Neil Young, Crazy Horse Still to 20th Century at Jazz Fest

Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 2022, by Joey Martinez

Young and Colombian band Cimarrón were the highlights of a sticky Saturday at the festival, and it’s hard to pick highlights on a Sunday that looks like Jazz Fest’s Greatest Hits.

On Saturday afternoon, Neil Young took a break from cleaning the gutters to walk onstage with Crazy Horse. Wearing a battered engineer’s cap, an often-washed “Earth” shirt and a pair of paint-spattered pants, Young and Crazy Horse played from the rock ’n’ roll side of his catalogue, slightly hunched over under the weight of those riffs. The show was pretty fan-friendly, certainly more so than his last few trips to New Orleans when the jams stretched out to a half-hour in some cases and the soloing pushed the limits of metallic sound. Perhaps because he didn’t have a new album to sell like he did the last two times he played New Orleans (Psychedelic Pill in 2012, Monsanto Years in 2016), it was easier to revisit old favorites and fall into older, less protracted ways of playing.

The setlist never made it to the 21st century, and the most recent song—“Scattered (Let’s Think About Love)”—was a mere 28 years old, coming from 1996’s Broken Arrow. Otherwise, Young gave the fans as close to a Crazy Horse greatest hits as he could manage—“Cortez the Killer,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down by the River,” “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere,” “Powderfinger,” and “Hey Hey My My (Into the Black)—with a few surprises including “Fuckin’ Up” from 1990’s Ragged Glory. Since student activism is in the news and Saturday was May 4, the anniversary of the murder of four students during a protest at Kent State University in 1970, Young included Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” in the set.

In a lot of ways, looking back suits Young conceptually as well as musically. What’s less 2024 than four guys walking around a stage playing without acknowledging the crowd as if they’re in a rehearsal hall? What’s less 2024 than an exercise in extended heaviness? Musically, Young’s musical sweet spot with Crazy Horse is elegiac as together they celebrate a world that’s passing. Young shows the wear and tear of age, and so do the band’s instruments. A close-up of Billy Talbot’s bass showed where he has worn the paint away, and the camera didn’t have to zoom in on Young’s black 1953 Gibson Les Paul to see the sweat and dirt and worn spots on the body. His default sound throughout the show was distortion, the sound of a note deteriorating. Strung together, they sounded like guitar lines determined to make it to the finish line, knowing that feedback CPR panels are always just an angled guitar away.

Crazy Horse’s proto-grunge that connected Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam to Young was on display for the duration of the show, and it was powerful on its own and as the sound of a noble beast that refuses to lay down gently. Still, I have to admit that I missed the indulgent thrills of the journeys to the edge of sound and patience that he undertook on his last two visits to New Orleans. People still talk with reverence about the blistering Voodoo set in 2012, and in 2016 Young sounded ready to take on the afternoon’s rainstorm, one force of nature to another. Saturday’s show was more human-scaled and probably truer to he is, but that gave the show a hint of nostalgia that I’d have happily traded in.

When I prepped my highlights of the Colombian acts playing Jazz Fest, I mentally short-handed Cimarrón as the Cowboy King Crimson and likely the band with the best chops at the Fair Grounds. The videos I saw tipped me off in certain directions—that their joropo music is tied to Colombia’s plains and a kind of stomp dancing—but they didn’t prep me for the ferocious shredding on display, primarily on a harp. The player didn’t execute any gentle glissandos or discreet harmonic support; instead, he dug in, grabbing strings with two hands torquing out fleet blasts of notes that did as much rhythmic as melodic work, and he wasn’t the only killer onstage.

They have two more shows at Jazz Fest today at 1:35 p.m. at the Sheraton New Orleans Fais-Do-Do Stage, and at 5 p.m. in the Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion. One of those should be among your appointment views today. One tip though—they have a show that they do, and even though they’re budgeted for 45 minute or more sets, their show takes 25 or so minutes, and when they’re done, they pack up and go. When they started to wrap up a set on Saturday, I saw that they had time left but couldn’t imagine what was left to do that wouldn’t seem redundant. The stage manager obviously let singer Ana Veydó know that they still had 20 minutes, but she made it clear that they were done. So get there for the beginning—I won’t spoil it for you—and plan on staying because unless things change overnight, you’ll be done and satisfied in a half-hour.

What else is there to do on Sunday?

One of the stories of this weekend of Jazz Fest has been the passing of Feufollet’s Chris Stafford. Yesterday after my preview of the day posted, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys switched into Feufollet’s slot on the Fais-Do-Do Stage so that they could attend Stafford’s memorial today in Lafayette. BeauSoleil’s Michael and David Doucet have moved into Riley’s 12:25 plot on Fais-Do-Do to play a set titled Michael & David Doucet avec ses amis, which could well be the kind of expression of community that’s certainly at the heart of Cajun music and the aesthetic of Jazz Fest.

The headliner tier has some hard choices, but most of them are pretty familiar to Jazz Fest regulars. Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue closes the Festival Stage as usual, this year opposite Bonnie Raitt, Earth Wind & Fire, and Tower of Power, all of which have played Jazz Fest too many times to count. All are good choices, but so are George Thorogood and the Destroyers (5:40 p.m., Blues Tent) and The Wallflowers (5:30 p.m., Sheraton New Orleans Fais-Do-Do Stage), who haven’t played the festival as often.

The day as a whole has the vibe of Jazz Fest’s greatest hits with George Porter Jr. & the Runnin’ Pardners (12:30 p.m., Festival Stage), Irma Thomas (1:55 p.m., Festival Stage), The Radiators (1:50 p.m., Shell Gentilly Stage), along with Terence Simien, Marcia Ball, Kermit Ruffins, Delfeayo Marsalis, Tim Laughlin, Roddie Romero, Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. and the Wild Magnolias. As a result, it’s hard to see how you go musically wrong, but it’s also hard to get revved up for such a familiar day at Jazz Fest.

Highlights outside of all that?

Grupo Niche (2:05 p.m., Congo Square Stage) - This Colombian act is professional grade salsa.

Tom McDermott & Aurora Nealand (2:25 p.m., Rhythmpourium Tent) - Pianist McDermott and horn player Nealand are both interesting thinkers about how to remain contemporary while playing in and honoring traditional forms.

Funk Monkey feat. Arsene DeLay (3 p.m., Lagniappe Stage) -  The band’s in the New Orleans funk/R&B tradition; DeLay makes it go.