“No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”
– Oliver Cromwell
Early days as a punk in Minneapolis
Born in St Paul, Minnesota, John Joyce, affectionately known as JJ in New Orleans, showed a keen interest in music and acquired a bass guitar at age 11. Soon he got interested in the local burgeoning punk and new wave scene, and met guitarist Robb Van Vranken and with whom he formed a band called Beat Merchant. By 1980, they were taking inspiration from the Ramones and the New York Dolls, and playing songs of Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, and early Elvis Presley. Early on it was rockabilly, which led him to the upright bass. To John and Robb, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious may as well have been Bonnie and Clyde.
“Robb Van Vranken had already been around for a few years and introduced me to the Minneapolis music scene. They used to have a lot of all-ages matinee shows, and Robb would get Beat Merchant on the bill. Though I was still underage, the bars allowed me to play the adult shows as long as I didn’t drink any alcohol. Touring bands would come to town and do a 5 pm show and a drunk show at 9 pm. The bands loved it because they would do two shows and got paid twice. There was a thriving local all-ages scene in Minneapolis with lots of kids involved. Sometimes their parents were in bands with them, getting them started. It was really a grassroots thing, it was community, like what we have here in New Orleans.”
JJ moved to Minneapolis and he ended up at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which due to art grants experienced a major artistic boom by the ’80s. His New Orleans neighborhood of the Bywater always reminds him of being there in Whittier, the artsy neighborhood of Minneapolis where MCAD is located. Soon thereafter JJ and friends started a new band The Magnolias, and the local label Twin/Tone records signed them and releases their first album on vinyl and CD. This was huge for JJ, as Twin/Tone was home to his heroes, The Replacements and Soul Asylum.
National tours followed along with artistic disputes, and JJ started a band called Toadstool, where he found himself singing and writing songs with his friend Brad White. More recordings for Twin/Tone records and national tours followed, and Toadstool relocated to Boston to find a new drummer. After Toadstool fizzled out, JJ returned to Minneapolis and joined his friends in the band Run Westy Run who were signed at the time to SST Records in California.
“All the bands at that time got swept up by major labels. Everyone got signed because of Kurt Cobain, they didn’t want to let another one of those slip away. I came back to Minneapolis from Boston to join Run Westy Run. After touring with Soul Asylum, we signed to A&M records.”
California and first forays into New Orleans
“Once I got to New Orleans and California and met circus people, that’s when I noticed that nothing I had done yet had any humor in it, indie rock wasn’t light-hearted like early jazz is.”
By 1994, their A&R person for A&M had been fired, and the album never came out. JJ knew it was time to leave Minnesota, and a friend called with an offer to come help fix up a family home in Los Angeles. Just after arriving, the Northridge earthquake occurred, and there was suddenly much more work for him do in Los Angeles. JJ soon answered a listing in the L.A. Recycler seeking a bagpipe player for a circus act called “kick the bagpipe player.” Appreciating the humor in it, he responded to the listing and the met the Circus Redickuless, part of a larger group called the Cacophony Society throwing annual parties on the beach. JJ soon thereafter helped them move the party to the Nevada desert where it became Burning Man. For the rest of the ’90s, JJ spent a few summer months of the year making money by putting together the metal works team at Burning Man, and the rest of the year he spent in New Orleans, where he called his neighborhood bar the Hi-Ho Lounge home, and joined with up-and-coming rock band, The Morning Forty Oz. Federation.
“I had already come to New Orleanst as a tourist to Jazz Fest, but I really wanted to check out Mardi Gras. I got here in ’95, got a job at Maspero’s, and an apartment at 711 Royal St., right where the busking spot at St. Peter is. My friend Pierre Pressure hosted the ‘Not-So-Ladylike-Ladies-Night’ at the Hi-Ho Lounge. It was just an open mic, but a fantastic success, and we made tons of money every Tuesday. And that’s where I met all my friends, they would come to Mardi Gras from all over the country like they do now. That’s when we started The End Of The World Circus.”
At the same time as all of JJ’s experiences in the rock & roll and circus worlds, a critical part of this era for him was the good fortune of being neighbors to New Orleans musical legend, Tuba Fats. In the hours he wasn’t playing Jackson Square, Fats would sit and play for JJ record after record of the old style of New Orleans jazz, and became his mentor in this New Orleans lifestyle. Traveling between home and work, JJ would see Fats work the Square, an age-old tradition, and the formative instillation of a respect for New Orleans jazz and busking that would be realized in decades to come.
“Tuba Fats was my first jazz mentor. In 1995, I would go down to Jackson Square and watch him, just sit on the steps there and realizing, ‘this stuff is so cool.’ Doreen Ketchens was on clarinet, Seva Venet on guitar, Jon Braun on saxophone, John Rodli on guitar. I lived in the Bywater on Clouet St. and Rampart St., and Tuba Fats was my neighbor. He would always hang out and wait for the taxi in the morning, so I got to know him. I was in the Morning 40s and stuff, I didn’t know how cool he was at the time, he was just my neighbor with the big sousaphone heading down to the Quarter. I remember going down to watch him and thinking, maybe I could do this when I got old! After ten years of punk rock, I didn’t wanna be grandpa punk forever.”
The road from Barcelona to Bali
“I remember we met the Butthole Surfers and they had told me that they hadn’t been home for ten months, they were on tour. I was like, wow, you can do that? I was really inspired by psychedelic rock band The Sun City Girls to do what came next for me with the circus—they went to India together as a band. They just kept touring. Even when they stopped touring, they would just stay somewhere and go on tour again. I just figured someday I’d probably do the same.”
Via his friends in the circus scene, the End of the World got a gig in 2000 playing for a Red Cross refugee center in Denmark. It became such a success that they were invited to play all the Danish refugee camps. There was no financial compensation for the circus, other than a delicious dinner prepared by the refugees. The circus made money by busking as they biked between cities. They learned that many of the Scandinavian countries had open border policies for Afghani refugees at the time, so they spent summers playing for refugee camps and busking in Northern Europe, and the winters in Spain, Greece, and Italy. JJ and friends whom he had stayed with and met in his travels had meanwhile created their own organization, the Cyclowns, a bicycle circus with intent of bringing their busking and biking clown gang throughout Europe.
“All of the sudden, young traveling kids were playing acoustic instruments. I don’t know how, but jazz caught on like mad, in America and Europe. That’s right around the time I met Jimbino Vegan, the clarinet player who did head spins, and I got an upright bass in Barcelona. I found it in a squat, my friend wasn’t using it anymore. It came with a cowboy hat, leather jacket, and shoes, all painted with rockabilly cheetah spots. First night I had it, I was doing a gig and making money. I had no idea what I was doing on it, but I could figure out “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby.” My friend came and saw us and said, oh man, it doesn’t look like I’m gonna get my bass back soon. I ended up trading him a straitjacket escape trick for it, he says he still uses it.”
After some years of European travel, the Cyclowns made it to Istanbul, a locale that changed the essence of their journeys. Istanbul and the East was as different to them again as New Orleans is to a Northerner. The new goal for the Cyclowns was clear—a biking, busking journey from Barcelona to Bali. After seasons in Turkey, Georgia, and Russia, the Cyclowns took the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Moscow to Mongolia and began the next chapter of their adventure. They crossed the Gobi into Beijing, and continued further to perform to eager audiences throughout China, Thailand, and Indonesia. By this time, their new vision was crystal clear—to play Tiger Rag with the King of Thailand, a lifelong fan of New Orleans jazz, and himself a saxophonist and composer. Whilst that never came to fruition, the city of Bangkok did hire the Cyclown’s to busk for a season in order to draw attention and promote usage of bicycle paths and greenways.
Royal Street and the swing revival
“After another year touring Asia, I decided to fly back to Athens, Greece. I bought a ticket and I left my bass in Hong Kong where it is still to this day at my friends house, waiting for me. I arrived in Athens and borrowed another bass, and Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, and Meschiya Lake joined me in Patras. We made tall bikes and toured around Eastern Europe, going through Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Italy whilst studying and learning Balkan and Jazz music. When we finally got to Berlin with our New Orleans-Balkan jazz band, we met up with many friends and busked all over town. Berlin was wide open and full of great artists and musicians from all over the world. Kind of like the New Orleans of Europe.
After being in Europe with my New Orleans friends, I guess we all got a little homesick. When winter hit, I returned to the USA to see my mom. After that visit, I decided to go back to New Orleans and I discovered the best busking street in the world, Royal Street. I looked up and down and I found other great busking streets, but never one as consistent and as welcoming as Royal Street. It was back in my own back yard. I was loving it back in New Orleans, and I was playing jazz, not rock and roll, and I started the Smoking Time Jazz Club. At the same time, Shaye and Erika started Tuba Skinny and Meschiya started The Little Big Horns.”
Ten years on the road inspired him to get serious about upright bass and New Orleans jazz, and the lessons he learned organizing large groups of people all of his life gave him a big advantage working Royal Street in New Orleans. What he had yet to learn in musicality and repertoire, he voraciously made up for in working the street, slinging CDs, creating a variety of entertainment and hustling non-stop, all whilst being very community-forward. Royal Street was a place for him and his friends to train their musical craft, as he already had the advantage of organization. Quickly, the Smoking Time Jazz Club was formed, with trombonist Colin Myers, guitarist Blu Beverage, saxophonist Chris Johnson, and vocalist Sarah Peterson.
JJ acquired a copy of the Grilles de Jazz, the French-printed jazz songbook accumulating over a thousand early jazz standards, and Smoking Time began scouring jazz books and compilations for every source recording imaginable, voraciously adapting old arrangements to their repertoire with each busk. It wasn’t uncommon at this time for the band to include seven or eight members and two dancers. Chance Bushman, Amy Johnson, Peter Loggins, and Giselle Anguizola were often out dancing with them, providing an invaluable visual aspect to the show. Each of them were already professional, world-class dancers and instructors, and this era was marked by cultural influence by TV program Dancing With The Stars.
“It just happened to be a great time to be gone—I came back and I didn’t know it, but there was a swing music revolution going on. When I returned to New Orleans, there were a hundred dancers that moved there too. Loose Marbles were playing, and all my friends were playing with them, only on the street, and they played with everybody. When Smoking Time would play on the street, we would have a tap dancer, two swing dancers, and a ten piece band, sell a hundred CDs a day, and still make a hundred bucks a day a person. We wouldn’t even finish, we would go until the CDs were gone. That’s how much they were selling. Loose Marbles wouldn’t even put ‘em in paper, just sold them off the spindle. It was around this time that Beau Patrick Coulon filmed the iconic Smoking Time Jazz Club video for “Percolatin’ Blues” on the courthouse steps on Royal Street, and thanks to YouTube it went viral and the band became a worldwide sensation.”
As the scene adjusted following Hurricane Katrina, it was clear that the swing revival was in full force, and many bands began to negotiate with the Frenchman Street clubs. Smoking Time divided into a busking band and a bar band, Smoking Time became the busking band, and JJ and Colin Myers started a band at Fritzels’ European Jazz Pub—the Jumbo Shrimp Jazz Band, still today under helm of Myers. Shortly thereafter, Smoking Time began a residency at the Spotted Cat Music Club, which it still holds well past a decade later. The era that really defines the band coming into its own style began in 2016 when clarinetist Joe Goldberg joined the band. At this time, the steady lineup had included Sarah Peterson on vocals, Russell Ramirez on trombone, Byron Asher on clarinet and tenor saxophone, Jack Pritchett on trumpet, Mike Voelker on drums, Joseph Faison on banjo, and Brett Gardner on guitar. This band, with the later addition of reeds player James Evans, becomes the core of Smoking Time up to the pandemic.
The Pandemic Era
At this point in his story, it may be important that I begin to narrate from my perspective in addition to JJ’s from his own words.
“Part of the inspiration for the name comes from famed abolitionist John Brown and his “Secret Society of Six” from 1859. It seemed to fit during a summer filled with civil rights protests and of course, the core group of six musicians.”
I first met JJ during Mardi Gras 2020—I sat in on a Smoking Time Jazz Club set at recommendation of Brett Gardner, and JJ took my number for a gig during Jazz Fest. Weeks later the world shut down, which JJ describes thusly: “March 15th, 2020 saw me playing one of my weekly gigs on Frenchman Street in New Orleans when the police came in and showed us their digital badges on their phones and told us to stop playing. We indicated that we would stop after the song we were playing and they indicated that we were to stop immediately. That was the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. After a few months of live streaming shows over the internet and applying for grants and unemployment I decided that I wanted to continue playing live music.”
By October of 2020, we were deep in the pandemic, and the landscape of Frenchmen Street and the New Orleans music scene was indeed shaken up. However, in lieu of the traditional sets we were once accustomed to, New Orleans and its citizens got creative in the ways few else do. The weather cooled, and events began coordinating softly—distanced, masked outdoor events in backyards, on porches, courtyard restaurants and street parties. The Spotted Cat, Three Muses, and Royal Frenchmen were some of the venues that featured bands playing weekly on their balconies, with a tip jar on a pulley headed down to the listeners seated in lawn chairs in the street.
In good fortune, October brought a gig booked with Evelyn and Her Vintage Ties from the Bay Area, playing a virtual swing dance with a New Orleans pickup band. With availability being simpler, we had booked out a killer band—Charlie Halloran on trombone, Susanne Ortner on clarinet, and Adam Arredondo on trumpet. Though I called upwards of ten bassists for a Friday night in 2020, they were all accounted for already. As the date grew closer, I remembered connecting with John briefly in the spring—one text and I learned that he had just gotten back from quarantining with family in Minnesota, and was eager to play!
The gig went over well, and as other opportunities were advancing, I began calling JJ for gigs, and he began calling me to busk, starting on Royal Street. We played a porch party on Halloween at a friends bed-and-breakfast the night after Hurricane Zeta blew through town. JJ had the forethought to invite trumpeter Reid Poole, and the Secret Six had its first gig as a trio on Halloween of 2020. As we started to hit the streets and parks, John included Smoking Time regulars Mike Voelker on drums and Russell Ramirez on trombone.
Around that time, I had met clarinetist Jory Woodis at a weekly porch concert hosted by Kevin Clark of the DUKES of Dixieland, and brought him into the fold as we needed a reeds player to round out the classic six-piece traditional jazz ensemble. The first day we met and played as the Secret Six in City Park, we realized a great coincidence—Jory had moved to New Orleans in March 2020 to join the DUKES of Dixieland’s one-night-a-week sub band. With Russell Ramirez and Reid Poole, the three were to have been the frontline of the band if not for pandemic. There was only some competition in the park —we shared the space with Linda the Bubble Lady, and occasionally alternate with a solo guitarist or saxophonist playing next to Cafe Du Monde. We tried busking at Coliseum Square Park some, before finding the perfect spot under the oaks in Audubon Park, next to the Gumbel Fountain across from Tulane University.
“I started playing safe socially distanced shows with other like minded musicians. I returned to the streets and started playing in parks and playgrounds for the local people of New Orleans. We played flea markets, church picnics, kids birthday parties, levee lunches, porch parties and backyard gatherings. We went all over the city playing music for people outdoors and often we played to just a few socially distanced people who were out getting some fresh air. No matter what it took or what the money was like we just kept playing. We met people with tears in their eyes because they had not heard live music in months. We met people who asked us to play for their lonely quarantining family members outside the windows of their retirement homes. At times we played as a duo or a trio or a quartet or whatever we could muster.”
The very first day we busked in Audubon, we grew a fair crowd, and incidentally, a photographer passing through the park took shots of us. The next day, we were listed on a half page of The Times Picayune, saying we played there every weekend. Because of that printing, it became our regular gig. And the Secret Six began to move fast. We would spend three or four days a week at the park, adding Meschiya Lake on vocals to the band on Sundays.
At the start of 2021, Tommy Thayer was booking bands at DBA to play directly across the street in front of the Frenchmen Art Market, which was closed indefinitely due to the pandemic. Reid’s band Dinosaurchestra had a gig there on the weekends, and he helped get our fledgling band a set there on Saturday afternoons, playing before The Storyville Stompers and the Palmetto Bug Stompers.
On two very cold days in February, we tracked the debut self-titled Secret Six record in JJ’s back yard, recorded and mixed by Earl Scioneaux III, who previously recorded many great records by Smoking Time, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and others. Earl has remained our engineer through all six of our albums. The first album marks the original lineup of The Secret Six Jazz Band, with Meschiya Lake on three vocals and James Evans guesting on reeds and trombone.
The pandemic years kept us in a good routine—busking between October and May (taking some cold days off), moving to Monday nights at DBA and irregularly on Sundays at The Spotted Cat, and claiming a summer tour residency in Buena Vista, Colorado. Our second record, There’s Something In My Eye and It’s You! chronicles the band getting more adventurous in repertoire, and the addition of second trumpet in the band, Satoru Ohashi, as well as California’s Heidi Evelyn on two vocal numbers.
Around that time, we were fortunate that our friend and mentor the great cornetist Ed Polcer came to visit every regularly to busk with us. To commemorate his mentorship and influence on both us, we made a sort of a “jam” album with him, playing and singing songs that were more standard, and it remains my personal favorite of the Secret Six catalog. Here is where the lineup begins to deviate, with Mike Voelker, Reid Poole, and Russell Ramirez departing the band. This record with Polcer, Relaxin’ with the Secret Six, is the first to feature Zach Lange on trumpet and cornet, and Craig Flory on clarinet, and a guest appearance by Tuba Skinny’s Robin Rapuzzi on washboard and drums.
The King Oliver Years
With a Jazz Fest and Satchmo Fest appearance, and four Colorado tours in, Chicken You Can Roost Behind The Moon codifies the third iteration of the band, with trumpeter Nathan Wolman now complementing Zach Lange a la Louis and King Oliver, as well as welcoming Haruka Kikuchi in the lineup filling the trombone seat, James McClaskey as guest vocalist and tenor banjoist, and Dizzy Incirlioglu rounding out the band on washboard. This record employs a couple of classic Oliver arrangements such as “Tears,” and “Snake Rag,” but ultimately represents a collection of traditional jazz and pop songs more than a repertoire of classic arrangements.
April 6th, 2023 marked the centennial of the first recordings of King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band featuring Louis Armstrong’s first appearances on record. To anybody that appreciates hot jazz, this set is the absolute tops. We celebrated with a daytime show at the New Orleans Jazz Museum on Esplanade Avenue, across from Frenchmen Street, recorded live by Earl Scioneaux III and recorded fourteen loving interpretations of the music that they made.
JJ still runs Smoking Time on Tuesdays at the Spotted Cat from 9:30pm til close, and at The Maison on Saturday’s from 7pm-10. The Secret Six are going into their 5th year at DBA, playing on Mondays from 6pm-9. His new project, JJ & the A-Ok’s, have a residency at Mahogany Jazz Hall on Sundays, and Wednesday afternoons at Bamboula’s on Frenchman Street from 12pm-4. The A-Ok’s will release their first recording in the Fall of 2025, featuring pianist Joplin Parnell, trombonist Stephan Tenney, clarinetist Craig Flory, trumpeter Hippolyte Fevre, guitarist Hunter Burgamy, and drummer Brett Gallo. The album release party is scheduled to be held at BJ’s in the Bywater on November 6, 2025. We hope to see you there!
Find the albums from the Secret Six on Bandcamp.
New Orleans native Hunter Burgamy is a guitarist, banjoist, and crooner in various bands, including The Secret Six, Jenavieve and the Winding Boys, and Garden of Joy. Visit his Bandcamp page athunterburgamy.bandcamp.com.
