November 9-15
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2026 Volume 47 Number 45
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GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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Merry Merry
CONTE NTS
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NOV 9 — NOV 15, 2026 VOLUME 47 || NUMBER 45
IN THE MI X We Belong Festival Preview ... 13 Dave Jinx................................ 14 Disco Donnie .......................... 15 Nola EDM ............................... 16 Nola DNB ............................... 17 Set de Flo ............................... 19 Bouffant Bouffant ................... 21 Female Trouble ...................... 23 Legatron Prime ....................... 24 Rusty Lazer ............................ 25
Gifts and Holiday Decor!
NE WS Opening Gambit ....................... 8 Blake Pontchartrain ................. 9
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In the mix
Its a good time for electronic music in New Orleans
Arts & Entertainment................ 7 Eat & Drink ............................. 28 Music Listings ........................ 34 Going Out ............................... 37 Puzzles ................................... 39 COVER PHOTO BY TAYLOR CASTILLO COVER DESIGN BY DORA SISON
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Burning bright
Skankfest
LUNA Fete brings giant puppets, light installations and more ZOZOBOT IS A GIANT HARLEQUIN CLOWN, sitting and staring into what looks like a telescope. People can sit in his hand and look up through the device, which is actually a massive kaleidoscope. Local actor and artist Walker Babington and his team at Sabatom Studios created Zozobot in 2024 to take to Burning Man, the massive annual festival in the Nevada desert. “Burning Man is the Super Bowl of big, weird art,” Babington says. Although built here, Zozobot will make its first public appearance in New Orleans this week at LUNA Fete, the annual festival of light and art installations. It runs 5-10 p.m. daily, Nov. 13-15, from Lafayette Square to Piazza D’Italia. Admission is free to most of the festival, and there’s also a silent disco. “Zozobot looks like a 100-year-old giant clown toy,” Babington says. “It sat down 100 years ago and rusted into that position.” Zozobot has a steel frame covered in reclaimed wood and sheet metal stenciled with harlequin designs. His face is made of fiberglass that can be illuminated from within. The tips of his shoes were fashioned from large propane tanks. Seated, he is 24 feet tall, and Babington estimates that he’d be 50 feet tall if he could stand up straight. At LUNA Fete, he may be surrounded at times by costumed members of the Satabom team. The figure is interactive in that viewers can sit in his hand and look at the kaleidoscope, which uses light and video. Creating such a massive figure to mount a small viewing peephole is grandly whimsical, but Babington had more on his mind. “It’s an allegory for artificial intelligence,” he says. “It’s a giant, fun plaything that’s built for enjoyment, but while we use it, it is studying us and learning about us and learning what humanness is through how we interact with it.” He notes that the concept has become increasingly timely as the use of AI has become controversial. “It’s not anti-AI,” Babington says. “It’s just that we’re responsible for that which we put out. We have core responsibility for everything we put out in the world.” Babington has attended and created installations at Burning Man numerous times since he first went in 2008. Zozobot has been on display at the Hermitage Museum & Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia, for much of the last year, before being brought home in the past week.
Zozobot at Burning Man in 2024 PHOTO PROVIDED BY WALKER BABINGTON
Locals may be familiar with Babington and Sabatom’s work. He and other artist parents created Bed Zeppelin, a Victorianlooking dirigible tethered to a mattress, for Carnival last year. At White Linen Night, it was part of an expo of art, installations and vehicles made for Burning Man at Arthur Roger Gallery on Julia Street. Zozobot doesn’t move while on display, but it fits LUNA Fete’s focus on puppets this year. The festival features five artists or groups presenting puppets or large moving sculptures in Lafayette Square. Three are mobile and will parade each night, moving around the park and going down Lafayette Street to the Piazza D’Italia and back. Another artist group, Milagros, will create an interactive space that festival attendees can enter. “Troubled Waters” is a collaboration between Samille Ganges, who creates work as Plantainfutures, and Pandora Gastelum, founder of the Mudlark Public Theatre and the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival. Their work features three giant mermaids, which are essentially lanterns with lightweight plastic skin that is responsive to heat and reflects light. The goddess-like mermaids are mythical figures that watch over Louisiana’s Gulf, rivers and bayous. The piece was created to remember and honor people lost or affected by Cancer Alley and the degradation of the environment.
by Will Coviello
“The mermaids are the keepers of these memories,” Gastelum says. “We’re trying to push back in a gentle way, with beauty and light. We’re trying to emphasize this critical issue that affects all of us and has affected us personally as well.” Also part of their installation is a grotto formed by what look like whale bones, also hung with lanterns. Much of the installation is movable and will be paraded during LUNA Fete. After the festival, the artwork will be installed at the Mid-City branch of the New Orleans Public Library, and at some point, they’ll lead a workshop on making lantern puppets. Artist Jaime Bird’s giant sculpture also is a sort of lantern. She’s creating a 12-foot gar fish that also will be paraded. She’s a longtime member of Aquarium Gallery, and this piece also reflects work on water environments and ancient creatures. Monsters of the Underground, both an art collective and Bywater shop and art space, also are parading giant swamp creatures that will require a team of puppeteers to operate. Their main figure is Lumo, a 10-foot, glowing protector of the swamps, made of fabric and soft sculpture. Lumo will reveal more about his nature on parade and in the square. Other major components of LUNA Fete are projection mapping works featuring videos projected on Gallier Hall and other buildings. Dohm Collective brings its multichannel silent disco and light show to Piazza D’Italia during the festival. DJs change every hour and night. Admission to the Piazza is $15, and children under 13 get in free. LUNA Fete also has an arts market, a wellness area and two clusters of food vendors. There’s a VIP area, and food and drinks are included with admission. LUNA Fete is presented by Arts New Orleans, formerly known as the Arts Council of New Orleans. The event was created in 2014 and has focused on projection mapping and art and light installations. It returns this year after the 2025 event was postponed due to funding issues. For more information, go to lunafete.org.
The comedy festival returns to New Orleans with more than 120 touring comics on multiple stages in a rowdy carnival atmosphere at Mardi Gras World on Nov. 13-15. Headliners including Mark Normand, Matt Braunger, Sam Tallent, Big Jay Oakerson, Doug Stanhope, Shane Gillis, Jim Norton, Eric Andre, Maddy Smith, Kurt Metzger, Luis J. Gomez, Maddy Kelly and more. There also are podcast tapings, a market and more. Single-day tickets start at $262.83 and festival passes also are available at skankfest.com.
Mark Normand FILE PHOTO
New Orleans Fringe Festival The alternative theater festival presents more than 40 shows in a cluster of venues in Marigny and Bywater including New Marigny Theater, AllWays Lounge & Cabaret and Siberia on Nov. 12-15. There’s plenty of alternative theater, burlesque, circus arts, puppetry, dance, solo shows and genre mashups. The box office is at New Marigny Theater. Most shows are about an hour long and they start on odd hours, beginning at 3 p.m. at many venues. Individual show tickets vary from $10-$20, and day and festival passes are available. Visit nolafringe.org for information.
Mannequin Pussy, Wednesday Indie punk band Mannequin Pussy and Ashville, North Carolina’s Wednesday co-headline this tour. Mannequin Pussy whiplashed through highs and lows of 10 songs in 30 minutes on its 2024 album “I Got Heaven.” Wednesday’s repertoire ranges from alt-country to shoegaze sounds. Nashville punk band Snooper also performs at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10, at Civic Theatre. Tickets $51.25 and up via ticketmaster.com. PAGE 33
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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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OPENING GAMBIT
NEW ORLEANS NEWS + VIEWS
Electronic music is good for the soul.
#
THUMB S UP/ THUMBS DOWN
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City Council recently voted to rename the Treme Recreation Community Center to the Jerome Smith Treme Center to honor the late civil rights leader and community activist affectionally nicknamed Big Duck. Smith also co-founded Tambourine & Fan in 1968 to mentor youth and pass on New Orleans cultural traditions. He died Aug. 21 at the age of 87.
The Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice now owns its home, the former St. Rose de Lima Church on Bayou Road. The Black-led performing arts center had been leasing the space since 2022 and recently purchased the 13,400-squarefoot building for $1.9 million after raising $500,000 for a down payment. The ACC will throw a fundraising celebration on Nov. 14 featuring musician AJ Haynes and spoken word by Donney Rose, TETRA and more.
Louisiana continues to have the highest poverty rate in the U.S. alongside Mississippi, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey. It’s the third year in a row for the Bayou State, where one in six residents live below the poverty line. The state’s Black residents also experience poverty at more than twice the rate of white residents.
THE COUNT
The percentage of eligible voters in Louisiana who cast ballots in the Nov. 3 election. According to the Secretary of State, that figure includes 448,525 in-person votes and 72,417 absentee votes. Of those voters, 221,066 were registered Democrats and 205,085 were registered Republicans, while over 92,000 were registered with no party affiliation. Election day turnout is expected to be higher than usual across Louisiana and the U.S. as a whole, amid sinking support for Republicans.
City Council President JP Morrell. PHOTO BY ENAN CHEDIAK / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
New Orleans voters approve city home rule charter budget amendment NEW ORLEANS VOTERS NOV. 3 OVERWHELMINGLY APPROVED A CHANGE
to the city’s home rule charter placing restraints on the mayor’s ability to shift money between priorities and giving the City Council greater control of the city’s purse strings. The charter amendment, authored by City Council President JP Morrell, comes in response to former Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s mismanagement of city funds that put New Orleans into a major budget crisis for the last year and a half. But the problem has been a longstanding one as administration’s have used their authority to essentially ignore the council’s appropriations decisions and use funds for priorities it had not approved – often without ever telling anyone. The amendment, which was passed by 61 percent of voters in the city, will create new controls on how the mayor
can use city funds, give the council greater authority over any efforts to shift funding and require greater reporting by the executive branch. The vote can as part of Tuesday’s historic election. Republican Rep. Lulia Letlow narrowly beat Democratic candidate Jamie Davis, securing just over 25,857 votes, accounting for roughly 1.8 percent of the vote. Davis, a Black farmer from Tensas Parish, entered the race as a virtual unknown at a time when the state Democratic Party was in shambles. With virtually no national support until the waning days of the election, the fact that Davis was able to mount such an impressive campaign was remarkable. Davis has hinted he’ll run against Gov. Jeff Landry next year. Landry, who is not popular even in strongly conservative areas of the state, is a champion of data center construction in Louisiana. — John Stanton
C’EST W H AT
?
The Poor Clares are moving from their Uptown monastery and selling items. What’s the surprise find in the estate sale?
15.9%
A GLOW IN THE DARK ROSARY
38.6%
THE HOLY GRAIL (REALLY JUST A GREAT KREWE OF KING ARTHUR CHALICE)
20.5%
A BUDDY CHRIST STATUE FROM ‘DOGMA’
25%
A BLU-RAY COPY OF ‘THE EXORCIST’
Vote on “C’est What?” at www.bestofneworleans.com
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BLAKE PONTCHARTRAIN™ @GambitBlake | askblake@gambitweekly.com
Hey Blake,
THIS WEEK WE WISH A VERY HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY TO JON BATISTE, the immensely talented Louisiana native whose list of
I saw a poster in a consignment shop for the 1981 Hammond Balloon Festival. It says it was the “third annual,” but what can you tell me about its history? Is there still such an event?
Dear Reader, THE HAMMOND BALLOON FESTIVAL was introduced
to the Tangipahoa Parish city in 1979. Local leaders, looking for a way to attract visitors and boost business, came up with the idea of capitalizing on national interest in hot air balloon racing and similar events. “We had a fellow by the name of Don Grimes move here from Albuquerque a couple of years ago and he brought his balloon with him,” Noel Poirier told The Times-Picayune in April 1980. Poirier, a licensed pilot, also served on the board of the Hammond Chamber of Commerce, which ran with the idea of a balloon festival. Poirier became its chairman. According to the newspaper, in its first year, the festival drew 10,000 people to watch 15 balloons take off from the Hammond airport. One of the races started at the New Orleans lakefront and crossed Lake Pontchartrain, although only one balloonist attempted it, due to bad weather.
Former channel 4 anchor Bill Elder flew his 1943 Stearman airplane in Hammond Balloon Festival air shows in the 1980s. FILE PHOTO / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
In the festival’s second year, the number of balloons rose to nearly 40, while the crowd grew to 25,000. Other aircraft also were added, including military and vintage planes, parachutists and skydivers. In 1985, WWL-TV news anchor and investigative reporter Bill Elder flew his vintage World War II plane in an aerobatic routine, according to The Times-Picayune. The festival grew over the next decade before taking what was supposed to be a short hiatus in 1992. It ended up lasting more than a decade. In 2014, city leaders — including Mayor Pete Panepinto, himself a pilot — launched an effort to revive the event, which returned in 2018. Now called the Hammond Northshore Regional Airshow, it is scheduled every two years. Next year’s is planned for October 30 and 31, 2027.
musical accomplishments includes eight Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and many others. Born Nov. 11, 1986, in Metairie and raised in Kenner, Batiste is a member of the famed musical family which includes the Batiste Brothers Band and brass band legends Milton and “Uncle” Lionel Batiste. He began performing as a child, playing drums then switching to piano at age 11. Batiste graduated from St. Augustine High School and NOCCA before studying at the prestigious Juilliard School. He released his first album at age 17 and later, as a solo artist and with his band Stay Human, produced a dozen others. The two he released this year feature his interpretations of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Thelonious Monk. In 2015, Batiste rose to national prominence as bandleader and musical director on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” In 2020, he co-wrote the score for the Pixar animated film “Soul,” earning him an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and Grammy Award. In 2022, he conducted the premiere of his first symphony at Carnegie Hall, which was chronicled in the documentary film “American Symphony,” which also documents his wife Suleika Jaouad’s battle with leukemia. Batiste is a favorite at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and was featured on both the 2022 and 2026 posters. One of his latest projects is composing the original score for next year’s Amazon MGM Studios film release “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
“ In the early days of COVID, Juliet got really sick.
During that time, her heart stopped twice. Thankfully, the doctors were able to bring her back. Because of Louisiana Blue, we didn’t have to worry about paying for the care she needed. We were able to focus on her recovery. Now she’s healthy and we’re all back to normal. Sometimes normal is the best thing. Boring is wonderful! “
Right Card. Right Care.
Happy Dad 01MK8362 08/26
Happy Daughter Covington
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BLAKEVIEW
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
10
IN THE
mix
It’s a good time for
electronic music in New Orleans B Y JA K E C L A P P NEW ORLEANS ISN’T USUALLY THOUGHT OF
as an electronic dance music town, which is understandable. Afterall, the city is the birthplace of jazz, and funk, hip-hop and bounce are in our blood. But there has long been an electronic music scene in New Orleans, which grew out of those Black American music roots of jazz, funk and soul. From the mid-’90s to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was the spot for Southern club kids who wanted to listen to house, drum 'n' bass or techno, from Houston to Atlanta. Like a lot of things, though, Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures changed that, scattering the DJs and promoters across the globe. But a new generation is again setting dance floors on fire across the city and attracting well-known touring DJs to spin at bars, dance clubs and festivals. The electronic scene was on full display this past Halloween. Across the city, DJs were spinning into the early morning hours, keeping dance floors packed and partygoers sweating. There were a lot of options in New Orleans for people who wanted to dance on Oct. 31. Uptown, witches and goblins roamed Oak Street for Ghoul’s Ball, dipping into Paulie’s, Z’otz, Vino, Aguasanta and more venues for DJs playing house, techno, Miami bass, hiphop and anything in between. Through the back of Vino and down a dark hallway, Sao Paolo-based The Grouch DJ spun a vinyl set of global funk and disco. And a makeshift theater, accessed through Z’otz showed horror movies into the early morning. Over at Poor Boys on St. Bernard Avenue, red lights and cobwebs set the vibe for Set De Flo as DJs KILOBAUUD, C’est Funk,
N*S*F*W* — the techno trio of D1ME, Gabriela and Lady Lavender — and New York’s WTCHCRFT played high-energy sets until the sun started to peek outside. N*S*F*W* picked things back up the next night down the block at The Crypt with Sana and Tristan Dufrene. Meanwhile, British house DJ Chris Lorenzo, melodic bass producer William Black and more were playing Mardi Gras World for the second night of Freaky Deaky’s first New Orleans edition. The electronic dance music festival has become a staple of Austin’s Halloween weekend, and this expansion brought Porter Robinson, Of the Trees, CID, Bradeazy, Distant Matter and more big names in dance music to New Orleans. Aliyuhhh and Funke played Dew Drop Inn. Cypriestess and Eden — two DJs in the trio Female Trouble — could be seen at Anna’s. Siisko hosted another edition of Club Chido, a party blending Latin, Caribbean and New Orleans sounds into dance music. For anyone needing more, the online platform Pleasure Savior pulled together a weekend events round-up while also organizing Ghoul’s Ball. Halloween in New Orleans, of course, is going to offer a lot to do. But New Orleans’ dance music community has been busy in the last few years. The city’s nightlife calendar right now is full of dance parties, DJ residencies and special events at small bars, like Anna’s and Domino, and dance-focused venues like Republic, Rabbit Hole and the Metropolitan. There are DJs playing house, Miami bass, techno, drum 'n' bass, footwork, dubstep and any number of subgenres that fall under the large electronic dance music umbrella. “I think [the community] is in a healthy place,” says KILOBAUUD, the DJ and pro-
Electronic dance music festival We Belong Here hosts a New Orleans edition Nov. 13-15. PROVIDED PHOTO BY CHRIS LAVADO
ducer behind Set De Flo. “Kids are trying new shit. They’re trying to establish a new fabric and push the lines.” Gambit spoke with a dozen New Orleans DJs, producers and event promoters about today’s community, and on the following pages, readers will find Q&As with them about different aspects of the scene. And this weekend, dance music festival We Belong Here, which started in 2021 in Miami, will take over Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park Friday, Nov. 13, through Sunday, Nov. 15. The lineup includes Odesza, a three-hour sunset set by Carl Cox, Sammy Virji and Steve Angello along with a number of New Orleans DJs and a stage takeover by Set De Flo (read more on page 13). “If you like a kind of dance music — if you just like to dance, you are fucking cooking,” says Rusty Lazer, who performs with DJ Messy as the live remix duo Chore Boys. “There is a sound for everybody. There is a vibe for everybody.” NEW ORLEANS IS KNOWN AS A LIVE MUSIC CITY, and
much of the city’s music is made to dance and groove to. But DJs have long been a cornerstone of New Orleans’ modern music culture.
In the ’70s, New Orleans had a number of popular DJs, like Sabu — the father of iconic DJ and producer Mannie Fresh — DJ Carriere and DJ Brees, who spun R&B, funk, soul and disco in nightclubs and at block parties. DJ Slick Leo then kicked the door open for hip-hop in New Orleans with his shows at the Famous Disco and the Civic and on-air at WAIL 105, and a number of hip-hop DJs followed in the ’80s. Bounce artists like MC T. Tucker & DJ Irv and DJ Jubilee then launched a New Orleans sound in the ’90s. Today, there are still many parties dedicated to funk, soul and rare grooves, like events thrown by DJ Soul Sister. And Mannie Fresh, Raj Smoove, DJ Poppa, Captain Charles and many others lean into mixing hip-hop and bounce during their sets — although, like with RQ Away, the dance music genre lines are always blurry. By the late-’80s, though, there were a handful of New Orleans DJs starting to pick up on the house music being created by the Black and queer DJs of Chicago and techno coming from Detroit. And a small local scene began to develop. Pockets also began to come together in Metairie and on the West Bank, says Dave
11 GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
DJ SS at a NOLADNB show PROVIDED PHOTO BY TAYLOR CASTILLO
TOP:
Jinx, a DJ active in New Orleans in the ’90s (read more on page 14). A store called Phuture Records opened in Metairie to try and push the sounds the owners were hearing from the U.K. The shops Cyberpig and Jinx’s Naked Records catered to the scene on Decatur Street. And the music was moving into clubs along Frenchmen Street and at the House of Blues, where Jinx played most nights. “At that point there had been maybe five or six raves going on, and you had hip-hop stuff happening,” Jinx says. As rave culture began to grow in larger cities, New Orleans DJs and promoters also began throwing their own all-night parties in warehouses and alternative spaces. The scene was still relatively small, but a community full of different subcultures had formed. By 1995, though, a promoter named James D. Estopinal Jr., better known as Disco Donnie, struck a deal with the State Palace Theater, and his group, Freebass Society, began throwing raves at the Canal Street venue. With acts like Paul Oakenfeld, Crystal Method and Planet of the Drums — and frequent surprises — the State Palace raves attracted thousands of people from across the South (read more on page 15). “It was a blank canvas, and it was an exciting time,” Estopinal says. “If you read about how people talk about it online, it was like the Holy Grail. And it wasn’t just me. There were people before me, people during my time — it was all of us together.” The use of MDMA, ketamine and other club drugs has a long history in rave culture. But by the late-’90s, law enforcement across the country started to target those underground parties. The State Palace Theater raves caught the attention of federal authorities, and in August 2000, the DEA raided the venue just ahead of a party. A few months later, Estopinal was indicted under a 1986 law that targeted people for maintaining properties “for the purpose of … distributing or using a controlled substance.” It was the first time the federal government had used the law to go after venue managers and event promoters.
The charges against Estopinal were dropped soon after, but the State Palace was fined $100,000 and the venue’s owners had to agree to ban items like pacifiers, glow sticks and inhalers. The raves at the State Palace continued through the early 2000s, but the raid and a national decline in dance music had thrown a wet blanket over the parties and attendance began to fall. Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures ultimately closed that chapter. “It displaced a lot of the people in our scene. A lot of people just got in their cars and never came back,” says Estopinal. He continues to produce numerous shows across the U.S. through his company Disco Presents, including the annual Carnival time rave Zoolu here in New Orleans. Like many other parts of the city, it took some time for the electronic music scene to bounce back, but new events had started to pop up by the early 2010s. Erik Browne, who DJs as Unicorn Fukr, launched the underground dubstep event Bass Church in 2010, and across nine years, the party featured numerous local DJs and an appearance by Pretty Lights. DJ Javier Drada, who had already been a part of the city’s techno scene before moving here in 1998, started up Techno Club in 2014 to focus on the genre. And KILOBAUUD (then known as Lil Jodeci) co-founded the Pink Room Project in 2015 to carve out a DIY space for young Black New Orleans artists and honor the music’s central Black American identity. The project morphed into Set De Flo in 2017 (read more on page 19). “When I got introduced to the scene, it felt like we had a really good scene, with artist bookings and venue assets. And then Covid happened,” says Ayanna Lovelady, who covers the community on the platform NOLA EDM (read more on page 15). “It seems like we’re still building up from Katrina, and we’re not quite there, but we have a really strong local community,” she adds. “There is a show for everyone and everything, from hyper-pop to just all kinds of crews and collectives doing their own things.”
A raver at the State Palace Theater in 2000 PHOTO BY KATHLEEN FLYNN / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE RIGHT:
People dance during BUKU 2018 at Mardi Gras World. PHOTO BY BRETT DUKE / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
TODAY, THE ELECTRONIC DANCE COMMUNITY is still
relatively small but robust. There are a handful of venues dedicated to dance music, like Republic NOLA, the clubs Arora and Ohm Lounge and the Rabbit Hole. And the Metropolitan and Mardi Gras World will often host larger special events. And consistently, the DJs and promoters Gambit spoke with say the city could use more clubs dedicated to electronic dance music. “Because New Orleans sonically isn’t an electronic music hub, per se, we don’t have a lot of the big clubs,” says busy DJ Legatron Prime (read more on page 24). “But then we have our smaller venues and our hole in the walls,” she adds. “We make do with what we have, and in New Orleans, we just want to party regardless.” Underground and DIY, most of the scene is happening in the city’s dive bars and rock venues, like Anna’s, Domino, The Saint, Santos, Poor Boys, Saturn Bar, R Bar, Okay Bar, Nightbloom, Katey Red’s Club Switch, Gasa Gasa and Hi-Ho Lounge. They’re malleable spaces for DJs to create their worlds — but often aren’t equipped with the best sound system for a chest-rattling drum 'n' bass show. New Orleans DJs are now playing in — and bending and combining — all kinds of
genres, and recently there has been a growth in more Latin and Caribbean genres, like reggaeton and baile funk, through sets by DJs like C’est Funk and parties like Siisko’s Club Chido. There are parties that foster consent-focused dance floors for women and the LGBTQ community. And although laws around drugs haven’t changed much, more bars today keep Narcan and product testing strips on hand. The loss of two of the city’s tentpole music festivals, Voodoo and BUKU, is still being felt by both DJs and fans. But, larger festivals like Freaky Deaky and We Belong Here are starting to test the New Orleans market. And in April, the locally focused Electric Spring fest threw its first event at Music Box Village. It’ll host a second edition April 2-3 at The Broadside. Also, more out of town talent is starting to play in the city, which helps build connections for more local artists looking to tour, says Legatron Prime. “The bottom line is we always need more spaces and more places and more big owners who are cool and do good business,” she says. “We still need a stronger infrastructure, but there have been DJs bringing different genres and brought things to life. That plays a big part in the growth of the dance culture in New Orleans.”
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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We Belong Here hosts threeday fest along Riverfront
We Belong Here throws a New Orleans festival Nov. 13-15 PROVIDED PHOTO BY ADINAYEV MEDIA
CHARLES HOCHFELDER, a
DJ, and Justin Dauman, who has worked in marketing and programming for venues in New York, co-founded the electronic dance music festival We Belong Here in 2021 and threw their first event in Miami in early 2022. Since then, they’ve launched editions in New York and Tampa Bay. This weekend, We Belong Here expands to New Orleans with a three-day festival at Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park. After each festival they throw, Hochfelder and Dauman do attendee surveys and put out feelers to gauge what fans of electronic dance music would want to see from We Belong Here. They found that people were pitching for a New Orleans festival. “We started noticing a lot of people saying the city doesn’t have a dance music festival right now, and there’s a big community here,” Dauman says. They heard, “‘We saw you guys just went into Tampa, and we want you to bring it here.’ That’s a lot of the feedback we were getting.” Since the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience ended in 2022 and BUKU Music + Art Project stopped in 2023 — both tentpole festivals on the New Orleans calendar — the city has lacked a major, multi-day festival heavily featuring DJs and electronic artists. Although, Austin’s Freaky Deaky recently held a two-night New Orleans edition over Halloween weekend. And in the spring, New Orleanians also organized the locally focused Electric Spring festival at Music Box Village. With two stages along the Riverfront and a mix of touring and local artists, We Belong Here New Orleans opens Friday, Nov. 13, with a headlining set by Odesza and performances by Andre Power, Mashall Jefferson, Styro, Supertaste, Legatron Prime, QBaby Worldwide, Nile Ashton and more. Saturday is headlined by Carl Cox performing a 3-hour sunset set, and the bill includes Steve Angello, Blond:ISH, Apex Martin, Dr. Romance, Flamingeaux, Shlomo and Josh Heller.
Sunday will feature headliner Sammy Virji along with Max Styler, Chasewest, Madison Park, Bouffant Bouffant, C-Lab, Breakline and more. New Orleans dance music collective Set De Flo takes over a stage for the whole weekend, a first for the festival, Dauman says. And the stage will feature Set De Flo organizer KILOBAUUD, RQ Away, Quickweave, Mikey Offline, Gabriela, Female Trouble, D1ME, Heelturn, Tokidokihoe back-to-back with OPJunkie and more. Set De Flo is "just pushing boundaries so much in the New Orleans scene, and discovering them and connecting with them and listening to the music [KILOBAUUD] is putting out, it’s really exciting,” Dauman says. Two of the hallmarks of We Belong Here are a large dance floor and a scenic location. Miami’s edition takes place at Virginia Key Beach Park, and Central Park is the backdrop for New York. The festival wanted to take advantage of New Orleans’ Riverfront, Hochfelder says. We Belong Here also will fill out the “blank canvas of the space,” Dauman says, with art installations by New Orleans artists, and there will be local food and drinks vendors. The festival is partnering with New Orleans music education organization The Roots of Music and is contributing to its Roots Studio Academy program. The program starts in the spring and will give about 25 young people hands-on experience in music production, audio engineering, live sound and music business. “There’s just something about the New Orleans community. More than any other market we’ve seen, it feels very cohesive and similar to the type of community we’re trying to build up,” Hochfelder says. “Just across the board: music, food, art. People are holding each other up and pushing boundaries. There’s something special and we gravitated toward it.” We Belong Here runs 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. Nov. 13-15. Tickets start at $94.99 per day and $239.99 for the weekend. Find tickets and more info at webelonghere.world.
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GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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Dave Jinx
LEFT:
Dave Jinx in the ‘90s ABOVE:
A recent photo of Dave Jinx PROVIDED PHOTOS
DAVE JINX grew up in New Orleans in the 1980s, and while in high school he started getting into hip-hop and the dance remixes released at the time by alternative bands like The Cure and New Order. That, in turn, led him to Miami bass. After graduating in 1988, he joined the Navy and wound up in San Francisco for several years, where he learned more about house music and began to DJ at events. Jinx returned to New Orleans in ’94 and became a part of the city’s small but active electronic music community, opening a few record stores, DJing at warehouses, the
House of Blues and the State Palace Theater and organizing raves with Moon Patrol, the promoter group that came to include James "Disco Donnie" Estopinal and evolved into the Freebass Society. Jinx today lives in Atlanta but remains connected to New Orleans and is working on a documentary project about the history of the city’s electronic dance music community, including the ’90s rave era, and the DJs he often worked with. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Read more of the interview at bestofneworleans.com.
What was the DJ scene like when you were growing up? Was it largely hip-hop focused? DAVE JINX: It depends on where you went. There was that, but then there were also clubs. Whenever I would come into town, I would go to the Tchoupitoulas Cafe, which is now Dos Jefes Cigar Bar. They had a DJ, and he was playing remixes of underground music, and there was probably some early house and stuff thrown in. You could go to the Gold Mine in the Quarter, and same thing. They would be doing stuff. You had this whole Metairie section, and even on the West Bank, there were two big clubs. Everybody was kind of all playing the same stuff, from freestyle music to maybe upbeat hip-hop, remixes of underground stuff, things like that. That’s where it all kind of started from. I’m sure what was happening in New York and bigger cities was starting to make an influence on New Orleans and DJs here were picking up on some of these other styles, right? JINX: Yes and no. Because of the homework I’ve been doing, with like house and techno as a genre by itself, there was kind of a not necessarily welcoming aspect of it early on. I’m talking like ’89, ’90, ’91. There were just a few people that were really into it. There was a record store in Metairie called Phuture Records, they were trying to push what they were hearing coming from the U.K., like reading magazines and seeing things like that. It was really just like five or six people who were pushing that whole aspect. You still had just the regular dance music. Then you had people like Clint Peltier. He started stuff in and around the French Quarter. He had (the parties) Snap. He did XXX. He did Crackle. And he did Pop. And you had this DJ, Trent DeLaune, who was kind of the first, probably, house DJ in the city. So he was playing at those parties. You had stuff like that happening in the early ’90s, around ’91. There also was a guy I went to high school with, John Domingo, and Mike Kussman and DJ Real, Sean Daliet. Through the ’90s, DJ Real and Black Pearl, they were underground hip-hop DJs. They started throwing parties in the early ’90s and even threw a rave or two. What was going on when you moved back in ’94? JINX: Like I said, John Domingo and I, we went to high school together and became business partners. He and this guy Mike Kussman were doing parties. They had a store on Decatur called Cyberpig. It was streetwear and geared more toward hip-hop early on. The store was graffitied and that whole thing. At that point there had been maybe five or six raves going on and you had hip-hop stuff happening.
And then when I came back, I met a couple of DJs and I had money saved up from the Navy, so I opened a record store on Decatur Street just geared toward DJs. That one was called Naked Records. Naked Records was short-lived, but we started that and then started a night at Café Istanbul when it was on Frenchmen Street. They gave us the upstairs on Friday and Saturday night. Then I became resident DJ at House of Blues for a year and a half. I played most nights, but Monday nights was a club night. It was called Sin Night, and when I took over, they would have a house band play until 10:30, 11 p.m. and then I’d play from 11 to 6 or 7 (a.m.), and it was hip-hop and house music — I’ll say house music as a generalization. I’d start off playing hip-hop for an hour or so, then I’d go into acid jazz and start speeding it up. Then go into house for an hour or so. Then go back to hip-hop and re-cycle it, and at the end play house music for like two or three hours, depending on how long we were going to stay open. That ended up becoming the biggest club night in the city. There wasn’t a Monday night where, throughout the night, 1,500 or 2,000 people weren’t going through the door.
What were those crowds like? JINX: The funny thing about that, like
the people that were coming to hear hip-hop — I kind of programmed everything so that people knew what the cycle was going to be. So like after the second round of hip-hop, a lot of those heads would leave, and then more people would come in, and then it was more of dance music through the night. All the DJs from Metairie were there. It became this whole big thing. But I got taken off the night because House of Blues became corporate. We had got written up in either SPIN Magazine or TIME — I think it was SPIN — that was like, “The best place to do ecstasy in New Orleans was House Blues on a Monday night.” And they didn’t really like that. So I got moved to Sundays and started a night called Sun Night. Galactic was the house band and I played acid jazz and hip-hop. But they ultimately took me off the night, and then the night was handed over to Raj Smoove.
You had mentioned some people would leave after the hip-hop portion of your sets. Was there a lot of segmentation in the city? Were people really just going for certain styles? JINX: Or just something they were used to. House music, house and Detroit (techno) was created by Black people. There are a lot of DJs, like John Wick, he played house and hip-hop. There was a number of Black DJs that would go do both avenues. CONTINUES ON P. 26
15 GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
Disco Donnie
A packed dance floor dances to the music of Caffeine during a rave at the State Palace Theater in July 2000. PROVIDED PHOTO BY TYLER CHURCH
MORE THAN 25 YEARS since
their heyday, people still talk about the State Palace Theater raves. At the peak of those raves in the late ’90s and early 2000s, around 5,000 people would pass through the venue at Canal and S. Rampart streets for parties called “Onslaught” and “Psychedelic Pimp-Daddyland.” And a fair share of those ravers would drive in from Houston, Birmingham and other parts of the South to dance with locals in different rooms in the venue. Major electronic acts like Paul Oakenfold, Crystal Method, Planet of the Drums, DJ Aphrodite and Andy C played the raves, and it wasn’t uncommon to have a “what just happened?” moment. As Gambit wrote in 2004: The “parties became nationally known for bizarre themes and attractions. There was a dance contest MC-ed by Fred Berry (the now-deceased actor who played Rerun on the television sitcom What's Happening!!), a surprise set by 2 Live Crew, a puppet show by local novelty act Quintron and a traditional Mardi Gras second line by ReBirth Brass Band. At one party, the San Diego group Crash Worship led a drum-pounding processional that included a naked woman drenched in wine. Another time, Estopinal turned on all the house lights at 3 a.m. and had a choir sing 'Amazing Grace' into the cavernous theater.” At the center of it all was James D. Estopinal Jr., also known as Disco Donnie. Estopinal grew up in New Orleans with a mother who was a CPA and an attorney father who took a job as a DJ, Disco Jim, on the West Bank. Estopinal expected he would follow in his mother’s footsteps, but after graduating from LSU — where he threw some small parties — and returning to New Orleans, a night at a club on Frenchmen
PHOTO BY KATHLEEN FLYNN / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
Street put him on the path to promoting DJs and electronic dance parties. He began booking local DJs at small clubs and alternative spaces and joined the promoter group Moon Patrol and later co-founded Freebass Society (which ultimately led to Disco Donnie Presents). As the parties grew, the raves moved to warehouses and less-than-legitimate spaces, until Estopinal and his partners in Freebass Society, including Dan Millstein (DJ Stryfe), connected with State Palace co-owner Robert Brunet. Freebass began throwing its shows at the venue in 1995 and their consistency — and boisterousness — built a fanbase that only grew through the ’90s. The raves’ notoriety, though, made it the target of federal law enforcement operating under a 1986 law called the “Crack House Statute,” which prohibited maintaining a property “for the purpose of … distributing or using a controlled substance.” Under the guise of cracking down on suspected ecstasy use — at a time authorities were investigating raves and club drugs — the DEA raided the State Palace in August 2000 and indicted Estopinal in early 2001 using the 1986 law. It was the first time the federal government used the law to indict venue managers and event promotors for alleged drug dealing and consumption at an event, rather than the dealers and consumers themselves. The charges against Estopinal were dropped, but the State Palace Theater was fined $100,000 and the venue’s owners had to agree to ban “drug paraphernalia” like pacifiers, glow sticks and inhalers. The raves at the State Palace continued through the early 2000s, but the raid and legal troubles put a real dent into the party and attendance began to fall. And in 2005, Hurricane Katrina and the federal levee failures
damaged the State Palace. Disco Donnie threw a few more raves at the venue in 2006, but the State Palace closed in 2007 and has been vacant ever since. While throwing parties at the State Palace, Estopinal had his sights on other cities and began booking shows first in the South and then across the country. In the late ’90s, he worked with Insomniac Events on Electric Daisy Carnival and Nocturnal Wonderland, both in Los Angeles, and in the 2000s, started festivals in Orlando, Dallas, New York, Seattle, Austin and other markets. Estopinal’s company was acquired by SFX Entertainment in 2012 and became part of LiveStyle in 2017. But in 2020, during the pandemic, Estopinal re-acquired sole ownership of Disco Presents. The company today produces events and works with promoters across the country, including New Orleans. Freaky Deaky, which launched in Austin, held its first New Orleans edition over Halloween weekend. And the Carnival time rave Zoolu — which Freebass started in ’94 — threw its 32nd edition back in February at Mardi Gras World. Estopinal left New Orleans for Ohio in 2001 and now lives in Puerto Rico. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Find more from the interview and a link to Gambit’s 2004 feature by Cristina Diettinger on Estopinal and the State Palace Theater at bestofneworleans.com.
What was the electronic music community like at the time you started hosting shows? DISCO DONNIE: I just had gotten back from Baton Rouge, and I was working at my mom’s CPA firm, and I was engaged to be married. I was kind of like, “Oh this will be the
rest of my life.” But I started going to parties. There was definitely a scene going on. It was smaller, but there were a few different promoters. There was a record store called Cyberpig, I think it was on Decatur. There was DJ Dave Jinx, he was a promoter and owned a record store. There was a group of kids from New York that were going to Tulane and were doing events based off of their knowledge of events in New York. There were just a few different, small promoters. The scene had been around for a few years before I went to my first events, in different incarnations. There were some different industrial shows and there were just different scenes going on in New Orleans, and I think it kind of all merged into the rave scene. You had like industrial type shows, and then you had the Oz and the Parade and the club kids. So you had some similar things that kind of began to merge and everybody came together.
Y’all hosted shows in some warehouses and some less-than-regulated spots. What were you looking for in a venue whenever you started booking shows? DD: A lot of times we were using legal venues, but we were also always searching for alternative venues. We used the Zeitgeist Theater, which was on O’Keefe (Avenue). It was kind of a big alternative event space, I would say. It was crazy. We had one guy, he owned a rug import company on Magazine Street, and he would rent his warehouse on Lafayette Street. It was right across the street from where the Virgin Hotel is now. It was like a five- or six-story building. I think he’d rent it to CONTINUES ON P. 27
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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NOLA EDM AYANNA LOVELADY was born in New Orleans, grew up in Baton Rouge and returned for college, graduating last year from Tulane University with a focus on digital media marketing and public relations. After attending a Space Jesus show at Republic NOLA in 2019, Lovelady felt like she had found her community and dove into the electronic dance music scene. While working a summer internship with Republic in 2023, she was connected to the platform NOLA EDM. Issam Amer and other local promoters started NOLA EDM several years ago as a way to highlight local DJs and nightlife through social media. But over time, the page went quiet, and in 2023, the platform was passed to Lovelady. She has since revived NOLA EDM with a website, Instagram and Facebook pages and, most recently, a podcast. Along with weekly round-ups of electronic dance music events in New Orleans, the website includes event guides and features on locals. And Lovelady interviews DJs and promoters for the NOLA EDM Unplugged podcast. Recent episodes have featured James “Disco Donnie" Estopinal and DJ Stryfe discussing the ’90s rave scene. Find NOLA EDM at neworleansedm.com. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Read more from the interview at bestofneworleans.com.
How did you get connected to NOLA EDM? Could you tell me about the platform and its history? AYANNA LOVELADY: I interned at Republic, so I did a little bit of their marketing and ad campaigns. But that’s how I got introduced to NOLA EDM. It was kind of a dormant page at the time. It’s been around since at least 2018, but I feel like it may have been around before and got restarted. There was a group of people who had the page and would post some things about Voodoo (Fest), BUKU (Music + Art Project) or some of the artists who were from here. It was there, and then it was kind of inactive with the loss of BUKU and Voodoo. In 2023, I got handed the page. I had thought about it and I was like, “I have time to do this.” At the same time I was in school, and my teachers were really cool at Tulane. They had worked for Obama or had worked on “Good Morning America,” so I was getting influences from them on how to do certain things while I was taking care of the page. I kind of got to go to school, practice it, and then do it on the page, which is a unique experience to have. I just started thinking about ways to revitalize it in a way that I would use it. I go to raves and concerts and I’m an active person within the community. I was like a micro-influencer and did a few festivals, like Okeechobee
naturally wanted to interview everybody that has been involved or is currently involved. I have questions that a lot of people have, like what happened to BUKU? What happened to Voodoo? Why does Live Nation not like New Orleans? If you look at Austin, Houston, Atlanta and Florida, we kind of get skipped over for a lot of genres, not just EDM, but with rock and country. I’ve had questions in my head for so long about what happened and what’s going on. So I’ve learned a lot of history just by being involved.
(Music & Arts Festival), BUKU, Voodoo, so I had a little experience doing marketing and festivals. I took all that experience and was like, OK, I’m gonna start doing a weekly list of events that are happening. I started doing that. It’s been two years, I think, where every week I’ll post a list of events that are happening for EDM in New Orleans. I registered as a business. I made an LLC for it. I decided I was gonna make a website and start getting into archiving the type of EDM and collectives that we have here. We have quite a few artists that are from here that are successful and that are still here or that come back. I got interested in documenting the community itself.
Could you tell me more about the research aspect of NOLA EDM and the documenting part? LOVELADY: It’s cool because it started as an Instagram post in a series I got into, and then it turned into a full-blown research project. I’m looking to turn that whole archive onto the website while still posting it on a podcast and Instagram. It’s called NOLA EDM Unplugged, where I sit down and talk with a lot of people who either own some businesses or were part of collectives. Like Disco Donnie, who was a favorite interview of mine. He is one of the people that kind of helped create this scene. He didn’t start it, of course, but he was a predominant figure. So I’ve been doing a lot of that to help archive the history. When did you start going to live music? And how did you get into EDM and going to raves? LOVELADY: I was always listening to EDM. I listen to all kinds of music. My Spotify would confuse people probably. My first concert was actually a 21 Pilots concert. I don't count Blue Bayou because I saw like Disney people there. But after that, because the production was so good, I was like, “Oh, this is obviously my life now. I go to shows.” Then in 2019, my friend took me to my first rave. It was for Space Jesus at Republic. And then I was like, “Oh, this is my people. I’m here now.” So it started with one show, and I’ve probably been to 15 states and over 100, 200 shows since then. Music and production and these shows can be a really cool experience.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY AYANNA LOVELADY
Then I started going to festivals and camping and felt that community so much more. I was like, “OK, not only do I want to be a part of this community, but I want to be voice in it, too.”
What do you think is the health of the New Orleans community right now? What’s working well? Is there anything you feel could be done better? LOVELADY: I think the healthiest the scene has been was probably in the early-2000s, before the RAVE Act (in 2003). And then it got revitalized after Katrina, because Katrina washed it quite a bit. After that, we’ve been starting to build it up. When I got introduced to the scene, it felt like we had a really good scene, with artist bookings and venue assets. And then Covid happened. So it seems like we’re still building up from Katrina, and we’re not quite there, but we have a really strong local community. There is a show for everyone and everything, from hyper-pop to just all kinds of crews and collectives doing their own things. I think it’s a good space right now for growth. It’s not where I think it could be, but it has potential. There’s a vacuum for festivals and major events that could grow the community. I also think that the local community — and I’ve noticed this getting said when I interview people and I kind of feel the same way — we could do better to unify. There is always going to be personal politics in any facet of any industry, because people are people. No one’s going to always get along. But it would be nice if we could try to unify. It’s cool to have so many shows going on, but just as a person who goes to shows, it would be nice to not have to choose. Maybe you could go to one spot and there’s going to be four different sounds going on, instead of having this split in the community that’s been going on since Covid.
It seemed like a great thing about the State Palace Theater was you could have five rooms and different styles going on. I don’t think we have a space that large now. What was it about that Space Jesus show and those early LOVELADY: That’s the biggest problem. events that hooked you? What I’ve noticed compared to like Houston LOVELADY: I just felt at home. When I or Atlanta, they have so many different sized What do you feel like you’ve started going to local shows, even just smaller venues. Certain artists like Ganja White Night learned about the New Orleans events, I was like, this is cool, too. No matter or people who sell arenas might do Smoothie the production. I love the music, of course, but community from running the page? King Center, but that's the only venue you have everybody was so kind and welcoming, and it LOVELADY: I’ve learned a lot about where somebody like that would want to play. felt like there’s so many different people here this history, actually. That’s what sparked There’s not a lot of options for people who don’t me to do this research project, because I just and we’re all here in a space together. want to be at Republic or Metro or The Joy. Do you have any particular styles you love? LOVELADY: I’m open to a lot. There’s some house stuff that I do like, but it’s not my most favorite genre. I’m a heavy bass-head. I love dubstep. I love riddim. I love bass music. Something about it scratches my brain just right.
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THE NEW ORLEANS DRUM & BASS (NOLADNB) collective has gone
through a few versions over the years. Things started off in the early 2000s as a forum for fans of drum ‘n’ bass and the local crews, like Below Sea Level, playing the fast, bass-heavy genre. After meeting some of the Below Sea Level DJs, electronic musician and producer Glassy Eye became a part of the scene and began performing at drum ‘n’ bass parties. In the early-2010s — around the time Bass Church was throwing its dubstep and bass-focused events — Glassy Eye and other friends began organizing occasional drum ‘n’ bass shows and created a Facebook page in 2015 to share things. A collective of DJs began to form, including Brother Electric, a veteran of the electronic dance music community and a Bass Church resident, and Coastill, a native of the Washington, D.C., suburbs and a relatively more recent addition to the local drum ‘n’ bass community. And shortly before the pandemic, the collective of 12 DJs hosted their own shows and rotated onto multi-genre bills alongside artists from Techno Club. The Covid pandemic, though, “wiped the slate clean,” Glassy Eye says. In 2021, as Covid restrictions relaxed at bars and restaurants, NOLADNB began hosting Jungle Punch at Portside Lounge, a night dedicated to drum ‘n’ bass and jungle. The first editions went great, and Jungle Punch has become NOLADNB’s monthly event for the last five years. Along with Jungle Punch, now held at The Crypt, NOLADNB organizes shows that often feature touring DJs alongside regional and local artists. In October, the collective brought in British DJ Lens to headline a bill with dubstep DJ Black Swan, New Orleans-to-Denver DJ Stemmily and Atlanta’s Melinda. Jungle Punch is the first Friday of each month. Find more at linktr.ee/noladnb. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Read more from the interview at bestofneworleans.com
So [Portside Lounge] was struggling. He had done one little private party that had worked well, and he told us about it. We were like, well, why don’t we help you out and help us out — because there hadn’t been any drum ‘n’ bass in a year — and throw a 25-person party. You had to buy a ticket in advance. Wear a mask. Show that you were vaccinated. But it was awesome, and it went off great. And by the next month, the 25% was gone and then things opened, so then it really went off. GLASSY EYE: And it was in a tiki lounge, so we called it Jungle Punch. There’s been some slight differences in the subgenres, but we’re not gonna get into all that. It turned into a monthly and people were coming out. At first, we thought we’d keep it the collective, the same 12 DJs we were booking for Techno Club. But then there were people coming out who played drum ‘n’ bass but weren’t part of the collective and asking, “Yo, can I get a slot?” And I’m like, “Sure! Why not?” COASTILL: I was coming from D.C., and there I was in a collective called SubDistrick, and their whole thing was a monthly and very much about giving new DJs a shot. So when people started reaching out to Joe about it, I was like, let’s make this part of the ethos. GLASSY EYE: Yeah, help build a jungle community that really got hit hard by Covid. A lot of places weren’t really doing anything yet. Then Republic is back, and then Rabbit Hole opened. And next thing you know, things are thriving.
NOLADNB hosted British DJ SS at Santos PROVIDED PHOTO BY TAYLOR CASTILLO
different sound, so you have to bring in your own system at Santos if you want to have that bass. COASTILL: It’s the same system we bring to The Crypt, too. Whenever we were at Portside, which is another rock band venue, they didn’t have any subwoofers. So the first Jungle Punch, we bought a little powered 18-inch one. It worked, but a few months into it, this guy, Carl — he goes by NLIC, he’s an old-school head — he texted me and said, “I like what you guys are doing. I have some old subwoofers I want to donate to you.” Those are these giant 2-by-18 Yorkville (Sound) subwoofers we have now. Then he was getting rid of some other stuff, so we bought the rest of the amps off him. He gave us a crazy deal on everything. It was called the “Head Grenade” system and it was used by Bass Church in the early days. It’s still rolling.
We’re not making money as it is. We break even. And if we do make any profit, we put it back into the pot so we can throw the next party. Nobody is getting rich off NOLADNB. It’s strictly for the love of the music.
What do you think about New Orleans right now in terms of electronic dance music? BROTHER ELECTRIC: I think people should start getting together and talk about when they’re throwing shows. Not stacking 20-30 shows on a weekend. GLASSY EYE: It’s a little too saturated. But we were in the roots of building that community. COASTILL: Yeah, it’s hard to call out other people when we’re also throwing Could you tell me about the a monthly. considerations y’all put into the GLASSY EYE: We’ve heard now from lineups for Jungle Punch? the younger generation, just gossip in the COASTILL: I’d say one, when it comes scene, like “I wish these parties were more So many of these parties are to Jungle Punch, at least — when we have a multi-genre.” Not necessarily at us, but at the happening in rock clubs or in bigger show like Lens, it’s a little different — with bars like Poor Boys or the second scene in general. the monthly, we always try to have somebody They’re like, “I don’t want to sit through a floor of Anna’s. The music is who has never played for us before. And we happening in unconventional whole night of [one thing].” But my generation, always try to have a resident, usually, someone spaces in New Orleans. we did. who is part of NOLADNB. Then we kind of build COASTILL: Coming from D.C., we had COASTILL: Yeah, but I feel like it works the rest of the night around that, like who hasn’t a million clubs, and they were all great and had for us because drum ‘n’ bass as a genre, it’s NOLADNB had been running for played in a while? Who can we match up vibea great sound system, and you didn’t have to hard to be casually into it. People who are into a while before 2020, but it sounds wise to create an interesting night? bring shit [laughs]. drum ‘n’ bass are into drum ‘n’ bass. They want like the pandemic changed things Another thing we try to do is have a variety for y’all. GLASSY EYE: I think a reason being for to hear a full night of drum ‘n’ bass. of decades or generations. So we’ll have a I think we’re in a period of growth. It’s been that — if you think of the major EDM clubs, like GLASSY EYE: Yeah, it was a defining younger person, and we’ll try to have someone some ups and downs, ups and downs. Some Arora, Republic and Rabbit Hole, they want moment for us, really. who’s more established. We like to bring those new kids come in really excited and start throwto gear more to a younger crowd and more people and those crowds together. COASTILL: Two blocks down from me popular crowd. Can we throw parties there? Of ing parties, and then you see them burn out. used to be Portside Lounge. I moved into this You get bad nights, and sometimes you get course, and we have. But they have different Jungle Punch started at house in September 2019, and I got to know a couple bad nights in a row, and you feel like standards that we have to meet. It’s about the the bar owner, and my wife did, too. It turns out Portside, then went to Sidney’s you should throw in the towel. But then the next numbers, and it’s monetary. Saloon and Santos for a while and he had been good friends with Joe (Glassy party pops off and it’s like, “You got me back in.” They’re more hesitant with drum ‘n’ bass. It is now at The Crypt. What makes Eye) since high school from the band scene. I’m seeing right now a lot of crews kind of a good venue for NOLADNB? The can bring in people, but it could also flop. So we were all hanging out over there. go up and down through that. I think right now sound system seems especially COASTILL: It’s still not the cool Then Covid happened and, you know, it we’re getting to the point where a lot of the important for drum ‘n’ bass. kids’ music. was hard for a lot of businesses, especially players in the game are maybe wiser. They’ve bar and entertainment industry. But there was COASTILL: We bring our own sound GLASSY EYE: That’s the reason you gone through these cycles now, and so I think system everywhere we go. a moment post-vaccine, where restaurants see a lot of this happening in other clubs. We’re in the next year, things are gonna be cool. were open again but they could only be at like GLASSY EYE: Yeah, those systems not saying anything bad about them. They It may level out a little but the quality of have to make money and we know that. are more tuned for rock and not EDM. It’s a everything is going up. 25% capacity.
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KILOBAUUD got into DJing in the early 2010s to “create a third space for Black kids to have something,” he says. A New Orleans native, he grew up listening to a range of genres, and when he started DJing — under the name Lil Jodeci for a while — his music reflected those styles, from bounce and hip-hop to house, Baltimore club and techno. He knew there were other Black people listening to the same thing, and around 2015, he co-founded the Pink Room Project with hip-hop artist Brandon Ares. The collective of producers, DJs and rappers threw parties at houses and Bywater warehouses, carving out a DIY space for young Black New Orleans artists pushing underground electronic music forward. The Pink Room Project began to morph into Set De Flo in 2017 and picked up the Saturday night slot once held by DJ Soul Sister at Hi-Ho Lounge. And Pink Room and Set De Flo gained national attention for its parties and impact on the New Orleans dance music scene. Set De Flo has continued to evolve, but its dedication to the Black origins of dance music remains at its core. VICKTROLA, a Los Angeles native, met KILOBAUUD during the pandemic when the New Orleans artist was visiting the West Coast. She made a trip to New Orleans in 2022, fell in love with the city and made the move here, and with a background in animation and marketing, VICKTROLA has been helping run Set De Flo and working to grow the event and bring more outside attention to the New Orleans community. Set De Flo today throws a monthly party, typically at Poor Boys, where a host of New Orleans DJs, like RQ Away, Mikey Offline, Antwigadee! and Phlegm, have played into the morning hours alongside visiting artists. Set De Flo also is now aiming to bring those parties and DJs to other states. Writer and artist Kristina Kay Robinson crafts an altar for each Set De Flo to honor ancestors and others who have passed. And with Mike Hazel and DJ Hndrcks, the group runs Set De Flo Radio, featuring sets alongside conversations about music and culture captured at the events. KILOBAUUD also earlier this year released the album “Yakamein.” Find more at setdeflo.club. Set De Flo takes over a stage this weekend at We Belong Here, programming many of the DJs that have played its events, including Quickweave, Heelturn, D1ME and Tokidokihoe. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity. Read more from the interview at bestofneworleans.com.
How did the Pink Room and Set De Flo get started? KILOBAUUD: With Pink Room, we were filling in the gaps, filling in the void, doing things that we didn’t see happening necessarily. We’d be listening to Portishead or D’Angelo and then Lil Wayne and Kevin Gates. And it goes across the spectrum. A lot of Kaytranada at the time, when it was coming out. And then it kind of catapults into digging deeper into the genres and the knowledge.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
Set de Flo New Orleans had an underground scene before (Hurricane) Katrina with State Palace Theater, but after Katrina there wasn’t really a scene that was cultivating that experience.
Were there many parties like this at the time? KILOBAUUD: No, not at all. The deeper I got into dance music, the deeper I got into the genres, I wanted to create something for an audience my age at the time. I was really just trying to create a space. There wasn’t a lot of Black dance parties at the time at all. And to be honest with you, there’s few now. New Orleans doesn’t have a big club scene, as far as a space that’s outfitted to throw dance parties. Everything is a bar. We got to be kind of DIY. What led to the transition from Pink Room to Set De Flo? KILOBAUUD: Yeah. So I had probably about eight people living with me at the time. And you can't keep a band together for too long. But I'll say this: What we were doing at the time was very underground and counterculture, but also we all had different gifts. When I see the void in something, I try to fill it. And, like I said, when Soul Sister left [Hi-Ho], that was another void. We was doing underground, counterculture [type shows]. With Set De Flo, I wanted to do something a little bit more, I would say, sexy a little bit, like a place where people could feel good about themselves. Have the energy and the rawness but still feel good about being safe in the place. Ultimately some of the members moved to New York, one of my homies moved to Japan, so we were just kind of like growing, not apart but just growing in different places at the time. Pink Room was just a moment in time, and Set De Flo was something I made sure we kept going. VICKTROLA: A cool thing he's told me, too, about Pink Room is with that being a new thing in the scene at the time, so many people that were in Pink Room have started their own things either here in the city or outside. For example, like Prescott, who goes by Boytoy, he throws this party together with Kush, who is also in Pink Room. There are other things, we could wax on all day. There were Black dance competitions in the 19th century called set de flo’. Does your party name have a connection? KILOBAUUD: That’s actually the impetus of the name. When I work, I like to put the medicine in the candy, so people can find these little nuggets when they do the research of what Set De Flo is. It’s a Black ritual dance. VICKTROLA: I think a lot of people think the flo’ means like “flow,” but it’s actually floor. They would have a circle on the ground, and when the two dancers would compete, the first
KILOBAUUD PROVIDED PHOTO BY VICK TROCHEZ
PROVIDED PHOTO BY VICK TROCHEZ
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VICKTROLA PROVIDED PHOTO BY GABRIELA MAJ
thing they would do is stomp in the circle, and that would be them setting the floor. It’s really cool to have that historical connection. That’s something that’s really important to us in how we talk about anything that we’re doing. How we handle the booking. How we curate the projections. We like to bring the history of what this is and the history of this music being Black and the roots of Black American music coming down to here in New Orleans. It’s really cool to be able to connect a lot of those dots and also bring artists from other cities, where we can kind of tie roots back down here for them as well.
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Could you tell me about some of the hallmarks of a Set De Flo party? VICKTROLA: I would say that it’s kind of changed over time. The party started as a weekly party that [KILOBAUUD] was doing, where he was running the whole night and [Lord Chilla] was there on the microphone with him. Then he had Jalen, DJ Quickweave, who was like a guest, and then it moved into having more guests. KILOBAUUD: Yeah, I had a lot of inspiration from Soul Sister, who threw weekly parties, because I understood what that meant to the community, to have a place to go to every week, especially if you work a lot and have a hard week of work — those Saturday or Friday nights or Thursday nights were probably what you were looking forward to most. So that's why Set De Flo started as a weekly. Once Vick came on after the pandemic, she really helped us move on a national level, because of her impetus to push this outside of New Orleans and her marketing mind. VICKTROLA: It's never through any expensive means, but we like to be hyper-intentional about every element of the party. We've gone from weekly to, this year for the first time, we've been doing monthly parties, and our goal at the top of the year was to be once a month in the city and once a month in another city, and we've been about able to navigate that. It's been a very strong learning experience for us throughout that time.
And then we also have the radio show. [KILOBAUUD] started Flo Radio in 2019, and we started doing it consistently on a weekly basis in 2023. But that was a large undertaking, so we stopped doing that for a year. We brought it back as part of the party now, and we have different guests from the community come and speak on different topics. KILOBAUUD: If you've been out in New Orleans, you understand what it's like: Most of the time, the party is the backdrop. The reason people come out to the party is to like smoke cigarettes with their friends and talk and meet up and drink. We kind of understood that, too, and that's a big part of New Orleans nightlife culture. So we document that, and then, teaching people the history of Black dance music and the lineage of this music. We have all of those conversations. VICKTROLA: The radio show also has allowed us to add to our team, and so the three people that are working with us right now when we produce the radio show and the party are Kristina Kay Robinson, she's a brilliant writer and artist. She does our altars every month at the party. Those are so beautiful and just so unique every time. Mike Hazel, he's another visual and audio artist. He works with us as our consistent host and co-producer on the radio show. And then DJ Hndrcks, he runs the sound and rescue ambulance that we use as the backdrop to the radio show. It's been great to work with all three of them as we've kind of locked into how we're operating this year.
What are your thoughts about the dance community today? KILOBAUUD: I think it’s in a healthy place. Kids are trying new shit. They’re trying to establish a new fabric and push the lines. You’ve got to just be willing to try. We’re trying to just build infrastructure at this point. How do we build it and make this an ecosystem that you can sustain it? VICKTROLA: We try to serve as some sort of glue or neutral ground for different corners of the scene to come together.
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Kniess and Mark Louque, they’re E Molina and Father Figure, we started a collective called Trax Only and started doing warehouse projects. They were these queer-focused, womenand queer-led, wild, all-night-long ’til 10 in the morning, great warehouse parties. But then, you know, the warehouse party situation can be exhausting. You come into a rectangle and create a whole nightclub and staff a bar and do this whole thing. Plus there’s a lot of risk. You don’t have permits. All of these things, and so it was a fire that burnt pretty bright but it didn’t really last past the pandemic. But I was also doing my monthly party then as well, and I started pouring more of my focus into Gimme A Reason.
Could you tell me about starting Gimme a Reason? That was around 2014, right? Along with performing as Bouffant Bouffant BB: Yeah, I think so. One of the warehouses we used had an art gallery in it, it was around the country, LaBauve also works as a called May Gallery, and that's where the first designer — and still makes shirts. Gimme a Reason was as well. I did two of This conversation has been edited for length them there. and clarity. Read more from the interview at I had this idea that we would throw them in bestofneworleans.com. different bars every time, so we were trying When did you start DJing and to find these very unlikely places to do them. And the idea was like, let me drag my friends playing around town? into these places that we never go to. Trying BOUFFANT BOUFFANT: I was to make it into something exciting to go to a organizing parties that were kind of these art new space. installations and to sell these T-shirts, and So it was a roving party that we would do all they became more and more popular. I had over the place. friends that I was booking to DJ, and they were And then Poor Boys opened. like, “You should just DJ. You’re already orgaAnd for the past, I guess, eight years, we’ve nizing the parties and you have a following.” been home at Poor Boys and I think we’ve I had a friend whose DJ name was A Boy kind of grown together. It became a comfortNamed Ruth, he was a WTUL DJ and he’d DJ able home and I could go in there and have a out a lot, and he encouraged me. He let me sound system. [Owner Matt Muscle] bought practice on his controller at home for a little bit. amazing equipment, so I wasn’t hauling One time he was like, “Look, I’m DJing the speakers and DJ equipment all the time. Saint this weekend. Why don’t you come and It’s been kind of an underground home for a if I have to go to the bathroom or something, lot of people. They host open decks so people you can play a few tracks.” I lived around the have access to expensive industry standard corner from the Saint at the time and was equipment, so these young DJs can come in there religiously anyway. on a Tuesday and learn, and there's people And he was playing and went to the baththat will kind of mentor others. room — and didn’t come back for, like, three hours. So he really threw me to the wolves Could you tell me about the [laughs]. I was terrified. I was sweating. It genres you like to play with? didn’t sound great and I didn’t have a huge BB: When I first started DJing, I was library of music to play in that way. But I just playing a lot of funk and disco. I can probably did it. credit that to Joey Buttons of Disko Obscura, It was really infectious because I got to experience this exchange that happens between who lives here, and Soul Sister, obviously. She’s the queen DJ of the city. That was my you and a room of people. The thing that you entry point. do, they’re responding to that. And then I went to Europe for the first I bought a controller and was just in my time and went to a lot of bigger nightclubs and room forever, DJing. I was doing my parties and started opening got a healthy education on like house and techno music. for the other DJs and started DJing at the So I feel like part of me has always been Saint a bit. And then that started snowballing. Eventually, I was throwing parties and DJing trying to meld those worlds of this lush, funky, around quite a lot. Me and my friends Kathi percussive disco with the playability in the PHOTO BY MADDIE SPINNER / GAMBIT
BRETT LABAUVE grew up south
of Lake Charles and moved to New Orleans in 2009 to attend the University of New Orleans, where he studied painting, printmaking and graphic design. But he “obviously moved to New Orleans to kind of be a party boy,” LaBauve says. “To discover myself. Being young and queer in Southwest Louisiana, you kind of run away from there in a way.” He began going out, partying and meeting people through the music community, and he soon started making posters for his friends’ bands. LaBauve was doing a lot of printmaking at UNO and after graduating but was becoming disillusioned with showing in galleries. So he decided to start a “fake, high-end designer T-shirt company,” he says, a spoof of Louis Vuitton. He called his company Bouffant Bouffant, began making T-shirts and would throw one-off parties with art installations to sell his shirts. Initially he had friends DJ his parties, but in time, people convinced him to try DJing himself — including by throwing him into the deep end at the dive bar The Saint. LaBauve loved the energy of feeling a crowd react to the music he played and began DJing more often under the name Bouffant Bouffant. In the 2010s, he and friends would throw warehouse parties in the Bywater, and in 2014, he started his monthly party Gimme a Reason, a staple at Poor Boys. The party’s Instagram carries the tagline “South Louisiana dangerous gay nightclub music,” and for anyone still not understanding, large, tonguein-cheek posters at the doors read “This is a gay party.” There also are occasional parties at Saturn Bar, with names like “Bouffant Bouffant’s Homo Cosmic Cajun Cool Breeze Discotheque” and “Homo Cosmic Cajun Jazz Daddy Disco.”
house and techno world. Finding those middle grounds. Also, my family’s Cajun from southwest Louisiana, and so I grew up with (Cajun and zydeco) music. It was always so present. There’s the percussion and these uplifting, soaring fiddles and accordions and this kind of four-on-the-floor beat. And they’re singing in French but their cadence feels almost Native American, because they were all down here mixing together. As I’ve gotten older and looked back, I’m finding this kind of throughline to what I’m drawn to now. I’m drawn to hypnotic percussion, these soaring, uplifting lead lines. I’m using that as a kind of North Star. I learned to DJ in dive bars on shitty sound systems. So how was I learning to get people to dance? It wasn’t playing minimal techno. That wouldn’t have worked there. As I’ve gotten older, I think I have a unique perspective on dance music that’s a little outside of big room house music or big techno music. [My style] lends itself more to being percussive and being catchy and hooky, and I’m drawn to lush, beautiful sounds. Also, there’s a little bit of angst in me that wants to stay there. I love sneaking in a rock song.
I hadn’t really thought about how the venue’s sound system shapes the way a DJ may play or what gets people dancing. BB: Yeah. I’m always kind of curious about it because things that make a lot of sense on a dance floor here sometimes [won’t work elsewhere]. My friend jokingly said once, “Yeah, gumbo doesn’t travel well. You eat it out the pot.” I am very lucky to travel and play a lot, and I feel an obligation, almost, to not skew outside of what I really feel is my thing. But I have to say, I love, love, love DJing to New Orleans people and New Orleans bars because it’s what built me. It’s where my comfort zone is, and it is something unique. What are your thoughts about the scene today? BB: It’s pretty wild. There are so many young DJs in town. There’s so many people that are young and excited about electronic music, whether they’re DJs or not. They’re going out a lot more and they’re seeking out DJs and dancing. And I think that’s likely because of the internet, and I think it’s the seeds me and my friends planted so long ago that are kind of coming to fruition now. I think it's thriving. We have a lot of really good DJs. And it also is a really close-knit community of people, especially downtown at places like Saturn Bar, the Domino, Hi-Ho, Poor Boys. All these places have DJs every single weekend now.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
Bouffant Bouffant
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PHOTO BY SAM GREGORY
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THE DJ TRIO FEMALE TROUBLE bring a wide range of styles to their dance floors, from techno, Miami bass and Chicago footwork to UK garage, dubstep and grime. They also might throw in a hyper-pop version of Cher’s “Believe,” a ’90s rave edit of “Forever Young” or a club mix of the viral “Hampster Dance Song” to lighten the mood with a cringey surprise. The three New Orleans DJs, Freak POV, Cypriestess and Eden, are bringing the things they love into their sets, and are clearly having fun — and causing trouble — while they do it. Cypriestess and Eden both grew up in the same area in the Northeast and have been friends for years. Cypriestess moved to New Orleans first, and Eden decided to come to the city toward the end of 2019. Around the time she moved to New Orleans, Eden was beginning to get into techno and DJing, and played her first party in New Orleans on Mardi Gras 2020. Cypriestess also learned to DJ during the pandemic lockdowns and began performing often in the following years. After spending time in Wisconsin, Minnesota and El Paso, Texas, Freak POV moved to the city on Halloween three years ago. She had been DJing and doing queer parties for the last decade, and within her first month in New Orleans, met Eden while performing and soon after met Cypriestess. The three DJs have been active over the last few years, performing either solo or back-to-back. The three are trans women and in early 2025, Freak POV approached DJ Bouffant Bouffant about having a DJ lineup of trans women at his queer party Gimme a Reason. Bouffant Bouffant first booked Female Trouble for Dad’s Ball during Carnival 2025, and the trio have been busy ever since. They’ve continued to perform regularly, solo and together, around New Orleans and beyond. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Read more from the interview at bestofneworleans.com.
Could y’all tell me about how Female Trouble got started? FREAK POV: We were all friends. Eden and Cypriestess have known each other forever, and I’m the new girl. But I had asked Brett (LaBauve, Bouffant Bouffant) at Gimme a Reason, like, “Hey, I really want to do a t-girl takeover at Gimme. You should have me, Cypriestess and Eden play Gimme. That would be so cute.” He was like, “Yeah, that sounds cool. But also, I’m working with Dad’s Ball this year. Why don’t I see if y’all can play a side room?” That’s ultimately how we started. We didn’t end up actualizing that vision of playing at Gimme for another year.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
Female Trouble How has female trouble evolved over the last year and a half? EDEN: I think we’ve just played more parties than we expected. We’ve gone and played up in the Northeast, and we also ended up playing more of the parties produced by Father Figure (DJ and party producer Mark Louque) and Horse Meat Disco during Decadence. We played a great set our first time together despite having never done that in the way that we did, and it kind of became quickly beloved by a bit of the gay circuit. Then we realized we could keep doing this and there were opportunities, and we were having a lot of fun.
The John Waters movie immediately came to mind whenever I saw the name Female Trouble. I was curious if that’s where the name came from. EDEN: I suggested the name at one point. And we love John Waters. That movie is absolutely darling. The connotations of the name expand beyond that scope, and I think you can draw parallels between the sort of diva, chaotic elements of what we do and the film. Our sets really shake things up and are chaotic and hard to ignore and undeniably female. If you break it down, we are some troubled females making waves. FREAK POV: A lot of things are unexpected, and there’s a range of stuff you’re gonna hear at a Female Trouble set. I think we do a good job of keeping things in the container of [the set], but there’s an element of trouble. That’s always an aspect. I think we wanted female in the name because we wanted something cheeky. EDEN: People are so caught up in denying trans women womanhood — not that they ever could. Sometimes it’s important to just be like, no, we’re actually female. The thing you want to use as your evidence? We’re gonna challenge that concept. You can’t argue with it. You can try, but you’ll lose. FREAK POV: And we love pervert daddy John Waters. If you’re reading this, I adore you. I’d love to know more about the styles y’all lean toward in your sets. CYPRIESTESS: I think we all have somewhat of our own little signature vibe that we bring into the mix. I like to play a lot of club music from around the world, and also just like regional United States-based club music. I also really like breakbeats. I’m always trying to bring breakbeats into what we’re doing. FREAK POV: It’s been fun figuring it out. Like, initially when we started playing, I was like, I’m gonna bring a mix of stuff, and also music that sounds like it will do well in
PROVIDED PHOTO BY SELWYN FIGG
a gay club environment. So the edits are a big one, and I brought a lot of cunty vogue and bitch tracks. A lot of club music from the Northeast, like Baltimore Club, but then also techno and stuff that’s getting up there. I also love a baile edit, a guaracha edit, and those rolling syncopated beats. CYPRIESTESS: You also bring the hyper-pop vibe and that really sets you apart. EDEN: When I started, it was techno that made me want to DJ and what I was into as a DJ. So I think a lot of the sounds I touch on are U.K. sounds. But it really doesn’t stop there. I’ve played quite a bit of garage as well as a U.K. vibe of techno. Dubstep and grime, even. I also like to play trance in our sets sometimes and deep, throwback ravey music. I love Miami bass. I see Female Trouble as an opportunity to really go through many parts of my library to find the bangers. It’s such an expansive style between the three of us that there’s a lot of room to play different stuff. CYPRIESTESS: We go all over the place, and I think we like to bring people really far away from music they recognize and then bring it back to hot music they’ll know. That way, we’ll expand people’s ideas of what they like to dance to.
What comes to mind about the New Orleans dance community right now? EDEN: I’ve been seeing way more parties and way more attendance at those parties and way more different people throwing parties. A lot of DIY efforts, and I think that’s really cool.
I think the critiques I have have nothing to do with the people putting on parties as much as it is we lack resources here. People are broke. We live in a city that’s not necessarily easy to make a living in. There’s also a lack of dedicated spaces for dancing, and that leaves all these efforts up to DJs and promoters to be doing that in DIY ways. Not everyone can bankroll throwing high-budget parties. I mean, we have a sound system that needs to get fixed, and that’s from not just our use but use by other DJs and people in the community. CYPRIESTESS: Something I think is going well is there’s generally a sense of cooperation and collaboration among people. That’s been my experience. I feel like people support each other and help each other out, and maybe there’s more of a sense of community than what I hear about happening in other places. FREAK POV: One thing I want to add is that our perspective is ultimately that of white, trans transplants. There are parties like Set De Flo, Phlegm’s Sinus Drip, Delirium Aura, people that are recentering Black techno and dance music. There’s also parties centering Brazilian music and all this incredible electronic music coming from South and Central America. People are creating space for folks that want to hear music from their diaspora. And then obviously there’s trans women rolling hard for techno and doing things for queer communities. I see a lot of cool, exciting things happening, and it excites me most when those forces are doing stuff together.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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Legatron Prime
PROVIDED PHOTO BY JOSHUA MAYO
LEGATRON PRIME grew up in
a musical household in the 7th Ward and learned how to DJ while attending Southern University in Baton Rouge. Since making her professional start in 2015, she’s become a fixture in New Orleans’ nightlife scene and celebrated for her high-energy, multi-genre sets, consent-only dance floors and advocacy for local culture. Along with holding down her former Saturday night residency, Primetime, at the Dragon’s Den, Legatron Prime also co-founded the Where My Girls At party with DJ Jess, which emphasizes a safe dance floor for women and women-identifying people. She also throws the biannual Legendary Legatron’s Players Ball, a ’70s inspired party celebrating Black and Brown expression. “If I’m DJing for an hour, I’m creating a world: It’s big sounds, it’s bass, it’s sexy, it’s hot, it’s rowdy, it’s ratchet, it’s hood, it’s New Orleans, and it’s Black, Brown and free,” she told Gambit in 2023. She has built those worlds all over the place, from a Boiler Room set and parties thrown by Set De Flo and Ascendance to Essence Fest and venues in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Miami. Legatron Prime also was commissioned last year by Apple Music along with Mannie Fresh, KLC the Drum Major and DJ Poppa to create DJ mixes highlighting the city’s hip-hop legacy ahead of Super Bowl LIX. Legatron Prime next performs Friday, Nov. 13, at the We Belong Here festival. Find the next dates for Where My Girls At and her Kaytraaaa! Club! event on Instagram: @legatronprime.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Read more from the interview at bestofneworleans.com.
You pull together a wide range of genres in your music. Can you tell me about some of the styles that have attracted you over the years? LEGATRON PRIME: A lot of things that I play now definitely come from me listening to a lot of things growing up but not feeling like I was comfortable with telling my peers at the time. A lot of the time, I was listening to songs and these different genres kind of on my own. So I was always discovering different sounds that I liked, and I kind of just held them close until I started to DJ. And I’m more than sure there’s always something for somebody, so I know I wasn’t alone in wanting to hear certain music in the club. When I started DJing, I really wanted to be intentional about the spaces I created. Once I got my footing, then I felt comfortable with branching off. I’m a multi-dimensional person. I’m not just one thing. I can play a house set. I can play a club set. I can play an EDM set. I can play a hip-hop set, a trap set, a R&B set. These are all genres that I listen to. And there are people who are like-minded in the sense where they want to hear the love-dovey R&B songs, and they want to hear some rap shit. They want to shake some ass. They want to jump up and down and rage. I wanted to be able to incorporate all the things and still be a student of discovery.
Could you tell me about starting Where My Girls At? How did you and DJ Jess come together? LP: Around the tail end of 2019, early 2020, (DJ and promoter) Spin Griffey reached out to me with doing a concept, a woman-based event. He reached out to me to DJ, but also kind of create what the brand can be, the nooks and crannies and the language. I was totally down because being a woman in a club space and a woman who likes to go out, it’s tricky. It can be scary sometimes. Your night can be ruined just because a man is being a man or someone’s being inappropriate towards you. It was time where we address those narratives in the community, those types of behaviors in the club community. Above all else, everyone should be safe. But we see this uptick in spaces where women and women-identifying people aren’t made to be safe, and it’s not a priority. So Spin Griffey asked me who would I like to DJ with, and I was like, “Oh, Jess!” It was Jess and (DJ) Rakimbeau. And I felt like, the name Where My Girls At made sense for what we were trying to build and the messaging we were trying to get across, our stances on general safety of women and women-identifying people in the club setting. It’s like putting people on notice that that’s not OK and it’s time for us to do something about it. So it was born out of seeing a need for a space where women can come with their girls, they can turn up, they can be sliding, they can shake ass, and there aren’t men that’s gonna walk behind them or try to dance behind them or be inappropriate toward them. What could DJs, event producers or organizers do better in order to create safer spaces for people? LP: Unfortunately, it is up to us because sometimes the venue just isn’t equipped with the knowledge or the language to go about how to proceed with these types of things. But if you’re at a smaller bar, making sure there are safety precautions around serving and protecting drinks. If there’s Narcan. And also making the staff aware that if problems arise, you have to deal with it in a very soft but firm manner. Testing strips for things. Lids for drinks. People we bring in, volunteers who are like safety people. Ascendance and Set De Flo does that as well, where they have people where if something happens, you can go to one of them and things will get handled. I think that’s a very direct way to go about it. What’s on the top of your mind about the electronic music community today? LP: Especially in our current climate, I love that we have a lot of things that are geared toward fundraising, making sure people are straight, bringing about awareness to certain
things in communities. I’m loving seeing all of those aspects of fundraising and community giving and community support. Even if it’s not in the states, it’s community support for overseas — free Palestine, free Congo. I also just love that we are getting to have really good talent come down here, especially with what Set De Flo does. They bring different talent down from different areas. That’s something crazy to me because I never thought I’d see these people at Poor Boys at like 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning — or even be on a bill with some of these people as well. But the real core of New Orleans dance music is about camaraderie, freedom of expression, freedom of self, freedom to be and collectivizing and being one sound. The people who do it, they do it well. They stand on business 100% and treat the community with the utmost respect and guard it.
How do you think it has changed over the last 10 or 15 years? LP: The community has definitely grown. There are more places to play. There are more DJs who are on the scene that are really branching out and creating these subcultures and subgenres — making their own lanes and having their own waves and signs. We may all use the same three or four venues, but those venues are like, one day it’s EDM, one day it’s techno, one day it’s drum 'n' bass. They’re cool with having these different facets of electronic music and house music and dance music and that community. They’re cool with having a weekend full of different shit under the umbrella of dance music and what the culture really is. Still, the bottom line is we always need more spaces and more places and more big owners who are cool and do good business and have good deals in place to support organizers and the DJs. You make a good point about venues. There’s Republic and Arora and Metropolitan, but it seems like events tend to happen at bars or venues like Anna’s, Poor Boys or Hi-Ho, where the next night might be an indie band. LP: Yeah, and I think that’s because New Orleans isn’t necessarily — we do have a busy electronic music scene, but New Orleans in general, the musical landscape of it was not built off of having [DJs]. Some of us play all of these sounds and all this music that would go off in a big ass club in Miami, but we’re in New Orleans. We play at these smaller venues that are really made for, like they’re jazz clubs almost. Because New Orleans sonically isn’t an electronic music hub, per se, we don’t have a lot of the big clubs. We have Republic, Arora, Rabbit Hole, but that’s it. Those are the big things. But then we have our smaller venues and our hole in the walls. We make do with what we have, and in New Orleans, we just want to party regardless.
25
PHOTO BY MADDIE SPINNER / GAMBIT
RUSTY LAZER (Jay Pennington) and DJ Messy (Casey Coleman) had known each other for years before they started up the duo Chore Boys in early 2025. Pennington for several years managed Big Freedia and toured and DJed behind bounce artists like Katey Red and Nicky da B. And when the car company Scion funded Freedia’s music video for the song “Y’all Get Back Now,” Coleman came on as a producer. Pennington and Coleman remained friends since making the music video, and when both were going through similar life changes a few years ago, they started hanging out more. Pennington told Coleman about experimenting more with stem separation (splitting apart and isolating certain aspects of a song) and it caught Coleman’s interest. “I was like, ‘Well, let’s get together and fuck around,’” Pennington says. “We played together and basically immediately started doing what we’re doing now, which was trading those stems back and forth, so at any given moment, I was playing the drums and he was playing the melody. I’ve got the vocals. Now he’s got an extra drum he’s bringing on top of that. Now we’ve got a new melody, and he’s going to take the vocals. We’re just trading these hearts of songs instead of like normal DJing.” As Chore Boys, often performing faceto-face on the floor rather than on stage, Rusty Lazer and Messy do a live remix set that pulls from their deep music knowledge and libraries for unexpected combinations. At a recent show inside Arora, Chore Boys opened for British jungle DJ Sherelle and New Orleans DJs Freak POV and Tokidokihoe with a high beats-per-minute set to match Sherelle’s tempo. But within Chore Boys’ bassy, fast beats, clips could be heard of “Wipe Me Down,” Lil Wayne and more Southern hip-hop and bounce. A few measures of “Linus and Lucy” also snuck their way in.
Pennington grew up in Texas surrounded by music and began to make New Orleans home in the mid-’90s. In the early 2000s, he was drumming with five bands, but Hurricane Katrina led to the dissolution of each. After an ex-girlfriend and bandmate asked him to DJ her birthday party, Pennington began DJing more as Rusty Lazer and booked shows at small bars and spaces whenever he traveled. Pennington also is the co-founder of the arts organization New Orleans Airlift and the co-creator of Music Box Village. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Read more from the interview at bestofneworleans.com.
Chore Boys PROVIDED PHOTO BY SELWYN FIGG
Could you tell me about you and Casey getting started as Chore Boys? RUSTY LAZER: About three years ago, we were both going through a sort of similar relationship quandary, adaptation, adjustment in our lives. Like both of our relationships were adapting. And to get through that, we both just started hanging out and talking on these long walks, just kind of supporting each other.
We were just chit-chatting about what we were up to, and we talked one day about how we were both using this stem technology, the isolation of individual stems in software. You can turn on or off aspects of music in real time on your software, so I can just be like, only the drums of this track, or no drums, or only the melody, or no melody, or only the vocals, or no vocals, or any blend or combination of those things during a DJ set. I was talking to Casey about how I was doing that. He was telling me how he was interested, and I was like, “Well, let’s get together and fuck around.” And we started one day. We played together and basically immediately started doing what we’re doing now, which was trading those stems back and forth, so at any given moment, I was playing the drums and he was playing the melody. I’ve got the vocals. Now he’s got an extra drum he’s bringing on top of that. And now we’ve got a new melody, and he’s going to take the vocals. We’re just trading these hearts of songs instead of like normal DJing. Basically, what we’re doing is like live-remixing and production. There’s a production element instead of a DJing element. We just really love it. I was in five bands before Katrina. They all broke up, and then I started DJing because I can't really be in a musical project if I don't have an emotional connection with the people I'm doing it with. I'm not a good hired gun, you know. I was asking the universe for a relationship again in music, and I got it. Best part of it between the two of us is I’m very intuitive, very vibey. Everything I love about music is what’s happening in the crowd and what’s happening energetically. Casey is that way, too, but he is extremely adept and deeply enjoys the technical side of what’s going on.
Chore Boys can be malleable with its set. What sort of considerations do y’all take into account before a show? RL: It depends on who's inviting us and for what purpose. We’re just thinking, like, how do we make the people in this situation, who have been kind enough to bring us out, how do we bring to them what we like with the things they like? Which is why you heard us play what we did with Sherelle. We wanted to be in her BPM. We wanted to be in her style. What can we bring to the table that’s in her vein and in that energy? The benefit that we have is we’re both old, and we have a really extensive catalog to draw from. We’re just very lucky that we grew up on a diverse amount of music. Yeah, there were some surprising cuts during the Sherelle show. RL: That’s the goal for us, to bring some nostalgia to it, bring something that feels
familiar but then to throw a few things in that are in the same vein but may be obscure to others — or maybe even obscure to me when Casey’s playing. Maybe you only know this song if you’re like really into x, y and z. We played one show and we were mixing, Cocteau Twins was the melody, the drums were from a Kendrick thing, the vocals were from a dancehall song, and all three of those things are coming together. The guitar was “Heaven or Las Vegas” by Cocteau Twins. So all these things are coming together. This new wave from the ’80s, this up-to-date tempo and beat and then this dancehall thing from like 20 years ago. All of them are happening at the same time. The kid who came up to me afterwards and was like, “That combo was insane,” was like a 22-year-old barback, this young Black kid. We had another girl dancing to one of our shows, and we switched to The Prodigy, but we were doing it with a Jersey club beat and the vocal was “Laffy Taffy” and afterwards, I was like, “Did you know that Prodigy song?” and she said, “Oh hell no. I have no idea what that was, but it sounded cool.” The thing is to try and just give people enough points of reference that maybe one of them makes sense in any given mashup that we’re doing. Maybe only one element makes sense, but that’s enough.
What’s your view of the electronic dance music community today? RL: It’s better than ever. If you like a kind of dance music — if you just like to dance, you are fucking cooking. There is a sound for everybody. There is a vibe for everybody. At any given weekend, look at Pleasure Savior’s weekend picks. All of them are good. Pretty much all the clubs now have DJ nights and dance party nights. I will give massive credit to Matt Muscle, who owns Poor Boys, for taking the idea when he was part owner of Siberia and I was working with Freedia and Katey Red … Matt would do a punk show from 9 o’clock to 11:30, and a queer dance party or bounce night in the late night, and it was a formula that really fucking worked. He started doing it there, and then he moved, and then that was the formula for a long time over at Poor Boys as well. It’s just like the fusing of all those cultures and stuff. Now, there’s just so much variety in the electronic music and DJ music space. You just fucking can’t lose. I’m hoping the rest of the country figures out soon how awesome things are here because a lot of these DJs, we’re capping out on what we can make and what we can do. There’s only so many clubs and we’re a poor city. We don’t have that much money. We got to get people out into the world to make money — be able to stay home by traveling, you know. I’m hoping that we keep moving in that direction.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
Rusty Lazer
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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On page three, in the first paragraph, let's run: "I think in New Orleans, maybe some hardcore heads..." Fifth graph down, correct to "Millstein" (two LL) in Dan Millstein Change the period to a comma in the question "Living in other places, traveling a lot, how did New Orleans compare ..." Second column, fifth paragraph, put "KILOBAUUD" in all caps Second column, very last sentence, capitalize the D in Set De Flo. Fourth page, eight graphs down, change "drum and bass " to "drum 'n' bass" At the top of the second column, change "drum and bass" to "drum 'n' bass" there as well.
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I think New Orleans, maybe some hardcore heads never necessarily wanted to cross those lines. But like Tony Skratchere, he listens to house music. I’ve seen a lot of hip-hop DJs at raves. I think it just depends on the mentality of the individual. And who knows, maybe those hip-hop heads on Monday nights couldn’t just make it past 2 a.m. and had work in the morning. There could be all kinds of circumstances, you know.
Did you become involved with the State Palace Theater and Disco Donnie’s events? JINX: Yeah, I DJed a number (of the parties). When I moved back and opened Naked Records, we did Cafe Istanbul first, then it went to House of Blues, and then my business partner at Naked Records, Evil Eddie, he rented a warehouse, which is across the parking lot from NOCCA these days. They’re now condos. We started doing stuff in there. Then I threw a couple of illegal parties and started throwing raves. But that community was hella small, and there was maybe four or five different promotions groups. So me, Eddie and Stryfe (Dan Millstein), we started Moon Patrol, just named after the video game. And then Donnie became part of Moon Patrol. After I left Moon Patrol and Eddie left, Moon Patrol became Freebass (Society), and Freebass became Disco Donnie Presents. That’s the whole lineage of that. Living in other places, traveling a lot, how did New Orleans compare to other cities at that time? JINX: The New Orleans scene, and we can throw in Baton Rouge and the West Bank and the whole area, the scene was small in the grand scheme of things. Freebass and Disco Donnie Presents, Donnie had a bigger vision than all the other promoters. He comes from a business background, so he saw the business side of it and I give him all the credit in the world. They had the ability to promote from Houston to Orlando to Tennessee to even Atlanta. They had a wide-reaching network of people that would promote for them, and so you’re getting 3,000 to 5,000 people at State Palace parties. If you look at all the other parties that were thrown, it was like 750 to maybe 1,100 were the average number for all the other promoters’ parties. But yeah, the New Orleans scene as a whole was small, and I don’t think we ever really got accepted by New
Orleans, the city. It was just like, “Oh, these raver kids.” But even hip-hop early on, New Orleans wasn’t looked at as a hip-hop city.
How do you think Katrina impacted the scene? JINX: Everyone that was involved in it left. It was maybe a handful of people that remained, but all of the people that were doing a lot of stuff had left. I had already left, Dan (Stryfe) left, Donnie had left. It vacated the city, so it changed to where it became a whole new group of people. It took a while for any kind of community to bounce back, too, maybe up until like the 2010s. JINX: Yeah, you had Bass Church and Erik Browne (Unicorn Fukr). Javier Drada, who had been there since ’99, he really held up his end on the techno and house scene. He actually recently moved here. He always had something going on. You had a lot of people fill the holes. Lil Jodeci (KILOBAUUD) and those guys. DJ Quickweave is my daughter’s boyfriend, so my blood runs thick through it to this day. Any thoughts about how the New Orleans scene looks today? JINX: I’m always excited about it. I do kind of feel bad — I won’t say names, but I had a conversation with a promoter-slash-DJ a number of years ago who was having a hard time understanding how small the events were, and I was like, “Look, man, that’s the city.” The city is a live music city. You need to be happy with what you have, but don’t give up! Of course, kids coming in at Tulane, that’s always going to be a big help, too. But I think they just need to keep going and not give up. Stryfe said something in a [NOLA EDM] interview, you know, when we had it in the ’90s, even if we didn’t get along with each other, we all worked together. Now, you have so much happening that it spreads it even thinner. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but as a promoter, you have to understand, like, hey, I might only have a couple dozen people here because there’s four or five things to go to. I think it just depends on what the promoters want out of it. I wish them all the luck. And there’s some great people there right now. Otto, who’s been holding it down for forever. Bouffant Bouffant. The whole Set De Flo crew.
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us for like $1,000 a night, and we had to get like a $500 insurance policy or something. It’s kind of crazy to think about at the time, all the liability. We got a year lease on a warehouse on Erato Street. We didn’t tell the guy we were doing parties in there, so we lasted about a month. You have to look at it like this: This was the ’90s and we were kids, so we didn’t have any security or any permits or any event insurance. It was definitely the wild, wild west.
Then y’all landed at the State Palace Theater. What was it about the venue that made it so successful? DD: It’s right there on the edge of the French Quarter. It’s iconic. Everything is legal. Basically, you know, it’s like becoming legit. Going from some stinky warehouse with no permits and no A/C and into a legit venue, it’s a big step up. And it was safer. At the same time, that’s when the scene was kind of exploding, and I think State Palace, it was a timing thing, but also that venue itself and the consistency of us doing shows at that venue, we were able to really grow the scene rapidly. The capacity in there was like 3,000 (people). You see all those other restaurants around it? But above those, there’s a warehouse space that’s connected to the State Palace. So we leased that space out and we demoed the wall, so in that space, we created two more stages, a record store, and then we did a deck on the roof, and then we had a stage in like the mezzanine by the restrooms, a smaller stage. So in the end, we had five stages. So what was the legal capacity? [Laughs] Well, maybe five or six thousand. How were y’all using the spaces? Was the intention to have different parts of the experience around the venue? DD: In the world of EDM or whatever you want to call it, there’s different genres, right? Maybe they’re cousins. A lot of people like a lot of different things, and a lot of people like to try different things. So you’d have the main stage be a certain style, then you’d have like drum 'n' bass upstairs and then maybe you had a house stage. Then we had a local stage. Each room had its own theme. Not always, but that was the plan going into it. How did things change with Hurricane Katrina? DD: I was in Ohio at the time and was watching it on TV. We had LTJ Bukem, a UK drum 'n' bass DJ, booked on like
the Friday and I remember talking to people — we used to have a forum, so people that had power were saying the storm had passed and I was looking at videos of Canal Street and it was dry. And then an hour later, there’s videos of Canal Street and somebody’s going down it with a kayak. We didn’t know on the backend that that water was coming. After the legal issues, and the whole market crashed nationwide around 2001 or 2002 — some of it was hip-hop and some of it was people’s musical tastes changing — so our crowds were getting smaller and smaller. Then Katrina was a catastrophe. It displaced a lot of the people in our scene. A lot of people just got in their cars and never came back.
Do you have any thoughts about the dance community today in New Orleans? DD: There’s a lot of stuff going on. Maybe it could be just a bar with a DJ in it or whatever, but there’s a ton of stuff going on. You’ll see that in cities like New York and L.A. and Miami, just a ton of things going on. I feel like there’s almost too much going on in New Orleans. It feels a little disjointed to me, and I wish instead of like four people doing four parties, why don’t they get together? Why don’t these four people get together and do one big party? Try to build something a little more solid. There’s so many events going on in New Orleans every weekend. When we did shows in the ’90s, I held a calendar, and so this night, we’re gonna do a show, we would say, “oh, Joey’s doing a show that weekend.” “Ok, well how about this weekend instead?” We were able to kind of control it, so we were building something for the future and weren’t trying to kill each other. Right now, it seems a little discombobulated. Is there anything else that comes to mind, especially about this time in New Orleans? DD: Just that it was crazy. New Orleans, the city itself played a big factor in the success of the events as well. We were able to pull a lot of the New Orleans performers and vibes and different characters into the show and weave them into the shows. It was a blank canvas, and it was an exciting time. If you read about how people talk about it online, it was like the Holy Grail. And it wasn’t just me. There were people before me, people during my time — it was all of us together.
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E AT + D R I N K
Caribbean dream
FOR K + CE NTE R
Maison Revant highlights flavors of Martinique and more | by Beth D’Addono THE HOUSE OF DREAMS.
That’s what the name of the new restaurant Maison Revant means in French. It also speaks directly to the hopes and imaginings of its chef and co-owner Laura-Inès René-Corail. A native of Martinique and graduate of Paris’s École Grégoire Ferrandi culinary school, René-Corail brings her vision to life at 1014 N. Rampart St. on the edge of the French Quarter. Maison Revant celebrates her heritage with a menu of French-Caribbean cuisine powered by locally sourced ingredients. The September opening in the former Bijou space was powered by a chance meeting between René-Corail and local attorney Daryl Gray more than a year ago. He agreed to invest in her concept, with the historic side-gabled Creole cottage space deemed an ideal location. “I bring my experience and sweat equity,” Rene-Corail says. Her restaurant’s location in New Orleans is thanks to a love story. She was working as a sous chef for Nina Compton at Compere Lapin and met a chef working at Compton’s now closed second restaurant, BABs. She married the New Orleans native, Brandon Johnson, less than a year later. Their love story, a tale of two cultures colliding and abiding, is the subject of a gorgeous mural by Don Marshall Jr. in the restaurant’s courtyard. It represents her idea to use her cuisine to show the similarities between New Orleans, France and Martinique. René-Corail has worked closely with the opening team, sous chef Yuri de Melo and GM Aaron Morris. She drew the logo, which shows a young girl on a swing dressed in traditional Martinque madras plaid. “She’s swinging between cultures,” says the chef. “Like me.” Channeling her years spent at Michelin-starred restaurants in France, the chef created a polished menu of dishes that speak to Caribbean, French and Creole tables. There are smaller plates in the $16 to $32 range, including tuna tataki served with kiwi gel and
West Indian spice blend of turmeric, coriander, cumin, mustard seeds and fenugreek seeds. A compact list of specialty drinks leads with Martinique’s national cocktail, Ti punch, made with rum, fresh lime and cane syrup. Her French training helped her curate a mix of old and new world wines for the house list. The restaurant is a handsome space, full of light, art and exposed brick. There are seats for 95 inside and 40 in the courtyard. Handmade water carafes and dishes from Potsalot in Uptown add another layer of mindful detail. René-Corail also is passionate about Chef and founder Laura-Inès sourcing locally, René-Corail at Maison Revant primarily from PHOTO BY MADDIE SPINNER / GAMBIT Mississippi farms, while keeping waste to a minimum in her kitchen and treating her hamachi ceviche dressed with fresh employees well. A 20 percent gratuity is herbs and a passion fruit sauce. Braised added to all checks. octopus, called “chatrou” in Martinique, Maison Revant is the third restaurant is served atop a coconut bechamel. to open this year on or close to Rampart Roasted local shrimp are served with a Street, all run by strong women chefs of reduction of coconut cream. color. Kandy Taylor runs Kandy’s at 514 Calalou, a leafy green vegetable S. Rampart St. and chef Kimberly “K” popular in the Caribbean with ties to Cochran is in the kitchen at Succotash West Africa, is paired with a Frenchat 1041 Dumaine St. style crab croquette. There’s foie gras For her part, René-Corail sees torchon with fruit and pate en croute Maison Revant as a restaurant with as well as a Gulf fish of the day, served a story to tell. “When I arrived in New “damier,” or in a checkerboard design, Orleans, I immediately recognized the with a savory champagne sabayon soul of home from the French heritage, custard on the side. the African roots, the Creole identity Large plates priced from $72 to $90 and the deep relationship with food are designed to feed three or four and community,” she says. “My goal guests. Duck confit is paired with mushroom duxelles, herb salad and is to bring authenticity of the French foie gras. A spiced seafood jambalaya, Caribbean table to a city that shares made with pompano, is treated to a those same roots.”
? WHAT
WHERE
WHEN
HOW
CHECK IT OUT
Maison Revant
1014 N. Rampart St., maisonrevantnola.com
Dinner Tue.-Sat.
Dine-in
Flavors of Martinique and more in the French Quarter
Email dining@gambitweekly.com
Crunch time
SIZZLING SOUNDS ERUPT AS ANOTHER BATCH OF CHICKEN is dunked in the fryer
at McHardy’s Chicken & Fixin’, and the orders come in swiftly over the counter with the weekday lunch rush underway. In the prep room in back, the pace is more measured and methodical. Following an exacting process, each piece of chicken is washed and strips of yellow fat are trimmed away. The chicken is marinated overnight and covered in a seasoned flour just before cooking. The chicken is crunchy, less greasy and very flavorful, and each step in the cooking process has been calculated to keep it that way, says Kermit Mogilles, who runs the 7th Ward takeout fried chicken shop with his wife, Alvi, and their son, Rahman. Increasingly critical these days, too, are the calculations the family must make to balance the cost of serving their chicken and the price they charge for it.
Kermit Mogilles, Alvi Mogilles and their son Rahman Mogilles run McHardy’s Chicken & Fixin’. PHOTO BY IAN MCNULTY / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
“Doing something of quality at a cost-effective price is never easy, and it’s more challenging than ever now,” he says. “It’s a struggle.” Opened in 2000, with fried chicken based on a home recipe from Alvi’s mother, McHardy’s has become a low-key institution in New Orleans for an anytime meal, for large orders to feed groups and parties, and for whole fried turkeys for the holidays. It’s also known for affordability, and that’s an inescapable buzzword now from national headlines to the family table as people contend with higher costs. In the restaurant industry, food and labor costs have climbed an estimated 35% since 2020, the National Restaurant Association reported earlier this year,
®
putting growing pressure on businesses that typically run on profit margins of between 3% and 5%. Back in 2022, I set out on a quest to find dishes around New Orleans that could make a satisfying meal for $10 or less. It was an arbitrary threshold that produced some delicious finds, mostly from mom-and-pop takeout joints. Today, these spots also provide a benchmark for how things have changed, and how some have managed to keep prices down. I revisited all the examples I could, and a few of the restaurants have since closed. McHardy’s was a particularly rewarding find, and today it’s also a demonstration of the constant work and increasing struggle required to keep prices down. The menu board hanging over McHardy’s counter is essentially a multiplication table, with one baseline price for fried chicken that changes by quantity, so that a 10-piece box is one-tenth the cost of a suitcase-sized 100-piece order. In 2022, I sampled the smallest order available, a five-piece box. Back then it was $7.04. Today, it’s on the menu for $8.37. Every penny of that increase has been analyzed, and in many cases agonized over, by the proprietors. They know that even a small change can make a difference for people watching their own finances. “It takes a lot of discipline on our part, but we are determined,” Alvi says. “My husband and I both grew up very poor, so we know how to cut back and make sacrifices.” When presented with higher delivery charges and fuel surcharges for skyrocketing diesel prices, McHardy’s reduced the frequency of deliveries for just about everything except chicken. “Every time there’s a delivery, that’s a charge, we can see that, so that’s something where we can save,” Kermit says. Side dishes that were once outsourced to a purveyor, like the red beans, are now made in-house. After a McHardy’s employee moved out of town, Alvi took on her duties rather than hire for the position. She now arrives earlier to prep food. Both moves cut overhead costs, but mean more work. The family business has also diversified. It now runs McHardy’s Equipment Rental, providing fryers and other kitchen gear. It’s built a niche with church events and local food festivals, where vendors might need the equipment only for a weekend.
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McHardy’s Chicken & Fixin is a takeout spot for fried chicken. PHOTO BY IAN MCNULTY / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE
There is an annual bright spot ahead for McHardy’s, with November beginning what’s known at the shop as “fried turkey season.” Though always on the menu, fried turkeys are in high demand for Thanksgiving, and also for office parties and other gatherings continuing through Christmas and New Year’s. Like king cakes for bakeries, fried turkeys are a seasonal boost that buoys the whole business. “Thank God for that,” says Alvi. “It is our busiest time, and it’s all hands on deck, and it helps us all year.” McHardy’s is a Peeps-sized player in the fried chicken game, which is dominated by national brands with revenues in the billions and commensurately large marketing budgets and economies of scale for supply chains. These brands also tend to charge more. At local Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen outposts, for example, a four-piece order of bone-in chicken is now $9.99. At McHardy’s, all the measured steps in preparation, and the low prices, have drawn a loyal following. The shop’s other competitive advantage is character. Alvi coaches staff on making sure they thank customers for their business, which is more important than ever now, she insists. She also often has advice for customers on how to stretch their dollars further, like combining an order of McHardy’s chicken with a few groceries for a make-at-home salad or by customizing an order with a mix of larger pieces so there’s enough for parents and kids in one box. “This is a business that has thrived on discretionary income, but I don’t know if discretionary income really exists anymore,” Alvi said. “So you have to put yourself in other people’s shoes.” — Ian McNulty / The Times-Picayune
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3 COURSE INTERVIEW
Ciera Turbinton, Jordan Jones & Marita Blevins NOCHI chefs by Will Coviello EVERY GRADUATING CLASS OF CHEFS
at the New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality Institute (NOCHI) creates a pop-up restaurant at the school near Harmony Circle. Ciera Turbinton, Marita Blevins and Jordan Jones are on the team that created Yatai, a Japanese street food concept serving a menu of skewered shrimp, udon noodles, chicken katsu and more. The pop-up is open for lunch Tuesday through Friday Nov. 10-13 & 17-20 and Dec. 1-4 & 8-11. Visit nochi.org/yatai for the full menu and reservations.
How did you get interested in cooking and NOCHI? MARITA BLEVINS: I started cooking as a kid. When I was 10 years old, my parents would let me do whatever I wanted in the kitchen. I would come home from school and watch the Food Network and take recipes from there and play around. One of the first meals I ever made for my parents was a Cajun chicken Alfredo. I originally went into accounting. But after eight years, I decided to switch and start over. I just moved here in April. I am originally from Florida. JORDAN JONES: Cooking has always been a big thing in my family. If you asked who’s the best cook in my family, I’d probably tell you my dad. We will sit down and watch the cooking shows.
ways l a s i e r Th e or Roo m f
Me and my dad sat down and he asked me “What do you want to do after high school?” I didn’t want to go to college. That wasn’t my thing. I told him I wanted to go into cooking. He said, “I know a school. We can look into it.” I came here straight out of high school. My high school had a culinary program. We made simple stuff like biscuits and king cake. I worked at a couple restaurants. My first job was at Southerns in Metairie. After I came here, I worked at Morrow’s for a little bit. Now I am working part-time at La Petite Grocery. I am the pastry chef. We bake cookies, and one of my cookies is on the menu. It’s an oat white chocolate chip cookie. CIERA TURBINTON: I am born and raised in New Orleans. I grew up in the kitchen. My mom is the best cook in my family. I took the role of best hair stylist. I was the family hair stylist. I graduated from Paul Mitchell. I decided to pivot. My mom would give me her clients. I was like if she trusts me to do what she can do, I can do this. I decided to trust myself more in the kitchen and sharpen my edges by coming to culinary school. To get my feet wet, I worked at Li’l Dizzy’s on the weekends. It gave me experience. I had never been in a commercial kitchen. Right now, I am working at Commander’s Palace. I am in gardemanger. I am on hot apps. I do shrimp and tasso, escargot, which has a lot of components, and we have a tasting that is a play on an oyster po-boy. That’s really interesting. They are trying me at different stations. I would like to build a legacy for my family and pass it on to my kids some day.
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What’s on the menu?
MB: The majority of the menu are the heavy hitters in Osaka street food. CT: We all pitched ideas from our favorite dishes and restaurants. I remember a restaurant from when I lived in Las Vegas, and they had yakitori grills. They would cook in front of you. I loved that. NOCHI was able to provide the grills. We have shrimp yakitori. We are going to NOCHI chefs Gael Moya (left), Jordan marinate them and put Jones, Ciera Turbinton, Marita them on skewers. It’s Blevins, Nick Valentino, Olin Gasper and Nathalie Clerone created Yatai. an appetizer. PHOTO BY WILL COVIELLO MB: A couple other items are the okonomiHow did you come up yaki and takoyaki. Okonomiyaki is like a cabbage pancake and it’ll have a protein with the Yatai concept? on top. The cabbage is shredded and MB: Jordan was really excited about mixed into batter with green onions. The Japan from the moment we discussed what our options were. takoyaki are crispy octopus balls. JJ: I love Japanese culture. Since I was CT: We are vegetarian friendly. We a kid. I watched a lot of anime, I read a lot want to include everyone. The menu is of manga. pretty customizable. There aren’t a lot of straight Japanese JJ: We have people that are vegan. I spots (in New Orleans). If there is, it’s want everyone to enjoy it. fusion with something from here, like MB: We have a kitsune udon with a dashi Cajun and Creole. There’s not a lot of broth, udon noodles and a protein. Or it traditional Japanese food. could be vegan or vegetarian. CT: We agreed we were going to do CT: We have tofu, chicken katsu and something from Japan, but we narrowed it chashu pork and shrimp. down to one region. JJ: We are doing a matcha white chocMB: We identified a hole in the New olate chip cookie. We also are testing a Orleans market. There’s a lot of sushi, but chocolate mochi cake and a yuzu tart and not a lot of Japanese street food. an ice cream sandwich. CT: As far as the name, it resonated with CT: We hope we can have red lanterns what NOCHI has given us an opportunity which are traditional with yatai carts. That to do with a pop-up. Yatai is a pop-up adds to the atmosphere. We have cool station in Japan. It’s like a wooden cart. curtain on the door from Japan. They set up barstools.
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O U T T O E AT
3rd Block Depot — 316 Chartres St., (504) 552-4095; 3rdblockdepot.com — The menu ranges from seafood and sausage gumbo and Gulf shrimp ceviche to smashburgers and steaks. Brunch brings crab cake Benedict with hollandaise on an English muffin. Reservations available. Breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Acropolis Cuisine — 3841 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie, (504) 888-9046; acropoliscuisine.com — The menu of classic Greek dishes includes souvlaki, gyros and pita wraps, spanakopita, hummus and Greek salads. Moussaka has layers of eggplant, potatoes, zucchini, ground beef and bechamel. No reservations. Lunch and dinner daily. $$ Angelo Brocato’s — 214 N. Carrollton Ave., (504) 486-1465; angelobrocatoicecream.com — This Mid-City sweet shop serves its own gelato in flavors like praline, salted caramel and tiramisu, as well as Italian ices in flavors like lemon, strawberry and mango. There also are cannolis, biscotti, fig cookies, tiramisu, macaroons and coffee drinks. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sun. $ Annunciation — 1016 Annunciation St., (504) 568-0245; annunciationrestaurant.com — Gulf fish Capri includes artichokes, crawfish, tomatoes and capers. There also are oysters, seafood pasta dishes, salads, steaks, lamb chops and desserts like bananas Foster bread pudding and lemon icebox tart. Reservations recommended. Dinner Thu.-Mon. $$$ Audubon Clubhouse — 6500 Magazine St., (504) 558-1200; audubonclubhouse.com — The menu by Dickie Brennan and Co. includes crabmeat cheesecake, shrimp remoulade, fried oysters, burgers, sandwiches and more. Shrimp Tchefuncte combines house-made andouille, mushrooms, popcorn rice and Creole meuniere sauce. Outdoor seating available. Reservations recommended. Brunch, lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Banana Blossom — 500 9th St., Gretna, (504) 500-0997; 504bananablossom.com — There are traditional Thai dishes like pad thai, green curry, pineapple fried rice, drunken noodles and coconut shrimp as well as original creations. Beef rib Chiang Mai features a slow-braised beef rib with yellow curry, egg noodles, pickled mustard greens, cilantro and chili oil. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sat. $$
$ — average dinner entrée under $10 $$ — $11-$20 $$$ — $20-up
Budsi’s Authentic Thai — 1760 N. Rampart
St., (504) 381-4636; budsisthai.com — Chef Budsaba Mason prepares dishes from her native Issan region of Thailand and other popular Thai dishes like papaya salad, grilled pork shoulder, larb, khao soi, pad thai and red curry. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sun. $$ Chef Ron’s Gumbo Stop — 2309 N. Causeway Blvd., Metairie, (504) 835-2022; gumbostop.com — The Gumbo Stop has several gumbo varieties including chicken and sausage gumbo and seafood gumbo with shrimp, crab and crawfish. The menu also has boudin balls, Bayou shrimp scampi, crawfish etouffee and fried shrimp po-boys. Reservations accepted. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sat. $$ The Commissary — 634 Orange St., (504) 274-1850; thecommissarynola.com — Dickie Brennan’s Commissary supplies his other restaurant kitchens and also has a dine-in menu and prepared foods to go. A smoked turkey sandwich is served with bacon, tomato jam, herbed cream cheese, arugula and herb vinaigrette on honey oat bread. The menu includes dips, salads, sandwiches, boudin balls, fried oysters and more. No reservations. Outdoor seating available. Lunch Tue.-Sat. $$ The Country Club — 634 Louisa St., (504) 945-0742; thecountryclubneworleans.com — The Bywater restaurant and pool has a menu of crab beignets, truffle mac and cheese, shrimp and grits, burgers and more. Seared redfish is served with kale, toasted chickpeas, sesame seeds, chili crisp and whipped tahini. Outdoor seating available. Reservations recommended. Lunch, brunch and dinner daily. $$$ Delacroix Restaurant — 1 Poydras St., (504) 655-9002; delacroixrestaurant.com — With views overlooking the Mississippi River, the restaurant serves a mix of South Louisiana dishes like smoked duck gumbo, crawfish bisque, shrimp Creole, blackened redfish and crawfish étouffée. Drum amandine is served with green beans and stewed potatoes. Reservations available. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Desire Oyster Bar — Royal Sonesta New Orleans, 300 Bourbon St., (504) 586-0300; sonesta.com/desireoysterbar — A menu full of Gulf seafood includes oysters served raw
TAKEOUT and DELIVERY
www.mikimotosushi.com | 488-1881 | 3301 S. Carrollton
on the half-shell or char-broiled with with Parmesan, garlic and herbs. The menu also includes po-boys, gumbo, blackened fish, fried seafood platters and more. Reservations recommended. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$ Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House — 144 Bourbon St., (504) 522-0111; bourbonhouse. com — There’s a seafood raw bar with raw and char-broiled oysters, fish dip, crab fingers, shrimp and more. Redfish “on the half-shell” is cooked skin-on and served with crab-boiled potatoes, frisee and lemon buerre blanc. The bar offers a wide selection of bourbon and whiskies. Reservations accepted. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse — 716 Iberville St., (504) 522-2467; dickiebrennanssteakhouse.com — The menu includes a variety of steaks, plus seared Gulf fish, lobster pasta, barbecue shrimp and more. A 6-ounce filet mignon is served with fried oysters, creamed spinach, potatoes and bearnaise. Reservations recommended. Dinner Mon.Sat. $$$ Domenica — 123 Baronne St., (504) 6486020; domenicarestaurant.com — The Italian restaurant offers a mix of wood-fired Napolitano-style pizzas and house-made pastas. Appetizers include various salumi and cheese boards, antipasti, roasted cauliflower and more. Reservations accepted. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Don’s Seafood — 4801 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie, (504) 888-1555; donsseafoodonline.com — The seafood options range from char-broiled oysters to seafood gumbo, fried shrimp and catfish platters and stuffed flounder. The menu also has rib-eye steaks. Reservations accepted for large parties. Lunch and dinner daily. $$ Elizabeth’s Restaurant — 601 Gallier St., (504) 944-9272; elizabethsrestaurantnola. com — Elizabeth’s is known for its signature praline bacon, and the menu also includes boudin balls, shrimp and grits, chicken and waffles and eggs Florentine. Outdoor seating available. Reservations accepted for parties of 10 or more. Breakfast and lunch daily. $$ Katie’s Restaurant — 3701 Iberville St., (504) 488-6582; katiesinmidcity.com — The Cajun Cuban is stuffed with roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard. The eclectic menu also includes char-grilled oysters, sandwiches, burgers, pizza, fried seafood platters, pasta, salads and more. Delivery available. Reservations accepted for large parties. Lunch and dinner daily. $$
King Brasserie & Bar — Kimpton Hotel Fontenot, 501 Tchoupitoulas St., (504) 324-3000; kingbrasserieandbar.com — The restaurant’s menu is inspired by the cuisine of the Riviera and southern France. There are dishes like steak frites and bouillabaisse as well as blackened Gulf fish and barbecue shrimp and oysters. Reservations recommended. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Legacy Kitchen’s Craft Tavern — 700 Tchoupitoulas St., (504) 613-2350; legacykitchen.com — The menu includes oysters, flatbreads, burgers, sandwiches, salads and sharable plates like NOLA Tot Debris. A slow-cooked pulled pork barbecue sandwich is served with coleslaw on a brioche bun. Reservations accepted. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$ Legacy Kitchen Steak & Chop — 91 Westbank Expressway, Gretna, (504) 5132606; legacykitchen.com — The selection of steaks and chops includes filet mignon, bone-in rib-eye, top sirloin and double pork chops and a la carte toppings include bearnaise, blue cheese and sauteed crabmeat. There also are burgers, salads, pasta, seafood entrees, char-broiled oysters and more. Reservations accepted. Outdoor seating available. Lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat. $$ Luke — 333 St. Charles Ave., (504) 378-2840; lukeneworleans.com — The raw bar offers oysters, boiled shrimp, cured tuna, smoked trout dip and more. The menu has dishes like shrimp and grits, crab omelets, crawfish etouffee and steak frites. Reservations encouraged. Breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Lyons Corner — 537 Gravier St., (504) 5270006; lyonscornernola.com — The eclectic menu includes Cajun prawns, bang-bang fried oysters, chicken sandwiches, salads and more. In the morning, there are breakfast empanadas, muffins, croissants, scones, beignets and more. Delivery and takeout available. No reservations. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$ Mikimoto — 3301 S. Carrollton Ave., (504) 488-1881; mikimotosushi.com — The menu of Japanese cuisine includes sushi, signature rolls, tempura fried items, udon noodles, teriyaki, salads and more.The South Carrollton roll includes tuna tataki, avocado, snow crab, green onion and wasabi roe. Reservations accepted. Delivery available. Lunch Sun.-Fri., dinner daily. $$ PAGE 32
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
Out to Eat is an index of Gambit contract advertisers. Unless noted, addresses are for New Orleans and all accept credit cards. Updates: Email willc@gambitweekly.com or call (504) 483-3106.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
32 O U T T O E AT
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Mosca’s — 4137 Highway 90 West,
Westwego, (504) 436-8950; moscasrestaurant.com — This family-style eatery serves Italian dishes and specialties including shrimp Mosca, baked oysters Mosca and spaghetti bordelaise and chicken cacciatore. Chicken a la grands is sauteed with garlic, rosemary, Italian herbs and white wine. Reservations accepted. Dinner Wed.-Sat. Cash only. $$$ Mother’s Restaurant — 401 Poydras St., (504) 523-9656; mothersrestaurant.net — This counter-service spot serves po-boys dressed with sliced cabbage like the Famous Ferdi filled with ham, roast beef and debris. Creole favorites include jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, red beans and rice and more. Breakfast is available all day. Delivery available. No reservations. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$ Orleans Grapevine Wine Bar & Bistro — 720 Orleans Ave., (504) 523-1930; orleansgrapevine.com — The wine bar offers a selectoin of cheese boards and appetizers. Creole pasta combines shrimp and andouille in tomato cream sauce. Reservations accepted for large parties. Outdoor seating available. Dinner Thu.-Sun. $$ Pascal’s Manale — 1838 Napoleon Ave., (504) 895-4877; pascalsmanale.com — This Creole-Italian spot invented New Orleansstyle barbecue shrimp, and the menu also includes seafood gumbo, crab cakes, oysters and Italian-style pasta dishes. There’s also an oyster bar. Reservations recommended. Lunch and dinner Tue.-Sat. $$$ Peacock Room — Kimpton Hotel Fontenot, 501 Tchoupitoulas St., (504) 324-3073; peacockroomnola.com — At brunch, braised short rib grillades are served over grits with mushrooms, a poached egg and shaved truffle. The dinner menu has oysters, salads, pasta, shrimp and grits, a burger, cheese plates and more. Reservations accepted. Dinner Wed.-Mon., brunch Sun. $$ Pizza Domenica — 4933 Magazine St., (504) 301-4978; pizzadomenica.com — Pizza is the focus of this offshoot of the Italian restaurant Domenica. There also are meatballs, roasted cauliflower and house-made pastas. No reservations. Lunch and dinner daily. $$ Restaurant August — 301 Tchoupitoulas St., (504) 299-9777; restaurantaugust.com — The fine dining restaurant serves Creole and contemporary dishes featuring foie gras, Gulf fish, duck and more. Gnocchi are served with crab, summer truffles and Parmesan. Reservations recommended. Dinner Sun.Fri., lunch Fri. $$$ Rivershack Tavern — 3449 River Road, Jefferson, (504) 834-4938; rivershacktavern. com — This tavern along the levee offers a casual menu of roast beef po-boys, burgers, wraps, fried shrimp platters, catfish and gumbo. A country fried steak is served with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, vegetables and salad. Outdoor seating available. No reservations. Lunch and dinner daily. $$ Shaya — 4213 Magazine St., (504) 891-4213; shayarestaurant.com — The Mediterranean and Middle Eastern menu includes dishes like hummus, falafel, kebabs, grilled chicken and wood-oven pita bread. A chicken schnitzel sandwich is dressed with little gem lettuce, pickles and harissa mayonnaise on sesame brioche bread. Outdoor seating available. Reservations recommended. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Stingray’s Restaurant & Bar — 1303 W. Esplanade Ave., Kenner, (504) 443-4040;
stingraysseafoodrestaurant.com — Zydeco fish is stuffed with crabmeat dressing and topped with shrimp cream sauce. The menu also includes fried shrimp and oyster platters, grilled redfish, crabmeat jalapeños, and boudin egg rolls. Reservations available. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Tableau — 616 St. Peter St., (504) 934-3463; tableaufrenchquarter.com — The menu features traditional and creative Creole dishes. Pasta bouillabaisse features squid ink mafaldine, little neck clams, Gulf shrimp, squid, seafood broth, rouille and herbed breadcrumbs. Outdoor seating available on the balcony. Reservations recommended. Dinner Wed.-Sun., brunch Thu.-Sun. $$$ Tacklebox — 817 Common St., (504) 827-1651; legacykitchen.com — The menu includes raw and char-broiled oysters, seafood platters, po-boys, fried chicken, crab and corn bisque and more. Redfish St. Charles is served with garlic-herb butter, asparagus, mushrooms and crawfish cornbread. Reservations accepted. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$ Tavi — 330 N. New Hampshire St., (985) 200-2045; tavirestaurant.com — The menu combines dishes from the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. There’s hummus, falafel, kebabs, flatbreads, grilled fish, lamb burgers and more. Reservations accepted. Lunch and dinner daily. $$$ Theo’s Neighborhood Pizza — 1212 S. Clearview Parkway, Elmwood, (504) 733-3803; 2125 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie, (504) 510-4282; 4024 Canal St., (504) 302-1133; 4218 Magazine St., (504) 894-8554; 70488 Highway 21, Covington, (985) 234-9420; theospizza.com — A Marilynn Pota Supreme pie is topped with mozzarella, pepperoni, sausage, hamburger, mushrooms, bell peppers and onions. There also are salads, sandwiches, wings, breadsticks and more. Delivery available. Lunch and dinner daily. $ The Vintage — 3121 Magazine St., (504) 324-7144; thevintagenola.com — There’s a full coffee drinks menu and baked goods and beignets, as well as a full bar. The menu has flatbreads, cheese boards, small plates and a pressed vegetable sandwich with avocado, onions, arugula, red pepper and pepper jack cheese. No reservations. Delivery and outdoor seating available. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. $$ Vyoone’s — 412 Girod St., (504) 381-4384; vyoone.com — The French-Creole menu includes dishes like escargot, crawfish beignets, crab cakes, shrimp pasta, duck a l’orange and lamb chops. Reservations recommended. Dinner Wed.-Sun. $$$ Willa Jean — 611 O’Keefe Ave., (504) 5097334; willajean.com — The bakery and cafe serves biscuits with honey butter, cookies, pastries, breakfast sandwiches, shrimp and grits and more. Avocado toasts are made with house-baked ciabatta topped with tomatillo, spiced pepitas, pickled onion, cilantro and chipotle aioli. Outdoor seating available. No reservations. Breakfast and lunch daily. $$ Yinzer’s Amazing Cheesesteaks — 1514 Delachaise St., (412) 860-6801; yinzersamazingcheesesteaks.com —There are classic and original cheesesteaks filled with steak, chicken and more. Diners can opt for toppings like provolone, house-made cheddar whiz, mushrooms, onions, banana peppers and more. Delivery available. No reservations. Lunch and dinner Wed.-Sun. $
Winter S L I A T r K e t C in O W C & S GUIDE BARDRINK ISSUE NOV 16 1
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Alonzo King LINES Ballet
Choreographer Alonzo King’s contemporary ballet company is based in San Francisco. This program includes a tribute to harpist Alice Coltrane. There’s also a collaboration with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in “Ma mere l’Oye (Mother Goose).” The New Orleans Ballet Association presents the performance at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, at Mahalia Jackson Theater. Tickets $36-$222 via nobadance.com.
Radiator Hospital Sam Cook-Parrott’s lo-fi indie rock project Radiator Hospital in August released the album “Distorting Time,” a fuzzy project with pop and psychedelic influences. Radiator Hospital is now on tour with Noun, the solo project of former Screaming Females vocalist-guitarist Marissa Paternoster. They play Gasa Gasa with Lyla George at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10. Tickets are $20.96 via gasagasanola.com.
Heather Littlefield Country musician Heather Littlefield plays with her band The Buckle Dusters on Sunday, Nov. 15, at Okay Bar ahead of the release of her latest album “Wildflowers.” It’s also a goodbye show as Littlefield makes a move to Nashville. Rose Vaughn, Clare Doyle and Lily Unless & The If Onlys also perform. Things get started at 5 p.m. Find more info on Instagram: @honkytonkriotgrrrl.
Three Rivers Arts Festival Downtown Covington fills with art and craft vendors, plus live music and more. There are more than two hundred artist booths along Columbia Street offering paintings, sculpture, photography, jewelry, ceramics, woodwork, leather goods and more. There also is live music, a kids area and food vendors. From 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, and Sunday, Nov. 15. Admission is free. Visit covingtonthreeriversartfestival. com for information.
‘Tennessee Williams Abridged’ Set in the asylum where Blanche DuBois is taken at the end of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the comedic distillation of Tennessee Williams’ work draws on characters and plots from 17 of his plays. Blanche stars in the mashup with bits of “Night of the Iguana,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Glass Menagerie” and more. Adapted and directed by Augustin J. Correro. At 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, and Thursday, Nov. 12, at the Andre Cailloux Center for Performing Arts and Cultural Justice, and 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, through Sunday, Nov. 15, at Jefferson Performing Arts Center in Westwego. Tickets $33 via twtheatrenola.com.
The Music of ‘Hey Arnold!’ The Nickelodeon cartoon “Hey Arnold!” was a cornerstone show for a lot of Millennials, who remember it 30 years on for its laid-back style, warmth and surprisingly emotional moments. And an askew detail about Arnold, a 9-year-old, was that he loved jazz fusion, which prompted a great score for the show by composer Jim Lang, who wove in jazz, hip-hop, R&B, funk and blues. To celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary, Lang put together The PS 118 AllStars and is touring a concert with music, visuals and some storytelling. The Music of “Hey Arnold!” is at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, at The Fillmore. Tickets start at $51 via thefillmorenola.com.
.RUDOLPH’S BROWN BUTTER EGGNOG HYATT CENTRIC FRENCH QUARTER Made with Whole Milk, Egg, Brown Butter, Brown Sugar, Vanilla Bean, and O.H. Ingram Bourbon. You’ll be hard pressed to find homemade eggnog from scratch anywhere else in town this holiday season. 800 Iberville St, New Orleans • (504) 586-0800
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.CHAMPAGNE MIMOSAS MOTHER’S RESTAURANT Mother’s Restaurant introduces a weekend brunch special featuring two Champagne Mimosas (or a spicy Bloody Mary) served with a housebaked biscuit topped with crawfish étouffée and eggs any style, plus cheese grits. Offered all day Saturday and Sunday. 401 Poydras St, New Orleans • (504) 523-9656
RUDOLPH’S BROWN
BUTTER EGGNOG 1 HYATT CENTRIC FRENCH QUARTER
mothersrestaurant.net
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ISSUE DATE:
.SHELLE’S BELLS PIZZA DOMENICA Blanco tequila, red bell pepper, lime, triple sec, Tajin rim. 4933 Magazine St, New Orleans • (504) 301–4978 117 W. Harrison Ave, New Orleans • (504) 229–6538 pizzadomenica.com
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.SIGNATURE GINTÔNICA 34 RESTAURANT & BAR Crafted with Nordés gin from Galicia, Spain, house-made tonic water, white grape, bay leaf, and citrus peel. Photo credit: Randy Schmidt. 710 Baronne St, New Orleans • (504) 498-3434
RESERVE SPACE CALL NOW
34restaurantandbar.com
CHAMPAGNE MIMOSAS 2 MOTHER’S RESTAURANT
SHELLE’S BELLS 3 PIZZA DOMENICA
SIGNATURE GINTÔNICA 4 34 RESTAURANT & BAR
5
.ANGRY JOLLY JUICE WINTER COCKTAIL CRESCENT CROWN A blend of Angry Orchard Crisp Apple, pomegranate juice, Fireball whiskey, chai tea, and holiday spiced syrup. Serve cold with ice or warm with hot water, garnished with an orange wheel. crescentcrown.com
‘for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf’ Fat Squirrel productions and LSU New Orleans present Ntozake Shange’s drama about seven Black women sharing their experiences and outlooks in a work combining poetic monologues, dance and music. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, through Saturday, Nov. 14, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15, and continuing Nov. 19-12, at Robert E. Nims Theatre at LSU New Orleans. Tickets $25 via fatsquirrelnola.square.site and free for students with ID.
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.NEW YORK SOUR THE COUNTRY CLUB Featuring Natterjack Irish Whiskey, Cointreau, Lemon, and Lino 910 Lambrusco. 634 Louisa St, New Orleans • (504) 945-0742 thecountryclubneworleans.com
7 ANGRY JOLLY JUICE WINTER COCKTAIL
5 CRESCENT CROWN
NEW YORK SOUR 6 THE COUNTRY CLUB
.BACON OLD FASHION LEGACY KITCHEN’S STEAK AND CHOP House infused Bacon Bourbon, syrup & bitters. 91 Westbank Expy #51, Gretna • (504) 608-6082
BACON OLD FASHION 7 LEGACY KITCHEN’S STEAK AND CHOP
legacykitchen.com
WINTER DRINK GUIDE • GAMBIT PROMOTION
All “drink” ads receive a FREE cocktail feature in this issue
FORESTival The daytime festival brings live music and more to A Studio in the Woods in lower Algiers. The music lineup includes The Rumble, Tonya Boyd-Cannon, Bogue Chitto and more. There are displays from resident artists including Big Chiefs Victor Harris and David Peters Montana, Journey Allen, Milagros, Tiana Nobile, Rebecca Snedeker and more. There also are art activities for kids, food vendors and walks in the woods led by a Tulane University ecologist. At 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14. Admission $20 via astudiointhewoods.org, and free for children. Visit the website for details.
1
.RUDOLPH’S BROWN BUTTER EGGNOG HYATT CENTRIC FRENCH QUARTER Made with Whole Milk, Egg, Brown Butter, Brown Sugar, Vanilla Bean, and O.H. Ingram Bourbon. You’ll be hard pressed to find homemade eggnog from scratch anywhere else in town this holiday season. 800 Iberville St, New Orleans • (504) 586-0800
Winter
DRINK GUIDE
2 RUDOLPH’S BROWN
BUTTER EGGNOG 1 HYATT CENTRIC FRENCH QUARTER
.CHAMPAGNE MIMOSAS MOTHER’S RESTAURANT Mother’s Restaurant introduces a weekend brunch special featuring two Champagne Mimosas (or a spicy Bloody Mary) served with a housebaked biscuit topped with crawfish étouffée and eggs any style, plus cheese grits. Offered all day Saturday and Sunday. 401 Poydras St, New Orleans • (504) 523-9656 mothersrestaurant.net
3
.SHELLE’S BELLS PIZZA DOMENICA Blanco tequila, red bell pepper, lime, triple sec, Tajin rim. 4933 Magazine St, New Orleans • (504) 301–4978 117 W. Harrison Ave, New Orleans • (504) 229–6538 pizzadomenica.com
4
.SIGNATURE GINTÔNICA 34 RESTAURANT & BAR Crafted with Nordés gin from Galicia, Spain, house-made tonic water, white grape, bay leaf, and citrus peel. Photo credit: Randy Schmidt. 710 Baronne St, New Orleans • (504) 498-3434 34restaurantandbar.com
CHAMPAGNE MIMOSAS 2 MOTHER’S RESTAURANT
SHELLE’S BELLS 3 PIZZA DOMENICA
SIGNATURE GINTÔNICA 4 34 RESTAURANT & BAR
5
.ANGRY JOLLY JUICE WINTER COCKTAIL CRESCENT CROWN A blend of Angry Orchard Crisp Apple, pomegranate juice, Fireball whiskey, chai tea, and holiday spiced syrup. Serve cold with ice or warm with hot water, garnished with an orange wheel. crescentcrown.com
6
.NEW YORK SOUR THE COUNTRY CLUB Featuring Natterjack Irish Whiskey, Cointreau, Lemon, and Lino 910 Lambrusco. 634 Louisa St, New Orleans • (504) 945-0742 thecountryclubneworleans.com
7 ANGRY JOLLY JUICE
WINTER COCKTAIL 5 CRESCENT CROWN
NEW YORK SOUR 6 THE COUNTRY CLUB
BACON OLD FASHION 7 LEGACY KITCHEN’S STEAK AND CHOP
.BACON OLD FASHION LEGACY KITCHEN’S STEAK AND CHOP House infused Bacon Bourbon, syrup & bitters. 91 Westbank Expy #51, Gretna • (504) 608-6082 legacykitchen.com
WINTER DRINK GUIDE • GAMBIT PROMOTION
Red Rockers Red Rockers emerged as a punk band in New Orleans in the late 1970s and pivoted to more of a new wave sound on songs like “China” on a couple of albums before disbanding in the mid 1980s. The group reunited a couple of times since 2023. They’re back together to headline this show, which is a fundaiser for a documentary film about punk music in New Orleans. The Normals, Dash Rip Rock, and RZA also perform. At 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, at Tipitina’s. Tickets $39.49 at tipitinas.com.
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
A R T S & E N T E R TA I N M E N T
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Contact Sales and Marketing Manager Abigail Bordelon 504.636.7427 or abigail.bordelon@gambitweekly.com
G A M B I T > B E S T O F N E W O R L E A N S . C O M > N O V E M B E R 9 -1 5 > 2 0 2 6
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MUSIC
FOR COMPLETE MUSIC LISTINGS A N D M O R E E V E N T S TA K I N G P L A C E IN THE NEW ORLEANS AREA, VISIT C A L E N D A R . G A M B I T W E E K LY. C O M
To learn more about adding your event to the music calendar, please email listingsedit@gambitweekly.com
MONDAY ALLWAYS LOUNGE — Betsey Propane’s Smoke Show, 7 pm APPLE BARREL — Decaturadio, 6 pm; Mark Appleford, 10 pm BACCHANAL — Anna Laura Quinn, 6 pm BAMBOULA’S — Ted Hefko & the Thousandaires, 9 pm BJ’S LOUNGE — Red Beans & Blues: Washboard Chaz & Jonathan Freilich, 9 pm BROADSIDE — Compersion Quartet: Brian Haas, Skerik, James Singleton & Simon Lott, 8 pm BUFFA’S — David Doucet, 7 pm CARROLLTON STATION —Biscuits n’ Jam with Meryl Zimmerman & Friends, 10 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — Lou Barlow & Bobby Bare Jr. with Hoist the King, 8 pm DOMINO LOUNGE — Eli Winter & Mike Baggetta, 9 pm DBA —Secret Six Jazz Band, 6 pm; Corey Henry & the Treme Funktet, 9:30 pm DOS JEFES — John Fohl, 8:30 pm FRITZEL’S JAZZ CLUB — Tin Men, 5 pm; Richard Scott & Friends, 8 pm GASA GASA — INDUSTRY NIGHT: The Miss B. Haven Show Hosted by Ben Bauman & Blazen Haven, 7 pm HI HO LOUNGE — Old Time Jam, 7 pm MAHOGANY JAZZ HALL — Tom Hook, 6 pm; The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band, 8 pm THE MAISON — The New Orleans Rug Cutters, 5 pm; Gene’s Music Machine, 8 pm MAPLE LEAF BAR — George Porter Jr. Trio ft. Chris Adkins, 7 pm; 10 pm MARIGNY OPERA HOUSE — Liam Escame Quintet, 8 pm SATURN BAR — BC Coogan, 8:30 pm SIBERIA — Scoochie Boochie + Groovebox + Alfred Banks, 9 pm SPOTTED CAT — Jenavieve Cooke & the Winding Boys, 2 pm; Dominick Grillo & the Frenchmen Street All-Stars, 6 pm; Aurora Nealand & The Inquiry Quintet, 9:30 pm ST. ROCH TAVERN — Kristina Murray + Andrew Jobin & the Thick Smoke, 9 pm THREE MUSES — Sam Farthing & Zach Valentine, 8 pm
TUESDAY 30/90 — Kayla Jasmine, 9 pm APPLE BARREL — Bubbles Brown, 6 pm; Jackson’s Flying Circus, 9 pm BACCHANAL — Tangiers Combo, 6 pm CAFÉ NEGRIL — The SuperMost-Fantastic-Blues-N-Such Jam, 7 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — Lamont Landers, 8 pm CIVIC THEATRE — Bitch Cabal feat. Mannequin Pussy + Wednesday + Snõõper, 7 pm DBA — Les Femmes Farouches, 6 pm; Bras Band Brass Band, 9 pm DOS JEFES — Tom Hook, 8:30 pm GASA GASA — Radiator Hospital + NOUN + Lyla George, 9 pm HI HO LOUNGE — Taco Tuesday w/ Otto’s Gothic Cumbias, 9 pm HOWLIN’ WOLF — Pynk Beard, Steve Ray Ladson, Elsie, Joy Clark & More!, 7 pm MAHOGANY JAZZ HALL — Big Joe Kennedy, 6 pm; Leroy Jones & the Home Team, 8 pm THE MAISON — Paradise Jazz Band, 8 pm OKAY BAR — Big Easy Stompers Line Dancing & Lessons, 8 pm THE RABBIT HOLE — Rebirth Brass Band, 10 pm SATURN BAR — Cumbia Night with Los Güiiros & C’est Funk, 10 pm SIBERIA — hypokrits, 9 pm SPOTTED CAT — Chris Christy Band, 2 pm; Sweetie Pies of New Orleans, 6 pm; Smoking Time Jazz Club, 9:30 pm TIGERMEN DEN — Skerik, Mike Dillon, Brian Haas & Dr. Sick, 8 pm VAUGHAN’S LOUNGE — Cuttin’ Up with Lil Prince & the Youngbloods, 10 pm
WEDNESDAY 30/90 — Kim in the Wind, 9 pm BACCHANAL — Jesse Morrow, 6 pm BAYOU BAR — Firm Roots, 8 pm; 10 pm BJ’S LOUNGE — Soft Opening with Christin Bradford & Anna Laura Quinn, 9 pm BLUE NILE — New Breed Brass Band, 9 pm CAFÉ NEGRIL — Jam-ilton, 7:30 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — Cory Branan, 8 pm DBA — The Next Level Band, 9 pm
DOS JEFES — Yoshitaka “Z2”, 8:30 pm FRITZEL’S JAZZ CLUB — Richard “Piano” Scott, 1 pm; Fritzel’s All Star Band with Kevin Ray Clark, 8 pm GASA GASA — Daring Greatly + Deltaphonic + The Cicadas, 9 pm HOLY DIVER — POGO MOJO ALL VINYL PUNK & OI! NIGHT, 9 pm THE MAISON — Gene’s Music Machine, 6 pm MAPLE LEAF BAR — Very Good Tuesdays, 8 pm RABBIT HOLE — Brayden Owens + Laura Walls + The Dewdrops, 8 pm SANTOS BAR — Chambre Noir with Paco, 10 pm SATURN BAR — Ever More Nest + Tom Andes + Paul Faith & The B.P., 8 pm SIBERIA — Rock Bottom String Band + Marty Bush + Hobo Gadget Junk Band + Ponch Bueller, 9 pm
New Orleans rapper Alfred Banks performs with Scoochie Boochie and Groovebox at Siberia on Monday, November 9, at 9 p.m. PROVIDED PHOTO BY GARY GOVERNALE
VAUGHAN’S LOUNGE — Nat & Kat Cajun String Band, 8:30 pm
THURSDAY APPLE BARREL — Bubbles Brown, 6 pm; Johnny B, 9 pm BACCHANAL — Raphael Bas, 6 pm BJ’S LOUNGE — Sally Baby’s Silver Dollars, 9 pm BLUE NILE — Irvin Mayfield’s Music Church, 9 pm; DJ T-Roy (upstairs), 10 pm BUFFA’S — Tom McDermott with Tim Laughlin, 8 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — Mark Braud’s Jazz Giants ft. Craig Klein, Gerald French, Tyler Thomson & More!, 8 pm
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FRIDAY APPLE BARREL — Bubbles Brown, 6 pm; Joey Houck, 10 pm BACCHANAL — David Sigler, 1 pm; Willie Green, 7 pm BAMBOULA’S — Les Getrex, 6:30 pm BJ’S LOUNGE — Mike Dillon & the New F-Yeahs + Midnight Sticks, 9 pm THE BLUE CRAWFISH — Free Agents Brass Band, 6:30 pm BLUE NILE — The Rozes (Caribbean Funk), 8 pm; Kermit Ruffins & the BBQ Swingers, 10 pm; Chore Boys (upstairs), 10 pm THE BROADSIDE — Terror Optics, 6 pm; The Desert Nudes, 8 pm BROTHERS THREE LOUNGE — Steady Company, 9 pm BUFFA’S — Jamie Bernstein with Jon (Black Dog) Ridnell & Max Sanders, 7 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — The Figs, 6:30 pm; Bill Kirchen, 9 pm DBA — Michael Watson & The Alchemy, 6 pm; Colin Davis & Night People, 10 pm
OGDEN MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN ART — Lost Bayou Ramblers, 7 pm OKAY BAR — Optic Sink + Time Out Room + New Fools, 9 pm THE RABBIT HOLE — Joshwa, 10 pm SANTOS BAR — SUB DIVISION, 9 pm SATURN BAR — Mod Dance Party, 10 pm TIPITINA’S — Red Rockers Present Anarchy in the USA with The Normals, Dash Rip Rock, Lenny Zenith & RZA, 8 pm WOLDENBERG RIVERFRONT PARK — We Belong Here Music Festival, 2 pm
SUNDAY DEW DROP INN — Jonté Mayon’s Sacred & Soul Sessions: The Blues Edition, 8 pm DOS JEFES — The Joe Krown Trio, 9 pm DOUBLE DEALER — Jenavieve Cooke & the Winding Boys, 9:30 pm GASA GASA — Liv Bell with Keaton Schiller and Mae Magdalene, 8 pm; Nite Sesh, 10 pm GOOD MEASURE — Ari Teitel Album Release Show, 8 pm HOLY DIVER — KILLED BY FLORIDA | DONKEY PUNCHER | THE SAWED OFFS | JON Q PUBLIC, 8 pm HOWLIN’ WOLF — Swinging Astrid + Fish Band! + Petits Choux, 9 pm LE BON TEMPS ROULÉ — Good Enough for Good Times, 9 pm; Krewe De Bauchery, 11 pm THE RABBIT HOLE — Will Clarke, 10 pm REPUBLIC NOLA — Gasolina : Reggaeton Party, 10 pm SANTOS BAR — FRIDAY THE 13TH with THE QUADROHOLICS, OTTO, DERRAJ & more!, 9 pm SIBERIA — New Orleans Bad Luck Fest, 7 pm STUDIO ST. PHILLIP — James Singleton’s MALABAR, 7 pm TIPITINA’S — Bowling For Soup + Ballyhoo! + rosecoloredworld, 7:30 pm WOLDENBERG RIVERFRONT PARK — We Belong Here Music Festival, 2 pm
SATURDAY BACCHANAL — Miles Berry, 1 pm; Bayou Manouche, 7 pm BANKS STREET BAR — Christmas in November Holiday Party ft. Valerie Sassyfrass + Grits & Greens, 8 pm
Guitarist, singer and producer Ari Teitel performs an album release show at Good Measure on Friday, November 13, at 8 p.m. PROVIDED PHOTO
BEANLANDIA — The Andre Cailloux Procession ft. The Treme Brass Band, 12 pm; La Louisiane Series ft. Forest Huval Cajun Band, 6 pm BJ’S LOUNGE — Dance Lesson & Live Music by T Marie & Bayou Juju + Jeffery Broussard & the Creole Cowboys, 9 pm BLUE NILE — The Caesar Brothers’ FunkBox, 7:30 pm; The Soul Rebels, 11 pm BUFFA’S — Jay Dufour & The Strange Gang, 8 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — Papa Mali & The Instigators, 9 pm CIVIC THEATRE — The Renaissance Orchestra, 8 pm DBA — Tidal Wave Brass Band, 10 pm DOS JEFES — Sunpie & The Louisiana Sunspots, 9 pm DOUBLE DEALER — The Satin Strings, 9:30 pm GASA GASA — Fiend with Anareta and Fauns, 8 pm; Don Bolles of Germs, 45 Grave, WFMU’s Wired Up!, 11 pm GOOD MEASURE — D.V.S (Dillon, Vidacovich, Singleton), 8 pm HOLY DIVER — THE LOWLIEST ONE / S.W.A.R.M. /BIG RED / THE DEAD SPIES, 8 pm KERMIT’S TREMÉ MOTHER-IN-LAW LOUNGE — Kermit Ruffins & The BBQ Swingers, 6 pm LE BON TEMPS ROULÉ — Tru Phonic, 11 pm THE LITTLE HOUSE — Nat & Kat Cajun String Band, 6:30 pm MAPLE LEAF BAR — She Might Be A Beast, 8 pm
ALLWAYS LOUNGE — Sunday Swing with Smoking Time Jazz Club, 8 pm BACCHANAL — Juan Tigre, 1 pm; Noah Young, 7 pm BANKS STREET BAR — Claude “Louisiana“ Hitt, 1 pm BJ’S LOUNGE — Louis Michot & Leyla McCalla in BJ’s Backyard, 6 pm; James McClaskey & the Rhythm Band, 9:30 pm BLUE NILE — Juice presents Sypher Sundays, 9 pm; Street Legends Brass Band, 11 pm BUFFA’S — Lynn Drury, 7 pm CHICKIE WAH WAH — An Evening with Phosphorescent & Special Guest Jo Schnornikow, 8 pm DBA — Paradise Jazz Band, 6 pm; The Jump Hounds, 9:30 pm DOS JEFES — Joplin Parnell, 8 pm GASA GASA — Kaye The Beast, 7 pm HOWLIN’ WOLF — Hot 8 Brass Band, 10:30 pm MARIGNY OPERA HOUSE — Emily Mikesell, Mike Dillon, Cliff Hines & Robin Sherman, 8 pm OKAY BAR — Gumbo Party with Heather Littlefield & the Buckle Dusters, Rose Vaughn, Clare Doyle, Lily Unless & The If Onlys, 5 pm THE RABBIT HOLE — Sunday Service: Siisko + FTK, 9 pm SATURN BAR — Minka and Hey Thanks, 9 pm SIBERIA — Tear Dungeon with Donny’s Demeanor and Pistil, 9 pm TIPITINA’S — Uncle Lucius + Paige Plaisance, 8 pm
S C A N FO R THE COMPLETE GAMBIT C A L EN DA R
G A M B I T > B E S T O F N E W O R L E A N S . C O M > N O V E M B E R 9 -1 5 > 2 0 2 6
DBA — Ethan Santos, 6 pm; Vegas Cola Band, 9 pm DOS JEFES — The Mark Coleman Band, 8:30 pm DOUBLE DEALER — Tiffany Pollack, 9 pm THE FILLMORE — Hey Arnold! Live Feat. Jim Lang & The Ps 118 Allstars, 7 pm GOOD MEASURE — OVJ Collective, 8 pm HI HO LOUNGE — 80’s Night with DJ Shane Love, 9 pm HOWLIN’ WOLF — Cory Grinder & the Playboy Scouts + Cassidy Snider & the Wranglers, 8 pm; Delvin & the Shades, 10 pm LE BON TEMPS ROULE — The Soul Rebels, 11 pm MARIGNY OPERA HOUSE — Moises Cunha & Justin Snyder: Tucker Fuller’s Americana + More!, 7:30 pm ORPHEUM THEATER — LPO presents Mozart & Stravinsky, 7:30 pm PEACOCK ROOM — Da Lovebirds: Robin Barnes & Pat Casey, 8 pm THE RABBIT HOLE — THE DEEP: Enamour w/ DTR - We Belong Here Welcome Party, 7:30 pm SANTOS BAR — DETHWISH with BOBBY BRUISER, MORE OCTOBER & BOG BAT, 8 pm SATURN BAR — Nail Club & Friends, 9 pm SIBERIA — AJJ + Greet Death, 9 pm VAUGHAN’S LOUNGE — Corey Henry & The Treme Funktet, 10 pm
GAMBIT > BESTOFNEWORLE ANS.COM > November 9 - 15 > 2026
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What
ADVERTISERS ARE SAYING ... "Working with The Pearl has been such a joy for our small business! We love collaborating each month to choose the perfect vintage pieces for their magazine and advertisements – it’s always a fun and inspiring process. The feature continually brings new customers into our shop, and we are grateful for the opportunity to connect with more people who appreciate vintage treasures and timeless design."
Magazine Street UPTOWN
— Angela DiSimone | OWNER, AVIS ALDINE
"We couldn’t be happier with the results we’ve seen since we began advertising in The Pearl! Since our opening in late August, our ads and featured products have led to multiple sales and new customers seeking out the shop. We launched our website the same day as our latest ad publication and we received our first online order within hours of going live ... thanks to ad they saw in The Pearl!" Royal Street FRENCH QUARTER
— Josh Saladino | OWNER, THE RISING SON
Contact Sales and Marketing Manager Abigail Bordelon | 504-636-7427 or abigail.bordelon@gambitweekly.com
GOING OUT
Hed over heels by Will Coviello JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL HAS HAD PLENTY OF SUCCESS
with “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the award-winning rock musical and film he created with Stephen Trask. Hedwig is an aspiring singer who undergoes a botched sexual reassignment surgery in order to immigrate to the U.S. with an American G.I. husband, only to be abandoned in a trailer park in Kansas and overshadowed by someone who steals her songs. It opened off-Broadway in 1998 and won an Obie Award and later opened on Broadway and won several Tony Awards. In 2001, the film version, starring and directed by Mitchell, won Best Director and an Audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. It became a cult classic after being released on DVD. But its impact has been registered in other ways. Fans like showing him their Hedwig tattoos, Mitchell says. “I have seen hundreds of them,” Mitchell adds from his home in Bywater. “Another thing I hear a lot is, ‘I showed this film to someone I was dating and now my husband here of 20 years, and if he hadn’t liked it we would not be together.’ I like being a litmus test.” The film is marking its 25th anniversary this year, and Mitchell is celebrating with a tour, in which he screens a 4K restoration, does a Q&A, has a costume contest and does a set of music. At the screening at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, at The Fillmore, he’ll be joined by John Boutte. The path to becoming a cult classic isn’t easy. Mitchell and Trask started working on Hedwig in 1993 and did a version in New York nightclubs like Squeezebox before opening a full rock musical at the Jane Street Theater. The theater was constructed within a rundown hotel best known for housing survivors of the Titanic. The show noted that connection. Mitchell notes that a punk and glam rock musical about a trans character was not at all likely to get to Broadway. But making a show not wrapped up in commercial expectations had its benefits, he says. “The rock and the drag, they’re all considered kind of low-class entertainment by Hollywood and Broadway,” Mitchell says. “So the fact that it couldn’t make money kept it honest in a way.”
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A queer and unlucky but determined misfit, Hedwig proved quite alluring. The people who loved Hedwig came to the show hundreds of times, Mitchell says, and they were dubbed Hedheads. The film had a very successful debut at Sundance, but its release in theaters came in September 2001, which wasn’t an ideal time. It flopped at the box office, but the producers thought it would do well on DVD, and that proved correct. “I never expected it, but the influence has always surprised me,” Mitchell says. “I can meet people anywhere in the world who are like, ‘Wow, that film really changed me.’ ” Productions of “Hedwig” have spread around the globe, and Mitchell may direct an upcoming show in Japan. Mitchell handed off the role of Hedwig to performers including Michael Cerveris, Neil Patrick Harris and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Jinx Monsoon. Mitchell acted on Broadway before creating “Hedwig,” and afterward he has worked on numerous stage, film and music projects. He directed the movies “Shortbus” and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” This year, he starred as Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” off-Broadway. The 25th anniversary tour extends into 2027 and international destinations, and he’s currently working on a memoir and a play. Although Mitchell splits time between New York and New Orleans, he’s never performed a full set here, which makes this show a first. He and Boutte will be joined by Caleb Tokarska on guitar for a set likely mixing songs from “Hedwig” and more. For information, go to hedwig25.com. Tickets $35 via ticketmaster.com.
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1 T E G EE! FR CONTACT SALES & MARKETING MANAGER ABIGAIL BORDELON 5046367427 OR ABIGAIL.BORDELON@GAMBITWEEKLY.COM
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ELIZABETH (LIBBIE) REISS, REALTOR CELL: 504-813-1102
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PREMIER CROSSWORD PUZZLE VERTICAL TAKEOFF By Frank A. Longo
32 DiFranco with a Grammy 33 Brand of fat replacer 35 Fuse together 37 Bel -- (singing style) 39 “Enola Holmes” star -- Bobby Brown 41 Lake vehicles 43 Knee scrape, say 45 Lucidness 46 1970 hit for the Kinks 47 PC storage accessories 48 Baseball stat 49 Edmonton’s province 51 TV Tarzan portrayer Ron 52 Coll. dorm supervisors 55 Broke a fast 57 Geena of film
59 Poetic “always” 60 Getting the most rainfall 62 “Well, lah-di- --!” 63 “In the Valley of --” (2007 Tommy Lee Jones film) 64 Pays out 66 The “I” of IPA 67 Ink-squirting mollusks, in a cutesy plural spelling 69 Christopher of “The Sound of Music” 71 Tube lover’s food holder 72 Detergent component 73 Facades
MICHAEL ZAROU ABR, CRS, GRI, SFR, SRS
GARDEN DISTRICT OFFICE CELL: (504) 913-2872 2016, 2017, 2020 & 2022 EEMAIL: Michael.Zarou@Compass.com
74 Workplace watchdog gp. 76 Half plus half 77 Stage hams 79 Common food preservative, for short 80 Curse 81 Gallivant 82 -- Francisco 83 “This is so frustrating!” 84 UConn Huskies’ conference 86 Gimlet liquor 88 Notoriety 90 Geek’s cousin 91 Lower limits 94 Barcelona native, e.g. 97 “Close, but no --” 98 Pianist’s exercises 99 A-list member 100 Game moves 102 Allows to enter, as a visitor 104 “Hey Jude” syllables 105 With 108-Across, the Beastie Boys, e.g. 106 ER workers 108 See 105-Across 110 Horse-halting cry 111 Ariz.-to-Ky. direction 112 Yemen’s peninsula 114 Parts of some smiling-face emojis 116 Cake finisher 117 Mitzi of “Silk Stalkings” 118 Swimmer Thorpe 119 George who portayed Sulu on “Star Trek” 120 Helper: Abbr. 121 Spirit-seeking meeting 122 Comic Philips 123 Kicks out 124 Yoga pads
13 Pop, to a tot 64 Maki or nigiri 14 Treadmill fitted out to 65 “Legend of Zelda” vid“unweight” its users, e.g. eo game of 2011 15 IRA options 68 Quaker grain 16 Fashion figure Giorgio 70 Plame affair figure 17 Result in Scooter 18 Pub 71 “J to -- L-O!” (Lopez 25 What makes it album) get hotter 73 Notes that sound like 28 Journey by a group of A flats mountaineers 75 Ready to go 30 Bible book before 78 Tennis great Nadal, James to fans 34 Gaming tyros, say 80 Alaska politico Palin 36 Teensy bit 85 Brain test, in brief 38 Equine beast 87 Shiba -- (dog breed) 40 Ad- -88 Suffix with serpent 42 The “A” of IPA 89 Roman 1,550 44 Part in a film 91 Cell division process 47 Chili con -92 Most unkind 49 “13th” director 93 Declares DuVernay 94 Beats it 50 Abounds 95 “Inside” star Guy 52 Arrangement of an 96 Camel cousin A-to-Z list ... or what 97 Dramatist -- de seven long answers in Bergerac this puzzle are in? 101 Crack squad 53 Major South Korean 103 Bed linen airline 107 Broad valley 54 Didn’t leave 109 Simpsons’ bus driver 55 Casa bricks 113 Make taboo 56 Port near Seattle 114 Move hastily 58 Muhammad of the ring 115 It flows in la Seine 61 Blast stuff 116 Reply to “Are you?”
DOWN 1 Fragrant firs 2 Samoa is part of it 3 Aurora borealis, by another name 4 2000-15 CBS show 5 Horace of the old NewYork Tribune 6 Charlotte -- (dessert) 7 Very difficult struggle 8 Lipton drink 9 Johnson of old comedy 10 Some ‘60s protests 11 Muscat native 12 Fight like 58-Down
ANSWERS LAST ISSUE’S PUZZLE: P2 ANSWERS FOR TO LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE ON P4
PUZZLES
ACROSS 1 Pear variety 5 Garbo of the silver screen 10 Cry out loud 13 Stickers on racecars 19 Isn’t idle 20 Emperor, e.g. 21 “I think,” to texters 22 Newswoman Mitchell 23 Utah city near Provo 24 Legacy levy 26 Dreary 27 Slump 28 Lark’s home 29 Newswoman Burnett 30 “Take that!” 31 Fuss
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COMING SOON!
Inspiring healthier lives and stronger communities For more than 80 years, Ochsner Health has served the Greater New Orleans area and beyond, providing the highest quality of care for our patients and communities. With more than 4,700 providers spanning over 400 locations, we have you covered for all of your routine and complex care needs. Offering digital medicine programs, virtual visits, and extended hours, we are focused on making healthcare convenient and accessible, so that you can get back to doing the things you enjoy most. For 15 years in a row, Ochsner Medical Center, including Ochsner Baptist, Ochsner Medical Center - West Bank and Ochsner Hospital for Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, has been named Louisiana’s No. 1 hospital by U.S. News & World Report. Ochsner is nationally ranked in obstetrics and gynecology and pulmonology and lung surgery and ranked No. 1 in Louisiana for orthopedics. We are honored by this recognition and remain committed to delivering exceptional care across the communities we serve.
Learn more about our care or schedule an appointment at ochsner.org.