Jazzfest 2006 -- The Music

Though Jazzfest is ostensibly a daytime music festival, many attendees (this writer included) are all about the nighttime gigs. It is possible to see several shows a night without ever reaching the fairgrounds. Fortunately, we caught some daytime shows, like the McDonogh High School Gospel Choir and Paulette Wright in the Gospel Tent, Ellis Marsalis in the Jazz Tent, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux at Congo Square, and Eric Lindell at the Fais Do Do Stage, not to mention a rousing parade through the festival grounds with the Storyville Stompers. And then there were the headliners – Jimmy Buffett, Paul Simon, and Lionel Richie. But as expected, the real action was to be found outside the festival.

Thursday began with a visit to the Louisiana Music Factory on Decatur, a storied record store with a stage set up against a wall in the middle of the room. Johnny Vidacovich and Astral Project played a one-hour set there. For those who don’t know Vidacovich, he has been a New Orleans fixture for many years, and was one of Stanton Moore’s drumming instructors. His band played solid experimental jazz with a funk flavor.

The Greyboy Allstars played Thursday night on the Riverboat Cajun Queen, which departs from the river front and heads up the Mississippi River for a two-set show. The band sounded as good as they ever have. Somehow, the motion of the boat makes any band sound better. The Lil’ Rascals Brass Band kept everyone entertained upstairs during set break. One of the great things about brass bands is that they usually play unamplified, so they know how to hold an audience’s attention. Thursday was no exception.

Later, we made it to the Blue Nile for some old school jazz with Dr. Lonnie Smith & Idris Muhammad (featuring Donald Harrison and Will Bernard). Lonnie Smith is a wizard on the organ, and there was a spiritual element to the music that made the room feel more like a temple than a concert hall. The Greyboys’ own Karl Denson came over to sit in for a tune, and by the end of his solo it was eminently clear who was the master, and who the student. Denson seemed to find a certain humility and abandon that in my opinion is often absent in his playing.

Since it was only 3 am and there was still music playing somewhere, we trucked ourselves up to the Maple Leaf to catch GPS (Willie Green, Renard Poche and Reggie Scanlan). All of these fine players found their way into other late night sets we saw over the weekend. Renard Poche shone on guitar; I didn’t know his music before the weekend, but I definitely knew it well by the time I left New Orleans.

Friday night began at the Contemporary Arts Center with Gov’t Mule, Galactic and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Once upon a time, this venue was Tipitina’s Warehouse during Jazzfest, and hosted the first Superfly concerts back in the day. Since Katrina shuttered many fine venues in town (including the cherished Saenger Theater, which may not recover), the Contemporary Arts Center hosted many shows this year. It’s an odd room, essentially a long brick warehouse with plenty of places for sound to echo and reverberate, and depending where you stood inside it could be pretty hot and humid. However, that didn’t stop us from enjoying great music. Warren Haynes sat in for the end of Galactic’s set, and the Mule played their hearts out.

The Howlin’ Wolf had an incredible line-up of players Friday, with George Porter, Jr., Johnny Vidacovich, Ivan Neville and Shane Theriot backing up a mesmerizing and animated Theresa Andersson. We stuck around long enough to catch a bit of the Wolf’s late night act, Papa Grows Funk, before finding our way to Frenchman street, where the hiss of nitrous tanks and the presence of hundreds of hippies sitting around holding balloons reminded us that the New Orleans of 2006 is a bit more tolerant of lawlessness than it was before, so long as no one’s getting hurt. (And seriously, that photograph of the author was doctored; I haven’t passed out on Frenchman Street since 2002.) We made it to the Howlin’ Wolf to catch Bonerama. I don’t remember much about the set, but getting a cab home at dawn was a bit of a challenge.

Saturday brought us back to the Contemporary Arts Center for the Meters and Robert Randolph. Celia put it aptly when she said, “It doesn’t get any better than hearing the original Meters play Cissy Strut in New Orleans!” And if that had been all, we would have been content, but of course we got plenty of other classics like Fire On The Bayou, Africa (with the “New Orleans” chorus Art Neville has been adding since Katrina), They All Ask’d For You, and a killer Hey Pocky A-Way encore. The Howlin’ Wolf had an excellent free show at 2 am with the Rebirth Brass Band, after which I learned that it was not necessary to visit the Maple Leaf every night of the weekend, and that I could go to bed before dawn without feeling like I’d cheated myself.

Sunday brought us to Tipitina’s for the Original Uptown Allstars, the Rebirth Brass Band and Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk. Dumpstaphunk was the highlight, as George Porter, Jr. and Leo Nocentelli both sat in for several tunes. We headed down after that to the Howlin’ Wolf to catch the Krewe of Zigaboo. Fellow Meter George Porter headed down after his Tip’s set to play with Zigaboo, and several other guests sat in for a truly riveting set. At 5 am, Zigaboo announce that the band was taking a break! Apparently, the show went until 8 am.

We just weren’t ready to leave yet, so we stuck around Monday for more music, namely Robert Walter and Johnny Vidacovich at the Louisiana Music Factory. What a special and intimate place to see music, and what music to see at such a special and intimate venue! We finally got our oyster fix at Acme before trucking back up to the Maple Leaf for Papa Grows Funk to close things out.

After a weekend of great music, and of heartfelt gratitude from the New Orleans music community, I arrived home with a sense that as bad as things still are (and will be for years to come), New Orleans will continue to thrive in the face of its obstacles. Happy Jazzfest!