Papa Mali comes home to Chickie Wah Wah

The slide guitarist we've logged at 77 New Orleans shows plays the 200-capacity Canal Street room on Saturday night.

Saturday night at Chickie Wah Wah, the slide guitar will be the loudest voice in a small room. Papa Mali plays Chickie Wah Wah on Saturday, November 14, at 9pm, billed on the ticket page as Papa Mali and the Instigators. Tickets run $26.96 to $39.29 through TicketWeb, and the room holds about 200, so this is not a night to decide on at the door.

If you need a number to explain how much of a New Orleans fixture he is: our records show 77 shows here, far more than in any other city. The French Quarter Fest calls him a New Orleans-based singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer, and the route he took to get here runs through most of the musical South.

Papa Mali is Malcolm Welbourne, born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 6, 1957, and raised in Shreveport, where he picked up the guitar young. His slide playing came largely from Shreveport bluesman John Campbell, whose guidance shaped the sound people now know him for. He made his name in the 1980s in Austin, playing reggae with the Killer Bees, and WWOZ tells the story of the stage name: members of Burning Spear started calling him "Papa" after seeing him with his kids, and "Mali" came from Malcolm.

The Instigators came next, a band built on New Orleans rhythms that he put together while still living in Austin; their debut, Thunder Chicken, came out in 2000. Later he joined the Grateful Dead's Bill Kreutzmann and George Porter Jr. in 7 Walkers, a project that also produced "King Cotton Blues," a duet between Papa Mali and Willie Nelson. His solo catalog includes Do Your Thing on Fog City Records, which OffBeat reviewed. We didn't find a new release announced for this fall, so Saturday is about the songs he already has and how he stretches them.

That stretching is the reason to go. He's the kind of player who keeps turning up when the town's best musicians want to stretch out: around Jazz Fest this spring, his name was in the mix of club-night photos Grateful Web gathered from the shows around town.

Reggae in Austin, blues in Shreveport, and the Dead's own drummer on speed dial.

Chickie Wah Wah is the right room for it: small enough that you can watch his hands on the slide from anywhere, and late enough that the night has room to wander. Doors before nine, music at nine, and an easy cab home down Canal.

Sources: French Quarter Fest — Papa Mali bio (frenchquarterfest.org); WWOZ — Papa Mali (wwoz.org); Wikipedia — Papa Mali (en.wikipedia.org); Austin Chronicle — Papa Mali & the Instagators review (austinchronicle.com); OffBeat — Papa Mali, Do Your Thing (Fog City) (offbeat.com); Texas Monthly — 7 Walkers (texasmonthly.com); Grateful Web — The Music Never Stops in New Orleans During Jazz Fest (gratefulweb.com)