enjoyed your documentary on a music level. Just as important, however, I appreciated how Take Me To The River: New Orleans can be appreciated on an archival level as well.
I always wanted the film to be evergreen, meaning it’s a living piece of history. Which seems like two diametrically opposed things. But they’re not.
What I tried to create was documenting our musical history while making new history for the viewer. And something that you can check back to in any point even if you’ve watched it (several) times.
You can go back a couple of years from now and watch it again and it be as fresh and maybe more personal since you’re checking in with your friends, is what I’d say.
But really, when you take everything down to the basics, it’s really about watching master musicians go through their creative process. And being to be in the room with them and be a bit of a fly in the wall.
I always wanted to be able to tell American music story in a way that documented who we are as Americans and what we gave the world in terms of popular music and the influences and inspiration that continues today.
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Can you talk about your decision to start your documentary off with Ledisi and Irma Thomas?
If you were to ask me which performance continues to resonate after about a thousand times, that would be it. Just because you feel the love and respect they have for each other. Not only as artists but as people. And as documenting their process and how important they know what they’re doing is for future generations. They can feel it.
They understand passing the torch and receiving that torch of responsibility and what that means. But there was no forethought that this was going to be the one that leads us off. It was a process of continued – trying to feel out what feels right in the trajectory of the narrative.
Do you understand the pride that people have for New Orleans, not just as musicians and artists but for people who actually live and flourish in that city?
The community in New Orleans is deep and it’s rich. What you feel and what you see is real. That said, New Orleans is kind of in a constant state of small change. So if you look at it through history, there have been a lot of events that have changed and shifted New Orleans.
But what stayed is that glue of that real community which starts with the culture. So once the culture was laid down in New Orleans, the respect and the fellowship that the commitment to the community is there regardless of the catastrophic events and the changes that happened. That keeps them together – this rich heritage and that heritage is built on this melting pot.
So that’s why (New Orleans) can accept change. That is part of the gumbo and the fabric of the culture. But it’s incredibly important for New Orleanians to share that culture. It’s not so important that they have to keep it for themselves. It’s like going to Church. It’s the fellowship that comes out of the community, the heritage, the legacy – this all rolls into this ball of this fantastic commitment to each other. Their daily lives in New Orleans is not easy. It’s not an easy place – there is hurricanes – there’s tornadoes, there’s weather events that forces everyone to care for each other a little more so than other places.
All of those things combine into this very rich community. If you spend enough time in New Orleans, that commitment comes out a lot. When things need attention, they find a way to give it attention.
And that is what is so important about the film. The world needs to understand how important the culture, the history, the legacy, and the music is to the world. And it needs to be paid attention to. It needs to be supported.
Talking about commitment, was directing such an inspiring subject a great support in helping you get through the tougher times of making this project and getting it out into the world?
No question about that statement. The community in New Orleans is like no other particularly the music community. There is utmost respect that each and every musician in New Orleans has for each other and for the culture.
Therefore, the biggest challenge is to be accepted into this community and once that happens which takes commitment and takes a while, it’s fairly seamless because each musician and the respect that they have for each other and the music is natural and comes across whenever they are able to collaborate with each other.
It’s definitely a seamless music community, it’s just sometimes a little bit of a hard nut to crack in terms of being accepted as one of them.
One of the great things about your documentary is it’s not a standalone work. Can you talk about the album release and the documentary’s YouTube Channel?
We have the film, record, live shows – but we lead with our education. And our education piece is one that continues to have meaning year after year.
We have common core curriculum that has been commissioned by our education partner which is Berklee College of Music along with the Grammy Museum and the New School. Berklee has been our long term partner and we are now developing even a more verbose offering that can be offered online as well.
So we have great outlets as some high profile partners. These are partners that really understand the importance of the work and how it’s something that always needs to stand the test of time in terms of commitment to present. We’re constantly working on how we continue our educational journey which is getting music back into public schools, getting instruments to deserving students and making sure the world understands the importance of this music.
(It starts) with students and future generations so that they have a good understanding of the music and want to come and experience New Orleans personally.
What is it like for you to connect with students?
As a teacher at The New School and starting September I’ll be at Berklee, their eyes light up. A lot of them don’t understand the deeper history, particularly jazz when you have such great technicians and players as these young people are, a lot of students think jazz started in the bebop (or) big band era
They have no greater understand of the genesis of this music and how it was a combination of a lot of things that was able to turn into modern day jazz and popular music. It’s incredibly satisfying.
If you go to New Orleans, we work with the several after school programs, whether it be The Trombone Shorty Foundation, Preservation Hall, Roots of Music, these are fantastic conduits for the music. It’s so gratifying – the best moment when you see – we had the Roots of Music come for the premiere on Wednesday. They were out in the parking lot and did a show for us for 35 minutes. To see an 8 or 9-year-old twirling their trumpet and getting into it, that to me is the most joyful moment. It’s beyond words – it’s purely musical joy.
Is it hard for you as a director? Because the subject matter you’re tackling is very big to say the least.
There is tremendous amount of pressure to get it right for the home team – for the home city. It was a tremendous pressure to get it right in Memphis.
There is a term that both Memphis and New Orleans use – “culture vultures.” They come in and they bastardize the culture because they don’t really understand how to present it or the deeper meaning.
The pressure to make it right and to make it play in the home cities is tremendous for me. I know when it played in Memphis and when it played in New Orleans on Wednesday, that it will play – if it plays there, and we got standing ovations in both places . . .
Wednesday was particularly gratifying because New Orleans is a little bit of a tougher . . . that was huge. I know at that point it will play all over the world. Leading up to Wednesday, it is five years of that moment and it is such a big moment . . . it takes long because I will not let it out of the can until it is right.
It’s a lot of pressure and what drives me in these projects is to get it right for the home crowd. We do these friends and family screenings and we did one for New Orleans a couple of months ago. That was for the musicians and the crew and influencers in the city and so forth.
That was really a stunned audience. They just walked out like they had been shot between the eyes. They couldn’t really arms around how much everything meant to them. The premiere – I think the world had gotten around that “hey this is something you’ve got to see, this is really great.”
I think people came expecting to be shot between the eyes and when they did, it wasn’t shock, it was joy. That is what really was really gratifying was that moment.
I’ve got to say this one, it took a couple of days to sort through it in terms of the release in how much had been . . . it’s like a percolating pot, because of the pandemic I had to wait another two years to make it happen. So it was particularly gratifying.
I’m thinking the next project – there has been a thought about London and how London took our music, repackaged it, rebranded it. It became the British Invasion and they noticed how important our music was to the other side of the world. That’s such a big story – I’m afraid of it. That’s so big!
Can you talk about the joy in spotlighting so many different musicians, some of whom have passed?
Standing in the theater at the Broad for the premiere, there were a lot of tears. Our films make you tap your foot, you’re going to smile, but you’re going to cry too probably. I think for a lot of folks it was emotional. Especially seeing somebody as young as Fifth Ward Weebie not be around anymore.
Very special moments – the magic with the Nevilles and having Ivan and Ian playing with their fathers. And having George Porter Jr. there – that was complete magic. I give Ian a lot of credit for figuring out strategically how that might work. And Dr. John that was more personal because there were a lot less people in the room. He hung out the whole day. We became very good friends in that time.
He sort of knew where he was in his life and he was just so appreciative of what was going on and being part of it. And then you see people like Snoop – the joy that he has on his face being with these musicians who he loves and reveres so much. It’s evident. It’s not contrived in any way. What you see with Snoop is legitimately him. There is not any type of veneer. That’s him.
