Glen David Andrews and Marcia Ball – photo by Jeffrey Dupuis
After that set, I grabbed some culinary nourishment in the form of a merliton casserole (merlitons are a local vegetable treasure in the eggplant family). I wandered over to Dr. John, but I wasn’t feeling it, so I put my head down and headed back to the blues tent for Glen David Andrews, one member of the very musical Andrews clan that includes Glen’s cousins Trombone Shorty and James Andrews.
Well, let me just tell you, Glen David TOOK BACK the Blues Tent with a rousing set that had the aisles jammed with joyous dancing people, and nary a security guard around to tell you sit down or move along. (Earlier that day I saw one of them outside a full but not packed tent for the Anders Osborne-John Fohl -Johnny Sansone telling people they couldn’t go in the tent because there were no seats!)
Andrews had with him an all-star lineup including Marcia Ball on keys, Amanda Shaw on fiddle, Paul Sanchez on guitar and cousin Trombone Shorty. Twice in his set he skipped through the photography pit, climbed the rail and body surfed out into the crowd. Not a small man, he handpicked a few also-not-small men to ensure his safety as he rode the crowd literally and rode them dance and sing. One can only hope that Jazz Fest took note of how much fun the Blues Tent can be if you let it be.
Elated, I walked over to the Lagniappe stage to see Kristin Diable who I first caught at a Nola Showcase at SXSW in 2010 and was not disappointed. This singer-songwriter pens some emotional songs, sounding a bit like both Lucinda Williams and Shannon McNally. One of her last and strongest songs lamented her inability to leave her man. By the time she was done I both felt her pain and wanted to know her man too.
Closing acts frequently pose a problem at Jazz Fest. First of all, with 10 stages, you can’t see it all. You need to balance the hot acts (the Decemberists or John Legend and The Roots) with long-time bands (John Mellencamp) or blasts from the past (Tom Jones, Arlo Guthrie) who you can’t be sure will deliver. And then there’s always the chance to discover something new like NYC-based Bangra Brass, Red Baraat, or local Latin funsters Los Po-Boy-Citos. In the end, I caught a couple Decemberists songs few from Hazards of Love. At the same time, I checked out John Legend who enthralled fans with his crooning, ably but subtly backed by The Roots. I found they lacked the umph of their recent joint album Wake Up, offering a mellow set more in Legend’s arena than The Roots.
Next on to Tom Jones who had a packed field at Gentilly but was caught off guard with his bold attempt to cover one of New Orleans most sacrosanct songs, the Meters’ “Hey Pocky Way”. It seemed to me he had overstepped his bounds and hadn’t brought the proper chops to pay proper homage, but at the same time just couldn’t look away. When he followed it with Prince’s “Kiss,” I ran to grab a quick dinner.
On the way I saw a bunch of people flying around the Jazz and Heritage stage and thought, “ I need to get me some of that”. It was New York’s Red Baraat and it was awesome – it brought me back to the days of hearing my first brass bands, and wondered how so much sound and energy can come out of a bunch of musicians blowing through metal tubes of different sizes and beating on stuff. It cracks me up that I had to come all the way to New Orleans to find a band that is from my backyard, but that is what defines Jazz Fest.
Btw, despite my take on Jones’ performance, as I walked out, many I ran into out had loved his set. And I was reminded by a friend who caught a lot of the big acts over the first weekend – there’s a reason why these guys are big; you may not like the music but they’re professionals and they know how to entertain. Bottom line, no one I saw “mailed it in” first weekend.
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