Location: Lafayette Square Park, 602 St. Charles Ave.

Reading time: 3 minutes

Today’s big event is the 18th Annual Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival. This is our first full day in New Orleans. And the Blues and BBQ Festival just happened to start on this day. It is the 18th time this annual event has been held, so it has a lot of history behind it.

We ate breakfast at the hotel, enjoying the made-to-order breakfast. Then headed out for our first event in this city. We got there early. It didn’t start till 11. So we walked over to Canal Street and turned towards the river and the enormous Caesar’s Casino and Hotel. By the way, the stadium here is now named Caesar’s. The sidewalks here were packed with curious tourists and the usual hawkers. We passed the Ruby Slippers restaurant—a favorite breakfast place here. It was overflowing with hungry tourists, with a line out the door and down the sidewalk, all waiting for their name to be called.

It was getting close to 11 AM so we walked back to Lafayette Park. The concert started promptly at 11. The first show was the Wolfe Johns Band. I liked them. He sang some traditional songs, but with a lot of variation. He ended with I’m The Hootchy Kootchy Man. a very long and quite different rendition from the “normal” ones.

On the second stage on St. Charles Street side of the park, Eric Johnson began his set. His band was made up of a drummer, a bass player, and Eric who skillfully played lead guitar.

Eric Johanson is an American blues rock singer, guitarist, and songwriter. Johanson has performed with Tab Benoit, Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, the Neville Brothers, Terrance Simien, JJ Grey, Eric Lindell, Mike Zito, and at events including the Chicago Blues Festival, Edmonton Blues Festival, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and the Byron Bay Bluesfest. Wikipedia

There was such a variety of people here. Many dancing, most eating and drinking, and some dressed in their favorite get-ups to celebrate the blues. One lad danced to Eric’s band; eyes closed and moving to every note played. Eric is a natural with his guitar, as if it were part of him. The large sound his 3-piece band made reminded me of the ZZ Top trio.

The crowd continued to grow. Many sat under the large Live Oak trees scattered about this small park.

We were getting hungry – both tired of spending so much time on our feet with no place to sit other than on the grass. We decided to try the Saint John restaurant. Click here to see info on our visit to this restaurant.

After lunch, somewhat rested from being on our feet for a long time, we walked back to the concert. Jontavious Willis was playing – again with a 3-piece band; an acoustic bass player, a drummer and Jontavious.

American blues singer and songwriter – jontaviouswillis.com

Jontavious Willis is an American country blues singer, guitarist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Willis has released three albums to date, with his sophomore effort, Spectacular Class, debuting at number 12 in the Billboard Blues Albums Chart in May 2019. Wikipedia

Jontavious had a very old blues style, playing a lot of solitary notes and he sang songs that sounded like ancient blues recordings. We really enjoyed listening to him. (In the evening we looked him up on Apple Music and listened to 2 of his albums.) After we listened to 4 or 5 songs at the festival, we headed back to the hotel.

On the way back to the hotel, we decided to walk down Julia Street towards the Mississippi River and the convention center—an enormous building connected to the Riverwalk Outlets mall. The Riverwalk Outlets mall is a long linear mall stretching to the north with scores of brand name shops and overflowing with fast food vendors.

On the river side of the outlet is a long open patio allowing a view of the Mississippi River and the Port of New Orleans to the south of the patio. We took some photos then walked inside to the north. The mall went down to a lower level and continued to the north. We decided not to explore it any further and headed back to the hotel.

A look down the long hallway of the Riverwalk Outlet mall

The Port of New Orleans to the right

We were both glad to get back to the room and rest some before the evening hour downstairs at the bar just off the large breakfast area, which started at 5:30 PM.