Tour will bring musical gumbo to Maine

Both Eric Lindell and his adopted hometown are on the rise.

Lindell, who is playing at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Unity Centre for the Performing Arts, is a self-described “skate punk” from Northern California who got turned on to R&B in San Francisco before moving to New Orleans in 1999 and adding reggae, swamp pop and roots rock to his musical gumbo.

Lindell, 37, said it took “about two seconds to get comfortable [in New Orleans], as soon as I got off the plane. Everything had a real comfortable feel to it. There’s a lot of playing going on, a lot of really cool stuff.”

While improving his chops at West Bank dive bars in Gretna and Algiers, La., Lindell began to draw the interest of veteran and more established musicians, who would take in his show or sit in with his band.

“That’s been awesome,” said Lindell by phone from Pensacola, Fla., on his way home to the Crescent City. “To gain the respect of elder musicians means the world to me. It’s nice to get that encouragement from players. People here appreciate each other. It’s a close-knit musical family, and everyone’s got everyone else’s back.”

Lindell, who plays guitar and harmonica, and his band were on the West Coast when Hurricane Katrina hit in late summer 2005.

“It was really scary,” he recalled as he heard about the devastation. “My stomach just dropped. I couldn’t get in touch with my daughter for a week.”

Music in New Orleans is bouncing back, Lindell said.

“There’s been a drastic change in numbers,” he said. “But music is the backbone of the community, and musicians got right back to playing.”

The heavily tattooed Lindell caught a big break last year when he was signed by blues label Alligator Records.

“It’s an honor just to be among that roster of musicians,” he said. “[The label] is known for straight-ahead blues, and to get recognized by them for what I’m doing is really cool.”

“Change in the World,” a collection of 14 songs culled from his earlier self-produced EPs, came out last year. He’s now mixing his second album, recorded at New Orleans’ Piety Street Recording studios.

“We really wanted to make the new record, because those songs have been burning a hole in our pockets,” Lindell said. “We knocked out 18 songs that first night, just the four of us live. We’re really excited about the new record,” due out this fall.

Lindell, touring with lead guitarist Chris Mule, bassist Aaron Wilkinson and drummer Chris Pylant, is looking forward to his first trip to Maine. From his years of playing in Lake Tahoe, he has seen snow before, but New Orleans native Pylant saw the frozen precipitation for the first time at an earlier tour stop in Chicago.

“We’re really excited about coming to Maine,” he said. “We’ve seen pictures and it looks like beautiful country.”

His band is in the midst of its first national tour.

“It was a lot harder touring without Alligator behind me,” Lindell said. “There’s more rhyme and reason to our touring, as we’re following radio play. Recently we had 300 people singing the words to our songs in Virginia, where we’ve never been, and that’s a good feeling.”

Tickets are available by calling 948-7469 or online at www.unityme.org/theater.