The 27th Annual Michael Arnone’s Crawfish Fest in Augusta, New Jersey was once again a huge success. 23 artists performed on four stages, most of which came right from New Orleans. The festival was left buzzing all weekend by the two Friday night sets put in by Flow Tribe and Bonerama with special sit-in guest George Porter, Jr.
Flow Tribe’s high energy performance and wide ranging grooves made their first show at Crawfish Fest a huge success. Bonerama is a favorite band at this festival and their set was rolling along quite nicely, until they brought up George Porter, Jr. — then it exploded. Sometimes a sit-in guest can add some excitement and sometimes it can be absolutely incendiary; this was clearly the latter. Porter stayed for several songs including The Band’s “Ophilia”, and the festival was off and running.
Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes brought Camile Baudoin along from the Radiators, Cha Wa introduced the northern New Jersey crowd to masking Mardi Gras Indian J’wan Boudreaux, and recent Grammy winner Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen closed out the afternoon portion of Saturday.
Three great sets were turned in by Mike Zito and the Wheel, the amazingly tight Naughty Professor and Big Sam’s Funky Nation, whose MC-styled front man Sam Williams had the crowd dancing, jumping and screaming.
The only sad mark on the whole weekend was that the Sunday headliner Funky Meters’ set was cut after 45 minutes because of a violent thunder storm. All-in-all, this festival continues to do a fantastic job of bringing the culture, food and music of New Orleans and Louisiana to the northeast.
All photos by Bob Adamek. Click here to view the full gallery on Flickr.
Photo by Bob Adamek
