  Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint have a new album in stores Tuesday and play the Fallsview Casino July 7 and 8.
|
At first glance, a British New Wave pioneer and a New Orleans R&B legend -- the latter 17 years older than the former -- might not appear to have much musically in common.
But Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, whose new inspired collaboration, The River In Reverse, hits stores Tuesday, had worked together twice during the '80s.
Last year's life-changing Hurricane Katrina led to the two musicians crossing paths again in New York City, where Toussaint had temporarily relocated and Costello spends half of his time with Canadian wife Diana Krall.
The occasion was a jazz gala-turned-Katrina benefit that Costello and Krall -- in B.C. when the storm actually struck -- had been asked to play by Wynton Marsalis.
"By this time I'd heard that Allen had made it to New York and I said, 'There wouldn't be any better thing than to ask Allen to play (Toussaint's) Freedom For The Stallion with me," said Costello, 51, seated beside the elegant 68-year-old Toussaint in a Yorkville restaurant recently.
"So that was the first time I heard Allen's voice since the previous summer when we'd been on the bill together at the (New Orleans) jazz fest. Allen's presence of mind and stoicism in the face of everything was remarkable. It was kind of humbling."
The first benefit led to a second, The Big Apple For The Big Easy, a big televised event from Madison Square Garden, which saw Toussaint's band back up several artists, including Costello.
"Definitely, at that point, I thought, there were some songs of Allen's that could be heard in this moment that had particular resonance for the circumstance," said Costello.
The River In Reverse eventually became seven Toussaint songs, five Toussaint-Costello collaborations and the title track written solely by Costello in a burst of 10 minutes.
The collaborators arrived in Toronto in early May, fresh off a performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. And it was clear that Toussaint, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who has arranged horns for The Band and Paul Simon, produced huge hits for Dr. John (I Was In The Right Place) and LaBelle (Lady Marmalade) and whose songs have been covered by Glen Campbell (Southern Nights), Boz Scaggs (What Do You Want The Girl To Do?) and Devo (Working In A Coal Mine), was buoyed by some return to normalcy in his beloved Big Easy.
"It was a wonderful spiritual feeling to see so many people saying 'yes.' Because if they're there, they said 'yes,' " he said with a smile. "And I mean on stage and in the audience as well, so it was quite rewarding and the people who put the Fest together, they were almost teary-eyed to see such a turnout."
Recording The River In Reverse also brought Toussaint and Costello, whose summer tour includes stops at Fallsview Casino Resort on July 7 and 8, back to the Crescent City about a month and a half after Katrina.
They'd initially began their work -- with Costello's Imposters bandmates Steve Nieve on B3 organ and drummer Pete Thomas and Toussaint's four-man horn section and guitarist Anthony Brown -- in Los Angeles.
But Costello felt the move was important to Toussaint even if the Englishman wasn't quite prepared for the scene that greeted him so soon after the storm.
"The signs of destruction were everywhere but specifically in the most badly affected areas, it's pretty devastating experience to see with your own eyes," said Costello. "A television picture won't prepare you for it, when you're actually at eye level with it, and see some personal belongings just hanging in a tree, and a car on top of a roof, and a refrigerator upside down. It was like a surrealistic scene."
