You Can't Blow The Roof Off Of Outside!
Well, that was awesome.
Oh, right. By "that,” I mean Jazz Fest. Sure, a Jazz Fest retrospective may seem a bit late by now, but (here’s where I kinda-sorta cop to being lazy) when you paratroop right into the thick of it at the end of a two-week tour, it takes a little while to fully recover and process everything.
Last time I wrote, we were at the beginning of tour with Gov’t Mule. Fortunately, we were able to adapt to their bizarrely professional schedule, where things start happening before 7 PM and you actually have to be on time for stuff. Despite breaking off in the middle of the tour for one very enjoyable evening in Lexington and then another in Asheville with our good friends Thomas Wynn & the Believers, we were able to settle into a decent routine. Bus bands like Mule often travel long distances overnight, which can make it difficult for van bands like The Revivalists to keep pace, but this tour was pretty mercifully routed and Mule’s crew was pretty willing to work with us.
Speaking of willing to work with us, extra-big hip-hop-style shout-outs to Slim and Jay, Mule’s sound guys, for running our sound for the duration of the tour. It made everything awesome.
Speaking of made everything awesome, restrained and dignified British-style thank-yous to Gov’t Mule themselves for having us sit in every single show of the tour. It’s a great learning experience to get to play with such incredible musicians, and, to be perfectly honest, it’s also a bit of a thrill to get to share the stage with such rock legends and soak up some of their crowd-love.
The preceding sentence was not intended to be quite so gross.
So the Mule tour was a resounding success, but there was still a battle at home waiting to be won, and we had to go win it. For sweet lady America. Jazz Fest this year was a trial. A marathon. A feat of both physical and psychological strength. Or maybe it was just a battle. Like my father never used to say: One metaphor at a time.
Maybe I'm overselling a little bit, but four shows in two days was a pretty awesome challenge. We started out Friday at Fiyafest, an event which over the last few years has snowballed from an annual friends-and-family crawfish boil into a sprawling day festival benefitting The Roots of Music. We were the first of twelve-ish acts on the stage at Fiyafest, which meant we had to get there early in case the stage crew needed to work out any kinks during our sound check.
Fiyafest was an all-day affair, but we couldn't stick around for as long as we would have liked because we needed to get to the storied Mahalia Jackson Theater to sound check for our eighth and final show with Gov't Mule. We were all going to sit in on Mule's encore, but we had to leave early (SPOILER ALERT: we spent all of Jazz Fest leaving things early) so we could be at the fairgrounds the next morning, and somehow it was already 1:30 in the next morning, and oh dear we are not going to sleep at all tonight. Fortunately, Gov’t Mule bandleader and all-around rock legend Warren Haynes is a kind and understanding individual, and he shuffled the setlist around a bit so we could all have a little fun and still get away in time to still not really get enough sleep but yeah like whatever that's Jazz Fest.
And then it was Jazz Fest.
We were the first of eight-ish acts that day on the Gentilly Stage, which meant we had to get there early in case the stage crew needed to work out any kinks during our sound check. The festival itself is impossible. It's orchestrated chaos. The number of pieces that have to fall into just the right place at just the right time just to keep a single stage running within thirty minutes of its posted schedule is mind-boggling: the hurry-up sound checks, the constantly revolving drum and keyboard risers, the influx and efflux of gear, the transport vans running back and forth nonstop, the invisible volunteers who stock the hospitality trailers with precise allotments of Sprite and Miller Genuine Draft... And that's just one of seven or so stages, not to mention all of the vendors and artists and demonstrations and signings and interviews scattered throughout. It's a complicated system even before you factor in weather, human error, human noncompliance, and all of the other variables.
And there are always variables. In keeping with this year’s emerging theme of things that are supposed to be fun turning into big poopy messes, everyone was talking about the mud at this year’s Jazz Fest, and how, seeing as it was racetrack mud, it was actually mostly horse poop. Someone wrote a very nice write-up of our performance that spent two paragraphs talking about how everyone was walking around in poop before they even got to the music. Fortunately, lots of kind and resilient individuals braved the mudpoop and came to the 'Fest early enough to see us.
Even with all of the muck and the hustle, Jazz Fest turned out to be a pretty pleasant day in the sun. The show went well, we had a nice time at the signing booth, and when all of our chores were done we still had a little time to watch Mute Math and Galactic (featuring Corey Glover and some other guy on vocals) and catch a brief respite before we had to leave (early, of course) to load in for our late-night show at the Howlin' Wolf.
Despite the undeniable prestige of the festival itself, the jewel in the weekend's crown was definitely the Wolf show. The Revivalists are no strangers to Jazz Fest, daytime or night, but this felt like a step up in terms of legitimacy and awesomeness. It was the most authentic Jazz Fest show we've ever done: We started an hour late from our original start time of "like 1 or 1:30 AM, maybe 2” and played until 5 in the morning in front of a suspiciously alert and enthusiastic crowd. We played off the cuff and were honored to host a revolving door of special guests. Like a real band. Sincere thanks to everyone who joined us onstage and made it a special night: Mike Dillon, Ben Ellman, Lucas Ellman, Jesus (the one from the band Lettuce, not the one from the bible, although Bible Jesus is a pretty cool guy in his own right), Jamison Ross, Eric McFadden, Ryan Zoidis, Eric Bloom, a guitarist who introduced himself as "Brazil,” Maggie Koerner, Roosevelt Collier, and probably other people who I am very sorry to have omitted.
It was a lot of fun to just get up there and call the plays from the line and adapt as guests came and went. At one point I had to run backstage while our friend Maggie was singing a song with the band to teach trumpeter Eric Bloom the horn line to "Shot of Tears” so he could play it with us. The whole night was like that, and it was so fun that we hardly noticed when 5 AM rolled around and it was time to call it a night.
Or morning, as it were.
For all of the craziness, The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is one of the best times of the year. We're always inundated with friends both old and new, and for a youngish band like us there are challenges and conflicts and opportunities to prove ourselves around every corner. The constant stream of familiar faces reminds us how big our world is getting, and how small it has always been.
The end. I'm sorry if you're dying to hear about Hangout Festival (SPOILER ALERT: It ruled), but that'll have to wait til next Wednesday because I'm a little backlogged at the moment (due in no way whatsoever to procrastination and ADHD). We’re about to be on tour for almost all of the summer, but the only thing we have this week is a benefit concert tomorrow (Thursday) night at Tipitina’s for the victims of violent crimes here in New Orleans (particularly the May 12th parade shooting) . It’s a great cause, so please come by if you can.
