How Sweet Crude Celebrated Its Album Release After Recovering From COVID-19

XPN | By Gwen Thompkins,

Gwen Thompkins, John Myers

Published June 24, 2020 at 12:27 PM EDT

Sweet Crude, a six-piece band from New Orleans, combines English and Louisiana French, a dialect that has evolved over hundreds of years, mostly in southern Louisiana. The band's percussive sound is the result of classical training and youthful enthusiasm.

The group was on the road when the pandemic hit the United States. Soon after Sweet Crude cut its tour short and headed home, its primary singers, Sam Craft and Alexis Marceaux, got sick from the coronavirus.

In this session, World Cafe New Orleans correspondent Gwen Thompkins talks to Sam and Alexis, who describe their very different experiences with COVID-19. And you'll hear the uniquely New Orleanian story of how the band celebrated the release of its new album, Officiel//Artificiel, after Sam and Alexis recovered. It all begins with a live recording of the track "Cogo."

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Gwen Thompkins

Gwen Thompkins is a New Orleans native, NPR veteran and host of WWNO's Music Inside Out, where she brings to bear the knowledge and experience she amassed as senior editor of Weekend Edition, an East Africa correspondent, the holder of Nieman and Watson Fellowships, and as a longtime student of music from around the world.

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Gwen Thompkins

Gwen Thompkins hosts Music Inside Out on WWNO in New Orleans.

John Myers

Since 2017, John Myers has been the producer of NPR's World Cafe, which is produced by WXPN at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Previously he spent about eight years working on the other side of Philly at WHYY as a producer on the staff of Fresh Air with Terry Gross. John was also a member of the team of public radio veterans recruited to develop original programming for Audible and has worked extensively as a freelance producer. His portfolio includes work for the Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, The Association for Public Art and the radio documentary, Going Black: The Legacy of Philly Soul Radio. He's taught radio production to preschoolers and college students and, in the late 90's, spent a couple of years traveling around the country as a roadie for the rock band Huffamoose.

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