Vegas Cola: The reason why Frenchmen was so important to me then, as it is now… was that it always geared towards musicians practicing their artistry as well as their musicianship and entertaining. For me, it was always a safe place to try out and do what I want.
People are so welcoming; they celebrate individualism a bit more on Frenchmen Street than they do other places.
I try to be accepting of change, because I feel like some good things happen with change, but I feel like Frenchmen Street has reached its point of gentrification.
That day when the Praline Connection was bought out by the people that own half the French Quarter, that broke my heart, and I fell out of love with Frenchmen. And it’s to no fault of the people who sold it. But it’s just lost its ecosystem. When you think about the owners and the managers of the different venues, I knew them. I played at their Christmas parties. I could actually talk to the manager or the owner of these different places and it had a sense of support. Like, I didn’t feel like if I had a bad night, I was gonna lose my job. It lost that personality.
For me, I do believe there’s gonna be a big shift whenever we go back to whatever our quote-end-quote ‘new normal’ is” [after COVID, this interview was 2021] “I’m just hoping the babies come in and try to do what we did before. As far as like, these young garage bands from UNO or from different music departments coming down, and getting gigs, and honing their gift, and finding their personality. That’s the beautiful thing I loved about that. Then of course you had venues that had more experienced people where you could easily go and check them out on your breaks, and people knew you, and you could go in Snug Harbor and watch them or go to different venues and kind of have a good idea. So you had models of good musicians–Delfeayo and all these people–putting on really top notch shows right next to this place like Apple Barrel, where you had the guy in there like you know. So it had a very broad personality- it was music for musicians, music for tourists, music for people who loved music, no matter who. No matter what type of music. They just more appreciated the artistic value of it. And I’m hoping that’s something that’ll come back, because it was getting washed out. Right before [COVID].
A videographer named Imara followed Vegas around for a year with a camera, made a segment on the art of tipping, showing how she had to make it part of the show to survive. An additional $100 to $200 when the band passes the tip jar per person, definitely essential to band income under the typical Frenchmen St. financial arrangement.
Tipping is an art in of itself. It was an art [encouraging people to tip] that I took pride in, because I wanted to make more money for myself and the people that I hired.
Vegas talks about how some people think walking around with the tip jar is “degrading,” but according to her, “What’s more degrading is people walking in, getting a show for free, and walking out. That’s more degrading, to me.”
