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Continuing my busy Star Wars Day watching stars play, on May 4th, 2014 I followed up a great afternoon at jazzfest with an early aftershow at a venue just south of the French Quarter, an old collection of wooden rooms called Republic New Orleans.
The concert was a conglomeration of musicians called Dead Feat, a ‘super-group’ of sorts that pairs members of Little Feat and The Grateful Dead with a few local heroes solely for a single (albeit annual) New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival aftershow. The lineup jumbles around from year to year; this time it was Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett from Little Feat with Bill Kreutzmann from The Dead jamming their old songs along with New Orleans transplants Billy Iuso and Anders Osborne.
I’m not nearly as familiar with Little Feat as I ought to be. I only know the hits and Willin’ because I learned it for a gig (was Willin’ a hit?) but they played every song I knew. They didn’t play every Grateful Dead song I know – that would’ve taken a week – but they played enough to get me and my friends moving, dancing our little hippie shakes with our feet stuck firmly to the floor.
And you know that Anders Osborne guy wasn’t so bad either. He did an admirable job playing the front man for a pair of bands that had both been well-established well before he was born. I don’t remember the other local player, this Billy Iuso guy, but overall I enjoyed the show quite a bit and he played a part in it so he must have been solid enough.
Somehow I escaped the grip of any other aftershows and actually managed to get back to my hotel room at a somewhat reasonable hour. I have no idea what reasonable hour that was in particular but it was still dark out and for the NOLA jazzfest that’s pretty darn reasonable.
Todd Man Out 