Cowboy Mouth: The Band That Never Stopped Playing

The Band That Never Stopped Playing

If you've never seen Cowboy Mouth live, you haven't experienced the full range of what a New Orleans rock band can do to a room. Fred LeBlanc stands behind his drum kit — not sits, stands — singing, screaming, preaching, and beating those drums like they personally wronged him, for two hours straight. It's less a concert than a tent revival with a backbeat.

Cowboy Mouth formed in New Orleans in 1992, and they've been the city's hardest-working rock band ever since. LeBlanc, who'd previously played with Dash Rip Rock, built the band around a simple proposition: play every show like it's the last night on Earth. The name comes from a Sam Shepard and Patti Smith play about someone with a loud and raucous voice, and if you've heard LeBlanc sing, you understand why they chose it.

Their sound blends alternative rock with roots rock and the kind of communal energy that only makes sense if you grew up going to second lines and Mardi Gras parades. Their biggest radio hit, "Jenny Says," cracked the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in the late nineties, and an MCA Records deal followed. But when the major-label experiment ended, Cowboy Mouth did what New Orleans bands do best — they kept playing.

For over thirty years now, they've sustained a career on independent releases and relentless touring. They were inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2011, which was nice, but the real testament to Cowboy Mouth is simpler than any award: they're still filling rooms. Still making people lose their minds. Still proving that a rock band from New Orleans can survive anything the music industry throws at them, as long as they never stop playing.

In a city known for brass bands and jazz and bounce and hip-hop, Cowboy Mouth carved out space for straight-ahead, sweat-soaked, crowd-surfing rock and roll. And they did it without ever leaving home.