Filed Under: Swamp Heat & Soundwaves
We hit the edge of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival fairgrounds just as the chaos started to breathe. Crowds rolled in slow, sweaty, and loaded down with coolers, chairs, and emotional baggage, each one chasing a good time and a better buzz.
Everywhere you looked, people wandered. Police barked at cars and pedestrians while we circled the lot like sharks hunting a wounded swimmer. Scoring a spot near the front felt like a tactical win for the eventual retreat.
My buddy Tony flew in from Portland to see the Dave Matthews Band. We sparked some high-grade Acapulco Gold to get our heads in the game, then loaded ourselves down with supplies.
By the time we cleared security, the New Orleans Suspects were already on stage, entertaining the growing mob filing into the fairgrounds. The crowd was a technicolor sprawl of all shapes and ages, shuffling with the same dazed energy, like lost kids searching for their camp. Fingers pointed, hands waved, blank faces searching for a claim in the chaos.
The Suspects played on, and a merciful breeze kicked up as we carved out a spot near center stage, doing our best to ignore the slow creep of heatstroke.
The crowd around us was a sensory war zone. Hot, loud, crawling with people in enough neon polyester to trigger migraines. The air was thick with weed, sunscreen, sausage grease, cigar smoke, perfume, and warm beer, like a state fair deep fryer got into a fistfight with a head shop. It didn’t smell like summer, it smelled like survival.
Then came Paul Varisco, a relic from another time. His voice flailed around the stage like a drunk mosquito. He couldn’t hold a note to save his life. At one point, he tried to sing “ Moondance” by Van Morrison, and it was dreadful, like a karaoke nightmare in a bar that doesn’t believe in mercy. His band held it together, but he was on his own. I suddenly remembered I paid $137 to hear what amounted to my stepdad belting into a dashboard, while the already-drunk crowd clapped and cheered like he just saved jazz. Poor bastard thought he slayed.
Between sets, two sunbaked women next to us launched into a stoned symposium on the virtues of indica versus sativa, oblivious to the fact that their wine spritzers were hybrid.
The Revivalists hit the stage with a saccharine, Christian radio vibe, pumping out poppy, painfully upbeat songs. Every fiber in my body recoiled. The syrupy positivity invaded the depths of my soul like a musical parasite. WHOLLY FUCK, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT? I said out loud, to no one. Next to a speaker, all I heard was that guy chirping about a good day, again and again.
With a full bladder and shattered eardrums, I knew I had to escape. But I couldn’t. Forty-five minutes earlier, Tony told me he was going to find souvenirs, and now he was gone. I was stuck babysitting our gear, my bladder sending urgent messages to my brain. At one point I thought, fuck it, he’s not coming back, I’m out.
An hour passed. Finally, I spotted Tony casually strolling back with two oversized pink lemonades like he had just returned from a beach vacation. Before he could speak, I shot up from my chair, ignored the offered lemonade, and made a beeline for what I prayed were porta-potties. I found one. Locked.
My organs twisted. A nearby security guard, casually puffing on a blunt, pointed me toward the right row. Past the lemonade stand, fittingly enough. I moved through the sluggish tide of humanity, dodging logjams of clueless people who stopped in the middle of the path to chat, oblivious to the massive crowd trying to move around them. They didn’t care. As long as they were happy, the rest of us could rot.
I finally got past the lemonade stand. Closer now. My bladder hit full mutiny. I trudged through the deep sand like my feet were encased in concrete. When I reached the porta-potties, the line looked like a FEMA camp. I waited, suffered, and carried on.
Back at the stage, Tab Benoit brought serious blues heat. Somewhere near the sound tower, I saw two people passed out from booze and the sun. A sweaty old drunk lurched by, colliding into strangers like a busted Roomba. Gravity doesn’t bargain with Coors Light.
By the time Dave Matthews Band finally took the stage, I was a hot, red mess. My shirt was drenched from the bottle of water I had dumped over my head. The crowd rose and roared.
A braless woman in a flimsy white halter top who’d been bouncing all afternoon was now in real danger of knocking herself out.
They opened with “ Ants Marching.” The massive crowd swayed with Dave, in sync. Carter Beauford’s snare cracked the drunks back to life. They staggered to their feet and began dancing like marionettes cut loose.
People who looked half-dead minutes earlier raised their hands, phones, and children into the sky. The weed smoke thickened. A puffy cloud rolled in, covering the sun just enough to keep the crowd conscious.
Somewhere between “Warehouse” and that surprise cover of “ Let’s Dance,” the place tipped from concert to collective hallucination. When Rashawn Ross took the mic for “ Word Up,” the crowd exploded. Funk, joy, and disbelief all hit at once. It wasn’t my song, but even I had to admit, it landed hard.
As the sun dipped low and the last notes rang out, the fairgrounds looked like the morning after a battlefield. People staggered off barefoot, sunburned, half-buzzed, and fully wrecked. I couldn’t tell if I felt revived or destroyed. Maybe both. But I was relieved I survived it all.
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