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Major League Soccer wants to be taken more seriously. Yet MLS still lags behind the top European leagues. Bringing Lionel Messi to play in America could change that.

This is American Routes, twenty years after the storm and flood that left 80% of New Orleans underwater. We’re still rebuilding. Many New Orleanians haven’t come back; areas of the city remain empty, and musical leaders and recovery advocates like Dr. John and Allen Toussaint have passed. Some things have changed for the better, but we still remember what it was like before the storm. New Orleans soul singer Irma Thomas was among many who lost everything to Katrina: her home and her beloved nightclub, the Lion’s Den. Irma set up a temporary home in Gonzales, LA, about forty miles upriver. When Irma returned to her New Orleans house for the first time, the muck was deep. Seven feet of floodwater ruined everything inside except for a few posters on the wall. Two years after the storm, she was back living in New Orleans East and working on the house. We caught up with her in that year, while her front fence was being spray-painted.

The Angola 3 refers to three men convicted of murdering a prison guard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary more than 40 years ago, in 1972. Robert King,…

Making a home in Southeastern Louisiana has always meant risk of flooding. While some families in low lying coastal parishes elevated their homes in the…

Noted writer, historian and former This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell will be in town to speak at Tulane’s Freeman Auditorium on Wednesday, April…

For Black residents from the South, during the Great Migration North in the 1940's and 50's, gospel music defined the sacred side of life. In Chicago, churches served as places of community, musical joy, and healing. A tradition of quartet singing grew with groups like the Clefs of Cavalry, Holy Wonders, and the Highway Q.C.’s. These groups toured on gospel circuits nationwide, had record deals and radio shows. Group members often changed; Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, and Johnnie Taylor had all been in the Highway Q.C.’s before each turned to secular music. Spencer Taylor Jr. was a member of the Holy Wonders when the Q.C.’s came calling in the 1950s. I sat down with Mr. Taylor and his son, Spencer Taylor III, of the Highway Q.C.’s, to talk about his long life leading the ensemble.

This is American Routes, and you can’t do a show about the blues without stopping by a juke joint, and I know a great one. It’s Teddy’s Juke Joint, right along Blues Highway 61 in Zachary, LA. It’s a small double shotgun house, at the end of a gravel road, lit up by Christmas lights all year round. Inside you’ll find good times and good blues music served up by Lloyd Johnson Jr., a well-dressed bear of a man in a red suit, sporting a large cowboy hat, and better known to the regulars as Teddy.

Baton Rouge guitarist, harp player and singer Kenny Neal is a second-generation leader in the city’s blues scene, born into a family of ten children. Kenny’s father Raful Neal was a noted harmonica player, influenced by Little Walter and played in a local band with Buddy Guy. Raful Neal’s friend Slim Harpo gave son Kenny Neal his first harmonica at age three. Kenny started playing bass for his father at thirteen and went on to Buddy Guy’s band. Later, he recruited his siblings to form the Neal Brothers Blues Band. In 1989, Kenny recorded a breakout swamp blues LP Big News from Baton Rouge for Alligator Records. His fine guitar work and harmonica, as well as authoritative voice, carried him forward making sixteen more records. Kenny carries on the Baton Rouge blues tradition. Let’s go to to the Juke Joint stage at West Baton Rouge Parish Museum with Kenny Neal.

For your consideration, the life of the late George Frayne, an aspiring track star and artist turned rock and roller back during the tumult of the 1960s. You know him as Commander Cody, the pianist and titular leader of the Lost Planet Airmen, an original roots rock band from Ann Arbor to San Francisco and beyond. The band had a large swashbuckling personae, “Lost in the Ozone” on their high road through atmospheric times. The Old Commander says he began life en route to somewhere.

This is American Routes Live from Marigny Studios with jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison and Quintet. I talked with Donald between songs about his life in music, from growing up in New Orleans to playing with Art Blakey in New York, and putting his own stamp on modern jazz.