Saturday and Music

Saturday was one of those days that I was going to be everywhere. It started off with me and Larry going downtown. We spent a few hours wandering the French Quarter and checking out Tower Records. The sad news is that Tower has offically decided to shut its doors. This really sucks for New Orleans. Virgin Records which had a big two story store before the hurricane never came back afterwards and it doesn't look like they plan to. Now Tower will be gone. Tower was a good place for me to go and find some of the harder to find bands and performers I like. We still have Louisiana Music Factory, but it caters to mainly local artists, which is great, but is far from solving the problem.

We ended up eating at Jimmy Buffet's Margitaville. Neither of us had ate there before and we just wanted a quick hamburger. We both agreed that the hamburgers were very good there. Not at all what we expected.

After the Quarter we drove over to the Westbank and checked out the second day of the Gretna Heritage Festival. Mainly today we were here to see Theresa Anderson. Theresa is a great local artist that is originally from Sweden. She has lived in New Orleans for about the last fifteen years. Her last ep is amazing. I have kept in my car and literally listened to it like five or six times in row. If anyone has seen "A Love Song For Bobby Long" (which I mentioned in a post about Grayson Capps) she also has music in that movie. She plays the fiddle, guitar and banjo and sings like a dream.

She gave a great show. She doesn't write a lot of her own material, but she is very smart at picking the songs she covers. She did a cover of Gillian Welch's "I Wanna Play Rock n Roll" and even a Wilco song at the end.

After that we headed back down to the Quarter where we were supposed to meet Heather (see I do mention you in here!), Nicole and Nick. Tonight we were off to see Will Hoge at One Eyes Jacks.

After meeting them we went to Fiorellas to eat. Great meat loaf dinner. And I only had to hit Nick once with my croc.

The show was late tonight so we still had plenty of time. We walked Bourbon Street. I haven't been on Bourbon in a long time, before the hurricane. It was packed. In fact the entire Quarter seemed busy and even later that night when we were leaving at like two in the morning it was still jumping. It was good to see that things are getting back to normal. Big Daddys is still on Bourbon. Sorry, this has a special meaning for me, it was the first strip club I ever went to.

Finally we got back to see the show. As always Will Hoge puts on a great show. He had a few new numbers from an upcoming cd tonight. I really enjoyed "Southern Belle". A good show, but not one of his best. He seemed distracted during the show. Normally he likes to talk and banter with the crowd. Tonight he hardly said two words. One song went into the next. He didn't even introduce the band. Seemed like something was wrong.

After the show we all headed for home and I was ready for bed. It was a long day, but an extremely fun one.