This was our eighth trip to New Orleans for Jazz Fest, and the seventh for the entire festival. We have the trip nailed by now, and if you have been reading these voluminous entries, so do you!
But first, let me tell you a story, one that must be read to be believed.
This year was the 50th New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and the festival producers had planned to celebrate the golden anniversary in a big way, by bringing in the Rolling Stones. The Stones would headline on a special, premium-priced day, with attendance strictly limited. The chosen day was what had been the only Thursday of Jazz Fest, leading off the second weekend. This day was historically known as "Locals Thursday," with discounted tickets available for Louisiana residents.
To compensate, for the loss of Locals Thursday, the producers added an eighth day of Jazz Fest, a new Locals Thursday, but on the Thursday before the first weekend. They also offered locals discounts to the Rolling Stones day. That was all well and good, except that it caused us (and I'm sure many others) to change our travel plans. Ordinarily we would fly into town later in the day on Wednesday and do our errands in a more leisurely manner during the day on Thursday. Now, we'd be traveling and doing compressed errands on Wednesday and Festing on Thursday. Our "Daze Between," ordinarily Monday to Wednesday after the first weekend, would extend to a fourth day, because we weren't going to pay $185 each on top of all of the other money that we spend on this trip, just to see the Rolling Stones. I mean, I like the Stones and all and really enjoyed seeing them ... in 1978! (And then it only cost $12.50!)
Then there was the matter of the Brass Pass. When we bought these passes from WWOZ, we expected that they would be for the usual seven days as in previous years. However, when Jazz Fest announced the extra premium day, they also said that the Brass Pass would not be valid on "Rolling Stones Thursday." This caught WWOZ and many Brass Pass holders, many of whom had already made travel arrangements that did not include the new Thursday, by surprise. Many claimed false advertising because the ticket was sold for specific dates that were changed after the sale. It was bad public relations for Jazz Fest, and also indirectly for WWOZ. Jazz Fest attempted to make up for it by announcing that the WWOZ hospitality tent would be open on the second Thursday and by offering the locals discount to Brass Pass holders through WWOZ. That helped some, but still left a bad taste in many a mouth.
The saga continues. On March 30, shortly after the cubes were released, and less than a month before Jazz Fest was to begin, the Rolling Stones cancelled the remainder of their North American tour as Mick Jagger need immediate surgery for a heart condition. This was a huge blow to Jazz Fest. The entire May 2 schedule at the Fair Grounds was built around the Rolling Stones. All the other stages were to go dark at 4 p.m., an hour before the Stones were to start up at the Acura stage. Refunds needed to be offered and package deals had to be adjusted and refunded as well.
You can see the cubes for the star-crossed "Rolling Stones Thursday" here.
Four days later, Jazz Fest announced that Fleetwood Mac would replace the Rolling Stones. Tickets would be the regular price, locals would receive their discount, and Jazz Fest would present the usual full lineup. However, they announced that Brass Passes still would not be accepted on that day.
The improbable saga continued four days after that, though, when Fleetwood Mac bowed out after Stevie Nicks became ill. Once again the producers had to scramble for a replacement. They found an old standby in Widespread Panic, who, ironically, had often headlined on Locals Thursday in years past.
What a debacle! For us, it wasn't such a big deal. We had to change our flight on Wednesday and scramble a bit on that day, but in the end it would get us an extra day of music at Jazz Fest. To be honest, the Stones thing just seemed like a big ego trip for the Jazz and Heritage Foundation and a perk for the Jazz Fest promoters and sponsors, with little regard for the loyal Jazz Fest attendees (and WWOZ listeners) but that's all I'm going to say about it. The end.
So on Wednesday, April 24, our daughter took us to the Washington Dulles International Airport, then TSA Pre got us through security, the AeroTrain (no people mover, thankfully) got us to the terminal, and our feet got us to the gate for our 8:30 a.m. flight on United Airlines. All without any trouble at all. There was the usual assortment of people at the gate, including a music industry type working out some bookings and a couple doting on their baby but hating on each other. We each had a spinach, feta, and egg white sandwich from the nearby Starbucks for breakfast.
It was then that I noticed that Laurie was posing a pink guitar pick in various locations. The posing and posting of "Shrimpy," as the pick came to be known, became a thing for her throughout the trip, a really fun diversion.
The flight from Dulles to the Louis Armstrong International Airport was smooth and uneventful. We crossed Lake Ponchartrain and approached the airport from the west, so we had no view of the city on the way in. As we taxied to the gate, we could see the gleaming new terminal scheduled to open later this year. The opening has been delayed many times, though, so we couldn't really be certain that this would be our last time in the old terminal.
A speedy ride on the Airport Shuttle got us to the Staybridge Suites hotel at the corner of Poydras and Tchoupitoulas, and we were checked in and in our room on the 17th floor, the one with that marvelous view of the Mississippi River that makes some of the quirkiness of the Staybridge worthwhile, very quickly. This was good because we were very hungry and had a number of errands to run. It was also good to get checked in early so we could change out of our April-in-Virginia clothes and into something more befitting the 80+ degrees and humidity we encountered in New Orleans. It did not take Laurie's hair very long to get its NOLA frizz on!
Note: Later this year, the Staybridge would be completely gutted and turned into the Kimpton Hotel Fontenot, and we won't be staying there any more for sure. No more river views for us, at least from this building! Farewell, Staybridge.
The way we figured out our schedule was to first provision the room, so we went to the Rouses Market on Girod Street at Barrone, a few blocks from the hotel by way of Lafayette Square. It's a full-service market, so we bee-lined to the prepared-foods area and got some paninis for lunch. I had a Cuban, and Laurie had a Greek. As in paninis. The folks making them were a bit frazzled, I think because one of them was new and the other was spending a lot of time helping her. But the sandwiches were pretty good nonetheless. We ate in an area decorated with wall graphics showing the car dealership that used to be in the building.
After dropping off the provisions (we even remembered to bring our reusable Rouses bags!), we headed over to Canal Street and the Sheraton, where we got our Jazz Fest Express shuttle bus tickets for the eight days of Jazz Fest. That's right, eight days! We decided that we would go for the extra day because after all it's Jazz Fest, and the lineup was actually pretty good. We then headed across the French Quarter to pick up our Brass Passes. On the way we passed through Jackson Square, where one of our favorite local brass bands was playing. They are in the picture at the top of this page.
Previously we had picked up Brass Passes at the WWOZ studio in the French Market. That was pretty convenient as we were almost always in that area. This year, they changed the pickup location to the George and Joyce Wein Jazz and Heritage Center, home of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. That's on North Rampart Street, which divides the French Quarter from the Tremé neighborhood, a walk of about 10 blocks up from the WWOZ studio, which itself is on the far end of the French Quarter for us. The steps were piling up! Once there we did get the Brass Passes, but we could not get any information about what would be happening on the second Thursday. Would the Brass Pass be valid? Would it allow us to get a ticket at a discount? Nobody seemed to know anything about it. So, while we had decided that we were going to attend that day, we still had no idea how.
Last year we went to our first in-store concert at the Louisiana Music Factory, an old-school record store on Frenchmen Street near the French Market. We had a great time there, and when we saw that one of the concerts today was the New Orleans Suspects, one of our favorite bands, we knew we had to do that.
We arrived in plenty of time to get a spot in one of the aisles close to the performance space, and were treated to 40 minutes of awesome New Orleans funk from this great group. I mean, any band that has among its members someone who played sax for James Brown has got to be good, right?
Here is my video of the New Orleans Suspects at the Louisiana Music Factory today, and here is a longer video of today's set from LMF's own feed. There's a whole bunch of audio recordings from the Suspects on archive.org, and here is a full concert video from earlier this month at the Suwannee Rising Festival in Florida.
As long we had to pass through the French Market area on our way back to the hotel, we made a stop at one of our favorite hangouts, the Envie Espresso Bar and Café on Decatur Street at Barracks. We consumed a couple of adult lattes and gave our weary legs a rest, sitting at an open-air table and soaking in the weather and the people. We were really glad to be back.
During the walk back to the hotel along the river, we noticed that the wind was really picking up, and not off the Gulf. That was not a good sign for the opening of Jazz Fest tomorrow. We shall see.
After a bit of rest at the hotel, we set off for some dinner, stopping for a few minutes at Lafayette Square to hear some of the Wednesday at the Square concert series, this week featuring Marc Broussard. We are mixed about Broussard. His set started out with some real good original soulful roots rock, but soon he started doing covers of old R&B classics, which didn't really move us. So we moved on to dinner.
There's a lot of Marc Broussard to listen to at archive.org if you are interested in his bayou-type soul music. Here is my video from Lafayette Square this evening, and here is something a bit longer from the Acura stage at Jazz Fest in 2014.
As night fell we ended up at a new restaurant for us, called Seaworthy. It's in the business district on Carondelet Street, sort of between Lafayette Square and the Rouses we were at previously. With a name like Seaworthy, you can imagine what they serve. Specialties are wild-caught or sustainably harvested oysters from American waters as well as locally sourced fish. The setting is a classic Creole cottage built in 1832. From our table in the candlelit dining room on the second floor, the ancient St. Charles line streetcars rumbled by every few minutes. A simply wonderful atmosphere.
We each had an Urban South Holy Roller IPA in the oyster bar while we waited for a table, which did not take very long at all. Once seated, we had our oysters, four different types from the Gulf Coast: Wild Gulf and Queen Bess from Louisiana, Alligator Cove from Florida, and Murder Point from Alabama. Laurie's dinner was red snapper with gochujang (spicy Korean red-pepper paste)-marinated squash, green beans, and turmeric broth. I had redfish with chili butter, roasted new potatoes, mustard greens, and satsuma (a small Asian orange) vinaigrette. Both were off the chart. For dessert we shared an almond semifreddo with fresh Louisiana strawberries. We will be back.
But there's more on this busy, busy day. Our friend Rachel from the U.K. decided this year to celebrate her 50th birthday at the 50th Jazz Fest. As luck would have it, her hotel was literally right next door to ours, at the Old 77 Hotel and Chandlery, so we decided to meet for a drink in her lobby bar and go over logistics for tomorrow. The bar just happened to be associated with the wonderful Compere Lapin restaurant, the place where we had our best dinner out (so far) in New Orleans. I stayed with beer, switching to NOLA Brewing’s Hopitoulas IPA. Laurie had a Red Witch, a most intriguing mixture of boubon, scotch, pinot noir, and madeira, poured over a giant ice cube with pink peppercorns.
A long but very satisfying day. As Dr. John would say, it's always great Goin' Back to New Orleans.
