Grateful Dead

Daze Between Festival Returns To The Rusty Nail

If you, like me, happened to walk into the Rusty Nail on the Tuesday or Wednesday between last year’s Jazz Fest weekends, you were treated to significantly more than just the comfortable atmosphere and reasonably priced drinks that are the bar’s specialty.  You would have walked into a day-long, indoor/outdoor music extravaganza featuring local and regional favorites plus appearances by the likes of  Bill Kreutzman and Blues Traveler’s John Popper.

The “Daze Between” Festival is coming back for 2011, with proceeds from the event benefiting The New Orleans Musicians Clinic and the Gulf Restoration Network.  On May 3, Nail regulars Jenn Howard & Crazy McGee and Country Fried will be joined by Chicago funk outfit Lubriphonic and a Tea Leaf Green/ALO mashup dubbed The San Francisco Free For All.

Wednesday’s lineup is awesomely filled with a variety of supergroups paying musical tribute to the Grateful Dead.  It’s Dead tunes all day, interpreted by Papa Mali and Friends, the Honey Island Swamp Trio, the Iko All-Stars (featuring Billy Iuso, the Radiators’ Reggie Scanlon, CR Gruver and Gravity A‘s Mike Foo), Drums and Space (featuring Particle‘s Steve Molitz, Col. Bruce Hampton, Ret. and a variety of special guests) and Counterclarkwise (another incarnation of a Tea Leaf Green/ALO collaboration).

Wall-to-wall music, hot boiled crawfish, freshly shucked oysters and jambalaya are sure to help you get a running start on the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival; and if last year was any indication, there should be plenty of surprises in store.

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