New Orleans Jazz Fest Rocks Out With Dave Matthews, Wilco, Kings of Leon

The lineup for next year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival emphasizes artists that are decidedly not jazzy. Dave Matthews, Wilco, Kings Of Leon, Aretha Franklin and many more will take part in the event, to be held the weekends of April 24-26th and April 30-May 3rd at the city's Fair Grounds Race Course. Not exactly Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sun Ra, but the lineup is still pretty awesome for a jazz fest.

Spoon, the Drive-by Truckers with Booker T. Jones, Erykah Badu, Bonnie Raitt, Ben Harper and many more help fill out the lineup. Things make a lot more sense on the Heritage side of things, with Wynton Marsalis, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint and the Neville Brothers all representing their home city. If the lineup seems more star-studded than in years past, it's because the festival is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2009.

Related Stories:
• Dave Matthews Band Announce Spring 2009 Tour, New Album
• Will Oldham, Members of Flobots, Fleet Foxes, Los Lobos Rock for New Orleans Musicians
• R.E.M., Nine Inch Nails, Lil Wayne Salute New Orleans, Obama at Voodoo Festival

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter