Sally Baby is a local gem of the New Orleans Music Scene, and, quite simply should not be missed.
Seamlessly blending the sounds of the early Creole Jazz Bands with New Orleans RnB, Second Line music, Calypso, and their ethereal, mystical, magical original music.
ABOUT SALLY BABY’S SILVER DOLLARS
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If NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest handed out medals like at the Olympics, Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars would have taken home the silver as runner-up in 2024. Since then, the former underground seven-piece band led by singer and songwriter Sal Geloso has taken off like a gold medal-winning sprinter.
The band has gone from playing tiny dives in the 9th Ward to bookings this year at the French Quarter Festival, Jazz Fest and the prestigious High Sierra Music Festival in California over the Fourth of July weekend. Geloso told NPR’s Scott Simon that the band’s submission to the national contest, a plaintive wail of a tune called “I’ve Got No More Tears Left to Cry,” almost didn’t happen.
The band set up in front of the songwriter’s home on a quaint block of shotgun houses to film the video. “I didn’t realize that we were, like, potentially disqualifying ourselves for the competition ’cause I forgot to read in the fine print there that you can’t have any bystanders in the video.”
It’s a truism at the creative heart of New Orleans—if a band starts playing on the street, people are going to gather. Geloso concluded to Simon, “So, literally, everybody came out of their house. And all of a sudden, before I knew it … we had a block party going on.”
Geloso’s songs are at the center of the music of Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars. He said in a phone interview, “The majority of it is original music stuff that I’ve written and songs from other people that I’ve played with that I’ve kind of adapted and put into my repertoire.”
But seeing the band live is not your rudimentary singer-with-a-guitar experience. All of the musicians in the band have extensive resumes; some with classical training and serious chops including Geloso who studied opera and choral works like Mozart’s “Requiem.”
Zach Valentine, bassist and band leader of the ensemble, explained the process in a phone interview. After shamelessly offering himself up to be Geloso’s bass player after a chance meeting at local coffee shop, “I went to his house; he played me his songs. I recorded them. He told me, the stories behind them and we worked up like a little duo set and we played maybe four shows in 2020.”
Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars photo by Noe Cugny / OffBeat
It became obvious to the two musicians that the music needed a full band to flesh out their basic arrangements. Valentine uses the bow on his bass a lot during performances as well as when developing each tune. He said, “When we get together as a band, usually I’ve already learned [the songs]. I’m playing the melodies, but I’m doing more than just playing a bass line. That’s where the bowing and the classical stuff comes in—to make it more orchestral.”
The horn section, featuring Nathan Wolman on trumpet, James Beaumont on saxophone and Ollie Tuttle on trombone, along with Steve DeTroy on piano and Jesse Armerding on drums, work together to allow the arrangements to emerge. Armerding, who has a background performing on Broadway in the show “Stomp,” brings a lot to the arranging in a subtle way. Valentine said, “He’s a super musical cat and like one of the most dramatic drummers I’ve ever played with. He is really good at subtly influencing the drama and dynamics of the tune.”
Valentine explained the process, “They start coming up with riffs or backups or parts—just things to lush it out. Sometimes those are influenced by the bowing parts that I’ve written, sometimes my bowing parts are influenced by what the horns have written. We’re all kind of trying to meld together. But the main goal of the arrangement is to make Sal’s performance, his words, and the arc of the song maintained. The soloing, the lead stuff, that you normally see in a jazz band, none of that matters. It’s all what the song needs and everyone in the band is on the same page for that.”
When you listen to this band, truer words have never been spoken. But Geloso brings so much more than just the songs to the live experience. With a background in theater and working the past couple of years guiding historic tours through the French Quarter, the singer’s mission is to bring every listener to the music. He compared it to leading a tour and explained the connection, “I just pull them into my little world and try to just kind of win ’em over in some way or make them engaged or interested. So, I feel like that helped me a lot as far as trying to command a crowd. How do I make it appeal to every type of human that might be in that crowd.”
Of course, being an engaging front man is only part of the success this band has been experiencing. The singer is only as good as the songs. Like so many other post-Katrina transplants to New Orleans, Geloso, who has been living in the city since 2008, has absorbed everything this most musical place has to offer.
He reminisced, “I feel like when I first got here, I started with all the more traditional, early jazz. I kind of had a limited knowledge coming into New Orleans… so I didn’t really realize how deep the waters went. I had a lot to really get into. So, I had to uncover a lot of the artists that people outside of New Orleans and aren’t jazz aficionados aren’t aware of. I was like ‘Oh my God, I love Sweet Emma Barrett’ and the Pres Hall Band and I fell in love with Kid Ory.”
He continued, “When I first came here, I felt like I was almost in one of those spasm bands, you know those early bands, those kids with their handmade instruments, I felt like I was very much in that vein. I’m going to absorb everything I’m hearing, hearing all the brass bands and hearing all these different groups around town, and I’m going to try and emulate what I’m hearing, but it’s going to come out in its own wacky sort of way and I’m going to figure it out as I go along.”
Figure it out he did. Be sure to check out Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars at the Fair Grounds during Jazz Fest and elsewhere around town. Like many of the other uniquely New Orleans bands that have preceded them into the national consciousness, they won’t remain ours alone for long.