LOUISIANA MUSIC FACTORY – TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY: I spend much of Tuesday and Wednesday inside the Lousiana Music Factory catching the in-store shows. Each hour, another band crowds onto the small stage, the jazz festers line up in the record stores narrow aisles or stand back on the wooden stairway.
Since this is New Orleans, the bar across the street is selling beers and mixed drinks and the sidewalk outside turns into a small party.
Jazz Fest is a stop on the perpetual Deadhead tour – several jam bands are on the bill over the two weekends – and the hippie vendors have taken up spots on the sidewalk too. Skinny girls with dreadlocks, wearing lots of Indian prints, hawk feathers and hand-made jewelry from small prayer rugs on the sidewalk.
Michael from Malibu, wearing a t-shirt and a paisley head-scarf, walks through the crowd with a plate of multicolored glass pipes. He says he’s been on the Deadhead circuit for over 20 years.
How’re sales? I ask.
“I’m killing this weekend, I tell ya.” He swears he’ll do $5,000 to $10,000 in sales over two weekends. But life as a street retailer following the jam bands takes a toll.
“My short-term memory is shot,” he says. “I started off with an IQ of 187 but I think I’m down to about 147 now.”
If he meets a girl who offers a place to stay, he’ll stick around after Jazz Fest. If not, he’s off to the next Phish or Allman Brothers show with a van load of imported glass.
The lineup inside the store on Tuesday is another good one. I catch one of my favorite New Orleans bands, The Iquanas, who are pushing a new CD of their Tex-Mex tunes. They’re followed by the The Dirty Dozen Brass Band – who offer up a rollicking hour of horn-driven music. Now over 30 years playing, the Dirty Dozen was the first brass band to break through to mainstream success.
Later, I hear the The Revivalists, a group of young street musicians who add pedal steel to a horn and rhythm section, plus some great vocals. New Orleans keeps drawing top young musicians like this, who find new ways to build on the New Orleans sound.
The Iguanas announce they’re doing a free show Tuesday night at someplace called The Bayou Beer Garden. A few hours later, we’re there on the crowded dance floor.
Wednesday’s in-store lineup starts with the stars and creators of Treme, the HBO show set in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I decide not to fight the crowds for that one and come later when the bands start.
It was a good decision. I hear Davell Crawford, who sports low-rider red Mohawk, and is a student of New Orleans piano. Crawford reels off some James Booker, a little Professor Longhair and some of his own compositions. He records for Basin Street Records, one of New Orleans best local labels. He’s on my radar for a Palladium show.
Theresa Andersson is next, and she has her own connection to the show Treme. Andersson came in 1990 to play violin on the streets of New Orleans with fellow Swede, Anders Osborne. She left him to play with other people when Osborne, a guitarist, was struggling with drug problems. Sound familiar?
Their story was loosely adapted into the HBO drama, which includes a couple of street musicians – a beautiful, talented violinist who breaks up with her pianist boyfriend over his drug problems.
Things turned out well for the real life Swedes. Osborne is now clean and making great music – he had a jazz fest slot and a late afternoon in-store show. And Andersson is a married mother of two who is earning raves creating music that’s mixes a bit of Bjork, with her epemeral voice and New Orleans rhythms. She uses a looper to build up layer on layer of her own vocals, then sings and plays above it, backed by a three-piece band.
Afterwards, the rain had chased away the street vendors, but it cooled down the French Quarter and stopped just as I was ready to go.
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