Yesterday, April 30, Daze Between New Orleans erupted to life for its 2024 presentation, drawing a massive crowd of visitors and locals from The Big Easy to spend the week between New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival’s two frames the right way. For its third annual presentation, the festival brought an outstanding bill of heroes from the worlds of jazz, jam, funk, fusion and all the groove in between, hosting six acts on two stages for a full day of music. Highlights from this year’s program included thrilling sets from Dogs In A Pile, Krasno/Moore Project and Lettuce, led by the legendary John Scofield.
Setting off the festivities at Faubourg Brewing Company, local funk powerhouse The Rumble took the Faubourg Stage for a heaping helping of NOLA funk. Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr. led the Grammy-nominated Mardi Gras Indian sextet through a precise and potent set with deep wells of groove that stirred a sense of the city’s incomparable musical legacy. Cool Cool Cool, which recently told its story for Relix, followed on the Daze Between Stage with a bright and spirited set of thumping R&B bangers. Next came Garden State jam quintet Dogs In A Pile, who saluted the setting with a psyched-out cover of Ween’s “Voodoo Lady.”
NOLA legends Dirty Dozen Brass Band stepped up to ring in the day’s second half, proudly flaunting its nearly 50-year standing as a frontrunner in the city’s brass scene with a treatment of Dr. John’s hard-hitting classic “Right Place, Wrong Time.” Krasno/Moore Project–comprised of a dream-team trio of Soulive guitarist Eric Kraso, Galactic drummer Stanton Moore and local stand-in organist Joe Ashlar–followed with a ripping jazz-funk set, which featured a treatment of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” derived from the band’s 2023 woman-focused tribut album Book of Queens. Finally, iconic Boston funk sextet Lettuce emerged to deliver a headline performance, dedicating its set to the late Dumpstaphunk vocalist and bassist Nick Daniels III. After a few tracks, the band welcomed the legendary genre-bending axe man John Scofield to the stage; Scofield led the ensemble through the remainder of the set, including a run through The Meters staple “Hand Clapping Song.”
See the sights from day one of Daze Between in the gallery below, courtesy of photographers Stephanie Parsley and Nick Langlois. For more information on the festival, visit dazebetweennola.com.
