First Day
The first morning of Jazz Fest: Five minutes into the inaugural set, and Flow Tribe are already demanding a sing-a-long. At Congo Square, Fredy Omar’s band is salsa-fying the theme from “Rocky”. And we wind up at the Acura stage, where the New Orleans Suspects play the first set as they did last year. This year’s set is different, though: For one thing, bassist Reggie Scanlan has recovered from his cancer surgery, so instead of being seated he’s jumping all over the stage. And though the band has played a few local chestnuts, this time their set was nearly all original.
—Brett Milano
Dr. John without the Lower 911
Last year Dr. John celebrated a Grammy-winning album by firing his management team and longstanding band the Lower 911, retaining only trombonist/arranger Sarah Morrow. The New Orleans music community was up in arms over Mac’s decision to recruit outside musicians to play his classic material. Mac insisted that the decision was his, not Morrow’s, and repeatedly said he wanted to make a change. His show with the new band, now called the Night Trippers, was a gilt-edge chance to prove he’d made the right decision.
It wasn’t so much that the Night Trippers sucked. It was much worse—they were clueless as they pounded their way through a set of Dr. John covers completely devoid of rhythmic nuance or syncopation. Morrow, who never struck me as terrible with the Lower 911, simply was not up to the task of being the featured soloist in Dr. John’s band. Mac returned to the clavinet groove from the original recording of “Right Place, Wrong Time” but Morrow’s cheerleader-like efforts to encourage the crowd to shout “whoo” were downright embarrassing. When Mac strapped on his guitar for Earl King’s “Come On” I breathed a sigh of relief; he never failed to inspire the previous band with the funky ostinato riffs he uses for the driving, super-syncopated solo. Not that day. With no response from the rhythm section he just walked through it.
—John Swenson
Jill Scott
Near the end of her set, in a move that confirms her diva/soul goddess persona, Jill Scott had two assistants come out to take off her high heels for her.
—David Kunian
Tuba Skinny
If it weren’t for the downpour, we might have missed Tuba Skinny. Tucked into the Lagniappe Stage, all we wanted was a moment to dry off, but Shaye Cohn’s big brass cornet grabbed us. Erika Lewis’s assertive vocals were almost equally brassy, especially when she accompanied herself on drum. Drawing from a variety of vintage styles—King Oliver-era jazz meets bluegrass meets ’30s blues—Tuba Skinny turned a damp paddock into a speakeasy and turned our soggy Sunday blues into party time. When we saw them again on Royal Street, their original stomping grounds, we almost missed the rain.
—Clea Simon
New Leviathan
The New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra finds the zone where traditional jazz meets performance art. The lineup claims to play authentic shipboard dance music of the 1890s; they take the stage in captain’s outfits and use period instruments and purposely tinny amplification. But I seriously doubt that many 19th century groups had Theremin players, or had the horn players shout “…without no drawers on!” during “I’m the Sheik of Araby.” The string arrangements often harked back to Carl Stalling’s Warner Brothers cartoon scores, and the whole sound was surreal in its jollity. They’ve been featured in Woody Allen movies, but I’d say David Lynch would be a closer match.
—Brett Milano
Willie Nelson
A woman at Willie Nelson’s stage greeted me by saying “Excuse me, I’ve got goosebumps,” but I wasn’t sure whether she got them from “Always On My Mind” or just the dropping temperature. Of the half-dozen Nelson shows I’ve seen, everyone has ended with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” but at Gentilly he followed that with his latest treatise on life and death, and one the crowd clearly found more resonant: “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die.” There’s one to give you goosebumps, or at least the munchies.
—Brett Milano
Patti Smith
Patti Smith was starting “Because the Night” as I arrived and went into “Banga” (with longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye doing the dog barks) and “People Have the Power,” a high level of intensity that I was told she’d maintained for the full set. There was a short breather on a piano/vocal Neil Young ballad, “It’s a Dream,” which she slotted in because “I didn’t do as much yakking as usual and we zipped through our set.” Then came the encore segue of “Land” into “Gloria,” a moment designed to inspire. As the song peaked for the third or fourth time, Smith made her testimony: “We have our blood. We have our imaginations. And we are fucking HERE!” Never mind if you’re too cynical to go to concerts looking for epiphanies: This was one.
—Brett Milano
Dirty Dozen
The most exciting moment in any brass band show is when the group has established a rocking groove and one member breaks out of the pack with a solo of real jazz invention. And no one makes that moment more thrilling than Roger Lewis, the baritone saxophonist for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. He did it with that band in the pouring rain at the Fess Stage on Thursday. Wearing a rainbow-colored tie-dye T-shirt, he shifted from honking bass lines to a solo of bluesy lyricism. He was wearing the red T-shirt of the Midnite Disturbers, Stanton Moore’s all-star brass band, when it poured again on the first Sunday. He hurried over from the Jazz & Heritage stage to the Economy Hall tent and changed into the traditional white-shirt-and-black-tie dress of the Treme Brass Band for a moving tribute to the late Lionel Batiste. Wearing a white fedora and blazer, Lewis sat in the five-man reed section of Delfeayo Marsalis’s Uptown Jazz Orchestra earlier on Thursday. He stepped out to center stage to deliver the vocal and crowning solo on his comic blues number, “Dirty Old Man.” In whatever guise, Lewis wrestled his massive horn into a stomping beat and then into exhilarating improvisation every time.
—Geoffrey Himes
Billy Joel
As someone who neither loves nor hates Billy Joel, I’d say his set was about as good as Fest sets by aging ’70s superstars get (and he’s fine with jokes about his age, pointing out onstage that “I look so much like my dad now that my mom’s started hitting on me”). A couple of his biggest hits were absent (to these ears, “Just the Way You Are” wasn’t missed), replaced by deep cuts like “Zanzibar” and “Big Man on Mulberry Street,” both as close to jazz as he gets; there was also a Preservation Hall Jazz Band cameo during the New Orleans-referencing part of “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.” Joel’s self-effacing humor was a plus; he even took a jab at one of his whinier lyrics, “The Entertainer,” noting afterward that “I was wrong on that one, but we all write a bullshit song sometimes.”
—Brett Milano
C.J. Chenier
“I used to be the youngster in the band and now they call me Pops,” zydeco purveyor C.J. Chenier said with a laugh as he remembered his early days when he blew saxophone with his father Clifton Chenier’s band. The sun sparkled off his Chenier’s big, beautiful, keyboard-style accordion as he strutted, almost peacock-like in attitude, at the edge of the stage. Old school at heart, C.J. wove his magic on a rarely heard Fats Domino number, “If You See Rose Mary” that, particularly in his rendition, shouted swamp pop.
—Geraldine Wyckoff
Hall & Oates
Some bands seem obliged to jam at Jazz Fest, even if jamming isn’t what they do best. That was partly the case in Hall & Oates’ set, with stretched out versions of “I Can’t Go For That” and “Sara Smile” that collectively filled nearly one-third of a 90-minute show. The jams were largely beside the point, and the point with H&O is the four-minute singles that thankfully filled most of the set. Though H&O are tied to the past as hitmakers (1985’s “Method of Modern Love” was the newest song played), Daryl Hall remains a fine singer and charismatic performer. John Oates did a good job on whatever it is he does.
—Brett Milano
