Soggy Po' Boys w/ Helen Gillet

The Soggy Po Boys, native to New England, have quickly become an institution. They are spreading the good news of New Orleans music across the northeast and beyond, playing at concert halls and street corners; music festivals and burlesque festivals; bars and libraries; wherever the party requires. Part of the beauty of New Orleans music is that it's celebrated and appreciated wherever it goes, from the street to the theater.

The Po Boys formed in 2012 to shake the walls of a local club on a Fat Tuesday but have honed their sound and become more than a Mardi Gras centerpiece. Exploring the vast musical traditions of New Orleans and expanding their repertoire to look beyond NOLA jazz, the band includes traditional Caribbean tunes (it’s been said that New Orleans is the northernmost city in the Caribbean), as well as Meters funk, soul, and brass band / street beat music.

Helen Gillet is a singer-songwriter and surrealist-archeologist creating synthesized sounds, texture, rhythm using an acoustic cello and effects. For someone with her varied background, New Orleans, with its mix of cultures and musics, seemed like a natural place to call home. She was born in Belgium, raised in Singapore from the ages of 2 to 11, and routinely shuttled between the homelands of her Belgian father and American mother. Over the past 20 years — working in New Orleans with musicians of all stripes, from avant-garde jazz and classical to pop and funk — Gillet has developed a singular polyglot style. The synthesis of her work is featured in her solo performance with live looping, layering cello parts and vocal lines. Rhythmic figures emerge with bowed or plucked ostinatos or a variety of rubbing and slapping on the body of the cello, then enhanced with melodies played or sung in her haunting alto. Her mixed musical vocabulary is commensurate with her disparate travels — French chanson of the 1940s, Belgian folk tunes sung in Walloon, a mix of rock and punk from the likes of PJ Harvey and X-Ray Spex, and her own affecting originals, like audience favorites “Julien,” sung in a mix of French and English and "Mes Amis" a new infectious funk tune based off a Medieval French Poem.

Gillet performed as solo artist at The Big Ears Music Festival in 2024, has been nominated twice as Rising Star in Downbeat Magazine's Critic Poll, has collaborated with Chris Corsano (Bjork), Jeff Coffin (Dave Matthews Band), Nir Felder (Diana Krall, Chaka Khan), Nikki Glaspie (Beyonce, Parliament Funkadelic), Jerome Deupree (Morph*ne), Doug Garrison (Iguanas, Alex Chilton), Jason Marsalis, Michael Ray (Sun Ra), Leland Sklar, Johnny Vidacovich, Roger Lewis (Dirty Dozen Brass Band), Skerik, Cassandra Wilson, Steve Earle, Wadada Leo Smith, Soul Asylum, Kidd Jordan, and many more.

Doors are at 7pm and music will begin sometime between 730 and 8. Seating is first come first served!

Host or Publisher Nova Arts