OffBeat Magazine October 2016

Fall Festival Issue

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Crescent City Blues & BBQ Fest Cedric Burnside Taj Mahal Festivals Acadiens et Créoles Po-Boy Fest Coffee, anyone?

LOUISIANA MUSIC, FOOD & CULTURE—OCTOBER 2016 Free In Metro New Orleans US $5.99 CAN $6.99 £UK 3.50

BLAST FROM THE PAST

Eternity in the Interval

“Hunks of Funk”

Sarah Quintana gives voice to Louisiana.

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LETTERS

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MOJO MOUTH

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Five Questions with Chef Daniel Esses of Three Muses; Oak Street Po-Boy Festival; My Music with Nesby Phips; 10 songs you didn’t know were recorded in New Orleans; Greensky Bluegrass; Five Questions with Steve Rivera of Project Lazarus; Nickel-A-Dance and more.

WE’RE GOING TO NEED HELP

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WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS 20 John Gros releases River’s on Fire.

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Cedric Burnside Project carries on hill country blues’ good name.

TWO LEGENDS Lil Poochie and Hezekiah Early get the job done.

www.OFFBEAT.com

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Craig Seaman of Bar Frances mixes up Be Still My Beating Cello for Helen Gillet.

REVIEWS

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Bobby Rush, Seth Walker, Robin Barnes, Lost Bayou Ramblers, Zeke Fishhead, Christian Serpas & Ghost Town, Barry Ancelet and Sam Broussard, MarchFourth!, the Good for Nothin’ Band and more.

REWIND 22

Festivals Acadiens et Créoles celebrates 42 years.

RAW AND REAL

IN THE SPIRIT

Craig Klein is In the Spot at JuiceNOLA and Peter Thriffiley reviews Bao & Noodle.

Kenny Neal’s Louisiana blues bloodline runs deep.

COSMIC MOMENTS

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Coffee as avant-garde art in New Orleans.

OFFBEAT EATS

August floods put Acadiana’s cultural heritage at risk.

MORE TO LIFE

THE NEW EXPRESSIONISM

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Producer Leo Sacks hits rewind on the New Orleans Social Club’s Sing Me Back Home.

LISTINGS

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BACKTALK with Taj Mahal

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By Christopher Blagg April 2003 In our cover story on Papa Gros Funk, Christopher Blagg talks to John Gros about writing and playing new material for their second album Shakin’: “When we played our original music, people just started freakin’ out...

There’s no better feeling than playing your own music and watching people go off on it.”

For more, this issue can be purchased at offbeat. com/shop/2003/offbeatmagazine-april-2003/.

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Letters

“I have deep respect for a musician that allows themselves to be honest with their listeners, it allows for a much deeper understanding of their songwriting and emotions.”

—Michelle Morales, Chicago, Illinois

Louisiana Music, Food & Culture

October 2016 Volume 29, Number 11 Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Jan V. Ramsey, janramsey@offbeat.com Managing Editor Joseph L. Irrera, josephirrera@offbeat.com

Too Many Festivals?

The following letters are in response to Jan Ramsey’s blog post, “Spread Too Thin?” questioning if we have enough population capacity to make every single festival successful.

Festivals are an industry unto itself now. The barriers to entry are pretty low in New Orleans compared to other places, and the human and material machinery for making them happen is here and ready every week. But I sense we’re in the midst of a festival bubble. It will take ever more visitors to keep it from bursting (and more short-term rentals to keep them all housed).

—Peris Brodsky, Riverwoods, Illinois I think you [Jan Ramsey] bring up some valid points, but it may not be so much that we have too many festivals as much as the festivals we have are growing too large. Look at Jazz Fest. As you mentioned, they reached their peak attendance a few years ago. I, for one, don’t attend because the crowds are too large. Instead, I go to all the ancillary events around the city. French Quarter Fest is another one bursting at the seams. Remember when that used to be our little secret? Now it’s a destination event for tourists. Even Bayou Boogaloo is getting a little too big for the venue.

That being said, I think we can, and do, support as many festivals as people can think up. With the amount of talent we have in this city, even the mediocre events are worth going to. We almost need more festivals just to help thin the crowds at the already established events that we love so much! Keep up the good work—I always enjoy your articles since the early days delivering your magazines from the back of the Firehouse!

—Paul Gunther, New Orleans, Louisiana

Luke Winslow-King Best music-related article that I have read in a while, thank you for sharing and writing it!

I have deep respect for a musician that allows themselves to be honest with their listeners, it allows for a much deeper understanding of their songwriting and emotions. Music is pretty great that way and so is this artist, Luke Winslow-King, for telling his tale.

—Michelle Morales, Chicago, Illinois

As women, musicians, artists, and community members in New Orleans, we are writing to express our opinion that it was inappropriate and unprofessional for OffBeat to publish defamatory details about Luke Winslow-King’s ex-wife in the article “No More Crying Today.”

The article perpetuates a sexist tradition of publicly shaming women for their sexual behavior. King has every right to malign his ex-wife in his art. However, in publishing these personal attacks without her knowledge or permission, OffBeat has become complicit in King’s attempt to damage his ex-wife’s reputation and career.

In addition to a primer on what sexism is, perhaps you need a reminder that your magazine serves a small community of musicians, which includes King’s ex-wife.

There’s no anonymity here—we know each other, work with each other, trade bands and trade songs. The information that gets broadcast has an impact on this community, and we are disturbed that you would forget or choose to ignore this. This article does not serve to “improve and expand local music culture and business,” and instead sows divisiveness, detracting from the culture of music that ties us together.

Sincerely, —Renee Anderson, Jessie Antonick, Tiffany Chana Asraf, Maggie Belle… [full list of 69 signees available on OffBeat.com] We take exception to the accusation that the interview with Luke Winslow-King was sexist in any way.

We published a story about Luke WinslowKing and the recording of his new album (I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always). Our writer was tasked with examining the inspiration for the album, and he did just that. Any accusations of infidelity came from WinslowKing and him alone. We understand that there often are double-standards for women in the music industry—as in life as a whole—and we try our best to be sensitive to those issues.

However, Winslow-King’s new album and his

OffBeat welcomes letters from its readers—both comments and criticisms. To be considered for publication, all letters must be signed and contain the current address and phone number of the writer. Letters to the editor are subject to editing for length or content deemed objectionable to OffBeat readers. Please send letters to Editor, OffBeat Publications, 421 Frenchmen St., Suite 200, New Orleans, LA 70116.

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Consulting Editor John Swenson Food Editor Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Listings Editor Katie Walenter, listings@offbeat.com Contributors Sam D’Arcangelo, Michael Dominici, Frank Etheridge, Robert Fontenot, Elsa Hahne, Jeff Hannusch, Holly Hobbs, Amanda Mester, Brett Milano, Jennifer Odell, John Swenson, Peter Thriffiley, Dan Willging, John Wirt, Geraldine Wyckoff Cover Elsa Hahne (photo), Selma Alamin (hair) Art Director/Food Editor Elsa Hahne, elsahahne@offbeat.com Web Editor Sam D'Arcangelo, sam@offbeat.com Web Associate Writer Mary Graci, mary@offbeat.com Copy Editor Theo Schell-Lambert, theo@offbeat.com Advertising Sales Camille A. Ramsey, camille@offbeat.com Carver Rayburn, carver@offbeat.com Advertising Design PressWorks, 504-944-4300 Business Manager Joseph L. Irrera Interns Justin Gordon, Jayna Puchkoff Distribution Patti Carrigan, Doug Jackson OffBeat (ISSN# 1090-0810) is published monthly in New Orleans by OffBeat, Inc., 421 Frenchmen St., Suite 200, New Orleans, LA 70116 (504) 944-4300 • fax (504) 944-4306 e-mail: offbeat@offbeat.com, web site: www.offbeat.com facebook.com/offbeatmagazine twitter.com/offbeatmagazine Copyright © 2016, OffBeat, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the publisher. OffBeat is a registered trademark of OffBeat, Inc. First class subscriptions to OffBeat in the U.S. are available for $45 per year ($52 Canada, $105 foreign airmail). Back issues are available for $10, except for the May issue for $16 (for foreign delivery add $6, except for the May issue add $4). Submission of photos and articles on Louisiana artists are welcomed, but unfortunately material cannot be returned.

LETTERS marital issues are inextricably linked, so there was no way to tell this story without mentioning them.

Our opinion is that WinslowKing perhaps should not have gone as deep as he did publicly, but it’s certainly not sexist for us to publish this information.

Artists tend to use negative experiences to create great art.

There’s probably more to this story, as it’s not usually all one partner’s fault that the marriage dissolves. But it was also not up to OffBeat writer Milano to interview Winslow-King’s partner to get her side of the story. The article was about Winslow-King and his music, and to delve into what created such a wrenching musical statement.

We apologize to anyone who was offended by the details of the piece, but we see no need to retract or apologize for a story that did its job of diving into an artist’s inspiration, and did it well.

—Ed.

www.OFFBEAT.com

Never a Hippie Dick [Deluxe] has several shows planned for California and has been getting really positive comments on the new album.

Vaughan. Then went to California and was one of the original punk rockers. As an original member of Club Foot Orchestra his musical chops are without question.

“It’s amazing to me that true musicians like Dickie Landry (Lil’ Band O’ Gold), Rod Hodges (Iguanas), David Brouillette (Gal Holiday), were so impressed with the material that they asked to be on the record and worked for free to put the music out there.”

—Patricia Dragovan Foster, New Orleans, LA OffBeat reviewer [Robert] Fontenot had a different opinion.

I absolutely support everyone’s right to their opinion and believe your reviewer was speaking his mind. What I take exception with is his obvious disdain for Dick being from California (not originally by the way) and his assertion of Dick being a “former hippie.” He was actually never a hippie and started playing music in Texas City, Texas as teenager along with roommate Stevie Ray

It’s amazing to me that true musicians like Dickie Landry (Lil’ Band O’ Gold), Rod Hodges (Iguanas), David Brouillette (Gal Holiday), were so impressed with the material that they asked to be on the record and worked for free to put the music out there. The recording studio and producer Mark Bingham (REM fame) also took on the project because of the stellar original arrangements and musical talents involved.

I, and other New Orleanians, are shocked by the broad strokes

of hate coming from the pen of this reviewer. Labeling some musicians as not black enough, not playing where they started from, not being from Louisiana.

Lots of hate speech going around for everyone. I wonder from where all that is bubbling up.

—Patricia Dragovan Foster, New Orleans, Louisiana Being from California was background information in order to tell Deluxe’s story. Calling him a “hippie” is not meant as a bad thing but rather a terminology based on being from the Bay Area scene during the ’60s.

The statement “not being black enough” was neither written nor insinuated in the review and the evaluation of the music contains no “hate speech” whatsoever.

Every reviewer has a different opinion, that’s true.

Please reference the July 27, 2015 story on Dick Deluxe on OffBeat.com.

—Ed.

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Oh, the Irony

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had lunch today with a client of ours, who’s the district manager for a large retail operation.

We were discussing the problems that every retail operation is facing (declining revenues in the face of the online onslaught of available retail). I was told that the corporate office in California questioned the decline in revenues at a Baton Rouge location over the past few months, and asked the district manager what was going on.

“Well,” he said, “Let’s see: several black people shot by police in Baton Rouge, retaliation against police in Baton Rouge; funerals of those affected; Black Lives Matter protests; and then the major flooding. But the people in California had no idea or grasp on the problems our Baton Rouge location was experiencing. The problems there were not on national news and no one at corporate knew about them. Our store is near where everything took place, so obviously there’s going to be an effect on business.” The corporate office in California was oblivious to what was happening in Baton Rouge. Surely, this was national news?

While we have so many sources of “news,” perhaps the information overload doesn’t reach the recipients that it used to before the internet took over as a main news source.

When print newspapers dispensed news, at least you had one pretty reliable source where you could get real news items.

How ironic. We have so many more places where we can get information, but there seems to be a big disconnect between information and information

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By Jan Ramsey

consumption. Is it the way that information is disseminated now, i.e. through the web—which focuses on headline news items with little (or mostly no) depth, entertainment fluff (Brad and Angelina are getting divorced!) and sports scores? Is it our embrace of social media as a first source of news?

Or is it the way the human beings’ brains are being rewired to adjust to how we are being

The traditional newspaper model has been superseded by websites. Websites don’t, for the most part, delve into a story because readers don’t have an attention span long enough to actually read details.

“Journalism” in newspapers is now focused on how many clicks a writer generates for his or her online story. So the TMZ story on the Brangelina divorce is going to get a lot more clicks than a

Journalism used to provide information that people need to know about, not particularly what they want to know about (would you rather read a juicy gossip story or a sports feature rather than what’s going in your city government?).

So journalism has been totally corrupted by entertaining the masses rather than keeping us informed and educated about what’s honestly going on in our world.

slammed with information, most of which is totally useless crap?

Is this what’s making our minds tune out some of the static, only leaving room for the bits and pieces, the headlines, that make it through the curtain of so-called news “confetti” that we all have to wade through every day?

The information world is, in fact, probably dominated by social media, which in my humble opinion is the worst possible source of information.

If anything, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. have been the nail in the coffin for news media and journalism in general.

corruption story in Congress.

Clicks equate to advertising, don’t you know, and that’s pretty much what it’s all about. Click bait. Clicks equal money.

I highly recommend your viewing a feature now on YouTube that was done on Last Week Tonight, a satirical news program hosted by John Oliver. Also look for Oliver’s piece on “native advertising” or advertorial content disguised as editorial.

Journalism used to provide information that people need to know about, not particularly what they want to know about

(would you rather read a juicy gossip story or a sports feature rather than what’s going in your city government?). So journalism has been totally corrupted by entertaining the masses rather than keeping us informed and educated about what’s honestly going on in our world.

This is scary and pitiful, but it’s pretty clear that this is the wave of the future.

It’s why we are experiencing this bizarre presidential election.

Wonk versus entertainment. It’s a sad commentary on the future of news media.

While OffBeat could never really be considered a source of hard news, we endeavor to provide our readers with writing about stuff that matters in our culture. It’s very difficult to resist click bait online, and we can certainly see what garners traffic and what doesn’t on our website and on social media.

Should that influence OffBeat’s core mission of informing our readers on local and regional music and culture? Lest you think that what our writers honestly and legitimately write about has no real impact on our survival, let me tell you that if there’s, say, a CD review that is less than stellar, OffBeat will be called to task on that. We’ve lost many an ad because we were honest in our assessments.

Will we include advertorial?

Not unless we tell you what it is, and if you are a longtime reader of OffBeat, you know we have resisted that temptation mightily, unlike other local publications.

It depends on what you want to read: click bait, native advertising, lists of advertising clients disguised as editorial, or real editorial content. Your

choice.

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OffBeat.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

Five Questions with Chef Daniel Esses of Three Muses

SWEET TWEETS

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ongratulations on the new venue!

Thank you.

Is the new location a replica of the Frenchmen Street location, or are you looking to do something different?

We want to create a new energy and vibe for the new place but use the same formula that we’ve been successful with on Frenchmen Street.

Frenchmen will always be a different vibe because it’s on Frenchmen.

Over time, we found that locals just weren’t coming down to Frenchmen Street as much as they used to. Now our clientele is mostly tourists, and we’ve always wanted to be a locals’ place. So we want to bring the elements of the old place and bring them uptown where locals can enjoy them as well as the tourists who come uptown.

What about the music? Are you looking to stay with your current booking style, or change it up?

In the new place, we’ve decided to make the music a little more subdued. It’ll be mostly duos and trios—all acoustic—so it’ll be a more mellow vibe and a little more food-centric. We’re still going to have two bands a night, we’ll probably start with a piano player for the 5 p.m. slot, and then in the evenings we might have an acoustic trio playing that’s great to listen to but you can still talk over.

Should we expect changes to the menu?

We’re planning to keep a lot of the more popular items on the menu—the lamb sliders, the feta fry, the pork belly, the tempura shrimp—but we’re going to take certain items and change the components up a little bit. And then the chef is going to have his own take on it. Just like on Frenchmen Street, I have my items I’ve had on the menu for a long time… the chef will do his own thing within the confines of that.

Was it difficult to decide on your new location?

Actually, it pretty much fell in our laps. We’d been wanting to expand for a while but we only wanted it with the same setup as we had with our landlord that we have now. He owns this new building and he asked if we wanted the spot so he gave us a few months with no rent, gave us some time to get our ducks in a row, the timing couldn’t have been better. We had wanted to find somewhere uptown for quite awhile so this is a perfect spot for us.

Three Muses: 7537 Maple St., New Orleans, LA 70118.

—Holly Hobbs

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@AmyTrailSongs Me: “I just can’t help but be a formidable bitch.”

Husband: “It’s called being an adult in a sea of children.” @KermitRuffins Heads up! On May 1st, 2nd and 3rd of 2017 I’m recording a live CD at the Mother-in-Law Lounge @Davejordan_NIA I’m so glad my face doesn’t have a progress bar that shows how long it takes me to understand what someone is saying. #Monday @Davejordan_NIA I’m convinced that every time a sock goes missing from the dryer, it comes back as an extra tupperware lid. #wth @marci_schramm You know that you have a Louisiana child when she INSISTS it’s “Swamp Lake”—not Swan Lake. @ericbolivar This is the first year that I could care less about the VMA’s... At all...

Yep, I’m old. @T_Blanchard (Terence Blanchard) Although I am in the UK for this incredible transatlantic musical collaboration, the US election still comes up. @GalacticFunk Happy 65th B Day to the one and only Theryl Houseman DeClouet!

We had him in the studio this week to record. @drayzze (Ignoble Savage) This is a dedicated musician.

www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: kim welsh

Village People at Louisiana Seafood Fest

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OAK STREET PO-BOY FESTIVAL

The 10th Annual Event Moves to October

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o longer held in November, the 10th Annual Oak Street Po-Boy Festival will take place on October 23. The festival is free and open to the public and pets are allowed.

The Oak Street Po-Boy Festival’s website gives us an interesting history of the sandwich: Bennie and Clovis Martin left their Raceland, Louisiana, home in the Acadiana region in the mid-1910s for New Orleans. Both worked as streetcar conductors until they opened Martin Brothers’ Coffee Stand and Restaurant in the French Market in 1922. The years they had spent working as streetcar operators and members of the street railway employees’ union would eventually lead to their hole-in-the-wall coffee stand becoming the birthplace of the poor boy sandwich.

The streetcar motormen and conductors began a strike on July 1, 1929 that put 1,100 jobs at risk. When the company attempted to run the cars on July 5 using strike breakers, jeering crowds stopped them. More than 10,000 New Orleanians gathered downtown and watched strike supporters disable and then burn the first car operated by a strike breaker.

A sympathetic public participated in great numbers by avoiding the transit system, which remained shut for two weeks. The Martin Brothers offered free meals to members of Division 194: ”We are with you ’till hell freezes, and when it does, we will furnish blankets to keep you warm.” In order to maintain their promise, the Martins provided large sandwiches to the strikers. Bennie Martin said, “We fed those men free of charge until the strike ended. Whenever we saw one of the striking men coming, one of us would say, ‘Here comes another poor boy.’”

The traditional French bread’s narrowed ends meant that much of each loaf was wasted, so the Martins worked with baker John Gendusa to develop a 40-inch loaf of bread that retained its uniform, rectangular shape from end to end. This innovation allowed for half-loaf sandwiches 20 inches in length as well as a 15-inch standard and smaller ones. The original poor boy sandwiches offered the same fillings as had been served on French bread loaves before the strike, but the size was startlingly new.

The streetcar motormen and conductors eventually lost the strike and their jobs. The continuing generosity of the Martins as well as the size of the sandwiches proved to be a wise business decision.

—Ed. The Oak Street Po-Boy Festival is on Sunday, October 23,10 a.m.-8 p.m. Two stages with music by Ambushin’ Bastards featuring Jake Eckert, Reggie Scanlan, Doug Belote, John Gros and Dave Malone; the Original Gentlemen; Corey Henry’s Treme Funktet; Los Po-Boy-Citos; Khris Royal & Dark Matter and Darcy Malone & the Tangle. www.OFFBEAT.com

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TEN SONGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW WERE RECORDED IN NEW ORLEANS

MY MUSIC Photo: DIWANG VALDEZ

Nesby Phips

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rom cutting hair to painting to making music, I was always selftaught and always had my own method. When I cut hair, even if it’s the same client every week, I approach each haircut from a different standpoint, usually governed by emotion and what’s going on at the time. I make songs the same way. In terms of painting, my painting and my music kind of come from the same place. ’Cuz when I’m making music, I see sounds, just as I see color when I paint. And while I’m making music, I’m factoring in colors, I’m factoring in moods. Whether you’re baking a cake or you’re baking bread, you’re still baking.

In terms of songwriting, I usually approach melody first. There was one point in my life where I would do drums first… that’s when I was really studying drum machines and I was learning step recording. But now I go with melody first. I think it works best when you can fit the drums in between the spaces of the melody and the drums are there as the solid foundation. And in that way the song has a stronger narrative. It’s all about taking different approaches to the emotion involved. Some people have said my sound is more classic, harder to put a date on. That’s definitely not done on purpose—you never attempt to write your name the way you write your name, or consciously choose the way you talk. I do know I favor the analog sound of things, it’s warmer. And I like things from scratch, in real life as well as creatively. I prefer not to eat out of cans. I like fresh vegetables. And I like fresh sounds. Stuff that has textures, layers, personality to it. As with everything, what you put into it is what you get out of it, so something with all organic ingredients is always going to taste homegrown. Which actually makes the work easier—it’s always easier to get things right when you put the freshest ingredients into it.

I’ve got lots of new work coming out these days. My new single and video, ‘Cream On Chrome,’ was my way of moving that classic sample and idea down South. I usually don’t touch stuff that other people have touched before, but I was just in love with it and when I found it I was like, this is what the big dogs was playing with. And I liked how it sounded raw. I was playing with the pitch, which directly affects the tempo on it, and when I slowed it down I just had it looped. I actually tried to make it maybe two, maybe three times over and I finally got it right. The words just kind of came together after that.

But to be honest, most of my favorite songs are instrumentals. My instrumental record I put out at the end of last year is one of my favorite projects I’ve done so far. Sometimes you can get more said with no lyrics at all.”

—Holly Hobbs

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verybody knows that half the great music in the world was recorded in New Orleans and that the occasional rock star came through town to make a record here (McCartney’s Venus and Mars album probably being the most famous). This month’s playlist brings together some tracks with lesser-known local origins: Kansas: “Carry On Wayward Son”: Yes, this quintessential piece of ’70s prog was recorded at the Studio in the Country in Bogalusa— so in fact were the entirety of the band’s two most famous albums, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return. Maybe they looked out at the swamp and heard those cosmic harmonies.

Prince: “4 the Tears in Your Eyes”: This was Prince’s contribution to the benefit We Are the World album, and you’ll recall that he needed to make amends fast after bowing out of the all-star sessions for the title song.

Only trouble was, he was on tour in the South at the time. So on February 2, 1985 he came to town, rented a mobile studio, and set up for an all-day session with the members of the Revolution. And what hidden-away location did he rent to use as the recording site? Nothing less than the Superdome.

Bob Dylan: “Heart of Mine”: Dylan made big news in 1989 when he came to New Orleans to record the Oh Mercy album with producer Daniel Lanois. But he’d already made a recording here in 1981, when he cut a live version of “Heart of Mine” at the Saenger Theatre in November.

Emmylou Harris: “Wrecking Ball”: Dylan was just one of the big names that came into town when Daniel Lanois had his Kingsway Studios at Esplanade and Chartres. Harris also made her watershed album there, with a great studio band including Larry Mullen of U2.

R.E.M.: “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”: Another one from Kingsway, where this song was written and recorded. R.E.M. came here quite a bit in the latter part of their career, and anyone who went to Jazz Fest in the ’90s probably caught a few glimpses of guitarist Peter Buck in the crowds.

Bill Murray: “The Bare Necessities”: Bill Murray and Kermit Ruffins?

That unlikely duet took place at the Music Shed on Euterpe Street, where Murray laid down vocals for the soundtrack of Disney’s Jungle Book remake.

Neither Kermit nor the surroundings could make a great singer out of Murray, but likely encouraged the exuberance of the performance.

Little Richard: “Tutti Frutti”: Most of the greats who recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studio on Rampart were locals—Fats Domino, Professor Longhair—but the Georgia Peach also stopped in to cut one of the greatest records ever made. Approach with respect if you ever do your laundry there now.

Marilyn Manson: “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”: Yes, Marilyn Manson’s parent-annoying Smells Like Children album was largely made at the Studio in the Country—probably at the behest of his producer Trent Reznor, who lived here at the time. Maybe he got inspired to cover this Eurythmics song from the many Bourbon Street cover bands who did.

Pearl Jam: “Off He Goes”: Recorded at Kingsway, this ballad became the third single off the No Code album. Since the band used its usual producer Brendan O’Brien, it’s one of the notable Kingsway recordings without the trademark Lanois sound.

Stevie Wonder: The Secret Life of Plants: The Studio in the Country was one of many spots where Stevie worked on this 1980 double-album epic. Recording was so elaborate that no single song was done at any one location, but you can bet that some of the nature sounds running through the album are straight outta Bogalusa.

—Brett Milano www.OFFBEAT.com

FRESH

GREENSKY BLUEGRASS Photo: Dylan Langille

Serenade for Strings

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reensky Bluegrass may take the stage with a banjo, mandolin, dobro, upright bass and acoustic guitar, but don’t let the name or the instrumentation fool you. These guys owe as much to jam band titans like the Grateful Dead and Phish as they do to bluegrass luminaries like Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.

“We have a lot of influences that have been swirling around in our heads for a long time, and bluegrass is one of them,” explains dobro/ lap steel player Anders Beck. “But it’s always been our goal, as we’ve evolved, to take that to a new place. Why would we want to do the same thing that everyone has done for so long? Originality is one of the most important things you can have in this day and age.”

That originality is a key part of what Greensky does, though it might not be clear after a cursory listen. The five-piece string band is more adept in the art of songwriting than many of the other improvisational wizards that make up the jam scene, and their originality lies in the space between their record material and their live performances.

The group’s studio albums tend to veer away from long-form sonic explorations in favor of concise, lyrically engaging tunes, but that all changes when the show starts.

“It’s almost like we’re two types of bands,” says Beck. “There’s the live aspect where we’re more of a bluegrass jam band, and we can get experimental and psychedelic. Then the other aspect is recording albums, where we’re trying to make this definitive version of songs that we then play live. We like to do both.”

It was barely six months ago that the band headlined Hogs for the Cause in City Park, delivering a one-set show that featured an assortment of original tunes and bluegrass classics. Things will a little different next time around, as the group will have two full sets to explore new material (their latest album, Shouted, Written Down & Quoted was released in September), old material, and in all likelihood, a few choice covers.

“I was talking to Corey [Henry] from Galactic about how New Orleans has its own thing going on where he can get together with anyone on any given night and play 100 different tunes without even thinking about it,” adds Beck. “Bluegrass is like that too. We were laughing about how I couldn’t do it in his genre and he couldn’t do it in mine, but it works out that way. New Orleans is an amazing city and we’re psyched to go back.”

Greensky Bluegrass will perform at the Joy Theater on Saturday, October 15.

—Sam D’Arcangelo www.OFFBEAT.com

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SOUNDCHECK

Five Questions with Steve Rivera

NICKEL-A-DANCE

Kicks Off October 2nd at Maison Topsy Chapman

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teve Rivera is the Executive Director of Project Lazarus, a New Orleans–based organization which cares for people living with HIV and AIDS that has been operating for more than three decades.

Cities across the country faced tragedy in the early days of HIV, but Project Lazarus began here, in New Orleans. Why was the city chosen?

There was a strong need here. It was founded in 1985 during the early days of the HIV epidemic, by Fathers Bob Pawell and Paul Desrosiers, who noticed many black wreaths hanging in the French Quarter. They learned there was this disease that seemed to be hitting gay individuals and got a call that someone was being released from the hospital with this highly stigmatized disease and nowhere to go, so Father Bob offered his guest room in his ministry. In 1985, Father Paul opened up a space in the convent of his Marigny church, where we are to this day.

How does one go about acquiring help from Project Lazarus?

What care are residents given once they’ve entered the facility?

Residents are referred by a case manager from various agencies. We have 23 beds so we’re limited and generally remain full. But once a resident is here, the mission is to help them with skills, teach them how to manage this disease, and ultimately help them live independently. Project Lazarus used to be a place where people came to die. Now, it’s become a happy place filled with goals. Our tagline is “living in the positive.”

What are some HIV statistics that you think readers should know?

Baton Rouge ranks number one and New Orleans number four in the nation for estimated HIV cases. The most important thing is that HIV is no longer a death sentence. Ultimately, you need to be tested and get into and stay in treatment. With an undetectable viral load, there’s almost no chance of transmission. But we’re not out of the woods yet.

Could you explain the relationship between Project Lazarus and Halloween New Orleans?

In the mid-’80s, when HIV was affecting predominantly gay men, a group of friends hosted an elaborate Halloween party for the LGBT community.

They decided to connect the successful party to a cause that was important to them, so they decided to begin donating to Project Lazarus.

Could you speak to the importance of Halloween New Orleans’ Benefit for Project Lazarus, and what makes attending it valuable, in terms of helping to keep the organization running?

Since the ’80s they have donated one hundred percent of proceeds for approximately 30 years. They receive no form of compensation and just really want to help this cause. They have raised over $4.5 million for Project Lazarus.

Readers interested in getting involved can visit www.projectlazarus.net —Amanda Mester

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wo very different female vocalists sharing some unique ties are featured during this autumn’s Nickel-A-Dance series. Thais Clark kicks off the popular, free event at 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 2.

She’ll front an impressive ensemble at the Maison with drummer Shannon Powell, trumpeter Wendell Brunious, guitarist/banjoist Don Vappie, reedman Christian Winther, bassist Richard Moten and pianist Ricky Monet.

“I’ve got a helluva band,” declares the ever-exuberant Clark, whose last appearance at Nickel-A-Dance was back when it was held at Cafe Brasil.

Two weeks later, Topsy Chapman takes center stage with the Palm Court All Stars including pianist/leader Lars Edegran, trumpeter Gregg Stafford, trombonist Robert Harris and bassist Richard Moten.

The obvious tie between Clark and Chapman is that they’re both original cast members in producer/actor Vernel Bagneris’ successful musical, On Mo’ Time. Clark, who assisted with choreography, played the feisty Ma Clara Reed and Chapman the cocky Thelma. Before that, Clark sang with Chapman’s gospel group, the Chapman Singers.

“The difference between the two of us is that although she sings, she’s more of a performer,” says Chapman, who is making her first appearance at Nickel-A-Dance on October 16. “She has lots of energy where my energy level is low. She’s a dancer and a comedian and my stuff comes from inside.”

It is refreshing to realize that Chapman didn’t experience any backlash from the gospel community when she crossed over to secular music. Unfortunately, it was quite common for gospel singers to be scorned for performing the “devil’s music.”

“By the time we started, I think everything had changed,” Chapman explains. “People were excited and happy that I was able to do something other than gospel. They said, ‘I knew you were going to be somebody!’”

Chapman, who had a role and sang in the Academy Award– winning movie 12 Years a Slave, certainly hasn’t deserted her gospel roots. Her group, Solid Harmony, which includes her daughters Yolanda Windsay and Jolynda Phillips plus Wendy Myles and often her grandson, trombonist Caleb Windsay, performs both gospel and jazz.

With the Palm Court All Stars, Chapman primarily sings material from New Orleans’ traditional jazz repertoire. “We do very little gospel. Lars’ style of gospel is different from my gospel. When I grew up, my gospel was from the ’50s and ’60s and Lars’ is Preservation Hall gospel,” says Chapman.

Held each Sunday in October, the Nickel-A-Dance series also presents clarinetist Tim Laughlin (October 9), the Jazz Vipers (October 23) and Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers (October 30).

—Geraldine Wyckoff www.OFFBEAT.com

ACADIANA FLOODS

We’re Going To Need Help August floods put Acadiana’s cultural heritage at risk.

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Photo: carey hamburg

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week after an unprecedented volume of rain fell in Louisiana in August, causing floodwaters to ravage homes and businesses from Baton Rouge to Acadiana, Cezanne “Wish” Nails stood outside the long-famed, nowgutted music studio she runs with her husband, Steve Nails. At the “poolhouse” building behind her, which narrowly escaped flooding when the Vermilion River flowed over its banks and onto Dockside’s grounds, a handful of folks sat on the porch, running alcohol-soaked maxi pads and Q-tips over cables and other gear in an effort to keep mold at bay before the interior of the studio from which they’d been yanked could house them again.

In front of the building marked “Dockside,” local artist Rozalyn Galyean introduced herself to Nails.

“I make jewelry out of broken drum cymbals,” she explained, adding that her father had recorded at Dockside, so she knew what a special place it was. When she heard it flooded, Galyean staged a Facebook Live jewelry sale to raise money to help.

She’d come that day to present Nails with a check. She wished it were more, she said, but it was something.

Later, as Jo-El and Bobbye Sonnier talked with Steve Nails in the poolhouse kitchen over the smell of gumbo preparations, Wish’s eyes went glassy at the mention of Galyean’s gift, though it was right in line with what’s been happening around the Acadian music community since the flood.

At Dockside—the site of key recordings by Sonnier, as well as Irma Thomas, Buckwheat Zydeco, Levon Helm and many others—musicians, engineers, music production workers and fans have offered tireless assistance to help rebuild a studio often described in terms like “magical” and “inspiring” by artists who have worked there.

On a less consolidated scale, instruments, gear and other donations have started to make their way into the hands of Acadiana area flood victims. In September, Marc Stone was looking for a home for an amp that was rebuilt and given to him after all his amps were damaged in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

(He plans to sell it and donate the proceeds to flood relief if there are no takers.) The Lost Bayou Ramblers released a flood relief benefit album, Rue Vermilion Revival, within two weeks of the disaster. By the end of August, Louisiana Folk Roots, a nonprofit organization focused on Cajun and Creole music education that was decimated after sitting in water for 12 days, had secured a temporary office donation from the LITE Center.

As September got underway, MusiCares was working to process more than 100 applications from musicians in need of assistance in and around Lafayette and Baton Rouge. Benefit concerts are starting

By Jennifer Odell

to proliferate from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Lafayette, as well.

This month, the Lafayette area gets another profile boost when Festivals Acadiens et Créoles kicks off on October 13. Hopefully, it will also help boost morale for those still piecing together their futures after the worst U.S. natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy.

Those surprises began appearing at Dockside the night the water rose. The unhappy ones, Wish Nails recalls, included things like having to remind her 16-year-old son Dylan they should keep an eye out for snakes and alligators as they waded through the darkness trying to save instruments and recording equipment. The river itself, after all, had technically entered the studio.

Unexpected glitches have continued well into the rebuilding process, too. A month after the flood, Nails discovered another section of wall containing soaked material.

Among the happier surprises?

The fact that Dylan—plus a call from producer and engineer Trina Shoemaker—managed to save the studio’s most important element: the massive Rupert Neve console.

“He took out every module and it was the last thing we did at the end of the day and we were exhausted,” Wish recalled in August, speaking over the hum of half a dozen fans and dehumidifiers aimed at various parts of the studio, which smelled of mold and dust mixed with bleach.

Shoemaker had called to check on the Neve (“That’s all she cared about,” Nails joked) and Nails told her “We’re losing it, it’s over, there’s no way to move it.” But Shoemaker urged her to find a way to take the modules out of the console. Said “way” turned out to be Dylan’s strength and determination to save his parents’ livelihood.

“They pull out but they’re real heavy and you have to be real www.OFFBEAT.com

PhotoS: Cezanne Nails

“We did this really beautiful Cajun and Creole lullaby CD and when I opened the wooden door of the porch, all of a sudden these Je M’Endors CDs came floating towards me.” careful,” Nails said. “So we … put the first couple upstairs— we’re still wading through the water—and then after that you could see it come up higher and we were just throwing them on top of the table but we got them all out. Dylan saved the day.”

As soon as roads were passable, area musicians including J Burton and Geoff Thistlethwaite, along with engineers like Tony Daigle and Justin Tocket, began appearing daily to help tear apart the floors, pull out the porch and dry out the multi-layered walls, among many other tasks.

“It’s amazing, people have just rallied around and helped us so much,” Nails marveled.

By mid-September, she was working to install new insulation, though she cautioned that her early estimate of being back up and running in three months, published in an interview in the Advocate, may have been optimistic.

Thistlethwaite, who worked as an engineer at Dockside in the ’90s and had been scheduled to record there the week after the flood, has no plans to move his scheduled session elsewhere. He said he hoped to record at Dockside by the holidays.

“When Wish had a Facebook post saying it might be the end of Dockside…” he said, his voice trailing off. “Well, I’m not the only one around here who feels that can’t happen.”

Other things lost to the flood included belongings left by musicians who’d worked there, like Givers’ Taylor Guarisco, who recovered waterstained but salvageable notes from the album In Light on the premises.

“It was surreal to be at Dockside and see it flooded,” he said, calling it his “home away from home.”

“It’s just never felt like that … a place that was a safety net, a creative zone. It seemed like www.OFFBEAT.com

Dockside Studios

nothing could penetrate the walls of Dockside Studio.”

Though Dockside expects to come back, bigger question marks loom over the future of other music and arts organizations in the area.

Among the hardest hit was Louisiana Folk Roots, which sponsors the hugely popular Dewey Balfa Cajun and Creole Heritage Week in April, as well as other unique music education programs for children and adults.

Executive Director Todd Mouton said when rain forced the Vermilion

River to flow over the levee as it expanded by about half a mile, he found that his office—a rented building insulated with bousillage, or cured Spanish moss and mud—was in the middle of that half-mile radius.

The water remained above 16 feet with nowhere to recede or be pumped out to, he recalled, and his small staff faced a quarter-mile paddle to get to the office and start trying to salvage archives, recordings and files.

“Our offices marinated in flood waters for about 12 days,”

S OD FLO A N IA AD AC

he said. “I think we got many important and valuable things [out] but any sort of bottom drawers of file cabinets, bottom shelves of book shelves—those things were just reduced to pulp.”

The first visual sign of the damage came when he arrived on the building’s front porch in mud boots ready to tackle the situation, despite the water still being a good foot and a half deep.

“We did this really beautiful Cajun and Creole lullaby CD and when I opened the wooden door of the porch, all of a sudden these Je M’Endors CDs came floating towards me,” he said. They lost nearly 500 copies, he estimates.

While his team works to secure more aid for recovery, they also hope to keep their spring events on the calendar. Over the course of 16 annual Balfa Week events, the organization has trained and taught thousands of people about the region’s rich music culture.

“We’re hoping they’ll be there for us in a big way at our 2017 event because we’re going to need all the help we can get,” he said.

Balfa Week, like Festivals Acadiens et Créoles and other events that celebrate Acadiana’s cultural heritage, fits into a long history of communal gatherings around Cajun and Creole music amid adverse conditions. Yet a disaster such as the August floods can cause damage not just to homes and property but also to a cultural community’s longevity and sustainability.

“The little bits we’re able to pay artists is part of that cultural mosaic and that framework that keeps things moving and working,” Mouton said. “We have a very robust cultural ecosystem but any time a piece of the puzzle takes a shot you have to reassess and take stock.” O O CTO BER 2 016

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KENNY NEAL

More to Life

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enny Neal, one of Baton Rouge’s internationally known blues artists, grew up in the country. His bluesman father, the late Raful Neal, filled the family’s house in West Baton Rouge Parish with instruments. Encouraged by their dad, all ten Neal siblings turned out musical. Oldest child Kenny is the most famous of them all.

“I learned everything, just about, from my dad,” Neal said of the father who, rather than move to Chicago, as so many Southern bluesmen did, stayed in Louisiana to raise his family.

Neal and his brothers and sisters learned from their father’s friends, too. They included Slim Harpo and his band members James Johnson and Rudy Richard, Rockin’ Tabby Thomas and future blues star Buddy Guy. Kenny Neal performed with his dad from the age of 12 through 15.

Meanwhile, growing up in Erwinville on a two-house street, he dreamed of where music could take him.

“I used to sit on the porch and watch the airplane lights flying over my head to Baton Rouge,” he remembered. “I’d go, ‘One day I’m going to fly in one of those things!’ I knew there was more to life than where I was at.”

Neal’s opportunity came at 16. Guy, who’d left Baton Rouge in 1957 to pursue a career in Chicago, invited Neal to play bass in his band. The teen musician’s dad gave his blessing.

“I was right out of the country, man, from Erwinville to Chicago,” Neal remembered. “A whole different world, but I was excited.”

Guy became Neal’s boss, mentor, example and inspiration.

“What I learned from Buddy was, I didn’t want to play the bass guitar anymore,” he said. “And I didn’t want to be a sideman. My dad was a band leader, but then I watched another band leader, Buddy Guy. My dad was

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just around Louisiana. With Buddy, I was playing with the same kind of guys as my dad, the same type of music, but we played New York City and Chicago. We flew to Europe. I’m thinking, ‘Man, what is Buddy doing different from my dad?’”

The difference was music publishing deals and record contracts, Neal realized. “So I started writing my own songs and learning how to play the guitar, so I could be a band leader.

I followed that dream.”

The dream became real. For decades, Neal has performed throughout the world. He’s won handfuls of awards and released albums through multiple labels, including Blind Pig, Telarc, Kingsnake and Chicago’s Alligator Records. In July, the Los Angeles– based Cleopatra Records released Bloodline, his 18th album.

Bloodline represents Neal’s swamp-blues heritage and something he’s never exploited so thoroughly before: his versatility.

By John Wirt

Working with Tom Hambridge, Buddy Guy’s Grammy-winning producer, Neal recorded most of Bloodline in Nashville. Despite the ace Nashville studio players Hambridge booked, Neal knew he had to complete one of the album’s songs back home in Louisiana. Title song “Bloodline,” with its lyrics about family, tradition and the blues, is that special song.

“Down in Louisiana, where the blues bloodline run deep,” Neal growls amidst steamy swamp-blues atmosphere. “The apple don’t fall far from the tree.

Grandpa died. Daddy gone. Now I’m here to carry on.”

After cutting the “Bloodline” rhythm track in Music City, Neal told his Nashville guys: “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to take it away. You guys can’t finish this one.”

Later, he offered more explanation for the move at his home in a still-country patch of East Baton Rouge Parish.

“It’s something that had to happen with the family,” he explained. “I took the Neal kids, the grandkids, the great-grandkids and got them all on the song singing.”

Deep in the blues though Bloodline is, it’s also the most varied album of Neal’s 40-plus year career.

Blues meets country in his elegantly soulful rendition of Willie Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away.”

Following the classic Nashville Sound, the production features real strings.

“This Willie Nelson song is bluesy as you can get,” Neal said.

“They want to stamp it as country, but country is blues. And I love the way the country writers are just down from the heart. And that’s what our blues is about.”

Real horns and a Memphis groove push Bloodline’s Rufus Thomas–style “Keep on Movin’.” Blues goes to church in the high-energy “Ain’t Gon Let the Blues Die.” And “I’m So Happy” glows with a happy Southernsoul vibe that Neal’s father loved.

“I didn’t go with my straight-up, 12bar blues songs for the album,” Neal said. “So we hit uptown, downtown, the Delta, tried to cover it all.”

After these many years in the business, Neal keeps hustling. He financed Bloodline’s production himself.

“You’re always self-employed,” he said. “It’s not one of these jobs where you have your benefits. Ain’t no retirement in this game. When they roll you out, that’s when you retire. But it’s in our blood to do it.

We love it. For me, it’s even more special because I feel obligated to pass it on. And I want to leave some kind of mark behind that says, ‘Well, I did this.’”

O Kenny Neal and other members of the Neal family of blues musicians were affected by August’s widespread flooding. They have a GoFundMe campaign at gofundme. com/2krfy9hv.—Ed www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: bob hakins

Kenny Neal’s Louisiana blues bloodline runs deep.

JOHN GROS

With a Little Help From His Friends John Gros releases River’s on Fire.

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Photo: noe cugny

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n mid-August John Gros was preparing to drop his first solo album in 12 years, River’s on Fire, when he got the call. His father Don’s Baton Rouge house had fallen victim to the floodwaters inundating Louisiana. Despite the crucial business at hand, Gros knew what he had to do. Weeks later he was still commuting from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to work on gutting his dad’s house, taking the time in between to launch his latest project.

“43 inches of water,” said Gros, shaking his head in between bites of a gravy-laden meatloaf po-boy at Horn’s. “Me and my brother were helping my dad out with some of our friends. We had a team of 610 Stompers come in (Gros’ brother Andrew is a member). We had some musician friends, some childhood friends came out.”

Gros applied a similar spirit of cooperation to the making of River’s on Fire. Several of the songs were co-written with a lyricist friend, Mark Carson.

“Mark Carson sang in a cover band called the Murmurs and during my freshman year at Loyola I played in a cover band called Impulse,” Gros recalls. “The Murmurs were pretty well established on the frat circuit and at the cover clubs out by the Lakefront. Over the years we got to be friends and we wrote a lot of songs together. I get stuck all the time—stuck on the story, stuck on a word. Not on the musical side, but on the lyric side. Mark will come in, listen to it and say, ‘That doesn’t make sense, let’s talk it out.’ After we got a few songs written we started writing songs from scratch.”

Carson also sings background on several songs along with John Couvillon, a childhood buddy of Gros’. “I’ve known him since the first grade. He’s a great singer.”

Susan Cowsill and Vicki Peterson, two friends from numerous New Orleans projects, sing on a new version of “House of Love,” originally recorded for Gros’ previous band, Papa Grows Funk.

“That’s a strong song that never got properly utilized. From the git-go I knew I was gonna do that song again. I rearranged it and put it more into my original idea of the song.”

Cowsill’s husband Russ Broussard plays drums on the album.

“I’ve known Russell a really, really long time,” says Gros. “He was my sub drummer for Mule Bone.

He’s a unique drummer. He can marry the New Orleans tradition with the Lafayette tradition and he also knows how to play songs. He’s married to Susan Cowsill. If you can’t play to the song you’ve got no business being in that family.”

Guitarist Brian Stoltz is another longtime pal.

“We can talk about the Beatles, Yes, Earl King, ZZ Top, the Neville

By John Swenson

Brothers, Dr. John,” says Gros.

“And he’s a great songwriter himself. When I tell him what I’m going for in a certain song, he knows exactly what I want.”

The bulk of the album features two of the hottest vocalists on the New Orleans scene—Erica Falls, from Allen Toussaint’s band and more recently Galactic; and Jelly Joseph of Tank and the Bangas.

Gros blends his voice magnificently with them in a variety of styles, from the hard funk of “Crazy,” “Cocaine and Chicken Fricassée” and the title track to the New Orleans–style reggae of “Why’d Ya Do It?” and the gorgeous ballad “Her Love Can’t Be Denied.”

Gros says that the vocal arrangements on those numbers were influenced by another friend, Allen Toussaint, who produced tracks for Papa Grows Funk’s Needle In the Groove album.

“On the songs that Erica and Jelly sang on, I definitely had Allen in

mind. Erica and I have been playing together since 1992. Back then we were in a band called ELS, playing corporate parties. She is phenomenal.

Just like everybody on the record they’re close friends. That’s how lucky I am, to have so many talented friends who want to play with me.

“We talked a lot about Allen, making the record. He passed while we were making it. He was a Jedi master. He didn’t tell you what to do. He would ask you the questions and make you come up with the answers. The biggest thing he did for me personally is that he validated every doubt I had about how people thought New Orleans music should be. All my doubts dissipated when he said ‘You know who you are.

You have your sound. You have your message. We’re gonna do that.’

I got five long days in the studio with him and several hang out conversations. It’s sad that it was so late in his life, but those exchanges changed my life forever.”

O www.OFFBEAT.com

FESTIVALS ACADIENS

Cosmic Moments Festivals Acadiens et Créoles celebrates 42 years.

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Photo: lucius fontenot

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f you had told me in 1974 when we were doing that very first one that in 2016, we would have 65 groups playing and it still wouldn’t be enough on 5 active stages,” says retired University of Louisiana-Lafayette professor Barry Ancelet, “I would have said you’ve got to be nuts.”

Now celebrating its forty-second anniversary, the free Festivals Acadiens et Créoles (Thursday, October 13 through Sunday, October 16) offers a tantalizing array of Cajun and Creole music spread across five stages. Additionally, there are cooking demonstrations, a photography exhibit, a special film screening, a run and a cultural symposium on Cajun dancehalls and zydeco clubs, the theme of this year’s festival.

It’s staggering in scope and even more mine-blowing considering that it evolved from a single night concert, A Tribute to Cajun Music, that occurred on a drizzly Tuesday night, March 26, 1974 at Blackham Coliseum. Among those playing the inaugural event were the Balfa Brothers with Ray Abshire, Nathan Abshire, Clifton Chenier and the Ardoin Family Band with Canray Fontenot. Dancing was not permitted as the organizers—CODOFIL (Council for the Development of the French Language in Louisiana), Ancelet and musicians Dewey Balfa and Marc Savoy—all advocated that the concert should solely be a listening experience as opposed to just dancing to it and “hearing it.”

An estimated 12,000 people showed up and with the concert being so wildly successful, a second tribute occurred on April 15, 1975, again at Blackham. This time, not even the police could keep people from dancing. “So what do you do when Clifton Chenier is playing?” asks Ancelet.

When Ancelet returned home in ’76 from graduate school, he was

incredulous that a third concert had not occurred. “What, are y’all nuts? You got this momentum going. We got to do it again.”

Since organizers felt that the point about listening versus dancing had been made, the event moved to Girard Park on Halloween 1976 so people could dance more freely.

One reveler who never missed a tribute concert or festival was chef Pat Mould. Sometime in the early ’90s, he had had enough when a local publication panned the festival as “What’s Hot Not.” So out of the blue, he called Ancelet and pitched the idea of having a tent where he would conduct interviews with musicians.

In 1994, Mould conducted an interview-performance session with Canray Fontenot, “Bois Sec” Ardoin and BeauSoleil’s Michael Doucet. “It was one of the most cosmic sets I’ve ever seen in my

By Dan Willging

life,” says Mould. “Canray, at the time, was dying of cancer.

I remember him coming up to me and saying ‘Oh chère, I am not doing too good.’ What’s the matter, man? ‘That cancer has got me bad.’ And I am thinking to myself, shit, Canray is going to die on my stage. This is going to become known as the stage where Canray Fontenot died.”

“I am seriously freaking out, right? He sits down and starts stroking that fiddle and he has got that big Canray Fontenot smile. Michael is playing and trying to keep up with Canray, who is just hitting these Jimi Hendrix licks on the fiddle. And I am thinking five minutes ago this guy was going to drop dead on my stage.”

“I call them cosmic moments and that was one of those cosmic moments,” says Mould.

Mould’s other cosmic moments include a fiddle workshop conducted by Kevin Wimmer and Mitch Reed and a songwriter’s workshop featuring D.L. Menard and Shirley Bergeron who became the best of friends afterwards.

In time, Mould’s interview tent grew into a performance tent, also known as the gospel revival tent since it had an intimate, up-close vibe. “The year Lil’ Band O’ Gold played, I had one little light bulb hanging over the stage, right?

So it is kind of semi-dark in there come dusk on a Saturday night. I look over there at Dickie Landry, the saxophone player, and say ‘Hey Dickie, what do you think of my light show?’ And we both look at the light bulb and crack up.”

In 2007, the then-presenting organization, the Lafayette Jaycees, who had sponsored the festival since 1980 after assuming the reins www.OFFBEAT.com

FESTIVALS ACADIENS from CODOFIL, dissolved, and a new community nonprofit was formed in 2008. From there, the nonprofit stepped its game up as Mould pursued public and private sponsorship as well as influential media partners.

“For the first 33 years of this festival, there was not one outside public or private dollar invested,” Mould says. Concessions and draft beer sales essentially paid for the festival. “Think about it; it’s a

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pretty poor business model. We are basing our survival on selling as much draft beer as we possibly can.

We’re potentially sending people home drunk in order to survive.”

Today, Capital One is the presenting sponsor but Mould is proud of all the sponsors that include Chevron, the Louisiana Lottery and the Lafayette Consolidated Government. “Our sponsors have figured out that, hey man, if we want our brand to be seen, this is

the place to see it,” Mould explains.

“This is a self-celebration of how we live, how we eat, how we dance and how we speak.”

Ancelet likens the nonprofit to a foundation where proceeds are invested back into the community.

“We decided that one of the most direct ways to put it back into the community was to pay musicians well and we started doing that,” Ancelet says. The inaugural Tribute to Cajun Music concert didn’t pay

its musicians, but Ancelet says it was a cause that they believed in to attract attention to the value and importance of Cajun and Creole music. The second Tribute concert basically paid for travel expenses. By 1976, the pay was a whopping $15 per musician.

Besides paying musicians better, Festivals Acadiens et Créoles has five philanthropic arms, music, food, art, language and the beautification of Girard Park—“all the areas the festival touches to make sure there are young people today who are ready to take our places 20–30 years from now,” says Ancelet.

“We have given musicians scholarships to learn French at St. Anne’s (Nova Scotia). We gave a young blacksmith a $1,000 scholarship to do a cast iron table.

Last year we paid for a chef’s airfare to be a part of the Cannes Film Festival apprenticeship program,” Mould explains. Last year 50 fruit trees were planted in Girard Park with the assistance of the Boy Scouts. “Maybe this fall, if not next, you’ll be able to step off the trail and grab a grapefruit or an orange and continue your walk,” Mould says.

“It’s a story that’s just developing. Not too many people know about it but when they hear the story, they say that’s pretty cool, man,” Mould says. “We are cognizant of it but we’re not into tooting our horn.”

“I like to think of this festival as a smart festival,” says Ancelet.

“It’s entertaining but there’s a message. There’s matter behind it. There is a juxtaposition of this band playing right after that one that is, hopefully, carrying active messages to people. It’s what I have come to call guerilla academics where you sneak information to people while they think they are being entertained. That’s being the professor in me. I have always thought of the festival stage as one of my classrooms. I hope the crowd doesn’t feel that they are in a classroom but walk away with a better understanding of the music and who they are, where they come from and what’s important. And in that way, it’s not just entertainment, its info-tainment.”

O www.OFFBEAT.com

CEDRIC BURNSIDE

Raw and Real

Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival Sunday, Oct. 16 Camp Street Stage 5:45 p.m.

Cedric Burnside Project carries on hill country blues’ good name.

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Photo: ELSA HAHNE

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he late R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough— guitarists, vocalists and composers—remain legendary as master purveyors of “hill country” blues, a style specific to north Mississippi, particularly in the area around the town of Holly Springs.

Remarkably, their respective, very talented grandsons, Cedric Burnside and Trenton Ayers, continue their legacy as the Cedric Burnside Project. “I think that’s a blessing,” says drummer, vocalist and sometime guitarist Burnside, who at age 13 was already behind the drums and on the road with his grandfather, R.L., who he affectionately calls “Big Daddy.”

“I was born on the road and I’m still on it,” Cedric, 38, says with a laugh. It happens that his mother was traveling with her father, R.L., when they were forced to stop in Memphis for Cedric’s arrival.

The Cedric Burnside Project, which performs at the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival on Sunday, October 16, received a Grammy nomination for its very appropriately titled 2015 album, Descendants of Hill Country. “It was a collaboration between me, my uncle Garry [R.L.’s son, guitarist Garry Burnside] and [guitarist] Trenton,” Cedric explains. “We three came together and wanted to do something for the hill country and to sort of let people know where we are coming from and who we got it from.”

A duo of just drums, guitar and vocals remains common to the genre, though unusual on today’s music scene. As put forth by this team, the stripped-down instrumentation certainly doesn’t result in any lack of dynamics or muscularity. “It’s very unorthodox, I know that,” Burnside agrees.

“I’d have to say, not everybody gets it though lots of people who

have come and heard us for the first time left amazed. We see a lot of those people when we go back the next time.”

“In Europe, they really love it.

Even the ones who don’t speak English, they dance to the music like they’ve been listening to it their whole lives. I guess it’s that hypnotic beat—that hypnotic drone that hill country blues gives out. Hill country blues is very raw and very real. Big Daddy was a sharecropper. He was that guy who would get off the tractor when somebody comes to see him to play guitar because that’s what you love to do. When

By Geraldine Wyckoff

people start feeling that energy, they can kind of relate to where he was coming from.”

A night with the Cedric Burnside Project naturally includes material from both R.L. and Junior Kimbrough—tunes that Cedric and Trenton, 30, both grew up hearing and playing. The drummer and guitarist also delve into songs from Descendants of Hill Country and, says Cedric, go back to selections from 2013’s Hear Me When I Say, the first album they recorded together.

The two have known each other since childhood and decades ago would play at the many jam

sessions R.L. would host at his home in Holly Springs.

“He plays Junior, yeah, but I think all of Trent’s music is his own style—he puts his own little thing to it,” says Burnside. “He can play just about anything of Junior’s or Big Daddy’s or other musicians. He plays regular guitar and slide with open tuning, which is open G. A lot of older cats around the hill country used to call it ‘Spanish’ tuning.”

Burnside and Ayers both perpetuate the hill country blues of those who came before them— as well as modernize it. “It’s updated and the reason is because we’re the newer generation— www.OFFBEAT.com

CEDRIC BURNSIDE

we’re descendants. We kind of do it our way—call it a younger way if you want—but we also keep it raw like how we got it.

It’s also a bit more uptempo.”

“My music is closer to Big Daddy’s music than anybody else,” Burnside continues. “It’s because I was around him my whole life. Anything he would do from walking to cooking, I would sit there and watch him.

I just grabbed what I could and tried to perfect it.”

Burnside sees a lot of musicians getting hip to hill country blues and playing more of his grandfather’s and Kimbrough’s songs. With its driving rhythm and played-fromthe-gut, juke joint attitude, the genre is not easy to pull off with authenticity.

“You can’t read this music,” Burnside makes clear. “I like to call it feel music—you have to feel it and go with the flow.

A lot of the old cats back in the day—and even now—they tend to change [chords] when they’re ready. You just have to be ready.”

“I was quite young the first time I came to New Orleans, maybe 17, and I played with Big Daddy at Tipitina’s. A few years later, we did the Ponderosa Stomp. New Orleans is like my second home. That city always shows us love. Man, y’all can cut a rug. Other places I have to tell the people that we love for people to dance. I never have to tell people in New Orleans or Mississippi to dance because they’re already going to be on the floor.”

Cedric Burnside smiles a lot as he lays down hill country’s intensely compelling rhythm.

“I can’t play too good if I can’t enjoy it.”

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LIL POOCHIE/HEZEKIAH EARLY

Two Legends

Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival Sunday, Oct. 16 Camp Street Stage 11 a.m.

Lil Poochie and Hezekiah Early get the job done.

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PHOTO FROM THE CD NATCHEZ BURNIN’ ON BROKE & HUNGRY RECORDS

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obert Lee “Lil Poochie” Watson, 65, and Hezekiah Early, 82, have some years between them, though they’ve shared decades of playing the blues.

The Natchez, Mississippi natives started hooking up back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Guitarist and vocalist Lil Poochie would come in to perform with drummer, vocalist and harmonica player Hezekiah and the House Rockers band when the group’s guitarist, Elmo Williams, couldn’t make a date. “That went on for years,” says Early, “and after that he would just start playing with us regularly [often along with trombonist Leon “Pee Wee” Whittaker].

During much of that era, Lil Poochie also led his own bands, his first one being the Roadrunners, which included vocalist Ernest Fitzgerald. “He was the James Brown back in the day and I wasn’t singing at the time,” says Poochie, who did sing gospel music in church. “He said, ‘Man look, you have a beautiful voice, you need to start singing.’ I said ‘I can’t sing—I’m not going get up there and embarrass myself and run these people off.’ He said, ‘That’s okay you will.’ After he passed, it dawned on me that he wouldn’t want me to sit there and lose my voice. He would always tell me, ‘Go ahead, please try to sing.’ I’ve been singing for him ever since.”

Beyond being noted blues artists, another thing that Lil Poochie and Hezekiah have in common is that they both built their first guitars.

Poochie’s was made with a board, some fishing wire and nails for pegs.

Early’s instrument boasted an even more unusual construction. His father bagged groceries at a store near the farm where they lived and the owner would give him bunches of cheese boxes. “I decided I would make me a guitar out of them,” Early remembers. “I wasn’t able to buy no strings and these older guys that

would play house parties, they’d throw them away so I got me some of those strings.” He drilled holes in the head and used bolts as tuning pegs so a wrench would be required to tighten or loosen the strings. “It would take me a while to get it tuned, but when it was tuned it was tuned,” he remembers with a laugh.

“It was awhile before I knew he could pick [guitar] the way he did,” says Lil Poochie of Early. “I knew he was a drummer and a harmonica man but I didn’t know he could play guitar until we were out to his house rehearsing getting ready to go to Clarksdale to do a recording [Natchez Burning]. I always brought my electric guitar whenever he and I would do something. One day I brought an acoustic and we played together and I said, ‘Man, we sound good, we need to do something with this. We need to put this in our act.’ Then he said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll carry it along with me.’ So we started doin’ things like we do.

Sometimes we just get together and have us a little time.”

For a long while, folks didn’t realize that besides playing drums

By Geraldine Wyckoff

and singing, Early could also blow harp. He was just a youngster when an older guitarist, Robert Fitzgerald, and his son would come get him to play harmonica with them. They eventually started doing house parties. “It got to a point when we needed some drums so that became my job,” Early relates.

To play drums and harmonica at the same time wasn’t something Early had considered doing. Just from the physical requirements, the two instruments didn’t mix—or at least that’s what Early thought. That is until the day he met the great Muhammad Ali on the set of the 1979 television movie, Freedom Road. It was Ali’s first acting role and Early—after, apparently, an extensive search, since he was really known as a drummer— was recruited to play harmonica.

“Meeting Ali was wonderful—it was a dream,” Early remembers.

“He came to me and said, ‘Hezekiah, how long have you been playing harmonica?’ I said I learned harmonica when I was about eight or nine years old but I don’t play harmonica now, all I do is drum now. He said ‘Man, look, why don’t you try to figure out a way

to blow harmonica too. You’re too good a harmonica player to lay the harmonica aside.’ So I started taping the harp to the mic stand and playing the drums with my hands. It just became natural. It looked like when I wasn’t playing the drums and harp together it was like I wasn’t doing anything.”

“We go back a long way,” says Lil Poochie, remembering trips to New Orleans to play with Hezekiah & the House Rockers at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. “We used to have a couple of more guys playing with us but they passed. After they passed, we sort of like slowed down and then all of a sudden people started getting him for shows. One lady remarked, ‘Now this you can’t beat, we have two legends in one band.’ He’s my idol. I couldn’t have a better musician friend than him.”

Hezekiah & the House Rockers were regulars at the Jazz Fest, playing almost every year in the ’80s and ’90s, though Early says he hasn’t been invited since Hurricane Katrina.

The band was also a fixture at the 1984 New Orleans World’s Fair and performed on opening day. “I did www.OFFBEAT.com

. etc HIE, C O PO LIL

a lot of getting around in New Orleans,” Early proclaims.

In the ’60s, the House Rockers could often be heard at the now legendary Haney’s Big House in Ferriday, Louisiana. Hezekiah and his band are recognized for their contribution to the blues by a plaque located next to Ferriday’s Delta Music Museum. There’s also a marker honoring Lil Poochie and Hezekiah in a little park on St. Catherine Street in their hometown of Natchez.

“He [owner Will Haney] was open 24 hours,” Early says, “and when he had a big band coming in he would give us a free pass so we could see the band and eat and drink.”

Before officially joining Early and the House Rockers sometimes in the ’80s, Lil Poochie was leading a number of bands of ever-changing names—the aforementioned Roadrunners turned into the Soul Brothers and then the Red Hot and Ready band. Even when Lil Poochie is working with Hezekiah, whose roots are firmly based in blues and rhythm and blues, his love of soul music and its influence is still evident. “A lot of times we’d open shows for the big stars when they’d come to Natchez, like [soulman/vocalist] Tyrone Davis,” says Lil Poochie, whose repertoire with his early groups would include material from the likes of soul singers Davis, James Brown and Al Green.

Since childhood, gospel music has also been core to Lil Poochie and until recently he would play guitar and solo at his church every third Sunday. “I always say, if I can go up into a juke joint and play up in there all night long, I should be able to give the Lord some of my time because he’s the cause of why I’m doin’ what I’m doin’. He gave to me so I have to give back.”

On the blues side of the aisle, Lil Poochie was first influenced by his uncle, Dave Pinder. “I used to hear my blind uncle sing ‘Uncle Bud’ all of the time,” he recalls. “That’s where www.OFFBEAT.com

a lot of my playing came from. I said I always wanted to be like my uncle because he would have a whole lot of girls around.”

Beyond playing the blues, Lil Poochie and Hezekiah, who are featured in the 2012 documentary/ CD We Juke Up in Here, boast other skills that have provided a way of making a living and that they also enjoy. Early built his own house, one for his brother and with some help another one across the street from his home.

“I’ll tell you what, all of this stuff I learned it from scratch,” Early declares with a sense of pride.

“I took my time and built me a guitar—I’ve got about nine of them built—and I learned how to play guitar on my own. I learned to play harmonica by listening at people.

And I learned to play drums by listening—I took out a few classes on drums but not very many. I built a bass too. All this stuff came to me and I haven’t forgotten it.”

Lil Poochie’s delight is gardening and for over five decades, he has been working at the Rosalie Plantation Home in Natchez.

I’ve been doing it for 52 years at the same spot,” he says with a similar touch of pride in his voice.

“I do a whole lot of planting and sometimes I do a little designing. I keep the yard nice and try to keep things in order. People ask ‘How do you get your flowers to grow?’

I say, ‘A lot of times I get my guitar and sit in the flower bed and you should see my flowers dancin’.’ I really love it.”

“We’ve played for so long, we pretty much know each other’s songs and know where we’re comin’ from,” Lil Poochie says.

“We don’t really have to do much practicing. We just go out there and get the job done. I put some songs together and he puts some songs together. You know, it works real good.”

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The New Expressionism Coffee as avant-garde art in New Orleans.

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hat is she doing in there? A woman in her early twenties, brown hair, sitting in a parked car at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, with circular movements perceivable through the windshield. What’s going on?

Meet Lauren Fink, one of New Orleans’ new coffee queens and proprietor of Cherry Coffee, which still operates out of its original location inside Stein’s Deli on Magazine Street near Jackson Avenue, but since March also in a bright new location in what used to be a fire station by Wisner Playground at Laurel and Upperline Streets, down from Le Bon Temps Roulé, deep into the residential neighborhood.

Fink drove here crosscountry from Portland, hand-grinding her own coffee in her ’84 Chevy Silverado, sourcing hot water from gas stations along the way.

She’s committed, you could say, to excellent coffee no matter where she is. When she goes camping she brings along her AeroPress.

“I don’t get to travel a whole lot, but I take short trips to the beach,” she says. “I take my dog, and I bring my own coffee.

The AeroPress is nice because it’s plastic, you can’t break it, so all I need is hot water and my grinder.

I’m ridiculous, but coffee is important to me. Those are an important 15 minutes that I thoroughly enjoy.”

When Fink first moved to New Orleans five years ago, the local reference point for coffee was still chicory and dark roast. What’s become known as third-wave coffee had not yet hit the Gulf Coast.

“The attitude in New Orleans is still very much that you drink coffee in the morning to get caffeinated,” Fink says. “That’s what you do to start your day, but where we’re going is more of a culinary experience.

It’s not about putting in milk and sugar and getting it down as quickly as possible to get you where you need to go. It’s supposed to be a sensory journey. You’re supposed to pay attention.”

Historically, the so-called first-wave put coffee in almost every kitchen in America. Think Folgers and Maxwell House, mass marketing along with technical innovations such as airtight cans and instant

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coffee that brought the product onto grocery stores’ shelves and into soldiers’ rations. The second-wave was as a reaction to the “bad coffee” of the first. Here came the cult of espresso drinks, big companies like Peet’s and Starbucks, coffee shop culture and some degree of snobbery surrounding specific origins, such as Brazilian and Colombian beans, as well as roasting styles.

“When I came down, New Orleans had PJ’s and CC’s and Rue de la Course, and those were small businesses, so kind of cool, but they didn’t serve the coffee we have now,” says Fink.

Third-wavers like her think of coffee as an artisanal craft beverage, not unlike wine or beer. It’s all about freshness (beans are generally sold with the roasting date displayed on the package), direct relationships with farmers and roasters, and teasing out the essential flavors from each bean, respecting what it has to offer and enjoying those qualities in their purest form. This requires light to medium roasts rather than dark or French roasts, explains Fink: “It’s easy to roast coffee, but it’s quite hard to nail the balance between acidity and sweetness.

What’s happening in the roasting process is that you’re caramelizing the natural sugars in the coffee and the acidity changes into sugar then to caramel to burnt sugar as you roast it longer.

“The East Coast and the West Coast have different roasting styles. Coffee from the East Coast is more developed, more savory, a heavier mouth-feel—rich, I’d say—with coffees from Guatemala and Brazil. Then on the West Coast there are higher-end notes, higher acidity and lighter roasts. Might be a little bit more delicate, but with a lot of flavor. I try to bring in both to show people what’s out there.

Comparison is the best way to learn, so we do cuppings on Sundays for our customers.

“Lately, I’ve been playing around with a sample roaster. I’d like to get that ball rolling, roasting my own coffee. I should do a Kickstarter, honestly. ‘Hey, New Orleans! I want to roast your coffee!’ That’s where I see myself going next.”

By Elsa Hahne, Photography by Elsa Hahne

www.OFFBEAT.com

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For a short while after moving here, Fink worked as a barista for Brigade, the specialty coffee truck that used to park in front of Stein’s Deli.

“Eventually Dan [Stein] asked them if they wanted to move into his place,” she remembers. “But they said, ’No. It smells bad in there.’ That was right around the time when I was ready to make a move so I talked to Dan myself and that’s how Cherry got started.

“Working for Brigade was frustrating. They’d buy a large amount of coffee, which has a shelf life of two weeks, and I’d be trying to make good coffee with monthold coffee. It wasn’t working.”

Going from being a barista to a business owner was a big step for Fink, who nevertheless had worked in coffee since high school.

“In the beginning, it was just a fun job,” she says. “But I didn’t know what I was doing until I went through Stumptown’s training program in Portland and learned how different coffee can taste. I had no idea. I was drinking caramel lattes, you know, when I was ‘little.’

Tasting black coffee was mindblowing.”

Today, Fink wouldn’t even hire the barista she herself used to be. Her employees work with scales and timers and high-end equipment. There are no buttons to press, no thermoses.

What motivates her more than anything is blowing other peoples’ minds with the complexities of flavors she’s able to express from coffee beans.

“At Stein’s, where people would come in for a sandwich and end up ordering an espresso after their meal, I’d hear on a regular basis, ‘I had no idea coffee could taste like this,’” she says. “Those reactions kept me going. All of a sudden, coffee wasn’t just coffee to them anymore.”

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cross town, Lauren Morlock runs Solo Espresso on Poland Avenue in the Bywater. She lives upstairs, which helped a lot when she opened three years ago and was the only one working—except for her husband, who made coffee deliveries on skateboard.

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Above: Lauren Fink at Cherry Espresso Bar on Laurel Street.

“We’d deliver mochas and lattes and cold brew to anywhere between Press Street and the Industrial Canal, the Mississippi and Claiborne [Avenue],” she remembers. “Delivery was tricky. I did it on bike. We created all kinds of different contraptions to hold the coffee.

I’d just close the door with a note on it, ‘Be right back.’”

Solo was originally supposed to be run as a pop-up in a neighborhood bar. When that fell through and Morlock already had bought all the equipment, she simply set it up in her basement, handed out flyers and ran Solo as a coffee speakeasy for eight to nine months. Once people started coming on a consistent basis, it made sense to stop delivering and instead run the business as a coffee shop. Now she hosts food pop-ups each Saturday, addressing neighbors’ breakfast needs. Morlock admits having a sweet spot in her heart for Cuban coffee, which is black as night, thick and syrupy, but Solo relies exclusively on lighter roasts from a variety of roasters, primarily Panther in Miami. She gets her dairy from Mauthe’s Progress Milk Barn in McComb, Mississippi and her sugar from Three Brothers Farm in Youngsville, Louisiana.

For consistency, Morlock keeps a recipe log. Each week, she comes up with a baseline recipe (coffee to water ratio, weight and time measurements) for her baristas to follow using the beans that are currently available. When the baristas come in for work each morning, they individually tweak the recipe for an optimal brew.

“Coffee is forever changing,” Morlock says. “Every day, it releases carbon dioxide, and there are so many variables. With a finer grind, you get more surface area to extract from, but you also create more resistance, which means that it takes the water longer to pass through the grinds. The goal is beautiful flavors in a consistent cup of coffee every day.”

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he port of New Orleans was always the first stop for a large portion of green coffee beans coming into the U.S. For more local coffee history—and a reality check if you imagine that we’ve reached a point of saturation when it comes to coffee shops in the city—read the sidebar.

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To the Bitter End New Orleans’ coffee history runs deep.

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hicory coffee runs in high doses through the bloodstreams of south Louisiana, and has for generations. Chicory may be considered a roadside weed in most places, but in New Orleans it gives coffee that special taste that locals crave, smoky and slightly bitter. In the eighteenth century, Haiti (then a French colony called St. Domingue) produced half of the world’s coffee. But after the 1791 revolution, Parisians and New Orleanians turned to chicory to stretch the divine drops. New Orleans’ coffee culture was all the while much reinforced by the slave revolt, since the city soon hosted thousands of Haitian refugees. Rose Nicaud,

a free woman of color, was reputedly the first person to serve demitasse to French Market shoppers and vendors. Gardner’s city directory from 1859 lists about five hundred local coffee houses. Some were combined with other businesses, such as groceries (thirty-six) and boarding houses (thirteen). There was even a “coffee house and wood yard” by the levee at Thalia Street and a “coffee house and wine store” at 34 Main (Dumaine) Street in the French Quarter, owned by an Italian. Today’s clustering of coffee shops has nothing on New Orleans in the 1850s, where one could choose from five different coffee houses just at the intersection of Magazine and St. Mary Streets, twelve on St. Philip Street and thirty-four along Tchoupitoulas Street.

Excerpted from You Are Where You Eat: Stories and Recipes from the Neighborhoods of New Orleans by Elsa Hahne (University Press of Mississippi, 2008).

For a truly e check out o xcellent cup, ne of these places: Cherry

Espresso Bar 4877 Laurel St.; Fri 6:30a-5 (504) 875-3 p, Sat-Sun 7a-5p 699; MonSolo Espre sso 1301 Po land Ave.; 3p (starting (504) 408-1 Sept. 5, M 377; Mon-S on-Sat 7aMammoth at 8a3p); soloes Espresso p ressobar.co 8 2 1 B aronne St.; Sun 7a-3p m (504) 475-4 344; MonArrow Ca fé 628 N. R am part St.; M Sun 8a-2p on-Fri 8a-3 p, Sat 8a-5 HiVolt Co p, ffee 1829 So p h ie Fri 7a-7p, W ri g h t Pl .; (504) 32 Sat 8a-7p, 4-8818; M Sun 8a-5p Spitfire C on; hivoltcoff offee 627 ee.com St .

Peter St.; M spitfirecoff on-Sun 8aee.com 8p; French Tru ck Coffee 1200 Mag Mon-Fri 7aazine St.; (5 5p, Sat-Su 04) 298-11 n 8a-4p // 702-1900; 15; 4536 Dryad Mon–Wed es St.; (504 7a-5p, Th Sun 8a–5p ) ur–Fri 7a-8 ; frenchtru p, Sat 8a–8 ckcoffee.c Church All p , o m ey Coffee Bar 1618 Mon-Sat 8 Oretha Cas a-4p tle Haley B lvd.; www.OFFBEAT.com

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By Michael Dominici Photography by Elsa Hahne

Eternity in the Interval Sarah Quintana gives voice to Louisiana.

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n the last few years, several locally based musical artists have forged ahead in somewhat new and unconventional ways to gain not only a national, but an international audience. Aurora Nealand, Helen Gillet, Leyla McCalla, Meschiya Lake, Alynda Lee Segarra (Hurray for the Riff Raff), Sasha Masakowski, Shannon McNally and Sarah Quintana have used crowdfunding and social media to help reach a wide and supportive audience. Before launching her career abroad and returning to New Orleans, Sarah Quintana studied the arts at Benjamin Franklin, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Loyola University. Her extensive family’s Cajun French heritage and her love of jazz, standards and classic singer-songwriters served her well on 2012 release The World Has Changed, on which she performed a stunning rendition of Hoagy Carmichael’s love letter to the Crescent City, “New Orleans.” Only Sarah Quintana sang it in French. Her latest effort, Miss River, is the culmination of a confluence of experiences including a residency at A Studio In The Woods, whose stated purpose is “to protect and preserve the Mississippi River bottomland hardwood forest and to provide a tranquil haven where artists can reconnect with

universal creative energy and work uninterrupted within this natural sanctuary.” Sarah Quintana explored those possibilities as a songwriter and literally utilized the Mississippi River as a sounding board, incorporating underwater and natural sounds she gathered upon her explorations. With the assistance and guidance of engineer guru Mark Bingham (Piety Street Studio) Miss River came to fruition.

Take us back to your earliest recollection of your musical experiences growing up in New Orleans.

My aunt Hillary is good friends with Deacon John and he used to come over to our house and play guitar for us in our kitchen. He would perform all kinds of songs for us kids, but our favorite was “Constipation Blues,” a novelty tune by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins—which he’d play using a beer bottle as a slide. Deacon is such a charming entertainer—I was mesmerized.

I got my first guitar when I was eight years old. It was a classical guitar.

My aunt also plays piano—pretty much everyone in my family plays piano.

We had one in our home before Hurricane Katrina. We’d play all kinds of music—church hymns, standards, tunes from songbooks, Mariah Carey or O CTO BER 2 016

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Boyz II Men. I was always able to just go up to the piano and play. I didn’t really appreciate the fact that I was raised in a music family here in New Orleans until I moved to France. I was there after Katrina. I fell in love with a sailor in Marseille and stayed there for a second, working as a musician in a band there in my early twenties. I initially busked, but soon thereafter I was invited to play in clubs, contract engagements, tours and several music festivals. It didn’t work out with the French guy but I’m still singing!

A very endearing New Orleans element apparent in your music is your deep, visceral connection with your family.

You use personal items such as family mementos, keepsakes, stories, recipes not only as lyrical references but using items such as your grandmother’s porcelain tea cups and silverware to add musical flourishes to your songs.

I love that word, “keepsakes.” One of the objects that I salvaged from our house after Katrina is a porcelain demitasse coffee cup passed down through my grandmother Emily Ardenaux-Quintana from Bayou Goula, just south of Baton Rouge near Donaldsonville. This coffee cup is a cherished item in our family because it was passed down from her mother, who was Cajun and spoke only French—Grandma Annie.

Also because it was tiny, all the children grew up drinking out of this particular cup. I grew up on Banks and South Pierce in Mid-City New Orleans near my grandmother. We had a dozen cousins and dozens of children that grew up in a close-knit Catholic family with Cajun roots. This coffee cup is a touchstone to family folklore and became a symbol of New Orleans for me—a way of talking to French audiences, explaining to them that New Orleans is shaped like a bowl, and an image of our strong rituals, French heritage and fragile landscape. I use the cup as a percussion instrument in several of my songs including “Mama Mississippi.” I am very inspired by objects and relics pertaining to the mythology of my Louisiana family, exploring the deeper roots. Especially as we see the disappearance of our coastline, and have so many questions about that, we need to know where we come from and decide best where we want to go. We have so much to think about and so many decisions to make if we want to survive here. So, the coffee cup is a comforting symbol about moving forward, baby steps and daily rituals that remind us who we are. We have conversations around drinking coffee. And yes, some mysteries will never be solved, but we can honor and cherish what we do know.

Many of us left New Orleans after Katrina. You spent time away in France. Describe your experience of returning home and your

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path upon your return, and how this process influenced and shaped your life, and music.

I was a painter in college, and involved with visual arts, making tiny books and other objects. I lost my portfolio in Katrina. When I moved to France, I felt lost. I felt like I had lost everything, all my connections.

I lost my city. I was cut off from many of my family members and most of my friends and lost all of my possessions. Music became a way for me to forge ahead with a newfound purpose and identity; it was more temporal, eternal, and a tangible thing for me at that point, traveling.

I didn’t need paint and canvas to show what I could do. Now, I could sing a simple song like “Basin Street Blues” or “St. James Infirmary” and “All Of Me” and all these standards that I just knew because I’m from here, so that just made sense. Or just make up a tune. Initially, I played for my friends in homes and at parties. I was playing guitar and singing, but with no career in mind at the time. But, then I started get asked to play more often, and for money! Eventually, I was doing better as a musician than I was teaching English to French students. I began to perform all over Europe. It was the perfect experience at the time for a twenty-year-old. Basically, the songs were my passport. www.OFFBEAT.com

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“Although singing is my talent, I’ve always identified myself as a guitar player going back to my days at NOCCA.”

It was soon after that I began to get serious about music and realize that there were opportunities available for me to pursue. There were personal, creative desires that I could fulfill with music. I could paint pictures with stories, and images, and sound. I could transmute my pain.

When I was lonely I just went outside and started singing. That loneliness became a dinner party because I made all my friends, everything I have now through music. I’m still friends with people that saw me on the street when I was 19 or 20. The people of France were so kind to me. I was feeling down and out and they welcomed me into their homes, gave me comfort, and friendship and gigs. So music became my home away from home—my new social network, and eventually, a way to come back to New Orleans with purposeful intentions. Upon my return, I joined the New Orleans Moonshiners, and started singing with swing bands. I started working on my chart book. Musicians like Charlie Fardella, Matt Lemmler, Joe Cabral, Jonathan Freilich, John Bradley and many others took me under their wings. I grew up watching Davy Mooney play at Plantation Coffee House in Lakeview, and he and I started playing together. Although singing is my talent, I’ve always identified myself as a guitar player going back to my days at NOCCA. It was around this time that I began to seek out more established guitarists and take private lessons with them.

www.OFFBEAT.com

You also seem to have several eclectic, kindred spirits here that you’ve performed with such as Helen Gillet, Leyla McCalla and Aurora Nealand. How have those particular bonds influenced the direction of your music?

First of all, if I hadn’t seen women on the stage, whether as leaders or side musicians, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for me to one day do the same. It’s always been extremely important to me to have chops and know how to play well in an ensemble setting, to know the jazz code if you will. Seeing Shaye Cohn with Tuba Skinny and Aurora Nealand, and working with them and Helen Gillet, who has invited me to play in several French settings. It’s meant a lot to me to see women play jazz and creative, original music, as well as do so in the capacity of a leader. They are part of the reason that I continue to compose original music and improve my skills as a guitarist. These women have truly inspired the shit out of me. Not only do I have the fortune to go to dinner with them, we share life experiences, I babysit for them, record with them, perform with them, tour with them, and learn from them. As a creative being I admire them, and they showed me that anything was possible.

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“I know what it feels like to not belong and I don’t want anyone to feel this way. Music definitely makes me feel like I belong.

I feel safe there.”

Since Katrina there have been several interesting venues that have opened up that seem very different from the pre-Katrina landscape. They vary from outdoor venues such as Bacchanal to the Marigny Opera House, which is a re-purposed Church that often features acoustic performances without any amplification whatsoever. What they have in common is a more communal approach to music. What’s your take on this?

It’s totally magical. I’ve played in all of these newer venues and even performed in yoga festivals, which is something different entirely, and an increasingly promising avenue for me. Of course, I still do a lot of house concerts, and still love traditional venues such as Preservation Hall, and playing on a riverboat.

Another commonality you share with these particular musicians is savvy when it comes to funding dream projects and tapping into the online community as a source of revenue, exposure and support. I imagine it also played a part in dreaming big after seeing their successful efforts to having such an ambition enterprise as Miss River come to fruition, which must have been challenging considering all the outdoor and environmental challenges of such an elaborate venture.

Totally. Miss River was a tremendous undertaking that required the collaborative efforts of so many incredible musicians and of course, it was made possible by the generosity of my friends and fans and Kickstarter. First of all, I was very lucky to meet Mark Bingham, who is not only a brilliant engineer, producer and musician but a feminist! In turn, I’ve had the pleasure of being able to offer my support to other musicians in kind. For instance, Davy Mooney has a new recording called Hope Of Home featuring Brian Blade coming out and I’m helping him with online fundraising and a promotional campaign. I’m also producing my first album with help from with Rex Gregory and Mark Bingham. I’ve found that we all share and participate in our musical community.

Debbie Davis, who I often babysit for, puts it this way: “If I put money in your tip jar it will eventually find its way into mine.” It’s a sharing economy in a way. We uplift each other, and our dreams. We uplift the Gulf of Mexico, social change, social justice prison reform, it’s all connected. Yes! The whole world is looking to New Orleans and Louisiana for answers. We share the responsibilities to be stewards not only of our cultural heritage but to the land and rich habitats around us.

You’ve written songs dealing with issues of social justice. How does that issue work its way into your music?

One thing about being a musician and a writer is that you are a witness. You can play a song that has a deep meaning and conveys a feeling and can make a personal connection. People of any color or any side of the political spectrum will come up to you and tell me how much they were impacted and moved by my performance. Being from New Orleans, you have to at some point begin to grapple with the difficult issues we face here. I’ve developed my own feelings, my own perspective in regards to issues of race, social injustice, privilege, poverty, and other issues we face and too often ignore here. I went to Loyola, which is a

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Catholic social justice institution, and met Sister Helen Prejean there my freshman year, and of course, she had strong opinions in regard to the death penalty and she had a tremendous impact on me.

Going to France was illuminating and confrontational in that regard, because it made me realize just how difficult things are here. It also made me realize that we as musicians pretty much owe everything to black culture. If it wasn’t for Louis Armstrong and many others, I wouldn’t be here singing any songs! Why can’t we live harmoniously, celebrate life, and uplift each other? People do want to help and be a part of making things better in the world.

The social justice aspect of my career happened because of my relationship with Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3 who spent over four decades in solitary confinement, who I was pen-pals with for five years. I met Herman through my yoga teacher Jackie Sumell at Swan River Yoga. She’s kind of the radical social justice yogi in this area, known to quote Angela Davis in her classes. She is also the star of the documentary The House That Herman Built, which shows her amazing work. And that’s how I got involved. The day Herman was released I wrote “Almost Free.” Herman’s voice lives through that song.

The positive feedback and support I get from a song like that becomes a positive cycle when people ask me to play that song at funerals and other situations, or I receive royalties from it which encourages me and allows me to continue to write new songs addressing social concerns.

Everything is about planting a seed and building a network. How can this moment be honest and open enough to create another beautiful moment and opportunity?

Music is one of the few mediums that’s able to transcend politics no matter one’s affiliation.

There are certain situations where one can simply feel like they don’t belong for various reasons, be it gender, religion, sexual orientation— whatever. I lost my home in Katrina and sometimes still feel I’m wandering. I know what it feels like to not belong and I don’t want anyone to feel this way. Music definitely makes me feel like I belong. I feel safe there.

Tell us about your involvement with environmental concerns.

You did a residency at Studio in the Woods and as always your connection with the land and the water that surrounds us and that delicate relationship has had a tremendous influence on you. How did the whole concept of Miss River develop?

The map of Louisiana looks very different now than it did when I was in grade school. It’s gone from looking like a boot to more like a worn down sneaker. I saw how that water devastated so many communities.

Even areas that weren’t traditionally considered vulnerable. We need to explore more options besides simply waiting for the apocalypse. Its hard work and we need to get to the business of doing it. We can imagine a world that we want to see. I also believe that nature is divine and holy whether it’s a meadow or a bayou, and the same quality that can be found in a masterpiece painting in the Louvre is also manifested by our creator in the form of a mountain, a beautiful tree, and the bounty of nature that surrounds us here in Louisiana. We need to cherish and www.OFFBEAT.com

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protect Mother Nature. For me, it’s like being part of an ever-flowing stream to be connected to this source of inspiration. I have had a variety of experiences and as an artist it’s important to explore. Miss River in a way is the culmination of my experiences and my attempt to give voice to the water, if you will.

Elaborate on your process and perspective as a musical artist.

As a musician, we are looking for eternity in the interval. We are looking for the perfect solo, the perfect poem or lyric, or just to be present and do the work in case the muse shows up. Writing is a spiritual exercise and improvising is an instant form of composing. I am constantly recording myself and sometimes those fragments later get structured and shaped into songs. For me, the most precious gem—and I hope that everyone can get the opportunity to experience this in some way—is the blissful free space where you are one with your soul and your source. Music is the eternal refuge, it’s art, beauty, and it’s available to everyone. It’s available in so many ways and people find it differently. It’s important to find your inspiration and hang out there. For me, the sweet spot seems to be balancing discipline with creating new possibilities of personal and artistic growth. Living in New Orleans, it’s easy to get caught up in a comfort zone. Traveling challenges you to discover the world and your place in it. Traveling creates a new orbit. When I was in France, everything felt equal. I felt safe in any neighborhood and didn’t fear gun violence and crime for instance. Everyone has access to health care and just knowing that was a comforting thought, but it also got me thinking about important social issues back home. That perspective was illuminating. Travel really improves every element of life and that includes a higher vibration, clearer thinking, writing from a more interesting perspective, as well as simply making my heart happier.

What are you up to next?

Keith Porteous’ album that I co-produced, Sound Refuge, comes out on October 16. My next project will be a solo covers recording of some of my favorite songs, ranging from Joni Mitchell to Stevie Wonder. I’m also very excited about a new project which is an interactive song blog where people write in to me and I respond by creating a music video. That project is in development. Also, very excited and honored to be performing in French at the Blackpot Festival in Lafayette on October 29. I’m also booking 2017 in France now, which is super exciting! Also, I’ve just recently begun working with the Ocean Conservancy which is very exciting as well.

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photos: Elsa Hahne

Craig Seaman/Bar Frances

“I

t’s fun to think about a person as an influence as opposed to a spirit or a style of drink. Helen Gillet, I’ve seen her perform a bunch.

She’s one of my favorite people to watch, she’s animated and works up a sweat. I’ve seen her perform a solo show and sound like she’s four or five people—all the different sounds. Not only is she a phenomenal cellist, but she can pull off so much else too, with the looping and her beating on the cello.

For this drink, I wanted something simple that was refreshing and maybe a touch bitter, something she could sip as she was performing. This is in the Bicyclette style, with rosé wine, which I know she drinks.

I know that she’s lived in a few different places in the world so I wanted this to be a bit of a gypsy cocktail with European influences.

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I came here to Bar Frances from Dante’s Kitchen. Started there as a server, got behind the bar and ran the bar for a minute, then became the GM. When I started here, I didn’t know how much I actually like a spritz—not until I had to make a million of them—and now I love creating these really simple cocktails, that’s my buzz right now. The deeper I got into the 10-ingredient drinks, the more I realized that I’d forget what I was making at the end of it.

Overall, I’m just happy to get back to bartending.

I drink wine more than anything. But I drink everything.

I’m a lover of all things that I pour. Sometimes tequila; sometimes pisco, neat. The people around me inspire me. I don’t really know much about music, but music can be very inspirational. It can hit you in just the right way. Whenever I

By Elsa Hahne

get flat, I need something to grab me and that’s what it was like when I first saw Helen Gillet perform in an old church several years ago.

I went to school here [Uptown] and back then, the only place I’d ever go on Freret [Street] was Dunbar’s.

Everything else was just a residential neighborhood. It’s crazy how much it’s changed.

There’s so much construction.

A lot of our customers have recently moved here and walk. It’s so nice to see people walking, going from bar to bar, not having to drive anywhere.

Next to us there will soon be a gelateria, and three doors down a juice bar. It’s a great community.”

Be Still My Beating Cello 3/4 ounce Gran Classico 1/2 ounce Dorothy Parker gin

1/4 ounce Pierre-Marie Chermette crème de cassis 1/4 ounce lemon juice 4 drops orange flower water 2 ounces rosé wine Soda water Shake Gran Classico, gin, crème de cassis, lemon juice and orange flower water together. Pour over ice. Stir in wine and top off with soda water. www.OFFBEAT.com

Café Degas: 3127 Esplanade Ave., 945-5635 La Crepe Nanou: 1410 Robert St., 899-2670

Howlin’ Wolf’s Wolf Den: 907 S. Peters St., 529-5844 Le Bon Temps Roule: 4801 Magazine St., 895-8117 Little Gem Saloon: 445 S. Rampart St., 267-4863 Maison: 508 Frenchmen St., 289-5648 Mid City Lanes Rock ‘N’ Bowl: 4133 S. Carrollton Ave., 482-3133 Palm Court: 1204 Decatur St., 525-0200 Rivershack Tavern: 3449 River Rd., 834-4938 Southport Hall: 200 Monticello Ave., 835-2903 Snug Harbor: 626 Frenchmen St., 949-0696 Three Muses: 536 Frenchmen St., 298-8746 Three Muses Uptown: 7537 Maple St., 510-2749

GERMAN

NEIGHBORHOOD JOINTS

FRENCH

Jaeger Haus: 833 Conti, 525-9200

ICE CREAM/CAKE/CANDY Aunt Sally’s Praline Shop’s: 2831 Chartres St., 944-6090 Bittersweet Confections: 725 Magazine St., 523-2626 La Divina Cafe e Gelateria: 621 St. Peter St., 302-2692 Sucré: 3025 Magazine St.,520-8311 Tee-Eva’s Praline Shop: 4430 Magazine St., 899-8350

INDIAN Nirvana: 4308 Magazine St., 894-9797

AFRICAN Bennachin: 1212 Royal St., 522-1230.

AMERICAN Barcadia: 601 Tchoupitoulas St., 335-1740 Brown Butter Southern Kitchen: 231 N Carrollton Ave., 609-3871 Poppy’s Time Out Sports Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St., 247-9265 Port of Call: 838 Esplanade Ave., 523-0120 Primitivo: 1800 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 881-1775

BARBECUE The Joint: 701 Mazant St., 949-3232

COFFEE HOUSE Café du Monde: 800 Decatur St., 525-4544 Morning Call Coffee Stand: 56 Dreyfous Dr., (504) 300-1157, 3325 Severn Ave., Metairie, 885-4068

CREOLE/CAJUN Cochon: 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 588-2123 Cornet: 700 Bourbon St., 523-1485 Galatoire’s: 209 Bourbon St., 525-2021 Gumbo Shop: 630 St. Peter St., 525-1486 K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen: 416 Chartres St., 524-7394 Mulate’s: 201 Julia St., 522-1492 New Orleans Creole Cookery: 508 Toulouse St., 524-9632 Restaurant Rebirth: 857 Fulton St., 522-6863

DELI Stein’s Market and Deli: 2207 Magazine St., 527-0771

FINE DINING Bombay Club: 830 Conti St., 586-0972 Broussard’s: 819 Conti St., 581-3866 Commander’s Palace: 1403 Washington Ave., 899-8221

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IRISH The Irish House: 1432 Saint Charles Ave., 595-6755

Biscuits and Buns on Banks: 4337 Banks St., 273-4600 Cake Café: 2440 Chartres St., 943-0010 City Diner: 3116 S I-10 Service Rd E, 8311030; 5708 Citrus Blvd., 309-7614 Cowbell: 8801 Oak St., 298-8689 Dat Dog: 601 Frenchmen St., 309-3362; 5030 Freret St., 899-6883; 3336 Magazine St., 324-2226 Live Oak Cafe: 8140 Oak St., 265-0050 Parkway Bakery and Tavern: 538 Hagan Ave., 482-3047 Phil’s Grill: 3020 Severn Ave., Metairie, 324-9080; 1640 Hickory Ave., Harahan, 305-1705 Sammy’s Food Services: 3000 Elysian Fields Ave., 948-7361 Tracey’s: 2604 Magazine St., 897-5413

ITALIAN

Chiba: 8312 Oak St., 826-9119 Mikimoto: 3301 S. Carrollton Ave., 488-1881 Seoul Shack: 435 Esplanade Ave., 417-6206 Sukho Thai: 4519 Magazine St., 373-6471; 2200 Royal St., 948-9309 Wasabi: 900 Frenchmen St., 943-9433

LOUISIANA / SOUTHERN Fulton Alley: 600 Fulton St., 208-5593 Mondo: 900 Harrison Ave., 224-2633 Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934

MEDITERRANEAN Byblos: 3218 Magazine St., 894-1233 Mona’s Café: 504 Frenchmen St., 949-4115

MEXICAN/CARIBBEAN/SPANISH Barú Bistro & Tapas: 3700 Magazine St., 895-2225 Juan’s Flying Burrito: 2018 Magazine St., 569-0000 El Gato Negro: 81 French Market Place, 525-9846

MUSIC ON THE MENU Banks Street Bar & Grill: 4401 Banks St., 486-0258 Buffa’s: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038 Chickie Wah Wah: 2828 Canal St., 304-4714 Dmac’s Bar & Grill: 542 S Jefferson Davis Pkwy, 304-5757 Gattuso’s: 435 Huey P Long Ave., Gretna, 368-1114 Hard Rock Café: 125 Bourbon St., 529-5617 House of Blues: 225 Decatur St., 412-8068

Midway Pizza: 4725 Freret St., 322-2815 Pizza Delicious: 617 Piety St., 676-8482 Slice Pizzeria: 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525-7437 Theo’s Pizza: 4218 Magazine St., 894-8554; 4024 Canal St., 302-1133; 1212 S Clearview, 733-3803

SEAFOOD Basin Seafood and Spirits: 3222 Magazine St., 302-7391 Crazy Lobster Bar & Grill: 1 Poydras St. 569-3380 LeBayou Restaurant: 208 Bourbon St., 525-4755 Pier 424 Seafood Market: 424 Bourbon St., 309-1574 Royal House Oyster Bar: 441 Royal St., 528-2601

SOUL Praline Connection: 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934

STEAKHOUSE La Boca: 870 Tchoupitoulas St., 525-8205

VIETNAMESE Namese: 4077 Tulane Ave., 483-8899

WEE HOURS Buffa’s Restaurant & Lounge: 1001 Esplanade Ave., 949-0038 Mimi’s in the Marigny: 2601 Royal St., 872-9868

Craig Klein hits the

Adolfo’s: 611 Frenchmen St., 948-3800 Little Vic’s: 719 Toulouse St., 304-1238

JAPANESE/KOREAN/SUSHI/THAI

PIZZA

Spot

[of Bonerama, the New Orleans Jazz Vipers and the Storyville Stompers] When did you start coming here?

Actually, I lived in Arabi for many years and used to drive by almost every day back when it was a fish market, pretty dark and, well, it smelled like a seafood market, let’s just say that. I love how they have all the different vendors here now and if you come as a group, everyone can find something they like.

Have you tried a lot of stuff?

Yes, but I usually get the fresh spring rolls from JuiceNOLA. They have that mint and sweet mango running down the middle and that’s really good. Also, the kale salad. It’s big. We could split it.

You seem healthy. Got any tips?

I drink a lot of water. Sometimes I add a little apple cider vinegar to it and ice and sip it like a cocktail. It does all kinds of good things for you.

It’s helped me with heartburn.

—Elsa Hahne

JuiceNOLA at St. Roch Market 2381 St. Claude Ave. (802) 503-5336 www.OFFBEAT.com

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

Kingfish: 337 Chartres St., 598-5005 Mr. B’s Bistro: 201 Royal St. 523-2078 Restaurant R’evolution: 777 Bienville St., 553-2277

Ye Olde College Inn: 3000 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-3683 Warehouse Grille: 869 Magazine St., 322-2188

DINING OUT

Bao & Noodle When Sound Café closed in the summer of 2014, Marigny residents collectively sighed over the loss of their beloved coffee shop and book store–cum–community center. The period of mourning was short-lived, however, as a few months later the bookshelves and coffee mugs were replaced by an updated kitchen and chopsticks with the opening of Bao & Noodle by Doug Crowell, formerly of Herbsaint. Crowell can often be found peeking out from behind columns of steam in his open kitchen, where he creates authentic Chinese cuisine drawing on the influence of his Chinese-American wife’s extended family.

The short but diverse menu intersperses subtle and bold flavors in dishes that range from the familiar to Cantonese favorites as well as spicy Szechuan specialties. The namesake dim sum staples deserve top billing, especially the steamed and fried bao filled with ground pork and served with spicy soy for dipping. Thick, hand-pulled

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biang biang noodles with an ideal chewy structure are the foundation for lamb seasoned with cumin for a lingering heat and braised to the consistency of your favorite debris-style roast beef po-boy. Comparatively thinner dan dan noodles are mixed with minced pork and laced with chili oil and peppercorns for more assertive heat.

Unique house specialties include a crunchy Burmese tea-leaf salad and baked scallion buns filled and topped with pork floss, an unfortunately (but accurately) named delicacy of dried, shredded pork that has the texture of cotton candy and the appearance of Spanish moss. Less adventurous eaters will be pleased with the handmade dumplings filled with shrimp, pork, or a combination of both, but beware of a Friday night dumpling sell-out that typically carries over into Saturday. Thankfully, the tea-smoked duck breast is always available, and the remarkably tender and flavorful slices demand that this dish be ordered on every visit.

Like its predecessor, Bao & Noodle fits perfectly within the bohemian vibe of the Marigny. Tall ceilings and a plethora of windows create an open and airy space that is both casual and comfortable. Prices are laughably affordable, with only a few dishes crossing the $15 mark.

Although the restaurant lacks a liquor license, diners are encouraged to BYOB or take advantage

Photo: RENEE BIENVENU

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of a recent partnership with the nearby wine shop Grand Krewe, which created a short list of wine and sake specifically paired for the menu. Patrons can either stop by the shop on Decatur on their way to dinner or take advantage of Grand Krewe’s delivery service (until 8 p.m.) when available.

—Peter Thriffiley 2700 Chartres Street; Tue–Sat 11:30a–2p, 5p–10p; (504) 272-0004; baoandnoodle.com

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Reviews When submitting CDs for consideration, please send two copies to OffBeat Reviews, 421 Frenchmen Street, Suite 200, New Orleans, LA 70116

CDs reviewed are available now at 421 Frenchmen Street in the Marigny 504-586-1094 or online at LouisianaMusicFactory.com

First-class Vocal Performances

Bobby Rush Porcupine Meat (Rounder) Bobby Rush’s Rounder debut is the closest thing to a major-label release in his 50-year career, and it may be the most polished one he’s ever made. Producer Scott Billington has to walk a fine line, keeping Rush’s eccentricity intact while giving him an album that will appeal to a broader audience.

For the most part they succeed (and tellingly, NPR’s already behind it), though longtime Rush aficionados might find it a bit too cleaned-up for their taste.

Granted, there’s a lot more to Rush than offbeat humor— “Another Murder in New Orleans,” his 2013 track with Dr. John, was dead serious—so it makes sense to show what else he can do.

“Standing On Shaky Ground” is a surprisingly slick R&B groove, one of many times here where the local players—notably in this case, David Torkanowsky on electric piano—push him in new directions.

The album’s longest and grittiest blues track, “Got Me Accused” (a rewrite of Eddie Boyd’s classic “Third Degree”) is notably placed early in the disc. Rush’s inexplicable love for disco stays out of the mix this time, though there are a handful of harder funk tracks. In each case he

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gives first-class vocal performances, sounding considerably younger than his 82 years.

Fans of Rush’s raunchier muse will get a taste on “I Think Your Dress is Too Short” and “Catfish Stew,” though the latter is one of his gentler double-entendres (and the first to be co-written by an artist, namely Johnette Downing, who’s better-known for children’s songs). The bigname guitar cameos are more of a mixed bag, with Dave Alvin coming off best. Keb’ Mo’s slide work is perfectly respectable on “Nighttime Gardener,” but there are dozens of local players who could’ve done it with more raunch. As for Joe Bonamassa’s shredding on “Me, Myself & I,” it lands like McDonald’s dressing on porcupine meat.

—Brett Milano

MarchFourth!

Magic Number (Independent) If for some reason you’re not yet familiar with the brilliant multimedia assault that was heretofore known as the MarchFourth Marching Band, picture a multiplied Tower of Power—9 horns! 5 percussionists!

2 guitars!—dressing up like some alternate-universe high school outfit and performing with a less pretentious, burlesque Cirque du Soleil. It’s a perfect assault on the senses, one that’s been garnering them fans all over this great country.

What’s different about their new album, aside from the fact that they’ve shortened their moniker, is how well a marathon 10-day recording session with Galactic producer Ben Ellman has drawn out the rock-funk band that was always in them. “The Quarter,”

for example, resembles nothing so much as the original ’70s theme from The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 mixed in with 50 Cent’s deathless “In the Club.” It’s action-jazz hiphop, in other words. And while the local guests are very impressive— that’s Stanton Moore drumming on “Push It Back” and Trombone Shorty taking a solo on “Inventing the Wheel”—the real irony is that this once largely instrumental band is now starting to come up with some verbal hooks as well.

It’s rare when bands develop their songcraft down here as well as their groove; a little change of venue can work wonders on even the most established bands. And speaking of which, the main achievement of this album is to reestablish them: It’s no coincidence that they titled this one eponymously, as if it were a debut.

MarchFourth was once thought of as a live experience only. These songs are about to change all that.

—Robert Fontenot

Barry Jean Ancelet & Sam Broussard Broken Promised Land (Swallow Records) For decades now, retired ULL professor Barry Ancelet has written French language poems and lyrics under the pseudonym of Jean Arceneaux. A few have been recorded, such as “Late in Life,” the 1992 CFMA Song of the Year that was co-written with Wayne Toups. The roots of this collaboration began when Ancelet gave Mamou Playboys’ guitarist Broussard some minimalist lyrics that blossomed into the electrifying “Menteur” found on Steve Riley’s 2008 Best Of disc.

This set is a brilliant showcase of Ancelet’s thought-provoking poetry and Broussard’s genius

arrangements. Only three tracks feature guest musicians. Broussard played everything else: acoustic, electric and lap steel guitars, fiddles, bass, harmonicas, flutes, saxes and programmed percussion all recorded in his home studio.

Interestingly, for being an account of Amédé Ardoin towards the end of his life, “Une Dernière Chanson” is a surprising steel guitar and fiddle–fueled country twostepper. The despairing loneliness of “Appuyé Dessus la Barre” is folkcentric and haunting, yet replete with a beautiful, sunny solo.

As Ancelet’s poems vary in subject, Broussard counters with creative arrangements to suit whatever’s on hand, whether it’s a protest rocker (“Trop de Pas”), a wall-rattling bluesy howl (“Le Loup”), or a densely layered, poignant ballad (“Personne Pour Me Recevoir”). While Ancelet and Broussard alternate vocals and occasionally harmonize, Anna Laura Edmiston blows the doors off with her enchanting performance of “Coeur Cassé.”

To break up the vocal content, Broussard tosses in a quasiorchestral instrumental—“Pour Qui?”—that’s simultaneously jazzy and cinematic. A rare recording that gets deeper with each and every listen.

—Dan Willging www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS

Seth Walker Gotta Get Back (Royal Potato Family) Ever notice that modern-day Americana is far too short on party songs? Pouring out your darkest secrets is fine and all, but you’ve gotta enjoy yourself sometime. And celebrated songwriter Seth Walker’s latest is proof that you can write party-

friendly tunes without sounding like a bonehead or a Buffett clone. “It’s high time we had a high time together,” Walker announces on the opening track, but its gospel harmonies and acoustic guitar add some musical depth. “Way Past Midnight” celebrates the soul-restoring aspects of a good wild evening.

Driven along by double drums and Booker T–style organ, its good spirits don’t even flag when the singer loses both his keys and his date as the song (and the night) concludes.

Elsewhere Walker shows a knack for wrapping deep statements into appealing grooves. “Turn This Thing Around” could be about any number of things—the lyrics could apply equally to a failing relationship or the political

Elegance Robin Barnes Songbird Sessions (Rhythm Elevation Records) A guitar often offers certain elegance when it’s employed in a jazz combo backing a vocalist.

Songbird Sessions teams singer Robin Barnes with guitarists Steve Masakowski and Danny Abel. The opening notes stand as an example of that elegance. The tune on the five-cut EP is Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do,” which begins quietly and gains a contrasting rhythm as bass player Pat Casey and drummer Herlin Riley jump in. Barnes, a New Orleans native, displays her vocal range, gets brash and then impressively goes up for some pure high notes.

George and Ira Gershwin’s standard “Little Jazz Bird” gets a similar treatment by starting out with just guitar and vocals before being lifted to a light and lovely flight. “Great Day” swings, then the beat fires up like that behind some old-time church testifying, with Shannon Powell’s tambourine emphasizing that spirit.

Another standard, “My Funny Valentine,” written by Rodgers and Hart back in 1937 and performed by numerous artists including trumpeter Miles Davis and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald, is given straight-up treatment. Barnes and her band show it respect with good performances.

The album ends in a bit funkier mood with Irma Thomas’ hit, the Allen Toussaint–composed classic “Ruler of My Heart.” Powell is back slammin’ the tambourine with Riley reinforcing the New Orleans rhythm.

Robin Barnes, who continually boasts increasing popularity, has the pipes to perform in any number of genres. A bit more adventurous song selection, perhaps some original material and a full album might be just the right step forward in her journey.

—Geraldine Wyckoff www.OFFBEAT.com

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REVIEWS climate—but the singalong chorus makes the point without fuss.

The title track is the kind of song you’ve heard a million times—a singer testifying about the love that’s saved him from his old destructive ways—but he realizes nobody’s going to care unless the melody carries the emotions, and he resists the temptation to oversing. A recent Austin transplant to New Orleans, Walker largely sticks with Austin-styled, country-ish arrangements with acoustic lead guitar. He tastefully works in the new local influences—a parade rhythm here, a supple bassline there—without trying to take it all in at once.

—Brett Milano

Ana Popovic Trilogy (ArtisteXclusive Records) It’s hard to set yourself apart in the blues world these days.

Concept remains an effective way of doing it, and Popovic, with the help of a host of New Orleans– based musicians, achieves this on the three-disc set Trilogy, divided into sections titled “Morning,” “Mid-Day” and “Midnight.”

The “Morning” disc, recorded primarily at Esplanade Studios, is a hot funk session manned by Ivan Neville on keys and backing vocals and featuring George Porter Jr. on bass and backing vocals, Raymond Weber on drums and backing vocals, Erica Falls on backing vocals and a horn section including Mark Mullins on trombone and Jason Mingledorff on tenor saxophone. “She Was a Doorman” is an outstanding track on this lively set. Joe Bonamassa sits in on guitar for “Train” and Robert Randolph adds lap steel guitar to “Hook Me Up.” “Mid-Day” is a hard-edged blues rock disc that features Popovic’s guitar playing and singing on some strong original material and covers of Chaka Khan’s “You Got the Love” and Curtis Mayfield’s “Let’s Do It Again,” done with an Al Kapone hip-hop break. Aside from the latter, this disc is what fans of Popovic have come to expect of her.

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The real surprise here comes at “Midnight,” Popovic’s departure into the world of jazz with Delfeayo Marsalis producing and Misha Kachkachishvili engineering back at Esplanade. Marsalis brings drummer Herlin Riley and bassist David Pulphus into the mix and adds gorgeous horn arrangements played by New Orleanians Khari Allen Lee, Roderick Paulin and Marsalis himself that bring out a different side of Popovic’s vocals and guitar playing. She handles the Oliver Nelson–style treatment of Tom Waits’ “New Coat of Paint” with sassy aplomb and caresses Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” doubling her vocal on guitar. Perhaps her greatest moment is her treatment of the Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley vehicle “The Old Country” (listed here as “Old Country.”) Popovic demonstrates real control of a difficult swing arrangement on this one. In the end this sprawling, ambitious record reminds me a lot of our own Leslie Smith. I hope we get to hear more of these different aspects of Popovic’s talents.

—John Swenson

John Paul Daniel All is Well (Independent) Songwriter Daniel has been kicking around country music for years now, his most famous moment coming via shared credits on Pam Tillis’ “All of This Love” and Sherrié Austin’s “I Want To Fall In Love (So Hard It Hurts),” but this solo album, for whatever reason, has some strong and surprising New Orleans flavors in it. His day job is turning scrap lumber into outsider art under the

name Bebo, and he takes a similar homespun approach with these 14 (mostly) originals, countryflavored heartland rock with more than a hint of blue-eyed soul.

Little surprises keep cropping up, however, like the straight swamp-pop of “Louisiana” or the rolling New Orleans piano on the otherwise generic “Boogie Man.” Come to think of it, he’s pretty plain when he just rocks out—“Wahoo” is a character study without a character, “Barefoot Boogie” is more or less a rewrite of Hank’s “Move It

on Over,” and Daniel gets so lost for clichés in “Baby Don’t You” (“come around here no more”) he winds up repeating a few rhymes. He fares better when sticking to the MOR country stuff like “Blue Looks Good on You,” but in the quieter moments the ’70s singer-songwriter lurking within him comes out, and “Heart Broken,” “Make Me a Blessing” and the title track suggest he may have a real relationship album in him. As it stands now, his musical craftsmanship is more like unfinished furniture than folk art:

Helping Acadiana Lost Bayou Ramblers Rue Vermilion Revival (Independent) With the release of 2012’s Mammoth Waltz, a lush set of sonic explorations that gracefully exploded preconceived notions about the Cajun music tradition, the Lost Bayou Ramblers cemented their rep as musical innovators.

But whether they’re reimagining a Daniel Lanois tune or giving the music of the Pogues an Acadian twist, the raw energy that propels their sound is as much about honoring the Cajun music tradition as it is about updating it.

Their latest release, Rue Vermilion Revival, offers a snapshot of that energy in its infancy. Recorded at Louis and Andre Michot’s first gig as the Lost Bayou Ramblers in a coffeehouse in downtown Lafayette on August 27, 1999, the 55-minute set sticks mainly to the traditional Cajun repertoire.

The then-sprawling lineup (among the eight musicians on the bill are two fiddle players, a clarinetist and triangle and frottoir players) opens with the fiddle-centric “Happy One Step,” a fun—if not quite exuberant—warm-up peppered with Louis Michot’s instantly identifiable howls. By the second track, “Love Bridge Waltz,” the audience lets out some wails of its own, cheering the band on as things get increasingly raucous.

The sound is raw, stripped down to high fiddle peels—Louis Michot is joined by Matthew Doucet on fiddle here—and the loping rhythm propelled

by Andre Michot and his (then) newly acquired accordion skills.

The dance-obsessed traditional “J’etais au Bal” adds some humor to the mix (the lyrics translate to “I went to the ball last night, I’m going back to the ball tonight and if the occasion presents itself, I’ll go back to the ball tomorrow night,” Louis explains, sparking a few chuckles). Originals like “Main Street Special,” meanwhile, give listeners a glimpse of the direction the Ramblers will eventually head as this one-off gig spawns a full-time, decades-long career.

The album’s true highlight comes in its final 15 minutes, as the crowd launches into what sounds like a dance-fueled frenzy before the band draws out an expansive and layered version of “La Danse de Mardi Gras.”

Proceeds from the album, available on Bandcamp.com and in limitededition cassette format, support those impacted by the August floods across Acadiana and Baton Rouge.

—Jennifer Odell www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS sturdy and useful to a point, but not really existing “outside” of anything.

—Robert Fontenot

Doublewide Doublewide (Carhouse Records) The old adage “too rock for country and too country for rock” used to be the death knell for any band straddling the sanctified lines of these genres. Lafayette’s Doublewide is definitely both, as evidenced by an eponymously titled sophomore double-disc effort that’s one volume of country and one volume of cranked-up, metal-head rock.

Lead guitarist Justin Lewis has no shortage of killer twangy licks and could conceivably be a hired gun in Nashville if he desired. But he’s also adept at heavier rock textures, as evidenced by the epic “Alabaster Blue,” where he has ample time and space to develop an awe-inspiring, searing solo.

Songsmith Matthew Thornton’s whiskey-and-cigarette pipes may take a little getting used to but seem perfect for Doublewide’s brand of rock and suitable for its outlaw-ish country.

Of the two discs, the country platter is more lighthearted, with songs about derelicts, cows and fishing. “Jukebox” and “Downtown” are custom-made for barroom sing-alongs. The latter is particularly interesting since structurally, it’s a bi-chorus song. Other tracks, like “Back to Life,” are more introspective in nature as Thornton reaches deeper into the well.

There’s a little levity on the rock disc such as with the Chuck Berryesque “Murdo,” the throttlin’ carracing “Derby” and the satirical “Lowdown Man.” Though texturally it’s darker, Thornton gets deep with his writing here too, channeling inner feelings and experiences so it’s not just a bunch of senseless headbanging for black-clad, tattooed, nose-pierced rockers. An unlikely combination that succeeds on its own terms.

—Dan Willging www.OFFBEAT.com

Various Artists Stony Plain—40 Years (Stony Plain Records) Not to be outdone by Alligator’s recent double CD 45th anniversary collection, along comes a three CD set celebrating Stony Plain Records’ fourth decade. Named after a suburb of Edmonton, Alberta, Stony Plain proved years ago it was certainly was “Canada’s Roots, Rock, Folk, Country and Blues label.” Formed as a labor of love (as most indies are) by the eclectic Holger Peterson, the label continues to release a steady stream of enjoyable music from various genres. This collection contains 47 tracks total, and each individual CD has a theme. Disc one is dedicated to singers and songwriters. There are several “name artists” in the mix, including Doug Sahm, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle.

In contrast, there are just as many new names to many listeners, including Jr. Gone Wild, Tim Hus and Corb Lund. There’s also a fine vintage track from Canada’s own Ian Tyson. Disc two is quite a bit more lively as it features blues, R&B, swing “and even more.”

Name checks here include Joe Louis Walker, Rory Block, Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters, Billy Boy Arnold, Rosco Gordon and my old running buddy, the late Richard Newell, a.k.a. King Biscuit Boy. Disc three is somewhat a bonus as it contains largely unreleased material. For folks in these parts, the highlight here would be Duke Robillard’s lively treatment of Dave Bartholomew’s warhorse “Ain’t Gonna Do It.” There’s also material here that didn’t make the initial cut

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Producer Leo Sacks hits rewind on the New Orleans Social Club’s Sing Me Back Home.

Chatmon and Stony Plain’s first artist, Walter “Shakey” Horton.

Splendid package with informative notes telling the Stony Plain story.

Nice release that touches all the bases and you can’t beat the price.

—Jeff Hannusch

Various Artists Alligator Records—45th Anniversary Collection (Alligator Records)

The New Orleans Social Club Sing Me Back Home (Burgundy Records)

“I

was sitting in a pizza parlor in midtown Manhattan with a dear friend of mine, Andy Kowalczyk, who became the executive producer of the project. It was August 29, 2005. We were watching the flood waters rise on CNN and the extent of the calamity was becoming very clear. And I realized that one of the ways the healing process could naturally start was by making music. I knew that there would be a roller coaster of emotion, but that ultimately I would try and organize a celebration of the old neighborhood, even if it wasn’t going to be there anymore. And so everyone became a kind of a cultural first responder. There was mourning, there was haunting, there was uncertainty, there was resolve. There was trust and mistrust. There were varying degrees of faith. But most of all there was defiance. And I had to work through my own fears too, because I didn’t want to let anyone down.

Once I knew where everyone was I enlisted my friend Ray Bardani, who really is the consummate engineer and mixer. He helped me to pilot the ship, and Kimball Packard became our air traffic controller—he coordinated traffic for 27 artists, shuttling them to the airport, sometimes twice a day. It got to be like that old Don Covay song: ‘She Was Checking Out While I Was Checking In.’ We set up shop at Wire Recording, which is on a lonely strip of asphalt in south Austin. It’s downhome, dyed-in-the-wool funky; the Christmas lights were still up in the vocal booth from last Christmas.

We had an endangered analog tape machine—that’s what made the music sound raw. When Ray saw it he shouted, ‘Old school!’ People are playing ping-pong, watching TV, eating barbecue—they’re all savoring what they couldn’t get for the moment at home.

I didn’t want artists to submit a track to some compilation; I preferred the idea of a house band. So one by one, we put the five of them together. It started with Ivan Neville who was in Austin, and I liked the idea of him with Henry Butler; there’s two guys with the history of New Orleans piano at their fingertips. For a rhythm section, how cool would it be to get George (Porter Jr.) and Leo (Nocentelli) from the Meters? And Raymond Weber on drums, a really strong and gentle spirit.

It’s not my hope that people think of this as a CD about the storm, and I would be disappointed if they

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only heard that. Obviously ‘This Is My Country’ is one of Curtis Mayfield’s more poignant prayers for social justice, and Cyril (Neville) poured his fury into that. And Ivan suggested ‘Fortunate Son’ to speak to the powers that be. And yes, ‘Why’ (the Annie Lennox hit sung by John Boutté) is wrenching. That was Kimball’s idea to include it, but John had been singing that song in New Orleans before the storm. When he came in that day he was shadow-boxing like a bantamweight and saying, ‘I wanted you all to know that I didn’t smoke at all today.’

I knew we had 13 songs to record, but then the days started rolling into each other. I remember Dr. John coming over the speakerphone saying ‘How you mothas doing?’ in the perfect Mac growl. I wanted Irma Thomas to sing ‘Look Up,’ a song she recorded with Allen [Toussaint] in 1960, when she was a teenaged mother. When she sang it she seemed to slip back in time and become that teenager again.

But we had to get her the lyrics—she told me ‘I’m sorry honey, but I don’t remember those words.’

Monk Boudreaux showed up in his floppy hat, looking like an apparition—he knew he had just cheated death so he had that twinkle in his eye. I asked what he wanted to sing and he said ‘I wrote a poem.’

So the band improvised a reggae groove and he recited over it, with a definite nod to Bob Marley. If you listen you can hear George calling out the changes.

Henry Butler’s track was ‘Somewhere,’ and there was a creative decision there that I came to regret. Leo gave me two options for the guitar solo: He could do something smoother and more melodic, or he could do something nasty and hardcore, almost screaming with rage—maybe I was scared off by the intensity of that idea. So just on the strength of that one mellifluous solo, Rolling Stone said the album was smooth jazz.

That effectively took the heart out of the record company’s desire to promote the album, and that’s the truth. The marketing was a grave disappointment, and the album’s been out of print since 2006.

The way I really want to think about this record is as a testament to hope and the human spirit. In the vulnerability of that moment, there was something powerful and kinetic. How do you say ‘Thank you’ out of such heartbreak?—Brett Milano

I’m showing my age here, but as a tenth grader, I hitchhiked to Toronto and bought the very first Alligator LP by Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers at the Jazz and Blues Record Shop on Yonge Street shortly after its release.

45 years and 300 releases later, Alligator Records is still going strong while in the interim, hundreds of blues/indie labels have come and gone. Founded in Chicago by Bruce Iglauer, it began as a labor of love on a shoestring budget. For the first decade, Alligator put out about one album a year as each new release had to finance the subsequent next one. Luckily, Iglauer’s roster of Chicago blues heavyweights— Taylor, Son Seals, Fenton Robinson and Koko Taylor—eventually got the label off the ground. By the early 1980s, Alligator’s horizon expanded and the label began signing artists from hither and yon. This specially priced two-cd set doesn’t tell the whole Alligator story, but it’s certainly a reminder of the strength of the label’s catalog, and it’s a testament to Iglauer’s perseverance—especially in light of the current state of the music business. Oh, and there’s some houserockin’ music found here.

Being old school, I favor the tracks here by Albert Collins, Billy Boy Arnold, A. C. Reed, Luther Allison, James Cotton, Charlie Musselwhite, Lazy Lester and Guitar Shorty. But the music from the next generation also has merit. Our old friend Marcia Ball is in the mix, as is Lil’ Ed, Lurrie Bell, Roomful of Blues, Rick Estrin, Tommy Castro and Joe Louis Walker. No less than 37 tracks and an insightful booklet are part of this package. The one glaring omission here however is that not even one www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS

track from Professor Longhair’s historic LP Crawfish Fiesta made the cut! Petty bitching aside, this is an outstanding release and you can’t beat the price. Check it out if you like rockin’—in or out of the house.

—Jeff Hannusch

she kills and then she lets it kill her/ She’s a killer-diller, the real chinchilla.”

There are a lot of really catchy pieces here, including the languid melody of “Call Throw Back Man” (which references the Rads’ loss of its equipment truck several lifetimes ago); the very Rads-like pulse of “Crashing the Past”; “The World Without You,” a tribute to both Earl King and Clark Vreeland, Ed’s old sidekick from

the Rhapsodizers; the dance party anthem “Twist It Up,” with its references to Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, Bo Diddley and Eddie Bo; and the reflections of Alice in Wonderland in the title track.

Volker’s tunes are easy on the ears and prone to set your feet a-pattin’, but are not always so easy to decipher. Or recipher or lucipher.

He’s an imagist, a punster, a wordsmith, a Zen trickster. The stories he may be telling probably

do not adhere to whatever narrative the listener is taking from them. As if that mattered on this highway. Poetic license and registration, please. Don’t get out of the car, and don’t take off your shoes.

A good example of Zeke’s slippery method appears on the title track of the latest release, Gone World. One of his best newer pieces, “Gone World” was the climax of this year’s

Zeke Fishhead Look Glass Trick (www.Livedownloads.com)

Zeke Fishhead Gone World (www.Livedownloads.com) Zeke Fishhead a.k.a. Ed Volker continues to pour new material out of his Bayou St. John home studio with the seeming effortlessness and digestibility of a great SF pulp novelist. I’ve fallen behind in keeping track of them in these pages and have a pair to cover this time around. Earlier this year he released the hallucinatory Look Glass Trick, a collection of songs about the mental disassociation which occurs while viewing life through the crystalline facets of a funhouse mirror. Two never-recorded songs by the Radiators appear here: “This Old House” and “Right As Rain.”

Everything in the deckhouse of Volker’s magic carpet is designed to supplicate whatever muse inspires his art, from his one-man recording rig to his armada of dictionaries.

Through overlaying multiple passes on his multiple-effects keyboard, including the otherworldly maracas shakes that added deep vibe to so many Radiators tunes, Volker builds an incantatory trance music that underlies his fascination with revenant spirits, magnetic spheres, the afterlife and the labyrinths of love. Or all of it at once, as in “Ma Ma Magnetizer”: “She eats what www.OFFBEAT.com

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REVIEWS Volker performance with Quintet Narcosis at Jazz Fest, and here it comes as an addendum to “Maggie Got a Firebird”: “When you goin’ back to the Gone World/ Take me with you when you go.”

Easy to understand, right?

Except what is the “gone world”?

Yes, the Firebird, but… Is it the Avalon of myth that guides our dreams? Is it a world that existed, the good old days that are indeed gone if not forgotten? Is it a world that never existed in the first place? Or is it a world we are going to, the world we step into when we “get gone,” like when we’re at a particularly good Zeke Fishhead show? Get back, Loretta.

At any rate, Gone World is a great place to start if you want to know more about Volker’s recent live appearances as Zeke Fishhead.

It’s the closest available reflection of what he sounds like live these days, with four songs—the title track, the much-requested “Go Down Swinging,” “I Got a Thing for You” and “Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch” (I bet you think this song is about you)—all included in that Jazz Fest set. Also of note is the beautiful tribute to Allen Toussaint, “Sweet Touch,” and the thoughtful “Hundred Year Solitude,” inspired by the Angola Three.

—John Swenson

Rusty Metoyer and the Zydeco Krush In Due Time (Back Porch Entertainment) Rusty Metoyer started playing accordion at age 14 to fill a musical void at family parties after his grandfather’s passing. Nearly a decade later, Metoyer has become one of the bright new lights of zydeco, given his involvement with Sean Ardoin and Andre Thierry’s Creole United and this confident sophomore effort (13 tracks, 12 originals) that’s leaps and bounds beyond his debut Take My Hand.

It’s a bouncy, jangly affair that constantly shifts hues and styles, primarily due to alternating between four accordions and incorporating

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outside influences, besides the proverbial R&B and hip-hop that’s more of a trademark of his contemporaries. Though the swirling background vocals of “I Still Love You” were inspired by hip-hopper Missy Elliott, there’s also a steel guitar in the background for an innovative combination. Additionally, there are Caribbean-style vocals on the tropically seasoned “Louisiana Summertime” and a chic single-note guitar counterpoint shadowing the accordion lines on the relentless “Set Me Free.”

Several tracks are blazing firestorms (“Hey Rosa,” “DeoFoyo-B-O”); the uplifting autobiographical title song is a testament to how Metoyer is willing to wait for his time to shine, and to keep paying his dues until then. As evidenced by “If I Was Your Man,” he has grown immensely as a soulful vocalist, making the plea stick with conviction. It’s still danceintoxicating zydeco but served with tantalizingly fresh snap beans.

—Dan Willging

Kumasi Togetherness (Independent) Kumasi smacks you in the booty with Fela Kuti. And that’s a good thing. The nascent New Orleans collective acknowledges “the late musical genius for creating afro-beat music” in the liner notes to its infectious debut album, Togetherness. Having now morphed from the salacious bowels of beatific Ninth Ward house parties to gigs of increasing stature, Kumasi chose as its band name the ancient vibrant city in present-day Ghana that served as cultural center of the enchanting pre-colonial Ashanti Empire. Fela Kuti’s immortal meld of traditional West African chants and rhythms with the swing of Ghanaian/Nigerian highlife were sprinkled with flourishes of jazz, funk and psychedelic rock to pioneer Afrobeat. Kumasi clearly draws mightily—in terms of both

tempo and tone—from the late Nigerian musical mastermind, revered today for his iconoclastic political activism as much as his genius compositions and soulstirring performances. Eschewing righteous vocal harmonies that permeate Kumasi live, Togetherness supplies 40 minutes of all-instrumental grooves. Bass guitarist Jonathan Solomon (founding Gravity A member) and drummer Logan Schutts (BateBunda) are credited on all

five compositions on the album, produced by Schutts, recorded Uptown at Parlor Studio and released in a lush vinyl format (digital download included).

“Marigny Monday Morning” in the second slot jolts the rocksteady repetitions with fivehorn blasts of second-line strut syncopation and deep-groove drumming so identified with New Orleans street beats, so connected to the city’s ancestral ties to West Africa. Simple wood block pumps the intro to “Zipper” before the tune rises to utopian climaxes.

Flipping over, side two slides in with silky guitar weaves during “Odo Seine.” A sprawling opus just shy of 11 minutes, “Trinity Gritty” soars on jazzy horn improv, funky organ strokes (Joe Boucha) to close an aspiring album evoking a voice and vibe much needed in today’s troubled times.

—Frank Etheridge

No Real Duds Christian Serpas & Ghost Town Favorites (Independent) Christian Serpas likes to call his band a combination of Led Zeppelin and Johnny Cash, but it’s really more like AC/DC and Merle Haggard: His brand of country is the twangy Bakersfield variety, while his rock ’n’ roll is the good-timey, riff-slinging kind. That fusion is pretty much literal on the Haggard tune “I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink,” which has some arena-ready power chords (and a Ramonesy running time of 1:37). But the lowdown flavor of Haggard’s tune is maintained, the singer just chose to drink in a rowdier watering hole.

This is essentially a greatest-hits CD, equally divided among rockers and ballads with no real duds. You can hear the production approach change over the years, from the garage-band kick of “Hoot and Holler” to a more layered, radio-friendly sound on “If That’s How You Want It”—but he never succumbs to Nashville polish. The former is the album’s only real party song, and a damn good one; its chorus calls out for a shout-along.

But the honky-tonk heartbreak songs are Serpas’ real specialty: At least half these songs are about the end of a relationship (only “Sixty Seconds” is about the start of one) and he’s equally adept at a please-come-back song as a good-riddance one. His voice has an emotive appeal—comparisons to Dwight Yoakam wouldn’t be off-base. And what he takes from his Bakersfield heroes is a certain economy of songwriting: You make your point in an accessible way, throw in a tasty guitar solo and move on. As a result the early tracks here sound just as fresh as the new ones.

—Brett Milano www.OFFBEAT.com

REVIEWS some bounce and a twisted little smile.”) It’s a rock band version of gypsy jazz, but you can dance to it.

Preferably close to a new friend.

—Robert Fontenot

The Good for Nothin’ Band Maniac World (Independent) Their PR sounds like someone ate way too much Bohemian mythology, from Kerouac to Burroughs, and then went out drinking all night, but while the Good for Nothin’ Band won’t “decapitate your senses with songs and music crafted from utter mayhem and sheer debauchery,” they are very definitely good for something: in this case, translating swinging jazz into a more rockoriented format. Not that they get super electric and rock out or anything, but these guys definitely approach classic New Orleans jazz (mostly of the Louis Prima–esque post–World War II persuasion) with a nod and a wink, then adapt it to their own outsize salaciousness, the same way a band like Aerosmith uses the blues. It’s not ironic so much as repurposed, locally sourced tradition cut into sheets of drunken, winking seduction. They’re not about to unleash “St. James Infirmary” on you, but they’re not going to bore you into leaving the bar, either.

It works, too, because singer/ songwriter/leader Jon Roniger has a great, endlessly expressive voice, all clove cigarettes and martinis, that’s matched perfectly by Alex Massa’s divebombing trumpet solos. The lyrics are fairly witty, too, exploring what Roniger blatantly (and lovingly) describes as the city of “sex and jazz and whores” as a state of mind unto itself but also employing it as a backdrop for all those messy physical and romantic entanglements. (“Well, you’ll go back to your humdrum and your same old style/ But now you’ve got www.OFFBEAT.com

Alfred Banks A Beautiful Prelude EP (Independent) Don’t look now, but there’s a whole raft of up-and-coming hip hop artists on the New Orleans scene, most of them making a significant break from the 504’s legendary bounce scene to blaze their own trail nationally. Chief among them is Alfred Banks, now going by his given name; as Lyriqs Da Lyriciss, he got notice for solid joints like D.A.I.Y.L.F. (Dream As If You’ll Live Forever) and The Nobody’s Monologues 2, which were long on flow but a little short on originality—just another young buck hyping himself for his big moment.

But while undergoing his rebranding, he’s also had to suffer personal tragedy: His brother, who suffered from schizophrenia, took his own life in 2014. This three-song EP is the result, a fitting tribute and simultaneous bid for artistic maturity. It’s not often you get to hear an artist become a man in real time, but that’s just what’s happening here: By forcing himself to look inward, Banks shakes off the generic bravado of the debut and invests in a new, philosophical flow, heavy on the classic chipmunk soul, that ups his game immediately.

Hard to tell whether this tragedy will transform Banks like Scott La Rock’s death did KRS-One, for example, but it’s definitely made him stop and think. He’s not just “a monkey on these bars” anymore.

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Songwriter SK Ska PI Solo Piano SO Soul SW Spoken Word SP Swamp Pop SI Swing VR Variety ZY Zydeco

SATURDAY OCTOBER 1

Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p Bombay Club: Matt Johnson (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Chip Wilson (VR) 5p, Silver City Bound (VR) 8p, the Secret Egrets (VR) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Helen Gillet with Sylvain (VR) 8p, Marcia Ball (PI) 9p Circle Bar: Trance Farmers, the Sun Machine, Bipolaroid (PK) 10p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Big Sam’s Funky Nation (FK) 11p Dos Jefes: Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots (ZY) 10p Dragon’s Den: Swinging Gypsies (JV) 7p, DJ Q (VR) 10p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 7p, No Scrubs with Lemonhead (VR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Jonathan “Boogie” Long, Roadside Glorious, Griffin Dean (BL) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Close Me Out (CO) 7p, Hustle feat. DJ Soul Sister (FK) 11p House of Blues: YG, RJ, Sadboy (HH) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker and Trumpet Mafia (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Blue October (VR) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Speed the Mule (FO) 5p, Carson Station with Chris Pylant and Mark Carson (FO) 9p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Roamin’ Jasmine (JV) 1p, Royal Street Winding Boys, Big Easy Brawlers, No Good Deed (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Official Bear Creek After-Party presents Green is Beautiful: A Tribute to Grant Green feat.

Eddie Roberts, Robert Walter, Chris Stillwell, Alan Evans and special guests (BL) 1a Mardi Gras World: Bear Creek Bayou Festival (VR) 11a Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a One Eyed Jacks: Saint Vitus, the Skull, Witch Mountain (VR) 9p

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Palm Court Jazz Café: Brian O’Connell and Palm Court Jazz Band with Lester Caliste (TJ) 8p Pontchartrain Vineyards: Jazz’n the Vines feat. Hill Country Hounds (CW) 6:30p Preservation Hall: Joint Chiefs of Jazz feat. Jamie Wight (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Republic: Rae Sremmurd, Lil Yachty (HH) 10p RF’s: Lucas Davenport (JV) 6p, Hyperphlyy (CW) 9p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Supercharger (VR) 9:30p Siberia: Alex McMurray (SS) 6p, One Love Brass Band CDrelease party, Daria and the Hip Drops (BB) 9p Snug Harbor: Henry Butler Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Carolyn Broussard (JV) 12p, Antoine Diel and Arsene DeLay (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Davis Rogan (JV) 10p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p, Debbie Davis (JV) 6p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Lagniappe feat. Cool Nasty and DJ RQ Away (HH) 11p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 2

Banks Street Bar: Stuff N Things (FK) 4p Bombay Club: Tom McDermott (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Steve Pistorius (JV) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: James Singleton Quartet feat. Jonathan Freilich, Skerik, Johnny Vidacovich (VR) 9p Circle Bar: Micah McKee and friends, Blind Texas Marlin (FO) 7p, Country Night with DJ Pasta (CW) 10p Crazy Lobster: the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Greg Schatz and the Friggin’ Geniuses (VR) 10p Dragon’s Den: Jazz Jam (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: NOLA Comedy Hour Open Mic (CO) 8p, Burlesque (BQ) 10p House of Blues (the Parish): Denzel Curry, Boogie (HH) 8p House of Blues: Cherub (EL) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, Roamin’ Jasmine (JV) 10a, Nickel-A-Dance feat. Thais Clark and the Jazzsters (JV) 4p, Too Darn Hot, Higher Heights (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Palm Court Jazz Café: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters with Craig Klein (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Henry Butler and Yolanda Windsay (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 12p, Pfister Sisters (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and Bayou Shufflers (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascal (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Sunday Youth Music Workshop feat. Johnny Vidacovich, Chris Severin and Cliff Hines (VR) 1p Tropical Isle Bourbon: BC and Company (RK) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

MONDAY OCTOBER 3

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Helen Gillet (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas: Mark Rubin and Chip Wilson, Swinging Gypsies, Smoky’s Blues Monday Jam with Doc Lovett, Sunshine Brass Band (VR) 12p

Banks Street Bar: Dignity Reve’s Piano Showcase (PI) 7p, Lilli Lewis (RB) 9p Bombay Club: Josh Paxton (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Benny Maygarden and Thomas “Mad Dog” Walker (VR) 6p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p Circle Bar: Phil the Tremelo King (VR) 7p, Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 9p Civic Theater: Andrew Bird, Sinkane (ID) 8p Columns Hotel: David Doucet (KJ) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Dos Jefes: John Fohl (BL) 9p Dragon’s Den: Kala Bazaar Swing Society (JV) 8p, DJ Ill Medina (VR) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: the Felice Brothers, Aaron Lee Tasjan (FO) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (VR) 9p House of Blues: Tiger Army, Creeper, Tijuana Panthers (PK) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Jackson Brewery: Theatre Nouveau feat. Cherry Bombshell and Queenie O’Hart (BQ) 7:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Mark Appleford (FO) 8p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Sam Price and the True Believers (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. and friends (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Ooh Poo Pah Doo: James Andrews and the Crescent City All-Stars, Bobby Love (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 8p Republic: the Struts, Beware of Darkness, Goodbye June (RK) 7:30p RF’s: John Marcey Duo (JV) 4p, Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 7p Siberia: ONO, Buck Gooter, Drapes, TV-MA, Lee Harvey Oswald (PK) 9p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Muses: Monty Banks (JV) 5p, Dr. Sick (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Original: Graham Robinson Band (RK) 5:15p, Trop Rock Express (RK) 9:15p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 4

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Mark Weliky (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Albanie Falletta (VR) 6p, Jon Cleary (VR) 8p Circle Bar: Carl LeBlanc (RB) 6p, Tournament, Trampoline Team, Bottomfeeders (PK) 9:30p Columns Hotel: Matt Rhody and John Rankin (JV) 8p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Deutsches Haus: Jesuit High School Band, Clavius Gynasium High School Band (JV) 6:30p Dos Jefes: Tom Hook and Wendell Brunious (JV) 9p Ellis Marsalis Center for Music: Troy Sawyer (JV) 6:30p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Progression feat. Elizabeth McBride, Maggie Belle Band, Tasche and the Psychedelic Roses, DJ Doug Funnie (VR) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: Chrome Sparks, Roland Tings (VR) 9p House of Blues: Schoolby Q, Joey Bada$$ (HH) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Shea Pierre (PI) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Marc Stone (BL) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Mark Pentone (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Swinging Gypsies, Gregory Agid, Willie Green Project (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (RK) 11p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-Stars feat. Shannon Powell (TJ) 8p

Siberia: Skeletonwitch, Iron Reagan, Oathbreaker, Gatekeeper, Torture Garden (ME) 8p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 9:15p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 5

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Jesse Morrow (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas : Bamboulas Hot Trio feat. Giselle Anguizola, Magnolia Dream, Mem Shannon Band (VR) 2p Banks Street Bar: Major Bacon (BL) 10p Bombay Club: Tom Hook (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Dave Hickey and Jacob Tanner (VR) 6p, Crooked Vines (VR) 8p Circle Bar: the Iguanas (RK) 7p, Space Bass IV feat. DJ Obi-1 and Slick Leo (RL) 10p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dos Jefes: George French Trio (RB) 9:30p Dragon’s Den: Reggae Night (RE) 10p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: July Talk, the Painted Hands (RK) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Shamarr Allen, DJ Chicken (FK) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): I the Mighty, Dayshell, Artifex Pereo, Picturesque (RK) 6:30p, Jet Lounge (HH) 11p House of Blues: Young the Giant, Ra Ra Riot (RK) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Sonic Harvest (VR) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Jay B. Elston (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Maison: Up Up We Go, Jazz Vipers, Revival (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: Robin Barnes with Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band and Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Will Smith (TJ) 8p RF’s: David Bach (SS) 4p, Tony Seville and the Cadillacs (JV) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Johnny Angel (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat. Ellis Marsalis (JV) 7p Siberia: the Crookes, Step Rockets, Bantam Foxes (ID) 9p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and Uptown Jazz Orchestra (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Original: Debi and the Deacons (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 6

Armstrong Park: Jazz in the Park feat. Noisewater, Soul Rebels (VR) 4p Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, the Courtyard Kings (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Phillip Manuel (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Debbie Davis and Josh Paxton (JV) 5p, Tom McDermott and Chloe Feoranzo (JV) 8p Bullet’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 6:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, Beartoe (VR) 8p, Graham Hawthorne’s High Standard Orchestra (VR) 9p Circle Bar: Natalie Mae (CW) 7p Civic Theater: Chris D’Elia (CO) 8p Columns Hotel: Marc Stone (BL) 8p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series (VR) 5:30p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p Dixon Hall (Tulane University): Ellis Marsalis (JV) 7p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Dos Jefes: Todd Duke Trio (JV) 9:30p Dragon’s Den: Ill Vibe with Matt Scott (EL) 8p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: the Plus One Show (CO) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Cave (VR) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): the Summer Set (PO) 7p House of Blues: Stryper, Millenial Reign (RK) 8p, Soul 2 Soul (HH) 11:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Joy Theater: the Naked and the Famous (VR) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Will Dickerson (FO) 8:30p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Reid Poole Duo (VR) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Allen Hebert (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Good for Nothin’ Band, Sweet Substitute, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich and guests (FK) 11p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Colin Lake (SS) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Tim Laughlin with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Louis Ford (TJ) 8p RF’s: Will Kennedy (PO) 5p, Meghan Stewart Band (JV) 8p Siberia: Max and the Martian’s CD-release party, Video Age, Esther Rose Band (RK) 9p Snug Harbor: Oscar Rossignoli Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (JV) 5p, Luke Winslow King (JV) 7:30p Tipitina’s: Homegrown Night feat. Paris Ave., the Fixers, the Bummers (VR) 8:30p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Cajun Drifters (KJ) 5p, Nonc Nu and Da Wild Matous (KJ) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p Vaughan’s Lounge: Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet (FK) 10p W XYZ Bar: Tom Witek Quartet (JV) 5:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 7

Audubon Park (Newman Bandstand): Music Under the Oaks feat. Polymnia Quartet (VR) 5p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Harmonouche (JV) 5p, Willie Green (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Trick Bag (RK) 10p Bombay Club: Larry Scala (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Yvette Voelker and the Swinging Heathens (JV) 5p, Greg Schatz (VR) 8p, Stuart McNair (VR) 11p Bullet’s: Original Pinettes (BB) 8:30p Burgundy Bar (the Saint Hotel): Burgundy Burlesque: A Trixie Minx Production (BQ) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Charlie Wooton (VR) 11p Circle Bar: Rik Slave’s Country Persuasion (CW) 7p, So Pretty, the Burning Peppermints, Hurl Yeah, the Bad Misters (PK) 10p Civic Theater: Local Natives, Charlotte Day Wilson (ID) 8:30p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 6p, Cyril Neville’s Swamp Funk Birthday Bash (FK) 10p Davenport Lounge (Ritz-Carlton): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 9p Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall: Peace of Cake (JV) 6:30p Dos Jefes: Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 10p Dragon’s Den: Loose Marbles (JV) 7p, the Tipping Point with DJ RQ Away (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Comedy Fuck Yeah (CO) 7p, Latin Night (LT) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Colin Lake, Aaron Lopez Barrantes (RK) 10p Hi-Ho Lounge: Hell Yes Fest presents Altercation Road Stories with JT Habersaat (CO) 7p, Relapse with Matt Scott (VR) 10p House of Blues (the Parish): Electric Six, In the Whale, the Painted Hands (RK) 9p House of Blues: Big Tymers (HH) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Revival, the Somerton Suitcase, Big Eye Shiner (RK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Amber Matthews (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Michael Watson (BQ) 11:59p Jazz and Heritage Center: Ernan Lopez-Nussa (LT) 8p Jazz National Historical Park: Johnette Downing (SS) 11a Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Guitar Slim Jr. (BL) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, the One Tailed Three (FO) 9p

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Le Bon Temps Roule: Tom Worrell (PI) 7p Little Gem Saloon: Cullen Landry and Midnight Streetcar feat. Johnny Pennino (VR) 7p Mahalia Jackston Theater: New Orleans Opera Association presents Don Giovanni (CL) 8p Maison: Dinosaurchestra, G and the Swinging 3, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 1p, the Grid, Soul Company (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Dave Jordan and the NIA, Captain Midnight Band (RR) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Old Point Bar: Rick Trolsen (PI) 5p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (SO) 9:30p Old U.S. Mint: Armand St. Martin (JV) 2p, Dreux Antoine (RB) 7p Palm Court Jazz Café: Palm Court Jazz Band with Kevin Louis (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall Brass Band feat. Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p Republic: Destructo (EL) 10p RF’s: Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 6p, James Martin Band (JV) 9p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Flow Tribe (FK) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Royal Roses (JV) 5p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p, the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p W XYZ Bar: John Paul Carmondy (SS) 5:30p Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club: Friends of Lafitte Greenway Soiree feat. James Singleton, DJ Fayard (VR) 6p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 8

Banks Street Bar: Static Masks (RK) 10p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p Bombay Club: Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Yardbird Sweethearts (JV) 5p, Ruby and the Rogues (VR) 8p, Nyce (JV) 11p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: King James and the Special Men (RB) 11p Davenport Lounge (Ritz-Carlton): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 9p Dragon’s Den: As You Like It (JV) 7p, Baby Bats, Garbage Boy, Trance Farmers (ID) 10p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 7p, Dirty South Classics with DJ Otto (VR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: Hell Yes Fest feat. Megan Simon and Kyle Ayers (CO) 7p, Hustle feat. DJ Soul Sister (FK) 11p Howlin’ Wolf: Oktoberfunk Superjam feat. Corey Henry, Pete Murano, Tony Hall, Khris Royal and Simon Lott (FK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Andrew Baham (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Neisha Ruffins (JV) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Dave Hickey (FO) 5p, Van Hudson and friends (FO) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jay B. Elston (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Louisiana Music Factory: Smoky Greenwell (BL) 2p, Haruka Kikuchi and Big 4tune (JV) 3p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Loose Marbles, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 1p, Big Easy Brawlers (FK) 11:59p Maple Leaf: Royal Southern Brotherhood (VR) 11p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Old Point Bar: Diablo’s Horns (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Brian O’Connell and Palm Court Jazz Band with Jamie Wight (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Joint Chiefs of Jazz feat. Jamie Wight (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Will Smith (TJ) 8p RF’s: Lucas Davenport (JV) 6p, Pickin’ and Grinnin’ (CW) 9p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Eric Lindell (BL) 9:30p Saenger Theatre: Kenny Rogers (CW) 8p Snug Harbor: Johnaye Kendrick (BL) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Sweetwater and Company (JV) 12p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Muses: Chris Christy (JV) 5p, Debbie Davis (JV) 6p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tropical Isle Bayou Club: the Troubadour (KJ) 1p, Bayou Cajun Swamp Band (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p, the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 9

AllWays Lounge: Smoking Time Jazz Club (TJ) 9p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, the Tradsters (JV) 4p, Rumprollers (JV) 7:30p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Banks Street Bar: Noisewater (BB) 1p, Stuff N Things (FK) 4p Bombay Club: Tom McDermott (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Gerald French Trio (JV) 7p Circle Bar: Micah McKee and friends, Blind Texas Marlin (FO) 7p, Country Night with DJ Pasta (CW) 10p Crazy Lobster: the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Sam Price and the True Believers (VR) 10p Dragon’s Den: Jazz Jam (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: NOLA Comedy Hour Open Mic (CO) 8p, How To Dress Well, Ex Reyes (PO) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (RK) 5p, Mark Parsons (VR) 9p Mahalia Jackston Theater: New Orleans Opera Association presents Don Giovanni (CL) 2:30p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, Slick Skillet Serenaders (JV) 10a, Nickel-A-Dance feat. Tim Laughlin Band (JV) 4p, Tuba Skinny, Higher Heights (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Palm Court Jazz Café: Sunday Night Swingsters with Mark Brooks (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Khari Allen Lee and New Creative Collective (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 12p, Swinging Heathens (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and Bayou Shufflers (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascal (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Brandon Moreau and Cajungrass (KJ) 2p, Bayou Cajun Swamp Band (KJ) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: BC and Company (RK) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p

MONDAY OCTOBER 10

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Helen Gillet (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Dignity Reve’s Piano Showcase (PI) 7p, Lilli Lewis (RB) 9p Bombay Club: Josh Paxton (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Benny Maygarden and Thomas “Mad Dog” Walker (VR) 6p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p Circle Bar: Phil the Tremelo King (VR) 7p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Dos Jefes: John Fohl (BL) 9p Dragon’s Den: Russell Welch Hot Quartet (JV) 8p, DJ Ill Medina (VR) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: Susto (RK) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (VR) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): Brett Dennen (FO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Jackson Brewery: Theatre Nouveau feat. Cherry Bombshell and Queenie O’Hart (BQ) 7:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (FO) 9p Mahalia Jackston Theater: the Octonauts Live (VR) 6p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Brass Lightning (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. and friends (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Ooh Poo Pah Doo: James Andrews and the Crescent City All-Stars, Bobby Love (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Muses: Monty Banks (JV) 5p Tropical Isle Original: Graham Robinson Band (RK) 5:15p, Trop Rock Express (RK) 9:15p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 11

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Mark Weliky (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p

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OCTOBER 2016

Chickie Wah Wah: Albanie Falletta (VR) 6p, Jon Cleary (VR) 8p Circle Bar: Carl LeBlanc (RB) 6p Columns Hotel: Paul Sanchez (RR) 8p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dos Jefes: Tom Hook and Wendell Brunious (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Progression feat. the Dominic Minix Quartet, Froyo Ma, Helen of Coi (VR) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Grass Mud Horse (FO) 6:30p, Marshland (FO) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): Yuna, Nylo (RB) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Shea Pierre (PI) 7p Jazz National Historical Park: Richard Scott (PI) 12p Joy Theater: Cameron Esposito, Rhea Butcher (CO) 8p, Ben Gleib (CO) 10:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: NOLA Dukes (JV) 7p Maison: Swinging Gypsies, Gregory Agid, the Resident Aliens (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 11p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-Stars feat. Shannon Powell (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: Insane Clown Posse (VR) 6p Spitfire: Dick Deluxe’s Wheel of Misfortune (SS) 9p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: the Dandy Warhols, Savoy Motel (RK) 8:30p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 5p, Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 9:15p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 12 Banks Street Bar: Major Bacon (BL) 10p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Dave Hickey and Jacob Tanner (VR) 6p, Crooked Vines (VR) 8p Circle Bar: the Iguanas (RK) 7p, Iska Dhaaf, the Trance Farmers, Guts Club (ID) 10p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dos Jefes: George French Trio (RB) 9:30p Dragon’s Den: Reggae Night (RE) 10p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Gringo Star (ID) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Shamarr Allen, DJ Chicken (FK) 9p House of Blues (the Parish): Jet Lounge (HH) 11p House of Blues: Taking Back Sunday, You Blew It (RK) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Guys We Fucked Podcast with Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson (CO) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: David L. Harris Jr. Duo (JV) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Jay B. Elston (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Maison: Noruz, Jazz Vipers, Dana Abbott Band (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Robin Barnes with Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band and Greg Stafford (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: the Boogie Men (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat. Khari Allen Lee (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and Uptown Jazz Orchestra (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: Twiztid (VR) 7p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Muses: Hot Club of New Orleans (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Debi and the Deacons (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 13

Armstrong Park: Jazz in the Park feat. Caesar Brothers, John “Papa” Gros Band (VR) 4p Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, the Courtyard Kings (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski Duo (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Jerry Jumonville (JV) 5p, Tom McDermott and Chloe Feoranzo (JV) 8p Bullet’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 6:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, the Salt Wives (GY) 8p, United Bakery Records’ CD-release party (VR) 9p

Circle Bar: Natalie Mae (CW) 7p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series (VR) 5:30p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Lightnin’ Malcolm with RL Boyce (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Dave Easley (VR) 6p, Ill Vibe with Matt Scott (EL) 8p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Adam Torres, Thor and friends, Jasper Den Hartigh (ID) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Hell Yes Fest feat. James Adomian (CO) 10p House of Blues (the Parish): the Hip Abduction (ID) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, James Rivers Movement (JV) 8p Joy Theater: the Grawlix (CO) 7:30p, the Girlcode Showcase with Carly Aquilino, Jamie Lee and Annie Lederman (CO) 10p Kerry Irish Pub: Will Dickerson (FO) 8:30p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Milonga Osada to Recordings of Tango (JV) 7:30p Little Tropical Isle: Allen Hebert (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Good for Nothin’ Band, Roamin’ Jasmine, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich and guests (FK) 11p Mardi Gras World: Chance the Rapper (HH) 7p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Happy Talk Band (RK) 6p Old Point Bar: Ted Hefko and the Thousandaires (RK) 9p Palm Court Jazz Café: Duke Heitger and Crescent City Joymakers withDavid Boeddinghaus (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Leroy Thomas (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Steve Pistorius CD-release party (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (JV) 5p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Cajun Drifters (KJ) 5p, Nonc Nu and Da Wild Matous (KJ) 9p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Beach Combers (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Vaughan’s Lounge: Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet (FK) 10p W XYZ Bar: Carson vs. Carson (SS) 5:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 14

Audubon Park (Newman Bandstand): Music Under the Oaks feat. the New Orleans Concert Band (VR) 5p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Harmonouche (JV) 5p, Willie Green (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: South Jones, Grass Mud Horse (RK) 10p Bombay Club: Peter Harris (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Jon Roniger (VR) 5p, Alexandra Scott and her Magical Band (FO) 8p, Steve DeTroy (JV) 11p Bullet’s: Original Pinettes (BB) 8:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Honey Island Acoustic Set (RR) 9p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tuba Skinny (JV) 6p, Marc Stone’s All Star Band (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Loose Marbles (JV) 7p, the Tipping Point with DJ RQ Away (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Comedy Fuck Yeah (CO) 7p, Latin Night (LT) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Whores, Big Jesus (RK) 10p Hi-Ho Lounge: Relapse with Matt Scott (VR) 10p House of Blues (the Parish): the Temperance Movement, the Sheepdogs (RK) 8:30p House of Blues: Ben Rector, Jacob Whitesides (SS) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): East Cameron Folklore, Particle Devotion (PK) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Rebirth Brass Band, Cool Nasty (FK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Michael Watson (BQ) 11:59p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Guitar Slim Jr. (BL) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Mark Appleford (FO) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (FO) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Joe Krown (PI) 7p, COOT (RR) 10:30p Little Tropical Isle: Reed Lightfoot (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: As You Like It Trio, Ramblin’ Letters (VR) 1p, Shotgun Jazz Band ,the Night Owls, the Resident Aliens (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: New Orleans Suspects (FK) 11p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Old Arabi Bar: Maggie Belle Band (RB) 9p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Old Point Bar: Rick Trolsen (PI) 5p, Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Palm Court Jazz Band with James Evans and Charlie Halloran (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Will Smith (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall Brass Band feat.

Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p RF’s: Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 6p, James Martin Band (JV) 9p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: Soul Rebels, Rockenbraughs (VR) 7:30p Spotted Cat: Revival (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Matt Johnson (JV) 5:30p, Kris Tokarski (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: the Psychedelic Furs, My Jerusalem (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p, the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p W XYZ Bar: Kathryn Rose Wood (SS) 5:30p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 15

Abita Springs Town Hall: Abita Springs Opry feat. Chris Talley Band, Slick Skillet Serenaders, Rick Ledbetter, Messy Cookers (VR) 7p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Red Organ Trio (JV) 4p, Live Jazz (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Lynn Drury (SS) 10p Bombay Club: Duke Heitger (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Hannah KB Band (VR) 5p, Davis Rogan (VR) 8p, Michael Liuzza (VR) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Jontavious Willis (VR) 8p, Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes and Lil Buck Sinegal (ZY) 10p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p, Little Freddie King (BL) 11p Dragon’s Den: Good For Nothin’ Band (JV) 7p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 7p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Cosmicana (FO) 5p Hi-Ho Lounge: Hell Yes Fest feat. Aparna Noncherna (CO) 8p, Hustle feat. DJ Soul Sister (FK) 11p House of Blues: Parkway Drive (ME) 5:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Andy Frasco and the UN (SO) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Dance Yourself Clean (PO) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Wessell “Warmdaddy” Anderson Quartet (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Greensky Bluegrass, Larry Keel Experience (BU) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Neisha Ruffins (JV) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Vali Talbot (FO) 5p, the Gate Band (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Louisiana Blues Throwdown feat. John Mooney, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Marilyn Barbara, Marc Stone Band (BL) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Jay B. Elston (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Mahalia Jackston Theater: NOBA presents Grupo Corpo (DN) 8p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Royal Street Winding Boys, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 1p, Soul Project, Organized Crime (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: New Orleans Suspects (FK) 11p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a New Orleans Healing Center: Anba Dlo Festival (VR) 7p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: O What a Night Gala (VR) 6p One Eyed Jacks: Rooney, Royal Teeth, Swimming with Bears (VR) 8p Palm Court Jazz Café: Brian O’Connell and Palm Court Jazz Band with Lester Caliste (TJ) 8p Pontchartrain Vineyards: Jazz’n the Vines feat. Paul Sanchez and the Rolling Road Show (RR) 6:30p Preservation Hall: Joint Chiefs of Jazz feat. Jamie Wight (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: the Wiseguys (VR) 10p Saenger Theatre: Elvis Costello (SS) 8p Smoothie King Center: Keith Urban, Brett Eldredge, Maren Morris (CO) 7:30p Snug Harbor: Herlin Riley Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Carolyn Broussard (JV) 12p, Russell Welch’s Band (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p Three Muses: Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: High On Fire (VR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: the Troubadour (KJ) 1p, Bayou Cajun Swamp Band (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 16

AllWays Lounge: Haruka and the Big 4tune (TJ) 9p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, the Tradsters (JV) 4p, Roamin’ Jasmine (JV) 7:30p

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Banks Street Bar: Stuff N Things (FK) 4p Bombay Club: Daniel Schroeder (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Broads and Axes with Arsene Delay and others (VR) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Pat Flory and Mike Kerwin (BL) 6p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 8p Circle Bar: Micah McKee and friends, Blind Texas Marlin (FO) 7p, Country Night with DJ Pasta (CW) 10p Crazy Lobster: the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, Soul Brass Band (BB) 10p Dragon’s Den: Jazz Jam (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: NOLA Comedy Hour Open Mic (CO) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): Islands (ID) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, Slick Skillet Serenaders (JV) 10a, Nickel-A-Dance feat. Palm Court All-Stars with Topsy Chapman (JV) 4p, Leah Rucker, Higher Heights (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Palm Court Jazz Café: Sunday Night Swingsters with Kerry Lewis (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Shannon Powell (TJ) 8p Saenger Theatre: Sarah Silverman (CO) 8p Snug Harbor: Tim Laughlin Jazz Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 12p, G and the Swinging 3 (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and Bayou Shufflers (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascal (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Sunday Youth Music Workshop feat. Charlie Wooton Band (VR) 1p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Brandon Moreau and Cajungrass (KJ) 2p, Bayou Cajun Swamp Band (KJ) 7p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

MONDAY OCTOBER 17

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Helen Gillet (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas: Mark Rubin and Chip Wilson, Swinging Gypsies, Smoky’s Blues Monday Jam with J. Monque’D (VR) 2p Bombay Club: John Royen (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Benny Maygarden and Thomas “Mad Dog” Walker (VR) 6p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p Columns Hotel: David Doucet (KJ) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Dos Jefes: John Fohl (BL) 9p Dragon’s Den: Andy Reid’s Imagination Council (JV) 8p, DJ Ill Medina (VR) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: Gauche, Vile Bodies, Gland (PK) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (VR) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: the Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (JV) 8p Jackson Brewery: Theatre Nouveau feat. Cherry Bombshell and Queenie O’Hart (BQ) 7:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (FO) 8p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, the Key Sound (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: George Porter Jr. and friends (FK) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Ooh Poo Pah Doo: James Andrews and the Crescent City All-Stars, Bobby Love (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 8p RF’s: John Marcey Duo (JV) 4p, Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 7p Saenger Theatre: Needtobreath, Matt Kearney, Parachute, Welshly Arms (RK) 8p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Brett Richardson (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Muses: Bart Ramsey (JV) 5p, Washboard Rodeo (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Hiss Golden Messenger, Phil Cook (VR) 8:30p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Beach Combers (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Graham Robinson Band (RK) 5:15p, Trop Rock Express (RK) 9:15p

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TUESDAY OCTOBER 18

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Mark Weliky (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Emily Chambers (RB) 7p Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Albanie Falletta (VR) 6p, Seth Walker CD-release party (VR) 8p Columns Hotel: John Fohl and John Rankin (JV) 8p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dos Jefes: Tom Hook and Wendell Brunious (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Toonces, ROAR, Tele Novella (VR) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Grass Mud Horse (FO) 6:30p, Marshland (FO) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Oscar Rossignoli (PI) 7p Jazz National Historical Park: Richard Scott (PI) 12p Joy Theater: Turkuaz, the New Mastersounds (FK) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Marc Stone (BL) 7p Maison: Swinging Gypsies, Gregory Agid, the Resident Aliens (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 11p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-Stars feat. Shannon Powell (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 5p, Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 9:15p UNO Performing Arts Center: Tomoki Sakata (PI) 7p

Circle Bar: Natalie Mae (CW) 7p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series (VR) 5:30p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Little Freddie King (BL) 10p Dos Jefes: Loren Pickford’s Tribute to the Beat Generation (JV) 9:30p Dragon’s Den: Dave Easley (VR) 6p, Ill Vibe with Matt Scott (EL) 8p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: Circus Darling (BQ) 9p House of Blues: Kongos, the Joy Formidable (RK) 8:30p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, Amber Matthews (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Foot and friends (FO) 8:30p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Reid Poole Duo (VR) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Allen Hebert (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Good for Nothin’ Band, Asylum CHorus, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich and guests (FK) 11p Old Point Bar: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 9p Palm Court Jazz Café: Tim Laughlin and Crescent City Joymakers with Herman Lebeaux (TJ) 8p

PLAN A: Buddy Guy Buddy Guy may have been born in Lettsworth, Louisiana, but his name will forever be associated with the Chicago style of blues. The seventime Grammy winner has called the Midwestern metropolis home since relocating there from Baton Rouge in the 1950s, and has gone on to become one of the most influential exponents of the city’s musical heritage. That’s because he’s left his mark on the minds and music of the countless guitar gods who followed his footsteps, from Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Mayer.

While those achievements lie firmly in the past, recent years have been very good to Guy as well. Most of

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 19 Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Jesse Morrow (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Dave Hickey and Jacob Tanner (VR) 6p, Meschiya Lake and Tom McDermott (JV) 8p Circle Bar: the Iguanas (RK) 7p, the Vincas (RK) 10p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Reggae Night (RE) 10p Gasa Gasa: Preoccupations, Methyl Ethel, Val Hollie (VR) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Shamarr Allen, DJ Chicken (FK) 9p House of Blues: RX Bandits, And So I Watch You From Afar (RK) 8:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): McLovins (FK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Jefferson Orleans North: Jerry Embree and the Heartbeats (SI) 7p Kerry Irish Pub: Tim Robertson (FO) 8:30p Little Tropical Isle: Jay B. Elston (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Maison: Shynola, Jazz Vipers, Native Swing (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Robin Barnes with Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band and Shannon Powell (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Jerry Embree (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat. Ingrid Jensen (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and Uptown Jazz Orchestra (JV) 8p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Anoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Muses: Keith Burnstein (JV) 5p, Schatzy (JV) 7p Tipitina’s: Robert Randolph and the Family Band (VR) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Cajungrass (KJ) 7p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 20

Armstrong Park: Jazz in the Park feat. Mystic, Mike “Soulman” Baptiste (VR) 4p Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, the Courtyard Kings (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski Duo (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Spike Perkins (JV) 5p, Tom McDermott and guest (TJ) 8p Bullet’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 6:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, Eric Bloom and friends (VR) 9p

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Hi-Ho Lounge: Relapse with Matt Scott (VR) 10p Historic New Orleans Collection: Concerts in the Courtyard feat. the Tumbling Weeds (BU) 6p House of Blues: Bustout Burlesque (BQ) 7:30p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Chopped Up Tulips, the Bummers, $pare Change (RK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Leon “Kid Chocolate” Brown (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Michael Watson (BQ) 11:59p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Guitar Slim Jr. (BL) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Patrick Cooper (FO) 5p, Hurricane Refugees (FO) 9p Le Bon Temps Roule: Joe Krown (PI) 7p Little Gem Saloon: Nayo Jones Experience (JV) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Reed Lightfoot (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Eight Dice Cloth, Up Up We Go, Swinging Gypsies (JV) 1p, Big Easy Brawlers, No Good Deed (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Eric Benny Bloom and friends (FK) 11p Mardi Gras World: GRiZ, Haywyre, Louis Futon (VR) 8p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Old Point Bar: Rick Trolsen (PI) 5p, Truman Holland and the Back Porch Review (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Kevin Louis and Palm Court Jazz Band with Mari Watanabe (TJ) 8p Pearl Wine Co.: Jasper Brothers (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall Brass Band feat.

Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p RF’s: Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 6p, James Martin Band (JV) 9p Saenger Theatre: Brian Clay (CO) 8p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Royal Roses (JV) 5:30p Tipitina’s: Maceo Parker, Fantastic Negrito (VR) 10p Treme Coffeehouse: 504 Experience’s Treme Coffeehouse Sessions feat. Leroy Jones (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p, the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p W XYZ Bar: Motel Radio (ID) 5:30p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 22

Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Louis Ford (TJ) 8p the Rat (Tulane University): Jazz at the Rat feat. Brandee Younger (JV) 7p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: L’il Nathan and the Big Tymers (ZY) 8:30p Snug Harbor: Ingrid Jensen (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Sarah McCoy and the Oopsie Daisies (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (JV) 5p Tipitina’s: Talking Dreads: Reggae Tribute to Talking Heads, Jamaican Me Breakfast Club (RE) 9p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Cajun Drifters (KJ) 5p, Nonc Nu and Da Wild Matous (KJ) 9p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Beach Combers (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Vaughan’s Lounge: Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet (FK) 10p W XYZ Bar: Mighty Brother (SS) 5:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 21

Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Harmonouche (JV) 5p, Willie Green (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Tangerine Dreams (BQ) 10p Bombay Club: Riverside Jazz Collective (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Keith Burnstein (VR) 5p, Pfister Sisters (VR) 8p, Fraulein Frances and her Sleaze Ball Orchestra (VR) 11p Bullet’s: Original Pinettes (BB) 8:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Max Jury (VR) 9p, Liz Longley (VR) 10p Circle Bar: Rik Slave’s Country Persuasion (CW) 7p, Dark and Shiny presents Haunted Haus (IL) 10p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tuba Skinny (JV) 6p, Ike Stubblefield Trio (FK) 10p Davenport Lounge (Ritz-Carlton): Jeremy Davenport (JV) 9p Dew Drop Social and Benevolent Hall: David Torkanowsky and friends (JV) 6:30p Dragon’s Den: Loose Marbles (JV) 7p, the Tipping Point with DJ RQ Away (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Comedy Fuck Yeah (CO) 7p, Latin Night (LT) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p

his albums and all of his Grammys have come since 1990, including a Best Blues Album award for his charttopping 2015 release, Born to Play Guitar. Six-string sounds have been slowly disappearing from the airwaves for a couple of decades, yet Guy has doubled down on the techniques that defined his career, continuously putting out inspired blues records that elevate the genre rather than harkening back to its heyday.

Despite weaving himself into the fabric of Chicago, Guy has always had a soft spot for the state where he was born. The 80-year-old guitarist has been a Jazz Fest staple for years, frequently headlining the Blues Tent and even teaming up with local blues guitar heroes like Tab Benoit. It’s a connection that will grow a little bit stronger this October when he takes the stage at Tipitina’s (with much younger Chicago blues artist Marty Sammon in tow as the opening act) less than six months after his last performance in the Crescent City. He’s sure to get a warm welcome here, just like he always does. It may not be Chicago, but New Orleans knows a few things about the blues too.

Buddy Guy will perform at Tipitina’s on Sunday, October 23. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Tickets $65.

501 N. Genois St.: Mid-City Masquerade feat. Dan Deacon, Ghost-Note, Sweet Crude, ROAR, Caddywhompus, Elysian Feel, Sexy Dex and the Fresh, DJ Doug Funnie (VR) 5p Ashe Powerhouse: Roots of Music Benefit feat. the Revivalists, Roots of Music Marching Crusaders (VR) 6p Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Red Organ Trio (JV) 4p, Live Jazz (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: the NO Shows, Handsome Scoundrels, R-Dent, 11 Blade (PK) 10p Blue Nile: Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (BL) 7p Bombay Club: Todd Duke (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Ben Fox Trio (JV) 5p, Lynn Drury (VR) 8p, Miles Lyon Tribute to Tyree Glenn (JV) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Webb Wilder (VR) 8p, the Deslondes (CW) 10p Circle Bar: Minihorse, Mariine, Red Poison Berry (ID) 9:30p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: John Boutte (JV) 8p Dos Jefes: Betty Shirley Band (JV) 10p Dragon’s Den: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Backspin (VR) 10p; Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 7p, Sexy Back (VR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Highly Suspect, Slothrust (RK) 10p Hi-Ho Lounge: the Rip Off Show (CO) 7p, Hustle feat. DJ Soul Sister (FK) 11p House of Blues: KISS Alike: the Ultimate KISS Tribute Band (CR) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Ballroom Thieves, Blue Healer (FO) 9p Howlin’ Wolf: Krewe of Boo After-Party with Dumpstaphunk, Sexual Thunder (FK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Leroy Jones Quintet (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Jason Isbell, Josh Ritter (SS) 9p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Neisha Ruffins (JV) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Paul and Amy (FO) 5p, Crossing Canal with Ruby Ross and Patrick Cooper (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7& 9p Louisiana Music Factory: Dick Deluxe (SS) 2p, Luke Winslow King (JV) 3p Maison: Chance Bushman and and the Ibervillianaires, Loose Marbles, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 1p, Kumasi (AF) 10p

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PHOTO: CHRISTIAN LANTRY

LIVE LOCAL MUSIC

LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Maple Leaf: Joox Presents Po-boy Fest pre-party with Boukou Groove (VR) 11p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Old Point Bar: the One Percent Nation (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Brian O’Connell with Palm Court Jazz Band and Freddie Lonzo (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Joint Chiefs of Jazz feat. Jamie Wight (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Republic: G Jones, SAYER (EL) 10p RF’s: Lucas Davenport (JV) 6p, Hyperphlyy (CW) 9p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Honey Island Swamp Band (RR) 9:30p Second Line Brewing Company: Blues Jam (BL) 2p Spotted Cat: Sweetwater and Company (JV) 12p, Jazz Band Ballers (JV) 2p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 10p Three Muses: Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes 15th Anniversary Party, the Ron Holloway Band (VR) 10p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: the Troubadour (KJ) 1p, Bayou Cajun Swamp Band (KJ) 5p, T’Canaille (KJ) 9p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p UNO Lakefront Arena: Legends of Southern Hip-Hop feat.

Mystikal, Juvenile and others (HH) 8p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 23

Audubon Park (Newman Bandstand): Music Under the Oaks feat. Loyola University School of Music (VR) 5p Banks Street Bar: Stuff N Things (FK) 4p Bombay Club: Tom Hook (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Gerald French Trio (JV) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Pat Flory and Mike Kerwin (BL) 6p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 8p Circle Bar: Micah McKee and friends, Blind Texas Marlin (FO) 7p, Country Night with DJ Pasta (CW) 10p Columns Hotel: Chip Wilson (JV) 11a Crazy Lobster: the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p, John Lisi and Delta Funk (FK) 10p Dragon’s Den: Jazz Jam (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: Highly Suspect, Slothrust (RK) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: NOLA Comedy Hour Open Mic (CO) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Wes Williams Band (FK) 8p, Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Jason Isbell, John Moreland (SS) 9p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Irish Session (IR) 5p, Patrick Cooper (FO) 8p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (RK) 5p, Mark Parsons (VR) 9p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 10a, Nickel-A-Dance feat.

Jazz Vipers (JV) 4p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Orpheum Theater: Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox (VR) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Mark Braud and Sunday Night Swingsters with Meghan Swartz (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p RF’s: Will Kennedy (PO) 4p, Tony Seville and the Cadillacs (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Matt Perrine and Tuba Trinity (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: MacSabbath (VR) 7:30p Spotted Cat: Carolyn Broussard (JV) 12p, Sweetwater and Company (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and Bayou Shufflers (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascal (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Buddy Guy, Marty Sammon Band (VR) 9p Tropical Isle Bourbon: BC and Company (RK) 1p, Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p UNO Lakefront Arena: Anthony Hamilton, Lalah Hathaway, Eric Benet (VR) 7:30p

MONDAY OCTOBER 24

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Helen Gillet (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Dignity Reve’s Piano Showcase (PI) 7p, Lilli Lewis (RB) 9p Bombay Club: Kris Tokarski (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p

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Chickie Wah Wah: Benny Maygarden and Thomas “Mad Dog” Walker (VR) 6p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Glen David Andrews (JV) 10p Dos Jefes: John Fohl (BL) 9p Dragon’s Den: Echoes of Django (JV) 8p, DJ Ill Medina (VR) 11p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Gasa Gasa: AJJ, Diners, Chris Farren (FO) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Instant Opus Improvised Series (VR) 9p House of Blues: Machine Gun Kelly (HH) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Jackson Brewery: Theatre Nouveau feat. Cherry Bombshell and Queenie O’Hart (BQ) 7:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Kim Carson (FO) 9p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses, Organized Crime (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Ron Holloway Band (VR) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Ooh Poo Pah Doo: James Andrews and the Crescent City All-Stars, Bobby Love (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat.

Leroy Jones (TJ) 8p RF’s: John Marcey Duo (JV) 4p, Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 7p the Saint: Motown Mondays with DJ Shane Love (SO) 10p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Southport Hall: Tech N9ne (VR) 8p Spotted Cat: Sarah McCoy and the Oopsie Daisies (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Three Muses: Bart Ramsey (JV) 5p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Beach Combers (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Graham Robertson (RK) 5:15p, Trop Rock Express (RK) 9:15p

TUESDAY OCTOBER 25

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Mark Weliky (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Matt Lemmler (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Tacos, Tequila and Tiaras with Vanessa Carr (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Albanie Falletta (VR) 6p Columns Hotel: John Rankin and Alex McMurray (JV) 8p Crazy Lobster: AC and the Heat (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Dinosaurchestra (JV) 7p, Treme Brass Band (BB) 10p Dos Jefes: Tom Hook and Wendell Brunious (JV) 9p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Progression feat. Helen Gillet (MJ) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Grass Mud Horse (FO) 6:30p, Marshland (FO) 8p House of Blues (the Parish): Astronautalis (HH) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Jazz National Historical Park: Richard Scott (PI) 12p Kerry Irish Pub: Jason Bishop (FO) 8:30p Little Tropical Isle: Mark Pentone (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Swinging Gypsies, Gregory Agid, Cole Williams (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Rebirth Brass Band (FK) 11p Orpheum Theater: David Sedaris (CO) 7:30p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall-Stars feat. Shannon Powell (TJ) 8p Republic: Danny Brown (HH) 8p Snug Harbor: Stanton Moore Trio (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 6p, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 10p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 5p, Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Jay B. Elston Band (RK) 9:15p

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 26

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Jesse Morrow (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Major Bacon (BL) 10p Bombay Club: Tom Hook (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Open Mic Night with Nattie Sanchez (SS) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Dave Hickey and Jacob Tanner (VR) 6p, Crooked Vines (SS) 8p Circle Bar: the Iguanas (RK) 7p, Extra Spooky, Skeletin, the Noise Complaints (ID) 10p Civic Theater: the Head and the Heart, Declan McKenna (FO) 8p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Tin Men (RK) 7p Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters (BL) 10p Dragon’s Den: Reggae Night (RE) 10p Funky Pirate: Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Kikagaku Moyo (RK) 9p Hi-Ho Lounge: Shamarr Allen, DJ Chicken (FK) 9p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Joe Marcinek, Johnny Vidacovich (FK) 8p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Jazz National Historical Park: Making a Jazz Gumbo with Richard Scott, Jon Beebe and Bud Holmes (JV) 3p

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Kerry Irish Pub: Paintbox with Dave James and Tim Robertson (FO) 8:30p Little Gem Saloon: Marc Stone (BL) 6:30p Little Tropical Isle: Jay B. Elston (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Maison: Slick Skillet Serenaders, Jazz Vipers, Mutiny Squad (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: Robin Barnes with Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a, Krewe du Two (VR) 1p Palm Court Jazz Café: Lars Edegran and Topsy Chapman with Palm Court Jazz Band and Robert Harris (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Jayna Morgan and the Sazerac Sunrise Band (SI) 8p Sandbar at UNO: Jazz at the Sandbar feat. Jovino Santos Neto (JV) 7p Snug Harbor: Delfeayo Marsalis and Uptown Jazz Orchestra (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Chris Christy (JV) 2p, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Antoine Diel and the New Orleans Power Misfits (JV) 10p Three Muses: Leslie Martin (JV) 5p, Sarah McCoy (JV) 7p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Jezebels Chill’n (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Debi and the Deacons (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

THURSDAY OCTOBER 27

Armstrong Park: Jazz in the Park feat. Shannon Powell, Dwayne Dopsie and the Hellraisers (VR) 4p Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, the Courtyard Kings (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas: Kala Bazaar Swing Society, Jenavieve and the Royal Street Winding Boys, John Lisi Band (VR) 2p Bombay Club: Daniel Schroeder and Davy Mooney (JV) 8p Buffa’s: David Hull and Meschiya Lake (JV) 5p, McDermott and Chloe Feoranzo (JV) 8p Bullet’s: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 6:30p Chickie Wah Wah: Phil DeGruy (VR) 6p, Lynn Drury Band (BL) 8p Circle Bar: Natalie Mae (CW) 7p, Milkspot, Paper Bison, Enjoy the Weather (ID) 9:30p Covington Trailhead: Rockin’ the Rails Concert Series (VR) 5:30p Crazy Lobster: the Spanish Plaza 3 (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Funk Monkey (FK) 10p Dos Jefes: Rick Trolsen Jazz Quartet (JV) 9:30p Dragon’s Den: Dave Easley (VR) 6p, Ill Vibe with Matt Scott (EL) 8p; Upstairs: Soundclash (HH) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Gasa Gasa: Xena Zeitgeist’s Sexbomb Burlesque (BQ) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Ashlin Parker Trio (JV) 5p, Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Kerry Irish Pub: Chip Wilson (FO) 8:30p Le Bon Temps Roule: Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Little Gem Saloon: Reid Poole Duo (VR) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Allen Hebert (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Rumproller, Good For Nothin’ Band, Dysfunktional Bone (VR) 4p Maple Leaf: the Trio feat. Johnny Vidacovich and guests (FK) 11p Nunemaker Auditorium (Loyola University): Jazz Underground presents Ellis Marsalis and David Torkanowsky (JV) 7:30p Ogden Museum of Southern Art: Los Po-boy-citos (LT) 6p Palm Court Jazz Café: Leroy Jones and Katja Toivola with Crescent City Joymakers (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Louis Ford (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Geno Delafose (ZY) 8:30p Siberia: Lost Bayou Ramblers, Pine Hill Haints (RK) 9p Snug Harbor: Jovino Santos Neto (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Sarah McCoy and the Oopsie Daisies (JV) 2p, Miss Sophie Lee (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Tom McDermott (JV) 5p Tipitina’s: KING, Nick Hakim (VR) 9p Tropical Isle Original: the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p Vaughan’s Lounge: Corey Henry and the Treme Funktet (FK) 10p W XYZ Bar: Chris Rehm (VR) 5:30p

FRIDAY OCTOBER 28

Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Harmonouche (JV) 5p, Willie Green (JV) 7:30p Bombay Club: Russell Welch (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Alexandra Scott and Harry Mayronne (VR) 5p, Blake Amos (VR) 8p, Gumbo Cabaret (VR) 11p

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Bullet’s: Original Pinettes (BB) 8:30p Burgundy Bar (the Saint Hotel): Burgundy Burlesque: A Trixie Minx Production (BQ) 9p Chickie Wah Wah: Michael Pearce (BL) 6p, Paul Sanchez (RR) 8p, Harold Lopez-Nussa (VR) 10p Crazy Lobster: Ken Swartz and the Palace of Sin (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Honey Island Swamp Band, John Mooney and Bluesiana (RR) 10p Dragon’s Den: Loose Marbles (JV) 7p, the Tipping Point with DJ RQ Away (HH) 10p; Upstairs: Comedy Fuck Yeah (CO) 7p, Latin Night (LT) 11p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: Relapse with Matt Scott (VR) 10p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): the Coldwater Electric albumrelease party (RK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p, Burlesque Ballroom feat. Trixie Minx and Michael Watson (BQ) 11:59p Kerry Irish Pub: Mark Appleford (FO) 5p, Mark Hessler and friends (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Cullen Landry and Midnight Streetcar feat. Johnny Pennino (VR) 7p Little Tropical Isle: Reed Lightfoot (RK) 5p, Frank Fairbanks (RK) 9p Maison: Shynola, Broadmoor Jazz Band, Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 1p, Ballers Ball feat. Mannie Fresh and guests (HH) 10p Maple Leaf: Eric Struthers, Ike Stubblefield and Herlin Riley (FK) 11p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Palm Court Jazz Café: Kevin Louis and Palm Court Jazz Band with Karl Budo (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Wendell Brunious (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall Brass Band feat.

Daniel Farrow (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Colin Lake (BL) 10p Saturn Bar: Valparaiso Men’s Chorus (FO) 10p Snug Harbor: Ellis Marsalis Quintet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Andy J. Forest (JV) 2p, Washboard Chaz Blues Trio (JV) 6p, New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings (JV) 10p Three Muses: Matt Johnson (JV) 5:30p, Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue (JV) 9p Tipitina’s: the Jayhawks, Folk Uke (VR) 10p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p, the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p W XYZ Bar: Jon Roniger (SS) 5:30p

SATURDAY OCTOBER 29

Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, Red Organ Trio (JV) 4p, Live Jazz (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas: G and her Swinging 3, Johnny Mastro, Caesar Brothers (JV) 1p Banks Street Bar: PYMP Halloween Bash (EL) 10p Blue Nile: Soul Rebels (BB) 11p Bombay Club: Bill Solley and Kim Prevost (JV) 8:30p Buffa’s: Red Hot Jazz Band (JV) 11a, Davis Rogan (VR) 5p, Royal Rounders (VR) 8p, Swamp Kitchen (JV) 11p Chickie Wah Wah: Susan Cowsill’s Covered in Vinyl Series preesents ABBA (VR) 9p Crazy Lobster: the River Gang (VR) 11a Creole Cookery: Trad Stars Jazz Band (JV) 11a d.b.a.: Monster Jam Mash-Up feat. Eric McFadden, Papa Mali, Simon Lott, Ron Johnson, Queen Delphine, Margie Perez, DJ Quickie Mart, Lantz Lazwell and the Vibe Tribe (VR) 11p Dos Jefes: Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots (ZY) 10p Dragon’s Den: Swinging Gypsies (JV) 7p ;Upstairs: Talk Nerdy to Me (BQ) 7p, Graveyard Smash Bash with DJ G (VR) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 2p, Blues Masters feat. Big Al (BL) 8:30p Hi-Ho Lounge: Wait, What? Comedy (CO) 8p, Hustle feat.

DJ Soul Sister (FK) 11p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): See Brights Lights, Paris Ave., Campground (PK) 9p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield (JV) 8p Joy Theater: Monsters of Funk feat. Bernard Purdie, Ivan Neville, Leo Nocentelli, Oteil Burbridge, Dirty Dozen Brass Band Horns, the Motet (VR) 10p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Neisha Ruffins (JV) 8:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Mark Parsons (FO) 5p, Roux the Day (FO) 9p Little Gem Saloon: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 7 & 9p Maison: Chance Bushman and the Ibervillianaires, Dinosaurchestra, Smoking Time Jazz Club (JV) 1p, Miss Mojo, Big Easy Brawlers (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Flow Tribe (FK) 11p Mardi Gras World: Hell’s Gala feat. Steve Aoki, Mija, Bleep Bloop, Wuki, Klutch, P-TAB, Sunsabetches, LoMeyn, Zupparty, Dino Brawl, B2B, C-LAB (VR) 9p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a

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LIVE LOCAL MUSIC Old Point Bar: Maid of Orleans (RK) 9:30p Palm Court Jazz Café: Brian O’Connell and Palm Court Jazz Band with Ernie Elly (TJ) 8p Pontchartrain Vineyards: Jazz’n the Vines feat. Roddie Romero and the Hub City All-Stars (KJ) 6:30p Preservation Hall: Joint Chiefs of Jazz feat. Jamie Wight (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat. Charlie Gabriel (TJ) 8p Rock ‘n’ Bowl: Bonerama (BB) 9:30p Snug Harbor: Ike Stubblefield (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (JV) 12p, Panorama Jazz Band (JV) 6p, Jumbo Shrimp (JV) 10p Three Muses: Shotgun Jazz Band (JV) 9p Time Out: Andre Bouvier and the Royal Bohemians (VR) 11a Tipitina’s: Galactic, Gravy (FK) 11p Tropical Isle Bourbon: Rhythm and Rain (RK) 5p, Debi and the Deacons (RK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Down River (RK) 1p, the Hangovers (RK) 5:15p, Late As Usual (RK) 9:15p

SUNDAY OCTOBER 30

Bacchanal: the Tangiers Combo (JV) 12p, the Tradsters (JV) 4p, Roamin’ Jasmine (JV) 7:30p Banks Street Bar: Stuff N Things (FK) 4p Bombay Club: Oscar Rossignoli (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Some Like It Hot! (TJ) 10:30a, Doyle Cooper Jazz Band (JV) 7p Chickie Wah Wah: Pat Flory and Mike Kerwin (BL) 6p, Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns (JV) 8p Circle Bar: Micah McKee and friends, Blind Texas Marlin (FO) 7p, Country Night with DJ Pasta (CW) 10p Civic Theater: Here Come the Mummies, Peelander-Z (RK) 9:30p Crazy Lobster: the Neon Shadows (VR) 4p d.b.a.: Palmetto Bugs Stompers (SI) 6p Dragon’s Den: Jazz Jam (JV) 7p, Church (EL) 10p Funky Pirate: Mark and the Pentones (BL) 4p, Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: NOLA Comedy Hour Open Mic (CO) 8p, Bate Bunda (AF) 10p House of Blues (the Parish): Bad Girls of Burlesque (BQ) 8p Howlin’ Wolf (the Den): Hot 8 Brass Band (BB) 10p Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Germaine Bazzle (JV) 8p Kermit’s Mother-in-Law Lounge: Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 5:30p Kerry Irish Pub: Will Dickerson (FO) 8:30p Maison: Chance Bushman and the NOLA Jitterbugs, Royal Street Winding Boys (JV) 10a, Nickel-A-Dance feat.

Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers (JV) 4p, Brad Walker, Higher Heights (VR) 7p Maple Leaf: Joe Krown Trio feat. Russell Batiste and Walter “Wolfman” Washington (FK) 10p Morning Call City Park: Billy D. Chapman (JV) 10a Palm Court Jazz Café: Lucien Barbarin and Sunday Night Swingsters with Tom Fischer (TJ) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Legacy Band feat.

Gregg Stafford (TJ) 6p, Preservation Hall All-Stars feat.

Wendell Brunious (TJ) 8p Snug Harbor: James Singleton Quartet (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: John Lisi (JV) 12p, Jamey St. Pierre and the Honeycreepers (JV) 2p, Kristina Morales and Bayou Shufflers (JV) 6p, Pat Casey and the New Sound (JV) 10p Three Muses: Raphael et Pascal (JV) 5p, Linnzi Zaorski (JV) 8p Tipitina’s: Sunday Youth Music Workshop feat. Stanton Moore Trio (VR) 1p Tropical Isle Bayou Club: Brandon Moreau and Cajungrass (KJ) 2p, Bayou Cajun Swamp Band (KJ) 7p

MONDAY OCTOBER 31

Bacchanal: Raphael Bas (JV) 12p, Helen Gillet (JV) 7:30p Bamboulas: Mark Rubin and Chip Wilson, Swinging Gypsies, Blue Monday Jam with Ed Wills (JV) 12p Banks Street Bar: Dignity Reve’s Piano Showcase (PI) 7p; Lilli Lewis (RB) 9p Bombay Club: John Royen (JV) 8p Buffa’s: Arsene DeLay (VR) 5p, Antoine Diel (JV) 8p Café Istanbul: Rumer Willis (VR) 8p Chickie Wah Wah: Benny Maygarden and Thomas “Mad Dog” Walker (VR) 6p, Alex McMurray (SS) 8p Circle Bar: Phil the Tremelo King (VR) 7p, All the Colors of the Dark presents Beyond the Darkness XI (EL) 8p Crazy Lobster: the Insta-Gators (VR) 5p d.b.a.: Morning 40 Federation (RK) 10p Dragon’s Den: Kala Bazaar Swing Society (JV) 8p, DJ RQ Away, DJ Otto, DJ Jubilee (HH) 10p Funky Pirate: Willie Lockett Band (BL) 8p Hi-Ho Lounge: Bluegrass Pickin’ Party (BU) 8p, Natalita, Tasche and the Psychedelic Roses, Spare Change (PK) 10p

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Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse: Irvin Mayfield and Purple Disrespect (JV) 8p Jackson Brewery: Theatre Nouveau feat. Cherry Bombshell and Queenie O’Hart (BQ) 7:30p Joy Theater: Big Gigantic, Illenium (VR) 9p Kerry Irish Pub: Van Hudson and friends (FO) 9p Little Tropical Isle: Frank Fairbanks (RK) 5p, Reed Lightfoot (RK) 9p Maison: Chicken and Waffles, Aurora Nealand and the Royal Roses (JV) 4p, Full Orangutan, Brass-A-Holics, Soul Company (FK) 10p Maple Leaf: Halloween Show (VR) 9p Morning Call: Valerie Sassyfras (VR) 10a Ooh Poo Pah Doo: James Andrews and the Crescent City All-Stars, Bobby Love (VR) 8p Preservation Hall: Preservation Hall Jazz Masters feat.

Leroy Jones (TJ) 8p RF’s: John Marcey Duo (JV) 4p, Jamie Lynn Vessels (RK) 7p the Saint: Motown Mondays with DJ Shane Love (SO) 10p Snug Harbor: Charmaine Neville Band (JV) 8 & 10p Spotted Cat: Up Up We Go (JV) 12p, Sarah McCoy and the Oopsie Daisies (JV) 2p, Dominick Grillo and the Frenchmen St. All-Stars (JV) 6p, Jazz Vipers (JV) 10p Tipitina’s: the Funky Meters (FK) 9p Tropical Isle Original: Graham Robertson (RK) 5:15p, Trop Rock Express (RK) 9:15p

FESTIVALS SEPT. 30-OCT. 1 The Bear Creek Bayou music festival at Mardi Gras World includes performances by the Flaming Lips, George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and many others.

BearCreekBayou.com OCT. 7-9 The Gretna Heritage Festival features a live music, German beer garden, an Italian food village, arts and crafts, and food vendors. Gretnafest.com OCT. 7-9 The Voice of the Wetlands Festival features regional music, Cajun food and art vendors at a new location (5403 W. Park Ave.) in Houma. VoiceOfTheWetlands.org OCT. 9-11 Gentilly Fest includes live music, a gospel tent, food and drink vendors, arts and crafts, and a kids’ village.

GentillyFest.com OCT. 13-16 Festival Acadiens et Creoles takes place in Lafayette’s Girard Park and features five stages of music, regional food vendors, arts and crafts and kids’ activities.

FestivalsAcadiens.com OCT. 14-16 The Crescent City Blues and BBQ Festival takes place in Lafayette Square and features performances by Taj Mahal, Jon Cleary, Tab Benoit, Cedric Burnside and others.

JazzAndHeritage.org/Blues-Fest OCT. 15 The annual family-friendly Boo Carre Halloween and Harvest Festival in the French Market includes trick-ortreating for kids. FrenchMarket.org OCT. 22-23 The family-friendly Rougarou Festival in downtown Houma includes an evening parade, live music and a costume contest. RougarouFest.org OCT. 23 The Oak Street Po-Boy Festival celebrates the classic sandwich with food vendors, live music and arts and crafts.

PoboyFest.com OCT. 28-30 The three-day Voodoo Music + Arts Experience in City Park includes live music, regional cuisine and interactive art installations. VoodooFestival.com OCT. 29 The Louisiana Book Festival is held in Baton Rouge’s State Capitol building and includes author panels and books for sale. LouisianaBookFestival.org

SPECIAL EVENTS OCT. 21-21, 28-29 Audubon Institute holds its annual family-friendly Boo at the Zoo event featuring trick-or-treating, a Ghost Train, haunted house and games. AudubonNatureInstitute.org/BATZ

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Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival Sat., Oct. 15 St. Charles Stage 7 p.m.

Taj Mahal

Photo: ELSA HAHNE

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he name of musician Taj Mahal can bring to mind any number of tunes, genres or instruments, depending on what period of his over five-decade career made a memorable impact on a listener. For fans of blues and folk, maybe the strains of “Fishin’ Blues” comes to mind, with a laid-back Taj strumming his guitar and softly singing the homey lyrics. In a similar mode, strains of “Queen Bee,” off of Mahal’s 1997 Grammy-winning album, Señor Blues, might be the tune that one best associates with the remarkably versatile artist.

Taj Mahal could be deemed a musical archeologist, one who has continually dug into the roots of the artistic and cultural creations of people from around the globe.

He particularly admires those who have kept their traditions alive despite the intrusions and urgings of the commercial world.

Mahal played alongside some of the best African artists, including the brilliant Nigerian vocalist Fela Kuti and Mali’s stunning kora player, Toumani Diabaté. He experienced the full circle of the diaspora by collaborating with these legends—reaching back to his own roots in the continent. In turn, his highly regarded reputation helped bring awareness of these masters to American audiences.

On a local level, Mahal recorded with zydeco accordionist/vocalist Geno Delafose and keepers of the Cajun flame, accordionist Marc and violinist Ann Savoy. “I’m a huge fan of Clifton Chenier,” Taj declares with much enthusiasm. “What a wonderful music, what a wonderful culture. And something that is still solid. That’s what I’m for, people who believe in themselves and create stuff.” If he gets a chance, Taj hopes to get to Dooky Chase and see chef Leah as well as run up on some of his many musical friends in New Orleans. “I have a song that I need some bad ass trumpet or trombone on,” Taj temptingly puts out there. “Maybe Shorty [trombonist Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews] or Kermit [trumpeter Kermit Ruffins].”

Taj stands as a product of musical parents who embraced and were a part of the enlightened artistic outlook of the Harlem Renaissance era. Because of his culturally mixed upbringing and background, he saw few boundaries and many similarities in the www.OFFBEAT.com

music to which he was exposed. As a young child, he says, he already was aware of New Orleans’ importance in music overall and it being the birthplace of jazz.

Throughout your career you have performed and recorded a diversity of styles: blues, jazz, Caribbean, Afrobeat, reggae, rhythm and blues, Hawaiian, zydeco, gospel and more. What sparked these explorations?

My mother’s family are migrants from South Carolina to New York City, bringing

By Geraldine Wyckoff

talks back

that whole culture with them, and my father’s [family] are immigrants to the United States from the Caribbean. My dad was a jazz musician, a bebop pianist, and my mother was a gospel singer. So I was just curious to where things came from—like music. While I was a youngster comin’ up I just learned as much as I could.

I’m about the history of the music and the connections. You take a bunch of people and put them on some boats and you bring them thousands of miles away and spread them between South America, Central America, the O CTO BER 2 016

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“I don’t think jazz could have happened in any other city in the United States. New Orleans had a very special mix that made jazz.”

Caribbean and the American South and you’ve got a lot of relatives and you’ve got all this music that develops. So they’re already related.

You’re also known to play a number of different instruments. How and why did that come about?

When I was a kid, I didn’t have the money to have certain kinds of bands but I might have had the money to buy an instrument and learn how to play it—a banjo or harmonica or whatever.

All those instruments are personalities— they’re like people. Some of them stay quiet because popular music kind of dictates what people listen to. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with that instrument because it’s not popular at the moment.

At the Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, you’re playing with your trio with bassist Bill Rich and drummer Kester Smith.

These guys have been with you for decades. How did you hook up?

Back in the late ’60s, Bill was playing bass with [drummer] Buddy Miles. I went to hear a rehearsal and I’m always listening to the musicians in a band. I said ‘Oh, that bass player he’s really kicking it.’ A lot of times guys sound like their instrument and the other ones sound like the music. Well he sounded like the music and real good. I thought I certainly would like to work with somebody who plays that well. Eventually, I gave him a call and we started playing and traveling. As I kept putting different projects together he kept being the most solid bass player who knew my material and who was creative with it.

I was on this [PBS] show called Soul! and Kester was playing drums with this Caribbean group. The band was interesting because they had no bass player. Wow, they were really good. He [Smith] seemed to have all kinds of things going on. I had never seen anybody play like that—really open.

So I was putting a band together and we found out where he was playing and he gave notice and about a month later he joined me.

He’s been up there in the drum chair pretty much from the ’70s. He’s been in and out of a lot of my projects.

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Considering your many musical interests, what will you be up to at the festival and what instruments will you be bringing?

We’ll focus on blues and we’ll have the cousins and uncles and aunts and other relatives [in the mix]. I usually have four guitars with me plus a ukulele and a banjo. [In Hawaiian] ‘uku’ is a flea and ‘lele’ means to jump. So when people watched someone play it, it looked like a flea jumping on the strings.

I started playing ukulele long after I lived in Hawaii. I heard Hawaiian music when I was a very young child and I was struck by how deeply soulful it was. That music comes from way deep down as any African-based music—that I love—does, or soul music or gospel. I wondered ‘Who are these people?’

Hawaiian music, which was real popular in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, is responsible for the slide guitar. The Hawaiians were the ones who started that. It ended up in the Delta, the cowboys play it, the country guys, the blues guys play it, the Africans play it.

I’m one of these guys who is interested in people and their culture. If you do something unique that you continue to do even when everybody is trying to make you be some kind of contemporary bozo, I’m interested. I ask, ‘Where’s the idea coming from?’

New Orleans certainly fits into that category and is an important part of the African diaspora you talk about.

It’s one of my favorite cities in the world.

It’s the blending of ideas and influences. You have indigenous people that were there, you have the African contingent that was brought in, you have the Spanish, you have the French, you have the Caribbean. You have every kind of quarter in that city. Then they put it together and made a gumbo and made music and something that everybody in the world wanted to be a part of and it’s still going on. I don’t think jazz could have happened in any other city in the United States. New Orleans had a very special mix that made jazz.

You perform in New Orleans fairly often—the last time was with your trio at this year’s Jazz Fest. Folks here often pride themselves on really getting into live shows and dancing.

I played this place and that place, Tipitina’s, and it’s always good. I think that the audiences there are much more knowledgeable music-wise. I love them. I love them.

In 2013 you brought your Real Thing Tuba Band to Jazz Fest. I think there were like 10 tubas on stage including a New Orleans contingent that had Kirk Joseph and Phil Frazier on stage. That was so much fun. Have you ever resurrected it since then?

That year, they asked me if I was going to come to New Orleans and what I was going to do. I said, ‘Well, I’ll come if I can bring the Tuba Band.’ As soon as the New Orleans guys heard I was playing tuba style, they said, ‘Oh no, you’re not comin’ down here if we can’t play in that.’ I said, ‘Of course you can play—I’m wide open for some playing.’

Anytime we want to we can bring the tuba band out. We played the [2013] Playboy Jazz Festival in the Hollywood Bowl.

You’ve collaborated and played with so many different people. Are there some musicians that were particularly close to your soul and spirit?

That’s how I pick people to work with.

Some people [also] come pick me. One of the people that I worked with who was really tremendous was Jesse Ed Davis. He was a guitar player and he and I did a good bit of the arrangements on some of the early albums. Oh, Toumani Diabaté The reason I’m in there is that I see the value of the music and what it is to get together with these people.

Is there anyone who’d you like to collaborate with?

Somebody like Chuck D. I have some material that he could step in and do something with. I like a lot of the contemporary musicians who are doing something with the music.

Do you have a shout out to the city?

New Orleans, y’all got it. I’m comin’ to get some of it.

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