Soggy Po’ Boys bring New Orleans flair to The Press Room every Tuesday night

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The music that’s inspired by the city of New Orleans embodies special characteristics that other styles can’t match. It’s a vibrant blend of jazz, funk, blues and folk that gets people dancing and creates an atmosphere that’s welcoming and inclusive. Different parts of the country have occasions where this feeling is abundant, including Tuesday nights at The Press Room in Portsmouth.

That’s where the Soggy Po’ Boys play on a weekly basis for a residency that’s become a staple of the city’s nightlife. It starts at 9 p.m. and it goes all night long while creating a fun evening for everyone involved.

I had a talk with vocalist/guitarist Stu Dias, trombonist Josh Gagnon, pianist Mike Effenberger and bassist Scott Kiefner about how the band started, how this weekly gig came to be and plans to release a new album later this year.

Rob Duguay: The Soggy Po’ Boys are known for their music having a New Orleans influence, so what made you all want to gravitate to this particular style when the band was starting out?

Stu Dias: I think all of us enjoy the music of New Orleans in one way or another. We first had an occasion to play it and it felt better than we initially thought, it felt like a natural thing to do. As we explored it more and more, we just discovered a depth to the music that a lot of us had sort of written off. We think of this type of music as traditional, simplistic and things like that and I think we were collectively amazed at how much depth there was to the music with so many different threads to pull on. There’s also so many different subgenres within New Orleans music, so there was ample room to explore and we also found different elements that we each gravitated towards.

I think that, along with a lot of gigs, helped us really hone our style as well as really fall in love with the music.

RD: Very cool. How did you all initially meet up to start this band? Did you all go to school together? Were you all in different bands beforehand?

Mike Effenberger: It’s sort of the latter. All of us were playing around the Seacoast area in New Hampshire, so we knew each other from various bands, projects and recordings. Then we all came together to start the Soggy Po’ Boys once we all realized how much the music mattered to us.

RD: With this Tuesday night residency at The Press Room in Portsmouth, how were you guys able to get this regular gig?

SD: Relatively speaking, our residency at The Press Room is somewhat of a recent thing. We’ve had a residency for a very, very long time, there was one run of a residency that we had at Sonny’s in Dover that lasted around seven years. Early on when we were sort of getting started, we were testing it out to see if this would work, but it ended up being vital for our development because that’s how we would test out new material and try different arrangements. The residency shows are a bit more casual than a formal gig, but that’s where if you’re in the audience you’ll be able to see us trying out new things, new ideas and new arrangements. The venue where we had been doing the residency before the pandemic no longer did live music on the other side of it, so The Press Room had reopened at that point and it was the most natural fit for us.

We reached out to them and they thought it was a good idea, so we’re there every Tuesday.

RD: What can folks expect when they show up to an edition of the residency? What makes this particular show stand out?

Josh Gagnon: The way that we utilize the residency is a combination of things. One is to introduce new material into the band, both original music and music that’s from the New Orleans tradition that we really love. We try to hone that into the Po’ Boys sound as well as revisiting some stuff that we played previously in our past albums which maybe has come out of the rotation and we’d like to introduce back into it. It allows us to engage with the Seacoast community in New Hampshire and play with some new musicians that are coming to town or even some students in the area who may want to see what the music is all about in a more casual setting. It allows for a more open environment in that respect.

RD: That’s great. It seems like a very positive atmosphere. Outside of the residency at The Press Room, what are The Soggy Po Boys plans for the coming months? Can we expect a new album at some point this year?

Scott Kiefner: We actually just got out of the studio the other weekend to finish up a new album, so we’re sort of in the process of getting it mixed and mastered and we should be releasing that in the fall. I think the fall is the plan, but we have a new crop of original songs. Our last two albums have largely consisted of songs from the New Orleans canon and we have a few standards on the new record, but we’ve also written some new material in the vein of New Orleans music with our own unique perspective.