Friday, April 29, 2016

Jazz Fest, 2016

OK, I'm still damp 24 hours later, but I survived a day of Jazz Fest.

I was invited to accompany my new crazy cat neighbor/aging hippie and full-time writer Beth--a truly wonderful person--and her friend Lolly. (And no, she had no adverbs with her. You know I had to ask anyone named Lolly.) Lolly was from New Jersey, and I scored extra bonus points when she told me this by asking "which exit?"

But we made the quick drive up to the Fairgrounds under clouds which promised a serious soaking...and they did deliver.

Part of the venue. Imagine a dozen or more concerts going on all at once in the same park.

Add food, t-shirts, booze and rain/mud and you've got Jazz Fest.

Seventy-five bucks a day for tickets. And hundreds of thousands of people pay it during the two week-ends that this event goes on.

The rain first drove us into the Gospel Tent, where we heard the Jones Sisters rocking it out.

After a while, the rain stopped, so we wandered a bit. Then Beth and Lolly popped into one hall to hear a band that Beth knew and I went off to get more food and beer. Then the clouds opened up again and I got so wet that I could have jumped in the river to dry off. But on the plus side, the beer line got real short so I loaded up my cargo pants pockets with cans of beer and I was happy for a while.
I listened to a brass band for a while, out in the rain, because...well hell, I was already at my saturation point. Why not?

Back in the hall, a jazz band played, and an impromptu Second Line dance broke out.

It's all fun and games until someone breaks a hip.

And yeah, we joined in.


More wanderings...more music. And I had my beer.

It was more than a little muddy, but that didn't really seem to stop these folks.



All ages got into it.



A bit more wandering put us in Prime view of some Mardi Gras indians.




Some of these costumes can weigh over a hundred pounds and cost thousands of dollars to make--and they're all hand-made.

We wandered more. Drank more, got rained on a bit more...it was great.



Finally we wound up at the Acura stage to catch Susan Tedeschi and the Tedeschi Truck Band, who made a great finale for our day.


More mud.


The way to dress for Jazz Fest...See the Jazz Fest boots?

Although that was not a bad look either...little black dress, jazz boots, beer, and a hat that says "Keep calm and kill zombies".


Looking forward to next year already.

10 comments:

  1. Now that looks like it was fun!

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  2. Anonymous7:17 PM

    Sounds like you had a great day inspite of the rain/

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  3. Jazz Fest is a blast! :-)

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  4. Please tell me you ate some Crawfish Monica. Best part of Jazz Fest for me!!

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    1. I did not find that, but I did partake of the Cochon de lait and I'm still savoring that today. Oh!

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  5. Good to see you're enjoying yourself and making some friends!

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  6. I only got jealous when I saw the Tedeschi-Trucks band was there. I love those two. Derek is one of the greatest slide guitar players working these days, but they're both great musicians.

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  7. Murphy,
    Glad you enjoyed the Jazz fest, of course beer makes most anything better.
    We have our own Jazz fest here in Denton, Tx, starts today in fact. Univ of N Texas (I graduated many moons ago) has the top jazz program in the US. Has had numerous Grammy nominations. I'll be helping with the beer inventory (depleting it) later today.

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  8. You are a man of eclectic tastes. I wouldn't go near something like that on a bet!

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  9. We did miss going to Jazzfest and the Zurich Classic. Cochon de Lait is the BEST! (I have a Crawfish Monica recipe that was in the Times-Pic a few years back, but no Cpchon de Lait recipe!). We learned always to carry a fold up poncho because there WILL be mud at some point. I loved seeing the pics on the WWL app of people using make-shift rafts to head to the gates! Be sure to check for the advance, cheap(er) tickets next year. Glad you got in the spirit and had a blast!!

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