March, 2021
[HKB: So when did you first play on Frenchmen, or hear about Frenchmen?]
Eric Bolivar: Probably was 2002; that was the first year I played on Frenchmen. I didn’t live here though. I was still in California. And even though I’d toured through here for a couple of years prior, I didn’t know about Frenchmen yet.
I knew about about Rampart; Donald’s was still there, Funky Butt was still there–or, the Maple Leaf. And we were playing at Tip’s—when I first came down here, I played at Tipitina’s and at UNO, the amphitheater, with Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. And if we had a night off or something like that we wound up on Rampart.
But I didn’t actually find out about Frenchmen til I was with another band called Global Funk Council. It was during Jazz Fest. It was at Blue Nile, [and we were playing] one of those, like, a million bands in a night, multiple promoter things. And we were supposed to do the late night, at 1:00 or 2:00 or something like that.
They were running so far behind that I don’t think we got on until 7:00. 6:30 or 7:00—something like that. To the point where I had friends have a full night’s sleep come and see us when they got up. People were jogging by during our second set; the morning jog. It was ridiculous. Like, when we stopped we went to lunch. We went to Fiorella’s after our gig, for lunch.
It was so stupid, we were breaking at like, 8:30. I’m like, “It’s 8:30, should we really be taking a break now?!” And of course there were people that were still up.
