NBC 17 - Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill

'Soup Bowl Refugee' Finds Stage In Raleigh
Displaced Musician Sings Blues At Local Club
September 7, 2005

RALEIGH, N.C. -- New Orleans has always been known for Mardi Gras and as the home of great jazz and blues musicians.

Now, when you hear the Big Easy's name, you think of crisis and devastation. The city where the music never stops had its music drowned out by floodwaters and the cries of Hurricane Katrina's victims.

But the music is starting back up again in the Triangle, where some of New Orleans' displaced musicians are finding a place to play again.

"My name is Jeremy Lyons and my group in New Orleans is the Jeremy Lyons and the DeltaBilly Boys."

Lyons's agile fingers pluck the strings of his guitar -- notes and lyrics inspired by unparalleled sense of loss.

"I'm up here in North Carolina, traveling to meet my family in the northeast and try to start over again," Lyons told NBC-17.

Lyons is starting over and singing the blues again after a week on the move thanks to Katrina.

"It's hard for me to absorb it all right now," Lyons said. "People refer to the flooding in New Orleans as the 'soup bowl effect,' so, I consider myself a soup bowl refugee."

A refugee who's landed temporarily at the doors of the Pour House Music Hall in Raleigh.

"I hope that everybody will open up their establishments," Marianne Taylo, the clubs manager, told NBC-17. "Because, the musicians from New Orleans not only don't have a home, they don't have a place to play."

Lyons said it was difficult to play at the club. He said he had a mixture of emotions and wasn't sure how he would handle it.

"I'm trying to think of it as a glass half full, trying to make lemonade with the lemons kind of thing," Lyons said.

Lyons is in the process of moving to Boston.

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