This afternoon another of New Orleans’ erstwhile supergroups converges for a rare performance outside of the Jazz Fest season. Dragon Smoke features the rhythm section of Galactic, Robert Mercurio, and Stanton Moore, with keyboardist Ivan Neville and guitarist Eric Lindell. Both Neville and Lindell contribute vocals.
The group began as a one-off in San Francisco back in the early aughts. The original piano player was Jon Cleary. Ivan Neville took over at the first performance, which was at the Dragon’s Den in New Orleans, hence the band’s moniker. The group played once a year on the Tuesday between Jazz Fest weekends, but has recently begun stretching out and touring a bit. This may be their first performance during the day time.
For the first time in recent memory (possibly ever) many of the bands that generally only play late night shows during Jazz Fest are playing during “normal” music business hours.
Two weeks ago we had a performance by keyboardist Marco Benevento at the Blue Nile that began at the relatively early hour of midnight. The place, which has been renovated to remove the long-vexing column up front at stage left, was packed with fans that cheered the keyboardist at very turn in the music.
Jam band fans will be happy to hear the Karl Denson, another denizen of the Jazz Fest late night scene, will be playing a Voodoo Fest after party at Tipitina’s on November 1. That show also starts at midnight.
Pigeon Town opens the performance today that supports the Harvest the Music food initiative. The music begins at 5 PM.
