Summer has officially ended and as my colleague Geraldine Wyckoff astutely points out in her column this week, there are now two festival seasons in New Orleans.
Though the fall season doesn’t have monster fests like Jazz Fest and the French Quarter Festival, it easily makes up for size with quantity.
The Cutting Edge Music Conference has flown under the radar for years for reasons that are too involved to detail here. But this year, they have upped their profile by adding a weekend festival at Lafayette Square dubbed the NOLA Downtown Music and Arts Festival.
This evening, the Brass-a-Holics (pictured above), an up-and-coming band that mixes Washington, D.C. go-go music with New Orleans brass bands sounds, is a highlight at 4:30 PM.
Saturday afternoon has a nice stretch of music beginning with the legendary Gospel Soul Children at 4 PM followed by Davis Rogan and then the Black Market Butchers. The closing act is a relatively rare appearance by funk pioneer David Batiste and his seminal band the Gladiators.
Also on Saturday the inaugural Street Fare Derby debuts at the Fairgrounds. While I laud the effort to bring a large group of mobile food vendors together and I appreciate the musical selections (Kermit Ruffins and the BBQ Swingers and Papa Grows Funk), I have to question one aspect of the organizers’ concept. You are charging me $15 dollars to enjoy the privilege of buying food?
If you are looking for another sign that summer is officially over, check Tipitina’s schedule. Their hottest show this weekend is on Sunday night. Lettuce, an offshoot of Soulive that I had the pleasure of enjoying on a recent trip to Chicago, is headlining the uptown club. Good Enough for Good Times, a group that is an offshoot of Galactic, opens.
