Greg Schatz: upright bass, accordion, backing vocals

I first met Greg at a school spaghetti-dinner/talent show. We were both in the sixth grade. He was easily the youngest and smallest person onstage with a high school jam-band, out front with the mic and a shaker, singing something he made up.

A couple years later a friend and I were in my room messing around with guitars we didn’t know how to play. I had rigged up a tape recorder with stereo inputs. Greg showed up. We gave him a mic and stuck him in the closet so his amp wouldn’t feedback. My buddy and I laid down a primitive blues riff, and Greg improvised some brilliantly hilarious vocals about “don’t you let my chickens run.” We have been collaborators ever since.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties. I had been living in New Orleans for a couple of years, playing on the street with The Big Mess. One spring Greg came to visit. He had been playing electric bass since our high school garage band days, but also played some piano and guitar. He borrowed a toy accordion I had bought at the French Market and proceeded to wow all my bandmates with his playing and showmanship while sitting in on Royal St. (on a toy accordion). They let him know that if he decided to move to New Orleans, he was in. That's just what he did. He bought himself a real accordion, and about a year later he was making his living playing it with the Big Mess.

In 2000 Greg and I started “The Schatzy Band” as an outlet for the songs Greg had been writing at a ridiculous pace. Paul Santopadre and I played behind Greg on vocals, accordion, guitar, mandolin and keyboards, and we recruited a series of bass players. Schatzy has recorded three albums of all-original material, but he has his own website, and a myspace page, which you can check out: www.schatzymusic.com and www.myspace.com/schatzy

After Katrina, Greg split his time for a while between New Orleans and Brooklyn, NY. During that time he and I played several shows in the Northeast and the South as The Deltabilly Duo, which had started in 2004 at the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen St in New Orleans. Greg has since moved back to New Orleans, where he fronts a new version of The Schatzy Band.