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The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is sensory overload.
There’s hardly a swath of land among the 146-acre fairground where a person can escape the sound of music, the smell of food and the sight of crafts, a trio of temptresses that tranquilly battle one another for the attention of tens of thousands of festivalgoers.
David Bergeron, of Thibodaux, is a beloved cog in the festival, inviting onlookers with frames, trunks and dressers made of salvaged wood. The forsaken lumber’s varied colors mesh together into practical furniture and are such a hit at Jazz Fest that Bergeron has been invited back seven times.
“It’s mainly recycling,” Bergeron says of his work, which typically takes about 30 hours from discovery of wood, to de-nailing, sanding and completing a project.
The most arduous aspect is locating the correct wood. Although there is a re-sale market for salvaged lumber, Bergeron says it’s more rewarding on a personal level to discover material that has been cast off.
“I love finding it in the trash,” he says.
Bergeron says the festival has helped him gain national exposure because of the tourists it commands. He has even sold a framed mirror to a customer in Poland.
“Instead of taking new wood and making it old, he’s making the old stuff work,” Lisa Harper, a frequent traveler now living in Birmingham, says.
The music, festival’s centerpiece, is just as inviting.
Zebra, playing Friday afternoon to a vast crowd immediately preceding the Beach Boys, closed with an infused cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Ocean,” and “Heartbreaker,” a five-plus minute charm of an old-school crowd that was ready to celebrate the surf-rock group’s anniversary.
Gretta and Patrick Michaels, who live in New Orleans’ Irish Channel, went to the festival’s first day by way of a $1.25 bus ticket, circumventing the $15 or more parking costs.
The newlyweds make a trip to the Fairgrounds each year. They happily listened to Lafayette’s GIVERS in the outskirts of the Gentilly Stage while waiting for the Beach Boys to take the Acura Stage.
“It’s the music,” Gretta says when asked what draws the couple to Jazz Fest each year. “Of course, New Orleans also does it right when it comes to food.”
The Beach Boys commanded the largest crowd Friday, setting the theme for the festival’s other first-weekend headliners, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen.
Petty – and those Heartbreakers – turned in one of the most memorable performances of the first two days Saturday evening. The group began and ended its set with radio-hit sing-a-longs but during a two-hour show ditched the prototypical crowd-pleasers and rocked deep cuts, like “Something Big,” and “Spike.” The group also mixed in covers and acoustic performances to the delight of the seemingly endless collection of revelers.
For a 61-year-old front man, Petty, adorned in a blue suit that made his shoulder-length stringy hair glow, more than delivered on his headlining act. The crowd retorted to the precise, searing notes – and a duel between Petty and lead guitarist Mike Campbell – with overhand applause and relentless shouting.
The group feigned its exit at 7 p.m., Jazz Fest’s closing time, before returning to play “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” and “American Girl.” The crowd of thousands beckoned with chants of “Petty,” and non-stop applause. The charade, although anticipated by the anchored audience, was warranted as per the excellent blend of showman- and musician-ship.
On Friday, Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band enchanted a drove of people from the Fais Do-Do stage. Carrier’s accordion rifts coerced the crowd into dancing frenzy during “Zydeco Junkie,” the namesake of the album that garnered the group a Grammy Award in 2011.
Liane Neil, of San Francisco, openly dances to Senegal’s Chekh Lo on the Congo Stage. He alone could have brought her to New Orleans for the Fest. “The openness of the music is wonderful,” she says. “It’s the spirit.”
Ne-Yo, Mystikal, Zac Brown Band, Jimmy Buffett, Florence and the Machine, the Eagles, Warren Haynes, Galactic, Better than Ezra, the Foo Fighters and the Neville Brothers are among the second weekend’s featured acts.
Ken Machuta, who lives in Destin, Fla., returns to New Orleans each year to visit family and enjoy the Jazz Fest celebration. For him, it’s largely about the music.
“The beautiful thing about the Fest is you can see the small local acts you normally wouldn’t see,” Machuta says. “The food’s not bad either.”
The food booths, with most offerings ranging between $6 and $10, sell Crawfish Bread, Alligator Sauce Piquante, Shrimp and Grits, raw oysters, Cochon de Lait po-boys, Cajun Duck po-boys, boiled crawfish, Vegetarian Muffulettas, and a variety of other local and exotic dishes.
Harrison Otalon and Solomon Mbala, both of African heritage, bring unique crafts to the festival.
Mbala presents expansive thread-based silk mosaics, which range from $650 to $1,700 in cost. The art, which he learned from his uncle in west Africa, is a “painstaking” process done completely by hand.
Otalon, of Nigeria, produces artwork with bamboo splinters placed on the same material used for athletic jerseys, an intricate incorporation of natural colors. “It’s not something you can find,” he says.
Closer to the local realm, Rebecca Rebouché creates mixed media paintings on canvas. Her subjects are metaphors for larger ideas depicting optimism and hope, as driven by her emotions, she says.
She spends time writing down a list of words, then circles a handful based on her feelings. She then goes to work in either her New Orleans studio or a cabin in the woods near Abita Springs to try to portray these ideas in paint.
“It’s kind of like a language I’ve created, and now I’m speaking it,” Rebouché says.
Elsa and Ronnie Williams have come to Jazz Fest for 21 years. Elsa owns a Rebouché painting (“I love her work,” she says) and is spotted examining this year’s offerings, which hang from a sky blue tent around the word “Wonder.”
“Showing at Jazz Fest makes your year,” the 30-year-old artist says. “For me, it has made my career.”
Elsa and Ronnie made the trip from their hometown in Mobile, with their curious 8-year-old daughter Isabella. They’ll return for the festival’s second weekend, sans one member of the family.
“We come one weekend with our child,” Elsa says. “Next weekend, we’ll come only with adults.”
– editor@gumboguide.com
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers perform from the Acura Stage Saturday at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
Cee Lo Green entertains from the Congo Square Stage Saturday at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Festival-goers camped out early in anticipation of the former Gnarls Barkley rapper and current judge on NBC’s “The Voice.”
