Day: January 6, 2019

Week in Review – January 6, 2019

Happy 2019 to my thousands of followers!

We arrived in New Orleans on Sunday night to welcome in the New Year with great friends, food, and music.  After some delicious Denny snacks – crab dip and braised short ribs in a new modern version of a pressure cooker – Denny and I saw the trombone player, composer, and band leader, Rick Trolsen, at the Dos Jefes cigar bar and music club.  This is a very small place but always seems to provide excellent music.

New Year’s Eve in the French Quarter was predicted to be a bit of a zoo with all the college football fans in for the Sugar Bowl game on New Year’s Day, so we opted for a Bywater/Marigny ramble rather than our traditional afternoon French Quarter Ramble (FQR).

Saint Germaine Bistro
Mimis Tapas Bar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We started at Saint Germaine (a new bistro) with excellent goose fat fries and chicken liver pate.  From there the ramble proceeded to Mimi’s, which had a great tapas menu but a kitchen that wasn’t quite ready to cook.  Not to worry – a short walk took us to the gorgeous St Roch market.

St Roch Market
Fake snow house

St Roch was originally opened as a market in 1875 and was updated several years ago to one of the more elegant food halls that I’ve come across.  The ladies enjoyed some fresh oysters.

 

We passed this entertaining house on the walk, complete with fake snow – not quite in keeping with the pleasant 60 degree temperatures.

 

 

The afternoon finished at the Tin Roof bar atop the Pontchartrain hotel on the way back home to get ready for dinner.  This is the hotel where Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” and the rooftop bar provides a great view of downtown New Orleans.  The hotel was having a Veuve Clicquot champagne event that the ladies enjoyed.

New Year’s Eve dinner was at Chais Delachaise with Denny, Anne, Thom, Libby, Alex, and Laura.  This was a great pick by Denny that provided us with a relaxed and comfortable spot to enjoy an unhurried meal with friends.  I started with a French Old Fashioned that I loved – what makes it “French”? – I’m not sure the menu just said a little “je ne sais quoi”.  The mushroom bruschetta were yummy and so was the meat and cheese platter.  Then I enjoyed my lamb burger, accompanied by a very nice Burgundy that Thom helped to select.

 

 

Mushroom Bruschetta

After dinner everyone headed back to Denny and Anne’s home to ring in 2019 – we don’t look too tired for a bunch of old fogeys do we?  Ok, you don’t need to answer that now that I look at the pictures again.

New Years Day was a sleepy one for Denny and me, mostly spent on the couch with a book, a fire, and college football bowl games.  Diana, Anne and Laura were more adventurous, making their annual visit to Pascal’s Manale for happy hour oysters.  They were kind enough to bring dinner home for the sleepy boys.

We were honoured to be invited to celebrate Jack and Mason’s 16th birthday with them at Commanders Palace on Wednesday.  Denny always says that they better get good jobs to support their fine dining tastes.

The soups at Commanders are always amazing.  We sampled turtle, lobster bisque, gumbo and at least one other.  I loved the stuffed quail dish that I tried for the first time and of course the piece de resistance was the bread pudding souffle with whiskey cream sauce.

Some whiskey sauce with that young man?
Boudin stuffed quail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Iguanas at jazzfest

After a pleasant afternoon nap, Denny convinced us to make a trip to the Circle Bar to see the Iguanas.  I’d seen this group that was very popular in the 1980s on my last trip and was looking forward to a reprise.  They did a great job of entertaining the crowd in the tiny living room of the Circle Bar  – a bit of a smaller crowd than they played to at jazzfest back in their more popular days.  The music is like a combination of Los Lobos and the Buena Vista Social Club – very unique and different.  Alex, Thom and Gary joined us for the show and then a stop at Domenica pizza on the drive home.  Diana was a real trooper to hang in there with all the boys for so long – it probably felt like she was dealing with her five younger brothers again.

Sadly, our time in New Orleans came to an end on Thursday.  We wrapped up the visit with a perfect French brasserie meal at Couvant in the Eliza Jane hotel (a gorgeous new hotel with a great patio).  This is one of several new French restaurants in New Orleans (a pleasant trend) and another excellent Denny recommendation.  We shared chicken liver mousse, steak tartare, and mussels a la Normande, all accompanied with some very AAnice French wines available by the glass.

 

Alicia picked us up at the airport and we were back home by 10:30pm.  Friday was pretty much a full work day again for both of us after some good time off for the holidays.  We were back to our normal routine on Saturday and Sunday with morning workouts and crossword and coffee sessions.  I enjoyed the Cowboys playoff win over the Seattle Seahawks on Saturday night very much albeit way more stressful than it needed to be.  We’ll find out after the Eagles game tonight if the Cowboys play the New Orleans Saints or the Los Angeles Rams next week.  Either one will be very much an uphill battle.

I mentioned earlier in the post that the Iguanas reminded me of a cross between Los Lobos and the Buena Vista Social club.  Here’s a sampling of both – can you imagine what the combination might sound like?

Well, add something like this…

To something like this…

And maybe you get something like this…

 

 

Best of 2018 Lists

Top 10 Restaurants, 5 Best Destinations, Best 20 books of 2018, Top Places to Live in America.

Over the last few years, a lot of communication seems to come in the form of ranked lists.  This year I decided, if you can’t beat them, why not join in?

The last couple of hours have been spent scrolling back through all the blog posts of 2018 in search of my favourite concerts, books, and records of the year (while keeping one  eye on the Colts versus Texans playoff game – not going well for the Texans so far).   Wow, we covered a lot of ground and saw some great performances last year!  From tiny jazz clubs to arena shows to classical performances at Lincoln Center – a wide variety of venues and genres to choose from.

Best Concerts of 2018

  1.  Curtis Stigers (Birdland, NY)  Diana and I talked about this list and spent no time at all debating our top pick for concert of the year.  We both loved the Curtis Stigers concert that we saw at Birdland prior to Denny and Anne arriving in New York for Denny’s 50th birthday trip.  This was more surprising given that neither of us had heard the name Stigers prior to the concert.  I bought the tickets purely on the basis of the write up on the Birdland website.  Within the first 10 seconds of Curtis’ opening song, “I’ll be Home” by Randy Newman, I was sold.   The arrangements, variety of songs, and quality of performance were all top notch.  We were both completely aligned on staying for the late set and were very pleasantly surprised to find it was mostly completely different music, ending the way it started with “I’ll be Home”.

2.   Band of Heathens (Kessler Theater, Oak Cliff)  Why is this band not famous?  They have amazing talent, a great sound, look great (according to McD), and put on excellent performances.  We first saw them on Austin, again purely based on a magazine write up, as they performed a closing show for the venue “Momo’s” where they formed as a band.  We left amazed at our fortune of lucking into the show.  Since then, we must have seen them 10 or more times at various venues in Texas and Louisiana.  Their Thanksgiving week concert at the Kessler was a special highlight – they performed their cover of the Ray Charles album, “A Message From the People”, in entirety and book-ended it with some of their most popular songs.  Both Diana and I can very easily get their version of  “Abraham, Martin and John” stuck in our brains on hearing the fist line, “Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Abraham?”.

3.  Nils Lofgren (Kessler Theater, Oak Cliff)  Can you tell that the Kessler puts on one amazing show after another?  Best venue ever!  I’ve loved Nils since high school and his Live album from the Glasgow Apollo (signed copy obtained after this show, when he told me that tour was his favourite of his career).  The show was particularly special as Lofgren showed what a consummate performer he is.  His guitars had been stolen the night before, and you would never have known by the quality of the performance with borrowed gear, and his willingness to stay after the show to greet all of his fans.

4.  Joshua Redman (Blue Note, New York)  This is the best jazz performance that I’ve seen so far (granted, it’s only been a few years that I’ve been attending jazz shows).  Diana and I saw Joshua as a special guest in the tiny Village Vanguard and were amazed at his saxophone mastery (that’s the night that he  shared some of D’s champagne).  This show was a complete master class on the saxophone with a beautifully varied repertoire that showed off his amazing versatility and musicality.

5.  New York Philharmonic (Lincoln Center, New York)  The precision of the performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 was ridiculous.  I’ve heard a few orchestras but never one so completely synchronized and rehearsed but still entirely musical and flowing.  This is one of a few classical pieces that I could sing form start to finish (my Mum had a record that was played quite a bit, one of her favourites from her time teaching in France and living with Aunt Louise).

Excellent shows that didn’t make the top 5 include The Eagles and Chris Stapleton at ATT Stadium, Elton John’s farewell tour at American Airlines Center, James Hunter Six at the Kessler, Mark Broussard at the Kessler, Marcia Ball and Shelley King at the Kessler, Doyle Bramhall with guest Lukas Nelson at Antone’s (my first great Austin show), Marcia Ball, Shelley King, and Carolyn Wonderland’s Christmas Show at Poor David’s Pub,  Nick Lowe and Los Straightjackets at the Kessler (with the amazing performance of “Peace, Love, and Understanding”),  Jethro Tull’s 50th anniversary show at the Beacon in NY, the Bacon Brothers at the Kessler, Los Miguels in a private concert in the courtyard of El Taminamba in San Miguel de Allende, Big Sam’s Funky Nation at the Kessler (with dancing by Diana on stage),  John Fohl and Johhny Sansone at Chickie Wah Wah in New Orleans (amazing performance of “Do or Die”),  Devon Allman and Duane Betts at the Kessler (half the audience in tears during “Blue Sky”),  Kenny Baron’s excellent piano at the Jazz Standard in NY,  John Oates soulful blues show at the Kessler, Soullive and Robert Randolph at the Blue Note in NY, and finally Rayo Bros at the Gasa Gasa in New Orleans during jazzfest.

Wow!  2018 might be the best year of live music I’ve experienced in my 54 years on this planet.

Best Books of 2018

  1.  Every Note Played by Lisa Genova.  I loved this book and have recommended it to several people.  I hadn’t read “Still Alice” prior to this and that probably enhanced my enjoyment as I understand her books may be a bit formulaic.  The empathy in Genova’s writing about a musician losing the ability to play is extraordinary.

 

2.   The Reminders by Val Emmich.  This was a very close second choice.  I had never heard of the author when I visited Interabang books in Dallas and received such a high recommendation for this book.  It ended up completely sucking me in to the extent that I didn’t do a number of planned activities in order to finish the book in one sitting.  Such a creative story about memory and relationships.

 

3.  The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.  “A Gentleman in Moscow” was one of my favourite books of 2017 and I was delighted to discover this previous novel by Towles when I accompanied Diana on her work trip to St Petersburg.  Such an excellent job of capturing New York society in the 1920s.  I anxiously await his next novel.

 

4.  The Soloist by Steve Lopez.  This was a very good movie (I don’t like to see movies before reading books) and an even better book.  The understanding of mental illness and homelessness that Lopez communicates is stunning.  The backdrop of unrewarded musical ability (at a virtuoso level) is heartbreaking in the extreme.

 

5.  Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult.  This is the most relevant book on my list for today’s society.  The unnecessary and embedded hatred portrayed in the book seems to become more and more part of our political system and society on a daily basis.  While somewhat egregiously depicted, the characters ring true as examples of the bigoted and inflexible positions taken by so many these days.

Other books I enjoyed this year include Calypso by David Sedaris (an excellent Christmas read), Less by Andrew Sean Greer (a great recommendation by Interabang books), Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (surprisingly enjoyable and creative), The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (excellent writing and led me to Independence Day that I’m currently loving), Famous Father Girl by Jamie Bernstein (great anecdotes on the musical master), A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (classic Irving and a bit of a long slog),  A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach, and Emerald City, a trio of books by Jennifer Egan (a very rewarding discovery this year),  Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks (in a year when vintage typewriters seemed to appear everywhere).

Best Records of 2018

Several of my top records of 2018 were actually released in 2017 and not noticed by me until 2018.  I’m going to claim a 9 month wiggle area for inclusion in the current year – it’s my list and I’ll do what I wanna.

  1.  John Prine – The Tree of Forgiveness.   Prine’s first album in many years is not his finest but still the best of the year for me.  Sublime songwriting coupled with an aged voice that communicates all the passion and hurt in his songs.

 

2.  Teskey Brothers – Harvest Hill Moon.  I heard a song from this album on the radio in Austin and listened to the rest of it as soon as I could.  I remember telling Diana how amazed I was that a sound like this (sounds like deep Muscle Shoals from the 70s) came out of Australia.  I listen to this at least once a week – especially when able to enjoy the home office system.

3.  Charlie Hunter – Baboon Strength.  Hunter was discovered when he played the excellent Townsend speakeasy bar and music venue on Congress Avenue in Austin.  He plays a hybrid bass and lead guitar and has a very unique style.  I love the sound of this record – “Fine Corinthian Leather” is a standout for me.

4. Jason Isbell – Nashville Sound.  Isbell was my favourite performance at the Telluride Blues festival a few years ago by a long way.  This album has several stand out songs and “If we were Vampires” is the most poignant song that I heard this year.  I’m making it a goal to see an Isbell performance in 2019.

 

5.  Marc Broussard – Easy to Love.  “Don’t be afraid to call Me” is reason enough to love this album.  After you hear it live, you can’t forget it for a while.  Broussard is certainly one of my favourite live performers and I look forward to seeing him again at the Kessler in February.

 

6.  Anderson East – Encore.   I had to add a 6th choice to this category.  I like every song on this one and still rue not attending the two shows of East’s that we had tickets for this year – work got in the way both times (it doesn’t happen very often and it impacted the same artist twice).    The song “Cabinet Door” is certainly the saddest one I heard this year – but one I couldn’t stop listening to.

 

I hope you enjoyed this recap of some 2018 highlights.  Are any of my top picks aligned with yours?  I’m always looking for new recommendations on musical artists and authors.