The New Orleans Suspects will be bringing their signature Crescent City sounds to Johnny D’s on Wednesday, January 20.

By Blake Maddux

As a musical unit, the Crescent City quintet The New Orleans Suspects has everything going for it. Its members include longtime Neville Brothers drummer “Mean” Willie Green, onetime Dirty Dozen Brass Band lead guitarist Jake Eckert, saxophonist and former James Brown bandleader Jeff Watkins, classically trained pianist C.R. Gruver, and bassist Reggie Scanlan.

Scanlan, who was born and raised in The Big Easy, was a member of The Radiators – possibly the longest-lived New Orleans rock band ever – for all of its 33 years. Like his current fellow band mates, he has also played alongside some of NOLA’s most legendary performers.

On Wednesday, January 20, The New Orleans Suspects will voyage down the streets of Somerville to Johnny D’s. Reggie Scanlan spoke to The Somerville Times by phone in advance of the band’s visit.

Somerville Times: I have heard several different pronunciations of the name of the town that you are from. Which is correct?

Reggie Scanlan: The fastest possible way that you can do it. The most abbreviated, fastest way – that’s how people say it. They are all correct. A lot of it depends on what part of the city you’re from, too. Different parts of the city have different quirks in the accent, you know. And then when you get out of the city, it gets even more diverse. Once you get southwest of here you start getting a lot of the Cajun twist coming into the dialogue and the accents.

ST: Is most of the musical talent in New Orleans homegrown, or do many musicians from out of town come to establish themselves there?

RS: Yeah, a lot of it is but like you said, it’s also a magnet for musicians who are not from here. For musicians that are not from here, it’s probably the mystique of going to New Orleans, certainly after [Hurricane] Katrina. [The HBO series] Treme kind of sparked a little bit of that as well. The other thing, too, was, you know, property values were cheap. You could come here and buy a house for not too much money and renovate it, and have a nice place.

They’re in a place that’s perceived as being cool. The music scene was really, at that time, at a huge changing point. You had a huge influx of out-of-town musicians and a huge exodus musicians that had lived here but had to leave because of the storm. There was a big shift in the whole music scene. For a young musician who was looking to get involved in a new scene, this certainly would have been the place I would have chosen!

The New Orleans Suspects’ bassist, Reggie Scanlan.

ST: When did you start playing a musical instrument and which one was it?

RS: I started when I was in the third grade. I played tenor sax in the school band, but I also lived six blocks from the school, so carrying that thing back and forth after one semester, I was like, “You know what? I’m done with this, I want a clarinet!” So I got a clarinet and man, that thing was so great at just being a noisemaker that I finally got kicked out of the school band. I just wanted to make noise. I wasn’t planning on actually playing it. I was just into goofing off, really.

And then, the next thing that happened was The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan and everyone went out and bought guitars. I was a pretty terrible guitar player, I gotta say. And then some guy from my school who thought I could actually play guitar – because he had never heard me – needed a bass player for a Creedence Clearwater [Revival] cover band. They asked me if I wanted to play bass. I said that I didn’t really play bass, but if you show me how to play the songs then I’ll do it. So they gave me a bass, and I started playing and I was like, “Wow, this makes sense. I should have been doing this all along!” That’s how it started.

ST: Had you and any other members of The New Orleans Suspects crossed paths before forming a band together?

RS: Me and Willie [Green, drummer] had had a lot of projects over the years. We were part of a band back in the 90s. Then right after the storm he and I had a residency at the Maple Leaf [a New Orleans venue and bar] for a while. Me and Willie go back a long way. We’ve been friends for I don’t even know who long. Jake and C.R. they knew each other and had been doing stuff in New Orleans post-Katrina when they both moved here. And then Jeff moved here. I think that he was still playing with James Brown when he was living here. Jake and Kevin Harris, who was our original sax player – was in the Dirty Dozen [Brass Band] – knew each other because Jake was in the Dozen as well. Before the band got together, I knew Willie and that was it. He and I are the only native New Orleanians.

ST: How did the band end up forming?

RS: The guy that owns the Maple Leaf, Hank [Staples], has got a pool of musicians that when a band didn’t show up, or they forgot to book a band, or whatever happened, he would call somebody up and just say, “Round up the usual suspects.” So that happened one night to us. It wasn’t Willie on the drums, it was another guy. Jake and C.R. had never met before. So we did the gig, it was a lot fun, and we told Hank that if this happens again and we’re all in town, just call us up and we’ll do it. That happened a few times and we started getting some gigs on the side and we called ourselves The Usual Suspects. So when The Rads [Radiators] broke up and The Neville Brothers broke up, we were kind of like, let’s just do this band for real. We thought that we’d be The Unusual Suspects, but then I was researching online and there was a band in England called The Unusual Suspects with a CD out. So we chose New Orleans Suspects, because that way people know where we’re from, they’ll know it’s New Orleans Music, and we’re still the Suspects. That’s how it happened.

ST: The Radiators formed in the late 1970s, right?

RS: January of ’78.

ST: So you’re coming up on four full decades as a professional musician?

RS: I was professional way before that. I’d been on Bourbon Street. I’d been on the blues circuit in California. I’d played already with a lot of the older New Orleans guys like James Booker and Professor Longhair. The Rads formed [when] I was like 26, so I’d been professional for six years already.

ST: Does anything surprise you after all of this time?

RS: The fact that I can be surprised surprises me! It’s nice that I can still be surprised. I like that. Some of the stuff that I’ve seen has been pretty crazy, I have to say!

Glen David Andrews, The New Orleans Suspects, and Ben Knight, Wednesday, January 20, 8:00 p.m. Johnny D’s Uptown, 17 Holland St., Somerville.