Issue Articles
Davell Crawford
Davell Crawford spends a lot of time on the bayou these days. Not a bayou in Louisiana, where he lived and worked for decades—but a Hudson River bayou just upstate from Manhattan, where he’s made his home and creative base since Katrina. His idiosyncratic, often brilliant career earned him the nickname “Piano Prince of New Orleans” a long time ago, but maybe now he can add “Piano Prince of Piermont” to his resume.
Bonerama
It’s fine to blow your own horn sometimes, especially when you’re in a band full of trombone players. So, Bonerama leader Mark Mullins can be proud of the fact that his band just made a strong album in six weeks’ time, from first notes to mixdown—and one of those weeks even included the Christmas holidays. The album, So Much Love, breaks a seven-year recording silence, gets some of their recent live standouts on disc, and introduces the latest incarnation of the long-admired band.
Bill Summers
For an album with only four tracks on it, Herbie Hancock’s 1973 opus Head Hunters made a mighty impression. It expanded the bounds of fusion, resonating with funk/R&B fans the way Mahavishnu and Chick Corea had looped in the prog-rockers. It contributed at least two standards to the repertoire, “Chameleon” and the reworked version of “Watermelon Man.” And it birthed a band that’s on its third or fourth life right now.
Vicki Peterson & John Cowsill
One night in April 1979, a young Vicki Peterson took herself to a Cowsills show at a small club in Redondo Beach. There were absolutely no fireworks when she had a fannish encounter with her teenage crush—the drummer, John Cowsill.
Boyfriend
Suzannah Powell is formally breaking up with her Boyfriend. The performance alter-ego that she’s worked under for the past 15 years is being retired, and this year’s will be the final Boyfriend show at Jazz Fest (though not the last altogether, a farewell tour is coming later in the year). But this year she’s also staging her concept piece, In The Garden, which signals her future direction: A return to her first love, musical theater. So, this year marks a fresh start as well as an ending.
Paul Sanchez
Paul Sanchez is used to being called a world-class songwriter. He’s less used to being called “one tough motherfucker,” which is how a friend recently put it. But the road that brought him back to Jazz Fest this year included toughing through some serious health issues and facing a long struggle to regain his singing voice.
Dayna Kurtz and Robert Maché
When you see Dayna Kurtz and Robert Maché onstage together, the first thing you notice—aside from the fact that he’s a killer guitarist and she’s got a voice to die for—is the rapport they have together. It’s both personal and musical, as they complete each other’s jokes as easily as they get into a song.
Little Feat
There are likely a lot of people who still presume that Little Feat is a New Orleans band—and spiritually speaking, they are. You name the connection, they’ve got it: The Feat have made regular Jazz Fest appearances, performed and recorded with local icons, and saluted New Orleans by name in a few great songs. They are regulars on the Big Easy Cruise line up and they’ve even had their share of dinners at Cochon.
George Porter Jr.
When most artists attain legendary status, they usually cut their gigs down to a high-profile few. That’s hardly the case with George Porter, Jr. He may be a bass master, an ex-Meter and a cornerstone of funk, but he’s also the guy who plays the Maple Leaf without fail on Monday nights—only missing the show if he’s on the road or recovering from surgery, as he was last summer. Otherwise, you’ll find him every week, laying it down on his home turf. And over the next two weeks, wherever in New Orleans you’re at, the man will be hard to miss.
Sweet Crude: Drums and Voices
There are two phrases that Sweet Crude try their hardest to avoid when talking about their upcoming project: One is “back to our roots,” the other is “with a little help from our friends.” Both phrases are things you’ve heard many times before, while Sweet Crude’s music decidedly is not.
