Fat Tuesday Records is a small label and editorial project in the French Quarter. Since February 2020 we have hosted the Stellarterm Sessions — a monthly live-recording programme at our St Peter Street rooms, documenting New Orleans brass, piano, and vocal tradition one evening at a time. Sixty evenings so far.
Our writing is slow. We publish a handful of articles each year, each drafted by a named editor and each tied, in one way or another, to the musical life of the neighbourhood in which we work. Below: a retrospective on the first five years of the Stellarterm Sessions, and an essay on the second-line tradition that shaped much of what we record.
Since 2020 we have recorded one live session per month at our St Peter Street rooms — sixty evenings of New Orleans brass, piano, and vocal tradition, under the name the Stellarterm Sessions. A retrospective look at what the programme has become.
The second-line parade is the living public form of New Orleans brass music — neither a concert nor a procession in the European sense, but a specific local genre with more than a century of continuous practice. A guide to its history, its music, and where to encounter it today.
"The Stellarterm Sessions were supposed to be a six-month experiment. We rented a room on St Peter Street, bought two microphones, and invited a pianist we knew to come by on a Thursday. Six years later, the sixtieth session is recorded, and we have quietly become the thing we never set out to be — a small label with a small archive."
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