New Orleans is a place where the timeless sounds of jazz fill the air on any given night. One particularly notable voice in this great city is the smooth and sultry ragtime sound of Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns. Lake, who has called the Crescent City home for over ten years, has quite the interesting past. Her career began in a South Dakota steakhouse at age nine, where she won a $500 singing contest, and years down the road she ended up in a traveling circus, performing an array of acts, including insect eating and fire dancing. It was during this time when Lake fell in love with the city and soon became a fixture on Royal Street in the French Quarter, busking and becoming one of the city’s most admired street performers, often taking her act on tour both nationally and abroad.
Forming the Little Big Horns in 2009 and shortly after releasing a full length album, Lucky Devil, Meschiya Lake has secured herself as a staple of local live music receiving rave reviews. WWOZ’s David Kunian citing the album as one of his top four releases of 2010 on NPR’s All Things Considered and, as Dan Baum of The New Yorker aptly described, “Meschiya Lake rocks back on her heels, lifts her chest, and opens her throat like an air raid siren to croon in a thrilling pre-microphone style that can make you feel by turns as though you were shivering around a campfire in a railroad (yard) or drinking in a Budapest nightclub in 1938.”
To experience the jazz revival ushered in by Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns, check out weekly gigs at Mimi in the Marigny on Monday nights, and at the Spotted Cat on Tuesday nights . The full calendar and tour information is available at www. myspace.com/meschiyalake . Also enjoy a lively performance on Royal Street in the French Quarter at http://youtu.be/m_SMk42zcfI.
