Tonight’s the last night to finish up our residency at the infamous Maple Leaf on Oak Street in New Orleans with the incredible Robin Barnes singin’ her face off, Pat Casey bein’ all about dat bass, Thomas Glass holdin’ it down on the drums and yours truly on keyboards and backup vocals.
Here’s a video of us playing last week with Alvin Ford Jr. on the drums. We had a little too much fun last week…

Also it’s Robin’s birthday tonight, so please come celebrate with us! Here is a link to the Facebook event: Maple Leaf Birthday Bash. 
Love y’all and see ya tonight!
xx Sam…

I’m delighted to announce my residency at the New Orleans Mint every Wednesday at 2PM-3PM CST for an hour of piano music. Every week, I will introduce a topic and explain it by performing and singing through the set list.
You can stream it live every Wednesday at 2PM at their website: www.livestream.com/directionofsky and if you’d like, you can dig through the archive to hear many other incredible performances that the Mint has held as well as my past performances….

Very excited to announce the first shows from a newly formed band I’m in called Raw Deal at the Marigny music club called the Maison Frenchmen and 30° x 90°. It’s an incredible cast of musicians which includes, Dexter Gilmore of Sexy Dex and the Fresh manning the vocals and guitar, Noah Young holding down the bass, John Culbreth and Nick Ellman manning the horn section, all of whom hail from the great NOLA-based funk group Naughty Professor, and Reginald Nicholas Jr., of The Brassoholics, who absolutely lays it down on the drums and backup vocals. 
Raw Deal is the brainchild of Noah Young. When Noah approached me, he had an idea for a “party band” playing music we loved and wanted to learn. Noah said three things,…

Welcome to www.samkuslan.com. I’m now officially a website! I’ll be posting here regularly with a mixture of music and photography, commentaries and criticisms, satire and essays, recipes to travel blogs. I like to think of it as lovechild of The New Yorker, Saveur and BBC 4 Extra. 
My first post is a from a collection of photos I took around churches in Uptown New Orleans this past spring. In a little uptown New Orleans neighborhood sits an old white (effectively cream colored now due to years in the sun) Volkswagen Type 2 bus in front of a church parking lot. And in the front of this little bus sat a little Hawaiian hula girl boogieing down! Needless to say, we had ourselves a little photoshoot. This particular photo is among my favorites from that day. I thought she provided some insight into the beautiful New Orleanian culture;…