Here's the dig on Jazzfest 2k6 ...

New Orleans is slowly recovering from Katrina.  It's still difficult for the hotels and restaurants to find waitstaff and housekeeping staff, because most of the lower-cost housing in the city is simply gone.  Many people are commuting in from Baton Rouge.  But in spite of being short-staffed, most of the restaurants and bars in the Quarter are back online, with a few notable exceptions (Mr. B's, to name one.)  The restaurants are generally only able to find enough labor for one shift a day, so they're closing earlier than they once did.  But we didn't have any trouble finding good places to eat and drink every night we were there.

The downtown area still has visible signs of damage -- the Superdome's roof is still torn up, many buildings in the Central Business District are still missing windows, the St. Charles streetcar line is down ...  About half of the downtown shops are boarded up, the owners never having returned after the storm.  Outside of the downtown area, things are less rosey.  Mid City seems to be running at about 20 percent, with visible waterlines on just about every building and many homes and businesses gutted or abandonned.  But the more popular tourist destinations and larger restaurants are open for business, for the most part.  One of the unsung victims of Katrina is the local business owner, and many of them have been forced to sell out to big chain stores as a result of the storm.  The local drugstore on the corner is becoming the Walgreen's on the corner, but the neighborhoods of Mid City are slowly but surely rebuilding, and people are trickling back into the area.

Like the Whos of Whoville, the citizens of New Orleans dance and sing even when all that they have has been taken away.  Jazzfest 2006 is being called "Miraclefest", because it's practically a miracle that it is happening this year at all.  For the first time ever, the festival organizers are having to fly in many of the New Orleans-based musicians who are still displaced in cities as far away as New York.  And over the first weekend of the festival, those musicians descended on New Orleans like a swarm and turned the whole city into a 72-hour-long city-wide party.  The bars and restaurants that were open were packed, and there was an amazing array of good bands to choose from.

This was my first year at Jazzfest, but it would be hard to imagine it being more crowded (the festival veterans indicated that this year's crowd was actually about normal.)  The layout of the festival is similar in concept to the Austin City Limits festival, with two large stages at either end of the New Orleans Fairgrounds Racetrack and six smaller stages and tons of vendor booths scattered in between.  There were about three times as many food booths as at ACL, and just about every one of them served up some form of unique and delicious Cajun/Creole delicacy.  The menu list read like a line from "Forrest Gump":  Crawfish Etouffee', Crawfish Bread, Crawfish Pasta, Crawfish Gumbo, Boiled Crawfish, Fried Crawfish, Crawfish Strudel, Crawfish Enchiladas, Crawfish Jambalaya, Crawfish Po-Boys, Crawfish Remoulade, oh, and Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce for dessert.  In short, I was in culinary heaven.

The larger stages at Jazzfest featured more popular funk, R&B, and rock acts, but there was also a whole stage dedicated just to modern jazz (I spent a lot of time there), another whole stage dedicated just to gospel, another dedicated just to Cajun and Zydeco, and another that featured more "traditional" New Orleans jazz and brass bands (Dixieland-style.)  There were frequent street parades and a general party atmosphere that you just don't get at ACL.  It wasn't overrun with college kids, either.

We stayed all four nights at the 1896 O'Malley House, a beautiful historic B&B in the heart of Mid City.  Brad and Larry have lovingly restored the house, retaining all of the original Victorian charm while still offering all of the modern amenities of a hotel.  The B&B is right on the Canal streetcar line (which is up and running) and is thus a perfect place to stay for Jazzfest.  The O'Malley House, one of the few B&B's open in that area, received about a foot of water as a result of the levee breaches, but fortunately the owners had enough cash stashed away to affect repairs without having to wait for the insurance red tape.

We drove out all day from Austin on Thursday, stopping for lunch at Beck's in West Houston.  After arriving in New Orleans and checking into the B&B, we cabbed it downtown for dinner (and white chocolate bread pudding) at The Palace Cafe', followed by an after-dinner stroll down Bourbon Street which eventually took us to Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop.  Jean Lafitte's is the oldest continuously running bar in the United States, and it features one of the oldest continuously performing pianists in the United States.  In one corner of the bar sits Johnny Gordon, a New Orleans institution, showing every bit of his 68 years of age but still showing up every night, as he has since the 1960's, to play popular tunes for tips.  Maxwell somehow engineered it so that Johnny would take a break and call me up out of the audience to sit in for a few songs, so I found myself quickly having to plumb the uncharted depths of my brain for appropriate piano bar repertoire.  Ultimately, what I came up with was "Crocodile Rock", "Take it Easy", "Friends in Low Places", and the only half of "Running on Empty" that I could remember (sorry, Mr. Browne.)

Friday was the first day of Jazzfest.  I did a lot of stage hopping, hoping to familiarize myself with the New Orleans music scene.  Dr. John and Cowboy Mouth both put on great shows (despite the unexplained power failure during the latter's rendition of "Hurricane Party"), but while everything else I saw on Friday was good, none of it really stuck in my memory.  I suppose that it's hard for anyone to stand out in the middle of a festival full of outstanding performers.  I tried to get in to see Bob Dylan, but I couldn't even squeeze far enough into the crowd to see the stage.  On Friday evening, we had dinner at The Gumbo Shop and were too tired to do much else.

Saturday, I spent most of the day at the Jazz Tent, mostly listening in awe at the quality and quantity of good music that I was getting for my measley 40 bucks.  Herbie Hancock himself would've been more than worth the price of admission, and his show was the highlight of the festival for me.  Herbie had Kendrick Scott sitting in on drums and Lionel Loueke on guitar.  The girl I was sitting next to leaned over right before the show and said, "I'm secretly hoping he plays 'Rockit.'"  I really had to struggle against the overwhelming urge to slap her upside the head.  Herbie did open with a somewhat updated version of "Cantaloupe Island" and close with "Chameleon", always crowd favorites, but the intervening show was much more experimental, influenced a lot by Loueke's African-inspired rhythms.  Herbie's performance was followed by trumpeter Terence Blanchard, whose approach was decidedly a bit more modern but no less enjoyable than Herbie's.  Kendrick and Lionel sat in with Terence as well, with Aaron Parks on piano.  Of equal note on Saturday was drummer Tony "Oulabula" Bazley's performance earlier in the day, although I can't remember many details of it apart from the fact that it was impressive.  Saturday night's festivities included dinner at Felix's (during a raging rain/windstorm), watching a brass band at Donna's, and another stop by Jean Lafitte's.

I spent a lot less time at the Jazz Tent on Sunday, but I did catch trumpeter Christian Scott, with Aaron Parks, Kendrick Scott, and Canadian guitarist Matt Stevens sitting in.  I always make it a point to buy an autographed CD from up-and-coming performers that impress me, and I definitely bought one from Christian.  Apart from that, I mostly did a lot of stage hopping on Sunday, catching bits of "Papa" Gros (funk), Walter "Wolfman" Washington (R&B), The Rebirth Brass Band, Allen Toussaint and Elvis Costello, The Meters (funk), and Bruce Springsteen.  Bruce is trying to cross over into acoustic music, and IMHO, he hasn't completely succeeded.  In a genre that contains such virtuostic performers as The Waybacks and Eddie From Ohio, bands that loyal Springsteen fans have likely never heard of, the bar is set pretty high.  To be an outstanding folk musician, you either need to have dynamite original material (e.g. Robert Earl Keen, Todd Snider) or need to be able to perform others' material virtuostically.  Bruce Springsteen performing Pete Seeger was neither.  Bruce's own material is dynamite, to be sure, but his strength is very much as a songwriter performing his own material, not as a singer performing someone else's.  It was a show that die-hard loyal Springsteen fans loved, but as a die-hard loyal acoustic music fan, I thought it was good but not great.

A ton of chicks and Ray Nagin were there.