4th Annual Threadhead Patry - Location Unknown and Dragon Smoke - Blue Nile - New Orleans - 4-29-2008

The Tuesday in between JazzFest weekends finds me being picked up at the hotel, blindfolded, gagged and being driven to a secret location for the 4th Annual Threadhead Patry ( no, not misspelled) that I am not able to divulge for National Security reasons…. Ok, it was not that dramatic, but when you throw a soiree with food, music and plenty of free-flowing alcohol you have to fly under the radar a bit.

The Threadheads are folks who are members of the JazzFest forum and come from all corners of the planet and if they can’t come to JazzFest for any reason, then they live vicarously through us that are fortunate to make it.

What I can tell you is that through the sales of tickets to the Patry, the raffle I wrote about recently and various other sources, the Threadheads raised over $20,000 for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic and Fest4Kidz. Much praise goes out to all the organizers for their hard work.

I don’t know if words can describe what a great time I had at the Patry, so I will just let the photos below do the deed. I will say that one of my highlights was having the Silence is Violence Music Clinic Kids on stage playing for the crowd and the rest of the bands with Shamarr Allen, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show and the Hot 8 Brass Band certainly rose to the occasion for the most appreciative Threadheads. Unfortunately, I did not make it in time for Bob French’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Band to start things off for the day.

After 9 hours of fun, I was thrown in the back of a van and dropped off somewhere on the outskirts of the city. I then made my way back to the Blue Nile for Dragon Smoke with Eric Lindell on guitar, Stanton Moore and Robert Mercurio of Galactic on drums and bass, Jimmy Carpenter on sax and Ivan Neville on keys. After getting a taste of what these guys could do at the Instruments A Comin’ benefit at Tipitina’s the night before, I was looking forward to a extended session.

After leading with “Hercules”, a number of guest appearances got kicked off with Bernie Worrell, of P-Funk fame, sitting in with Ivan at the keyboards for Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round In Circles”. Others showing up and hanging around for a song or two were Will Bernard, Eric Krasno of Soulive and Ian Neville. A most funkified version of the Temptations “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” had me so stoked I was singing (attempting anyway) the lyrics all the way down Royal Street back to the hotel an hour later. Sweet day…..

So much for resting in between weekends….