Meschiya Lake & The Little Big Horns

Fronted by Meschiya Lake — from circus sideshow to Frenchmen Street

Meschiya Lake ran away from the circus to New Orleans — literally. A former glass-eater in a traveling sideshow, she landed in the Crescent City in 2000, learned vintage jazz busking on Royal Street with the Loose Marbles, and built the Little Big Horns into one of the hottest trad bands in town: a Spotted Cat staple, a Big Easy Award winner three years running, and a 2019 Danish Music Award winner for Best Vocal Jazz.

Never heard Meschiya Lake & The Little Big Horns before?

🎵 Notable

Lucky Devil (2010)

🎵 Then Try

Bad Kids Club (2015)

🎵 Also

This Is Meschiya Lake (2019)

“[Meschiya Lake] opens her throat like an air raid siren to croon in a thrilling pre-microphone style.”

— Dan Baum, The New Yorker

Why We Love Meschiya Lake & The Little Big Horns

There is nobody else in New Orleans with Meschiya Lake’s story — circus sideshow glass-eater to Frenchmen Street royalty — and nobody else with her voice, a thrilling pre-microphone instrument that can fill a room without trying. The Little Big Horns don’t do museum-piece trad jazz; they do the sweaty, danceable, joyful kind, the kind that packed dance halls in 1930 and packs the Spotted Cat now. Three Big Easy Awards, a Danish Grammy, tours across Europe — and at the center of it, a bandleader who learned show business the hard way and makes it look like the most fun on earth.

Biography

The Circus Runaway Who Became Frenchmen Street Royalty

Meschiya Lake was born in Oregon and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota, where she won an adults-only singing contest at age nine — the prize was $500 and a weekly club gig, and she was hooked. In her early twenties she joined a touring renegade circus troupe, the Know Nothing Family Zirkus Zideshow, where glass-eating was her specialty, alongside fire dancing and insect eating. When the troupe spent its off-season in New Orleans in 2000, Lake fell for the city’s beautiful dilapidation and — in her words — ran away from the circus to make it her home.

In 2007 she connected with the Loose Marbles, a traditional jazz band and dance crew famous for exuberant French Quarter busking, and calls the years that followed her “jazz boot camp.” They busked Royal Street, held a residency in New York’s Washington Square Park, and won over swing dancers across the country. Lake added guitar and banjo to her arsenal — and then decided she was done being a sideman. A year later she was at the helm of her own band: the Little Big Horns, the name an ironic tip of the hat to her home state’s most famous landmark.

Meschiya Lake’s powerful singing, millennial mindset, and infectious, danceable repertoire have made her a favorite of both old and young traditional jazz fans from Frenchmen Street to France.

— WWOZ

Things moved fast. The self-produced debut Lucky Devil (2010) was named one of the four top New Orleans releases of the year on NPR’s All Things Considered, and Lake was voted Female Performer of the Year at the Big Easy Awards three years running. The Little Big Horns became a staple of the New Orleans club scene — most famously at the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street — and a regular on the road, touring Europe and playing Lincoln Center, Brazil’s I Love Jazz Festival, and Denmark’s Tønder Festival. Foolers’ Gold (2013) and Bad Kids Club (2015) followed, and in 2013 and 2014 OffBeat’s Best of the Beat poll named her Best Female Singer and the Little Big Horns Best Trad Band. She was even named First Lady of Jazz at the 2013 Sun Valley Jazz Festival — and along the way lent her voice to studio sessions for Tom Waits.

Her 2019 collaboration with Danish bandleader Søren Siegumfeldt, This Is Meschiya Lake, won the Danish Music Award for Best Vocal Jazz — the “Danish Grammy.” From glass-eating in a sideshow to the grandest stages in Europe, Lake has built one of the most joyful careers in traditional jazz on sheer force of personality, a voice that needs no microphone, and a band that swings like the dance halls of 1930 never closed.