New Orleans travel tips, developed as fans of NOLA’s food, jazz and people

Maybe you’re headed to New Orleans for the Super Bowl or Mardi Gras.

Maybe you’re going for a conference like Inland Press Association‘s.

Maybe you’re just going for fun.

My husband and I haven’t missed a Jazz Fest since Katrina and we lived in New Orleans for three months in 2011, so we often get requests from friends about what to do. I’ve compiled an ever-expanding list to share when someone asks.

These are my NOLA tips — I welcome your additions, questions or objections:

John Tebeau and Colleen Newvine Tebeau on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Easter 2011.

In general, New Orleans is more a state of mind than a place. People move slower, they’re less concerned with what you do than where you ate last night, music and art are everywhere and there’s such appreciation for creativity … so don’t worry as much about your to-do list as about experiencing how it feels to be there.

Do an obligatory walk down Bourbon Street one night, maybe on your way to something more your speed. It’s a younger, drunker, rowdier crowd than I want to be part of, but it’s worth seeing a never-ending street party.

Much of the best music we’ve seen has been unplanned. If you stroll down Royal Street during the day, for example, a fantastic band typically plays on the street in front of Rouses grocery store. That’s sort of what New Orleans is about: serendipity.

Bikes are a great way to get around New Orleans — it’s flat as a pancake and traffic’s not bad. Rent bikes and buy or bring lights and a bell.

That said, as a jazz fan, I suggest Irvin Mayfield’s for a civilized happy hour, Fritzel’s on Bourbon Street for a little later in the evening, and Spotted Cat and/or dba on Frenchmen Street at the end of the night.

Wednesday night, go to Preservation Hall on St. Peter just off Bourbon. It might be hot. There’s no AC. There are very few seats and they don’t sell drinks, so wear comfy shoes and get the obligatory hurricane to go from Pat O’Briens next door. But Preservation Hall Jazz Band is typically in town Wednesdays and the hall is unlike anything else I’ve experienced. It’s like a temple to trad jazz.

We haven’t been to the Sazerac Bar but have been told it’s THE place to go. John is a sazerac fan and he really loved them at Old Absinthe House and at Napoleon House, both in the Quarter.

Have a drink at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop on the far end of Bourbon Street and sit on the sidewalk if you can. (You’ll find that with no open container laws, you can just get a drink and stroll wherever you want with it.)

St. Claude is to New Orleans as Bushwick is to Brooklyn. It’s the younger, edgier entertainment district. The All-Ways or the Hi-Ho can launch an evening there, or maybe you’ll end your night at Spellcaster.

Some of my favorite restaurants:

• Felix oyster bar — skip the line, walk straight up to the stand-up oyster bar, order a dozen or two, make your own cocktail sauce, tip the shuckers
• Mimi’s in the Marigny — looks like a typical bar, but once you’re in there, it’s cozy and friendly, with great tapas plates and excellent cocktails
•  Lilette — white table cloth amazing-ness. You might need a reservation, but it’s worth the effort. We had a spectacular multi-hour brunch with friends. Ditto dinner at Emeril’s and his French Quarter place, NOLA.
• Coop’s has crazy-good Cajun-inspired pasta and is among the best fried chicken in town. There generally a line, but the bar next door, Molly’s, has friendly bartenders and delicious frozen Irish coffee, so you can get a drink in a go cup and treat the line as your happy hour.  Service can be a little gruff at Coop’s so if you want to get treated a little better and have similar chow, Fiorella’s just down the block is a good choice. They’re slow but good.

Related: Molly’s has good free wifi and several outlets, so if you must do a little work, it’s a pretty great remote office.

If you go to New Orleans during crawfish season, take advantage of local tradition and eat some boiled crawfish — they’re a lot of work for not much meat, so I tend to focus on the corn and potatoes, which soak up all the spices in the boiling water.
This painting is by my husband, John Tebeau.

Of the well-known restaurants in walking distance of the Quarter, I would do lunch at K-Paul’s (they do a cheap self-service lunch that I liked better than dinner) and  dinner at Emeril’s (because I don’t care how cliche bam became, the guy still knows his chow). Galatoire’s is an institution, jackets required, excellent people watching and nola.com says the new chef is improving the food, though that’s almost secondary to the scene.

John’s favorite roast beef po boy is at a divey bar called Parasol’s in the Irish Channel, adjacent to the Garden District. You could take the St. Charles street car for an afternoon ride and hop off for a meal.

Personally, I don’t really like oyster po’boys — I find the bread of the sandwich then the breading on the oyster overwhelming and too dry. (Instead, I’d steer you to a muffaletta from Central Grocery.) But if I was going to get one, I’d probably go to Coop’s or Fiorella’s, both on Decatur.

People will tell you to go to Cafe du Monde for cafe au lait. It’s iconic and open 24 hours so it can be worth doing. I think Cafe Beignet on Royal Street is better. Besides good coffee and beignets, which are heavily powdered doughnuts, it has a side door that opens to the police department … a short cut for cops to get doughnuts? C’mon. That’s beautiful.

Take the St. Charles street car to see the big old houses where the wealthy folks live, then if you haven’t seen the devastation and reconstruction in the Ninth Ward, get a cab or a tour through the Brad Pitt houses (formal name is Make it Right) and the Musicians Village Habitat for Humanity neighborhood.

If you get ambitious, taking a swamp tour might be touristy but it’s an interesting insight into a totally different way of life and ecosystem. You’ll lose much of the day, with the bus ride out and back, but if you have the time, it’s a nice reminder that there’s more to Louisiana than Bourbon Street.

Related posts on Newvine Growing:

• Katrina spurred me to visit – and fall in love with – New Orleans
• I didn’t expect to like New Orleans Jazz Fest, but it surprised me
• Tim Robbins on some of what makes New Orleans special
• Goin’ to New Orleans: sinking in to a city we love

With thanks to Ashley Shabankareh for posting on Facebook, here’s a killer scene from Live and Let Die:

Two months ’til 40 and counting

After talking about it for years, I finally started beginner piano lessons last spring, in part because the approach of my 40th birthday felt like  a good deadline.

I fantasized about learning a song that I’d be comfortable playing in public, maybe even hosting a big 40th birthday bash with New Orleans Bingo Show headlining and with me playing my 40th birthday song as a sort of boozy grown up recital.

Today I’m exactly two months out from my 40th birthday and realistically, I don’t see it happening. And that’s OK.

I’ve come a long way since my first lesson: I’m learning to read music, to play scales, to keep time, to have my left and right hands do independent things. I can look at a new piece of sheet music, puzzle out what I need to do, and if I go at it slowly, I can make the song emerge from the page.

But it’s going to be a while before I’m ready to play a song in front of people. I sometimes lose my way, or clunk the wrong note, and am still learning to recover and keep going when that happens.

John and I went to Arthur’s Tavern recently to see traditional jazz with the Grove Street Stompers. I watched the pianist in rapt attention as he effortlessly called over his shoulder to ask the trumpeter what key she wanted the next transition in — he could talk, play and transpose without breaking a sweat, and I’m still working on tapping my foot while I play.

When they took a break, I asked how long he’d been playing. He’d put himself through Yale playing piano — 55 years ago.

Yes, I’d love to play like Dick Voigt, shown here with his Big Apple Jazz Band, but I’m not going to hold myself to the standard of someone who’s got quite a few decades on me.  I think it’s more important for me to celebrate my 40th birthday as part of a journey than to beat myself up about what destination I have or haven’t achieved.

Christmas tree second line?

We took our Christmas tree down last weekend, and I think that’s got to be one of the saddest rituals of the year.

When we decorate the tree in December, we’re preparing for a fun-filled season of celebrations.

Taking the tree down is not only a less fun chore, it’s also the physical reminder that all that socializing and holiday cheer is over.

I mean, have you ever heard of someone having a tree un-trimming party?

That got me thinking that maybe what we need to begin is a tradition of a January jazz funeral for our tree, doing a second line with it all the way to the chipper shredder.

One of the many things I love about New Orleans is the way they bring celebration to mourning, playing music and dancing in black down the streets to honor someone who’s died.

Losing a loved one is sad, but the reason you’re sad is that you loved having him or her in your life, so why not mourn and celebrate at the same time?

Here are two YouTube videos of New Orleans jazz funeral second lines, one for Juanita Brooks and the other for Ernest “Doc” Watson:

It just somehow feels like the same mix of feelings I have at the end of the holidays — happy we had so much fun, sad they’re over, wanting to mark the occasion.

I am grateful for: traditional jazz

Our jazz fest krewe at Preservation Hall this spring

Preservation Hall Jazz Band plays New York tonight and I’m such a geeky fan girl that I’m going even though I think I’ve seen them five times already this year.

Traditional jazz is my soul music. It never fails to make me happy. Whether I am covered in mud on a rainy day at New Orleans Jazz Fest or packed into a hot, sweaty little club, I am compelled to tap my foot, bob my head and smile.

Special bonus: John and I met our friend Ittai at Arthur's on Monday for traditional jazz with the Grove Street Stompers. Two great shows in one week! Click here to learn more about the Stompers.

I’m grateful to live in a city where I get the opportunity to be a repeat customer seeing a band that makes my heart sing, and grateful to have discovered traditional jazz, New Orleans and Preservation Hall.

If you can’t make it to City Winery tonight, here are some videos to help get your foot tapping.

Related posts:

• A profile of Ben Jaffe, the second-generation creative director of Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
• A profile of Clint Maedgen, a New Orleans multi-instrumentalist who leads the New Orleans Bingo Show and plays sax with Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Woody Allen on the merits of practicing and New Orleans jazz

The Village Voice this week has a wonderful, sprawling piece on Woody Allen and his love of traditional jazz.

Yes, the same Woody Allen, he of the artsy movies that define the neurotic New York archetype, also happens to have a standing weekly gig at the Carlyle. If you’re wondering if they’re any good, it might be worth noting that even at about $100 a ticket, it’s typically a sell out crowd.

But Allen doesn’t consider himself a stellar musician, apparently. He told the Voice:

“I’m not just saying this to be amusing: To be even as bad as I am, you do have to practice every day,” says Allen, with a small, almost imperceptible chuckle. “I’m a strict hobby musician. I don’t have a particularly good ear for music. I’m a very poor musician, like a Sunday tennis player.”

(I loved reading this the same day I’d written a post about having to practice my beginner piano.)

You can judge for yourself whether Allen is as mediocre as he says. Here’s video of Allen and his band:

Another reason I loved the Voice article — Allen is wisely using his fame to expose fans of his films to the music he loves. He says:

“I’ve been a great jazz fan my whole life,” he says. “I certainly like modern jazz as well, but my favorite kind is New Orleans jazz. Something about the primitive quality, the simplicity of it, the directness. It is the one style of jazz that stays with me the most.”

“Early jazz was very pleasurable and very simple,” explains Allen. “After a while, that stuff became concert music, and the chord progressions got very complicated, and the harmonies got very complicated. It became less pleasurable. Not less great—it certainly was every bit as great and, in many cases, stupendously great and greater. But it required more concentration and more effort from the audience.”

Who knew Woody Allen and I were kindred spirits? Traditional jazz makes my heart soar. Listening to Arwulf’s Sunday morning WEMU show back in Ann Arbor exposed me to music I’d never known but I now love. Thankfully we can still listen through the magic of the interwebs.

As the Village Voice bemoans the sad decline of traditional jazz in New York, I’m reminded of another reason Jazz Fest is such a compelling destination for me — whether at the festival, at evening shows around town or just walking down the sidewalks of New Orleans, I’m surrounded by marvelous, joyous traditional jazz morning ’til night. I don’t have to seek it out as much as let it wash over me.

I don’t want to take it for granted, though, and we’ll be making an effort to support more traditional jazz here in New York.

Coming up soon:

• Arthur’s Tavern — the Grove Street Stompers play Mondays
• Sofia’s — Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks offer early New Orleans jazz Monday and Tuesday nights
• Lovin Cup — third Thursday of the month is traditional jazz, produced by Tight Like This
• Nolafunk organizes a whole load of great New Orleans music events in NYC

And sometimes, I even stumble across great trad jazz in New York, like seeing Baby Soda Jazz Band in Penn Station recently. Love those moments of serendipity.

Here they are in Times Square:

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Preservation Hall’s Ben Jaffe balances tradition and innovation

Editor’s note: This is a fairly lengthy post. I suggest you fire up Preservation Hall’s live performance on World Cafe, maybe mix yourself a hurricane, and settle in.

Ben Jaffe grew up with dreams of becoming a modern jazz musician, “really hell bent on moving to New York.”

Family responsibility and appreciation of where he’d come from put him on a different path.

Ben Jaffe, far left, with Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Jaffe is the son of Allan and Sandra Jaffe, who established Preservation Hall in New Orleans in the 1960s then grew it into a jazz institution.  They are credited with not only building the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which played Saturday Night Live and Newport Jazz Festival before Ben got to kindergarten, but with protecting the heritage of New Orleans jazz itself.

Allan Jaffe died of cancer at 51 while son Ben was still in high school, then Ben went off to Oberlin College to study music.

Ben Jaffe had grown up around music, considering Preservation Hall an extension of his living room, but “it wasn’t until college when I realized how unique my childhood was.” He began to reflect on the way music permeates the culture of New Orleans – it is not unusual to hear talented musicians playing on the street or in an alley for whoever wanders by, not to mention at weddings and funerals.

“I didn’t grow to appreciate New Orleans until I moved away and I’ve never moved away since.”

Jaffe graduated from Oberlin in 1993 and stepped into tradition the next day, flying to Paris to meet up with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on tour.

Though he was back in the French Quarter, and taking over his father’s duties as director of Preservation Hall, Jaffe said it took until his early 30s to set his own course.

“It took me about 10 years to figure out what we were trying to achieve,” said Jaffe, now 38.

Today he’s working at balancing transformation of Preservation Hall into a modern, multimedia experience with protecting its rich heritage. He is also on his own path of evolution as a creative, pursuing filmmaking projects in addition to managing PHJB and playing tuba with the band.

Education as a mission of Preservation Hall

When the last original member of the band, Narvin Kimball, stopped touring in 1999, Jaffe seriously considered what that meant.

“That was a huge turning point,” Jaffe recalled. For the band to continue to evolve, and not become a parody of itself, it needed a reason to be.

Jaffe collaborated with Oberlin classmate Ethan Graham to develop a music education and outreach program. They would bring in a couple hundred kids to introduce them to New Orleans jazz, second line dancing and other parts of regional culture.

“I wanted kids to put their hands on a piano. I wanted to demystify music,” Jaffe said.

Preservation Hall wants its MTV

Out of the education programming, Jaffe began to think of Preservation Hall as a multimedia experience.

He worked with friend Rebecca Snedigar to archive his parents’ copious film properly – the hot, humid air of New Orleans risked ruining it, and Preservation Hall famously lacks air conditioning.

Footage from the 1960s “really renewed my belief in how important Preservation Hall is to the community and really, the world,” Jaffe said. They developed a 10-minute Preservation Hall history video and showed it whenever they played.

Digging into the film helped Jaffe understand his parents’ risks – a Jewish couple from the north who moved to New Orleans, pre civil rights, and ran a business upholding traditionally black music, showcasing “mixed” bands, even if it meant getting arrested. Jaffe watched a Brinkley News Hour interview where his father referred to the band’s black members as “gentlemen,” and admired the subtle political statement.

Preservation Hall meets New Orleans Bingo! Show

New Orleans Bingo Show must be seen to be fully appreciated but you can start by listening to them on their MySpace profile. Click here.

The first time Jaffe saw punk cabaret act New Orleans Bingo! Show, he only went to accommodate a friend who wanted to go. “I could have cared less.”

Then he walked into the back room of Fiorella’s, the French Quarter fried chicken joint where Bingo played weekly, and saw a clown on the bar dancing, a video playing, a big bingo board and a “bingo girl” working the crowd.

“I immediately recognized I was in the presence of true performers,” Jaffe recalled. “I knew nothing about them but I was immediately touched by what they were doing.”

Part of that was Bingo front man Clint Maedgen. “The electricity of Clint’s voice and the entire experience stopped me cold.”

Having enjoyed making the history video, Jaffe recalls he approached Maedgen saying something like “You don’t know who I am but I have an idea.” Jaffe proposed a one-take video with Maedgen singing the Kinks song Complicated Life while delivering Fiorella’s on his bike, winding through the Quarter. Jaffe remembers Maedgen’s response as “if you’re crazy enough to think I can sing with Preservation Hall, I’ll give it a shot.”

They shot the video in 2005, a few months before Katrina hit New Orleans. They hadn’t released it before the hurricane devastated their beloved city, and luckily the video and Preservation Hall itself survived.

When Preservation Hall reopened in May 2006, during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, I’m honored to say I was there for the debut weekend of the Complicated Life video.

It’s an understatement to call life post-Katrina complicated. Many of the band’s members lost their homes.

“It was amazing the timeliness when it came out, even though it was shot before the hurricane. It gave everybody in my world hope.”

What’s next?

Cartoon Clint Maedgen sounds just as good as the real-life version.

Driving Mr. the Turk? Ronnie Numbers rides shotgun.

Jaffe continues to scratch his filmmaking itch. The day we first spoke by phone, he was on site for a Terence Blanchard video project with Ron Rona — AKA Ronnie Numbers, the Bingo Show clown.

Bingo and Preservation Hall are all tangled together, with Rona leading Preservation Hall’s PR and Earl Scioneaux, Bingo’s keyboardist AKA Madd Wikkid, doing PHJB’s engineering.

Another example of that comingling is an animated video more than a year in the making. A King Britt arrangement of St. James Infirmary, the video to be released Oct. 20 features animator James Tancill’s cartoon versions of Bingo Show and Preservation Hall, along with New Orleans icons like Marie Laveau. Jaffe gave me a sneak peek and I couldn’t stop comparing it to the masterful Triplets of Belleville. Check out their YouTube channel later this month.

Preservation Hall is exploring the recording business, including releasing both new tunes and remastered archival material.

Jaffe has also begun interviewing family and friends about his father. He started out to make a documentary but has since realized it is also an intensely personal project, getting to know the man he only had in his life until he was 16.

Transformation versus preservation

Jaffe knows he risks alienating jazz traditionalists — not only fans, but his band mates — when he invites U2’s The Edge to sit in with them, for example.

“At the end of the day, I have to be true to myself,” he said. “It’s a balancing act.”

“If you look at what we’ve done, it’s no different from what New Orleans musicians have been doing for 100 years,” Jaffe said. “They’ve always pulled from different cultural influences. Otherwise we just become an artifact or a museum piece.”

As he told another blogger recently:

“When you combine a song that was written in the 1820’s with African rhythms,” he said, “you have the beginnings of what we know today as New Orleans jazz.” He winces at Bourbon Street’s lecherous, debauchery-laden reputation and thinks that the dignity of pure jazz is often overlooked. “You really have to look beyond Bourbon Street to see my New Orleans,” Ben said.

Jazz has alienated its audiences by becoming too precious, too serious, not engaged enough with modern culture, Jaffe said.

“As a band, we have a responsibility to be entertaining and to evolve.”

“I’ve always battled with that ‘Preservation’ in our name,” he said. “I like the definition ‘to protect.’”

“I think you pay homage to your history and your culture by becoming someone who protects the blessings you’ve been given.”

And what if one day his children take Preservation Hall in a direction different from his?

“I’d like to think I’d embrace it,” he said. “I think the key to any creative decision is knowing in your heart that it is done with the utmost respect and integrity.

“You can’t make a bad decision if that’s how you approach life.”

Free consulting, worth exactly as much as you paid

Ben didn’t ask me what I think Preservation Hall should do next, but since it’s my blog, I can say so anyway:

1. Launch a Preservation Hall branded jazz channel on XM Radio to take their visibility to a broader audience, or at least a show on the Real Jazz station like Wynton Marsalis.
2. Continue collaboration outside the jazz genre — my top recommendations include Eddie Vedder, Aretha Franklin and Ray Manzarek.
3. Roll out a series of PHJB jazz-apalooza shows across the country, curated to show their sense of traditional jazz and innovation. Since Bingo Show has practice organizing the line up of a tent at Voodoo Festival in New Orleans, I’m betting Ron Rona could bring some fantastic ideas to this and their new agency TKA could help drive it.
4. Don’t let the traditionalists — both inside and out of the band — feel forgotten. Sometimes you just need to hear When the Saints Go Marching In.

Oh, and did I mention coming back to New York? Ben, you don’t have to live here to enjoy the Big Apple.

• Ben’s profile on the Preservation Hall Web site
• A 2007 Offbeat magazine article on the tension between preservation and innovation (I never said I was the first one to think of it)
• Virtual tour of Preservation Hall
• Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s profile on TKA
• Make an offer to get Preservation Hall Jazz Band to play your venue