When you think of Preservation Hall, you think of jazz. The humble little two-story building nestled tightly into St. Peter Street in the middle of the bustling French Quarter is easily passed by, its history-worn pink and green paint only faintly marking its identity among the rest of of the bright neon signs lining the noisy Bourbon Street just a block away. Preservation Hall’s volume is not in wild, drunken parties, but rather in its profound history of jazz pioneers that have laid sounds within its walls. But this Saturday night, November 23, Preservation Hall hosts its first ever bounce show. Not just any bounce show though, this will be one of the rare acoustic bounce sets with live band.
DJ Jubilee plays first acoustic bounce show at Preservation Hall jazz club.
Highly regarded as the “King of Bounce,” DJ Jubilee will hold court in the small, dimly lit wooden jazz room for a late-night affair, just after the Preservation Hall All-Stars perform their nightly traditional jazz and ragtime set at 8 p.m. Just as Preservation Hall and its house bands are known for the conservation, perpetuation and protection of jazz forms, DJ Jubilee is heralded for serving as one of the key gatekeepers of New Orleans indigenous bounce music. Call and response jams like “Get It Ready” and “Back That Thang Up” to his newest hit, “GitOnDaFlur,” have made Take Fo’ record label artist’s name synonymous with bounce music.
Saturday night’s set at Pres Hall will be unique though; more than just a regular bounce music dance party with a favorite New Orleans bounce DJ and perhaps a few local hip-hop MCs, this set will get to roots of the bounce sound with a live, acoustic band. The somewhat elusive Big Easy Bounce Band is set to perform with Jubilee in a space where amplification is minimal, if existent. Though this band has performed at shows in recent years past, including sets with Big Freedia, Cheeky Blakk and Partners N Crime, the cast of band members is not easy to find. The air of enigma surrounding the band alone making Saturday’s show all the more intriguing.
The November 23 concert at Pres Hall also marks another first in music technology at the hall, as in-house sound engineer an music producer, Earl Scioneaux II a/k/a The Madd Wikkid (of Brassft Punk), launches the prototype for his new crowd-sourcing meets online ticketing platform, Downtix.
The Madd Wikkid launches Downtix.com platform for November 23 show.
According to Scioneaux, Downtix intends to curb scalping and “secondary ticket market” sales, put more money into the pockets of artists, and offer a chance for fans to obtain tickets at fair prices. The platform design does this by using a patent-pending dynamic pricing system to optimize ticket sales. It appears to be a sort of hybrid of Kickstarter and EventBrite. Although Scioneaux and Pres Hall creative director, Ben Jaffe, have curated a host of electronic, fusion and experimental shows at the hall in years past, the Preservation Hall acoustic bounce show will be the first show sold through this new platform. More information on Downtix is available here.
The acoustic bounce show with DJ Jubilee and the Big Easy Bounce Band is Saturday, November 23, at Preservation Hall (726 St. Peter St). Doors are at 11 p.m. (following the hall’s regular 8 p.m. jazz concert) and tickets are $10 (or up to $100 for VIP meet and greet and reserved seating) until they sell out at Downtix.com. If tickets remain on night of show, tickets will be available at the door for $20.
