Jazz drummer Moore finds joy in the groove


For drummer Stanton Moore, there was no "aha" moment when he realized he could make his way in the world as a musician. It is just what he's always done, and he segued into his career in jazz as a natural outgrowth of the gigging he'd done growing up in New Orleans.

"I started playing gigs when I was about 16, and I never really had a day job.

"Pretty much from when I was in college, still I was playing gigs and making enough money to pay rent. I was pretty much able to do it from moving out of my parents' house as a teenager to go to college."

Push him a bit about the day job, and Moore (who plays May 7 at the Belly Up Tavern) will admit to one job that didn't involve music: "I was an usher at a movie theater for about a minute."

But Moore said growing up in the culturally fertile city of New Orleans led him very naturally to music.

The city that gave us jazz a century ago, New Orleans was experiencing a renaissance in the 1980s (Moore was born in 1972). Acts such as the Meters (a popular '70s funk band), swamp bluesman Dr. John, soulsters the Neville Brothers, crooner Harry Connick Jr. and the Marsalis family were busy recording, touring and carrying the Crescent City torch. Surrounded by all this, Moore said he knew from the time he was in elementary school that music would be his life.

"I guess I was probably 9 years old or so. My mom was bringing me to Mardi Gras parades when I was 8 months old. From 4 or 5, I would get excited about the drums coming down the street. I've been hearing that stuff from a very young age.

"Around 17 or 18, I really started getting into the Meters and all the drumming of the New Orleans idiom, and I really decided that was the direction I wanted to go in."

Moore was an early member of the popular funk-jazz combo Galactic, with whom he stays active. But his last three solo albums ---- 2007's "III," 2008's "Emphases (On Parentheses)" and the just-released "Groove Alchemy" ---- have seen him in a trio format with guitarist Will Bernard and Greyboy Allstar and San Diego native Robert Walter on keyboards. The music on all three discs is a funky groove-based instrumental jazz that sounds a bit like a cross between Moore's beloved Meters and '60s instrumental soul combo Booker T & the MG's.

While Walter left San Diego for Moore's New Orleans in 2003, last year he moved back to Southern California ---- and Moore said the distance between the friends makes having Walter on his current tour all the sweeter.

"I love playing with Robert. We play a few tours a year, and we get to play a lot during Jazz Fest. Robert's the type of guy I'd love to hang out with every day.

"He's back in the L.A. area now. He's got a young son, and his parents are out there ---- and his wife managed to get a really good-paying job. He's doing a lot of studio work with Mike Andrews of the Greyboy Allstars; a lot of movie soundtracks."


