Off the Road
with the
Cadillacs:
Multi-instrumentalist
Tony Seville Shines at his
own French Quarter Club
By Dean M. Shapiro
The dream of many serious professional
musicians is to have their
own music club in a heavily trafficked
location from which to showcase
their talents. Tony Seville is fulfilling
that dream.
A prolific multi-instrumentalist and
vocalist, Tony is the co-owner – along
with his Venezuelan-born wife, Thais
Solano – of the Mahogany Jazz Hall in
the 100-block of Chartres Street in the
French Quarter. For four nights every
week, Tony Seville & The Cadillacs
perform old standards in many musical
genres to the delight of their appreciative
customers, most of whom are visitors to
New Orleans.
“Many of the people we get are amazed
that they can find music of that quality
away from Bourbon Street,” said Tony who
sings and plays trumpet, saxophones, flute
and Latin percussion, all with equal proficiency.
“Often better than what they heard
elsewhere,” he proudly added. “We’ve
gotten a lot of those types of comments.
We get people right off the street as they’re
walking back to their hotels. They hear
the music and they come in and enjoy it.”
For Tony, the journey to owning his
own music club was a long one with
many twists and turns. He spent many
exhausting years on the road, touring
and performing, before coming to New
Orleans about 30 years ago and settling in.
His most visible and perhaps best-remembered
steady gig was performing for ten
years in the house band for Chris Owens’
world-renowned nightclub at Bourbon
and St. Louis streets.
Today, in addition to owning the
Mahogany Jazz Hall, Tony and Thais also
own the Pirate’s Alley Café on Pirate’s
Alley between Royal Street and Jackson
Square. They are into their 16th year of
ownership of the quaint corner bar with
its patio tables, adjacent to the historic
Faulkner House and opposite the side of
St. Louis Cathedral.
Tony’s musical sojourn began in 1969
when he moved from his Midwestern
home to Los Angeles where he played
various gigs and did some recording at
Paramount Studios. “After that I did a
lot of road work, playing the hotel circuit
and I pretty much stayed on the road for
the next 27 years,” he said. He also did a
five-year stretch of one-night stands as the
musical director for a touring children’s
show, “kind of like Sesame Street,” he
added. By 1986 he was based out of New
Orleans and playing gigs at the Landmark
Hotel in Metairie between road work.
Tony’s versatility on horns and other
wind instruments and, to a limited extent
on drums and keyboards, came about in
a very functional way. As he explained,
“I went to band instrument repair school
and I learned how to repair them. And, of
course, you had to test the instruments.
So, little by little, I learned how to play
them and I started playing them on my
gigs.” In the mid-1990s he took a job at
Werlein’s Music on Canal Street repairing
instruments and he did that for about
six years.
Tony’s steady job backing Chris Owens
began in 1998 and lasted, on and off, for
about ten years. He also performed at
the Kelsto Club, formerly headlined by
Gennifer Flowers, on St. Louis Street, and
at the Storyville Jazz Club, as well as other
French Quarter nightspots.
PHOTOGRAPHER DEAN SHAPIRO
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