New Orleans Jazz Fest is Decadent and Depraved and Entirely Perfect
Notes on New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 2024
Everything that Las Vegas is, New Orleans is not, and that’s a damn good reality. Vegas is synthetic, built in a desert, and wholly a facsimile of more interesting places. New Orleans is organic, arising out of necessity, built on water, and filled with the wholly authentic. Like shitty pizza joints in Brooklyn, the phony doesn’t last long in New Orleans. The citizens sniff that nonsense out in half a millisecond and word travels fast. This principle extends to all aspects of the culture in the Gulf Coast - the food, the style, the language, and un-fucking-questionably, the music. Sweet mother of all things holy, the music.
Jazz, the first great American musical invention, was born here, and that thread and theme born of untrained musicians playing classical instruments does not merely survive here. It is as close to bedrock as this water-drenched city will ever know. Yes, of fucking course, the city existed before jazz and before all the other music, but this is not a history lesson (mostly). This is about my first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest.
My brother called me up and explained the lineup. I immediately transferred the funds and booked the flight. It was fucking game time. My semester was scheduled to end about a week before the festival was to begin, and for the first time in the 17 years Matt has lived in NOLA, the stars aligned for me to get there. I got off the plane and he picked me up in style, and that means a T-Top muscle car stripped to bare metal and absolutely growling with about 400 demons under the hood. Matt has always understood the assignment.
Got to the house, hugged my lovely sister-in-law, and started game planning for the first day of the fest. With ten stages operating simultaneously, this was too big an operation to make up entirely on the fly. The New Breed Brass Band with local legend Trombone Shorty set overlapped with John “Papa” Gros, CC Adcock & the Lafayette Marquis were on stage at the same time as the Jazz Vipers and that overlapped with the first 15 minutes of Dumpstaphunk’s set. Brothers gotta coordinate. What was NOT in question, at all, for even a second, was the 5 pm start time for some band from London formed 62 years ago - The Rolling Stones. Yes, they’re collectively 236 years old, not including former members, dead members, and the rest of the touring band. That said, they can do something no one else on this planet can do and that’s be the Rolling Stones.
If there’s proof rock ‘n’ roll is still alive it’s the Rolling fucking Stones.
-Dave Grohl, live on stage at Jazz Fest
Sure, Mick repeated the first verse of Tumbling Dice and Keef forgot some of the words to Little T&A, but HOLY FUCK that was what my soul needed. I danced nonstop for two hours and I felt joy resound in me in almighty Drop D tuning.
Here’s what Jazz Fest gets 100% correct without fail or fault:
Free water bottle refill stations. FREE. It’s fucking New Orleans in May. It’s gonna be hot and humid and that’s an immutable fact of Gulf Coast life. It’s not as hot as it’s GONNA be, but 86 degrees outside with heavy humidity is a damned issue. The refill stations were completely free, had plenty of taps, and were reasonably cold. This is so painfully obvious that the riots at other festivals (Looking at you, Woodstock ‘99) could steal a page from this professional event.
Plenty of toilets that weren’t overflowing with biological waste. They were all well-maintained, and they had separate facilities for women because anyone who’s ever been at a crowded bar or packed festival knows the ladies’ facilities are a medical disaster. Not at Jazz Fest. They were prepared and ready and it showed. Well fucking done.
Handicap accessibility. This is not just on the event organizers. Everyone I saw was not just willing but eager to help out handicapped people. Accommodations were easily available from special grandstands close to stages to various toilets that were locked and the code was only available to them. Absolutely brilliant.
Sober spaces. Man… staying sober in New Orleans requires a military special operations level of self-discipline. Those who maintain are the Medal of Honor recipients in the sober community. The sober spaces at the festival were thoughtful, well-designed, and conveniently placed. Absolutely awesome.
Reprieve from the heat. The festival is held at the horse-racing track, and the organizers make a point to have musicians play and displays set up inside the main concourse with the air-conditioning blasting indoors. Also, there are plenty of beautiful trees and shady spaces for concert-goers to relax under and in.
Security. This goes in two different directions and is important for two different reasons. Security at the entrances were… let’s just say cooooooooool. So fucking cool. They were not aggressive in any way about checking for, let’s just say substances. That said, they were exceptional about making sure walking lanes for disabled folks were clear, keeping walkways in incredibly jam-packed areas open for traffic, and kept people walking at the exits. This is a wildly unappreciated tactic, because people who stop in the middle of heavy traffic areas deserve to be beaten within an inch of their lives, but only off the walking path so as not to disturb the flow. I’ve said before that I want to carry a bullwhip on me to fulfill two fantasies: being Indiana Jones and whipping stupid pedestrians.
Day two of the festival was more of the same as day one with plenty of local heavy hitters, bonafide legends, and Jazz Fest favorites. Anders Osborne, a staple, was on the stage at the same as Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns who are an acquired taste but are perfect in their own way. Post-bop, jazz-fusion, funkonauts Galactic went bananas as they’re prone to, and the end of their set collided with the beginning of the Soul Rebels and Marc Broussard. Fucking choices, man.
They tell me Hozier was playing on the festival’s second biggest stage, and I believe it, but I can’t testify to it. Honestly, the greatest show of the festival, the most liberating, the most fun, the set that obliterated all the other rock stars (and only the rock stars) was the fabulous fucking Foo Fighters.
Clock’s ticking. Let’s play everything twice as fast.
-Dave Grohl, with about 15 minutes left to play
Two hours, 20 songs. They held nothing back. Dave paid homage to the legends at Preservation Hall and the other luminaries who had previously taken the main stage at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Dave is a world-class stage presence who serves up gold at each show, which brings me to…
The best things I heard at Jazz Fest:
“Nothing on stage, please. No drinks. No camera equipment. No panties.” - Joe Lastie's New Orleans Sound
“Nothing’s under control.” -Neil Young, who’s been known to turn a phrase from time to time
“To ra ra to ra ra la… Don’t ask me what that means ‘cuz I don’t know either.” - John Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen
And that leads me directly to…
The best band names at the festival in descending order:
Andy J. Forest & The Swampcrawlers
New Orleans Jazz Vipers
Naughty Professor
George Thorogood & The Destroyers
Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen
Day three, Saturday, saw Matt and I avoid the back and knee pain that comes with being a pair of 43-year-old men by posting up at the main stage in a pair of comfy chairs with plenty of cold beverages. We got ourselves plugged in for Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen, Tab Benoit, and Neil Young & Crazy Horse. The word ‘rollicking’ was created for musicians like Cleary, an Englishman weened on jazz, blues, and soul who honed his act at the storied Maple Leaf Club in NOLA. Tab Benoit put on a blistering blues set indicative of a man who built his following the old-fashioned way - playing any and every rathole, shithole, dive, dump, carnival, county fair, and festival that would let his band go on. Neil Young has perhaps gone further in his career than a man who disregards his audience’s whims probably should, but fuck it. The grizzled, grumpy Canuck has earned the right to play whatever the hell he wants. Carry on, Neil. He did serve up a few gifts in the form of Cinnamon Girl, a solo acoustic version of Ohio, and the fucking brilliant Hey Hey, My My which made me cry. It was a fine way to close the day.
Everywhere I looked, everywhere I turned throughout the festival there was music. The gospel tent was a full-on revival every single morning with unbridled joy. The Economy Hall tent was a steady stream of classic New Orleans jazz performed by a bevy of well-dressed wizards, sorcerers, and mystical conjurers. This is New Orleans, home to Mardi-Gras, and that means the second lines and the kids are going to get theirs.
These kids are better musicians now than I have been or will be.
The Cultural Exchange Pavillion highlights a different country each year, and this year was a chance to highlight the cumbia, vallenato, champeta, joropo, and bomba estéreo direct from Colombia.
Sunday, May 5, day four of festing and feasting, and yes, ANOTHER stacked bill. Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Earth, Wind & Fire, Thorogood & The Destroyers, Marcia Ball, Joe Bonamassa, The Radiators, NOLA supergroup Dragon Smoke, and the seemingly eternal Irma Thomas and Bonnie Raitt.
Final thought:
Jazz Festival is a holy thing. I am not a church man though I have been in many houses of worship. This is the finest of them all.