Income to be donated to Red Cross, Musicians’ Fund

By MOLLY DRYMAN

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE — A LaPlace-based band called Desire Street has received recognition on the Internet and local radio stations for a personal song about surviving Hurricane Katrina.

Husband and wife Freddy and Tracy Gonzales make up the Desire Street Band, Freddy doing the music and Tracy doing the singing. They have performed all over New Orleans and locally for more than 20 years including almost all of the clubs in New Orleans, the Andouille Festival, Sacred Heart Fair, Tipatina’s and the Treasure Chest. In LaPlace, they have performed at Foxxy’s, Airline Motors and The Ugly Hound.

“I didn’t want to be one of those people who wrote a song about the hurricane,” Freddy said. “But I was inspired by the fact that for so long everyone kept saying the big one will come one day and it did, and one day I was just listening to the radio, and it all started with the words I will survive then it just went on from there.”

The song is called “We Will Survive” and it is featured on the band’s website www.desirestreetband.com as well as on other websites such as neworleansband.com and infozone.net, which named the song an anthem for New Orleans. The song has been played and is the number one listened-to song on KBON 101.1 in Lafayette.

“We are setting up the website where people can buy the song for a dollar and the proceeds will go to the American Red Cross and to the New Orleans Musicians Fund,” Freddy said. “We are working with Pay-Pal in order to do this. I think the thing that sets our song from the others is

that the others tell about what happened and ours is more of a message of hope for the people.”

Freddy said they did the song just for friends and family to hear and relate to.

“We had no idea it would be on the radio and the Internet,” he said. “It was never done to make money or to cash in on a bad situation. It came straight from the heart and never expected to go any further.”