Big Freedia Among Friday's Best at Jazz Fest; Picks for Saturday

Big Freedia

Our highlights from Friday at Jazz Fest and picks for Saturday at the Fair Grounds.

This year’s Jazz Fest remains essentially charmed. Yes, there have been hiccups, two new ones being Melissa Etheridge and Willie Nelson being forced to cancel due to COVID in their crews, and they’ll be replaced by Mavis Staples (Saturday, Blues Tent, 5:55 p.m.) and the Zac Brown Band (Sunday, Shell Gentilly Stage, 5:40 p.m.). But the rain Thursday night and Friday morning that forced the delay of the opening on Friday didn’t badly damage the Fair Grounds, and by mid-afternoon water was a non-factor. 

Like last Friday, the crowds took their time showing up, which makes me wonder if this year’s audience is more local than usual and because of that, affected by the work day in a way that visitors aren’t. Whatever, the audiences were a good size—large enough to feel like an event but not so large that they were overwhelming. 

One of the biggest crowds early on was for Big Freedia, who is a 100 percent rock star. The subject of a Big Freedia isn’t ass—though I get why you’d think that—but Big Freedia, and the audience is invested in her. The songs are an extension of her, not stand alone objects, and she can get anything over on the strength of her personality and presence. 

On Friday, she took to the stage wearing camouflage with purple fringe hanging from purple patches on the pockets and presided over her crew of dancers, who themselves served as a reminder of how far she has come. There was a time when at least one of her dancers was a needy mess who happened to be freakishly good at shaking her ass; on Friday, that slot was taken by one of the guests onstage for “Azz Everywhere.” Freedia’s own dancers are uniformly good and know how to work. They get a few breaks during the show, but they’re not gassed after a number or two the way some of the earlier dancers were. 

The set opened with “B.D.E.” which celebrated “Big Dick Energy,” and the good-naturedness of Freedia’s performance kept is and most of the set from seeming raunchy. When the dancers came out with Super Soakers to spray the crowd, toys onstage seemed tonally spot-on with the show. Freedia’s vocalisms are often reduced to syllables of energy and encouragement, and at one point she instructed, “Watusi Watusi Watusi Watusi” to a dancer who was shaking her ass since the dancer was doing nothing close to the dance from the 1960s, what Freedia sang was sound as another rhythmic element and another potential meme to put over.

The women who played trombone and saxophone for Cimafunk had their own cheering sections, but their star power was just a small selling point for their early set at the Jazz & Heritage Stage. The Cuban funk band has developed ties with New Orleans and has recorded with The Soul Rebels and Tank from Tank and the Bangas, but on their own, they sound like an amalgamation of dance club music in New York City in the early ’80s. Cimafunk presents the last days of disco fused with funk, rock, and Cuban music in a blend that sounds natural in their hands. It’s not so natural though, that anybody made it before now.

In recent years, The Cowsills has become Susan Cowsill’s main gig. She and her brothers Bob and Paul now perform regularly on the oldies circuit and have started a podcast to talk to their musical friends. The family band’s signature selling point besides its mother+brothers+sister lineup was its ability to harmonize, and even though their mother and two brothers have died, harmonizing is a fundamental Cowsill thing, and it’s what their show is about. Rather than stick to their own songs, they folded in popular songs that made sense for them with their emphasis on harmonies. That included We Five’s “You Were on My Mind,” Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer,” and The Hollies’ “Bus Stop,” and even though they announced from the stage that many of the songs were covers that they didn’t write, I overheard a number of people say, “I didn’t know they did this.”

Saturday’s Picks

Bill Kirchen - The picker for Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen long ago found his own niche as the honky tonk hero with a sense of humor. 

(Blues Tent, 11:20 a.m.)

Seratones - Shreveport’s AJ Haynes has worked to make Seratones speak more personally for her. The new Love & Algorythms largely sheds their Americana window dressing for songs and sounds that are more contemporary.

(Festival, 12:35 p.m.)

Pell - The local rapper is a hip-hop ‘tweener, not plugged in to the hit-making machine, but not defining himself against those acts either.

(Congo Square, 2:40 p.m.)

Hurray for the Riff Riff - Alynda Segarra’s music has long felt plugged into the moment when it was created, and her new Life on Earth continues in that vein.

(Shell Gentilly, 4 p.m.)

Shovels & Rope - Part of the fun of this rowdy Americana duo is the way they feel like a healthy relationship, with each balancing the other in multiple and sometimes subtle ways.  

(Sheraton New Orleans Fais-Do-Do, 4:30 p.m.)