Mama Digdown’s Brass Band at 30

On the phone in his car, driving back from a hunting trip in Wisconsin, Dave Jemilo doesn’t even pause when asked to recall the 25-year-old story of how he came to meet the guys in Mama Digdown’s Brass Band.

“I had Kermit Ruffins booked. You know, the New Orleans band leader. He’s a big fuckin’ deal,” Jemilo, owner of Chicago’s legendary Green Mill jazz club, says. “It was all set up and I get a call from these young kids and they say, ‘Can we open for Kermit? He’s our idol, we won’t charge you.’”

Jemilo explained to Mama Digdown’s sousaphone player Erik Jacobson that the Green Mill didn’t have opening acts, but offered to put their names on the guest list because of how polite and enthusiastic he was on the phone. 

“The night of the gig, Kermit is stuck in St. Louis, because there’s tornadoes. And we’re fucked. I show up at the joint and it’s packed. This was the first time Kermit is playing outside of New Orleans,” Jemilo recalls, not missing a beat. “These kids show up at the door and I say, ‘You guys got your axes?’ They say, ‘Yeah.’ So I say, ‘Get ‘em. You got a gig.’

“But I tell them to stand outside until the doorman opens the door, and then walk in playing.

I get on the microphone and say ‘I’ve got bad news. Kermit’s not going to make it.’ Everybody goes ‘Awwwww,’ you know. ‘But the good news is, we’ve got Mama Digdown’s Brass Band!’ They walk in playing and the whole fuckin’ place goes crazy.”

Jemilo’s story is almost exactly as Jacobson tells it. The gig led to a long-lasting relationship — business and personal — between one of Madison’s favorite musical acts and the region’s most storied jazz club. Jacobson and Christopher “Roc” Ohly bring it up as a big moment in their careers as they prepare to celebrate their 30th anniversary this weekend at The Bur Oak.

“He gives us a weekend every year,” Jacobson says. “It’s our favorite gig at this point. It’s the best.”

Jemilo is just as complimentary.

“They’ve got a huge following in Chicago. It’s one of the biggest weekends of the year,” he says. “It’s crazy packed here, but everyone’s very polite, because they’re all grown ups. I like the fact that they make it an event. The wives come, sometimes kids. I’ve watched them grow up.”

Playing a style of music that wasn’t common in the city before 1993, when the 12-piece brass band started to show up — often uninvited — at shows, festivals and events, Mama Digdown’s Brass Band has become not just a Madison institution, but a crew well-respected by the New Orleans jazz community.

The Green Mill story follows a theme that has stuck with Mama Digdown’s since the beginning: They have audaciously sought opportunities to play with and near jazz greats they could learn from and then they won over nightclub owners, show promoters and fans with their enthusiasm, polite demeanor and musicianship.

“I think in general, people respond to us being authentic about it,” Jacobson says. “Our love and respect for the music is palpable.”

That point is seconded by Donna Sims, whose New Orleans bar was considered the brass band Mecca by Jacobson and Mama Digdown’s saxophone player Roc Ohly until it was forced to close in 2010.

“They are some of the kindest, most fun-loving, best musicians I’ve ever met,” says Sims, whose musical ear is based on booking jazz six nights a week at Donna’s Bar and Grill, over which she often presided from behind the bar. “They’re just joyous. And their music is joyous.”

She started to book them to play during Mardi Gras, when she says it’s difficult to find brass bands that are otherwise busy playing in parades. She and her late husband, Charlie, invited the band to stay at their house.

“I knew they were really good because they gave us a CD and Charlie really liked it,” she says. “And when I say I resonated with this band, if we allowed them to stay in our house, you better believe we loved that band.”

Sims is working on a book for LSU Press about the New Orleans brass band renaissance and her place in it. She jokes about being reluctant to share too many stories about Mama Digdown’s, which she says will play a significant role in the book.

“They weren’t down here two seconds before they were sitting in with bands, individually, and pretty soon they were playing in the second lines, the funerals,” Sims says. “New Orleans brass band music, in particular, isn’t like it is in other places. It is highly improvised. People down here know how to read music, but they can also play by ear. All they have to hear is one riff and they’re off and running.

“Mama Digdown’s started to be able to do the same thing.”

What follows is a Q&A exchange I had last month with Jacobson and Ohly. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How did the two of you come to start this band?

Ohly: We met at the UW School of Music, and I ended up joining a band that Erik was in called Blackjack Davey and when that was kind of petering out, he brought up this idea of a brass band. I say he brought the idea up because I don't have any recollection of ever knowing what a brass band was. The jazz director at Erik’s high school in Minneapolis introduced him to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, but that was our first exposure to this music and he's like, “Hey, let's do something like this.” And so that's how this spark happened. And that was right around when Rebirth Brass Band was starting to become a household name. So we got the recordings of Rebirth and Dirty Dozen and we're learning tunes from there. And we got guys with similar ideas who were interested, most of them somehow connected to the School of Music, either music degree people, like we were, or some of them were just in a band. Like they were in the jazz band, but were maybe an engineer.

Jacobson: We both were in Richard Davis’ jazz band. In other jazz bands we were in, I was playing the fourth trombone part or the upright bass part. But when I listened to recordings from the Dirty Dozen, it was the tuba that was the central thing. So it really struck a nerve because it wasn’t trying to be something else. My sousaphone was in its natural habitat with brass instruments.

The unspoken part of this is that Roc doesn’t play a brass instrument. Is that unusual?

Jacobson: We’ve been holding that against him for 30 years.

Ohly: I’m not treated the same.

Jacobson: We say he provides the color.

Ohly: That’s the reason the sax was created, though. Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone to compete with horns. Reed instruments like a clarinet can’t compete. So even though it’s a woodwind, it’s technically a brass woodwind, as I would call it.

Jacobson: Really every brass band album we listen to has a saxophone. Even when you can’t hear the sax, like when we’re on the street and there are no microphones, it creates a different timbre and a different texture in the harmony parts. As much as we hate to admit it, we do like having him around.

How were you able to recruit other players in the early days?

Ohly: We were just young and hungry, and there were guys around us that were the same. So we would eat whatever was served to us. I'm from Milwaukee and I've been playing a horn my whole life. But, you know, what can you play? You can play concert music and orchestral music and you can play jazz music and different variations of combos. But when I first heard brass band music, I think other guys had the same feeling also: Wow! This is something totally different and cool and loose.

And I'm a loose guy about practicing and everything else. It’s not to say you don't practice brass band music, but it was the organic nature of how we perform and the music itself and how you practice it. We learned everything by ear, you know? There's no sheet music. There are brass bands that have sheet music, but that's not how we were learning.

We did have some turnover in the beginning, a couple guys. One of our very first trumpet players wasn't with us for very long, then some of them graduated. But we did have one guy who was actually from New Orleans who played bass drum for us, Derek Wright. And he was a real go-getter. And so I think, coming from New Orleans, he wasn't a brass band guy, but he heard it before. So that helped. But we were hungry. Like Hamilton.

What was the idea at the start in terms of what kinds of shows you were going to play?

Ohly: I think our aspirations at the start were small. Our first official gig was we crashed the Art Fair on the Square. Erik and I did come from a band that was gigging in nightclubs and we weren't real successful. It was kind of low key, but we had gigging experience. So I think we could see that in front of us. It wasn't that far away. Then winning the Union’s Battle of the Bands in 1996 really was a big deal. We got 100 bucks, and we got to open for (Minneapolis reggae band) Ipso Facto on the Terrace, which you know, that was pretty cool back then.

Back in the day, Madison had the Latin Club, the East End, Cafe Montmartre a little bit later on. We started building a following and it helped that we had a presence. We did the Mifflin Street Block Party a couple of times, just parading down the street.

Madison did not have a street band culture back then. It's not very close to New Orleans in that respect. So do you have memories of how you were greeted, how people responded to what you were doing?

Ohly: I think the interesting part is that it's so infectious. That's the word I've always liked to use, because it's like you light a spark and it hits a fuse and it just goes. You don't have to understand why it's doing it, it just starts to pull you along. Some people thought we were the marching band because they see a sousaphone, and that's the only other exposure to a sousaphone they've had. But then they start to hear the music being different. So I think it's just because it just ignites something in people and I think that's organic. Everybody does not know how to do a second line dance, and they don't necessarily know to follow us if we're going down the street. But I don't think there’s much obstacle to it.

You think about the music scene in our town, which has been primarily driven by rock-and-roll quartets and quintets, blues bands and maybe some funk bands. What we were doing was fresh and new and that was exciting. And I don't think it was really hard to get people excited.

Do you find that the relationship between the band and the audience, and the players to one another, is different from that kind of quartet or blues band that you mentioned?

Ohly: It definitely is, I think because there's so much energy. Playing a horn instrument…I love piano players. Some of my best friends are piano players. But you know, they're at a piano and there's only a certain way that they can do what they do. But when you're moving around, I just think that activity that engages people. They look interested and, as musicians, having people begin to get into what you're doing and express themselves and move and throw their hands in the air, whatever, that energizes you back, so there's that kind of Tony Stark Arc Reactor kind of thing. Everything keeps feeding itself.

If I play a horn, and I see a band like that, and I like pop music, I'm like, holy cow. This is an opportunity to do something that I can't do every other day.

I found a letter from one of our journeyman members who's been with us since about 2005, when he was in high school. It said, “Dear Mr. Ohly,” and he went on to ask about, hey, can I audition for your band? And that's not the only one, we've had a few, but that was pretty special. And especially because this fella, you know, he’s a longtime member now.

This is not your full-time job though. What do you do for a living?

Ohly: I've been a mortgage lender for 30 years. One of the reasons it's worked is because this brass band thing has been a calling. I love it so much. It's part of who I am. I've been in the brass band longer than I’ve done anything. Having the job I have allows me to do this and enjoy it. There are guys in the band who are full-time professional musicians, and then there's guys like Erik and me who have a full time job and then still do this.

Jacobson: I’m a school social worker. For a long time, I sort of felt that because some of the guys in the band are full-time musicians, if I'm not doing this full time, I'm not as serious about it or it's not as cool. One of our mentors in New Orleans, Bob French, played with Fats Domino. He had the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, which is the longest running jazz band in New Orleans. He was a very successful drummer, passed away a number of years ago. We took him out for breakfast one morning and he told me that he worked for the post office in New Orleans. And that sort of relieved me from my feelings that you had to be a full-time musician to be a successful and, you know, cool musician. So I think that having a full-time job has allowed us to be a little pickier with the gigs and do the gigs that we want to instead of taking absolutely everything.

You both talked about New Orleans and that is obviously the Mecca of the kind of music you're playing, and not even just brass band music, but jazz, American music. At what point in the band's beginning years did it occur to you that you were gonna go to New Orleans?

Jacobson: We played a gig at the Angelic Brewery. And when the band got done, we loaded our gear, piled into the band van and we drove to New Orleans after the gig. We arrived 18 hours later in New Orleans and we went into Donna’s.

We gave them our album, Mama's House. No, wait, it was North of New Orleans, and we introduced ourselves to Donna and Charlie, who were the owners of the place. And we listened to bands there, listened to bands at the Funky Butt. And then, several months later, we returned. And they had put that album on their jukebox.

These two clubs — the Funky Butt and Donna's — were just  a block apart. And I remember going back and forth between the two because they both had brass bands. And there was a liquor store that was in between the two and we'd stop and get like a bottle of grape-flavored Mad Dog.

Can you describe Donna’s?

Ohly: Donna's is kind of a spiritual place for us. It has gone through some changes, but it’s the place to go see brass band music. It's a little earthy, you know, a little gritty. It's got some character. The North Street Cabaret gives me vibes of the old Donna's. There was no stage. The band would set up at the side of the club. But if you wanted to go pee, you had to go through the band. Because both toilets were behind the band.

Charlie really liked us because he liked our song, “Mo’ Better Blues” that was on the album and that was one of the reasons why it went into the jukebox. But Charlie was from Chicago. So he worked on the City of New Orleans Amtrak train, back and forth from New Orleans to Chicago. When he retired, he just stayed in the South. And then he met Donna. But Charlie really loved having us there because we were starting to get it. You know, we still had a long way to go, but we were really trying to study the music. But he loved having guys from the North come down and give these folks in New Orleans a run for their money.

Jacobson: Charlie would say things like, “These motherfuckers from the South, they're always late. But you guys from the North, you know how to show up on time.” When we started playing down there, we would get put on a bill with other brass bands like The New Birth Brass Band or the Soul Rebels. And the bands down there were just sort amused and intrigued by the fact that we took it so seriously, because at that point, there really weren't many brass bands that were taking the music really seriously and studying it and playing it and performing it all the time. We would go on WWOZ radio down there to play a morning show before one of our gigs that night. And the host would tease us about being cheeseheads from Wisconsin, but we knew how to play. And so it was really validating that we're getting props from these guys.

Do you remember a moment in Madison during the early years that you thought, hey, this is catching on? We’re on to something here?

Jacobson: I would say that was the early years of the Madison Blues Fest. The promoter, Ken Adamany, would have us play in between sets and start at the bottom, down by the lake. Whoever it was, Dr. John or Buddy Guy or the Neville Brothers or whoever, would finish and we would walk up the hill and the crowds were just huge. These are all music lovers. Those were some of the shows where Madison was getting it.

Ohly: I just think Madison is a place where people can play and be seen. We brought something new and interesting and fresh, but Madison has been open to new stuff, so we didn’t have to cultivate it for long.

Jacobson: Early on at the Paramount, Gary Taylor had us warm up for Branford Marsalis’ group, Buckshot LeFonque. We played our set and then they played and it was incredible, still one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. And when Branford got done, we walked up and introduced ourselves as Mama Digdown’s Brass Band from Madison and he showed genuine surprise. “What? I thought y’all was from back home!”

When Branford said that, it was, okay, we’re on the right track here.

How often do you play a year these days?

Jacobson: I don’t know, 20? Thirty? The quantity is down, but the quality is much higher. When I look at our calendar from the early years, we were playing stuff like the grand opening at Target on Mineral Point. We were doing 10 gigs a month for years and then it became less.

How many total members have there been?

Jacobson: Outside of guys who might sub in a couple gigs, we’ve had 28 or 30 members. The core of the band we’ve had right now has been with us for a long time. Like more than half of our time together.

Roc, your son Jack is now playing with the band. Is he a full-time member?

Jacobson: I would call him a full-time member.

Ohly: Thanks for saying that. He’s been playing pretty regular. We have day jobs, he’s in college. Sometimes guys can’t make it. I’ve missed some gigs. Erik has missed some gigs….

Here’s a story: Jack was born and we had a gig at the Great Dane that night. I missed it. It was a Thursday night. But they all had Jack and Cokes in his honor.

Your son grew up with the band, basically. When was that a conversation that he might actually play with you?

Ohly: I think it just unfolded. It’s not like the Spike Lee Mo’ Better Blues joint where the dad forced you to practice for six hours. He gravitated toward the trombone and I might have inched him in that direction, because that’s what he played with us when he was 2 years old. But he played drums and trombone and now he’s focused on that, studying at the UW and playing in some jazz bands. But I let him find it. He has played in rock bands, he likes big band, he likes small combos and he likes brass bands. So I can’t complain.

Erik, doesn’t your son play trombone?

Jacobson: Yeah, Edward plays trombone and drums and he actually just switched to drums in band. He keeps reminding me that someday he’s going to take over the band. It might be Jack and Edward leading the band at some point. My daughter, like Roc’s daughter, plays the alto sax. So they may elbow their brothers out of the way and run the band.

What are you most proud of at this stage of your career?

Ohly: We work real hard at studying this music and getting as good as we can at it and that had to happen by us going to New Orleans. At one point, we were going four times a year. Now it’s more like one or two times a year. We’ve developed friendships, helped bands down there get gigs up here and vice versa.

But we were at a second line parade a few years ago, we weren’t playing or anything, we were going as fans of the environment. This was on North Claiborne, under the freeway. All the cars park there and sell food and beer and then they all run to the next interval where the parade stops again. Someone’s got their boombox blasting “Word on the Street,” a song written by Nat McIntosh, one of our fellas. It was being performed by another brass band out of New Orleans, I think it was TBC Brass Band, and it was a radio cut. So a New Orleans brass band recorded that song and someone was playing it. That was such a connection that we were so proud of, musically. We just happened to be walking by and heard that.

Jacobson: We keep in touch with a lot of New Orleans musicians over social media and we’ve been posting a lot of photos from our history. Today I posted this photo of us in New Orleans in 2014 and this New Orleans trumpeter, Eric Gordon, was sitting in with us. He reposted it on his Instagram, and wrote “Here I am with one of the OGs of brass bands, Mama Digdown’s.”

Eric Gordon goes out on the road with Galactic. He’s in TBC. He’s played with everybody down there. He masks for Mardi Gras Indians. He doesn’t know this, but for him to say that is so flattering. It’s those things that mean a lot. Those are the biggest accomplishments.

We’ve been able to keep this band together. We love each other. We’re best friends. Our care for each other and the high level of musicianship that we’re putting into this has kept everyone interested.

What plans do you have for the coming year?

Jacobson: We’ve been working on this album, Brass Jackson, which is an album of Michael Jackson songs, for 10 years. Maybe it’s 11 years. And it’s really, really close to being done. It’s an absolutely fantastic record. I’ve never said that before about one of our albums. Nat McIntosh did the arrangements.

And we’re not done. We’re still humming along and we’ve traveled to Europe three different times and we want to dig back into that, now that our children are getting a little bit older.

This music has a different allure in Europe, right?

Jacobson: Oh yes. We played this festival, JazzAscona in Switzerland, for three years. One of our albums was recorded there. It’s unbelievable how well they treat us. The food spreads, before and after the sets! It’s true what they say about how they treat jazz musicians over there.

What song has the band played more than any other?

Jacobson: I’m gonna say the “Whoopin’ Blues.”

Ohly: This is a great question and I think there are a lot of answers and none of them are wrong. I think “Mardi Gras in New Orleans” and “Money Back” are in the top five.

Jacobson: Okay, “Gimme My Money Back” by the Treme Brass Band. Yes. And the other one is “Mojito,” written by Jeff Maddern. He wrote it as a protest song for how much the club in Switzerland was charging for mojitos. So the words are, “Somebody buy the band a drink, we’ll take mojitos.” That’s another one that’s right up there with the Professor Longhair song, “Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”

Do you build a set, or is it an organic process during a show?

Jacobson: If we’re playing a big club or an event, we’ll build a set list. But if we’re in a smaller club, where it’s easier to read the crowd, we’re just gonna call a set based on what we feel would work at the time. We have probably 300 or 400 songs in our database.

Roc, Erik is in back, you’re in front. Say, you’re at Coda, it’s late on a Friday night, everybody’s dancing. How does it work?

Ohly: This is not something we’ve figured out, it’s just what happens and I think it works pretty well. Generally, Erik is the tune guy and he may get feedback from Darren (Sterud) or Jeff (Maddern), but he’ll generally have the idea of where we’re going. He might get some consultants. I generally don’t call tunes, however, my role is to fill that space when we’re trying to figure out what tune is next. So I’m the jaw jacker or the crowd enthusiast until we get going again.

What has it been like to develop relationships with audiences outside Madison?

Jacobson: The whole thing with Chicago, we ended up playing for years and years at these great places in Chicago, including the Billy Goat Tavern a number of times. We might be the only live band to play the Billy Goat. We would play a Mardi Gras party at the Chicago Cultural Center and they would book their after party at the Billy Goat. In the middle of February, we would march over from the Chicago Cultural Center to the Billy Goat, it was like zero degrees and we would play another set.

Another time, based on the Green Mill gig, we got booked to play this private party on the El train, going around Chicago playing in one of the cars. We ended up on this rooftop overlooking Wrigley Field. All of these things are connected. One gig leads to the next and we find ourselves in another crazy situation.

I’ve seen you in many settings, and when the brass band shows up, maybe you were part of the program and maybe you weren’t, but this big sound shows up, maybe uninvited. People are always happy to see you! That’s pretty great, right?

Jacobson: What you say is true. There’s also this utility in a brass band that’s not there for other bands. You can just hire a brass band to play your grand opening or your festival, a wedding, a high school graduation. We can just show up without a sound system and make fun.

I think one of the things right now is there is a proliferation of brass bands. There are a lot of brass bands right now that are not from New Orleans. My sense is their primary source is YouTube and Instagram and seeing bands online. The difference with us is we went there and we continued to go there for decades. That is a difference. Because when we showed up, some of us would get hired.

I jumped in with Rebirth for a Mardi Gras parade and Roc and I were hired to play with the Algiers Brass Band for the Zulu parade on Mardi Gras morning. Jeff Maddern lived down there for a year and a half playing with the Hot 8. That’s a lot different from getting into a band and learning some songs from YouTube. It’s almost like I feel lucky that we came of age before all of that. It forced us to go down there and learn it firsthand like that.