bio

Peter Berkowitz is a reporter, critic, essayist, columnist and editor based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Since 2004, he has written, edited, created and/or managed stories about music, drag, comedy, theater, movies, TV, radio, journalism, books, visual art, food and drinks for LEO Weekly, The Louisville Courier-Journal, The Voice-Tribune, Insider Louisville, Louisville Magazine, Kentucky Monthly, Story, Lucky Peach, Spin, Thrillist, Bejeezus, and private clients.
Here are some tweets. Link in here.

He has written cover stories on Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, Food Network chef Damaris Phillips, local restaurants, the local DJ scene, public radio, My Morning Jacket, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Coliseum, Rodan and Slint.

He has also profiled everyone from Joan Rivers, Rick Moranis, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Patricia Arquette and Jerry Bruckheimer to the Arcade Fire, Black Sabbath, The Del McCoury Band, Insane Clown Posse, The Meters, Kacey Musgraves, The Soweto Gospel Choir, and several members of the "RuPaul's Drag Race" family (and many more characters).

He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with a concentration in writing, from Indiana University.

Preservation Hall Jazz Band takes over Belle of Louisville to share New Orleans and Cuban music

Preservation Hall Jazz Band | Photo by Danny Clinch

“It really started many years ago,” says Ben Jaffe, leader of New Orleans’ legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

He could be speaking about the band created by his parents in 1963 to shine a light on New Orleans’ finest traditional jazz musicians. At the moment, though, he’s speaking about how he and his local heroes-turned-global-ambassadors found themselves in Cuba in 2015.

“For any musician, there are certain places you’re drawn to, a mecca. For us, Cuba is one of those places,” says Jaffe, who plays upright bass, tuba and percussion and serves as creative director of both the band and the Preservation Hall club in New Orleans’ French Quarter. “There’s no other place that mirrors the history and culture of New Orleans as Cuba. For political reasons, it’s been off-limits to us. We never had the right opportunity until the (2015) Havana Jazz Fest, and then we started putting pieces together.”

Those pieces were both musical and personal. Jaffe stresses the value of community in his band’s music, itself an outgrowth of New Orleans’ famously unique social life.

In Cuba, he tells Insider, “we focused on personal connections, because that’s what life is — exploring where our lives overlap. All of our experiences are universal. That’s one of those secrets that holds back progress.”

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band also has made friends in Louisville, where they return Saturday for an encore performance on the Belle of Louisville for a Forecastle Festival late-night show.

They first played on the Belle with friends My Morning Jacket during 2012’s Forecastle. The next year, for their 50th anniversary, Jaffe and Jacket leader Jim James produced the band’s first album of original songs, That’s It!


Ben Jaffe | Courtesy of Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Approximately 50 people have been members of the ever-evolving band in 50-plus years, and they’ve collaborated with rock bands often — from the Grateful Dead in the 1960s to Arcade Fire recently. It’s part of the Jaffe family’s mission to honor the traditions of their music without limiting it to a novelty act, forever recreating the sounds of yesteryear.

It’s led them to test the limits of many types of folk music, sharing microphones with Tom Waits, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Foo Fighters and many more.

So it’s not surprising Jaffe led them to Cuba as soon as it became viable.

“New Orleans and Cuba have had a very long history. Until the embargo in the ’50s, they were trade partners,” he says. “There was a constant flow of people and culture and information. Cuban music influenced New Orleans music going back to in the mid-1800s.”

The history in Cuba is heavy, continues Jaffe. “There’s spirits and ghosts there. I scratch my head that the trade in humans from Africa — that out of that brutal act can come this beautiful expression: jazz, Cuban music. The trip changed the way we approach our music.”

Cuban musicians and fans showed their openness to the outsiders and received them warmly. Jaffe says it encouraged the band “to keep going, to push harder, go bigger. It’s real clear, especially in these political times — ‘What are you doing? You have a platform — what are you doing with it?’”

The New Orleanians, no strangers to struggle, were humbled by what they saw.


Courtesy of Preservation Hall Jazz Band

“You’re talking about a country that has suffered in ways that we don’t even know,” Jaffe says. “To go there and see they’re still suffering, simple needs aren’t being met — it eats at your soul. This thing we know in New Orleans, no matter what you’re given in life — Katrina, embargo — there’s something embedded in our DNA, a survival code. Part of that it is to turn to music and art and faith.”

At the same time, Jaffe emphasizes how much joy comes with that music, and art and faith.

“We want people to dance, have a good time,” he says, “but we want people to dance like in church — a religious experience.”

The band came home from the trip inspired and fired up. To ensure they captured the vitality of their new music, Jaffe hired another producer from the rock world to keep them focused on staying modern. TV on the Radio co-founder David Sitek helped shape So It Is, the new album, perhaps a necessary decision considering that Jaffe wrote much of the music with saxophonist and clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, who is 84 years old.

The current cross-generational lineup of seven includes three members who only joined within the past two years.

“New Orleans is this very rare place where those types of opportunities actually exist,” says Jaffe, who first performed live with this band when he was 3 years old, “where music is something that’s introduced in the womb. At a very young age, you’re exposed to this incredible community.”

Jaffe says their Cuban adventure brought a new level of seriousness to what they do. “It’s always been fun, but it has a purpose,” he was reminded. “It’s why we play music at funerals — it’s the ultimate honor.”

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band plays on the Belle of Louisville on Saturday, July 15, at 11 p.m. Admission is $25 and is for those 18 and older.

c. 2017 Insider Louisville

Houndmouth: A local band’s crazy week of both great and terrible adventures

Photo by Julia Rickles.

This week began badly for Houndmouth. The Louisville quartet woke up after a gig in Springfield, Mo., where they had opened for the Drive-By Truckers. A thief had smashed into their van and stole its GPS, an iPad, a Blu-ray player and personal items, including clothing.

“They took my favorite yoga pants!” keyboardist/vocalist Katie Toupin laughs with a true yogi’s lightness. For a touring band, such thefts are terrible and extremely inconvenient, she notes. It’s happened to several of their friends’ bands. “Not to point fingers, but it seems like every single one has been in Missouri,” she notes. While the band’s gear survived, presumably too heavy to take, the thief went through dirty clothes and selected favorites, leaving some behind.


Katie Toupin checks out the damage.

At least the thief had good taste in clothes. Toupin and business partner Addie Mills are behind a new store, Bermuda Highway, which will open at 811 E. Market St. on Nov. 8, coinciding with the annual NuLu Holiday Open House shopping event. Their music-themed shop will focus mostly on men and women’s clothing, new and vintage.

“I don’t like stores where you have to go in and look through 8,000 vintage things to buy one thing that’s cool. So the vintage is just unique pieces that are all cool,” Toupin explains.

Vintage band T-shirts will be a specialty of Bermuda Highway, which took its name from an early My Morning Jacket song. “It’s my favorite My Morning Jacket song. It’s obviously a tribute to my friend Jim James,” says Toupin. “He’s been a big brother to our band from the very beginning. So I really loved the whole idea of it … And the line in that song, Don’t let your silly dreams / Fall in between the crack of the bed and the wall, is incredibly fitting for doing something kind of risky,” she laughs.

So she wasn’t inspired by the previous line, Your ass, it draws me in like a Bermuda highway?

“Your ass — yeah, it’s a clothing store, so it works either way!”


Bermuda Highway takes its name from an MMJ song.

James wasn’t the only two-decade music veteran who helped inspire them. Houndmouth met Jack White and his Third Man Records crew in July at the Newport Folk Festival. “I fell in love with them as people,” Toupin says, “and I really loved the idea of just carrying their products, mainly. Also, not to compete with other local record stores. I’m doing a niche sort of thing, so everybody’s winning here.”

While the Nashville-based Third Man’s roving record truck has popped up in front of NuLu neighbor Please & Thank You, what the two shops do will be very different, as Bermuda Highway will only carry all of Third Man’s records, as well as their offbeat knickknacks.

Keeping with White’s penchant for surprises and his celebration of objects, the owners will present an artist-curated section in the store. In December, Dr. Dog guitarist/vocalist Scott McMicken is “actually making these special records, and hand-making clothing and all kinds of things, art, for his section,” says Toupin.

But each month will be something different. “It’s this open format for them to have a presence — a direct, exclusive relationship with the fans out of the store.” Some bands will also play in-store sets.

Houndmouth’s week went on to include a day spent doing tasks like fixing their van’s windows, followed by their debut at Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium — “a huge thrill,” says Toupin. On Halloween, they joined the Drive-By Truckers for a show in that band’s hometown, Athens, Ga. After tonight’s Charlotte performance, they’re done for 2014.

Bermuda Highway began taking shape this summer after Toupin decided to stay in Louisville instead of moving to Nashville. It seemed like a way for her to give back to the community that has given her so much, she says.

Toupin and Mills met at General Eccentric, where Mills worked with Toupin to pick out clothes for Houndmouth tours. While Mills will run Bermuda Highway during Toupin’s tour time, Houndmouth’s three-month break means fans should be able to see plenty of the musician at the store for now. And possibly her bandmates.

“The boys in the band just talk about how they want to steal clothes from me!”

C. 2014 Insider Louisville