The Chris Moeller Archives

A-Train Concert Series - New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival 4/27/2008 - by Aaron Moeller

My brother and I drove to New Orleans last Friday and Saturday and never went more than five minutes without running the windshield wipers. There were a half dozen stretches of thunderstorms along the way that were severe enough that multiple cars pulled over to wait out the downpours. The rain was beating down its hardest as we drove the lengthy I-55 bridge across the western corner of Lake Pontchartrain, headed toward downtown New Orleans. Our hotel was further south across the Mississippi River in Westbank, a section of Harvey, Louisiana. Westbank, we learned later, had had significant flooding that very morning.

We found New Orleans to be as long advertised – wet. Our tickets for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival were for Sunday the 27th, day three of seven at the festival and the final day of the opening weekend. Rumor had it that Billy Joel played in a vicious storm on Friday night and that the collaborative performance of Robert Plant and Allison Krauss was a stunning highlight of Saturday’s lineup.

We parked in a virtual swamp at New Orleans’ City Park on Sunday morning (I brought some genuine Louisiana swamp mud back to Iowa on my car) and took a shuttle bus to the fairgrounds and horse racing track that serves as the festival’s annual home. The sun was out and I even applied some sunblock as the day’s shows started. I munched on my lunch – a crawfish po’ boy sandwich – as we gathered at the Jazz and Heritage Stage and listened to the Paulin Brothers Brass Band. (The festival is made up of both larger stages that present bigger, major-label acts and smaller ones with local names generally playing more traditional and indigenous styles - Dixieland jazz, cajun, zydeco, etc. The Jazz and Heritage Stage is one of the latter. Dozens of acts were on the docket every day and a music lover simply couldn’t hear all the music they desired.)

The Paulin Brothers are a popular local brass band noted for performing in the "traditional" marine-type uniform – black pants, white shirt, tie and band cap. The Paulin Brothers carry on the tradition of "Doc" Paulin, family patriarch and a Louis Armstrong-contemporary (!) who is still alive and kicking, but who retired from performing after the 2004 Jazz Fest. According to their website, Doc is in good health at one hundred years old.

Chris and I then listened to a talk with jazz chanteuse Cassandra Wilson, who was giving an open-air radio interview in advance of her late afternoon headlining performance. She looked great in a sundress, was open and engaging to listen to and no performer all day was more accessible as it was easy to get within ten feet and snap a picture.

Then it was out to the Acura Stage, the largest at the fairgrounds, and a performance by the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars. Some of the biggest names in New Orleans had put together this supergroup even before Hurricane Katrina as a way of bringing light to the devastating destruction of wetlands in the Mississippi Delta. Tab Benoit, a blues guitarist, is the guiding force of this outfit that also boasts one of the Neville Brothers (percussionist Cyril) and the great Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John. No one did more than the Nevilles and Dr. John to rescue the New Orleans voodoo sounds and styles and bring them to a larger audience in the '60s and '70s. With their long, prolific careers – timed as they were with the psychedelic and funk music eras – they’re now elder statesmen and very much the face of the city’s music scene.

Side note: That Jim Henson based Muppets character, Dr. Teeth, bandleader of the Electric Mayhem, on Dr. John is patently obvious to anyone familiar with both.

The other "Voices" in the band include bassist George Porter, Jr. of the Meters, drummer Johnny Vidacovich, New Orleans icon Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, fiddler Wayne Thibodeaux, and Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone on harmonica and accordion. But it was Anders Osborne, who’s guitar and soaring vocals on "We Ain’t Gonna Lose No More" stole the show. Unfortunately, five songs in, their set was cut short after their voodoo magic caused the skies to open and unleashed an hour and a half monsoon on the unsuspecting public. Suddenly, we were at Woodstock. If you meandered at all from the sidewalk after that, which was inevitable, your feet were certain to sink ankle-deep into the earth. Kids played in puddles, some plunging in up to their waists.

Chris and I went our separate ways after the rain delay. I stayed at the Acura Stage and listened to the Soul Queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas. Thomas, grateful to the vast crowd who waited out the delay, treated the crowd to "Stone Survivor", "Ruler of My Heart" (perhaps her best known song) and "Time is on My Side" (a tune she recorded before the Rolling Stones had a hit with it), among others. Everyone waved a handkerchief or twirled an umbrella as she led everyone in the legendary New Orleans tune and indestructible crowd-pleaser, "Iko Iko". Though a contemporary of Aretha Franklin or Gladys Knight, Thomas has never had comparable mainstream success. But in this town, she had no difficulty filling the place – in less than ideal conditions – on the festival’s biggest stage.

Chris spent the rest of the afternoon checking in on legendary New Orleans clarinetist, Pete Fountain, jazz upstart Nicholas Payton, and Cassandra Wilson, all of whom – fortunately for Chris – were performing under tents and in presumably drier conditions. (I’ve had a crush on Cassandra Wilson for years, but with plans to attend the St. Louis Jazz Festival next month, where she’s the headliner, I settled for having heard her interview and took the opportunity to check out some other music greats.)

Enjoying another po’ boy – fried alligator smothered in cajun hot sauce this time – I looked in on Pete Fountain, but also Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and the Golden Eagles, back at the Jazz and Heritage stage, who have the whole headdress and Mardi Gras Indian thing going. Their smaller stage was packed with young people moving and grooving.

The muddy track had me running late, but I heard the unmistakable sounds of "What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding", the presumed set opener of Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint. I’ve already seen Elvis Costello twice in the last two years. With his Imposters, he opened for the Rolling Stones at Soldier Field in Chicago a year and a half ago. Then I caught him in a radically different solo performance opening for Bob Dylan in Iowa City last fall. You never know what surprises Elvis may have in store – he has a vast collection of songs and thrives in collaborative situations and never more so than on the Katrina-inspired The River in Reverse, his most recent album with Mr. Toussaint, legendary New Orleans rhythm and blues producer and pianist. Armed with Costello’s own Imposters, plus Anthony "A.B." Brown on electric guitar and the Crescent City Horns, the collective musicians unleashed the day’s most unprecedented soul storm as the sun again struggled to peek out.

Allen Toussaint took over lead vocals for "A Certain Girl", a song he originally produced for Ernie K-Doe. "Clown Strike" is from Elvis’ Brutal Youth album, but it now has a Toussaint horn arrangement which would have blown off the roof had we been in an indoor venue. A thunderous trombone solo by Big Sam Williams added power to "Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further", already the most ass-kicking song on The River in Reverse. With Costello’s dark suit and bolo tie to match Mr. Toussaint’s matching outfit (plus distinguished salt and pepper hair), this was rough and tumble R&B with a classy look and buckets of style.

Toussaint’s boogie-woogie piano and lead vocal tore into his own composition, "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)", which segued into the title track of their album. I may have mentioned it after last fall’s Costello concert in Iowa City, but "The River in Reverse" is one of the decade’s great songs. An instant classic, it’s a pissed-off and fiery song to rival John Lennon, Darkness on the Edge of Town-era Springsteen, or Costello’s own early records. He again threw in the lyrical declaration (borrowed from another unperformed song on the album), "In the name of the Father and the Son, in the name of gasoline and a gun!"

A muted trumpet solo from Joe "Foxx" Smith was a highlight of "Watching the Detectives", one of Costello’s best-loved tunes, accompanied as it was with another brand new Toussaint arrangement. Costello has collaborated with numerous musicians from a variety of genres, but these recent collaborations with Toussaint are electric and the often-radical reinterpretations of his songs have set fire to Costello’s back catalog. And as this setting proved, nothing beats the power of a big, live horn section.

Unfortunately though, I then had to jet across the fairgrounds to ensure seeing at least an hour of Al Green’s co-headlining set which was occurring simultaneously. Some legitimate sunshine blessed the Good Reverend as he quoted lyrics from "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", his own chart-hitting cover of the BeeGees song: "How can you stop the sun from shining?"

"Everything is Gonna Be Alright (He’s Comin’ Back)" is a criminally underrated Green composition and the man was – as usual – tossing roses into the crowd. Dressed in a sharp black tux with spotless white shoes, Green’s face kept breaking into that million-watt smile at the sight of all us mud people. "Amazing Grace" kept us in the ol’ time religion, though Green did gently comfort the audience: "Don’t you worry folks, I’m gonna sing ‘Love and Happiness’ in a minute."

I knew I had missed the first part of his performance, but I was still there soon enough to hear "Let’s Stay Together" and "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" – two of his biggest hits. "People said I could wear a tux because I wouldn’t be sweating out here," Green told us. "But we don’t sing those kinds of songs. We don’t sing (gently crooning) ‘I left my heart in San Francisco’, we sing (soulfully emoting) "I’M SO TIRED OF BEING ALONE, I’m so TIRED of on-my-own, won’t you HELP me, girl, just as soon as you can..."

Sipping liberally from a Gatorade bottle, Green had – by this point – shed the tuxedo coat and was drenched in sweat. "People often say, ‘ I wonder if the Rev’s still got it’," Green pointed out, just before reaching for a sky-high falsetto note and sustaining it for a solid ten seconds. The crowd roared its approval and agreement. I then noticed a woman walking by with a t-shirt that read "Burn K-Doe Burn", a reference to the catchphrase of the late New Orleans eccentric and R&B giant, Ernie K-Doe, who died in 2001, but whose spirit lives in every great R&B performance at Jazz Fest.

The skies again threatened to open and the day could not have had a more righteous finale as Green delivered definitive versions of "I’m Still in Love with You" and the eternal "Love and Happiness". It’s a wonder to behold that the man who is still the best singer in our country is now 62 years old. But everybody knows great music never has to worry about giving up the ghost and it certainly can’t be washed away.

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