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On December 15th, 2023 I went to see Mike Cooley play a solo show at Chickie Wah Wah in New Orleans. I was at the tail end of a weeklong Big Easy vacation with my brother Al and our cousin Kenny, and though we were smack-dab in the middle of one of the most notoriously musical cities on the planet there had been a surprising dearth of live music offerings of interest during our stay. In fact, aside from hitting up one of my favourite NOLA happenings (George Porter Jr.’s nearly-regular Monday night slot at the Maple Leaf Bar, which you can read about here) this Mike Cooley show was the only live music we saw.
(Indoors, that is. There was plenty of live music happening for free outside on the streets and sidewalks all over the French Quarter, so we saw our fair share of trombone players and…well…mostly trombone players. The trombone is a disproportionally popular instrument in New Orleans.)
I had discovered the Cooley show announcement a month earlier and emailed Kenny and Alan right away. Neither of them are music guys by any stretch so I suggested that they might want to save the forty bucks and do something else while I went to the show. I was pretty surprised when they both asked me to grab them tickets, but of course I did. In the end my brother bailed, willing to eat the ticket price in favour of staying in and nursing his tourist-fatigued knee, which had recently been medically installed, but Kenny was still in. We hopped on the Canal streetcar in plenty of time to get to the bar early.
I had never been to Chickie Wah Wah before but I had coveted the bar’s name since I first heard of the place. Though it’s a small-ish place it is definitely a proper venue, and I ended up liking it a lot. It even had a ticket booth built into the facade, which is where I stood trying to sell my brother’s ticket.
Which proved difficult.
First of all, the show wasn’t sold out, and not only that, Cooley would be playing Chickie Wah Wah again the following night. So ticket demand was decidedly low, and It seemed that most of the people who had purchased tickets were already in the bar by the time I arrived. No biggie though, I figured I could get something for it from the next person that walked up to the ticket booth and recoup at least part of Alan’s money.
Only nobody walked up to the ticket booth. I’m talking nobody.
Well, okay, one person. “Hooray!” I thought excitedly. “Now I can sell this damn ticket and Kenny and I can go in the bar.” As the guy approached I asked if he was interested in buying my extra for $30.
“Uh, I own the place,” he said, looking me up and down.
“How about $25 then?” I asked hopefully. Fortunately he liked the joke. Unfortunately, after waiting outside for a half-hour or more I decided it was time for Al to eat his ticket and we went in. I bee-lined to the bar and ordered a big IPA for me and a ginger ale for Kenny (who is allergic to alcohol). The bar was pretty full up; all the seats were taken and a few pockets of people were staking out precious little floorspace. Ken and I took three steps back from the bar and parked ourselves basically dead-centre in the middle of the room – which put us about twenty feet from the foot-high stage – and we didn’t budge for the duration (except for an occasional three-step sashay for more drinks).
If you know Mike Cooley at all it’s because you know him as one of the singer/guitarists from Drive-By Truckers. He’s the cool-looking one on stage left, the guy who looks like he drove a Camaro in high school and wore mirrored sunglasses when he sold hash behind the McDonalds.
He’s also the one who writes the grab-you-in-the-first-ten-words-and-keep-you-breathless-’til-the-end sagas of the down-and-out that always jump out at me when I listen to the Truckers. Take for example the first line of the first song of this show:
“Which one’s the birthday boy?” She said, “I ain’t got all night…”
I mean, wow. That’s a novella in a dozen words, right there. Where is she? A hotel room, probably. Or more likely, a cheap motel. How old is the birthday boy? Is he nervous? Where does she have to go afterwards?
I’m not sure if I had heard Birthday Boy before but if I did that opening line had somehow escaped my attention. I mean the storytelling power of those twelve words haunted me; I was thinking about that opening line for most of the concert. Which was great, start-to-finish. Luckily a lot of the other songs he played (solo, on both acoustic and electric guitars) had pretty awesome opening lines as well, good enough to distract me from my Birthday Boy fixation. Like Checkout Time in Vegas:
A bloody nose, empty pockets/A rented car with a trunk full of guns
It ain’t true that the sun don’t rise in Vegas/I’ve seen it once
Or First Air of Autumn:
First air of autumn up your nose/Popcorn, heavy hairspray, nylon pantyhose
Please stand and bow your heads/And pray you don’t get old
Or Panties in Your Purse:
Saw you standing in the hallway/Red plastic cup and one of them big long cigarettes
You asked me if I could play you some Dylan/I said “Dylan who?” and you told me to kiss your ass
See what I mean? Heck, Cooley deserves a Nobel Prize just for his titles.
The show was long – twenty-one sonic dramas of drawled brilliance in all – but it never got old, not for a minute. I think he even held Kenny’s interest all the way to the end. I tell you, if I didn’t have a flight home booked for the following morning I would have gone to Cooley’s second show for sure.
Who knows, I might have even found a cheap ticket out front.
Todd Man Out 