Mary Katherine's (and Tony's) Excellent Adventure

The saga began in downtown Los Angeles on February 14, when Jim dropped me off at the Amtrak station and I boarded the Southwest Chief to Chicago. Met lots of nice folks on this leg of the trip, including an Amish couple with whom I had a couple of meals in the dining car. The woman eyed my unfeminine t-shirt and jeans warily, but was friendly; the man was a farmer, with the broad forehead and frank open stare of someone used to spotting a missing calf at 1000 yards. An odd mixture of protective and assertive, he ordered for his wife, consulting her in their own language, and later doled out the money for their frugal meal from a heavy old-fashioned brown leather wallet that had clearly been, at least, his grandfather’s.

The farther east we got, the more snow and ice there was on the ground outside the train, and by the time we arrived in Chicago it was extremely cold, though it had stopped snowing. My “other son” John, his wife Jeanine, and my honorary granddaughter Olivia plowed their way through the snowdrifts to collect me, and we all went to the usual Thai place for dinner. Olivia, it turns out, is very fond of chicken satay! We had a lovely visit (and I passed along some hand-me-down baby clothes of Eliza’s for Olivia) and then they took me back to the station and I got on the City of New Orleans for the overnight ride to Memphis.

L: Pete Howard outside the Rendezvous. R: Jam session in the lobby of the hotel. L-R: Geoff Seitz on fiddle, Bob Carlin on banjo, Jim Nelson on guitar, Paul David Smith on fiddle

Thursday I met my old friend Josh Dunson (who was my editor when I wrote for Sing Out back in the early 1970s) for lunch at Alcenia’s, a great meat-and-two-veg place just a block from the hotel, where I had my first (but not last) catfish plate of the trip. Ordered peach cobbler for dessert, but by the time it came I was afraid I’d be late for my first panel, so I took it back to the hotel with me and gave it to Andy Cohen, who promptly wrapped himself around it. The panel (“When Is a Song Traditional?”) with Andy, Scott Alarik, Sarah McQuaid, Steve Winick, Paul David Smith and myself, went very well, I thought, and we had some good questions from the full house of attendees. Then attended the folk djs reception, since I am a folk dj, after all (more free food!), and then checked out the first day of Exhibit Hall. Ran into most of the Campbell Brothers in the registration area, and had a good visit with them. Pete and I went to the Rendezvous BBQ for an early dinner, and later that night saw Diana Jones’ official showcase. She was terrific, had a jammed full room and played and sang beautifully. Wandered from room to room, hearing Molasses Creek, Roosevelt Dime (love these band names!), the Carolina Chocolate Drops and many more.

        Andy Cohen and Dom Flemons on a panel                                                                                                 The Stax Museum. with Robert's name on the marquee

Friday morning I was interviewed over breakfast by a woman who is writing a book about my old pal Dick Waterman, then went straight to my next panel, “The Influence of Traditional Music on Popular Music.” It was another good session, with some of the same panelists as yesterday plus Judy Peiser and Dave Siglin. Then Pete and I played hookey from the conference and went to visit the Stax Records Museum, where my membership got us both in free. My pal Robert Gordon, who unfortunately was out of town while we were there, had just won a Grammy that week, and was saluted on their marquee! I bought a few souvenirs in their gift shop, then snapped a photo of the "historic home of Memphis Slim" before heading back to the conference. After a business meeting with Diana Jones and Lisa Best, I heard Ginny Hawker and Tracy Schwarz, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Molasses Creek, the Honey Dewdrops, and the first of several Sacred Steel sessions I’d catch. Then at midnight Tony arrived from London, and we stayed up late talking; alas, we were rudely shaken awake after only a couple of hours sleep at 4:30 a.m. by the hotel’s fire alarm going off, and had to dress groggily but hastily and hover in our room doorway waiting to hear whether we were supposed to evacuate or not. As it turned out, some idiot (probably having had a bit too much alcoholic fun) had set off the fire alarm system manually, so the fire department came, and after much ado about nothing we finally got back to sleep around 6 a.m. Didn’t do much to help Tony’s jet lag!
                   
L.: This house has been exactly this decrepit on my last several visits, and has said "Renovations Coming Soon" for at least five years that I know of! R.: The Sacred Steel guys - some of the
Campbell Brothers and Ted Beard

Saturday morning we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant with a revolving cast of friends who came and ate with us and visited and went away again; then I did my final panel (with Dick Waterman, Bill Ellis and Andy, among others), on the music of Reverend Gary Davis, and while I was doing that Tony went off to find a local cigar store he had visited last time, which turned out to have closed. My pal Scott Barretta showed up during the panel, so he, along with Tony, Andy, Steve Weiss from UNC Chapel Hill and I all went to lunch at Alcenia’s together. I had – catfish! Tom and Joyce Freeland drove up from Oxford later that day and we all went to dinner together at Cozy Corner that night for barbecue, Tony’s first (but not last) of the trip. Honestly? I think Cozy Corner beats the Rendezvous all to hell. That night we heard more Sacred Steel, Dehlia Low, Watermelon Slim, Mary Gauthier, Ginny and Tracy, Blind Boy Paxton and more, and finally fell into bed exhausted but happy at about 2 a.m.

Sunday was Tranquility Day. Most folks were checking out of the hotel, so the place was quite peaceful. After the morning Gospel Brunch (more free food!). I did laundry and then we went for a nice walk along Main Street to book Tony’s room for his overnight return to Memphis the following week. That night was the conference closing party at the Center for Southern Folklore (yes, more free food!) and after a set by Sid Griffin & the Coal Porters, who played acoustically because the stage mikes were so bad, we packed our bags and turned in early, as we had a train to catch at 6 the next morning.

Then the real fun began, if you call getting a 5:00 a.m. wakeup call fun. We went to the Memphis train station and hopped on the City of New Orleans, and got off it some hours later at our destination. Our first adventure began with the taxi ride to our hotel; I was busily pointing out places of musical interest to Tony, and as we approached our hotel I pointed to a plaque on a building across the street and said, “And that building is the birthplace of New Orleans musician Danny Barker.” The cab driver got out, unloaded our luggage, collected the fare plus tip, and grunted at me, “You see the name on the front of my cab?” Well, of course I hadn’t, so I went up front to have a look. Joe Barker, it said in neatly painted letters. “What?—are you--?” “Third cousin,” he grunted, and got back into his cab and drove off, leaving me agape. Only in New Orleans!

The BarkerMarker                                                                                                                  Our palatial retreat, the Hotel Provincial on Chartres

We settled in, made some phone calls to friends, and tried to set up the laptop which had worked so beautifully in Memphis. We had a fair amount of trouble connecting to the hotel’s free WiFi connection, but eventually succeeded, and then walked across the Quarter to have dinner at the Palace Café on Canal, where I had my first (but not last) shrimp remoulade of the trip. As we walked back along Royal we heard street musicians playing, and when we cut down to Chartres there was a stripped-down four piece brass band holding forth in the Square. In the distance I heard the evocative off-key calliope sound of the Mississippi River paddlewheelers calling the tourists to come down to the dock for an evening cruise; ahhh, it’s good to be back!

Street musicians on Royal

Tuesday morning we availed ourselves of the promised “free daily continental breakfast” offered by the hotel. Economical, true, but not really satisfying unless you like overly sweet Danish pastries and hard boiled (!) eggs. The orange juice, of which I can drink quarts at a time, was my favorite part of the meal. However, having breakfast in the picturesque courtyard of our hotel was fun, and gave Tony a chance to write up his journal while he had his morning coffee. Then we started off on a walk along Burgundy, admiring the lovely old houses all decorated for Mardi Gras, and congratulating ourselves on having no responsibilities beyond the next meal for a whole week. We were incredibly lucky to have wonderful weather the entire time we were there (and, I later learned, the day we left it started pouring rain and it was miserable for a week thereafter).

We stopped for lunch at the Gumbo Shop (followed, eventually, by dessert across the street at La Divina Gelateria) and walked and shopped our way back to the hotel in time for Ben Sandmel to collect us for dinner at Liuzza’s, where I had – you’ll never guess - shrimp remoulade and catfish. We were lucky to catch up with Ben, as he was leaving the following day for – Los Angeles!

                                                                                                                                                          Tony at Preservation Hall
  
After a morning spent wandering the Quarter, and lunch at Napoleon House, we rode on the riverboat Creole Queen down the Mississippi to Chalmette and back on Wednesday afternoon, then walked around some more, and had dinner that night with my pal Scott McCraw and his bride Rebecca, who met each other, can you stand it, on match.com. Yes, really. They are the second completely happy couple I know who found each other via an internet matching-up service. The first was Jim’s cousin from Florida, who over dinner at the Castle one night told us the story of how she met her husband on eHarmony.com; they each filled out a bunch of compatibility questions, were matched up, met, married, and are idyllically happy together. Anyhow, we had dinner at Brigtsens, and it was incredible – I had corn and shrimp bisque and a lovely fish of some kind, and it was great to see Scott so happy after such a long time, and to get to meet Rebecca after hearing so much about her from Scott.

Pirates Alley, without and with Tony in the frame

Thursday was more shopping and more great meals. I should also mention that we walked everywhere (a good thing considering the stupendous amounts of food we were taking in) and talked constantly, and I really enjoyed being in Tony’s company again. We had the hotel breakfast (zzzz) and then went to lunch at the new branch of the Camellia Grill that has recently opened in the Quarter. It’s the same minimalist comfort food as the original location – breakfast (catfish and eggs for me) and lunch, diner style, with stools around a counter, and hamburgers that are pretty darn good. Then we did more walking and shopping and talking, and had dinner that night at Mr. B’s (where Tony praised the Gumbo Ya-Ya) with my friend Bill Morgan. It was wonderful to get to see him again. After we ate, Bill drove us over to check out the new location of Rock ‘N’ Bowl, where Geno Delafose was holding forth to a packed house. Then we took a cab back to the hotel, and Tony relaxed in the courtyard with a post-prandial cigar and wrote in his journal while Eliza and I conferred via Skype. “Hi, Grandma!” she waved at the computer, and held up her bedtime story book for me to read to her – alas, it was upside down.

Geno Delafose at Rock'n'Bowl                                                                                                            Tony in the courtyard of our hotel

Friday morning we took a cab up to the Bayou St. John end of Esplanade to visit with my dear friend Harold Battiste, who had saved me a copy of his new book and signed it for me (with some coaching as to the correct spelling of my name), and we went to breakfast together at Lil’ Dizzy’s. That ran so late that we really didn’t feel the need for much lunch, so after I visited the Suds Dem Duds Laundromat to set us both up with enough clean clothes to get us through the rest of our stay, we stopped at Stanley on the Square and just had salads. That was a real breakthrough for me – I had never been in there, because it is on the site of the former La Madeleine, where Keith and I ate every single day that we were in New Orleans, and in fact it’s where we had our last meal together before he died. I didn’t think I could stand going in there again, but it was easier than I'd feared. La Madeleine closed after Hurricane Katrina and never reopened; the new owners have laid out the inside completely differently, though parts of it are still recognizable. Anyhow, it’s a good thing we ate lightly, because that night we went to Herbsaint with T.H. Freeland and Sarah and Brian Simonson, and stuffed ourselves like pigs. Oh. My. God. The food is amazing there. We were lucky to have T.H. (who works there) kindly orchestrate the ordering so that we had many shared plates on the table and were able to taste a lot of different dishes. There were bleachers set up right in front of the restaurant, and Tony got to see his first Mardi Gras parade that night (Krewe of Oshun); it was also celebrity night, as the mayor of New Orleans was in the restaurant, along with CNN’s James Carville and somebody else famous, I forget who now. We got stuck in the post-parade street closures, naturally, but Sarah finally got us back to the Quarter, where Tom (Sarah and T.H.’s dad) and Joyce Freeland met us and we had a short visit before they headed out to hear music.

By Saturday I was starting to panic, realizing that I still had a long shopping list of souvenirs/commissions for friends and only two more days to shop in. I was tired of the hotel breakfast, so we walked a block over to the Croissant D’Or and ate in *their* courtyard for a change, after which I dragged Tony from pillar to post looking for and checking off items on my list. I had lunch (without him) at noon at Galatoire’s with my darling goddaughter Nell while he checked out cigar stores, and then we met up back at the hotel in the afternoon and went strolling along Royal listening to the street musicians. I packed up some of my purchases and we walked over to a mailing center and mailed them home so I wouldn’t have to carry them (and yes, everything got home safely, and before I did!). After a sketchy dinner we went to see Don Vappie at Irvin Mayfield’s new listening room in the Royal Sonesta, then tried to dodge the Bourbon Street Saturday night insanity as we went back to the hotel.

            View of the French Quarter from the deck of the Creole Queen                                                                 View of Tony on board the Creole Queen

Don Vappie at Irvin Mayfield's                                                                           On the way to dinner at Herbsaint

Sunday morning we didn’t eat any breakfast, because we had a date for brunch with Tom and Joyce and T.H. and Sarah and Brian at Patois. I had been there a couple of years previously for dinner with Bill Morgan, but I don’t think they were doing the brunch back then. Tony and I decided to take the Riverfront Trolley and then the Magazine Street bus uptown, which was a big success except that we missed our bus stop and ended up in Audubon Park, and had a nice leafy walk back several blocks to the restaurant. Well, the food was just stupendous. Our dinner at Herbsaint and this brunch were by far the best food I had on this trip, with Brigtsens coming in a close second. Then I said a fond goodbye to the Freeland/Simonson clan, and we took the bus back to the Quarter. Naturally we got stuck in parade street closures again, so Tony got to see the Krewe of Carrollton strut their stuff down Canal. And I caught some throws!

Krewe of Carrollton parade

Once we finally got back into the Quarter we ran smack into the tail end, you should excuse the expression, of the Krewe of Barkus, a lovely little local parade in which folks dress their dogs up in Mardi Gras costumes and parade with them. And I finally found some items I had been looking for to bring home for friends, and was very relieved, although I am still regretting not buying myself a lovely parrot fan that we saw – it was just too expensive, and I couldn’t figure out how to pack it. We had dinner that night at Tom and Hild Morgan’s house with my old activist friend John Sinclair and his daughter Celia, and Eric Cager of the Cutting Edge Business Conference. We decided to walk over to Tom’s place on Elysian Fields through Frenchmen Street so that Tony could see some of that area too, and there were street musicians playing old time tunes that he recognized immediately. Over dinner we had some great conversation, as well as a chance to look at some of Tom’s remarkable collection of vintage sheet music. Tom and Hild had sold the house and would be moving to Florida right after Mardi Gras, so this was our last chance to visit with them.

Musicians on Frenchmen Street

Monday morning there was no time for anything but a farewell breakfast at Café Beignet, and then I was off to catch my train to L.A.; it started to sprinkle as my cab pulled away from the hotel, which I thought was about appropriate! Tony caught his own train a few hours later, going back to Memphis, where he spent the night before flying home to London the next day. It was a wonderful vacation, and I hope it’s not another two years before he and I get to see each other again.