built for comfort

Finally starting to unwind… it only took three or four days of extra sleep and fried seafood to do it. Here’s my take on the second day of the Fest:

4/29

Large frozen cafe au lait

Beignets

Frozen water

Patina earrings for B with Germaine Bazzle’s scatting carrying over from the Jazz tent

E) Indian fry bead

Mrs. Wheat’s crawfish pie

B) Softshell crab po’boy

S) Crawfish tail po’boy

S) Shrimp remoulade

Banda Blanca of Honduras (with two booty dancers to keep all the men in the audience paying strict attention to the stage)

Louisiana Heritage tent (Viator family showing their violins)

Virgin Megatent (B buys the Viators’ last album, I buy a David Lindley record I’ve been looking for for ages – it has “Brother John” and “Rock it with I” on it)

Grandstand to cool off in the AC and look for one of Steve and Elizabeth’s friends working in the Brazilian pavilion

B) Spring rolls

S&E) Vermicelli

Carlos Maba & Pife Muderno of Brazil @ Fais Do Do stage

I passed Wardel Quezergue Orchestra (an Afro-Cuban style big band – very hot) @ the Congo Square stage on my way to get

Fried sweet potatoes (disappointing, soggy and greasy, so two strikes no against Jeanminette’s food stand) &

Crawfish Monica, large (great as always, but small would have been more than adequate – except B helped me finish it off)

Pife Muderno quotes Ravel’s Bolero on flutes in their encore number

Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings plays at least three Robert Johnson songs (Rocks in the Roadway? that’s not the title but something like that, Terraplane Blues which absolutely tears the place up, and 32/20 Blues) – he’s a big hit with the crowd, which has a tad too many drunken dust dancers and off-beat tambourinists for my liking, but a cupped hand at each ear does wonders. Bonnie Raitt comes out and does the “I’m not worthy” bow. Let’s see, what else, he plays “Down in Mississippi with Legends of the Blues” about touring with John Lee Hooker in 1982 (he has since produced JLH’s album(s?)) on 12-string National steel guitar. Encores with Willie Dixon’s “Built for Comfort, Not for Speed” a little more mellow.

We move to the rickety House of Blues grandstand and wait for Derek Trucks Band to come on. Only problem is a cigar smoker in front of us (and I cut my knuckle on the end of a metal pipe strut). Somewhere in her we bought two more bottles of water and 1 sweetened rosemint tea. Later I get to see an altercation between a drunken college-guy type and a feisty young woman who hits back and then taunts the fellow all down the strip)

Derek’s first tune is jazzy with a bass solo – can’t just call them a blues-rock outfit, then

Ain’t That Lovin’ You

then two, three, four tunes I don’t know? then

Afro Blue (cool, taken fast)

then a song, then band intros, then

Amazing Grace, with an extended guitar intro and then a reggae arrangement

then an encore I don’t recognize that trends into Love Light as we’re heading out of the place.

On the way out, we couldn’t resists catching the last few tunes of

Zawinul Syndicate in the jazz tent


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