Secret New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Highlights:
Wednesday May 1, 2002

by Reid Mitchell

I know Texans know how to get to New Orleans. In fact, I was a grown man before I found out that Texans come in any flavor except Drunk. Most of you must know that the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival can be one of the great music festivals around. This year they jacked up admission and food and beverage prices in general, and there's been some dark mutterings; I hear the my fellow locals aren't showing up in the same numbers and that even out-of-towners, whom we have always regarded as our natural prey, are getting surly. And of course with any event that's been around as long as the Jazz Fest has plenty of folks saying, it hasn't been any good since that one back in 19XX, when it was for locals.... Or when Schiltz Beer was the sponsor. Or when the stages had numbers, not the names of corporate sponsors. Or the Mt. Olivet Church had the jambalaya concession. And mainly when I was twenty-five years younger.

What fewer of you may know is that you could come to New Orleans for Jazz Fest, spend a week listening to great music and never set foot on the Fair Grounds. There's not only the number of performers jamming the local clubs, although there's hardly anyone who plays the Jazz Fest you can't see somewhere else in town. Tonight, for example, I'll be seeing Marcia Ball and others playing piano at the Snug Harbor, a jazz club that's not her usual venue. But it's also the free sessions in music stores and the occasional workshop.

Yesterday Leo Nocentilli gave an afternoon workshop at the Funky Butt, a music bar at the northern edge of the Quarter. Admission was $20, a bit steep maybe, but there were probably fewer than twenty of us in the bar, and I sat about five feet from Leo.

Don't remember Leo? Leo was the guitar player and--as he tells it--tunesmith for the preeminent New Orleans funk group, The Meters. The Meters are to New Orleans what Booker T and the MGs are to Memphis--and as somebody other than me pointed out, the differences in the music of these two master groups are the differences in the two cities encapsulated. Their first single is probably their most famous and certainly their most copied song: "Cissy Strut." If you like New Orleans funk, you love the Meters.

My buddy Johnny Harper, a guitar player who fronts a band in East Bay, was in town. "Hey man, Leo Nocentilli's doing a workshop at the Funky Butt. I got to go." Johnny had about twenty questions for Leo, about half of which he got to ask. Most of the other folks there had twenty questions for Leo, too. There was such a deep knowledge of Leo's work in general--hey, when the man was a teenager, for godsakes, he and a few other musicians were in Detroit, laying down tracks for Hitsville, soon to be Motown, and he's still recording new music--and the Meters in particular that I kept my mouth shut. Somebody would ask Leo to play something, the lead line from "Chicken Strut." Leo would play it. "Can you play it again?" "Wow. Can you play it again slower?" Twenty of us craning our necks, watching his fingers, taking notes. Whispering--so that's how he does it--nodding of heads. Lots of woodshedding in the old town tonight.

Leo's a patient cat. He takes us through a lot of material, tells some stories, answers lots of questions. He's also one of the hardest working players I've ever seen up close. All the guitar parts on the Meters stuff, "Look-Ka Py Py" for example, that sound like two guitar players or at least Leo double-, maybe triple-tracked, that's Leo live in the studio. And, if you were lucky enough to be here, live at the Funky Butt, April 30, 2002.

Today there's lot of stuff happening, but here's an almost hidden gem--Tony Joe White playing the Louisiana Music Factory, a French Quarter music store. Later on, while I'm at Snug Harbor tonight, Johnny's going to be checking out Tony Joe White playing a concert with James Burton and oh-my-god Scotty Moore. But this afternoon it's Tony, his beat-up hard-tail Strat, and his drummer.

If you're an admirer of Tony Joe White--and I have to assume you are, else why would you be hanging around Americana at all--you know that he doesn't play concerts in the US too often (though in Europe and Australia, they eat him up with a spoon). This is the first time I've head the man live. It's a short show, maybe 45 minutes, and the music store is packed. Tony's cool though; he has the aplomb and mastery of some ancient bluesman. He's the only person in this crowded store not sweating. Opens his mouth and it's that voice--get Tommy Lee Jones to play him in the movie. Tony Joe's totally in control of his music, which is dirty and nasty and funny and, sometimes, touchingly sweet. He does a new one just written; sings some songs from the semi-obscure career he's had since his time on the hit parade; he sings a beautiful version of "Rainy Night in Georgia" - no matter who you associate that song with, Tony Joe wrote it and recorded it first. But there's only one song he can use to end to show:

Some of you all in this store never been down south too much
I'm going to tell you a little bit about this
So that you'll understand what I'm talking about
Down there we have a plant that grows out in the fields and the woods
Looks something like a turnip green
Everybody calls it polk salad
POLK
SALAD
Used to know a girl that lived down there
She'd go out in the evenings and pick a mess of it
Carry it home and cook it for supper
If she had any left, she hung on the clothesline
Dried it out
And smoked it.
But she did all right.

Yeah, we did all right too. One of the greatest shows of my entire life and I heard the whole thing shoved up against a wooden bin filled with Cajun music cds.

The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival folks won't thank me, but I think you should know: you can come to New Orleans during jazz fest, never buy a ticket, and still hear some of the best music on the planet.

*Official site of the fest: www.nojazzfest.com Learn a little more about Leo Nocentilli at www.djmrec.com/nocentelli/band.html The current Nocentilliless incarnation of the Meters, the Funky Meters, has a site at www.funkymeters.com/
Rhino offers Funkify Your Life, a two-cd introduction to the original Meters
www.rhino.com/features/71869p.html
Tony Joe White maintains a website at www.tonyjoewhite.net You can buy stuff directly from them; my friend Johnny swears it must be Tony Joe's wife that answers the phone. There's a very fine Tony Joe White fan website at home.t-online.de/home/Martin.Doppelbauer/main.htm


Contact Reid Mitchell at: reid-at-rockzilla.net

 
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