Oopsy, it happened again. Another year when we were definitely taking a break from the New Orleans Jazzfest only to be unable to resist at the last minute. We had so much fun with Denny and Anne in New York that we booked flights to New Orleans sitting at the airport for our flight home on Sunday afternoon.
The visit started on Wednesday afternoon with the girls making their regular happy hour visit to Pascal’s Manale for oysters and bubbly. This restaurant has been open for over 100 years and is the originator of barbecue shrimp. I heard the comedian Amy Shumer interviewed recently and when asked about her favorite place to eat she said that if she ever had a couple of days free she flew to New Orleans and had barbecue shrimp and bread pudding at Pascal’s.
Meanwhile, the boys dropped off kids for soccer practice and then visited a new place for me, Vessel NOLA. This is an old church converted into a beautiful restaurant and cocktail bar. A very nicely done place with great drinks afforded me the perfect opportunity to catch up with Denny, Thom and Alex.
After our respective Happy Hours we met up at Marjie’s for dinner. We had tried to visit once before on a strong recommendation from the New York Times food critic and Denny but hadn’t made it. Thom and Alex joined the foursome and we sat on the patio to share wonderful smoked meat dishes. Marjie’s combines smoked meats with Southeast Asian flavors for great results. We enjoyed cornmeal crusted yardbird and charred pork shoulder steak among other treats.
The evening concluded with some good story telling at Dos Jefes cigar bar on Tchoupitoulas Street (I double checked to make sure I spelled that correctly).
Thursday began with a visit to the new car wash that Denny and Anne are opening in Algiers. It’s the prettiest of the empire so far and we enjoyed exploring and taking pictures while Denny conducted some business.
After the car wash excitement we picked up Denny’s Mum, Diane, and had a lovely lunch at the Red Maple in Gretna. This was an old school New Orleans restaurant with delicious pecan crusted catfish. It was a treat to catch up with Diane whose social calendar has been too packed to squeeze us in on the last couple of visits.
Effervescence, a new “bubble and bites” restaurant on Rampart Street was our destination for Happy Hour. Denny and Diana both ordered tasting flights of bubbles from the menu of over 40 choices by the glass and we sampled some superb small plates. Anne joined us in time to enjoy a glass of the champagne that Denny had selected for her from his samples. We sat in the courtyard and agreed that this was McD heaven.
It was a pleasant saunter through the French Quarter on Ursuline Street from Effervescence to our dinner destination, Trinity on Decatur Street. This was another new place for us that Denny and Anne had really enjoyed on a recent visit. The food, decor, open kitchen and service were all outstanding. I can’t wait to return.
Can you tell we all loved our meals?
From Trinity Denny led us to Gasa Gasa music club on Freret Street to listen to the Rayo Brothers band. I really enjoyed this club – great sound and space. The band was a cross between the Avett Brothers and the Band of Heathens and we all enjoyed them very much. They play at Jazzfest next weekend.
Some very creative art on the Gasa Gasa patio wall:
Friday was Jazzfest day and we got a nice early start to get set up at the Gentilly stage for the day. The stage has a new logo on top since this is Fats Domino year. After an opening set from The Deslondes, a local Americana band, we enjoyed a strong set from Eric Lindell. The initial 30 minutes were a bit sleepy but picked up with a cover of Cinnamon Girl and several more strong songs.
The musical highlight of the day came next – Jon Cleary with a great set of New Orleans piano and funk. He really irritated me by playing some great guitar in addition to his normal outstanding piano – some people are just too multi-talented. Here he is with a great Meters cover (Just Kissed My Baby). At some point around here Alex and Thom and Libby showed up to join the party.
After Jon Cleary, Diana and I went for a wander around the festival grounds. We got our usual frozen cafe au laits and sauntered through the art and jewelry tents. The most interesting to me were custom made turntables with beautiful wood bases:
The Rythmporium where they sell LPs and CDs had a great sign celebrating New Orleans’ 300th anniversary and an interesting stage.
I heard some great music coming from a small tent that I hadn’t been in before and went to investigate – turned out it was the kids tent where the next generation was doing a great job:
As we continued round the racetrack we came across great performances from the New Orleans Nightcrawlers on the Jazz and Heritage stage and an emotional dirge for Charles Neville by the Dixie Dozen Brass Band on the Congo Square stage. Neville died the day before the festival started. He was the saxophone player with the Neville Brothers and well loved throughout the New Orleans and world music communities.
We returned to Gentilly to see Lukas Nelson (Willie’s son) and the Promise of the Real band. I was anticipating this to be a highlight of the day but was underwhelmed – the music was fine but just didn’t interest me as much as I’d hoped. My spirits were lifted when Denny returned with a meat pie for me.
The day finished out with Sturgill Simpson who entertained the crowd with a set that spanned many musical genres – straight ahead country, Americana, blues and some jam band influence. He won everybody over by having the 610 stompers (a local group of men who do silly dances in the Mardi Gras and other parades) take the stage to start the show.
We had hoped for a full brass section similar to the one that joined him for his Saturday Night Live performances but had to settle for a much smaller one – great show nonetheless.
We waited for the crowd to clear out and watched the sun set on another amazing Jazzfest day.
Denny had to drive the boys to a soccer tournament on Saturday early. The rest of us got to sleep in and then enjoy a great brunch at the Canal Street Bistro. The lobster crepe and particularly the sauce was delicious.
From there we Ubered down to the French Quarter for an afternoon ramble that started on Frenchman Street with a visit to the Louisiana Music Factory to check out the latest music releases.
From there we wandered down Royal Street with a stop at Amelie which has 
a beautiful courtyard and at the Michalopoulos (checked the spelling on that one too) gallery to see if there were any new paintings that D had to have. We finished up at a new place named Curio which had delicious small bar snacks. Now it was time to head back to Webster Street to relax before heading to the airport for our flight back home. I got this picture of the sun setting over the Mississippi which seemed like an appropriate closing picture for another amazing New Orleans visit.
Sunday was spent relaxing and assembling a new patio rocking chair. While we were enjoying New Orleans Will was with his friends in Bali. I haven’t heard much of an update but did get some interesting photos.
Diana just alerted me to a new Marcia Ball album and I’ve been listening while writing this update. Here’s a great new song.
I’m closing with this tribute to Charles Neville which features some of his signature sax work.
After the enjoyable stop at EO I was ready for a coffee before heading to a jazz show at the Village Vanguard. Fortunately, New York has a locally owned coffee shop on every corner – something I really miss in the Dallas area – that and being able to walk to so many great spots.
After a full day of meetings with 200 of my IT friends on Wednesday, I took my boss and buddy Mike to Bobo in Greenwich Village to try some more of the menu before the trio arrived for the weekend. We did a good job of sampling the dinner menu and I chose scallops on a bed of pureed celery root as my entree – there’s something very delicious about that combination. I was able to make a Saturday brunch reservation and a plan was coming together.
would like – she didn’t have to think about it – rhubarb or bread pudding in the description and I’m sold.
music was very improvisational and we were amazed when the two would join each other in perfect unison out of what seemed to be a completely free form improvisational journey. Caine is a classically trained pianist and has released 16 relatively well known classical recordings. I would not have guessed this from the free form abandon he brought to his jazz playing.
activity – we assembled bikes for foster children. A representative from the organization “Together We Rise” gave a quick talk on the challenges of foster care before we began building. The statistics he quoted were pretty staggering – only 3% of foster children attend college and it gets more disturbing from there. The usual amazing view from our office is being encroached upon by the continuing explosion in new construction. Speaking of construction – I was impressed by the quality of the graphics as I tracked Diana’s arrival at La Guardia airport which is severely under construction just now and for the next 3 years.
Stigers at Birdland (conveniently directly across the street from our hotel). Stigers is an American jazz vocalist, saxophonist, guitarist, and songwriter. He achieved a number of hits in the early 1990s, most notably international 1991 hit, “I Wonder Why”, which reached No. 5 in the UK and No. 9 in the US. Diana and I both commented that this was probably the best show that we’ve seen this year. The first song he played was Randy Newman’s “I’ll be Home” and he had us hooked in the first few bars.
We enjoyed the show so much that we opted to stay for the late show which featured quite a different selection of music and finished up with the song that captured us at the start, “I’ll be Home”. Diana had a good chat with Curtis after the show.
From Fig and Olive we walked to the Chelsea Market where the ladies did some quick shopping while we enjoyed coffees. Then more walking through the village – down Bleeker Street, through Washington Square park and ultimately back over to Employees Only for dinner (with a brief stop in a sports bar to see how the New Orleans Pelicans were doing in the NBA playoffs). Along the way we snapped a picture of the birthday boy at Cafe Wha? where Bob Dylan played his first concert and tried to recreate the classic Bob Dylan album cover – we needed some vintage cars to finish it off correctly.
On the walk back to the hotel (subway wait was too long) we experienced a classic Denny and Anne occurrence – Denny looks into the window of an establishment and they both agree they have to go in. In this case it was a Cuban restaurant, Guantanamera NYC, with live music. The music was excellent and we had a good late night snack while the ladies danced. Nicely done Denny! I first heard this song on the excellent “Buena Vista Social Club” recording by Ry Cooder – highly recommended listening.
We attended our latest concert at the Kessler on Thursday night and the artist was The James Hunter Six – Hunter on vocals and guitar, along with double bass, drums, keyboards, tenor sax and baritone sax. James Hunter is an English R&B and soul singer who spent decades playing in small pubs and clubs around London before 
catching the ear of Van Morrison who appeared on his first album, “Believe What I Say”. Hunter toured with Van in the early 90s and sang backup on one of my favorite albums, “A Night in San Francisco”, in 1994. Hunter’s first album was released in the US in 2006 and he’s been touring regularly since. He’s one of those rare musicians who has success later in life – now 55.
this time of year. Around 6pm a strong hail storm erupted, managing to block one of the drains on the patio. I got the joyous task of going out in the storm to brush the water into the pool before it entered the house. Just when we thought the flood was over, it would start back up again. The good news is that Penelope was in the garage and no damage was sustained to our new roof (replaced after a hail storm right around this time last year that happened while we were attending a show at the Kessler). Here’s a video of the hail storm in progress:
I finished the book “Every Note Played” by Lisa Genova earlier this week and absolutely loved it. For the first time in a while I’m going to do a separate post on this novel as I have quite a bit to say on it. I came across a TED talk from Genova about “What you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s” that is worth a quick watch. The message I took away is that you have to build up a reserve of synapses by reading and engaging in mentally stimulating exercises so that if some stop to function correctly you still have backups.
I’ve started the new book from John Irving, “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, but am only 50 pages into the 700 page tome and so don’t have much to report yet. It is shaping up like a classic Irving novel so far and so I’m sure I’ll enjoy the remaining time reading.
Next was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 performed by the 25 year old English pianist Benjamin Grosvenor who first performed in a fish and chip shop by the seaside and won the BBC Young Musician competition at age 11. I loved the precision of the string section in this piece – absolute unison from lead violin through double bass in the very quiet pizzicato sections. Grosvenor shone brightest in the cadenza at the end of the first movement which I found very creative. Here’s Glen Gould performing the same piece:
The final piece of the evening was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. Back to that crossword clue – did you figure it out? The answer is “Eroica”, the name Beethoven ultimately gave to the symphony. I take umbrage with the clue as the Playbill for the concert says that Beethoven says of Napoleon after he declared himself Emperor, “Is even he nothing but an ordinary man! Now he will also trample upon human rights and become a slave to his own ambition; now he will set himself above all other men and become a tyrant”. He went to the table, grabbed the top of the title page of the score and tore it in half. The first page was rewritten and the symphony was given the name Sinfonia eroica. The symphony was very familiar to me as I heard my Mum play it in our home many times growing up.
Thursday night was jazz night. I took the subway down to the West Village and caught the early set at Small’s jazz club. This is an aptly named tiny cellar club where the first few rows of seats are right on stage with the band. The first show was a sextet with tenor and alto saxes, piano, guitar, drums and bass and fully occupied the small stage. I appreciated the mirrors angled above the piano and drums that let you see exactly what the musicians were up to.
My main book this week was “The Names” by Don DeLillo. This was recommended by Suzy Hansen in her book that I finished last week as a good tour of expat life in Greece. I read DeLillo’s most famous novel,”White Noise”, a few years ago and was disappointed but decided to give him another try with “The Names”. Portions of the book were compelling and enjoyable but the deep discussion on the origins of alphabets and language were too involved for my taste.
Saturday was an on and off sunny day and I was able to sit outside and finish my long running book “Notes on a Foreign Country” by Suzy Hansen. The book chronicles Hansen’s changing views on American foreign policy as she lives in Turkey and visits Greece, Afghanistan, and Iran. One of the hardest hitting passages is when Hansen returns to New York and is admitted to a Brooklyn hospital for what is ultimately diagnosed as pneumonia. She tells of her American friends saying she was so lucky to be home when it happened. However, her story of misdiagnosis and the conditions in the Brooklyn hospital as compared to the Turkish hospitals she had visited is pretty scary. The book is fairly dense and intellectual but worth reading for a differing view on America’s role on the world stage.