➼ Original Jazz Fest Redux 2016

 

by Rory Callais (RC); Sam D’Arcangelo (SD); Laura DeFazio (LD); Frank Etheridge (FE); Brett Milano (BM); Jennifer Odell (JO); Clea Simon (CS); John Swenson (JS): John Wirt (JW); Geraldine Wyckoff (GW)

 

Driskill Mountain Boys

Old-timer purveyors of old time music, the Driskill Mountain Boys—a quintet dressed in matching black pants, purple shirts, grey jackets and white Stetson hats—cracked corny jokes and told stories from a long, legendary career, but also served notice to the Lagniappe Stage crowd: “We’re still here pickin’ and grinnin’.” Indeed, the all-acoustic band expertly delivered on country/bluegrass classics such as Jimmy Rodgers’ “No Hard Times” and the traditional “Darling Corey.” (FE)

 

Mason Ruffner

Mason Ruffner, a New Orleans resident since last summer, launched the Blues Tent’s opening-day music with a blues-rock set propelled by groove. New Orleans drummer Kerry Brown and Nashville bassist David Hyde, who’s originally from Hammond, served as Ruffner’s propulsive rhythm section.

Archetypal blues-rocker Ruffner sang and jammed with Brown and Hyde in songs and instrumentals. “Let’s groove a while,” he said, before locking in with his two-man band during the sprinting-named “Running Son of a Gun.” Ruffner’s grooving guitar work during the song included solos one end of the guitar neck to the other and in-the-pocket rhythm guitar.

There was more running in “Gypsy Blood,” a song Ruffner recorded in the 1980s with primal British roots-rocker Dave Edmunds. Brown smacked a bouncing, popping beat at drums as Ruffner sang lyrics about a restless soul who can’t stop moving. “It’s in my blood, y’all!” Ruffner said during the song. The band kept the momentum going with an instrumental Ruffner dubbed “roadhouse music.”

In the 1980s, Ruffner toured with U2 as well as Jimmy Page’s band, The Firm. He was also signed to CBS Records Backstage. He recalled learning his musical chops decades ago on Bourbon Street.

After moving from Sweden to New Orleans last year, he’s currently in a rebuilding phase. He left Sweden because the country didn’t give him enough performing opportunities.

“I was hungry to perform more,” Ruffner said. “I think New Orleans is better than ever. The culture and the music are still alive.” (JW)

 

 

 

subdudes

The subdudes were in fine form at the Blues Tent. No matter the long journey—begun in New Orleans in 1987 and twisted along turns of fractured friendships and the 2014 death of original bassist Johnny Ray Allen—the band still shreds. Tommy Malone took a guitar solo deep into sonic space atop a funky piano roll by John Magnie during “It’s So Hard,” which led into the bouncy fan favorite “All the Time in the World” to close the set. (FE)

 

Aya Takazawa

Tokyo-based trumpeter Aya Takazawa collaborated with special guests from New Orleans during a stylish mid-century American jazz–based set.

Drummer Jason Marsalis, pianist Jesse McBride, saxophonist Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson and cornetist Gregory Davis (of the Dirty Dozen) joined Japanese musicians Takazawa, bassist Kengo Nakamura and saxophonist Mina Kano.

 

 

Prior to their Jazz Fest show, Takazawa and the group spent the week at Music Shed Recording Studio. At Jazz Fest, the New Orleanians and Japanese made cool, melodic, gently swinging jazz together.

For Takazawa’s original composition “Chicken Tails,” Freddie Hubbard’s “Mr. Clean” and Anderson’s “Herlin ‘Homey’ Riley,” Takazawa played tasteful trumpet solos that avoided flash for flash’s sake. A highly musical artist, she never rushed what she wished to express. Flash did appear in Kano’s sax solos, which also crossed colorfully into the blues.

Marsalis at the drums played most of the spectacular stuff in Takazawa’s set, especially his multi-layered solo for the second line–based “Herlin ‘Homey’ Riley.” Anderson composed the piece for Riley, one of New Orleans great drummers.

“You hear this,” Anderson said before the group performed the piece, “you’re going to want to dance.” (JW)

 

 

Gospel Tent

Wandering around the Fair Grounds I went into the Gospel Tent, where Alexis Spight was killing “Joy” with six backing vocalists and a hard gospel rhythm section pounding it out behind her. The Gospel Tent seemed a likely spot to remember Prince, whose genre-bending style included more than a little gospel influence. Sure enough, before long the MC was out there, dealing with the audience after Betty Winn and One A-Chord whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a pop gospel set highlighted by “Love Train” and “Oh Happy Day.”

“Let’s remember Prince,” said the MC. “He only wanted to see us laughing in the Purple Rain.” (JS)

 

 

McCalla

I wish I could say I’d remembered Leyla McCalla from her work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. But it was the midday sun that drove me into the grandstand, where the interplay of banjo and—could that be cello?—drew me to the Lagniappe Stage. There, the interplay of her beautiful, clear alto, singing in both English (“Little sparrow, little sparrow…”) and Creole French, while accompanying herself on, yes, cello (which she played with the CCD) brought to mind both Helen Gillet and former bandmate Rhiannon Giddens. Re-workings of traditional Haitian and Louisiana Creole songs and originals like “A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey” kept me there as McCalla moved between instruments, amply supported by guitarist/banjoist Daniel Tremblay and violist Free Fural. And as McCalla followed a spiccato (bounced bow) cello passage with a particularly syncopated banjo, it became apparent how she uses her instruments largely for rhythm, allowing her butter-rich vocals to carry the melodies of the songs, both new and reclaimed, that made up her haunting set. Her sound, which evoked the traditional roots of her music without being precious, was fleshed out further as Jason Jurzak joined the trio on tuba for “Peze Café,” and then Giddens (whose own Blues Tent set would prove to be over-amplified) came on board for “Rose Marie.” By the time she wound into the two-step “Bluerunner,” dancers had filled in what little space remained, giving the paddock a Fais Do-Do feel. (CS)

 

 

Howl for Survival

Soggy in a white T-shirt soon after taking the Acura Stage well past his scheduled 3:45 p.m. start time, Neil Young took 30 minutes to play his first two tunes (“Fuckin’ Up,” “Cortez the Killer”) before expending a precious 18 minutes in a smackish space jam, full of face slaps to his guitar strings and face-amp feedback dissonance, to end “Love and Only Love” 15 minutes past his 5:15 p.m. close to rally with “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World” into “Powderfinger.” (FE)

 

 

La Bamba

Los Lobos has been, and still is, capable of killer shows. Lacking in energy, the legendary Latin rock band’s performance of its landmark 1988 album La Pistola y El Corazon felt flat on this reviewer’s ears during a quick survey. (FE)

 

 

Kids Day

Sometimes you get a reminder that this is still a neighborhood festival, at least on the smaller stages on kids’ day. So it was that percussion master Bill Summers devoted much of his Thursday set to featuring grade-school singers and players that he’s been mentoring. Summers left his percussion kit to direct the show, and the kids (two singers and a horn player) were indeed gifted. Summers’ pride in his charges was inspiring to see—but on the other hand, fans who’d come to see a jazz-funk legend wound up getting schoolkids doing Michael Jackson and Adele songs. (BM)

 

 

Maze

All clad in all white, Maze locked in a groove, the bassist’s vocal expressions showing on the video screens that it was time to get down to business, as frontman Frankie Beverly strolled to the Congo Square Stage. Beverly joked midway in the high-intensity set, “I’ll be blessed to turn 70 years old this year—70!—but damn if y’all ain’t trying to kill me up here on this stage today.” With surgeon-like precision, he set to swoon his devoted crowd—determined enough to bear brutal elements and blissful in a unity shared by a communal in-the-mud dip, slide, twist and bounce beneath a kaleidoscopic sea of umbrellas—early on when repeatedly asking “Where are my Southern girls?” introducing set staple “Southern Girl.” After a percussive jam closed the tune, Beverly declared, “That was some garbage funk—some nasty shit right there.” Playing nearly 20 minutes past the announced 7 p.m. closing time, Maze’s annual Sunday service come to a spiritual conclusion with the classic “Joy and Pain,” with its “sunshine and rain” refrain, from the band’s same-titled fourth album from 1980. (FE)

 

 

Revivalists

The Revivalists showed why they now sell out multiple nights at Tipitina’s and other increasingly large venues across the country. They offered all the sensual musicality a band can provide with “Fade Away,” which frontman David Shaw emoted with seasoned panache. (FE)

 

 

Dopsie

At Fais Do-Do, Rockin’ Dopsie flexed his zydeco-royalty status in a boogie-in-shrimp-boots take on Jr. Walker’s soul classic “Shotgun”—“do the sweet potato!”—before flipping his washboard on his chest with showman swagger, asking “Are y’all ready?” in call-and-response urgency before launching into “Show Me to Zydeco.” (FE)

 

 

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam had a big crowd, helped out by the new grandstands, which make the Acura stage feel like an entirely different festival. The stands accommodate the masses in a way the rest of the stages can’t duplicate. Pearl Jam finished with a powerful pair of covers, a version of the Who’s “The Real Me” followed by Neil Young’s “Keep On Rockin’ in the Free World.” (JS)

 

Pearl Jam and New Orleans have a special relationship. Beneath a cloud-less, brilliant blue sky adorned with memorials to Prince, the grunge titans brought the heat to deliver a two-hour, 15-minute rock marathon about as epic as they come. The Seattle band’s second appearance on the Acura Stage started with a welcoming of Saints hero and ALS champion Steve Gleason, a Spokane, Washington native long a close friend and devoted fan. (Eddie Vedder sported beneath his gray button-down a “Defend Team Gleason” tee while guitarist Mike McCarthy wore a black Defend New Orleans tee, as he did at Voodoo in 2013.) The local love and lore continued after Vedder—sweating, smiling, scowling and bouncing about the entire show—told the audience how colorful they were, an observation he followed by saying, “If you want to see colorful, you should get locked up here at four in the morning,” alluding to his 1993 arrest and visit to Orleans Parish Prison following a bar brawl in the French Quarter. (FE)

 

Fan-favorite “Alive” began a holy trifecta of songs to finish the show in fine fashion. Still full of surprises and wide-varying set lists, the band brought a horn section to stage before launching into a cover of the Who’s early-era rager “The Real Me.” The horns stayed and the band welcomed Red Hot Chili Peppers Chad Smith (drums) and Josh Klinghoffer (guitar) to rip a finale of “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” by Pearl Jam–inspiration Neil Young, a song regularly covered but positioned here in obvious tribute to the “Godfather of Grunge,” set to take the Acura Stage next Sunday.

Ending a bit early at 6:45 with a close scheduled at 7, Pearl Jam exited the stage with no pomp and circumstance, befitting the silent-victor humility that has sustained the band’s remarkable career longevity. “Thanks for the energy,” Vedder said at last. “I’ll keep it.” (FE)

 

 

Hammond

When John Hammond sings, his face contorts like a mask in a Greek tragedy and it seems like he’s become purely a channel for the blues. It’s hard to believe that it was just him with a guitar onstage, or maybe that he wasn’t actually an extension of the guitar. He played like a ramshackle locomotive—percussive, impossibly layered, with herky-jerky rhythms I didn’t understand but that somehow made sense—doing tunes from folks like Robert Johnson and Lightnin’ Slim and punctuating them with anecdotes about the people who wrote them or the people he wrote them about. Less a performer and more a storyteller tapping into the heart of our collective cultural memory, he painted a picture of a sorrowful, romantic and timeless America and looked totally consumed by it. (LD)

 

 

 

Prince Tributes

Grace Potter gripping a Gibson Flying V guitar and ripping solos on slide with sweat-matted blonde hair covering her face is certainly a sight. Showcasing her considerable talents, Potter deftly switched to Hammond B-3 organ and danced with abandon while singing Prince’s “Kiss,” one of many tribute covers to the late, great Purple One certain to mark Jazz Fest 2016. (FE)

 

 

The Mouth

A thunderous drum roll kicked off Cowboy Mouth’s Gentilly set, with hard-hitting frontman Fred LeBlanc soon grooving into a stream-of-conscious invocation for good Jazz Fest vibes, wishing “nothing but joy and happiness for the next two weeks.” Engaging and entertaining as ever from his seat behind the drums, LeBlanc launched into the raunchy romp of “Tell the Girl” to kick off the veteran band’s blend of Louisiana-flavored rock ‘n’ roll. (FE)

 

 

Zydeco People

The sight of spinning, twisting and two-stepping lovers of zydeco basking in the light of the Fais Do-Do stage—where dancers address each other as “cher” with no register of cliché—will bring a smile to the saddest of faces. Putting this special culture to song, Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band kicked the afternoon into high gear with “Zydeco People,” highlighting Carrier’s infectious accordion and smooth delivery of lyrics about “proud Creoles dancing” and the washboard player’s festive, frenetic style. (FE)

 

Hart

With Eric Lindell sadly forced to cancel his Blues Tent appearance due to health concerns for his newborn child, Alvin Youngblood Hart stepped up and extended his opening set to fill the gap. Hart here was backed with his electrifying power trio Muscle Theory and loomed large on the stage, laid back in a red-yellow headband but unleashing with wailing guitar and deep, rich vocals all the raw emotion that defines the blues at its best. (FE)

 

What Happened to Rosie?

Sometimes you just have to give up. The first Saturday the arteries at the Fair Grounds were badly clogged. I don’t know if it was a record crowd, but it was a crowd of people who couldn’t get out of each other’s way. There’s a kind of collective understanding that Jazz Festers have when things are working smoothly but it was not in operation Saturday. Whatever disassociation was happening in the crowd translated to some of the artists as well. Jonny Lang cancelled (replaced by John Mayall, which was not a bad tradeoff). Alpha Blondy was a half-hour late starting and ended up getting the plug pulled on him. Rosie Ledet was a flat-out no show, much to the dismay of her legions of fans, who were gathered at the Fais Do-Do stage to finish the day. (JS)

 

➼ Original Jazz Fest Redux 2016