Whistling Past The Graveyard: The Gospel According To Luke Spurr Allen
Offbeat
Luke Spurr Allen has patience. It's a quality that might be mistaken in a city other than New Orleans for inertia, but in the somnambulant byways of his adopted city, where many greet the day only because they've been up all night, Allen's patience could well be viewed as a kind of ambition.
From Steinbeck to Sweet Vermouth
Antigravity
Luke Spurr Allen has been a staple of the New Orleans music scene for two decades now, best known for his work with Happy Talk—a band that gained much loyalty from fans for being one of the few roots-framed rock groups to gig in town in the early, dark days after Katrina. And yet, it's been seven years since he's put out an album.
The Happy Talk Band rocked the Lagniappe Stage at New Orleans Jazz Fest
nola.com
In the first few months or so after Hurricane Katrina, the Happy Talk Band, which performed today at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, was one of the only musical acts you could see regularly in New Orleans, such as they were, anyway. Bandleader Luke Allen worked daily shifts, often doubles, at the Circle Bar that September and October of '05, and played raw, raggedy shows there with a catchall version of his scattered band. Allen's songs - already yearning, messy tales of the boozy, messy lives his friends and customers lived, on barstools, in New Orleans before the storm - felt truer than ever as we hurried to finish our drinks in time to get home before the National Guard curfew.