Win Tickets To See Nigel Hall Play at Tipitina's

The funky keyboardist will play an album release show Wednesday night at Tipitina's and we have a pair of tickets to give away.

Wednesday, R&B keyboard player Nigel Hall will play an album release party at Tipitina’s, and we’re giving away a pair of tickets to it. Register here for a chance to win.

The album is appropriately titled Ladies & Gentlemen … Nigel Hall, as it introduces Hall to record buyers and people outside New Orleans as a bandleader. Up to now, he has been better known as a sideman in Eric Krasno’s jam/funk bands Soulive and Lettuce. Ladies & Gentlemen … Nigel Hall presents him as a soul classicist who is more song-oriented than you might imagine. Only two songs pass the five-minute mark, and one is a cover of The Isley Brothers’ slow jam, “Lay Away.”

Krasno produced the album, which also includes guest spots by such regulars during the Jazz Fest season as saxophonist Ryan Zoidis, drummers Adam Deitch and ?uestlove, and Ivan Neville.

Unlike much jam funk, Hall’s album is shaped by lyrical content. “I like to sing songs that reflect my being and who I am as a person,” Hall says. “Because that really touches me. When you hear a song and it makes you cry, or it makes you happy or it evokes any kind of feeling, that is music. That is what music is supposed to do. And music is the last pure thing we have left on this earth.”

Contest closes Tuesday at 5 p.m

Keyboardist/singer Nigel Hall goes from sideman to leadman Dec. 2 at Tipitina's

Nigel Hall has spent the last decade or so backing some of the starriest names in the music business. Now, he is stepping into the foreground.

With the release of his first solo-led album – appropriately titled "Ladies & Gentlemen...Nigel Hall" on the Feel Music/Round Hill label – the Washington, D.C., native and current French Quarter resident has graduated from sideman to leadman. A sought-after studio keyboardist, his new album allows him to display his gifts as a singer, wrapped up in the funktastic sound that's always been his signature style.

You can catch Hall when he plays a record release show Dec. 2 at Tipitina's. Call it the New Orleans complement to similar roll-out shows in New York City and elsewhere, marking his emergence into the big-time while reasserting his allegiance to a classic slab of pop-soul-bluesy repertoire.

"I don't listen to any music made before 1940-ish, and don't go past 1983," Hall, 34, declared unabashedly during a recent interview. Actually, "unabashedly" doesn't quite cover his feelings on the subject. "Music is just such ---- now," he said, inserting a tersely expressive epithet, though a moment later he conceded that "there are some things coming out now that are really good."

Now, if this makes Hall come off as excessively dismissive – well, consider that up to now he's been conspicuous for his generous, if under-the-radar, musical partnerships. Before moving to New Orleans three years ago, he spent a chunk of time living in New York City – a place where expression doesn't quite keep up with expenses.

"I got really tired of New York," he said, adding that "I was over the whole image thing. There were just a lot of things that were annoying me. Part of it was this record sitting on the shelf for a little while. I said, 'I have a lot of friends in New Orleans; maybe I can go down and do something with myself. And I did."

When Hall says "a little while," he means five years' worth of percolating as songs and potential collaborators gradually came into creative focus.

He fully recognizes, the imperative to succeed as a leader. "It's my band, so the pressure is on me to show up."

Success, Hall acknowledged, stems from mutual respect, from "my being fans of them and also them being fans of me."

The goal, he said, was "to make a record that was soul music – the pop music of yesteryear. I wanted to do an album that did not represent what was out there today. I think in order to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been.

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