Jeff Hayes in New Orleans 2008

Blues Beat
Copied from the 7/3/08 issue of "Blueswax" online blues magazine

2008 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

A Musician's Point Of View

by Jeff Hayes

This is the story of my trip to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this year. Of course there will be references to the devastating hurricane of 2005, but the overwhelming feeling that I experienced sweeping over me during my five-day stay in New Orleans was of strength and resolute hope; not the kind of hope that you have when you're waiting to see if you got that favorite toy for Christmas when you were a child. Not the kind of hope that you have when you ask your soul mate to marry you. No, this is the kind of hope that spings from years of hardscrabble living in a place that is uniquely blessed with music, family, and food like nowhere else on this planet. It's still on the minds of people here, so it has to be part of the story, like it may always be. But not because like the souvenir t-shirts proclaim in every store front, "Katrina was a Bitch." It's a lot deeper and closer to the soul than that.

My wife Jenelle and I flew into Louis Armstrong Airport on Saturday night of the last weekend of JazzFest. For the record, New Orleans and Austin have the coolest airport music anywhere. The first weekend of JazzFest had been well attended, but was deluged with rain. This reportedly made for some interesting aromas because the festival is held on the infield and track of a horseracing track. This weekend the weather was a beautiful eighty degrees with relatively low humidity at thirty percent. Because of the late Saturday arrival, I was only able to make it out to the fairgrounds on Sunday. I was rewarded with the sweet strains of Sonny Landreth's slide guitar as I approached the festival from the south.

Despite my late arrival the festival did not disappoint and I was able to take in both traditional and contemporary acts on the numerous JazzFest stages. Among the acts I experienced were Carlos Santana; the Raconteurs; Galactic; the Rebirth Brass Band; the Radiators; Maze featuring Frankie Beverly; and Goldman Thibodeaux & the Lawtell Playboys. Not bad for a fifty-dollar entry fee, although there was some justified discussion in the Times-Picayune about how many New Orleans residents could afford to attend. It seems to me that if a resident were able to show a driver's license or ID card with a local address that they should be let in at a much-reduced rates. Just a thought. Historically, the Neville Brothers have closed the festival, but this year there was a slight amount of pre-festival controversy regarding the decision to have the Neville Brothers repeat their honor. Apparently there were some hurtful things said by members of the Neville family regarding their treatment by the local community that made it to the press. But the Neville Brothers performed beautifully and any trace of rancor was washed away by the sweet, soulful groove that flowed from the stage and over the sizeable crowd.

There were the usual post-function opportunities to catch some of the big acts on small stages sprinkled throughout the City. I was fortunate enough to hear about Charmaine Neville and her band playing at a funky, little dive called the Bullet Sports Bar not far from the Fairgrounds. The bar was surrounded by motorcycles and music was emanating from the joint like fat flowing out of a frying andouille sausage. I stepped inside and as my eyes grew accustomed to both the semidarkness and the wall of people that were inside, I recognized a familiar face. Portland's own Peter Dammann, the music producer of the Waterfront Blues Festival, was the guitarist in Charmaine's band. Reggie Houston was also on hand to round out the Rose City contingent. There was nowhere else on earth that I would rather have been at that moment.

Monday was taken up by beignets and café au laits at the Café du Monde and the musical remnants of the festival. The world famous Louisiana Music Factory in the French Quarter was hosting some in-store appearances and I had the pleasure of seeing the Ellis Marsalis Quartet with Jason Marsalis on the drums. Most of the tunes were from their latest disc, on open letter to Thelonious. Jason both inspired and crushed me as a drummer by pulling off one polyrhythm after another out of his ass pocket like he had a bottomless supply of grooves hidden inside his relatively young body. Spencer Bohren performed a solo set on acoustic and lap steel guitars. Bohren's's name may be familar to BluesWax readers as he has performed at Portland's Waterfront Blues Festival in the past. I was particularly blown away by his tune "Long Black Line." As Bohren explains himself, "There is an inescapable black line visible on every broken house tying it with every other broken house in every other devastated neighborhood." This black line is the resudue of the chemicals and poisons that surged into the city and signifies the high water mark of Katrina. The black line has mercifully begun to fade, but is still present in many areas of the City.

Tuesday dawned for me with a drum lesson [Editor's note: please note that the writer is the drummer for Seattle's Becki Sue & Her Big Rockin' Daddies! and knows his way around the skins!] for me on the agenda. I have been told and I believe that if you really want to attempt to capture the feel of a particular rhythmic groove, you must travel there and feel the groove of the people and the community around you. So I had called ahead and scheduled a drum lesson with one of New Orleans' finest drummers, Kevin O'Day. Kevin was outstanding. He maintained his patience and positive attitude in spite of my obvious (at least to me) handicap of living all of my life in the upper left-hand corner of the U.S. I walked out of the hour-long lesson not sure if I should crow like a proud rooster for having the guts to undertake this challenge or slink off like a whipped dog with my tail between my legs for attempting such foolishness. Ultimately it will make me a better drummer and that's what counts.

Wednesday was the day that I had been most looking forward to and dreading. My wife and I were going to take a drive to witness ourselves the destruction wrought by Katrina and (hopefully) see the progress that was being made as this beautiful Cajun Queen of a City was rebuilt. My firts emotion on seeing the lower ninth ward and St. Bernard Parish was hopelessness. Such destruction and absence of community I have never before seen. St. Bernard Parish was remarkable for its stark emptiness. Block after block of foundations, sidewalks, garage pads, and stairways that climb to a house that is no longer there. It's a hollow feeling to stand on a street where people used to live and is now occupied by only waist high grass and breeze. One hearbreaking example of the loss was the hand-drawn sign in front of a vacant lot that was accompanied by a ribbon publicly stating that this is "my home." The lower ninth ward is different in that the destroyed structures are, for the most part, still there. They are beyond repair and, to my untrained eye, waiting to be demolished. In some cases there are families that have moved back into their house in an effort to salvage their former life or because they simply have nowhere else to go. I'm not sure why, but the smell of gasoline seemed to permeate the air in the lowere ninth.

Just as I was at my lowest, we came on the Habitat for Humanity musician's village. This is a housing project that is chaired by Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis. It will consist of seventy-two single-family homes on eight acres of land. The houses are painted various bright colored hues and pop up like a rainbow at the end of the storm in the upper ninth ward. New Orleans cannot return until the musicians do and this project is a great start to that process. You can donate to the Habitat for Humanity musician's village at www.habitat-nola.org.

On my last morning in the Crescent City I was looking for a place to sit and enjoy one more beignet and café au lait when I spied an African-American gentleman sitting by himself at a table. I asked if I may join him and he graciously agreed to share his table with me. I introduced myself and he told me that his name was Sam. I inquired about his residence and he said that he was a local. He told me that he and his wife of forty years had lost everything in Katrina and had relocated to Houston to live with their oldest son. Shortly after Sam and his bride moved to Houston doctors discovered a lump in one of his wife's breasts.

Six months later, Sam's wife was gone. A short time later, FEMA allowed Sam to return to the only house that he and his wife had ever shared. It was heavily damaged and not suitable for human habitation. On seeing his house Sam had a heart attack and spent the next couple of weeks in the hospital. On his release from the hospital Sam returned to Houston and now divides his time between Houston and New Orleans where he's rebuilding his home. When Sam and I parted company an hour and a half later he wished me a good flight and hoped that I had enjoyed my stay in his hometown. I let him know that I would never forget him and that the best part of my trip had been the hour and a half that I had spent with him. God bless you Sam and God bless your city.

Jeff Hayes is the drummer for the Seattle/Olympia-based band, Becki Sue & Her Big Rockin' Daddies!, and the 2008 Washington Blues Society drummer of the year. Jeff can be contacted at blueswax@visnat.com.