Two weeks ago, underneath a highway, in the oldest black neighborhood in America, the heart of New Orleans is pumping. In a jazz club that seats 20 people, you can find all the richness of the city – the smell of world-renowned barbecue and traditional red beans and rice; the sound of award-winning trumpets and ten gospel singers hugging the perimeters of the room; local regulars hanging out in a back patio eating turkey necks, and eager visitors from every corner of the world arriving at 5:30pm to steal a seat for the 6:00pm show. The feel of it is raw, the taste of it is real, and the look may not be what you’d find on a New Orleans postcard. But it should be. And it happens every Tuesday.
Then comes Wednesday, four miles down the road, where the city’s most exclusive VIP party of the year gathers at a 22,000 square foot Romanesque Revival mansion. Two-hundred of the culinary world’s most decorated chefs and industry players make their entrance up the walkway of St. Charles Avenue’s second-largest home. Their mouths are agape as they walk through a fanfare of brass instruments performed by New Orleans most renowned high school marching band – The St. Augustine High School’s Marching 100. Inside, five of New Orleans’ most relevant chefs and restaurateurs take over five rooms of the mansion’s first floor, while more than 30 local musical artists move throughout each room (a harpist, a trio of afro-cuban percussionists, and a 10-piece “Trumpet Mafia” to name a few). Then the evening closes with a full blown rock concert on a custom-built stage that sits atop the mansion’s main staircase. And it all happens for one night only.
New Orleans is truly a tale of two cities, bridged together not only by music, but also by second chances. How a newcoming visitor such as myself finds an invite to these culturally divergent experiences is, truthfully, a near impossible feat were it not for one musician and the second chance he embraced after his return home from prison.
If resilience and creativity are at the heart of all second chances, then New Orleans’ resilient and creative fabric is a direct reflection of Irvin Mayfield’s personal Hero’s Journey.
“When my father drowned in [Hurricane] Katrina, I felt the imperative, like so many, to come back with more strength and purpose,” the two-time Grammy and Billboard Award winning artist Irvin Mayfield say. Mayfield represented the first culture bearer to return, perform, and help rebuild the cultural landscape in the aftermath of the storm, for which he received the White House Communications Appreciation Award from President George W. Bush. And Mayfield continued to ascend from the storm with Artistic Directorship positions with the Minnesota Orchestra and Apollo Theater, City- and State-appointed Cultural Ambassadorships, countless international service awards, and the White House appointments to the National Council on the Arts by President Bush in 2005 and President Obama in 2009.
But then came his own storm with a different type of death.
In 2015, Mayfield found himself at the center of a sweeping investigation that would eventually land him with an 18-month sentence in federal prison at FPC Pensacola. Like many who find themselves navigating the white-collar judicial system, Mayfield had to step down from his professorships, directorships, and leave behind the organization that he founded and led for almost two decades – the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. It was a professional storm surge that required an entirely new mindset and a full spiritual renewal.
“Prison was a humbling experience,” Mayfield says. “But it was an opportunity for me to lean into deep friendships and creative partnerships,” he continues, speaking primarily of his artistic colleague and fellow New Orleanian culture bearer, Kermit Ruffins. Mayfield described that whether it was in the challenging years leading up to his prison sentence or in the challenging adjustment period that followed, “Kermit [Ruffins] was always an anchor in the storm.”
In November 2017, one month before the indictment charges fell upon him, Mayfield released an ambitious and wildly successful record with Ruffins called “Beautiful World” – an LP that featured more than 40 artists, reached No.1 on the Billboard Charts, and was selected by NASA to play at the International Space Station. And since Mayfield’s release from prison in January 2023, he and Ruffins have performed live together on a weekly basis at Kermit Ruffins’ Treme Mother-in-Law Lounge.
“Irvin is a builder, you know?” says Kermit Ruffins, world-renowned trumpet player, chef, and owner of The Treme Mother-in-Law Lounge. “No one can deny he builds great things, and Tuesdays [at the Mother-in-Law Lounge] are a really great thing.”
Like many areas of the city, New Orleans’ historic Treme neighborhood used to burn bright with brushfires of talent before Hurricane Katrina decimated much of the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. For nearly a decade, there has been a fear that the storm all but extinguished this fire; it’s obvious that there the flame burns bright underneath the Claiborne Avenue bridge. And Tuesdays are such a “must-see” experience that even Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush from The Today Show chose to spend the evening at The Mother-in-Law Lounge when they visited New Orleans this year during festival season. (There’s even a special “Tuesdays T-Shirt” soon to be available to the general public online at www.irvinmayfieldmusic.com).
“Miraculously, through all of this, Mayfield has found creative freedom” says Steve Rehage, founder of Voodoo Music Festival and frequent audience member for Tuesdays at The Mother in Law (and was also in attendance at the coveted Wednesday night party). “The musical ideas he was forced to refine in [Federal Prison Camp] Pensacola are amplified by the performance he has developed at Kermit’s [Mother-in-Law Lounge]. It’s been an important springboard for what he’s producing now.”
It’s called Music Church, and I finally got to experience it in person.
Irvin Mayfield’s Music Church was the highlight of one of New Orleans’ most recent landmark occasions – the Bocuse d’Or Americas Continental Selections. As the first United States city to host the biannual Bocuse d’Or competition, New Orleans welcomed the highest-acclaimed culinary industry players in the world for a week of competitions and VIP parties.
“For years, Irvin was always the person to call if you wanted to create musical magic,” said attorney John Houghtaling, owner of the sprawling estate at 4717 St. Charles Avenue, as he recalled several events he and Mayfield had collaborated on in the past. Houghtaling and his wife Yulia Timonina-Houghtaling, an attorney and popular Russian singer, frequently host in their New Orleans home, but nothing compared in scope to the Bocuse d’Or event.
So, aptly, Houghtaling named Mayfield Creative Director of the affair.
“We’ve hosted a lot of parties, but this was at the highest level,” Houghtaling said. “I needed the music and culinary experiences to be seamless. I needed a cultural attaché, and since Irvin had served in that role for two sitting U.S. presidents, I knew he could hit this out of the park. And he did.”
Mayfield compared the experience to his experience creatively directing the North American Summit Events for President George W. Bush. “Our team was tasked with bringing together the greatest cultural assets of a cultural epicenter [New Orleans] for some of the world’s most culturally literate individuals,” Mayfield remarks. “It was truly a culminating experience for myself, personally, and for our town.”
Local New Orleans chefs, E.J. Lagasse (son of famed chef and restauranteur Emeril Lagasse), Justin Devillier (Le Petite Grocery) Jackie Blanchard (Sukoban), Ashwin Vilkhu (Saffron) and Baruch Rabasa (Resident Chef of John and Yulia Houghtaling) all cooked and presented their dishes in the five different rooms of the W.P. Brown mansion. And for as amazing as the food was, the music was shining at the level of the star chefs there, who were all on their feet during Mayfield’s final Music Church performance.
The audience couldn’t help but be moved to their feet and to the dance floor, joining in song and dance with the choir and multi-instrumental performance of Mayfield. But to see Thomas Keller (captain of U.S. culinary team, known for his renowned restaurant in Napa Valley, The French Laundry), Daniel Buloud and Jerome Bocuse (for whose father the Bocuse d’Or competition is named) on their feet for hours was a true testament to what this city has to offer.
“Chefs are not only creative artists but also very powerful businessmen,” Houghtaling remarks. “They could be anywhere, and they not only stayed to eat the food of our town’s finest chefs, but they also stayed for hours after to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime musical experience.”
But Mayfield is ever reminded of the humble origins where he honed his Music Church concept – as a clerk in the FPC Pensacola prison chapel. With the camp’s chaplain as his guide and mentor, Mayfield dedicated his time, mind, and spirit to uplifting his fellow inmates with a weekly Sunday service – a much-coveted break in the monotony of prison life. Mayfield grew from an attendance of 6 people to an at-capacity and standing-room only experience.
“Mayfield played religious music, jazz, pop, rock, and everything in between, a fellow FPC Pensacola inmate remarked. “He started a program that really encouraged others to participate and lose themselves in the music. He played every instrument and even offered music lessons to any inmate who was interested in learning how to play.”
Another inmate said it most poignantly: “He was a blessing that, very unfortunately for the men left behind, cannot be replaced.”
Whether in the confines of incarceration, underneath an often forgotten bridge, or in the upper bespoke eschalon of uptown New Orleans, Irvin Mayfield is proving that our own Hero’s Journey will cross many bridges and, hopefully, require a magical mix of music and second chances.
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