The Last Jam of Fat Foggy Waters & The Streetcar Band

It was a huge club, well over one hundred foot square. The air was humid, real heavy delta air. Cigarette smoke greyed and dulled the crimson lights. There was tremendous noise and chatter, booming voices calling out to old friends and locals across the room. The walls were wooden and disrepaired, like an old dying plantation house, slowly eaten away by the lethargy of the tropics. Perspiration was slick on everyone’s faces, the crowd rippled with white handkerchiefs mopping up brow sweat. I raised myself on the edge of the bar, peering over the throng to try and locate him. I could see the band setting up on stage, clarinet, guitar, drums, double-bass: Joe Miami, The Flannel, Triple Dixon, Cole Stanley. A few couples had got up to dance already and Joe Miami pulled a harmonica out of his pocket to oblige them with a few notes.

“He’s out in the back room.”

I turned to the bartender, jerking her thumb to a door round behind the bar.

“You’s from the Gazette right? Foggy waitin’ for y’all.”

I squeezed through to the door, leading to a small, empty ante room. The walls were varnished black to the point of reflection and the room was scented with a concoction of black pepper, lavender and sweets. Hanging just below the ceiling was a black wooden cross, from which a marionette was suspended on strings. It was carved of polished ivory, skeletal with flowing black hair.

Foggy was sat in the corner, looking at me expectantly. For a brief second my heart beat accelerated, almost straining against my diaphragm. He gestured for me to sit on a moth-balled armchair. I sat and pulled out my notebook.

“Thank you for the invitation, it’s a real honour.”

He nodded. His eyes were small and jaundiced but furtive.

“When was the last time you sat for an interview?”

“Mebbe 5 or 6 years ago now. Don’t hold much truck with no papers usually.”

He extended a huge, shovel like hand, offering me a cigarette. I shook my head.

“So why now?”

Readjusting his considerable heft in his seat, he reached over to a zesty, citrus cocktail, filled in a dainty champagne flute at odds with his own corpulent appearance.

“French 75. New Orleans style. Wine is water, water is wine…”

“...body without wine, ain’t no body o’mine.” I finished. “A mantra to live by.”

Foggy chuckled, a laugh textured with decades of smoke-filled rooms, soaked in whiskey, wine and moonshine since before he could remember.

“I don’t live by mantras, or by anything to tell yo’ the truth. But I do like that lyric.”

I nodded politely, aware that the conversation thus far was not making for great copy.

“So to return to my earlier question, why invite a reviewer? Why tonight?”

His small eyes narrowed, weighing me up.

“Old superstition you see. When we revive some of the old stuff, play the hits, we like to get us some second opinions. See if we still play it right, you know? Me and the fellas decided we gots to have someone bear witness tonight.”

*

I managed to find a table near the end of the room and even get an order in before the show began. Little Neck clams to start, fried Louisiana chicken with bacon and sweetcorn and a Vieux Carré. As everyone waited for Foggy Waters to come out on stage, I mentally went through what the ‘hits’ could be. The country porch sounds of Hooch ‘n’ Cooch? The baritone and slide of Down Bayou Yonder? Mopper’s Blues he always played with The Flannel and Triple Dixon. I went to scratch down some notes and biographical details just as the main lights began to dim. Pencil-thin white lights in the ceiling came on and the bartenders started placing glass witch balls of various colours along the bar and on the tables. As the white light hit them they emitted a pristine glow and illuminated the upper wall in dark blues, reds, silvers, purples. I spotted more figurines like the one in Foggy’s room, twisted, mummified marionettes, patchwork zombies, black serpents, macabre canines, stuffed alligators. I resolved to make note of the atmospheric choice of venue, beads of sweat beginning to form at the base of my neck.

The MC came up on stage, dressed oddly for a jovial night of blues. He wore tails and a bowler hat, with a series of white carnations pinned to his lapels. His skin was grey and sallow, stuck like thin paper to his tall, elongated cheekbones. An exhumed godforsaken priest from an El Greco painting.

He clapped once and the room instantly fell quiet.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. Fat Foggy Waters and The Streetcar Band!”

Applause broke out and a spotlight found the stage. Foggy Waters lumbered up to the microphone, taking a moment to finish a goblet of red wine. He placed the glass on a stool next to him and surveyed the crowd. He nodded to the band, who struck up instantly. He turned back and began in his signature, deep baritone.

“Ooooh, yeah, ooh, yeah.

Everythin’, everythin’, everythin’ gonna be alright tonight.

Ooh yeah, whoah.

Now when I was a young boy, at the age of nine, my mother baptized me, in a river of vines, But now I’m a man, the meanest man alive, I understand the truth,

That wine was the water, and the water was wine,

That blessed body without sin and wine

Ain’t no body o’mine…"

On the front tables it was pandemonium, hollering and table bashing, people clapping along to The Flannel’s guitar twangs. The sweat and fervour of the room began to really swell, I could taste the frenzy in the air. Foggy was clearly feeling it too, dabbing his shining forehead between lyrics with a black handkerchief.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

I walked through every garden

Every river, Mississippi to Jordan,

Some ran red, some ran clear

I bathed in blood and I bathed in fear

Jesus was gone but the devil was here!”

The whole room suddenly plunged into darkness. The only sound that continued was the beat of Triple Dixon’s drum, the rhythm shifting from fast jazz to one set dead to the human pulse. This continued for a whole minute. Then another. I found my hand gripping the edge of the table. The drumming stopped. The silence from the rest of the audience was unnerving. Did they know this was part of the show? I contemplated trying to grope my way through the blinding darkness to the bar.

A soft creaking began to sound from the ceiling, as if someone was prying open the dry wood of the roof. It cracked, ushering in a flood of moonlight that focused on the stage. The band had gone but the drum beat was still repeating. The stage was filled with dancers, naked, elongated torsos with masks in the shape of pure white, ossified skulls. Surely they were masks? From side to side, deliberately, they jerked and danced, shoulders shimmying in double time to the beat of the drum. Their mouths contorted, chanting incomprehensible words, the same words over and over, each repetition an octave deeper. The drum beat quickened now, as if it was keeping tempo to my own heart beat. At the shift the dancers moved into two lines and flung their heads upwards. Danse macabre.

Foggy emerged from the darkness and marched down the centre provided by the dancers. Except it wasn’t him really. The booze-happy crooner, winking through album covers with a devilish grin had transformed. He was naked except for a long black shawl and a tattered bowler hat, a white hand of death painted across his chest. He carried a matte black, stainless goblet filled with hot red liquid. The dancers, his denizens, kneeled down in genuflection as he drank the libation down. When he proudly displayed the empty cup the drum beats grew ever louder and I heard excited shouts from the audience. He himself began to chant and now smoke hissed and filtered the room and the noise of the drums became shattering, truly distracting and I couldn’t focus, all was driven from the mind, the ability to answer my gut instinct to flee suppressed. More light was permitted to eek into the room and the audience became visible. All were masked, not skulls but animals; crocodile, vulture, cockerel, pig, Cerberus, rat, hornless goat, alligator. And they were all staring at me.

Foggy advanced from the stage, a path forming for him through the crowd. One hand carried a heavy machete slick, almost fluid, with blood. In the other was the cup. He approached me and I could see the details of his large hefty body, the sweat resting on his powerful round belly. I was trembling, my own sweat drenching through my clothes. We were face to face. I noticed the pupils of his eyes were all but gone, only the translucent whites considered me. The dancing and drumming returned and the spectators rocked back and forth in perfect unison. Foam gathered around his mouth, frothing like a rabid dog. Whatever the goal of this horrific rite was, whatever my role was meant to be, I wasn’t destined to find out. He slowly pushed the sharp scythe through my stomach. I sagged forward, my body collapsed to the floor, and I died to the sound of nightmare.