Hard-wired Nights in New Orleans Town

Blistered nights in the French Quarter...

Bourbon Street, New Orleans. 12:15 a.m. It’s become a high-octane, two-thousand horsepower version of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A neon-soaked wasteland, travailed by every stumbling, wheezing, blank-eyed loser from Ann Arbor to the good Charleston. All looking for a story to tell back home…

“Hot titties and cold beer!” shrieks some bankrupty-laden pimp, a gun-for-hire at the Deja Vu strip club. Probably a down and out, former high-profile security agency thug. He jams a free pass into my shirt pocket. “Have at it, fella. Girls are all over in there.”

Mutter something to him unintelligibly. Explain why you can’t go inside, push past the pusher, and there’s another neckless, heavy-fisted bruiser trying to shove you into a cheap Coyote Ugly knockoff. “Two-for-one, man! There’s the party!” he shouts. “Just look at ‘em!”

Slip an elbow into his kidney. Push on. ”Hey, whad’are ya? Some kind of homo!?” he bellows, takin’ at a swing at you. “There’s chicks in there man!” Curse him, just keep moving. What’s happened here, anyways? This used to be Tab Benoit’s stomping grounds. I’ll never forget my first trip to Bourbon Street, last year, after the first day of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. As I trotted toward the action after getting dropped off at St. Charles and Canal by a friend – grinning violently – I could hear the wails of a Second Line. Throngs of frothing drunks, clutching “Hand Grenades” and rum-heavy Hurricanes, swaying to the authentic beats of a small horde of fresh-faced brass players. They’re all blistering the dream of being the next Rebirth, or Dirty Dozen as they stomp along the gin-soaked streets. But after that killer supporting act ‘neath the beaming ”Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club” sign, it’s seven blocks of full-fledged regression. From most of the hustle joints off the main drag, you can hear washed-up regulars doing a spot-on Steve Perry or Bret Michaels – a nod, perhaps, to lost nights in Daytona Beach, circa 1981…

“Hey man, you gotta pay the bills,” the heavy-breathing, balding guitarist, “Joe,” says, rolling a burning Marlboro gently between his thumb and forefinger. The singer, “Larry,” won’t even acknowledge me. “I used to jam down there with the best of ‘em. But not anymore… no money in it… leave that shit for the Wolf…”

Even the one drink minimum blues joints leave something to be desired, short of the occasional Bryan Lee slot. It’s Frenchman Street that’s the shining beacon; Bourbon Street’s become the arduous, festering corridor you’ve got to claw your way through to reach it. But it’ s a hell of a run-through. You can’t deny that. It’s Bourbon where you can see a five-foot-three, heavyset mother from Wichita flash her pasties for seven shrieking frat boys atop the bar balcony floor, while her husband scrambles for the beads strewn across the rain and booze-drenched asphault. It’s here where you get to see the unlit cigarette-chewing drug fiend who took the laid back, Bayou-swinging lifestyle just a little too seriously dance rabidly with a brick wall. Left hand claps his right, right elbow jams the wall, quick “Johnny Chin Spin” into roundhouse kick, left elbow into the wall, and so on and so forth, until one of the trombone players starts scoldingly flapping his hands at him and he scurries, giggling, back into the obscurity of the crowd.

But it’s Frenchman Street, at clubs like the D.B.A. and the Blue Nile where you sink in your teeth and let the real Cajun-fried grease of New Orleans seep out over your tongue. Clubs like the Howlin’ Wolf and Tipitina’s just off the main path know how to deliver the goods — Louisiana cult favorites like Galactic, the Neville Brothers, Anders Osbourne or Benoit until dawn, and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that. But it’s Frenchman where you can catch Walter “Wolfman” Washington, or Vinyl — acts who’ll change your whole outlook on the scene for just $10 or $20. Acts who have endured the record business, yet spent an upwards of thirty years floating ‘neath the radar, on a national level anyways, and almost seem to prefer it that way. Nearly every day (and especially during Jazz Fest) in New Orleans an act like the Monophonics — a young, roadrunning friendly band of Vinyl’s, both from the San Francisco Bay area – will have you stoned beautiful, reevaluating everything you thought you knew about The Jam. A horn section four-strong — bari, alto and two trumpets – jammed in tight quarters, weaving in and out of melodic and atavistic runs, answering that steady pulse of Korty’s Hammond organ. Before you know it, he’s lashing out in a savage round of his own. A relentless smile across his face says, “Oh shit, really?!“ Lean on the crowd. Test the bartender’s sense of humor. A margarita. Extra ice.  And bring on Eric Krasno, the Hanna-clad guest guitar player from Soulive. He’s grappling with his own eyelids and what appears to be mild psychosis, yet manages to coax notes out of the thing that makes the layman think his own teeth are bleeding. Casual Saturday night. Nothin’ but good times with good people in the French Quarter. Pass it on over. Makes the South Carolina music landscape seem like the Badlands. And Jesus, if that’s happening right now at the Blue Nile, what the hell’s going on down the street? And at Tipitina’s? What about the Maple Leaf? And that’s what keeps you going. The idea that you’ve missed something along the way. And then a sunrise.

And that’s what keeps you coming back.

Neon-soaked Bourbon Street...