The 2013 Jazz & Heritage Festival of New Orleans came to a close on Sunday with beautiful weather and groovin’ music. It was four days of temptational bliss, from the food to the culture to the music and brand new friendships born in the mud and rain and Patti Smith warblings. If you were there, rubber booted and ponchoed on Thursday and Friday, sandaled and bare-legged for Saturday and Sunday, then you ran the gamut of hot and cold, rain and wind, Black Keys and Frank Ocean. It was a time to hold hands while tromping through the mud so you wouldn’t slip and fall – and if you did, you went down together, laughing. It was a time for beer, beignets and snowballs between helpings of crawfish etouffee, alligator pie and boudin balls, never minding what your stomach would say later. And it was a time to just let go, forget the real world outside the gates and just enjoy, well, everything.
Weekend Two was jam-packed with music of all varieties, which is what Jazz Fest does best over all the other festivals. One couple standing in line to enter the fairgrounds told me they were just going to wander around and see where their ears led them. On Saturday, the only answer to “Who are you here to see the most?” was Fleetwood Mac. But oh the places you will go indeed and these were some of the things that made this weekend so memorable.
Dave Matthews’ conjuring the Rain Gods the first Sunday lasted through the week and into Thursday, which is known as locals day, but the crowds refused to be detoured by a few bothersome raindrops and held tight for Patti Smith and Widespread Panic. For the death knell rattlers who keep saying live music will soon be a thing of the past, Weekend Two proved them wrong – by the thousands. Nothing deterred music lovers from a good time and that was one of the most important highlights of Jazz Fest: live music is alive and well.
Mud. Everywhere. Up to your ankles, slippery and smelly. By Sunday, it had shrunk to islands amidst the bodies. No one went home without the brown earth somewhere on their clothes. And it was worth it.
Musically, the Black Keys rip-roared through a set that could have closed out the whole she-bang on Sunday, probably the best performance of Jazz Fest 2013, but it proved only an opening act for Trombone Shorty, blowing and snorting his way through a jazz-inflected rock & roll New Orleans-style party. People will return again next year just because this boy knows how to close down the joint.
Up & comers, like the Revivalists and Mutemath, bullied their way into the Saturday Fleetwood Mac-heavy crowd and burst out with an energetic joie de vivre. The vocalists each jumped into the crowd, Mutemath’s Paul Meany even riding an inflatable black mattress atop a sea of hands before plunging back over the fence and headfirst right into a puddle of mud. Phoenix’s Thomas Mars also entered the crowd while singing their hit “1901.”
The girls took a commanding stance this weekend, proving they were not just pretty faces to look at. Amanda Shaw sashayed her flirty young fiddle-playing self across the main stage on Sunday. The last time I saw her, she was about eleven years old and being called onstage to play with Cyndi Lauper; Christina Friis-Nielsen appearing just a little nervous as she made her debut at Jazz Fest singing with OTRA early on Sunday morning but providing some satisfyingly enjoyable vocals; and guitar player Ana Popovich tearing up some blues notes in a tight red dress.
With a loving embrace of our children, musicians called upon their smaller progeny to show off what their kin done gave’ em: Trombone player Corey Henry’s daughter on trumpet during Galactic’s set on Saturday; Frogman Henry’s grandchildren, one singing, the other being too shy and holding onto his “Ain’t Got No Home” grandpa, during the NOLA Classic R&B Revue set on Sunday; and numerous young Mardi Gras Indians – one telling me last weekend that his costume was handed down to him from his grandfather – keeping their heritage alive through generations.
Drummers were high-energy beat keepers all weekend: Mutemath’s Darren King with his duct-taped-on headphones, Cowboy Mouth’s Fred LeBlanc’s always animated hard-hitting antics, Patrick Carney whipping his sticks into a frenzy during the Black Keys’ Sunday set, the lanky legendary Mick Fleetwood, Stanton Moore of Galactic coming off his seat as the adrenalin pumps him up and Joey Peebles tearing the absolute skin off his drums during Trombone Shorty’s Fest closing performance.
The ladies poured out their souls: Irma Thomas invoking the spirit of Mahalia Jackson in the gospel tent, Patti Smith “Dancing Barefoot” in the pouring rain and Norah Jones’s lovely vocals lilting across the fairgrounds on “Remember Me” as she played piano with the Little Willies. Jones’s set was a definite top 5 highlight of the entire festival.
And the elder statesmen proving music has no age limit: 70 year old Taj Mahal with the Real Thing Tuba Band, 80 year old Willie Nelson 65 year old reggae artist Jimmy Cliff, 62 year old BeauSoleil cajun fiddler Michael Doucet, 69 year old New Orleans guitarist Walter “Wolfman” Washington, 70 year old George Benson and 65 year old funk bass player George Porter Jr.
And what of Maroon 5? Well, the third most popular band at Jazz Fest 2013 (behind Mac and Panic) played a fun, energetic set. For those who thought this band was nothing more than a fluffy pop side-vehicle for the sexy Adam Levine to play around with when not bantering with Blake Shelton on The Voice or canoodling with models, were surprised by the outright fun this band seems to have. The kids, of course, loved them – to the point of squealing and screaming at the top of their lungs, at times drowning out Levine altogether. But you couldn’t help but sing along, even if you didn’t know all the words, and dance around because the groove just made you; “One More Night” being the perfect example. James Valentine, with his golden locks blowing in the wind, conjured up some feverish guitar solos and Levine joked about a poster someone held up of a man on a motorcycle – “That is most certainly not me.” Come to find out, Levine after the show hung around long enough to find and sign that poster for the lucky fan.
Some unsung behind-the-sceners that deserve mentioning, and are never mentioned, are all the people who worked hard to make the festival enjoyable and, importantly, safe: the security men and women who watched over everyone, from the musicians on stage to the fans in the crowd; the clean-up crew; the food vendors sitting in booths that were hot as hell to provide us with mouth-watering taste-bud-dancing edibles; the cameramen with a hundred pounds of equipment sitting on their shoulders for hours on end to provide video of the music to those up close but more so for those way in the back; and the staff who actually put this whole extravaganza together. It is because of these people, who we don’t even realize are there, that Jazz Fest is what it is: a great big musical Disneyland.
Until next year … the music plays on …
