New Orleans buskers - 1990 - a photo on Flickriver

New Orleans buskers - 1990

Update, 12/08
Infrogmation's comment below and the links he added to his own photos of the washboard player sent me on a pleasant round of Google sleuthing. On the Kitchen Syncopators site, founding member Frank Lemon offers a lovely and evocative recollection of Lissa Driscoll.

When I first went to New Orleans alone, I took the greyhound from my hometown of Lake Charles with a guitar, a suitcase, and a phone number I got from a man named Baby Gramps from Seattle. I remember I was somewhere on Decatur Street when I gave Lissa a call. I told her I was a friend of Gramps and I was in town visiting wondering if she could put me up for a couple of nights. She told me how to get to her place so I grabbed my things and headed down the road. She lived in a two bedroom shotgun on Royal Street in the Marigny between Spain and St. Roch. I walked down the side alley and knocked on the old screen door in back of her house and she let me into the kitchen.

It's been so long now I can't remember our actual first encounter very well but she was drinking a glass of red wine, smoking a Lucky Strike, and wearing a slip for a dress, if it was a typical morning at all. The kitchen was pretty ramshackle in the most beautiful and charming way. It had a cot in the corner and a big pink gas stove she would sit on because she had it running for heat. I remember I was thirsty and I asked her half jokingly if it was safe to drink the water in New Orleans, and she said she doesn't drink water because "fish fuck in it". That's the kind of woman Lissa is. She wears a lot of faces.

Her kitchens have housed a lot of my best memories of the city, like naked pork chop day, musical wine breakfasts, impromptu parties where different gangs of musicians would come together to drink and play and tell stories. It's where I met almost every street performer and local eccentric in the Quarter, where i was taken under the wings of these folks and was introduced into New Orleans busker life.

But it is Lissa who I cannot speak highly or lowly enough of and who is my mentor. She's a former protege of Baby Gramps and a line of New Orleans originals and greats you'll probably never hear of. The product of a genuine and hard life met with humor, wit, and deep raw dark passion. She showed me the spirit of life in the music. She is bought and sold by the truth and love of genuine life, pain, and passionate beauty of and within the music. She taught me to play for the dead ones. She's a fortune teller, a musician, an alcoholic, a strange and wonderful friend.

So, if you see a barefoot lady named Lissa wearing red lipstick and lace, playing washboard or guitar on the streets of New Orleans or any town, do me and the world a favor and give her 20 bucks. It will surely come back to you, and you'll be aiding in the preservation of a little known national treasure.

Taken on: January 1, 1990

Tags:

busker

Lissa Driscoll

New Orleans

French Quarter

1990

film

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Sets appears in: • Musicians • New Orleans

Groups appears in: • Street Performers • New Orleans more » • musicians • Street Musicians - Buskers • Buskers • French Quarter (New Orleans) • Washboards • Street Themes #23 - Yarn bombing « less

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