| The
Spotted Cat features local and touring jazz acts on
Frenchman Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. |
 |
NEW
ORLEANS — The cab careened past Washington Square and
onto Frenchmen Street. It was close to 10 p.m., and the
neighborhood was filled with locals adorned with tattoos,
piercings and lots of ragged black accessories.
"The
cab drivers call this ‘Freak Street,’" our driver
said. "Because a lot of crazy characters hang out
here — guys in skirts with huge holes in their ears,
that kind of thing. But we mean it in a good way. This is
where all the music happens."
My
Australian friend, Jordan, and I had spent the last few
days finding novel ways to avoid Bourbon Street, where I
had twice been accosted by drunken frat boys in flip-flops
who wanted to ply me with foot-tall Hurricanes and make me
listen to bad cover bands playing Journey’s "Don’t
Stop Believin’."
I’m
a bass player and an avid music fan who was raised on
jazz, including plenty of Louis Armstrong. I was 14 on my
first visit here, but in those days I was more interested
in voodoo and swamps. Times change and so have I: Now, I
was here on a sort of musical mission to find out whether
Hurricane Katrina, which had slammed into the Big Easy in
2005, had drowned its rhythmic soul.
It
hasn’t, but you won’t find it on Bourbon Street. Ask
anyone here who knows anything about music and they’ll
tell you to head to Frenchmen Street (and the surrounding
area) and its warren of live-music clubs. It’s about a
15-minute walk from Bourbon Street, but it is light-years
away. (Hurricane Isaac hit the city in late August but
inflicted substantially less damage than Katrina.)
After
spending some time here, you’ll realize this: You can’t
know New Orleans unless you know its music, and you can’t
know its music unless you get acquainted with Frenchmen
Street.
There
you’ll find rockabilly, bluegrass, R&B, jazz, blues,
Latin music, hip-hop, rock ‘n’ roll and more in the
numerous live-music venues that line a two-block stretch.
Well-known musicians, including Ellis Marsalis and
Charmaine Neville, show up regularly. The drinks are cheap
and cover charges minimal. Music is such a part of life
here that some restaurants on the busy strip feature a
talented jazz trio with a tip jar.
Set
aside a night just to roam the area and you’ll begin to
find the legitimate musical soul of the city in the
characters who often pop up here: the R&B-fueled
majesty of native son Troy "Trombone Shorty"
Andrews or the legendary post-punk, experimental noise
rocker Quintron and his wife, Miss Pussycat.
How
to pick your spots? Let your ears guide you. Wander from
place to place; spend a few minutes or a few hours in this
joint or that. Want something more formal? Look at
schedules of acts online and plan your night that way.
We
needed to be well-fed to sustain ourselves on our harmonic
pilgrimage, so we started, as any club-hopping night in
the Crescent City should, with fried chicken and
rabbit-and-sausage jambalaya at Coop’s Place, a
hole-in-the-wall on neighboring Decatur Street. When it
comes to decor, Coop’s sets the bar pretty low:
scratched wooden tables, a large, square bar and bathrooms
outside in an alley.
The
low-key ambience blended seamlessly with the down-home
cooking: The fried chicken was juicy, crisp and golden,
and it bumped up nicely against the slightly sweet
coleslaw. We sampled the fried oysters with tangy tartar
sauce and washed it all down with a house Sazerac, a New
Orleans cocktail standard made of rye, bitters and sugar.
Sated,
we followed our ears to a bar called the Abbey (also on
Decatur), which our cab driver called "the nexus of
all things dark." She should have added "and
drunk." Inside this tiny dive we found a rollicking
Irish-influenced bluegrass band called the Woodchuck
Ramblers, which appears here on Sundays. The musicians
played so loudly they didn’t need microphones or amps.
"Got
fat, got angry, started hating myself," the lead
singer shouted while a fiddler sawed away and a banjo
player kept the beat. They were sloppy but fun, and the
beer-swilling punk rockers who filled the bar loved and
taunted them in equal measures.
In
contrast was the Vaso Ultra Lounge, where the Young Fellaz
Brass Band rocked its way to heaven. Dressed in jeans,
white T-shirts and tennis shoes, the members of the
six-piece band played tirelessly, as befitting their
youth. I was reminded of the frantic scene in Jack Kerouac’s
"On the Road," in which, upon seeing a great
tenor horn player, Dean Moriarty jumps around shouting,
"Blow, man, blow!"
Before
I could do likewise, Jordan dragged me out of Vaso onto
Frenchmen Street, and we were soon sucked into the
slightly more sedate Maison, a true jazz-style club with
small circular tables. Here, the Lazy Boys played jazzy
funk to a packed house. Performers, sometimes just
drifting in off the street, kept hopping onstage to sing
or play a horn.
As
luck would have it, we were sitting next to one of the
guest stars, a beautiful young vocalist named Nayo Jones
who sang a sultry cover of "Route 66." Jones,
who made her New Orleans Jazz Fest debut earlier this
year, was sitting at a table with her father, Doc Jones,
and Travis "Trumpet Black" Hill, who was gearing
up for a gig at the Hollywood Bowl opening for the Neville
Brothers.
"That’s
the beautiful thing about New Orleans," Nayo Jones
said. "There’s music everywhere, and we just sit in
with each other."
We
spilled out of the Maison in a kind of trance. It was
close to 2 a.m., but discordant strains from club after
club hung in the swampy air. We walked into Cafe Negril, a
tiny bar where Ruby Moon and her Vicarious Pleasure Band
wrestled "House of the Rising Sun" to the
ground. Then it was off to the Spotted Cat, where Pat
Casey and the New Sound played a mix of modern and classic
jazz spiced with Latin swing and funk from a tiny stage. I
had never seen a drummer hit as hard or as well.
I
ended the night in line for the bathroom at the Cat. I
waited for what seemed like forever until a young tattooed
girl with neon red hair emerged, smiling shyly.
"I’m
sorry, it’s just that there’s a piano in there,"
she said, pointing to the bathroom. "And I couldn’t
stop playing."
———
IF
YOU GO:
WHERE
TO STAY: Dauphine Orleans Hotel, 415 Dauphine St., New
Orleans; (504) 586-1800,