Can’t leave New Orleans without mentioning a little more about our trip. It’s just plain hard to leave New Orleans at all, and I’ve thought that every time I’ve visited. This was a great one week family vacation and I’d recommend a trip there to anybody who asks. We were supposed to fly out just after Christmas, but the Snowstorm that Stopped New York stopped us too. Our flights were delayed for days. We were at home, snowbound, with no jobs to do, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to be in New Orleans. I used to visit friends there frequently but hadn’t been back since Jazz Fest 1995, cue “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?”

I spent these null days re-watching Treme and taking a virtual visit to NO. The extra time allowed a level of research I’d never done for a vacation before. At http://www.offbeat.com/ —one of the local music magazines — I found lists of all the bands in the many clubs the week we’d be there. I had some favorite places to eat that I wanted to return to — like Franky & Johnny’s, for crawfish as good as I remembered — but knew that I needed some up to date insight, and looked through a bunch of too touristy sites until I stumbled upon http://chowhound.chow.com/boards

I loved the food, but the music is what has stayed with me the most. We landed the morning of New Year’s Eve and headed out to Jackson Square for the free concert that night. I have never been tempted to be in Times Square for New Year’s Eve, but this was something else. We stood in front of the stage and danced in the street. Terrence Simeon and his zydeco band was the highlight for me, including catching some of the beads he kept flinging out to the crowd. N.O. Mayor Moon Landry showed up and played washboard on stage with one of the acts.

New Year’s Day we headed to the Rock ‘n Bowl to see Kermit Ruffins and his Barbecue Swingers. Being in New Orleans on a family vacation, Rock ‘n Bowl is the perfect place, ’cause there’s no age limit and you can really bowl if you want, and Kermit (and his smile) was the perfect way to start a new year. Later I bought a copy of his latest cd Happy Talk from a vendor in the French Market and I have been wearing the grooves out of it since. If you come see my storytelling show the title track kicks off the pre-show music, as a talisman for me as much as for the audience. Kermit, doing the jazz standard I like to request (whenever anybody asks):

I just finished reading Patti Smith’s poetic and uplifting memoir, “Just Kids”, and twice in the book she recalls her mother’s traditional wisdom regarding New Year’s, that the way in which you start the new year is the way you will spend it. If so, I’ll take it.