My happy face was clearly visible around 3pm on Monday. “What brought that on?”, you ask. That’s about the time that we landed in New Orleans to spend the week with Denny and Anne and the rest of our local friends.
Monday night was reasonably quiet and mellow and we kept our destinations local to the Uptown area. Denny approved my idea of going to see John Fohl at Dos Jefes at 9pm, and added a pre-show stop at the “Kingpin”, a great nearby dive bar.
This bar is most famous for featuring in one of the late, great Anthony Bourdain’s television shows. Particularly the taco truck that parks out front. I do think that this is a great place to settle in with a good book.
Dos Jefes cigar bar doesn’t look like much from the outside (in typical New Orleans fashion) but features great live music every night of the week. John Fohl, best known as the guitar player in Dr. John’s band for many years, has a standing Monday night gig. We saw him there a few years ago and really enjoyed his set. I enjoyed this riff on James Booker’s “Classified”:
I really do enjoy the feel of this music and cigar bar. Always a friendly and fun crowd.
Anne was able to join us for the show and, as is pretty typical, took time to have a long conversation with Fohl. Mr. “Good Lord” Alex was also able to join us about half way through the first set. Here’s another one of the songs from an excellent first night in New Orleans:
Tuesday festivities started at a new restaurant, “Justine”, in the French Quarter – thanks to Anne for “Oganizing” reservations. This is the new venture from Justin Devillier, the chef/owner behind “La Petite Grocery” – a place we’ve loved for several years. Justin appeared on Top Chef season 11 and has won many awards since beginning his career as a line cook in 2004.
I think we could easily have made a meal from the appetizer section of the menu – steak tartare, fois gras torchon, lobster tartine, grilled octopus – a line up of all our favourites and all beautifully executed. We then split a couple of delicious entrees – lobster raviolo and a morrocan spiced short rib.
Justine is nicely divided into several smaller sections with different themes – front al fresco, middle formal, rear mural and outside courtyard. We enjoyed these two murals in the back section:
We left a nice, long lunch very well sated but not overly stuffed. Another amazing New Orleans dining experience.
We walked off some of lunch with a short ramble through the Quarter and stop into Mr. B’s for bubbles in the courtyard. Then it was back to Webster Street to rest up for the evening.
Diana and Anne didn’t have much of a rest before heading out for oyster and champagne Happy Hour at Pascal’s Manale. This is always one of the highlights of McD’s trips to New Orleans, as she gets to catch up with her New Orleans girlfriends.
As we were getting ready to head out for the evening, Denny’s neighbor asked for some help pushing his 1956 Thunderbird into the garage, resulting in this entertaining video:
After all that exertion (well, maybe not so much for Mason) Denny and I headed over to the HiHo lounge to catch an early music show. Every Tuesday they host “Ruby Tuesday”, where various musicians cover the Rolling Stones songbook. The doorman let us know that it would be all Stones except for his special request for “Atlantic City”, the Bruce Springsteen song that was famously covered by the band – that was a highlight for me.
The other highlight from the first band was “Loving Cup”, one of my favourite Stones songs:
The second band was Roddy Romero, Grammy nominated artist from Lafayette, and a friend whose name I missed. I enjoyed their cover of “Beast of Burden” (much quieter than the first band):
We hadn’t had quite enough music yet, and rode over to the French Quarter again to see Dragon Smoke at One Eyed Jacks – now having rendezvoused with Diana. This band is a kind of New Orleans supergroup that has come together on the Tuesday night of the week between Jazzfest weekends to perform a one of a kind show for the last 19 years. The members are Ivan Neville (Neville Brothers and Dumpstaphunk), Eric Lindell, Stanton Moore (Galactic) and Robert Mercurio (Galactic). I laughed at the sign outside the venue stating “Early Show – Dragon Smoke – Sold Out” which I saw after 11pm still waiting for the band to assemble from their other various gigs and start.
What an amazing show! The Galactic rhythm section has a one of a kind ability to build a song up gradually until the crowd goes nuts. Here’s a snippet showing Stanton Moore’s skills:
Eric Lindell and Ivan Neville traded vocal duties on the songs which added a nice variety. Here are songs from each of them:
Wednesday started with a pleasant walk around the loop in nearby Audubon park. The park was historically the first sugar cane plantation in Louisiana and is now home to many hundred plus year old oak trees, a nine hole golf course and the New Orleans zoo. The path is just under 2 miles long and makes for a leisurely start to the day.
A light lunch at the Rum House on Magazine St was followed by some light shopping and a coffee and champagne (one of us had coffee and one had champagne – hmm, I wonder which I had) at The Vintage.
We had an excellent dinner experience at Patois, just down the street from Denny and Anne’s home. I started with a duck mousse pate that was amazing and Diana had some beautifully cooked octopus in a sizzling skillet.
My main course was risotto with crawfish and mushrooms – absolutely amazing. Diana chose paneed veal – also perfectly cooked and on top of some delicious pearl cous cous.
After dinner, we did our best to reenact a picture taken outside Patois several years ago. Can you find a few things different between the two pictures? Ah, that’s too kind of you, and I agree that we really haven’t changed a bit.
While we were enjoying dinner, the famous Welsh singer, Tom Jones, was enjoying Jon Cleary’s piano music at the small Chickie Wah Wah music club (host to Anne’s excellent birthday party with the Creole String Beans performing). Jones was in town to perform at the Jazzfest on Thursday and decided to enjoy some local music the night before. As is typical in New Orleans, he was invited to join the band for some Elvis tunes:
I read that he did a great job with all his classics at the festival on Thursday, including “What’s New Pussycat?”. I had a flashback to Mum trying to teach me to waltz to this song in our Merrick View living room many years ago. I’m sure I was a horrible student.
Thursday also began with a pleasant stroll through Audubon park. I always enjoy seeing the moss in the trees that is so typically Southern. This was used to make mattresses and I’m sure was pretty comfortable.
We spent a relaxing afternoon reading on the back patio and then it was time to meet up with a work friend for dinner.
Norma, my CIO for Latin America and based in Guatemala, bought tickets to Jazzfest when the Rolling Stones were originally scheduled to play on Thursday. She kept her plans to visit New Orleans and met us for a delicious Peruvian dinner at Tito’s Ceviche and Pisco. The weather was good and we sat on the patio and enjoyed a good sampling of the menu. The lamb shank and hanger steak with pesto linguine were my favourites.
After dinner, we invited Norma and her friend to join us for the “International Blues Invitational” show hosted by New Orleans music 
legend, Johnny Sansone, in the event space of Monkey Hill bar. This was an excellent show in a great small venue. The blue lights at the front of the stage made it challenging for me to get good pictures and video. Things started out very well with Luke Winslow King and Roberto Luti. Luke is a good friend of my old boss, Vince, who had sent me a signed copy of his last album – it was very nice to hear it live.
Roberto Luti (guitarist on left side of stage) is from Tuscany and now makes his home in New Orleans. He started a project called “Playing for Change” that I think is amazing. Musicians from all around the world collaborate on songs via video. Here’s one that features Roberto at 3:08:
Sansone did a great job of recruiting talent for such a small show. John Fohl made his second appearance of the week, this time on electric guitar, and was joined by the amazing Joe Crowne on keyboard.
The excellent evening closed with some Blues royalty. The band including Fohl, Crowne, and Sansone, were joined by Benny Turner, younger brother of Freddie King and bass player for years in the Freddie King band. What a treat and what a character.
Our Friday at Jazzfest was upon us. This is the 50th anniversary of this wonderful institution and we were hoping for good weather and a great day. As you can see, the skies started off a bit overcast and threatening rain.
We set up camp at the main Acura stage and then began a ramble around the various stages – first stop Congo Square to see some of the Batiste Brothers family band.
From Congo we made the walk through to the Gentilly stage for Shamarr Allen. What an amazingly small cornet he uses, but still gets a great sound. McD was annoyed when Shamarr started her favourite “Weekend Dance” song only to be shut down by the festival police as he reached the end of his time slot – nobody goes over time at Jazzfest.
We ran into Shamarr later at the festival and Diana was able to tell him how much she had enjoyed his show at Antone’s in Austin a few weeks ago.
Next was a quick jaunt back to the Fais Do Do stage (Anne’s favourite) where a lot of local Cajun style music is featured. Cedric Watson was a classic example of this style. I was entertained by his punk rock, Joan Jett looking, washboard player.
Back to Gentilly for Leo Nocentelli (of The Meters guitar fame) and his band. This was a good show and I enjoyed him featuring his granddaughter, Harper, on “Fire on the Bayou”:
Getting tired of walking and too hot in the sun yet? Me too, so we stopped into the paddock area for a breather and some shade.
Now it was time for some of the yummy festival food. Diana enjoyed the trio of crawfish sack, fried oysters, and oyster/crawfish pastry and I wolfed down a cochon du lait po’ boy.
At this point the group splintered a bit – Diana and I made our way back to Acura (the main stage) to relax in the chairs while the rest of the crew rambled around various other stages. I picked up one of my favourite festival foods on the way – a spicy meat pie. We were fortunate to run into the guest country group from the Bahamas on the way as they paraded through the festival:
We caught the end of the Voice of the Wetlands Allstars, followed by Wayne Toups for some authentic Cajun music. Then the group reassembled at base camp for the headlining act, Chris Stapleton.
Diana and I both enjoy his music very much and thoroughly enjoyed this set. An early highlight was “Fire Away”:
The sound was so much better than when he opened for The Eagles at ATT Stadium. Those Jazzfest sound guys have learned a few tricks over the 50 years.
Diana faught her way up front to get a better view and got this picture from the screen looking out on the extensive Jazzfest crowd. Can you see us back there on the left side?
The show featured all of our favourites and finished up with the classic, “Tennessee Whiskey”:
Another amazing Jazzfest day in the books.
Back on Webster Street, we enjoyed a relaxing evening in the kitchen as Anne whipped up fine restaurant quality crawfish Monica pasta and bread.
Our New Orleans vacation started to wind down on Saturday. We had a midday flight but managed to work in one final meal with Denny and Anne before heading to the airport. Echo’s Pizza offers a very nice brunch – Diana and I shared the Echo’s Breakfast – avocado toast, eggs, bacon, and potatoes (delicious). The heavens opened just as we were leaving and so Denny and Anne very kindly dropped us at the airport. Those two are the best hosts you could ever hope for and have been to us for so many years – very special!
We arrived smoothly back in McKinney around 3:30pm. No signs of any issues from all the storms and tornado activity that we’d heard about during the week. Pizza and a movie sounded good after all the activity of the week. We watched a Kate Hudson movie set in New Orleans (two of my favourites so it couldn’t be all bad):
A typical Sunday started with workouts – this time I had a swim to try and straighten out my back (worked reasonably well). Then we drove to downtown McKinney for coffee, crossword, and quiche with K at Filtered.
Just as we got settled by the pool for an afternoon of reading in the sun, the neighbours showed up to spread the mulch we bought from their Boy Scout troop – ugh! We sent them to the front garden first and then took a break from the sun as they finished the back garden.
This was an excellent vacation week filled with all my favourites – amazing friends, delicious and unique food, and excellent music.