Spencer Bohren (English version)

                                               

New Orleans is again mourning the loss of a beloved community member with the death of musician Spencer Bohren, last June 8th.
Bohren's maternal ancestry is Scot-Irish, and his father's family came from Alsace-Lorraine. Born in Casper, Wyoming, he grew up in a Baptist family in Wyoming and spent time in Denver and Boulder, Colorado, southern Oregon, and Seattle, Washington in the early part of his career. In 1976 he began raising a family with his wife, Marilyn, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Bohren performed throughout the United States as well as in Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Mexico, and Japan. He has performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He has also taught at the Fur Peace Ranch. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he hosted a weekly Monday-night jam session at the Tipitina’s music club in New Orleans.
Although he most often worked as a soloist, he performed in several bands, including the Funston Brothers, the Eagle-Ridin' Papa, Butterfat, Rufus Krisp, the Earthtones, and Gone Johnson. He collaborated with folk blues performer Judy Roderick, diesel-billy guitarist Bill Kirchen, opera singer Karen Clift, Dr John, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the vocal duo The Tremors. 

In the academic world, Bohren presented a musical overview of American roots music, a lecture-performance entitled Down the Dirt Road Blues, which traces the journey of a single song, "Dirt Road Blues," from Africa to the days of slavery in the American South, through the modern age. He used appropriate vintage instruments to orchestrate the story as the song evolves from a simple vocal melody to a blues song, a dance number, a hillbilly banjo piece, a country hit, and into the age of rock 'n' roll.
His CD Carry the Word was named "Best CD of the Year 2000 by a Louisiana Artist" by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, and he has won the New Orleans Gambit Weekly’s "Big Easy Award for Best Folk Artist" several times.
He recorded for the Virgin, Sony/France, Valve, Zephyr, Public Road, Last Call, Loft, Alpha, Great Southern, and New Blues labels.
Also a visual artist, Bohren created artworks that he calls "Reliquaries" and shares his philosophy and techniques with interested students of all ages.
Spencer Bohren and his wife Marilyn lived in New Orleans and home-schooled their four children. The family home suffered significant damage during Hurricane Katrina and Bohren wrote the song "Long Black Line" about the experience.
He appears in television drama HBO's "Treme" in 2012.
He participated to the MNOPérigord Tour in Dordogne, France, with his son Andre back in July 2014

Makin’ It Home to You (Valve Records)

His latest album is both a meditation on his lengthy career and a showcase for his latest band, the Whippersnappers, an all-star collection of next-generation players. Spencer’s son Andre plays drums in the Whippersnappers. His bandmates are Alex McMurray on guitar, Dave Pomerleau on bass, Casey McAllister on keyboards and Aurora Nealand on saxophones. They share this easygoing romp through history like the trusted partners they are.
Bohren begins with “Travelin’,” his version of the itinerant musician’s ballad that namechecks cities where he’s played. Bohren sings it Hank Williams–style, carefree but with an underlying desire to return to his New Orleans home. “A Thousand Dusty Miles” is a more uptempo road song driven by Andre’s spirited drumming, Spencer’s cranked up lap steel playing and the nastiest of guitar accompaniments from McMurray. The title track is another song along this theme, a piece written by Clark Vreeland back in the 1970s when he and Bohren played together in a band called Room Service.
Today McMurray is Bohren’s partner in the Write Brothers and Nealand plays with him in Rory Danger and the Danger Dangers. They both, along with Andre, harmonize effectively with Bohren, a collaboration heard to great effect on the gospel shout “I’ve Been Delivered.” Elsewhere the band supports Bohren on the brooding “Thief in the Night,” the beautiful ballad “Is Your Heater Hot Tonight,” the Louisiana inundation tale “The River’s Risin’” and a terrific recounting of the old American folk song “Delia.”
Bohren also performs two songs without the band, a reading of Dolly Parton’s “Lost Forever in Your Kiss” and a rare political piece from Spencer, “In the Absence of the Sacred,” a commentary on current events that needs no explication.

On Sunday, June 23, the Marigny Opera House in New Orleans will host an opportunity to share stories about their friend and to celebrate the life of Spencer Bohren, the beloved musician who died on June 8, 2019.

The event will take place from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m.

Marilyn Bohren said “The focus is Spencer as a man and a chance for people to share their personal stories with one another, much like Spencer has shared conversations his whole life. We will have family favorites of his music playing in the background, but it is not a concert.” In lieu of flowers, the family asks that a gift be made in Spencer’s memory to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s Don Jamison Heritage School of Music.

The Marigny Opera House is located at 725 Saint Ferdinand St.