PAPA MALI & THE INSTAGATORS

Featuring some of the baddest musicians from the Austin music scene, Papa Mali & The Instagators bring a mix of southern fried soul, blunted Delta blues, New Orleans funk, and tribal hoodoo rhythms.

Bandleader MALCOLM WELBOURNE's personification "PAPA MALI" is a salute to his home territory of north Louisiana. Malcolm was born in Mississippi and raised in Shreveport, where absorbing the blues along Bayou Pierre was just as much a matter of course as chasing the mosquito fogging truck with friends -- and equally intoxicating. He spent his summers with grandparents in New Orleans digging that city's rhythm (and blues) and after hearing the Wild Tchoupitoulas and the Meters on the streets of New Orleans at age eleven, he developed an early and ongoing attachment to Crescent City funk.

A youthful adventure in Jamaica fired his passion for reggae and other musics of the islands, and gave rise to the internationally acclaimed Killer Bees (who have been Austin's reggae voice for nearly two decades). It was Burning Spear's band that gave Malcolm the nickname "Papa Mali" while Spear and the Bees toured together.

Having just completed the THUNDER CHICKEN album (the first that bears his stage name) for FOG CITY RECORDS, Malcolm now feels his music has come full circle -- encompassing his childhood in Shreveport, coming of age in New Orleans, experiences in the Carribean, and present home of Austin, Texas. "I haven't been this excited about a record since, well, maybe the first record I ever put out with the Killer Bees, 19 years ago."

Malcolm "Papa Mali" Welbourne
guitar, slide guitar, lead vocals, master of ceremonies

Other credits: The Killer Bees

From an early age, Malcolm was a unique character. While still in grade school, he was conning his cousin to take him into the French Quarter so he could buy every element of Brian Jones' outfit from the front cover of the front cover of High Tides & Green Grass... all part of his childhood wish to be "a real San Francisco hippie".

He had taken up the guitar at age four, and was playing blues by the time he was eight. The great blues guitarist John Campbell took him under his wing when Malcolm was 14, and around that time he started taking the Blues seriously as an instrumentalist. A white boy playing grown up blues and reggae in North Louisiana with its hard edged racial codes would present some dangerous challenges, particularly after teaming up with Michael Johnson and forming the integrated Killer Bees in 1980. For the first time in his adult life, Malcolm has now been able to reflect warmly on the years growing up in Shreveport with this body of work.

Malcolm is a big hearted chunk of funk (and a mean cook!) whose love for music spans a wide variety of genres but always remains uniquely southern-fried.

Barry "Frosty" Smith
drums

Other credits: Lee Michaels, Sly & the Family Stone (Riot Goin On), Dr. John, Soulhat, Sweathog, Parliament/Funkadelic (Let's Take It To The Stage), Rare Earth, Steve Miller Blues Band, various Motown releases

"Smith can levitate an entire band with his precise, fundamentally astounding playing" (Houston Sidewalk.com, from their all-time top 10 list of drummers)

The team of Malcolm and Frosty is the soul of this project. Frosty is a funk clock, in the pocket and ball in socket. His musical credentials are too numerous to list in full, but began in San Francisco when as a young boy he studied tap dancing (there is no better training for a future drummer!) In his teens, he got his start drumming in R&B show bands and the topless clubs of North Beach playing for snake dancers and the likes of "Topless Twiggy".

When the counterculture descended upon the Bay Area in the mid 60s, Frosty grew disenchanted and moved to Los Angeles, where his association with organist Lee Michaels began. Check out his thunderous drumming on Lee's legendary (and frequently sampled) albums from the early 1970s (the best of which featured just Lee and Frosty). Such relentless intensity has rarely been achieved by bands twice the size. We've heard stories that, when Lee and Frosty toured Europe, a certain John Bonham caught every one of their London dates and was blown away by Frosty's routine of playing the skins with his bare hands... some time later, the technique would become a signature of Led Zeppelin's live shows.

Those were crazy days, both onstage and off. Lee played a Hammond B3 organ with three Leslie speakers and a stack of Marshall amps; it's a miracle that Frosty can still hear. In the off season, they stayed in Marin, California, in a place Lee shared with his wild safari animals. Frosty recalls stepping over a tiger on the way to the shower, and later watching the same animal batting around a bowling ball like a kitten with a ball of yarn. Playtime for these cats left dents in the concrete walls surrounding the property.

After leaving Lee, Frosty began touring with Delbert McClinton. Eventually tiring of the constant travel between California and Texas, he settled in Austin -- where he is widely acknowledged as the top drummer of a very competitive music scene (both in studios and on stage). He teamed up with Malcolm in 1996 when Papa Mali and the Instagators was hatched, and has been key in taking it far beyond its original "party band" premise. "This music suits the way I play because it's based on R&B and I am a R&B drummer with Latin influences.... I'm capable of making right and left hand turns on a moments notice. Malcolm does that and it's like performing without a net and that's really, really good. I'm not afraid of heights."

We would say the funk is back in town, but it never really left.

Courtney Audain
bass

Raised in a musical household in Trinidad, Courtney began playing quarto (four string guitar) at age three and steel drums (piano pan) at age seven. At thirteen he joined the Solo Harmonizers, a pan orchestra which won three national championships at Trinidad's massive annual Pan-o-Rama.

By 1981, he had moved musically from the pans to drums and finally to bass, and geographically from Trinidad to New York, and finally to Austin. Of his involvement with the Instagators, Courtney says "New Orleans music is very close to the calypso music of Trinidad. There is the French flavoring of both places. Calypso falls more on the 1 and 3 beats while New Orleans music second-line is on the 2 and 4; I kinda mix them up a bit."

Claude McCan
keyboards

Claude contributed a liberal dose of his tasty keyboard licks (and a truckload of his vintage instruments!) to the Papa Mali recording sessions. No stranger to high technology, Claude nonetheless played a key role (no pun intended) in channeling the old school vibe when tape started rolling.

Paul "Buddha" Mills
percussion, drums

Fans of the Instagators' shows in Austin will remember "Buddha" as Frosty's right (and left) hand man, percolating the groove with his percussive fills and overseeing the proceedings with an ever-present smile. You can catch him most Sundays down at Shaggy's in south Austin, where he drums (alongside Malcolm) as part of a weekly gospel brunch that donates its proceeds to some very worthy local charities.

Buddha is also the drummer for the Instagators when Papa Mali takes the show on the road (Frosty is occupied with recordings in Austin at the present time).

Bevis Griffin
vocals

Bevis gravitated to Austin in his early teens, drawn by the early signs of its now-legendary music scene. Initially working as a drummer, he now performs primarily as a vocalist and brings his deep love and understanding of the music of New Orleans to the Instagators.

Tomas Ramirez
saxophone

" Surrender to the funk. It starts in the floor and in the walls, working its way into the very oxygen molecules you breathe, until you're surrounded by rubbery sound. Then it twists and pulls your insides until you're a piece of tired, but very happy, taffy. Welcome to a Papa Mali & The Instagators show. "
- Austin Chronicle

" Papa Mali & The Instagators The band has acquired a vital and viable life of its own gigging locally and playing some high profile road shows, such as its appearance for 50,000 Mardi Gras revelers last month. The local all-star unit's bloodline, which includes members of Soulhat, Killer Bees, Timbuk 3, and others, is impressive, but it's the band's ability to stake out a new, unified identity that makes it work so well "
- Michael Point, Austin American Statesman

" If you like your music funked up, Papa Mali & The Instagators is the place to be. This band has been rocking every house in Austin with some of the most slammin' jams known to man. "
- Arena International

For information on upcoming Papa Mali & The Instagators live dates, click here.

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