Jazz Fest 2023 Returns with a Fresher Lineup

Ed Sheeran at Jazz Fest 2015, by Erika Goldring

It will look familiar to long-time fans, but it’s not the same-old same-old.

Kenny Loggins threw me off.

When the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell announced its talent roster last week, I locked up when I got to Kenny Loggins in the third line, not because he didn’t make sense—he makes total sense—but because it seems so random. A friend who is excited to see him talked about his pre-‘80s soundtrack career and reminded me that he wrote the Anne Murray hit “Danny’s Song” and co-wrote “This is It” and “What a Fool Believes” with Michael McDonald. But in 2023, the booking comes out of nowhere.

That became the lens through which I initially looked at the lineup, and it’s not a good way to scrutinize Jazz Fest. Asking “Why now?” of The Lumineers and Steve Miller Band for starters doesn’t lead to good answers, and if I hadn’t been to previous Jazz Fest, I’d also wonder about Tom Jones and Mumford and Sons, the latter because Marcus Mumford is on tour right now as a solo in support of the self-titled album he released last year.

But Jazz Fest is best appreciated as part of a continuum, and Jones makes sense because each appearance has been well-received and the surprise that people talk about once the show is over. Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers are there because they were booked for the lost COVID years, as were many of this year’s performers.

Now, a week later, it’s easier to see that there’s a lot to like about this year’s lineup. It’s au courant by Jazz Fest standards with Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, Jazmine Sullivan, and Kane Brown. I’d include H.E.R. in that mix as well even though I suspect she’s almost entirely propped up by the Grammys. She has had nine tracks crack Billboard’s Top 100, but none has charted higher than “B.S.,” a 2020 track by Jhene Aiko that featured H.E.R. that reached 24. On her own, she peaked at number 43, but she represents a new generation plugging into traditional notions of musicality to play songs feel like the natural offshoots of the greats from the ‘60s and ’70s that loom large over Jazz Fest aesthetically. Allison Russell also falls in that category as well.

This year’s lineup’s mid-card leans into Americana with Russell, Larkin Poe, Marcus King, The Flatlanders, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, and Durand Jones among others, and the choices make sense. Those artists feel like the logical extension of Jazz Fest values, and with the exception of The Flatlanders—Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock—they’re artists who could have long futures with the festival. Ely, Hancock and Gilmore should have, but Jazz Fest only occasionally put its toe in the Texas country/folk/blues waters for much of their careers.

On the whole, this lineup looks like about as good a balance of contemporary and classic acts as Jazz Fest will strike, and it looks like as safe a bet as a music festival can be these days. Leading with Dead & Company makes the first note a graying one, but that’s Jazz Fest’s core constituency. People who find their musical sweet spot in the musical landscape inspired by the Dead and Allman Brothers will be well served, but this year doesn’t feel like we’re all being asked to find musical satisfaction in the Woodstock generation.

Keith Spera recently wondered if Ed Sheeran would inspire the kind of crowd that swamped the Fair Grounds the day he and Elton John closed the festival in 2015. Spera thinks not, and he’s probably right. It’s eight years later, and during that time Sheeran has become respectable and his fans have grown up. One of my all-time favorite Jazz Fest memories was watching his young fans want to get closer to him so badly that they slipped under the barricades into the guest enclosure beside the stage to get maybe 10 feet closer. Jazz Fest artists rarely inspire that kind of unreasonable love, and if anyone will inspire it in 2023, it will be Lizzo.   

I usually find the jazz booking dated, and while it’s hardly cutting edge this year, the lineup is at least fresher. I’m looking forward to genre-crossing guitarist Cory Wong, who has played with Jon Batiste’s Stay Human and NAME. Nicholas Payton is local, but his restless Jazz Fest collaboration policy makes his sets must-see for me. This year with bassist MonoNeon and drummer Corey Fonville, which will be a very different set than the electronics-heavy one he played last year with Sasha Masakowski and Cliff Hines. “Something Else!” is a tribute to Cannonball Adderley with Vincent Herring, James Carter, Randy Brecker, Lewis Nash, Dave Kikoski, Paul Bollenback and Essiet Essie, and I suppose the Jazz Tent lineup ought to have something like that. Herbie Hancock and Christian McBride fall into that category too. They’re safe, but after some recent lineups, safe will do.

The 2022 Jazz Fest often felt like a celebration that it simply existed after two years off with a schedule that frequently seemed like the festival on default settings. Even the local offerings have been freshened up, and the International Pavilion will be genuinely international again with musicians from Puerto Rico each weekend. It’s augmented by Angelique Kidjo, Farruko, Mdou Moctar, Bassekou Kouyate of Mali, Rey Vallenato & Beto Jamaica of Colombia, Ceferina Banquez from Colombia, and more. Those acts don’t simply make the festival more dynamic; in tandem with the Americana acts, they serve as a reminder that, as a port city, New Orleans is a kind of crossroads where the rest of the world meets the United States. They’re not adjacent to the New Orleans story. They’re crucial to it.

Right now, weekend passes are on sale. The Early Bird Ticket package for the first weekend is $225—$75 a day—and for the second weekend is $275—approximately $69 a day, then when those sell out, weekend packages go up to $240 and $290, $80 and $73 a day for the first and second weekend. Last year, it looked like $80 was the amount of money people would pay for Jazz Fest tickets. Pop-up sales that offered tickets at $80 without service charge did well (according to the accounts of friends in line at a few of them), and since these pop-up sales hadn’t taken place in years past, it’s fair to wonder if they were needed to sell the tickets. We’ll see this year because there’s word yet on what single day tickets will cost, but they’ll only go up from there. Last year they reached $90 at the gate. Once again, there will be a Locals Thursday the second weekend with $50 tickets at the door for Louisiana residents.

And why Kenny Loggins? On January 17, he announced that the tour that will bring him to New Orleans is his final tour. “After spending a lifetime on the road, I want to have more time at home,” he said in a statement that revealed that he’ll play on April 30. If Jazz Fest was going to book him, this had to be the year. This is it.