Reposting some bits and pieces I filed to Offbeat's Jazz Fest Redux below; read the full Offbeat recap here.
Gospel-inspired Trout Baquet | Thursday, April 25
My Jazz Fest began with a promise of heavenly seafood divination.
“God is good!” Pastor Tyrone Jefferson cried out in the Gospel Tent as I raced inside on the first Thursday. “And he’s gonna give us shriiiimp!”
His music’s bouncing energy had two golf cart traffic directors wielding their orange flags like praise accessories as they danced in the cool breeze and sunshine.
After catching the St. Roch-based preacher’s jubilant “Lord I Just Want to Thank You,” I beelined towards the food between the Blues and Jazz Tents to test out Jefferson’s shrimp claim.
Alas, God did not give me shrimp, but Lil Dizzy’s did sell me the best Trout Baquet I’ve had in years. Light, flaky and dusted with garlic, cayenne and pepper, the grilled fillet stretched off both ends of the plate beneath a generous pile of lemon and butter sautéed crabmeat.
Kingfish Ingram; Jourdan Thibodeaux et les Rodailleurs | Friday, May 3
Sometimes the “Jazz Fest moment” you’re looking for is the kind you didn’t expect to find.
After racing to catch the end of Terence Blanchard’s set, I was headed elsewhere when my ears pulled me towards the peels of deep Mississippi guitar gold I heard lilting out of the Blues Tent. It was Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and forgive my sap here, but his sound blew my heart wide open.
Hailing from the cotton belt blues mecca of Clarksdale, Miss., the 25-year-old guitarist and singer counts Buddy Guy as a mentor, an experience that might account for some of his unexpected phrasing and use of time. Ingram’s sound is clearly his own, though. His Fairgrounds set was full of bright, soulful tones, wailing guitar bends and towering crescendos built on power that felt unhurried and serene despite all the virtuosity behind them. (Check out the track “Fresh Out” from his stunning 2019 debut, Kingfish if you want to be wowed.)
Other surprises from Ingram and his band yielded similarly engrossing results – like a keyboard-fueled reggae groove that brought the tent back to earth after a series of soul-charged guitar solos and the added silk Ingram’s voice found when it dropped into lower vocal registers.
The raw joy of Kingfish Ingram’s set followed me to Fais Do Do for the stage’s hard-hitting closer, Jourdan Thibodeaux et les Rodailleurs. The group is stacked with Acadiana all-stars, including its namesake leader, a high-octane fiddle player whose Louisiana French lyrics are as emotionally charged as his determination to protect the culture from which he came, an ever-present theme in his songs.
Joined by accordion and fiddle phenom Cedric Watson, Valcour Records’ Joel Savoy on guitar, the reliably theatrical Alan Lafleur on upright bass and drummer Alan Cormier, Thibodeaux wrestled with life and death on his haunting “Equand J’Etais Pres Mourir”—a song he wrote while “lying in a rice field dying of cancer”—and celebrated the art of gallivanting between swigs from what looked like a wine bottle while belting out his ode to being a “Rodailleur.” He peppered growls and yelps into the crowd-sourced, handclap-driven “Blues Reconnaisant,” a workday blues he said was inspired by a moment of gratitude one sweaty day on his horse farm. Near the set’s end, Lafleur slung his bass sideways at his waist like a giant guitar and Thibodeaux launched into a jack knife run of high-knee dance steps, seemingly spellbound by the pummel of his own energy.
It all culminated with a fiddle face-off between Watson and Thibodeaux, who by that point were shirtless, drenched and grinning. It was straight musical catharsis, French Louisiana-style—and more proof the coexistence of innovation and cultural preservation here takes many forms.
—Jennifer Odell
