INTERVIEW: George Porter Jr. is still jamming after 50 years

Before George Porter Jr. starts thumping on his bass, he needs to perfect the sound. Any Porter concertgoer can attest to the maestro’s dedication to making the acoustics the best they can be. He normally can be seen on stage, thumbing through an iPad, checking the microphones and ensuring the amplification brings together the worlds of music he’s about to create.

He’s a skilled craftsman of the highest order, someone who will go down in the history books not only for being a founding member of The Meters, not only for leading the Runnin’ Pardners and funky meters, not only for offering simplified perfection with his Trio, but for being a musician’s musician, someone who helped define the New Orleans funk sound. And some 50 years after getting his start, he’s still searching for what that sound truly means.

“I think it’s all about playing and playing well and enjoying the players that you’re playing with,” Porter said recently in a phone interview. “I don’t kind of look at it like if we’re delivering a message other than just good music.”

When The Meters — featuring Porter on bass, plus the musical talents of Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli and Joseph Zigaboo Modeliste — began their genre-bending work in the late 1960s, the world didn’t know what to call the band. They were eventually labeled R&B artists, but that categorization never seemed to fit.

“It wasn’t funk,” Porter said. “That title didn’t come I guess somewhere in the ‘80s maybe or maybe the ‘90s. I think when the hippie community got aware of what we were doing, I believe that’s where the term funk came from. I used to always tell a story about it. Some guy woke up with a joint in his hand one morning and heard one of our songs and said, ‘Whoa, man, that’s funky.’ I hope I don’t get beat up for that.”

Since those early days five decades ago, Porter has been on many musical pathways, playing to thousands at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and holding down weekly residencies at intimate bars like the Maple Leaf. He’s gearing up for a concert with his Trio at April’s French Quarter Fest and several shows during festival season later in the spring. He’s even getting back together with The Meters for a reunion concert.

“I would think that some of the smaller venues are ones where you get to be more intimate with the audience and the crowds,” he said. “When you’re on that big stage, you’re kind of removed from the energy that’s being generated by the people out there in front of you. You see the movement, and you see the acceptance. But you don’t feel it like you do in a small venue when they’re right there in front of you. You can reach out and touch somebody if you wanted to. The smaller venues are probably more gratifying definitely.”

No matter the venue, Porter focuses on the sound. Before the concert, he strives to have the monitors set with the right EQ and tone, ensuring the players can hear one another. With today’s concerts adding oomph to the decibels of music, this perfection has become even more necessary.

“I have to know how to keep myself in tune tone-wise with the guitars, vocalists and make sure that I’m not overpowering the words he’s saying or singing,” Porter said. “It’s very important.”

He added: “I think being the bass player and the vocalist keeps me kind of honest in the sense of saying that I don’t overdo either one. You know, there’s melodies of vocal parts that are being [sung], and there are bass lines of melodies that are being played. And they don’t necessarily go in the same direction at the same time, so it keeps you honest musically.”

Pairing vocals with the music is especially important in the recording studio. For example, when cutting songs for the Runnin’ Pardners, the music is recorded first, and then the vocals are combined at a later date. “After the record comes out, I have to actually learn the song now because I’ve got to play the song and sing it, and I found that a lot of those bass lines get smaller, get altered just because now the vocal part is the more important part of the song,” he said. “So in order to sing that melody the way I [sang] it, I have to play a smaller bass line.”

Before Porter became a legendary bass player, he tried on a few instruments to see if they fit. He took piano lessons for a few months when he was 7 years old and then transitioned over to the violin. That string instrument didn’t last long. He eventually moved over to the guitar. In fact, he still plays the guitar today, but he admitted — with a laugh — that he’s never been hired as a guitar player for a gig.

“I was also playing drums in the school band,” he said. “So, yeah, I have a good feeling of all the instruments that [are] in the rhythm section really pretty good. I like playing drums, and I love playing guitar. I sort of kind of play bass like a guitar player.”

The New Orleans native credits his hometown for promoting musicality at a young age, but Porter also received support from his parents, who were not musicians but avid listeners. His mother sang in a Roman Catholic church choir, an experience that introduced the young Porter to the piano.

“I believe my parents were probably the most influential part of my musical input because both of them were music listeners, and my father listened to lots of the tenor players,” he said. “He didn’t listen to [John] Coltrane, but he liked Stanley Turrentine. And I believe he liked Dexter Gordon.”

With a musically rich background and five decades of creating funky tunes, Porter is constantly surrounded by music and memories. “I am never away from the music,” he said. “I have a studio in my home, so … for at least a couple hours every day I’m … listening to the gig that I played last night. I’ve already listened to the gig that I played last night today.”

That gig was a Monday night concert with the Porter Trio at the Maple Leaf in New Orleans. He said the new project, with Michael Lemmler on keyboards and Terrence Houston on drums and vocals, is coming together, and they are keeping track of their jams.

“I listen to those gigs just to pull pieces of music from here and pieces of music from there,” he said. “Right now they’re musical jams, and I’m trying to develop them into songs. That’s the way The Meters used to write back in the late ’60s. Back in the late ’60s, all of our songs were two minutes long, so when we played gigs, that two-minute, two-and-a-half minute song turned into a six-, seven-, eight-minute piece because we did a lot of jamming. We were jamming before jamming was considered something that you go out to do.”

The Porter Trio has already recorded 19 songs, and the bass player already has a few more lined up for an eventual release. “I found a couple more pieces of music that we should get in and develop, some more pockets, some more grooves and stuff that felt good and had me shaking my head saying, ‘Mmm-mmm, yeah, this is something to deal with,'” he said. “I pull that piece of music away from the rest of the gig, and I make a file and send it to the guys and say, ‘Let’s pick a day that we can come in here and do it.'”

At the same time he’s recording with the Trio, Porter is gearing up to release a live album of his 69th birthday concert from 2016. He was mixing that gig at the time of this interview.

So, for those counting, that’s a live album from Porter plus a Porter Trio album on the horizon, and he even has 40 tracks recorded with the Runnin’ Pardners. Add to these projects a reunion of the original Meters, plus gigs as far as Mexico, Colorado and North Carolina, and Porter can definitely be considered a busy man.

“You have your hands in too many pots, and sometimes none of them get finished,” he said. “Well, I got to sit down and finish both pots.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

George Porter Jr. has several concerts in the coming weeks. Click here for more information and tickets.