The Roanoke Times

File 1999 Jimmie Landry plays piano in the Regency Room of The Hotel Roanoke, where he's had a steady gig since 1995.

Traveling musicians often find their lives by accident. It happened that way for pianist Jimmie Landry.

Some 30 years ago, Landry was a 35-year-old musician from Houston by way of New Orleans, traveling the country with a show band called Lady and the Mates. The band came into Roanoke for a six-week stand at the old Red Lion Inn. On one of those nights, he met the woman he would marry.

The couple traveled together for a couple of years but soon settled in the Roanoke Valley, where Landry's wife used to live, to raise their family. They still live here, and for the past dozen years, you could find Landry playing a regular gig at the Hotel Roanoke.

When he thought that job was over (he later got it back), Landry did the only thing that made sense. He started a group, the Gumbo Band, playing the New Orleans music he grew up on and getting a ration of new show dates.

From hotel tuxedoes to T-shirts for club dates and back again, Landry is determined to keep moving forward.

"It's a part of what being a musician is about," he said. "You just deal with whatever you have to deal with to play your music. You can't control business, but you can control your music. Business is just money. Music is creative."

Big Easy education

Landry was born and raised in New Orleans and came up playing in all sorts of Bourbon Street nightclubs. By the time he graduated high school, he was a regular performer in that landmark of American music.

His influences were the best -- pianists Allen Toussaint and Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack and sound engineer/producer Cosimo Matassa, among others. He spent a lot of time at Matassa's J&M studios, where Fats Domino, Earl Palmer, Professor Longhair and others recorded. He got to watch sessions with Toussaint and Rebennack.

"That was a very fertile learning environment," Landry said. "That was school. That was learning. They let me hang around and observe sessions. They were more than willing to share their knowledge and help young players like myself. That's a big part of the New Orleans heritage, to encourage the younger generation."

Before long, Landry was playing such early 1960s Bourbon Street spots as Trader John's, Papa Joe's and El Morocco -- doing a show at one club, then heading to another one for a late-night or early-morning jam session.

"Then you'd go home, sleep all day and work all night," he said.

He was no different from many Big Easy musicians. He had to hit the road. He took a gig with a show band out of Houston and was off to all compass points -- and, eventually, to other bands. But, like most New Orleans players, he had to come back at least every couple of years, he said.

"You've got to go, but you've got to come back to get your batteries recharged," he said. "I never really left New Orleans. I always wanted to go back."

At least until the night he walked into the Red Lion and saw Robin Kilby sitting at the bar.

Fate and love

Kilby was a 20-year-old Virginia Western Community College student and a buffet restaurant employee when she decided on a whim to hit the Red Lion on Franklin Road.

"I hadn't really gone to visit any clubs very much in my life," she said. "I don't know what made me go that night, but I just decided to take a taxi over there that night, hang out and drink."

Not long after she took a seat at the bar, one of the band members walked up and asked if she would want to meet his friend, Jimmie.

"We were both real shy," she said. "But he did come over. We got to talking and everything. We just fell in love, I guess."

She remembered that Landry told her that he went out the next morning for breakfast and spotted a robin outside the restaurant -- "he said it was a sign."

The couple kept talking. She had wanted to go stay with her sister, in Houston. Landry was based in Houston.

"I got a ride with him, and we just hit it off, you know," she said. He dropped her off at her sister's, and "he went on to Columbus, Ohio. We just kept communicating, and we decided to get married."

The couple, who got married less than a year after they met, had two children -- son Louie, now 29 and an Austin-based musician, and daughter Llewellyn, now 28 and a hostess at Corned Beef & Co.

By 1982, Robin Landry was homesick, and the family moved to the Roanoke Valley for good, building a home in Glenvar, where Robin grew up.

Bringing New Orleans to him

Jimmie Landry got work as a pianist around Roanoke, but also spent time on the road. In 1995, he started what would become a longtime gig at the Hotel Roanoke.

He said he had tried to get in via Kings Entertainment Agency, which handles booking at the hotel, but it was taking some time. Then at a private gig, he met Phil Davis, who at the time was an assistant general manager there. Davis brought him into the Hotel Roanoke to work for him, not Kings Entertainment.

But earlier this year, Davis took another job with the company that owns the hotel, taking him away from town, and with him, Landry's ally. Kings Entertainment replaced Landry, though the agency's owner, Perry Calligan, said in an e-mail at the time that Landry would still play there occasionally.

So, now 66, Landry felt he was starting over. He thought about getting back to New Orleans.

"I'd move back there right now, but housing prices are so high after Katrina," he said in an interview that took place weeks before Hurricane Gustav made landfall southwest of New Orleans.

Instead, he started a New Orleans-style band. He also works part-time at American Freestyle Karate in Salem.

Within the past month, Davis returned to Hotel Roanoke and brought Landry back in. The hotel dates aren't quite as frequent now, but Landry's getting other bookings through Kings Entertainment, which hadn't happened under the old arrangement, he said.

"It's been better for me," he said. "It's turned out good."

Gigging around town

These days, you can see Landry and the Gumbo Band playing regularly. Although a regular gig at Blues BBQ fizzled out, Rockfish Food & Wine on Grandin Road started hiring the group. Again, it's turned out for the best, Landry said.

"It's one of the best places to work, actually," he said, adding that Rockfish owners Michael and Olivia Byrd bring enthusiasm and actual music knowledge to the room.

"It's the only place I've worked that at the end of the night, the owners were actually sitting down, listening to the band," he said. "It was just very impressive to have that kind of involvement."

At Blue 5 Restaurant in downtown Roanoke, Landry has started yet another band at owner Kerry Hurley's request. This act is called Mojo, and it's a power funk trio, playing mostly instrumentals with emphasis on jazz instead of blues, he said.

Gumbo Band drummer Rob Vaughan said he is learning a lot from working with Landry.

"He's taught me how to play real swing," said Vaughan, whose father, Hoppie, is a local music veteran, too.

Robin Landry said she has faith in her husband's ability to maneuver through changes in his musical world.

"He's very dedicated to whatever he puts his mind to," she said. "He never tried to get out of working. Even when he was sick, he played music every chance he could."

And those gigs are the products of years of steady work in the region, the ability to play in many styles and the willingness to play practically any kind of date.

"People that get around town like to go out and club, and they know there's only so many good musicians in this area," Jimmie Landry said. "And I hope I can count myself as one of those."