Issue Articles
Kids Tent
The Jazz Fest Kids’ Area isn’t just for kids. It’s for the young at heart of all ages who want to take a deep dive into creativity, dance and drum to Jamaican ska and reggae riddims from this year’s Cultural Exchange Pavilion artists and learn how to make their own Mardi Gras throws and costumes in the crafting tents.
Karen Ocker
Karen Ocker’s award-winning assemblage of art pieces mine the deep well of iconic New Orleans music and musicians and have been widely exhibited and collected throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Nan Parati
When you walk into the Fair Grounds for Jazz Fest, you are greeted by a feast for the eyes. Colorful signs, banners and backdrops festoon the stages, and all the auxiliary areas like the food booths and crafts vendors. Nan Parati is the woman behind everything you see. And while she manages a big art department that installs all the signage, she personally handwrites about 3,000 signs every year, often on the fly if needed.
Johnny Sansone
Johnny Sansone was born to play the blues. Schooled in saxophone by his dad, who played in Dave Brubeck’s band, he started wailing on harmonica and guitar at 10 and set his sights on becoming a bluesman when he was 12 after watching Howlin’ Wolf.
Cowboy Mouth
I vividly recall the first time I saw Cowboy Mouth at Jazz Fest, where Fred LeBlanc, the group’s founder and leader, climbed on top of a giant stage PA and proceeded to sing from up there.
Alejandro Escovedo: Echo Dancing
Over the past six decades, Alejandro Escovedo has forged a unique genre-busting path through the American musical landscape. From his early punk rock days in The Nuns, the Austin band that opened for the Sex Pistols’ last show, to his “Sensitive Boys” solo career as a beloved roots-rock artist. He’s followed the impulses of an always-open heart and ever-inquisitive mind wherever they lead him. Fortunately for us, we get to go along for the ride.
Little Freddie King
Little Freddie King is the undisputed monarch of New Orleans blues, whose down-home, gut-bucket style emerged from the fertile crescent of the Mississippi River.
Going Back to Coolsville: Rickie Lee Jones
Rickie Lee Jones was no stranger to New Orleans when she flew in from California to play Jazz Fest in 1992. She’d lived on the seamy edge of the Quarter in the early ’80s with a tribe of swashbuckling outlaws while working on Pirates, the critically acclaimed follow-up to the meteoric success of her Grammy-winning self-titled debut.
Wendell Brunious
When you enter Preservation Hall, it’s like stepping back in time. The small no-frills room looks pretty much like it did when Allan and Sandra Jaffe first opened their now-legendary French Quarter venue on St. Peter Street in 1961. Bare unvarnished floors serve as the stage, surrounded by wooden chairs where the audience sits — until as often happens, they are moved to get up and march around with a band that celebrates the living past of New Orleans jazz.
Boo! Ghosts Are Watching: Stoo Odom on His Spooky New Album
In 2013, after nearly two decades in San Francisco, the nimble-fingered bass man and composer Stoo Odom moved back to his birthplace, where he was conceived in what is now the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum and his father co-founded the legendary Maple Leaf Bar.
