It’s the first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the city’s last big fling before summer torpor sets in. The name is somewhat misleading—while the odd jazz band can be found at the festival, they are vastly overshadowed by rock-festival staples like the Dave Matthews Band and pop-culture flotsam like Bon Jovi and John Mayer. Nor is the entertainment in the Quarter of a more discerning caliber—cover bands, churning out Sweet Home Alabama ad nauseam. But just a block south of the Bourbon Street bacchanal, one stumbles across an odd specimen of jazz and heritage. A six-piece Dixieland jazz band has set up in a loose semi-circle in the entryway of a Royal Street art gallery, banging away at the smash hits of the prohibition era, and a growing crowd is gathering to watch them play. A strange alchemy occurs among passersby, as drunken bemusement gives way to total rapture. “They even kind oflook like they’re from the 1920s,” remarks a bewildered bystander. There is, in fact, something disarmingly antique about the band’s appearance. From their unamplified, old-world instrumentation to their shabby, jazz-age fashion sense—the tuba player is wearing suspenders—the band looks like it could have wandered out of a history book. But these are young kids, not old-timers, and they’re playing their guts out—the music swings mightily, and certainly doesn’t sound antique. The crowd responds with an enthusiastic shower of tips. “Thank you, we’re the Loose Marbles,” announces the trumpet player, as the cash box fills rapidly. “We’ll be back on the street tomorrow.”
I was looking at Liam Warfield’s current website yesterday because I hadn’t checked it in a while, and I found this article about Loose Marbles, a really excellent NoLa/NYC jazz ensemble. I didn’t know he knew all those people in those bands which I got into a few years after I last saw him. Small world.
