“And I can hear the band begin ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’
And by the whiskers on my chin, New Orleans, I’ll be there…”

Tom Waits, “I Wish I Was in New Orleans”

Voodoo Music Experience, The Tenth Ritual

Day 1

The sun wiped the sleep off his old eyes as he lifted his weary head up from behind the flat horizon of I-10E between Austin and Houston, Texas and took inventory of the lazy rolling pasture land and hay fields — the sluggish cattle there grazing and the tattered farm houses and stubborn silos that had refused to fall victim to Ike’s mighty winds back in September…  My photographer, Dave, and I were yet again on the road after a brief stop in Schulenburg, where we gorged our stomachs on a king’s feast of pancakes, swine meat, scrambled eggs, home fries, two pots of coffee, and some good ol’ Southern hospitality at the OakRidge Smokehouse Restaurant (Come As U-R, Bring Ma n’ Pa). We were reeling, fighting the fatigue and apathy of a food coma, but we diligently pressed on, eastward, en route to New Orleans, Louisiana for the tenth anniversary of the Voodoo Music Experience in City Park with nothing to our names but a handful of twenty dollar bills, a plastic bag of wasabi peanuts, and The Allman Brothers singing “Ramblin’ Man” on the radio station.

Of course, we had no place to stay once we finally got there, but we weren’t going to let that stop us. We didn’t have the time or the mind for these minor details. At 5:30am, when we took a wrong turn at 183N back in Austin and detoured our journey by more than half an hour and about 40 miles, we reached an unspoken and unequivocal agreement between the two of us that if the people of the great city of New Orleans could gather the grit and resolve to shuck Katrina and Gustav and throw a three-day celebration of everything that has made The Big Easy the musical, cultural, and culinary Mecca of the western world, we could muster enough grit and resolve to make the 532-mile trip to join them.

We arrived at 3:30pm and drove aimlessly around the park looking for some semblance of a festival before a Good Samaritan at the end of Harrison Avenue pointed us in the right direction (contrary to the slight misguidance of what I’d jotted down from Google Maps). After we filled out the proper papers, reviewed what little itinerary we’d prepared for the day, and picked up our passes from the press tent, we walked into what, by first impressions, looked to be something altogether very much darker, very much different from the tie-dyed, family-friendly pachouli pageantry of the ACL Festival.

At this point, I have to confess my reluctance at writing a “raving” review of the tenth annual Voodoo Music Festival for fear that even the slightest ripple of positive press will stir up a tidal wave that will eventually wipe out one of the most appealing factors of our experience at the festival: the size of the crowds.

For two fellas who are instinctively accustomed to fighting Hell’s fiery heat and the thousands upon thousands of stinking, sweating bodies that constitute the unmentionable tortures of an ACL Fest weekend, the cool temperatures and modest crowd sizes in New Orleans made the Voodoo Fest a literal Paradise — so much so that it took my photographer and I a solid hour of wandering around the merchant tents filled with Haitian art and jewerly, voodoo dolls, random skeletons, and severed alligator heads, glass pipes of various utility, and Creole culture oddities to finally regain our senses after the initial shock that (as far as we were concerned) barely anybody was there! But this is America, and good press means more exposure, and more exposure means larger crowds, and larger crowds means more money, and more money is something that we all need these days…especially the communities and efforts that have been supporting the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans for a decade now, against every obstacle that finances, scheduling, and even Mother Nature have thrown at them. And good press is an honor to bestow where it’s well deserved.

Due to the unfortunate tardiness of our arrival, the first gig we caught was New Orleans’s own Marva Wright and the BMWs. “The Blues Queen of New Orleans” wooed us away from the merchant vendors and over to the Preservation Hall with the soulful lilt of her voice and the steady, rocking rhythm and blues of her band. No less than five minutes after we arrived, Marva was orchestrating the crowd through a three-part call-and-response of “I Feel So Good” that escalated to a crescendo of shouting and dancing -– a musical liberation peaking at Marva’s howl that could convert even the coldest heart and the stiffest knees to shake it loose and enjoy themselves some good music and good times with good people in the bayou.

My photographer and I might have very well just stood there entranced by Marva alone for the whole afternoon, had not a press-type looking fellow with a backpack, camera, paper and pen in hand passed right in front of me reminding me that, after all, we had a job to do. And, as much as we would have loved to stay and hear the lovely Marva Wright and the BMWs finish their most excellent show, we were on a mission to try and cover as many shows as humanly possible, even if it killed us (and death was a very real, tangible possibility on this trip, as we knew that Sunday night we faced the harrowing eight to ten hour drive after the festival ended back to Austin for work Monday morning).

Our fancies led us to the lovely countenance and voice of the breathtaking Joss Stone, whose set at the Playstation/Billboard.com stage was already in progress. Joss Stone is not an artist that frequently finds rotation in my daily listening, but I am inclined to seriously reconsider the soulful British songstress after seeing her live last Friday afternoon.

It was the voice. Its raw power set me aback. Joss Stone commands the stage and the song like she’s the genetic outcome of twisting together the DNA strands of Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin into the musical chops of a pretty, young, barefooted, bohemian girl out of Kent. I was well aware of her somewhat questionable reputation and stage presence as a queen-bee diva, but even I can’t say a word against the rare combination of sincerity and brutally honest vulnerability in her vocal delivery — a delivery that hits you in the deepest parts of your soul like a good word on a Sunday morning. Of course, I went in with literally no expectations. I was a tabula rasa for the Joss Stone set that included a rousing, slowed-down performance of “Put Your Hands On Me,” and I left with a certainty that I’d gladly pay general admission to see her again (no small claim, mind you, for a hard case such as myself).

The next artist was the always-entertaining Wyclef Jean who took the main Voodoo stage at about 5:30pm. I had seen Wyclef years ago in another lifetime, where he flat out-performed the Dave Matthews Band at Texas Stadium. Personally, I wanted to see if the former member of The Refugees could again out-perform the critical reviews he has received after his collaborations with the likes of Shakira and The Rock.

The Haitian-born, Brooklyn-bred rapper did not disappoint, and he executed arguably the most interactive performance of the entire weekend, supported by his backing band. During the show, the boundary between the artist and the crowd disappeared as he called out and invited a hoola-hooping hippie chick onto the stage saying, “C’mon up here!!…Get out your cameras!!! We’re gonna make a YouTube video right here at the Voodoo Fest!!!”

Before his time was up, Wyclef had assembled an impromptu collection of a banner-waving bearded man tromping around the girl with the hoolah-hoop and a skinny, shirtless kid in Kanye shades whose dancing repertoire was limited to doing jumping jacks over and over till he was politely led off stage. Wyclef’s dynamic showcase included Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry,” “Carnival,” a mouth guitar solo played by the lips and teeth of Wyclef himself, a near-five-minute freestyle decrying the injustice of systematic racism, the war in Iraq, a few jabs at his naysayers, and a handful of petitions to the benefit of a certain Democratic Presidential candidate. He closed the set by playing the Hendrix rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — an appropriate introduction to the ensuing political overtones of the entire weekend.

While Wyclef had made it a priority to vocalize his support for Obama at several points through his set, Erykah Badu’s endorsement was accompanied by an explanation of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. Shining bright and beautiful from the stage with the maternal radiance of a woman expecting her third child, Ms. Badu crooned through cuts off her new album, New Amerykah Part One (Fourth World War), from under the shadows of her outstanding hair made famous back in Austin by word-of-mouth reviews of her performance at ACL Fest last month. Her set, which featured the likes of “Me,” “My People,” and “Kiss Me On My Neck,” among others, conjured the perfect, easy mood to the setting sun and ushered a refreshed and rejuvenated audience into the night, where TV on the Radio, Devotchka, the Reverend Horton Heat, and Stone Temple Pilots were still waiting.

Contrary to what I was expecting, TV on the Radio made no grand entrance to the Voodoo stage but rather lumbered out under the house lights with all the unassuming nonchalance of a group of stage techs who just so happened to have released two critically acclaimed albums. However, this casual façade quickly faded as Tunde Adebimpe started to jump, writhe, and flail his way around the stage like he was trying to shake off the pin-pricks and torments being hexed on him from one of the many voodoo dolls sold by the merchants on the festival grounds. The band played through creative renditions of “Wolf Like Me,” “Playhouses,” “Province,” and some new tracks off Dear Science such as “Golden Age” and “Dancing Choose.”

Yet the most intriguing thing about finally seeing TV on the Radio live was the ingenuity of their transitions between their songs. The breaks in their set were occupied by the sustained whistles and vocal beats that Tunde would loop and distort through a vocal synthesizer station at one of the two mics between which he bounced back and forth throughout the show. He would then wind and thread the hiccups, beats, and whistles of his own voice through an array of effects as the echoing chords of David Sitek’s lead guitar, Kyp Malone’s rhythm accompaniment, and fantastic falsetto, the keys and bass of Gerard Smith, and the beats of Jaleel Bunton would put flesh and blood to the skeletal framework and breathe new life into the next song. The overall effect was a collaborative effort that seemed less of a concert performance than an artistic witness to the unbounded, creative freedom of music.

They ended their set with their hit “Staring at the Sun” from Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, and the crowd dispersed. Some moved across the festival grounds to the DeVotchka show, and others took the opportunity to relieve themselves, get a bite to eat, order up another drink, or just sit down for once before the headlining act, Stone Temple Pilots, took the stage.

My photographer and I reconvened at the FUSEtv dome just across the way from the Playstation tent, where we hurried to recharge the camera’s batteries and check our phones for any hope that we would not end up sleeping in the car that night. Alas, a text message from Dave’s girlfriend heralded the good news that a friend of a friend of a friend (in other words, a complete stranger) who was soon to move out of their house in New Orleans was willing to have us sleep on the couches in the living room. Never mind the fact that we had no idea whose house we were about to crash at, we thought, our night was experiencing a dramatic upswing and we would NOT, could NOT let these minor details jeopardize the tides of our good fortune. On top of it all, we happened upon an old friend from New York City who coincidentally was the mastermind behind the “dome idea” for the FUSE interactive center at the Voodoo Festival. After taking a moment to catch up while watching DeVotchka from a distance, she promised to deliver passes to the Miller Lite VIP center (i.e., free beer) and free meal tickets to us the next day.

We rode high on the waves of our good luck over to the Voodoo main stage, as the masses from all the dark and forbidden corners of City Park began to swarm around what was going to be the finale of the first night of The Tenth Ritual of the Voodoo Music Experience.

Historically, when a music journalist writes about a rock star, they tend to advertently or inadvertently romanticize the self-destructive, adolescent behavior of their subjects and end up endorsing a horribly deficient culture of absolute losers and worthless deadbeats who sacrifice their talent and potential on the meaningless trip of shameful decadence under the false assumption that it’ll make them famous. I read more than enough material in my youth on Mr. Scott Weiland to know that the man is an unfortunate high-maintenance case of an unfettered, narcissistic ego run amok and he’d be a stinking, pitiful, greasy-bearded junky asking you for spare change at a shady bus station in Obispo, were it not for the fact that he just so happens to be in a rock band. Oh well…that’s the way the rock and roll cookie crumbles. And we, the mindless, adoring, and compliant herd whose lives don’t quite match up to a handful of royalty checks every month, hand over good chunks of our hard-earned money to stand below him in the dark while we watch and applaud someone who is somehow infinitely more wealthy and has achieved more recognition than every single one of us ever will without ever progressing beyond the base maturity level of a 16-year-old.

That said, the Stone Temple Pilot’s set was incredible. Not until Friday night had I realized the brute strength of STP as a legitimate rock and roll force, nor had I realized that their catalog was in large part the soundtrack for the chaos and confusion of my own climb from years 12 to 16. Scott Weiland (like I have said and will always say) really is one of the last of the great rock stars, and his command of the song, the stage, the band, and every single one of us standing there watching was captivating if not extremely frustrating at the same time (for the reasons just discussed in the previous paragraph). Given the trials and tribulations, both inflicted and self-inflicted, that the guy has managed to endure, he has earned at least some respect from even the most reserved critic just for surviving in good enough health to not only put on an amazing show, but also remain an aggressive, unavoidable voice in support of what’s left of good ol’ American rock and roll.

Clad in a red and black-checked jacket and low-billed fedora, Weiland pranced and swayed through the seemingly endless string of alternative radio hits such as “Wicked Garden,” “Dead and Bloated,” “Sour Girl,” “Plush,” “Vasoline,” -– honestly, the entire setlist blew me away. At several points in the show, my photographer and I turned to each other with the same stupid expressions on our faces as we both asked ourselves how and why STP has seemed to somehow hover just below the fame and recognition so often lofted upon the other big names of the ’90s, such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins. Such oversight is inexcusable — an injustice that most of us (including myself) should be ashamed of. Undoubtedly, Stone Temple Pilots are in every right a “classic” rock band, and they proved themselves worthy of such a moniker Friday night at the Voodoo Music Experience.

Performing without their original drummer, Eric Kretz (who had taken a break from the tour to be with his family after the passing of his father -– our prayers are with you and yours, Eric, and was replaced by Ray Luzier), Scott Weiland and brothers Dean and Robert DeLeo on guitar and bass, respectively, set the bar extremely high for the rest of the weekend’s headliners. They perfected the unforgettable standards “Interstate Love Song,” “Creep,” and “Big Empty” (three of my own personal favorites), with an acute balance of reckless abandonment and pure showmanship. You’d never guess that the band had spent nearly five years in bitter separation.

Scott, for his part, looked good, healthy, and more or less clean (remember who we’re talking about here). He beckoned the crowd with all the charisma and candor to compete with finest stock of legendary frontmen, and danced in and around the monitors and mic stands like a sinewy skeleton from one of David Bowie’s own rock and roll fantasies. His banter never bored nor faltered between their songs and, surprisingly (given the frequency of his politically aggressive blogposts on the band’s website), he only briefly hinted at the band’s partisan preference this election year. With a gravely grind in his throat (perhaps from decades of trying to satisfy an inhuman appetite for cigarettes, whiskey, and plain hard living), Weiland paid tribute to the city of New Orleans in his own strange, albeit humbly honest and authentic way, saying, “I was walking down Decatur Street with a friend of mine, earlier today, and we walked into this store that had this t-shirt that said, “Lounge Rat” on it…so I ate it.”

After the encore, Stone Temple Pilots took a bow and exited the stage, capping off what had turned out to be an astoundingly flawless opening day of the The Tenth Ritual. Despite the fact that we had woken up at 5:00am, spent more than eight hours on the road, and run the gauntlet of nearly seven unbelievable performances, Dave and I caught our third wind, which carried us to the address and front door of the house where we were hoping to find peace and some restful sleep before we embarked on Day 2 of the Voodoo Music Experience, and (yes) after we rehashed the day’s events over a few cups of classy brew and scrambled eggs at the International House of Pancakes.

Photos by David Hampton

Be sure to check out the Buzzscene photo essay!