Jazz Fest

Parrish and I came to New Orleans for JazzFest. We'd never been before. Jazzfest (aka the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival) is one of the oldest and largest continuously running music festivals in the country. It's 2 solid weeks of music going on at the fairgrounds in the city and it's been going on for 35 years or something. You can read more about it at www.nojazzfest.com New Orleans has this incredibly rich music tradition which manifests itself at Jazzfest. This festival is a total celebration of all things New Orleans: Music, Food, and Drinks. It's awesome. It's a big, sweaty, muddy, fiesta of all things wonderful about the crescent city. Here's a run-down of the bands we saw:

Dirty Dozen Brass Band (jivin)
Tribute to Max Roach, including Jason Marsalis on Vibes (percussitastic)
The Roots (jumpin)
Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea (serious melody going on)
Kenny Wayne Shepherd (rockin)
Galactic (funkalicious)
The Raconteurs (slammin)
Santana (smooth as silk)

I narrowly missed Stevie Wonder on Friday because I got held up working in Huntsville. We missed some phenomenal acts too...Robert Plant, Sheryl Crow, Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffett, Tim McGraw, Widespread Panic, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, and many others. This festival is so big you can't possibly see everything you want to see. It's the best music festival I have ever been to, no question. I'm gonna shut up now and cut to the chase. Here are some choice videos that I took yesterday:

The Roots, playing with Ludacris.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd doing 'Blue on Black'.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd doing 'Voodoo Child.'