{"id":501,"date":"2008-05-06T03:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T03:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/new-orleans-jazz-fest\/"},"modified":"2014-07-06T14:59:18","modified_gmt":"2014-07-06T14:59:18","slug":"new-orleans-jazz-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/new-orleans-jazz-fest\/","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans Jazz Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"

I played at the New Orleans Jazz Fest<\/a> with Stevie Wonder<\/a> on Friday, May 2, 2008. It was awesome! I arrived in New Orleans Thursday night, and stayed at the Sheraton downtown. I enjoyed my hotel room! I was up on the 31st floor, so I had a perfect opportunity to take some great photos of downtown New Orleans\u2026except that I FORGOT to! Oops. I suppose I was more than a little exhausted. : <\n\nAfter settling in a bit, I went to dinner with some of my bandmates at a restaurant called Deanie<\/a>‘s and ordered Crawfish Etouffee. It was my first time having crawfish. It was a tasty dish. The crawfish reminded me of a combination of fresh water shrimp and lobster, but definitely not overly “fishy”. After dinner, I went to bed early, because our lobby call for sound check was \u2026drum roll\u2026 7AM!!!<\/p>\n

The next morning, I was in the lobby ready to go at 7AM! We went to the venue and did a sound check for about 2 hours and then returned to the hotel to have lunch, rest and dress for the show. Of course, I should have remembered to have taken a photo at that point, as it was broad daylight, albeit overcast\u2026but noooooo, I forgot again : <\n\nAt 5:15pm, we took to the stage and I witnessed what must be the largest crowd I’ve ever seen. It was a veritable sea of people, stretching back for what looked like a mile and stretching almost as wide. I have no idea how many people were there, but some were saying it was over 100,000. I sure wish I had a photo of the crowd. Ok, maybe this experience will compel me to actually buy a new camera and remember to use it! It was certainly surreal to stand on stage before that kind of a crowd. Of course, in short order I had to block it all out and focus on playing my best for the boss! Stevie performed brilliantly<\/a>, as always, and everyone immediately fell back into sync, though we hadn’t played together in 5 months. Everyone in the band is so awesome. Just thinking about the blessing of the experience makes me smile. Wow\u2026<\/p>\n

After the show, I returned to the hotel to change into a more casual, yet still cute, outfit. When I returned to the lobby to wait for my band mates, I met Aaron Neville<\/a>! He was walking in a determined manner towards the elevator, but took a moment to greet us all kindly. Gotta love southern hospitality!<\/p>\n

I went to dinner at Mila Restaurant<\/a>, where I ordered a mixed green salad, sweet potato pappardelle, and lobster en croute. Everything was delicious, but the pappardelle was amazing! I was enjoying it so much that several other people at the dinner ordered it and proclaimed it to be their favorite dish. After dinner, there was a private party held for Stevie and most of the band was there. Within minutes, a line formed of people who wanted to meet and take a photo with Stevie. I am continually impressed with how Stevie is so gracious and welcoming to his fans. I have never seen him be anything other than genuine and friendly to those seeking a moment with this musical icon. That can’t be said of many other celebrities!<\/p>\n

I flew home the next morning, grateful to be home safely, but oh so ready to take off again! As Bonnie Raitt says “I got to go\u2026I hope you understand\u2026<\/a>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I played at the New Orleans Jazz Fest with Stevie Wonder on Friday, May 2, 2008. It was awesome! I arrived in New Orleans Thursday night, and stayed at the Sheraton downtown. I enjoyed my hotel room! I was up on the 31st floor, so I had a perfect opportunity to take some great photos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1107,"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/1107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriatheodore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}