With You In Mind Stanton Moore

• 1Here Come The Girls (feat. Cyril Neville & Trombone Shorty)04:06
• 2Life (feat. Cyril Neville, Nicholas Payton & Skerik)03:46
• 3Java (feat. Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison Jr. & Trombone Shorty)04:56
• 4All These Things (feat. Jolynda Kiki Chapman)05:37
• 5Night People (feat. Maceo Parker)06:00
• 6The Beat (feat. Cyril Neville)04:19
• 7Riverboat (feat. Nicholas Payton & Donald Harrison Jr.)05:59
• 8Everything I Do Gone Be Funky (feat. Maceo Parker)04:25
• 9With You In My Mind06:10
• 10Southern Nights (feat. Nicholas Payton & Wendell Pierce)07:33
• Total Runtime52:51

Info for With You In Mind

Stanton Moore’s busy all the time. Besides his solo projects, studio and TV work, and teaching, he’s the drummer of Galactic, the funky New Orleans conglomeration now in its third decade of touring, and he still finds time to record and travel as a trio with David “Tork” Torkanowsky (keys) and James Singleton (bass).

Like Moore, Tork and Singleton are in high demand, so it takes some lead time to clear everybody’s schedule. They’re both first-call players with ridiculously long resumes and long apprenticeships under departed masters, both composers, both deeply rooted in New Orleans. (Singleton moved to town 40 years ago to be in the Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown Band; Tork’s father conducted the New Orleans Philharmonic for 14 years.)

The trio had a new record ready, they thought. But then, “a couple of days before we were supposed to start recording,” says Moore, “Allen Toussaint passed.”

Toussaint’s sudden death on November 10, 2015 (in Madrid, far from home, of a heart attack, after playing a concert) shocked the city. The polymath New Orleans producer, songwriter, arranger, bandleader, pianist, singer, and all-around figure of elegance had been a vital, active presence in New Orleans since the 1950s. He wrote and/or produced scads of hits for R&B artists from Irma Thomas and Lee Dorsey to Labelle and the Pointer Sisters, rock artists including The Band and Elvis Costello, and decades’ worth of unclassifiable New Orleans musicians. He had shown no signs of slowing down.

The three musicians immediately shelved their planned album and went into creative hyperdrive. “We already had studio time booked, we couldn’t wait,” Moore recalls. “It’s not like we wrote out all these arrangements ahead of time. We were flying by the seat of our pants.”

As they began working up pieces of Toussaint’s vast repertoire, it quickly became a vocal album with guest singers. “As Tork likes to say,” Moore comments, “being a musician in New Orleans is like having the greatest musical toolbox at your disposal.” Supplementing their trio with some of New Orleans’s living legends — their friends — they reimagined Toussaint’s songs, conceptualizing and building out an album on the fly.

They called in Cyril Neville to sing a song. “It turned into him singing four songs,” laughs Moore, “plus one as a spoken-word performance.” Neville kicks off the album with “Here Come the Girls,” written by Toussaint for Ernie K-Doe in 1970, with the added muscle of the musicians’ longtime colleague Trombone Shorty, the former child prodigy who is now a marquee attraction all over the world. Neville gamely sings one of Toussaint’s best-known numbers, “Life,” in 7/8 (James Singleton’s idea). Inspired by that, Moore put the 1969 Lee Dorsey classic “Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky (From Now On)” into 5/4 (It was Tork, says Moore, who figured out how to make “fun-ky” line up on the 1). And Neville’s version of “Night People” features an alto solo by funk legend Maceo Parker.

With You in Mind: The Songs of Allen Toussaint is built on the livest grooves the trio could deliver. “We’ve been doing this together for four years now,” says Moore. “I don’t think we could have done this as well as we did if we were just starting to play together. We play in New Orleans every Tuesday when I’m in town and not out with Galactic, but we became better friends and started playing better together once we started traveling together. We’ve been touring — not a lot, but four days in Japan at the Cotton Club, we’ve done that three times, France twice, the Blue Note in New York twice. You become a more coherent unit when you travel like that together, plus we got more comfortable bouncing ideas off each other.”

It was a bittersweet project for all concerned, celebrating the memory of someone whose living presence was so important. “I didn’t get to work with Allen as often as I’d have liked to,” Moore says, “but I did get to.” Their friendship went back twenty years. “Back in ’95, when we were first getting started with Galactic,” he recalls, “we were brought to Allen’s attention, and he called us into his office to meet with us to discuss the possibility of producing us for his label at the time. But unbeknownst to him we had already gone into Sea-Saint [Toussaint’s studio, subsequently destroyed in Hurricane Katrina] and recorded Coolin’ Off, which became our first album. So we not only already had a producer, but we had recorded the album. He said, ‘looks like you guys are on your way.’ Through the years we crossed paths a few times. The first time he played with us was also the first time we played the Saenger Theater,” referring to the 2,600-seat New Orleans landmark.

“What was really interesting working with him was the rehearsal process. His ears were so refined, he heard everything that was going on. The way that he would hear, and the way that he would sculpt the band, every time we ran through it he would add details. He wasn’t spitting out an arrangement by rote, he was adapting the way we played together and making a new arrangement as we went.

“Allen Toussaint wrote the soundtrack to New Orleans,” says Moore. “He came out of an environment that no longer exists. The level of talent and ability and artistry that he embodied — we won’t see this again.”

Toussaint’s compositions stand as a brilliant display of why the city’s music is eternal and why New Orleans is still so artistically urgent. But the soundtrack keeps being written. The musicians on With You in Mind: The Songs of Allen Toussaint are present-generation masters of the unique musical style of the world-historic city of New Orleans. These singers and players felt the mission of the album, and delivered inspired, focused performances. Producers Torkanowsky and Moore sculpted it all into a great album that grows with every subsequent listen.

Stanton Moore, drums
David Torkanowsky, piano
James Singleton, double bass

Stanton Moore
Born and raised in New Orleans, Stanton Moore is a dedicated drummer and performer especially connected to the city, its culture and collaborative spirit. Driven and inspired by the thriving music scene of his hometown which includes such greats as Professor Longhair, Doctor John and The Meters, Moore’s name is now mentioned amongst these Big Easy mainstays.

In the early ‘90s, Moore helped found the New Orleans-based essential funk band Galactic. Their first album, 1996’s widely acclaimed Coolin’ Off, led to an intense tour schedule of nearly 200 gigs a year for the next ten years. Building on their fan base by adding an esteemed list of all-star collaborations to the six albums that followed, Galactic continues to amass a worldwide audience via recording and touring globally. Moore launched his solo career in 1998 aided by eight-string guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter and saxophonist Skerik (Les Claypool, John Scofield, Roger Waters). The group recorded All Kooked Out! featuring a handful of local New Orleans musicians as well.

In the midst of these recording sessions yet another concept was taking shape. Outtakes turned into the first Garage a Trois release, Mysteryfunk(1999). In 2000 the trio, led by Moore behind the drum kit, was joined by percussionist Mike Dillon (Les Claypool, Ani DiFranco) and has since released three more albums – Emphasizer in 2003, Outre Mer in 2005 andPower Patriot in 2009. Moore extended his solo discography with the release of Flyin’ the Koop (Verve/Blue Thumb) in 2001, and III (Telarc) in 2006. Following the latter Modern Drummer called Moore’s trademark sound “infectious, jazz-meets-Bonham, nouveau second-line.” Recorded at the legendary Preservation Hall in New Orleans, III featured organist Robert Walter (Greyboy Allstars, The Head Hunters) and guitarist Will Bernard (T.J. Kirk, Doctor Lonnie Smith) as the Stanton Moore Trio, with special guests Skerik and trombonist Mark Mullins (Galactic, Bonerama, Harry Connick, Jr., Better Than Ezra). In 2008, Moore looked to continue his scaled back session crew with Walter and Bernard to record Emphasis! (on parenthesis). Says Moore, “When it came time to do another record, I had already known for a while that I wanted to build on the momentum of this band – three musicians who were becoming a unit unto themselves – and I wanted to get a little more adventurous with the music itself.”

In April 2010, Moore releases Groove Alchemy. The 12-track set is the culmination of Moore’s multimedia project that also includes an instructional book and DVD of the same name. All three facets of the project are designed to explore the roots of funk drumming by examining the work of pioneers like Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, and Zigaboo Modeliste – each of whom made their mark at different times throughout the 1960s as the engines driving James Brown’s and the Meters’ legendary rhythm sections – and in turn tracing their influences back to the rhythms coming out of New Orleans in the earlier part of the 20th century. Recorded at Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, NY, this project is the follow up to the widely acclaimed Take it to the Street DVD and book that focused specifically on New Orleans drumming styles. Showing his outstanding versatility, Moore has appeared on Heavy Metal Grammy nominees Corrosion of Conformity’s In the Arms of God, Irma Thomas’ After the Rain (winning a grammy in the process), Robert Walter’s Super Heavy Organ, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) and Boots Riley’s (the Coup) Street Sweeper Social Club, Will Bernard's Blue Plate Special, Diane Birch’s Bible Belt, Alec Ounsworth’s (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah) Mo Beauty and Joss Stone's Colour Me Free!. He continues to play dates globally with an ever-evolving cast of musicians including John Scofield; Karl Denson; George Porter, Jr., and Leo Nocentelli (of the Meters); Charlie Hunter; Warren Haynes; John Medeski and Chris Wood (of Medeski, Martin and Wood); Donald Harrison Jr.; Dr. Lonnie Smith, Dr. John, Tab Benoit, Robert Walter; the New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to name a few.

With a bachelor’s degree in music and business from Loyola University, Moore stays involved in education by constantly giving clinics and teaching master classes and private lessons all over the world. He has been a contributing writer for Drum!, Modern Drummer, and DownBeat magazines. To date Moore has been featured on the covers of twelve drum publications worldwide. In 2005, he launched a signature line of cymbals with Bosphorus Cymbals and a signature drumstick with the Vic Firth stick company. In 2009, Moore developed his own drum company to introduce his signature titanium snare drum that he designed in conjunction with Ronn Dunnett. In 2010, Moore collaborated with Gretsch Drums to design and launch his new 4.5"x14" signature wood snare drum. In 2011, Moore and LP introduced the new signature pandeiro which was created to be used as an accessory piece for the drumset.

Deeply affected by Katrina and its aftermath, New Orleans’ native son was quick to lend a hand by spearheaded the Tipitina’s Music Workshop, free Sunday seminars that cater to children and a rotating cast of well-known professionals to promote the preservation of New Orleans music.

Moore stays active as a spokesperson for the Gulf Restoration Network and is a regular proponent of and player with the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars. Additionally he serves on the board of directors for the Roots of Music, a free music education and academic mentoring program founded by Derrick Tabb, drummer for Rebirth Brass Band and recent nominee for CNN’s Heroes awards.

This album contains no booklet.