Arriving at JazzFest long before the gates opened Friday morning, I headed for the nearby Fair Grinds coffee shop for a cup of joe, to begin my personal celebration of JazzFest, beautiful JazzFest and not just another JazzFest, if you know what I mean.
And I think you do.
The Fair Grinds has not reopened since The Thing. But it has been giving free coffee to the neighborhood since October, providing a service of importance just a notch below that of the first responders.
Think about it: Once you put out the fire in my house and fix my head wound, please—may I have a cup of coffee?
Fair Grinds proprietor Robert Thompson says it may be another month, maybe two, before it opens again, because of hang-ups, bang-ups, and delays.
“We’re in the New Orleans quagmire,” he shrugged. “We’re swimming in molasses.”
That’s a beautiful way, when you think about it, to describe a terrible thing. And more proof that when you get down to it, everything is about food.
Beneath our cheery demeanor this weekend as we greet our guests and our grandiloquent cultural gathering, the fact remains that we are a community largely held together by duct tape and delusion.
And truthfully, as I entered the festival grounds, I fully expected more of the ignominious weeping attacks I’m prone to that make everyone around me avert their eyes in embarrassment, but, in fact, I held up.
You try and you try and you try to get into the zone where you stop mourning what we aren’t anymore and start celebrating what we are and what we will be one day. And I got there. I got a new attitude. A new set of clothes.
We told our kids they were playing hooky, and we rolled out. Oh, happy day.
The kids, they behave on days like this. After all, if they’re getting on your nerves—if they whine too much—you simply say: Okay, you’re right, this sucks. What say we just take you back to school for the day?
That usually works.
I wanted them to be there on the first day JazzFest played in the year 2006, with the idea that I will tell them when they get older—when they’re teenagers—that they were here for this, were a part of it, part of something bigger than them and bigger than Mommy and Daddy and part of something important and even though their likely response will be “That’s great, Dad, but can I use the car tonight or not?” I will still shoulder this burden for them and with them until “this” is them.
We waited in line a really, really, really long time to get into the Fair Grounds, and it’s nice to know some of the festival’s charms haven’t changed despite the storm.
We grooved to the New Orleans Jazz Vipers. Anders Osborne laid out at least three new Katrina-themed songs, but they were neither maudlin nor sad but just good. I had managed to get this far in my life without ever hearing Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes and now I have and now I have a new favorite band.
They sang a song about St. Bernard Parish that was neither sad nor maudlin but just good.
Funny, the announcer who introduced the Dirty Notes did one of those “Let’s hear it for our sponsors!” routines that nobody ever listens to and he laid out Southern Comfort and everyone clapped and then American Express and then Shell and people clapped and you just couldn’t imagine such a thing a few years ago.
Or ever, really, from your typical anticorporate JazzFest crowd. But everyone clapped. Because everyone realizes that without the big money—the guys in suits—this would likely be just another April weekend in New Orleans. Just another spring Friday.
Among the many lessons we have learned here in our little town is humility. Generosity and giving are hard enough, but this receiving thing can just knock you flat on your ass.
And so the day rambled along, and despite the occasional political T-shirt and the occasional Katrina ballad and the occasional thank-God-we’re-here exhortations from stage emcees, it had all the flavor of, really, just another day at JazzFest.
A really good day at JazzFest. To hell with The Thing. Let’s party.
And then the set by local rockers Cowboy Mouth provided just the right ominous poignancy, and isn’t ominous poignancy really what you’re looking for when you walk out your door each morning?
Drummer/singer Fred LeBlanc preached to the masses: “Some folks say we shouldn’t talk about the elephant in the room today. Some folks say we shouldn’t think about it. I say don’t avoid it. I say dance all over the son of a bitch.”
It was a point taken to heart, and the crowd danced all over the son of a bitch.
Then, the weirdest thing. It came during one of their signature concert sing-along songs that they were forced by circumstances to quit playing this past fall.
It’s a chestnut: “Hurricane Party,” a rollicking (and true) story about giving the finger to hurricanes in that insouciant and mildly charming way we used to do around here until, well . . . you know.
So they stopped playing it this fall as they toured America even though fans called for it. They stopped out of respect. Out of mourning. Because it just didn’t work anymore.
But when Cowboy Mouth played the reopening of the House of Blues in December, they decided what the hell, let it rip, and they’ve put it back in their repertoire since, much to the delight of the Mouth faithful.
A flirtation with the fates and furies? Maybe. But it’s only rock ’n’ roll.
Or is it?
In the middle of the song Friday, the power went out at the Southern Comfort stage where Cowboy Mouth was playing. In my twenty-two years of JazzFest attendance, I’ve never seen this happen, a colossal technical glitch that ground a performance to a halt.
Total silence. Right in the middle of “Hurricane Party.”
I mean, that’s a coincidence, right? Please say yes.
After about ten or fifteen minutes, tech crews got the power back. Cowboy Mouth came back onstage.
Chastised by meteorological hoodoo? You better believe it. Rather than finish “Hurricane Party,” they restarted their show with “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz.
I’ll leave it to you to decipher the symbolism therein. I’ve had enough of it myself for one day.