High Lonesome Memorial for Neal Walker

Below is the poster that Billy and I made for Neal's memorial. Below the poster are the words that Billy Sothern said for Neal at the service.

printed by the lovely folks at
Hot Iron Press

The High Lonesome Blues of Neal Walker
Billy Sothern

When I got the call telling me that Neal Walker, my friend, colleague, boss, and role model, had died, I went into the next room over to look at a photograph on the wall of my wife and I dancing while Neal loomed slightly out of focus in the background, tall and gray, with his hands to his mouth playing the harmonica. And staring at the picture, with the sound of his music in my mind, I thought to myself about how Neal had helped turn me into lawyer, with advise on matters big – like how to construct an argument concerning the right to self representation or how to make your clients life jump out from the page – to small – like exactly how he expected an ellipses to appear or that there must be two spaces after a period.

And that was Neal, an amazing human being who could with equal dexterity argue with great precision before the United States Supreme Court, convince a deep south jury that his client was real person and should get a life sentence, and play a blues harmonica solo with some of the best bands in New Orleans.

Last week, many of Neal’s friends met at his house on Royal Street just to be among each other and around Neal. Until I reached his house, I had been sort of numb to his death. But as I poked around his things, the small box of old 78’s on the floor, the German poster of concrete architectural gems, the books – Graham Greene, Thomas Pynchon, James Lee Burke, Peter Mattheison, arranged in neat order on the bookcases, the small stack of Bob Dylan cd’s, I began to a sense of the enormity of what we had lost because I started to hear Neal’s voice in my head spinning a yarn about the old days when he and his friends used to argue the finer points of Mao vs. Trotsky. How he was a friend of an earlier pioneer of poured concrete architecture, an old Maoist, or perhaps Trotskyite character. How Bob Dylan was a good songwriter but a lousy harmonica player. A million stories, each of which could have gone for ever, all well told. All gone, except in our memories.

For me, part of being around all of Neal’s things made me appreciate how much I admired him. I met him for the first time as an intern at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center when I was twenty two years old and he was cranky, distant, intensely intelligent, and I thought, incredibly cool. Since then, I learned from Neal – sure many things about the law – but importantly about life and art and music. Without Neal, how many fewer people in the world would love Alan Lomax’s field recordings of prison music from Parchman farm. How many fewer would have heard the street music of Kinsasha, amplified with transistors and other things they had found in the junk, Neal told me with excitement, or the James Brown-esque R and B of Ethiopia. This is all to say, how much narrower and smaller would our lives have been without his influence. How much different would my life be if I hadn’t learned to affect certain Neal-isms. Haven’t we all tried to be just a little bit more like him. He was just so cool.

At Neal’s home that night, I put some old music from Neal’s vast collection of vinyl, organized alphabetically and by genre, and then a threw on a Bob Dylan album that Neal had introduced me to a few years earlier called Good as I Been to You. A few minutes later, Froggy Went A Courtin’, a classic song, several centuries old, that found its way to this country through Scotch Irish folks who came to towns in Kentucky near where Neal grew up. The song is about Froggy, who falls in love with Ms. Mousey, and asks her Uncle Rat permission for her hand after being told, “"Without my uncle Rat's consent. I wouldn't marry the president, Uh-huh.” Froggy and Ms. Mousey had an amazing wedding. The flying moth came, the june bug came, the big snake ate the wedding cake. It was a party Neal would have like. It was the kind of party he was planning to have with his fiancé Anna in the coming months.

Neal was part of the American musical and storytelling tradition that this song came from, a tradition called “high lonesome” by the folk musician John Cohen when he went down and recorded Roscoe Holcomb in Daisy, Kentucky in 1961, when Neal was eight. As I understand it, and I am sure that Neal could do a better job explaining, high lonesome is a blues that’s battered and sad but still innocent, like that of a hurt child. But the high lonesome singer or story teller, in fact, is wise on the blues and unsurprised at the pain of the world. He knows and possesses these blues. They don’t possess him.

In some ways, I think that this high lonesome tradition brings the different parts of Neal, the musician, the amazing lawyer together. Neal was a storyteller wherever he was, the Supreme Court, Winn Parish Courthouse, on stage with his harmonica. He used these skills to fight two of the darkest black eyes of American democracy, the death penalty and the woeful treatment of human being following Hurricane Katrina, and he used these skills to play songs and tell stories that made our lives richer.

Like many of the songs that Neal like, Little Froggy didn’t end happily, because as Neal knew, life is sweet, though hard.

Mr. Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brook, Uh-huh,
Mr. Frog went a-hoppin' up over the brook.
A lily-white duck come and swallowed him up, Uh-huh.

A little piece of cornbread layin' on a shelf, Uh-huh,
A little piece of cornbread layin' on a shelf.
If you want anymore, you can sing it yourself, Uh-huh.

Max: 1992-2007

We lost Max today.



Billy adopted him when he was about 16 in NYC. I met Max at St. John's College, when he came to live with Billy just after we met. When we were graduated, we moved to 426 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, between Nevins and Bond:








Our friend, Camille, stayed with us for awhile. She loved him well:






Many good times.




Then we moved to Windsor Terrace, near Prospect Park (17th Street and 11th Avenue). Max could play with other dogs in the Nethermead.


Everyone loved Max.


He went with Billy to Maine, to hang out with him while he studied for the bar exam:



Then we moved to New Orleans. We lived on Kerlerec between St. Claude and Marais. We were married there, after being together for seven years. Max was there.

On the levee, where everybody takes the pooches:


At the Treme house:



The day that we moved into the Treme house from Brooklyn (tired):


Halloween at the Treme house:


Evacuation, Hurricame Katrina:
Christmas 2005:

Carondelet, between Clio and Erato, the first house we ever owned:




After awhile, Max's cataracts became so awful that a dog who usually always knew where the camera was fled from the flash....

...and so daylight pictures were the way to go from then on.


Thanksgiving walk, 2005

We just bought our step-up house, where we will start a family, on friday. We wish he could have moved with us.
We really loved him. Goodbye Max.
I miss him.

Helen Hill Memorial Tree Sculpture

This is a rough sketch of the Helen Memorial Tree. I know that it's been a long time coming, but I have lost 2 friends and a dog this past month so I have been too sad and tired out to post.

Louise, Helen's cousin, has offered to be the person to whom all leaves will be sent. Here's her info:

"My address is

Louise Washer
280 Silvermine Ave.
Norwalk
CT 06850

email: lwmcf@optonline.net.

"Also, if people want to send straight to my mom in NOLA:

Teddy Hill
921 Dauphine St.
NO, LA 70116

Her email is teddyhill1@earthlink.net "

Donald Tully is the person who has volunteered to weld the structure, and I really think that it will be great. We will be meeting to cement details soon.

Lots of people have contacted me, excited to participate by creating a leaf.

I will post every so often as the project progresses to show the stages of development and so people will know the deadlines for submission and.

Neal Walker's Harmonica

Neal's fiancée and nephew were kind enough to let me borrow Neal's harmonica last night so that I could draw it.

Official News About Memorial's for Neal

The memorial in New Orleans has been relocated.

Family, friends and colleagues are invited to the Memorial Service for R. Neal Walker, to be held at: Venusian Gardens, 2601 Chartres Street (cnr Chartres & Franklin) New Orleans La.on Saturday, February 3, 2007 at 3:30pm with an Open House to follow at Neal’s home, just around the corner. All are welcome.In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, www.thejusticecenter.org/lcac/donations. Donations will be applied to the LCAC Client Welfare Fund to improve the lives of those Neal worked to save.


To all of Neal's friends
From: Anna, Neal's fiance.

Neal was a beautiful, intelligent, loving man. I loved him with my whole heart. Our hearts are broken.

I find it difficult to put words to our loss. Please keep us in your thoughts.

There will be two memorial celebrations.

New Orleans:
Date: February 3rd (now post-memorial gathering)
Time:4:30PM
Place: 2616 Royal Street
Corner of Franklin

Lexington KY:
Date: February 10th
Time: 3:30PM
Place: 612 Central Avenue
Near corner of Old Park and Central

Please pass this on. Thank you.

Anna amaanna@gmail.com

Jazz Funeral for Helen

Kittee sent this along for all to see:

Hey, ya'll! We're gonna do Helen up right with a big old jazz funeral in New Orleans. Can you believe it?

The procession starts at Paul and Helen's old place at 3438 Cleveland St. on Saturday, February 24. The procession forms at 12:30 p.m. and rolls at 1:00 p.m. sharp.

We're planning on two brass bands, a vegan cupcake wagon parade, and, of course, Ernie K-Doe's hearse. We'll head up Angela Davis Parkway, then toward the river on Orleans Ave., then up N. Claiborne Ave. We'll disband at the Mother-in-Law Lounge, 1500 N. Claiborne Ave., where we'll unwrap the cupcakes for an official tea party as well as shang-a-lang-a to some really cool tunes. So come on out -- we'll remember Helen and help try to put ourselves and our crazy city back together again.

For more info about the jazz funeral, email dazee at dkoen_2000 [at] yahoo [dot] com. For more info about joining the vegan cupcake brigade, email kittee at kittee68 [at] yahoo [dot] com. Helen, we love and miss you, baby.

Neal Walker, Rest in Peace

This is a picture that Billy and I always have up in our house. Neal's on the harmonica.

Photo by Ana Arien

So Sad

I am very sad. We lost another friend in an accident last night.

A Letter From Paul to Everyone

See Helen Hill's memorial website for the letter.

David Koen talks about Helen on NPR

Listen or read here. You should really listen.

Many, Many Photos from the New Orleans Enough! March

Miranda Lake was kind enough to take photos for me to post here. I was still en route from the funeral and recovering from a mean chest cold that rendered me voiceless. Thank you Miranda.

Many people complained about the racial make-up of the crowd. I just want to point out that it is pretty difficult to come out for a march that was planned quickly and takes place at 11 a.m. during a work day. When I taught in public schools, it was a good parent-teacher conference turn out if five families came in. Most people work -sometimes two or three jobs. I can't imagine you can tell your boss that you'll be leaving work for a demonstration.


David Koen and Kittee bee-lined it from So. Carolina, beginning the drive at around 5 p.m. on Wednesday and managing to get to the march in time. Here's David, below, wearing a strip of cloth that Kittee tied on his arm from the material she used to make her Helen vegan cupcake banner:



Francine, thank you for leaving this sign for us at our door. It was good to come home to:

People marched by neighborhood. Mine is Central City, which according to many accounts, received a hero's welcome when they arrived at City Hall. Central City was the first neighborhood to be super plagued with murders after the storm. The so-called "Triangle of Death" is within the bounds of this very large neighborhood.

Central City:

From a March 21, 2006 Nolanik post:


Central City at the march, continued...






Bywater, one neighborhood downriver from Marigny:




Gentilly:



The Irish Channel:


Read these signs: