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Galactic: Every Corner Has a Story (Relix Revisited)

Galactic kept touring, first with guest vocalists then just as an instrumental group.

“The idea for this record was always in the back of our mind,” says Vogel. “Since parting ways with Theryl we were playing instrumentally and that was going good in terms of the live shows and everybody was playing well, but making records is a different animal and there wasn’t a lot of inspiration in the idea of just cutting an instrumental record.”

Galactic has often paired their bills with progressive hip-hop acts, and it was during one tour with Lyrics Born that the idea for From the Corner to the Block began to take shape.

“Lyrics Born was a little bit of the nucleus of the whole project,” says Ellman. “We’ve worked with him on the road and we’re big fans and we love performing with him. Stylistically, it was a really good mix, as it was with all the MCs. Originally we were talking to LB about producing the whole thing. We had this even crazier idea at the beginning—a concept album which involved a lot of MCs playing different characters with a narrative running through the whole thing. LB got really busy so he didn’t have the time to do it, but in the end we started working with all these MCs and it kind of changed the concept around a little bit.”

Vogel noted that the concept was based on a book called Intersection—New Orleans.

“A lot of the music that influenced us as a band is a lot of the same stuff that the first generation of hip-hop was about,” says Vogel. “We wanted to model ourselves on the great funky rhythm sections—Booker T and The MGs, The Meters, James Brown’s band. That was our school, learning to play that stuff. So this was such a natural idea. Here we are a funky groove band, it makes sense for us to work with interesting MCs. One album we talked about when we were coming up with the idea for this project was The Brand New Heavies record that they made with all the MCs, Heavy Rhymin’ Vol. 1. We wanted to make a record on that model for the current generation of underground hip-hop artists. We came up with the corner idea based on Intersection—New Orleans to give the album thematic unity.”

Work began on the album at the band’s New Orleans studio during the summer of 2005, when Moore went in and recorded drum parts: “I would lay down drum tracks, then Ben would take what I played and put effects on it,” says Moore. “He would maybe lilt it up, slice and dice it, start it in a different place and just do different things with it to make it interesting. Ben has been getting into a lot of production over the years and he was actually starting to make some tracks so when it came time to do this record he had already developed some skills in this area.”

Before the band could take the next step in the recording process it was blindsided by Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed the studio. Moore’s drum tracks were safe, but suddenly the band had nowhere to live, let alone record.

“We went away just for a weekend totally unprepared to be gone for months,” says Ellman. “We didn’t have a chance to properly evacuate. We left town with nothing but a backpack, so it was like ‘What’s gonna happen?’ Our first instinct was: ‘Let’s book a tour, we need to work right now. Let’s go on the road and start playing shows if we can’t go home. We did do a couple and we realized it was not a good idea. It wasn’t time to go provide the party. We were not in the right head space to really do that. Our first show after the storm we were all crying onstage, it was really difficult. We felt an obligation before we started playing to talk about it a little bit to the audience. It was so fresh. But we couldn’t just get onstage and play. We just weren’t ready; it brought us all to tears. We needed some time, we were scattered and we were trying to figure out what we we’re gonna do personally, people had families and it was too difficult. We ended up working on the CD, which was good.” (The band has also recorded a track with Robbie Robertson for the upcoming Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, which benefits the Tipitina’s Foundation.)