Jazz Fest 2003, day 2

Moise & Alida Viator with Eh, La-Bas!, a surprisingly funky creole fusion. I accidentally capture a few seconds of this couple dancing (with crowds streaming between them and the camera):

[click pictures for larger shots]

When they’re done we head for some large iced café au lait, and b buys some earthernware pottery from Dallas. Then I get a seafood salad (popcorn shrimp, fried crawfish, mixed green salad, lemon, tartar/ranch type dressing), b gets crawfish sausage po’boy with mustard, and s gets fried eggplant with crawfish sauce (the big winner, he reminisces about it all day). Then I think it’s an hour later than it is and herd us prematurely to the Louisiana Heritage stage, where we catch some of Michael Ward‘s electric fiddle funk. En route we get a large unsweetened rosemint tea (for b), and a large unsweetened mandarin orange tea (for me).

Then we head over to the Lagniappe Stage for Golden Star Hunters Mardi Gras Indians

…who close out their set with the ol’ favorite singalong “Down by the Riverside.”

We head into the grandstand for air conditioning, flush toilets, and the photography exhibit, and on the way back out later catch a few bars of Renée McCrary, a rock belter, then head back to the La. Heritage stage for Garage a Trois, now a four-piece featuring Stanton Moore (the drummer from Galactic) and Charlie Hunter on guitar:

…also Skerik on sax and a vibraphone-player/percussionist whose name escapes me.

I ask s to snap another picture of b and me:

We meet e over at the Lagniappe stage and hear some of Alison Brown Quartet. She’s an award-winning banjo player and her band is an electro-newgrass-ish outfit. She goes on our “buy at the CD tent” list (along with Eh, La-Bas! and the Canadian group from yesterday). Her encore is called “Shoot the Dog.” It’s name seems to be derived from the fact that she’s walking the dog on the banjo and her electric pianist is shooting the keys in response.

Then it’s time for my softshell crab po’boy, b’s two Mrs. Wheat’s crawfish pies, e’s cuban sandwich, and s’s caribbean seafood salad. b and i share another large unsweetened rosemint tea and i also get a small frozen café au lait for the sugar/caffeine infusion.

Next we sit in the vastly improved Blues tent, which now has an impromptu sod lawn in the back half, more ventilation, and misters running along two sides to hear a bit of Jeremy Lyons and his trio (guitar, stand-up bass, drums):

As we come in they’re finishing up an instrumental version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” We stay in the tent for the Duke Robillard Blues Band:

According to s, Robillard was one of the founders of Roomful of Blues. His first tune is called “Swimming with Lucy” (he says, “I wrote this song for my dog,” making this the second dog song of the days, as Alison Brown had said of “Shoot the Dog” that she “wrote this song about my grandmother’s dog Woofie”).

We head over to the Acura stage to get set up for Bob Dylan‘s day-closing set. They don’t have any bleachers this year (!) so we find a grassy spot to hunker down behind the sea of lawnchairs. I head off to get a large crawfish monica and two bottles of water and then settle in for Dylan’s nearly two-hour set:

Dylan setlist (partial)
1 ??
2 Tonight, I’ll be Stayin’ Here with You
3 Highway 61
4 Things Have Changed
5 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
6 Dignity
7 Mr. Tambourine Man
8 Drifter’s Escape (?)
9 By and By
10 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
11 ??
12 ??
13 A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall
14 Summer Days
(bows)
encore:
15 Like a Rolling Stone
16 All Along the Watchtower

We’re definitely back in the dilettante section. Up closer is the fanatic section. I try to move in for some photos but the crush up front is unbearable. I end up taking pictures of the sky, b, and myself lying in the grass.

I also snap some pictures of Dylan on the monitors, to at least give a feel for what we were seeing:

Overheard conversation while fighting my way back from the frontside:

“I can’t believe you left the beers”
“There were only 3 left”
“But it’ll take us 20 minutes to get back there and I’m out!“

I see a guy in the crowd with a bunch of bills of various denomination stapled to his chest. B remembers the line as being about “50 lbs. of hairdye” but I’m pretty sure it’s “headlines.”

Looks like Charlie Sexton is out of the band on second guitar. There’s a new guy, named Koella from Nashville in there. I think the drummer is new too.

I doodled a few sketches but nothing came out all that good.

The weather really cooled off by the end of the day. Another perfect day at the fairgrounds. After that showers, dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, and then to bed (I opt not to go see Yonder Mountain String Band at Twi-Ro-Pa, though I’m sorely tempted) to get ready for Saturday.