Jazz Fest Part 2: No Sleep Till Brooklyn
For many, the eight hours spent roaming among the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival's twelve Fair Grounds Race Course stages is merely a prelude to equally rich nightclubbing in the city itself. While most shows at dozens of area clubs start at nine or ten, many kick off much later, at two or three; these entail either a post-fest nap or a commitment to a kind of ongoing fugue state if you plan on hitting the Fair Grounds in anything less than a zombie trance the following morning.
On Thursday, the evening prior to Jazz Fest's second weekend, our posse warmed up at the legendary Mid-City Lanes Rock 'n Bowl, where Geno Delafose & French Rockin' Boogie and Keith Frank and the Soileau Zydeco Band were playing Creole dance music like "He-Haw Breakdown" and "Stole My Chicken" while we rocked and bowled and ate rice and beans. Chicago improvising rockers Umphrey's McGee worked all kinds of complex grandiosity until 5 a.m. at the House of Blues on Friday night. Saturday night began with the Joe Krown Organ Combo's deeply satisfying funk at the Banks Street Bar, followed by a surprisingly fresh-looking 3 a.m. crowd for a live rap group whose name I never caught. And Sunday night at the Blue Nile belonged to Skerik, a versatile saxophonist-composer whose music sounds richer, fresher, and more daring each time I catch him.
The Sunday Fair Grounds were hot though less crowded than Saturday. The Black Eagles Mardi Gras Indians were in full plumage at the Jazz & Heritage Stage as we drifted in. After picking up coffee and beignets, we made our way over to the Congo Square/Louisiana Rebirth Stage, where Elder Edward Babb & the Madison Bumble Bees of Winnsboro, South Carolina, were praising the Lord with more than a dozen trombones and tubas. Babb, who used to lead New York's McCollough Sons of Thunder Brass Band, is an elder of the United House of Prayer for All People, and his music is a high-energy gospel "shout" tornado inspired by a literal interpretation of Psalm 150 ("Praise him with the sound of trumpet").
With the exception of enjoying Steely Dan with 60,000 others at the Acura Stage, I concentrated on local sounds: the old-timey Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience, Nathan & the Zydeco Cha-Chas, the funky Soul Rebels Brass Band, and, last of all, Beausoleil. Jazz Fest, it has been said, is as much about the music you miss as the music you hear; so if I had to do it over again, and next year I probably will, I might try to find more time for Allen Toussaint, Harry Connick Jr. (seated behind me on our Jetblue flight home), Gilberto Santa Rosa, Dr. Michael White, Galactic, and on and on. Or maybe not.
If this year's edition of Jazz Fest is any indication, things are looking up a little in New Orleans. Attendance obviously exceeded last year's 250,000, and you could detect defiant optimist everywhere—not least of all in John Boutte's references to both Friday's monsoon and Katrina when he sang "They're tryin' to wash us away" in Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927."