What It Means To Get A Jazz Fest Gig

BY KIMBERLY KAYE

The crowd looks like a psychedelic wonderland of wildflowers. Sometimes clouds cast shadows over the uneven sea of vibrant caftans, gator-patterned buttondown shirts, and festival hats, patches of midday sun illuminating masses of rosy faces. It’s a view familiar to generations of musicians privileged enough to stand on a festival stage—and a thrilling, if nerve-wracking, sight for New Orleans artists making their all-important Jazz Fest debuts.

“I was SO NERVOUS,” recalls 2023 main stage performer Maggie Koerner of her very first appearance roughly a decade ago. “It’s like a debutante’s coming-out ball. I felt like I was finally being included in The Club of New Orleans Musicians.”

“I’m a ball of nerves before taking any stage, but Jazz Fest in particular is such a milestone for me because I grew up watching it as a spectator,” echoes New Orleans native and Loyola alum Mia Borders, who debuted on the Gentilly Stage as a 20-something. “I wound up tearing my vocal cords onstage during [my debut] and couldn’t speak for the next six weeks. Thankfully my performances have gotten less dramatic since.”

It’s been a relief to hear premiere-related nerves are fairly ubiquitous, even amongst crowd favorites with thousands of live shows under their belts. Because full disclosure: My band, Loose Cattle, debuts its first-ever feature slot not as guests on another artists’ set this year… and I’ve already had one nightmare about getting onstage and blanking every lyric while being jeered by an audience weaponizing their crawfish. (This is not a joke, and yes, I have a great therapist.)

I’m not alone. We’ve been playing shows from NPR’s Mountain Stage to New York’s storied Lincoln Center for years, but something about getting the call to perform your own music at your town’s premiere music event, in front of everyone you know, hits different. My co-frontman and creative partner, Michael Cerveris, is a bonafide Broadway star with two Tony Awards, who’s stood before tens of thousands of people across a 30-year TV and stage career, and even he’s jittery about our formal introduction to Fest fans.

“It’s not just that Jazz Fest crowds are some of the best, most attentive, and discerning anywhere, or that I feel I have to rise to meet their expectations. I also have to compete with my own memories of all the heart-stopping, feet-moving, tear-jerking, smile-beaming, downright rocking shows I’ve seen myself over the decade plus I’ve been coming to the Fair Grounds,” Cerveris says. “More than anything, Loose Cattle wants to gift that kind of experience for everyone who makes their way to see us on the Lagniappe Stage this year. It means everything to ‘be in that number.’”

Which is a big thing to admit. Musicians, as a general rule, work overtime not to care whether they’re “in” or “out.” Nothing is less cool than trying to BE cool, and fixating on social hierarchy has a long legacy of murdering the quality of music. But in any community as small as New Orleans, or in an industry as insular ours, it’s nearly impossible not to care whether your band will be chosen to represent the city one lives in and bleeds in daily. Getting “the call” means the years poured into honing musicianship, writing, refining, rehearsing, and grinding through poorly-paid performances at starter venues hasn’t been for naught. Being passed over can make even the most decorated and experienced performers feel unseen, misunderstood, and dismissed.

“I didn’t fully realize how coveted making [the festival lineup] was until hearing the frontman of a very well-known national touring act complain about not getting a festival slot, while they were performing at the Joy Theatre,” says Arsène DeLay, a 13th generation New Orleanian who is debuting her own solo act this year after decades backing family.

This is because DeLay, a legacy performer, began getting hauled onstage at Fest by her aunt Lillian Boutté, and later uncle John Boutté, as an introverted teen. They didn’t stop when she ascended into womanhood, going on to blow the roof off shows as lead vocalist for groups like Funk Monkey and The A2D2 Experience. This year’s solo debut marks a moment she’s been waiting for as an independent singer-songwriter for years, in part because of the opportunity to share her own self-penned works, but also as testimony to how her elders’ investment in the next generation paid off.

“I was rgularly pulled out of my comfort zone by all of my performing family members. One Fest Lillian [Boutté] called a song I didn’t know, so I went to leave the stage. She said, ‘Stay up here,’ put her arm around me, and gave me the line reads for the first round,” recalls DeLay, describing the nerve-wracking New Orleans musical right-ofpassage which is being fed lyrics cold in front of a live audience. “She taught me how to pick [a song] up on the fly. In this business, that’s a life skill worth having.” And a skill that’s contributed to DeLay finally being spot-lit as a stand-alone talent.

For some “old heads”—musicians who’ve played Jazz Fest so regularly they’ve lost count— watching colleagues make debuts is a seasonal thrill on par with that first mango freeze or playing a packed Tipitina’s. It’s one of the reasons Paul Sanchez often shares his Rolling Road Show set, an annual festival standout, with lesser-known local performers working to build their profile in New Orleans. “I love the look—not just on the face of the performer, but on the faces of their family, friends, loved ones, all the folks who believed in them, all smiling with pride and love because they always knew they’d see their loved one on a big stage,” explains Sanchez, who made his debut with Cowboy Mouth back in 1992.

“I love being surrounded by people I respect and admire and watching them have so much fun making music together,” Sanchez says. “Their smiles seem almost childlike in the purity of the joy.”

He’s most excited this year to share his moment with singer and performance artist niece, Natasha Sanchez, continuing the beautiful tradition of families passing the torch while a crowd of benevolent strangers watch.

If you love heartwarming, full-circle stories, Sanchez was the first New Orleanian and Jazz Fest regular to invite Cerveris and myself onstage to sing with the aforementioned Rolling Road show, somewhere around 2011. He was also the one who told us: “You two should really start a band.” Having taken that advice perhaps too seriously, we’ll be on the very same well-shaded stage Sanchez first welcomed us on to—nervously, but excitedly—May 4.

Whether our tale will have a happy ending is entirely on the band now. Sanchez, Borders, and DeLay have all kindly reminded us that nervousness is just misplaced excitement, a powerful energy source which just needs to be twisted and reshaped, like a balloon animal, into the exhilaration which drives the best kinds of live performances. If we do well enough to get invited back, we’ll have the chance to pay the same debut gift given to us forward in future performances, something that feels as important as nailing harmonies and showing visitors a good time.

Even if the melomaniacs who fly great distances just to enter the Fair Grounds don’t pop by our set, I’m cheering for them to seek out, or stumble upon, as many other premiere performances as possible. Like Sanchez says, getting to see “the look” up close is rare medicine everyone deserves to get a dose of.

And I’m praying one feels a need to use their crawfish shells as a projectile protest at any stage, anywhere. Those suckers really sting on contact. O

Sunday May 7 at 2:10 p.m.