It's New Orleans: Happy Hour

In the Happy Hour annals of "random people who have nothing in common," the day artist Katrina Brees meets Tank and the Bangas stands out to Happy Hour Live Feed Video Director Asher Griffith as the Best Of Happy Hour.  Where's Karina? If you ever wondered what happened to Karina Nathan she’s now Kevin Simons. And Karen Regis. And Krystal Sedona. And Chi Chi the lead singer of the Girl Dawgs, who is actually a dog. Katrina Brees sheds some light on this fantastic array of personalities, and their wardrobes. Go Tank or Go Home Tank from Tank and the Bangas has her own specialty wardrobe and range of personas too. Her wardrobe doesn’t extend to panties (which she has given up wearing) but she does occasionally wear boy shorts to boost her booty. Her personas start out with Terianne Michelle Ball in New Orleans East and extend to the woman sorting through damaged goods on aisle 4 at Walmart. Norman Spence and Merell Burket from Tank’s band, Tank and the Bangas, join the party – but strictly under their own names. Hello, Ricky! Ricky Lemann’s alter ego is Frederick, his real name. Ricky could have gone with alter ego #2, Fred, but he’s keeping it real, pleading “the fifth” on a range of issues. Photos from this show by sunny Alison Moon at the now defunct Wayfare at our website.

Still barred from hanging out in bars in New Orleans, in the interests of public health, we continue to revisit standout shows from years gone by. This show, in which Humidor Saves The World Again, is the first Happy Hour after the election of Donald J Trump in 2016. Even then we knew things were going to go to Hell. If only podcasting was as popular in 2016 as it is today. Maybe somebody in DC would have heard this conversation and we could, indeed have saved the world. For now though all we can do is look back and laugh, and try not cry in our beer.  Austin Alward, aka Aus-T the Franco rap star, has a plan to save the country and the world from rampant Trumpism. It involves the internet, a Cuban cigar store owner, and a bunch of New Orleans actors and musicians. It might have been just crazy enough to work. Jazz great Mitchel Forman, and singer-songwriters Sam Doores from The Deslondes and Andrew Duhon have their own plan. It involves a searing rendition of I Shall Be Released, a tribute to both Leonard Cohen and the nation. Actress Teri Wyble made it out of dance school in Lafayette to become a critically acclaimed actress, a go-go dancer at Harrah’s Casino, and an international body painting sensation. This really is one of the greatest Happy Hours in the history of the show. When we first published this show we sent an admonition with it: "If you were thinking of leaving New Orleans this will make you stay. If you are thinking of moving here, call U-Haul, this will tip you over the edge." Photos from the now defunct Wayfare are by Alison Moon. For more Best of Happy Hour, try this.

There's nothing more totally "New Orleans" than poboys, drag queens, and Cowboy Mouth. That's why, till we can go back in bars and hang out, Happy Hour photographer Jill Lafleur picks this show as her favorite from the past few years to revisit. Drag Queens Poppy Tooker is New Orleans first lady of food. From her weekly TV appearances on Steppin’ Out to to her weekly radio show and podcast, Poppy is the best known foodie in the city. Poppy’s latest venture is a collaboration with a large group of drag queens to produce a strong of drag queen brunches around town, culminating in her 6th book, simply called Drag Queen Brunch. You could have found out any of this information in any New Orleans publication. What you won’t have heard anywhere but here is the explanation to this sentences Poppy utters by way of her current situation: “I’m not dead and I’m not knocked up.” Cowboy Mouth Fred LeBlanc is the larger than life front man of the band Cowboy Mouth. If you’ve ever been to a Cowboy Mouth show or heard any of Fred’s media appearances you have probably thought Fred’s life is an open book. Well, there might be a couple of chapters of the book you hadn’t heard about. Probably doubtful that you’ve heard Fred’s opinions on marriage or cross-dressing anywhere else. Or known anything about his relationship to the Poboy shop, Melba’s Po Boys. Poboys Scott Wolfe Sr is the owner of Melba’s Po Boy Shop, on the corner of North Claiborbne and Elysian Fields, the busiest Po Boy shop in the world. Scott is also the owner of the wildly successful local New Orleans grocery chain, Wagner’s. Yes, he’s the marketing genius who came up with the slogan “You can’t beat Wagner’s Meat.” Scott’s extraordinary flair for marketing can be found in full display at Melba’s where they’re open 24 hours a day, have a giant laundromat where each machine is named and themed for a local New Orleans celebrity – you can wash your clothes in the Fred LeBlanc machine for example – and a 24/7 daiquiri shop.  This Happy Hour is a classic no-holds-barred conversation with people who are comfortable in their own skin and not hesitant about telling it like it is. If you’d like to see Jill Lafleur’s photos from this show recorded live at Wayfare,  you’ll find them along with much more right here.

In the annals of “You never know what the hell is going to come up in conversation,” this Happy Hour would have to rank at the top of the list. That's why, till we can go back into bars in new Orleans, Happy Hour producer Graham da Ponte has chosen this as her favorite show of the past 5 years - yes, it's the return of Clit Sit Meditation. Aidi Kansas (her real name) left behind a career as a pet portrait artist to pursue her abilities as a psychic energy healer and has stumbled into the world of getting women to reach spiritual enlightenment by stroking their own clitoris. Aidi calls it Clit Sit Meditation. Masturbatory meditation is only able to be practiced by people with a clitoris, in other words not men. Men, however, can have their own problems with too little ejaculation that can lead to porn and all manner of bad behavior. Talking of badly behaved men, Hitler, according to John Hebert, would have been a nicer person if he’d stayed off of the crystal meth. Apparently only the 1930’s equivalent of Photoshop saved Adolf from being portrayed as the meth-head he really was. Atoning for his owns sins, and some of his family’s (“My mother and I were bar fighters”), John is the guy behind all the red and white signs that say “LOVE” nailed to phone poles all around New Orleans. John Lisi makes a welcome return visit to Happy Hour with his shiny Dobro, a fistful of stories, and a song. Andrew Duhon starts things off on the good foot with a bit of beard oil that was produced by a prisoner friend of Aidi’s. The hour goes by way too fast. If you start listening to this make sure you can listen to the whole 60 minutes because you won’t be turning this off.  Photos at what once was Wayfare by Alison Moon are at our website.  

After making Happy Hour for nearly 10 years and meeting with random folks in various bars around New Orleans, this is the very first show where we just turn on the mics, put the Zoom link out on the internet and sit back and see who shows up. Predictably, we get a bunch of people trying to hack the show down and hijack us with a bunch of porn, but other than a few salacious moments, our Digital producer Andrew “C-Rock” Cirac manages to run a tight ship and let in a few folks from around the country. One of them is David Wilkins, who is calling in from a small town just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. David lives with his wife of 35 years – they got married at 18 right out of high school – and for company they open their home to folks who pass by on bicycles. These are all members of a community of cyclists united by their membership of an organization called WarmShowers.org Asher Griffith is Happy Hour’s Facebook Live director, currently hunkering down with his mom in a small town called Greers Ferry, which, apparently, would have been spelled with an apostrophe if it wasn’t in rural Fox News-driven Alabama where niceties like grammar don’t matter that much.  On this show we learn that Asher has a secret life as a musician, that started with his first band Love Hog, and only terminated with his most recent band, Grass Mud Horse. Asher plays a song on this Happy Hour that manages to combine two of America’s rural ways of life: cowboys and masturbation. Other guests on today’s show include Thomas Walsh, Graham daPonte, Monique Pyle, Christopher Roth, and a guy playing an accordion player whose identity remains a mystery. Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are at our website.

Matt Haines went to school to learn to become a classical trombone player with visions of playing trombone in an orchestra. But plans change. Initially Matt started teaching people to play in marching bands, which lead him to Thailand, not necessarily known for its place on the brass band pantheon, and then to new Orleans, the home of the hippest trombone players on the planet. That’s when Matt quit playing trombone. He’s now a writer. Ashley Herbert is the CEO of a company called Bart’s Office. They are office workspace professionals. They set up offices, move offices, and facilitate every aspect of commercial office space. So now what happens? Now everybody’s working from home and too frisked out to go back into the office? Take a listen to Ashley’s hands-on analysis of what’s going on in the world of office work. It’s sobering, even for Happy Hour. Jay Winfield was too preoccupied by people falling ill around him at the beginning of the pandemic to think about music, but things are better now and he’s back into the swing of playing. On this Happy Hour he plays a Stevie Wonder song to celebrate Stevie’s birthday, and a Nora Jones song to temp fate and see if he can get Happy Hour sued. Seeing we’re still not allowed back in bars, this Happy Hour was conducted on Zoom, so we were able to be joined by a bunch of folks who dropped by. That’s the one upside to not being in a bar, but it’s the only one. Things are opening up in New Orleans but if this collection of people is anything to go by, nobody is going out. See photos from this show by Jill Lafleur on our website. Look back at a happier time when we used to hang out in bars here.

Isaac Toups is one of the most talented and celebrated chefs in New Orleans. Isaac was a finalist on the TV show Top Chef and he’s currently a finalist for the prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef South, which is the food equivalent of the Oscars. But before all that, Isaac was a winner of the Tadpole competition in his native Rayne, Louisiana. Rayne bills itself as The Frog Capital of the World (no kidding, look it up) and Isaac was the winner of the baby competition there, back when he was a baby. The best bay in Rayne, therefore, is the winner of the Tadpole Award. You can’t make this stuff up, and you can’t do justice it in writing, you need to hear this in Isaac’s own words, here on Happy Hour. Sara Lewis is running for Judge. The court she is looking to preside over is New Orleans First City Court. It’s a small claims court where there no jury. As somebody mentions on this show, it’s kind of lie reality TV court, except it’s actually reality. You can vote for Sara if you live in New Orleans, on July 11th if the election isn’t postponed again as it has been twice already. Sara doesn’t have a campaign slogan, yet, but today’s suggestions from the assembled Happy Hour guests and crew include “Lewis will do us,” “Small Claims Sara,” and “Sara is Fairer.” Lori Tipton and Andy Overslaugh might be New Orleans’ most interesting couple. And in New Orleans that’s saying something. Lori and Andy have both been on Happy Hour previously, but as Lori says, “We don’t usually do much together.” Two of the interesting aspects of their life is (a) they date other people and (b) they’re both exponents of various forms of therapeutic psychedelic exploration. So you think you’ve had it tough being cooped up in your house for the past 8 weeks? Imagine what Andy and Lori are going through. Lori and Andy have both had a long career in the New Orleans service industry, and Isaac is fighting to keep his restaurant open. If you’re interested in a front-line report and prognosis of the future of the service industry in New Orleans, take a listen to this conversation. Photos by Jill Lafleur. Lori’s super-popular previous appearance on Happy Hour, is here.

When you’re in a relationship, sex changes over time. Sometimes it goes from being good to being great. Other times, the fabulous person you fell in love with appears to change completely and turns into a person who is batsh*t crazy and completely unlovable.   We’re summarizing here, but this is pretty much how Andrew Duhon describes the possibility of the trajectories of love in the modern era.  The reason we’re having this conversation on Happy Hour is because Tracy Carlson is a sex therapist. It’s not every day you get  to meet a sex therapist, especially after you’ve already had a couple of drinks in the middle of the afternoon, and well, you’ve got questions, right? The good news is Tracy has answers. Jonathan Freilich raises some pretty good and searching questions about sexuality and fantasy, while he's taking some time off from making his own podcasts to drop by and say hi. Joshua Summey drops by too, from his home in San Antonio, Texas. Josh was the songwriter and singer and front-man for the band Hazy Ray and a favorite on Happy Hour when he lived in New Orleans, so the Covid-enforced Zoom format has its upside in as much as we can reconnect with people far flung across the country. Closer to home, Kimya Holmes is trapped in her apartment with her two highschool age kids, navigating distance learning and the distinction between oral, anal, and more traditional penetrative sex. It’s fascinating to find out how people are dealing with this quarantine, isn't it? On this show we opened the floodgates to talk to anyone who wanted to join and this time we did not get bombed by Russian porno trolls but we did have a couple of very nice drop-ins. Including David who is calling from his code-atorium in Birmingham Atlanta. We’ll do this open-invitation style show again next week. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur on our website. Last week’s quarantine happy hour is here.

Seriously, you have no idea how easy it is to be a best selling author. When you see a book on the best seller list of Amazon, don’t you assume that it must be selling hundreds of thousands? Try 800. Not 800,000, just 800. That’s what both the authors on this Happy Hour tell us. Dr Chris Yandle gets up around 6AM. By around 7AM he’s jotting down a clever line that he’s dreamed up since 6AM. He puts the clever line on a piece of paper and slips it into his daughter’s book bag. (This is not the plot of a novel, btw, this is what actually happens in the Yandle household in Mandeville.) So, anyway, after Dr Chris has a bunch of these notes he writes them up into a book called Lucky Enough, which turns out to be a prophetic title ‘cause he’s lucky enough to sell out of the whole run and be a big deal in the non-fiction world and seriously that’s only about 600 books later. You’d be forgiven for not believing these numbers could possibly be true, but then Fermin Ceballos confirms them. Fermin is also the author of a book called Pisadno Mi Sombra, which you have probably already gathered is in Spanish, and there’s some English in there too. Fermin is also shocked at his successful book sales of around 800 books – and both of our authors are working on their second books! Fermin also happens to be a talented musician, which is his primary job. There’s a parallel world of Latin music in New Orleans and the South in general in which Fermin is a star, and deservedly so. You can also catch him online on the Band Together benefit concert to raise money for Covidly-unemployed musicians. Connie Bellone is not an author or a musician but she does live on the Northshore, in delightful Madisonville. However, most of her work is done on the Southshore, brightening the lives of under-privileged children with her Health & Education Alliance of Louisiana, aka HEAL. Just as an aside, she is not killing wild turkeys over there in Madisonville, though there is apparently no good reason not to. Andrew Duhon and Fermin Ceballos team up as best one can on Zoom on a beautiful Andrew Duhon tune, Promised Land. Photos by Jill Lafleur.

Music is apparently non-essential. So New Orleans musicians have no place to play. Some are doing live streaming from their homes, but others – like drummers and sax players – don’t have the kind of live streaming ability that, say, a singer-songwriter has. And then there’s this interesting factoid – Petco is regarded as essential and is still open. So here’s the obvious solution: Live From Petco. Musicians go play at Petco, if not in the store then at least in the parking lot. That’s the wisdom that comes out of this Covid Zoom conversation aka Happy Hour. Back in the day when people went to work, Allison Hererra made social media influencer videos for people like personal injury attorney Chip Forstall. Allison is going to use her talents to film the Petco Sessions and put them up online. Brian Hudson knows a thing or two about viral music videos. Brian is a street performer whose singing partner is internet sensation Grandpa Elliot, the older guy who sings Stand By Me on YouTube, Instagram and all over. The other interesting thing about Brian is he’s a therapist. And a keen observer Sage Rouge is a sax player who is making live streaming videos with her roommate, Mark, who is also a sax player. Together they’re releasing a series of videos that combine music and alcohol, called Day Drinking Duets. For a day job, Sage is a sax player in the band Spylights. Vincent Giovanni, the front-man lead singer and driving force behind Spylights, throws caution and social distancing to the wind for today’s show, putting together a 3-piece version of Spylights to play two songs on this Happy Hour. Andrew Duhon takes us out with a rendition of his beautiful song about the heartache of separation, Coming Down Over Here. Apparently, we’re all staying home till the middle of May, so we’ll see you back on Zoom Happy Hour next week. Oh, and in the meantime, not everybody’s social isolation is totally dull and predictable. Listen to Asher Griffith’s story about shooting a chicken in the head. Stay home and stay safe and see you back here in a week. Photos by Jill Lafleur. Last week’s Covid conversation is here.

If you’re trapped at home hating watching the world come to an end, remember the wise words of Sergio from the band Rodo: One person’s dystopia is another person’s utopia. Sergio and Rodo (the person) play a couple of songs that illustrate this dichotomy, as well as pulling together another pair of polar concepts, ballads and hip hop, into their unique blend of music that Grant apparently branded as Hip Hop Ballad. Their new music is out April 15th, so enjoy your dystopia/utopia with a new soundtrack. Also, while you’re holed up in the house, how about watching Linda Midgett’s movie, Same God? Its on Amazon and AppleTV and is a feature length documentary about a black woman college professor at an evangelical school who decides to show some empathy for Muslim women by walking around in a hijab. You can probably guess what happens to her but it sounds a lot more worthwhile and compelling than Tiger King. The last time we had a major societal meltdown in New Orleans, Blake Haney and his company Dirty Coast were at the forefront of the recovery, galvanizing us around the bumper sticker that said it all, “Be a New Orleanian wherever you are.” This time around Blake isn’t quite so upbeat about how this is all going to go down. But’s one of the smartest and most erudite guys in town so his opinion is very much worth listening to. Photos by Jill Lafleur. Here's last week's Covideo.

In our second Happy Hour by Zoom we manage to take advantage of not being able to hang out in a bar and instead talk to people all across the country in a new concept we’re calling Covideo. Yes, that’s in questionable taste, but after all it is Happy Hour. Mike Rubin is stuck in his second week of isolation in San Francisco. When times are normal Mike has a photography business called Neomodern, in which people walk into his photo gallery with their phones filled with photos and with the assistance of experts walk out with a framed print on archival quality paper. It’s a brilliant idea that has been around for 3 years but Mike’s dilemma is, does he hang on and hope the world returns to how it was, or does he embrace change and morph into something different? He’s at this point heading along the latter avenue. Katrina Brees is sitting on a possible Covid-driven windfall. Not only did her 10 year old movie about her Vagina from the Future who cures a Chinese-born virus predict this whole current scenario, but she has long been in the funeral and casket business. Katrina’s Fantastic Casket business is fundamentally a  DIY coffin, though now she is moving into a whole new arena of disposing of dead bodies which involves melting flesh and crushing bones. In case you think this is a piece of mis-reporting or exaggerated in some way, take a listen to this conversation. Rich Collins had a great year lined up which included an Asian tour and a solo spot at Jazz Fest. Well, that’s all changed. However, he still has a trove of great new songs, one of which he plays on this show, about the pleasures of driving around aimlessly and cranking up the radio.  Hopefully those days will return in the not too distant future. Andrew Duhon gets his cable fixed in the middle of this show, just in time to play an almost acapella song. Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur are on our website https://itsneworleans.com/2020/03/25/covideo/

When we started making podcasts in New Orleans 10 years ago, we encountered a lot of skeptical questions, among them “What happens when you run out of good guests, in 6 weeks?” and “What’s a podcast?” One of the questions we didn’t hear was, “What happens if every bar and restaurant in the city shuts down?” That sure would have been funny, but it’s turning out to be no joke. So, welcome to It's New Orleans Coronavirus. Part 2. Our show is coming to you today courtesy of Zoom. All of our crew and our guests are quarantined in their homes. Mimi Schippers was last on Happy Hour when she was a younger woman and in a polyamorous relationship with two people. Those relationships have matured into something different (though not much different from your average long-term relationship actually, aka no sex)  and Mimi has matured into a respected academic who is head of the Sociology Department at Tulane University and a world authority on polyamory and Queer Studies. Melissa and Matt DeOrazio (pronounced “Dee-Razio” the “O” is silent) are a married couple with no polyamorous desires. They’re collectively The Dirty Rain Revelers and are in the process of using the Covid hiatus to tidy up around their apartment, record new songs and play live online. Well worth checking out. And let’s face it, you’ve got the time now to go all kinds of online rabbit holes like listening to bands and checking out Americana music. And while you’re doing that, go investigate what Andrew Duhon is up to. Andrew had to abandon his tour when it became illegal to play music to people in a room if they were closer than 6 feet apart, and then soon after there were no rooms even open in the US to go hear music. Can you believe this is even true and not some sort of drug-induced bar room drunken conversation like we normally hear on Happy Hour? Crazy. But we do get to hear a beautiful downer classic Andrew Duhon song on this show, called Almost Forever. Ryne Hancock had his Twitter account suspended when he “went off on a Nazi” who apparently said bad things about his Aunt Mandy. Ryne’s ex-landord was a crack addict who somehow managed to do a lot of crack while still holding onto rental property and retained functioning limbs while owing drug dealers money all over town. See photos from this show by Jill Lafleur on our website. More Happy Hour conversations about polyamory here and here.

So today it's New Orleans Corona Virus: Part 1 - the first day of the New Orleans shut down. Even the It's New Orleans Happy Hour podcast is caught up in the global pandemic, though so far all that's happened to us is we have to move off the stage of the Maple Leaf Bar to make room for Dave Jordan and Flow Tribe after they relocated here when the outdoor Wednesday in the Square concert was shut down by the city. So, instead of thousands of people gathering in the sunny outdoors while our small crew meets on the stage of the club, now thousands of people are crammed into the club while our small crew gets to hang out in the sunny outdoors in the courtyard. So, Yay Corona Virus Part 1! Felter goes by one name, like Cher or Prince, who she's the same height as. Felter, like Prince and Cher, specializes in making people feel better. She's a motivational speaker whose contribution to New Orleans Corona Virus Part 1 is coming up with a whole new way to inspire people without catching their viruses. Joe Gerrity's contribution to making people feel good during the early days of New Orleans Corona Virus: Part 1 is selling them CBD. Joe's company - Crescent Canna - makes what he says is not only the finest CBD available but, unlike other local manufacturers, it is actually CBD. Did you know what other people claim as CBD that you're paying $60 a bottle for, is not CBD at all? Now that you'll have plenty of time at home to do nothing but experimental stuff like trying various CBD's you can find that out for yourself. Doyle Cooper's contribution to the sum total of human happiness during the era of New Orleans Corona Virus is substantial. Doyle is the leader of the Doyle Cooper Jazz Band. Maybe you've heard people tell stories of how they got started playing an instrument? No matter how many of these stories you've heard, you've never heard  one like Doyle's. It involves parents who are partying their asses off, a stoned baby sitter, and Jazz Fest Crawfish Bread. See photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website: https://itsneworleans.com/2020/03/11/new-orleans-corona-virus-part-1/

If you've ever rented an apartment, when you've gone to move out, you've almost certainly told the landlord "I want to get my security deposit back." What happens after that is the great unknown. Most often you've probably just given up arguing with the landlord and let the guy keep your money. Because that's what a huge number of us do, there is about $6 BILLION a year in un-returned security deposits. Marco Nelson is the guy who knows all about that $6B, he's setting about getting it back for all of us, one renter at a time. Marco's startup is called RentCheck and it's already a big deal nationwide. Marco's got a great story about starting out in the military and while his friends are being shipped off to Iraq and Afghanistan, he gets  sent to New Orleans! You just know this guy is going to be a billionaire. Katherine Klimitas is a "3." She's also an artist and the author of a new book of portraits of dogs, called Breed All About Us, with co-author Yvonne Krumins. It's a delightful book, especially if you love dogs, and it's equally as delightful as its authors. Katherine's "3" refers to the specific kind of genetic mutation that makes her the shortest person in New Orleans, at 2 feet 7 inches tall - but there's no way you'd guess that from size of her personality - and Yvonne is an author-in-waiting whose time has finally come. Aaron Maras is one of New Orleans most talented singer-songwriters, and that's saying something. Aaron fronts a band called Cactus Thief built largely around his music. On this Happy Hour he plays two songs off the band's latest album, Two Bells. If you don't know Cactus Thief or Aaron you're going to love making this discovery. Happy Hour is recorded live at the iconic Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans. To see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, and more check out our website. Check out Katherine Klimitas' last appearance on Happy Hour where she was plotting to sabotage a Rolling Stones gig.

Mardi Gras and Day of the Dead are two very different holidays. But in 2020 Mardi Gras Death is a real thing. It's Ash Wednesday 2020, the day after the deadliest Mardi Gras, possibly of all time. Julie Couret is a witness to what happened. As a regular TV commentator camera crews sought Julie out right after the event and today, with the benefit of a bit hindsight, Julie gives us a first hand account of riding in the Nyx Parade just a few floats behind the woman who was killed trying to walk between the two sections of a tandem float. Was she cut in half, as people reported? (Julie says she knows the person who tried to give her CPR so it's doubtful she was in two pieces.) Was Mardi Gras 2020 cursed by the spirits of the dead people trapped inside the collapsed Hard Rock Hotel on Canal Street? (The jury is out on that one.) Dr. Mark Carson is a professor of history. But nobody mentions that small detail until the last moments of this Happy Hour, after Mark has played one of the nearly 2,000 songs he's written - this one appears on a Papa Grows Funk album and it's about a New Orleans character who used to hang out outside the Maple Leaf Bar where this show is recorded - and recounted his worst nightmare from years in bands. You'll wish you had a nightmare like this. Julie summarized it as, "having to deal with the oily grease from a stripper's tits."  All in all, for the day after the deadliest Mardi Gras ever - in which two separate people were killed in bizarre Mardi Gras parade accidents, both run over by the back half of a tandem-float - this Happy Hour is pretty punchy.  We get to hear how Julie get meets a guy on Bumble, and how - thanks to Ancestry.com and Facebook - she finds the brother she never knew she had, who came to be born as a result of a date her father barely remembers going on back in the day.  For photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, and more, visit our website at www.itsneworleans.com

Jazz singer/songwriter Gabrielle Cavassa broke up with the guy she was dating and when they got together a month later - for that ridiculous "closure" we've heard so much about - he gave her the ammo for a vicious, cutting song about what a kind, loving, genius he'd turned into since they split. He even told her that he'd gotten so smart that he listens to podcasts now. We realize we're on thin ice here, suggesting only pretentious jerks listen to podcasts, because obviously you're so smart you do listen to podcasts, but nobody in their right mind would claim this is a podcast for smart people. Although we do have smart people on it, like for example Arthur Franz IV. Arthur is the inventor of Mardi Gras Madness, a board game that doesn't actually require a board. It's a card game in which you play the part of a Mardi Gras parade-goer and the object of the game is to collect as many throws as possible. For $25 it looks like a good investment in drinking for those long nights between parades when you're dreaming of streets filled with people having fun and forgetting the misery that is our daily lives. Or is it? Do you believe most people go through life relatively confident and happy? Or that most of us are "riddled with debilitating self doubt?" If the latter camp, the captain of your ship is Andrew Duhon. Although, ironically, the song Andrew plays on this show is one of the quirkier in his pantheon. It's a new song called, The Castle on Irish Bayou. If you live in New Orleans and you've driven east on I-10 toward Slidell, you know the place. Deborah Oppenheim taught in the New Orleans public school system for 30 years and escaped with her sanity by switching schools every 7 years. These days she's the founder of an organization called Look Before You Open, a non-profit whose mission is to save bicyclists' lives by educating drivers and passengers on how to open a car door. There's actually a safe technique called "Opposite Hand Reach." (That's also the method Arthur would use to get out a submerged helicopter, and that's a whole other story.) It's New Orleans Happy Hour is recorded at the iconic Maple Leaf Bar in Uptown New Orleans. You can see photos from the show by Jill Lafleur at our website https://link.chtbl.com/NnOEpjgh There's more Happy Hour Mardi Gras Madness here.

You probably think you've heard every weird bad disastrous insane mistaken awful relationship story there is. You haven't. Not till you hear comedian hypnotist Flip Orley document his 5 wives and explain the drunken tattoos all over his body with, "My 4th wife was Cajun." Honestly, if you need to be reassured your own relationship is not so bad, or you want to bask in the relief of being in a good relationship, you have got to hear these extraordinary true tales of Flip's wives.  Musician Lenny Green has his own horror story. Namely, the time he came from a great gig to find his wife so mad that he was out all night playing music that she got out of bed and punched him in the face. "That was the beginning of the end," as you might imagine. Lenny also sings a love song on this show complete with the chorus in which he dreams about "flipping you over." Strangely, for a guy who writes sad songs about the lonely and broken-hearted - the self-described genre of Sad Bastard music - Andrew Duhon is the one guy at the table with a stable relationship. And a beautiful new work-in-progress song about the state of the heart. Fashion designer Claudia Croazzo was meant to be on this show but a last minute emergency took her away. Fate has a strange way of working things out. Claudia was spared having to listen to this kind of barroom talk, but on the other hand it's doubtful we would have gotten to these kinds of bare-knuckle tales with the leavening influence of a sensible woman of the world at the table. This is a chance to be a fly on the barroom wall at The Maple Leaf. There are photos by Jill Lafleur and more info on our website.

It literally doesn't get more real New Orleans than this Happy Hour. Charlie Gabriel was born in New Orleans in 1932. He started shining shoes and playing music when he was 5. By the time he was 11 he was a professional musician and he's never looked back. He did leave new Orleans for a while. Actually, about 60 years. Hurricane Katrina and Preservation Hall brought him back. Charlie is a national treasure and one of New Orleans' finest musicians and gentlemen. This is a rare opportunity to hear him talk about everything from living through segregation to playing with Aretha Franklin and working for Amazon.  Charlie plays sax on a new song by Andrew Duhon. If you're an Andrew Duhon fan you might want to chart the progress of this song from its first ever airing here on Happy Hour, through to wherever it eventually ends up. You'll get it from the first note: this is going to be a beautiful song. Deniseea Taylor moved to New Orleans because she got a cheap air ticket from New York but even if you don't believe in anything as mystical as the power of the Universe you'd have to believe it was Destiny. Where else could a person who is cocktail artist live if not the city that's the home of the cocktail? "D" as everybody calls her is the creative force behind Cocktails by Pop. You can keep up with all her cocktail events - and they're super cool - by following her on Instagram at @ChickenandChampagne. And just to make this show the most perfect representation of New Orleans of all time, T R Johnson is here with his new book, the definitive collection of New Orleans literature, called New Orleans: A Literary History. The book might be an academic tome but you can get it at decidedly unacademic places like Melba's poboy shop. Really, can you even imagine anything more Real New Orleans than this collection of New Orleanians? It's New Orleans Happy Hour is recorded live at The Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street in Uptown New Orleans. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, and more, on our website https://link.chtbl.com/NnOEpjgh   

All of us have a love language: some way we prefer love to be communicated to us. For some it’s touch, for others it’s receiving gifts. Your ideal partner in life is a person who speaks your language of love. If you’re having trouble finding that perfect lifetime love-talk , Ann Parnes can help you. Ann is a professional matchmaker. Tell her who you’re looking for and she’ll go to a bunch of parties, functions, and dinner parties and troll the crowds so you don’t have to. Big Chief Delco from Creole Osceola Mardi Gras Indian Tribe is in his 54th year of marriage and he can tell you straight out, his love language is not touch. He doesn’t want people touching him. He has, however, touched a lot of people. In his 50-plus years as a Chief he has traveled the world spreading the gospel of the Indian way, he’s adopted schools, influenced countless kids, and been such a leading light advocate of the Indian tradition that the Positive Vibrations Foundation is recognizing him with the coveted Heartbeat award. 2020 is the year Martin “Bats” Bradford breaks into the big time. Bats is an accomplished actor but most of his accomplishments have been acting in movies and TV and theater that has originated in New Orleans. If you don’t know his name, you know his face but for you to be able to say “Oh wow, it’s Bats Bradford!” rather than “Where do I know that guy from?” Bats is going to have to leave us and do time in Hollywood. Meantime, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll meet so make the most of it before fame goes to his head. Andrew Duhon plays a song he wrote “When I was a young man,” which was back before the Christmas break. This is the first Happy Hour of 2020 and the first ever at iconic The Maple Leaf bar. Photos by Jill Lafleur. See Jill's photos and more at our website, https://link.chtbl.com/NnOEpjgh

The girl with the Christmas tree on her head would be eye-catching anywhere. The sparkly glitter on her face and her 8 inch shoes with snow-globes in each perspex heel turns heads even in New Orleans. To find out Jezebel Lobelia lives in Lafayette is astounding. Jezebel makes things like the Christmas tree on her head. They're called fascinators and you can see the full wide range of them at Jezebel's Etsy shop, Jezebel's Fascination. Mark Taliancich doesn't look quite as eye-popping as Jezebel but he's every bit as fascinating. Mark is the Clinical Director of Counseling Solutions at Catholic Charities and he has a Ph.D in marriage counseling. And yet, even knowing everything there is to know about marriage, he went ahead and got married. And here's the fascinating bit: Mark and his wife, Maegen, are opening a rum distillery. The distillery is called Happy Raptor and their first lines of product are called 504Rum. The rums are flavored, like 504BananasFoster and 504 Hibiscus. Andrew Duhon closes out 2019 with a couple of new songs off his forthcoming album.  This edition of Happy Hour was recorded at The Freret Beer Room in Uptown New Orleans.  You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website. 

Sure it's heresy to eat King Cake before 12th Night but Susan Freeswick brings a load of awesome food to this edition of Happy Hour, including King Cake, and gets a NOLA Heresy Pass because it's all Keto from her bakery Everyday Keto to Go. In the middle of this conversation, Susan's Keto Fat Bomb explodes the myth of celebrity. Strictly, it's writer Thomas Beller who explodes that myth. Tom set out to be a rock star, as the drummer in a New York band. Along the way he stumbled into a different kind of stardom: as a staff writer for The New Yorker, the pinnacle of all writing gigs ever, anywhere. Tom describes the night he hung out recently with another superstar writer, playwright Tom Stoppard - the night neither of them had anything to do after the Rolling Stones canceled their Jazz fest gig - and British Tom imagined that New Yorker Tom "must have felt like a dog with five tails" the year he had the New Yorker gig. If you'd like to know what happened to the rest of the guys in New York Tom's band, check this out: https://www.beastiemania.com/whois/cushman_tom You can find Thomas Beller down on Canal Street staring at the crumpled Hard Rock Hotel or at Tulane directing the creative writing course. Singer/songwriter Dave Jordan's take on celebrity is, "Everybody in New Orleans thinks they're a celebrity." Not that they're delusionally believing they're the greatest guitar player of all time like some kind of loser wandering along Hollywood Boulevard, but they claim celebrity of a more totally NOLA nature in claiming they make the best gumbo or fried turkey on the planet - where "planet" ends at the spillway. Dave plays two songs on this show, one off his latest album, Burning Sage, the other a cover of Bob Dylan song that Andrew Duhon joins him on. For his part, Andrew Duhon is writing a new album and premieres a brand new song he's just finished writing with Anders Osborne, called Everybody's Got a Little Piece of the Map.  If you're listening to the conversation here about high school drinking and wondering, "What did ever happen to Friar Tucks bar on Freret Street?" this true story might interest you. http://uptownmessenger.com/2011/01/friar-tucks-ceasing-operations-immediately-owner-tells-freret-street/  You may also find these kind of hilarious yelp reviews interesting: https://www.yelp.com/biz/friar-tucks-new-orleans It's new Orleans Happy Hour is recorded live over drinks at The Freret Beer Room. You can find photos from the show by Jill Lafleur and more information at our website: https://link.chtbl.com/NnOEpjgh    

When Josh Benitez sings " I.D.G.A.F! I don't give a funk" he's got a whole lot not to give a funk about. It's actually a funking miracle he's not a serial killer or hasn't killed himself. You've got to hear Josh tell his story in his own words but the short version is, he was the target of racism that was so bad he didn't leave the house the whole time he was in high school. In fact he didn't even go to high school. He stayed inside so much his skin tone changed and he turned shades lighter. Where did this happen? About a 15 minute drive from where we're talking in Uptown New Orleans, in Belle Chasse on the Westbank. Chris Poche is both an architect and the super-talented screenwriter and director of one of the best movies to come out of New Orleans in years, if not ever. The movie is called The True Don Quixote and is the first ever movie based on the classic tilting-at-windmills saga. It's been about 500 years since the publication of Don Quixote marked the birth of the novel as we know it so how fitting for the biggest event in the world of literature to find its cinematic home in St Bernard Parish.  Andrew Duhon does what he does every week he's at Happy Hour: tries out a new song he's in the throes of writing. You'll have to forgive us for saying this repeatedly, but this song is stupendous. Take a listen to this very first airing and then listen to how the song turns out when it gets recorded. It's a fascinating insight into the creative process of song-writing, this journey we're all on with Andrew. This show was recorded at The Freret Beer Room in Uptown New Orleans. You can see photos from the show by Hope Byrd at our website. Check out Josh Benitez's last visit to happy Hour here.

Dominic Sgro owns a typically New Orleans tattoo shop, complete with an on-staff magician and live music. At Catahoula Tattoo & Gallery Dominic will give you a free tattoo, as long as it's not on your face. And it also has to be the logo of the tattoo shop - which is a catahoula wearing a death mask - but who wouldn't want that inked on their bicep, right? Winston Triolo from the band Motel Radio is going to trade playing a set at Dominic's shop for a tattoo of his truck on his forearm. If you're waiting for a punchline, sorry. Winston's longest relationship is with his truck and before it dies he wants to memorialize it in ink on his arm. He's apparently not worried about what the inevitable new truck might think about the old truck permanently on his arm, but apparently the new truck is just going to have to learn to live Winston's past. Comedian Matt Owens is going straight from Happy Hour to headlining a comedy show at Southern Rep. And today's the day the trailer for Matt's new film comes out. The film is called Wendy and it's about Wendy from Peter Pan. It's a big deal Hollywood movie complete with special effects and a giant budget. Matt Owens is a much bigger deal comedian than you might think from his under-the-radar life in New Orleans. There are a couple of "firsts" on this Happy Hour. It's the first day Andrew Duhon is back from a months-long tour and it's the first time Happy Hour is live at The Freret Beer Room. Although it's only a couple of blocks up the street from our previous home at the now-shuttered Wayfare, the relaxed, comfortable, chic environment is a million miles  away. Photos from this show by Jill Lafleur and more info is on our website.  

The two poles of human interaction are the desire for intimacy but the fear of commitment, right? We all have it. And nobody nails it quite like Cyrille Aimee. French-born, New York seasoned and now new Orleans resident, chanteuse Cyrille Aimee is what she calls "jazz famous." And she is. The New York Times has called Cyrille one of the greatest jazz vocalists of our time so it's a real treat to have her sit at Happy Hour and, with extraordinary accompanist Joshua Starkman, play Sondheim's Marry Me A little and the jazz standard, Duke Ellington's I'm Beginning To See The Light. Gia Hamilton is the person in this conversation who puts her finger on fear and intimacy. By day, Gia is officially the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the New Orleans African American Museum. But Gia has a varied past that includes farmer,  healer, and life coach - pastimes and traits that she has not totally left behind. Gia manages to integrate an amazing number of streams into her current life, including raising 5 sons, the youngest of whom, 4 month old Zaire, is with her. Matt Wisdom might be the smartest guy in New Orleans. He';s officially the founder and CEO of TurboSquid, the world's leading seller of 3D models that you see in films and video games. Matt is in reality the Jeff Bezos of New Orleans. You wouldn't necessarily know it though. He's modest, nice, and humble, but make no mistake - he's politically involved, he's got his finger on the pulse of what we all know is wrong with the city, he knows how to fix it, and he's on the way to doing it. Keep an eye on this guy! You can see photos by Hope Byrd of Happy Hour recorded live at Wayfare, here.  

Recovering architect and brand designer Adam Newman remarks on this show that knowing when to shut up is one of the most valuable life lessons. And he's glad he recently learned it because it has come in handy today, surrounded by three of the coolest women you could pull together at a table anywhere. Let's start with Michelle Welchons. Michelle plays the cajon, is a Spanish translator in the New Orleans court system, leads her own band, Orchidea, traveled to Peru to do Ahayuasca, and is half of the electrifying acoustic duo (the music is acoustic and the result is electrifying) Bom Bon. The other half of Bom Bon is the equally astounding Olivya Lee. Olivya has one of the most sultry and alluring singing voices you can imagine, and she didn't even start taking singing seriously till a couple of years ago 'cause she was concentrating on her classical flute playing. And wait till you hear how she plays guitar. Completing the triumvirate of awesomeness is no less than Melissa Sawyer, the co-founder of YEP, the Youth Empowerment Project. YEP is tacking the holy grail hot button issue that drives all community discussions in New Orleans: crime. YEP and Melissa may be quietly making the single biggest societal change in current New Orleans. You can find photos by Jill Lafleur from this show recorded at Wayfare, here.

If you have frequent flier miles and you've been wondering "What's the best thing I can do with them?" Seth Stanton has the answer. You can give them to the organization he founded here in New Orleans called Miles 4 Migrants. Seth and his fellow volunteers at Miles 4 Migrants will use your miles to reunite families who have been separated by conflict or persecution. Can you even imagine a more feel-good thing to do than to use the most ultimate luxury non-necessity in your life to help someone who is in the most dire and desperate need of their life? It's a world-wide organization and it started right here in New Orleans and, believe it or not, on Reddit. Ashlye Keaton is no slouch either when it comes to spreading the love around. Ashlye left behind a career as a choreographer  ("not for the New York City Ballet") and became a lawyer so she could help people. Yes, that does sound totally antithetical to the est if the legal profession but Ashlye is pulling it off. Her organization, The ELLA Project, provides free legal services to musicians. Darcy Malone and Rory Callais are members of the band, Darcy Malone & The Tangle. Just back from playing in Key West, they play two brand new songs that we'll find on their upcoming album, and make an aborted start on a jingle for Seth's day-job business - they get stumped on a trying to find a rhyme for "optometrist." Got any ideas? Call Darcy on her @BlingCases phone. You can find photos by Jill Lafleur from this show live from Wayfare, here. 

If you've been a New Orleanian for any length of time, you're going to enjoy this very candid conversation with 3 New Orleans celebrities. Poppy Tooker is New Orleans first lady of food. From her weekly TV appearances on Steppin' Out to to her weekly radio show and podcast, Poppy is the best known foodie in the city. Poppy's latest venture is a collaboration with a large group of drag queens to produce a strong of drag queen brunches around town, culminating in her 6th book, simply called Drag Queen Brunch. You could have found out any of this information in any New Orleans publication. What you won't have heard anywhere but here is the explanation to this sentences Poppy utters by way of her current situation: "I'm not dead and I'm not knocked up." Fred LeBlanc is the larger than life front man of the band Cowboy Mouth. If you've ever been to a Cowboy Mouth show or heard any of Fred's media appearances you have probably thought Fred's life is an open book. Well, there might be a couple of chapters of the book you hadn't heard about. Probably doubtful that you've heard Fred's opinions on marriage or cross-dressing anywhere else. Or known anything about his relationship to the Poboy shop, Melba's Po Boys. Scott Wolfe Sr is the owner of Melba's Po Boy Shop, on the corner of North Claiborbne and Elysian Fields, the busiest Po Boy shop in the world. Scott is also the owner of the wildly successful local New Orleans grocery chain, Wagner's. Yes, he's the marketing genius who came up with the slogan "You can't beat Wagner's Meat." Scott's extraordinary flair for marketing can be found in full display at Melba's where they're open 24 hours a day, have a giant laundromat where each machine is named and themed for a local New Orleans celebrity - you can wash your clothes in the Fred LeBlanc machine for example - and a 24/7 daiquiri shop.  This Happy Hour is a classic no-holds-barred conversation with people who are comfortable in their own skin and not hesitant about telling it like it is. If you'd like to see Jill Lafleur's photos from this show recorded live at Wayfare,  you'll find them along with much more right here.  

Where do you stand on crystals? Do you think they have any power? Or is that all b.s.? Stacy Bogg mines her own crystals and dispenses crystal-power medicine through her business, Karma Rocks. As you might imagine, Stacy comes down solidly on the side of metaphysical power emanating from crystals that vibrate at particular frequencies in ways that have a real effect on us in the physical world.  Daniel Shkolnik, as well as being a poet, is also variously an agnostic or atheist and believes that the only power emanating from a crystal is the psychological power we give it by believing in the hocus pocus of metaphysical vibrations and that in fact a crystal has no greater power than "a lucky rabbit's foot." Rodo, front man for the band Naughty By Choice, strangely enough is wearing a giant amethyst around his neck and has a new record coming out appropriately titled, A Note From The Universe. Rodo's guitarist today, Chris Wilson, is trying to steer the conversation onto ghosts because he's "dead inside."  And then there's the conversation about Stacy's kid who was kidnapped and how Stacy did her own detective work and got the kid back, no thanks to the Slidell Police Department. Plus there's two live songs from Rodo and Chris, in a whole new genre Rodo calls hip hop ballad.  If you'd like to see photos from this show by Hope Byrd recorded live at Wayfare in Uptown New Orleans, you can find them, and more, here.

"Good Morning New Orleans" is the song that Aaron Benjamin told himself he was definitely not going to sing on this Happy Hour. So, what does he end up singing? It's the song he wrote about his two day trip to New Orleans after he had decided definitely not to move here. Are you starting to see a pattern? If you're not familiar with Aaron's music, and especially his voice, you're in for a shock - as was everybody around the table at Wayfare in Uptown New Orleans. Kenny Bellau is a legitimate hero. Google his name and see what comes up: stories about how, single-handed, he rescued over 400 people from the floodwaters of Katrina. Besides his real-life hurricane heroics, Kenny spent 30 years as a world-class competitive cyclist, racing against household names like Lance Armstrong, who Kenny says was a jerk from way back when he was 17. Kenny has an amazing number of extraordinary stories, all of which culminate in his current position - you're not even going to believe this, but he's a movie star! Kenny stars in his first movie that was written specifically for him, Fast Food & Cigarettes. Rachel Dangermond makes a return to Happy Hour after having an extraordinary life change. The last time we saw Rachel she was a writer and social activist in New Orleans. Today she is the owner of The 100 Men Hall in Bay St Louis, Mississippi, a historic meeting place and fixture in African American life, famous for hosting concerts by the likes of James Brown, Ray Charles, Professor Longhair, Etta James, Sam Cooke and many more. Rachel was led to the hall to be the white owner of a historic black icon by the desire to move to the beach, and gigantic and inexplicable forces in the universe. If you'd like to see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, and more information about this and other Happy Hours, you can find that here and you can visit www.itsneworelans.com.

What if the guy you happen to be sitting next to at Wayfare in Uptown New Orleans happens to be the king of social media, Jeff Januszek? What's the first question you'd ask him? "How do I get more people to follow me on Instagram?" Right? Well, listen up. Jeff's Moscow Mule is the first thing he's eaten all day other than a few blueberries off his 4 year old son's breakfast plate and he's happy to talk about the secrets of making social media work.  Caitlin Carney is the 51% owner of Marjie's Grill, one of the hippest and most popular restaurants in New Orleans. Marjie's Instagram followers love posts about noodles, dumplings, and fried chicken. You're going to be surprised to hear what Caitlin thinks of the restaurant gold standard of social media, Yelp. And you might be even more surprised to hear what Jeff says is going to happen to Yelp. (As a public service, if you don't have time to listen to this podcast, sell your Yelp shares today.) Jeremy Joyce turned his back on a career working in IT for the US government to dedicate himself to the life of a singer songwriter. He's a lot happier, but now he's getting successful he's turning to pedi-cabbing to relieve the stress of making it as a musician. And he's still single. Or is he? See if you can figure that one out. If you'd like to see photos from this show taken by Jill Lafleur you can find those here.  

Caitlion O'Neill's entire trivia and cheerleading life had led up to the moment when she was already drunk at dinner in the Grill Room in the Windsor Court hotel with the Latvian man destined to become her father in law after she marries Mr Hunter and becomes Caitlion (Pronounced "Kate Lion") Hunter. That's when she gets the phone call. The phone call from Jeopardy! to tell her she's on the show. Nothing has ever been quite same since. But it's hard to say whether this episode is even one of the top 5 Most Interesting Things about Caitlion. Matthew Desotell is a big deal in some circles. Matthew wrote and directed a movie, and he made it for 15 years in the entertainment business in Los Angeles before returning recently to New Orleans. But this movie might not even make the list of the 5 Most Interesting Things about Matthew. You might know him for his professional banter. Or his fashion campaigns for the likes of Hudson Jeans. Daria Dzurik is the lead singer and steel pan player in the band Daria & The Hip Drops. Daria does something nobody has ever done before on Happy Hour, and that she has never done before anywhere: she accompanies herself on steel pans and sings. Judging by the enthusiastic response from the folks at the restaurant/bar Wayfare, the debut experiment is a smash success. You can see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, here: http://bit.ly/2NOLVgn 

You might be one of the many people who say, "I like all music. But not country." If that's you, you're about to discover a whole new meaning of "red neck." Meet Hyperphlyy. Three women from Poplarville, Mississippi who moved to New Orleans, look like a million bucks (each) and are re-writing the Book of Expectations. Nothing about Hyperphlyy is what it looks from the outside. On the subject of not judging a book by its cover, there's no way you could tell by looking at Alicia Cooke that she's had more adventures than anyone you've ever sat next to in a bar. Alicia lived for two tears in a part of Niger where she was the only foreigner and everybody else spoke a strange language called Zarma. Zarma isn't a written language and most words are onomatopoeia. In this conversation the folks at the table score 100% on Alicia's Zarma vocab test.  Lecco Morris visited New Orleans a few months ago and within 3 hours and one sazerac decided he was never leaving. Lecco has taken up residence as a street poet and it looks like he's going to be as good as his word(s). Lecco is building a poetry empire, called Ragtime Poetry. Throughout the course of this entire show Lecco manages to keep his shirt on (not as easy as you might think). You can see photos by Jill Lafleur from this show, recorded live at Wayfare in Uptown new Orleans by Jill Lafleur at wayfare, here.

DJ Nice Rack has a tattoo on her arm that advertises the fact she's bisexual. But it hasn't turned out to convey the message she was anticipating. Being openly bisexual, it turns out, just doubles the amount of paranoid insecurity that your partner feels. As DJ Nice Rack puts it on this Happy Hour, "Women think you're going to leave them for a guy, guys think you're going to leave them for a woman..." And apparently with good reason given Nice Rack's self-confessed history. But bisexual paranoia is only one of Ms Rack's wonderful tales. Arguably Mr Peepers' adventures in the RV rival it. Don't ask L. Kasimu Harris what the "L" stands for. He selected his middle name Kasimu as a hipper moniker, and it suits him. Kasimu might be one of the coolest guys you'll ever meet. A photographer for, among others, The New York Times, with solo photography exhibitions across the country, and a parallel career as a writer, you'll be looking a long time around New Orleans for a more suave, more entertaining, and more genuinely nice guy. Kasimu is the real deal. Graham daPonte, it turns out, is really D.Graham daPonte. The "d" is for Dorothy but her real name that her family and friends called her all through childhood remains as a big of a secret as the "L" in Kasimu. Graham is a criminal defense attorney who represents people who are looking at death at the hands of the State if Graham screws up in court. As a respite from that kind of stress, Graham produces this podcast. Happy Hour was recorded live at Wayfare in Uptown New Orleans. If you'd like to know more, including photos by Jill Lafleur, check it out here.

OK, so here's the thing about nut milk. Apparently Louisiana dairy producers are ticked off and powerful enough to get the legislature to outlaw anyone calling or labeling anything as "milk" that doesn't come from a cow. No bull. That's going to be the law. And that's according to one of the State's most connected journalists, Stephanie Grace. Stephanie Grace was a columnist for the Times Picayune before quitting and moving to The Advocate, only to end up at The Advocate again now that they have bought the Times Picayune and become a brand name with a "|" in it - a vertical line that's been hiding on your keyboard for years and is under-utliized in daily parlance, for good reason. Nonetheless, Stephanie gets paid for calling bullsh!t on Louisiana politicians, a job with enormous security. OK, the paper is officially called The Times Picayune | New Orleans Advocate.  Talking of long life, Paul Tuennerman says an insurance actuarial guy told him he's going to live till he's 92. Paul totally believes this and lives his life accordingly, wantonly eating hotdogs and creating dishes like charbroiled sh!tty sticky buns with high-end ice cream, which you're going to be able to order at a Dat Dog near you. Paul is actually the CEO of Dat Dog and he does sh!t like dream up stoner desserts for a living. Hey! Meet The Bummers! Sean Doyle and Ben Shooter are the guitar playing vocalist 50% of the alt/pop/rock band that sounds kind of like Lennon & McCartney if they had dropped acid in Mid City instead of India. Sweet harmonies wrap around bizarre and whimsical lyrics about subjects ranging from lawyer Morris Bart to the fate of being trapped in The Fountainbeu building on the corner of Tulane and Carrolton. You're going to love this discovery. Find photos from this show recorded at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur, here.

Happy Hour is not the kind of podcast you expect to hear shocking inside breaking news revelations about corruption in the New Orleans justice system, but you never know who you're going to be sitting next to in a bar and what they're going to tell you after a drink or two. Simone Levine is the Executive Director of Court Watch NOLA. It's a watchdog organization that keeps an eye on the courts. You won't even believe the story about Judge Bonin and why he gets defendants who appear in his court to wear an ankle monitor. Kickbacks. From the ankle monitor company. Sometimes the judge orders defendants to wear the monitors for up to a year - and the defendant has to pay $10 a day to the monitoring company. This story is going to be in the NY Times, and we scooped them on Happy Hour! Lila Turner has only been in New Orleans for 6 months but she's probably done more good for the city in that time than most of us do in 6 years. Lila is the Development Director for Son of a Saint, an organization that mentors fatherless kids, mostly because the fathers are one step beyond ankle monitoring: incarcerated. Basch Jernigan is the front man for the NOLA soul/Southern-rock band Roadside Glorious. It's hard to pin down exactly what they sound like, but that's a positive. Basch threw away a career in environmental journalism to sing in a rock band. That decision is not doing his student loans too much good but it's great for the rest of us who love music. Andrew Duhon unravels a brand new tune called Emerald Blue. If you're already a Duhon fan you''re going to love this. If this is the first time you've ever heard Andrew, you're coming in at a high point. If you'd like to see photos by Jill Lafleur from this show recorded live at Wayfare, click here. Oh, and by the way, wait till you the hear the shocking details of the Consent Decree that keeps both the NOPD and Sheriff's department under the thumb of the Feds, and who's getting paid for that. This is quite a Happy Hour. Thank God for cocktails.

Jonathan Andry shows up to this week's Happy Hour with a bunch of his CBD product, CBD-Tox. It's allegedly a kick-ass hangover cure, with 20mg of high grade CBD in each capsule. So, picture this. You're in a bar in New Orleans - Wayfare to be exact, Uptown - with ace guitar player June Yamagishi, Erica Falls, the vocalist for Galactic, high-net-worth business consultant (for folks over $20m only) Melissa Schutz Lilly, and singer-songwriter Andrew Duhon. And Jonathan's free boxes of CBD capsules. Oh, and everybody's drinking cocktails. So what do you think happens next? Correct. Everybody takes two CBD-Tox capsules. This podcast is the live, real-time experimental record of what happens next. Without spoiling anything, Erica's pain threshold changes fairly substantially over the hour. Andrew believes he can see where the song he's writing can be fixed, and debuts it. Melissa's stomach ailment disappears. And Jonathan defends himself against a lawsuit from the estate of the late Dr.John. Warning: your results with 40mg of CBD may vary. But we highly recommend accompanying it with rye, rose, pinot, or a gin based cocktail of indeterminate contents. We can guarantee those results. If you want to see photos of this experiment by Jill Lafleur or get more info about this show, click here.

If you're a fan of classic retro-TV you're familiar with Fame, the Glee of the 70's. (Basically a high school where they spend more time singing songs and dancing than doing any actual school work.) If you can imagine that on acid, that apparently was Jo Morris's education.  Today Jo and band-mate Steve Walkup are the nucleus of an awesome, almost retro 90's band called St. Lorelei. If you've never heard of them it's because they apparently never play anywhere, but there's an album due out in the Fall and we're predicting big things. if you like the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil you're going to flip out when you hear this. Buddy Bolden is as retro as you can get. Buddy was the father of all jazz and the biggest deal in New Orleans music of all time who never made a record. He does now, however, have a feature film about him and if Danielle de Sol, her outfit The Preservation Resource Center, and her partner PJ Morton from Maroon 5 has anything to with it, Buddy's original house in New Orleans will soon become a recording studio and community center. While we're being as fabulous as we can in our own little worlds, Shayne Tinge is actually being fabulous for real out in the big wide world. We're no strangers to people in bars turning out to be ridiculously fascinating, but even in that context this guy is in a league of his own. Not only is Shayne an ex stunt man, body double and still friends with stars like Woody Harrelson and Rob Reiner, he's also a world-wide nomadic adventurer who is dedicating his life to bringing fresh water to the villagers of Cambodia. Andrew Duhon is back from what turned out to be a vacation, but he hasn't been totally idle. Andrew tries out a brand new song, Blood Brothers. Potentially a hit after Grant gets through producing it on the fly. If you'd like to see photos from this show by Jill Lafleur, recorded live at Wayfare,  you can do that here.

This is not a cute click bait podcast title. Dr John Sawyer (you can call him "Johnny Jr" if you want) is the Co-Director of the Brain Health Program at Ochsner Health System. If you want any other reassuring credentials he's also an ex-seminarian and a married gay man and father of two kids. And he actually, for real, has the keys to human happiness.  You have to listen to almost this entire podcast to get to the secret of human happiness. Although you could skip right to the last 10 minutes. If you did you'd miss Kandy explaining the plight of being a side-chick - a third woman in a two-person relationship - or a side-dick - a third guy in a two person relationship. Kandy also has some insights into human, and her own, sexual behavior, but not quite as radical an insight as Jonathan Freilich, Jonathan is the librettist and composer of a new operetta called Darling, Do Not Be Offended By What I Wrote, which is a faithful operatic telling of the letters James Joyce wrote to his wife, recounting in graphic detail their sexual exploits. Jonathan's opera is being staged as part of the Bloomsday celebrations in New Orleans, centered on June 16th. More info here. Click here for more info and photos from this show shot at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur

If you're a woman, it's turning out to be a weird year. Suddenly we're all up in arms about whether or not the State is going to let you have an abortion. If you're a woman who would prefer to have the choice about whether or not to have an abortion, rather than leave that decision to a guy in Baton Rouge, Amy Irvin is your best friend. As the Executive Director of the New Orleans Abortion Fund, Amy is literally out there fighting for you. So, hey, cut her a bit of slack if she can't remember the phrase "pro choice" after a couple of cocktails. Theophile Bourgeois IV is a tattoo artist and the front man for New Orleans band Them Ol' Ghosts. Theophile, pronounced Thay-o-feel (it's very Cajun French) has graduated from tattooing drunk people from his old shop next to strip parlor, to working banker's hours from his shop on Oak Street, in Uptown New Orleans. TBIV has a disarmingly beautiful voice, even when singing the acerbic love song he wrote for his wife, "Bitch, I wrote this song for you" with tender loving lyrics like "“I know you’re worried I’m a narcissistic inconsiderate asshole, but don’t you worry baby ‘cause this heart belongs to you.” Given that we're almost halfway through the year, Theophile Bourgeois might be your best find of 2019 so far. If you're interested in the truth, so is Jonathan Blake Vasquez. Jonathan recently moved to New Orleans from Dallas, and brought his Truth Hurts Podcast with him. It's a no-punches-pulled look at life. And what we find out in this conversation is that the whole enterprise has the unlikely subversive intent of turning us all into Vegans.  Back to the being a woman thing again for a moment. If you're a woman, no doubt you've been hit on in almost every way imaginable. Well, guess what? There's one more way you hadn't imagined. Happy Hour photographer Alison Moon is back in town on a break from her stint as a grad student at Oxford University, with alarming tales of how the brainiac class of guys try and get women into bed. It's fairly unbelievable so in the interest of spoilers we won't ruin it for you. But if you've got time to kill, this insight is almost worth the whole price of admission to this Happy Hour. If you want to see some photos from this show, head over here. It's also available as a video at https://www.facebook.com/neworleanspodcasts/ Happy Hour is recorded live at Wayfare in Uptown New Orleans. Photos by Jill Lafleur.

Ingrid Victoria is best known in the world of drag queens as the maker of extravagant eyelashes. If you've seen drag queens on TV or on stage and wondered where the heck you get eyelashes like that, now you too can get hooked up for just $25 (or $12.50 for one eyelash) at Chimera Lashes. But Ingrid doesn't stop at making eyelashes. She also crochets stuff. Like beards. If you're thinking a woman in a fake beard must look like a circus freak, head over to here and check out the photo of Ingrid in her beard. She's gorgeous. Talking of men dressed as women, Edward Simon might be studying for a Ph.D in psychology, and he night also be a photographer, but he's also an award winning actor who made a name for himself playing the lead in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Oh, and he's also a recording artist with three records and was the lead singer in the Hollywood hair-band Knife Confession. Duz Mancini came to New Orleans from West Los Angeles and never went back. 10 years later, and after a stint as a song writer in Nashville, Duz is back and making music with his band the Scorpedos. On this Happy Hour, Duz plays two new songs. If you're not familiar with the Scorpedos, do yourself a favor and check this out. Happy Hour is recorded live at Wayfare in Uptown New Orleans.

Ray Lopez is a professional MMA fighter.  He has a gym in New Orleans, NOLA MMA,  where he teaches people to kill other people - only in self defense, not randomly - but the greatest thrill in his life comes from getting in a cage with another human and trying to kill him. Nothing in the world, he says, can make you feel more alive than having survived a fight. Ilona Obuchowski is super-competitive too. Ilona is the City Commissioner of fun for an organization called NOLA Fray. NOLA Fray organizes you and your friends or just you as a free agent in to leagues and teams to play games. Everything from softball to speed dating. No kidding. As the official city Fun Facilitator, Ilona might have the coolest job in New Orleans. Joshua Starkman, oddly enough, also refers to himself as a fun facilitator. You might have seen Josh on social media - he's the musician with the giant smile, the wacky songs, and the short video that always ends with the exhortation to "Have a great day" and "We love you." If you haven't seen Josh's work on Facebook, click on this link and check it out, it's totally worth it. You can find photos from this show on It's New Orleans Facebook page, @ItsNewOrleans on Instagram and here.

Chris Lee is back! With a brand new record. Chris retired from music for a few years but missed the adulation, and also has a few things to get off his chest. The new songs are gathered under the album title, Protest Songs and Party Anthems and Chris plays one of each on this Happy Hour. After you hear the first song, the question you're going to have answer is this: should Chris technically get a visit from The Secret Service and get hauled off for questioning? He maintains that he is not actually advocating that we lynch the President, but that we hang him after a trial has found him guilty of treason. It's a fine line. Mary Devon Dupuy is uninviting you to her wedding. Mary Devon is a comedian but she's not kidding when she says you better not show up at her wedding, even though she somehow mistakenly has listed her wedding openly online complete with directions and an RSVP button. If you Google Mary Devon's name hopefully by now you won't find it. But you will find her doing comedy around New Orleans, regularly at The Dragon's Den where she hosts an evening called F*ck Yeah Comedy. (We have to use the asterisk or they apparently kick us off Facebook and iTunes and other platforms, even though I f'kn Love Science has like a million followers so go figure...) Cliff Ussery didn't grow up in New Orleans but in a way he did. As a kid Cliff's parents sent him here in the Summer to hang with his cousins. Now as an adult he's come back. Wait till you hear what he's been up to working for The Saints and Pelicans. Professional sports is apparently rough at every level, even for the poor unpaid suckers who sell T-shirts at games. Andrew Duhon is gearing up for Breakfest, his annual Jazz fest early morning concert. This year it comes complete with a string quartet. If you've never been it's totally recommended. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

If there really is a God, why do 80% of the people in Indonesia, the 5th biggest country in the world, live without running water or basic human needs? Is this a theological question, or a political question? Today we're in a perfect spot to find out. Yanti Turang left her tiny Australian town called Kyneton to visit Indonesia, where her father came from, and was appalled at the sub-standard living conditions that saw members of her own family dying of preventable diseases. Yanti moved to New Orleans where she founded an organization to change all that, called Learn to Live. Learn to Live changes lives in Indonesia, South Africa, Laos, and Kenya. While Yanti was moving to New Orleans, Joanna Hale McGill's mother dragged her out of New Orleans to go live in Picayune, Mississippi, where she was subjected to blatant racism. Somehow, Joanna didn't get mad, she got God. Today Joanna Hale McGill is a rising star in the world of Gospel music - and when you hear her singing you'll know why. Joanna does her best to answer why God is good to her but letting 80% of Indonesians live in Hell; and you get the sense that if you gave Joanna another 5 minutes and one more song to sing she might turn the whole Inodnesian thing around herself. God didn't pick out Marcus DeLarge's tie, but he could have. Marcus is the sharpest dresser ever to appear on Happy Hour. And possibly the most passionate attorney. Marcus only lasted about 3 months as a prosecutor in the DA's office before he found his calling as a fighter, defending folks who need him to stand up to the justice system that's stacked against them. Andrew Duhon gets pretty close to finding God during this conversation. He also revisits and reworks an old song that time and experience have improved vastly. This conversation is a raucous but respectful romp through international politics, racism, slavery, theology, and immigration. A classic Happy Hour. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

On this Happy Hour, veteran New Orleans music writer Alex Rawls notes there are three ways to not get paid in the music business: write about music, take photos of musicians, or actually play music. We have all the bases covered in this conversation. Alex could have added a 4th way: podcasting. He's recently launched a new podcast which might actually have a bit of traction. It's called The Twelve Songs of Christmas, which is a bit misleading because it's about more than just 12 songs, but it is a quirky and unique examination of Christmas music by Alex and the people who make the music. By the way, to add to the cruelty of the poverty of the music business, Alex also teaches aspiring music writers at Loyola University. When she's not kicking fans in the face or beating adoring women away from her with a stick, Mia Borders is fantasizing about men she runs into at Costco. She got a great song out of the latter experience, which she sings on this show, and has some great stories about the former. And Mia has a new record out, The Good Side of Bad, a title that sums up the state of mind she was in but seems to have left far behind. Mia also teaches how to graduate into a life of poverty at Loyola University, educating young musicians. Hope Byrd has dreamed up a way to make a living that she describes as "a business plan destined to fail," aka photographing musicians. You can see Hope's photos on Instagram at her account The Gold Frame. They're impressive, and without the aid of encouraging poverty at Loyola, Hope seems to be keeping body and soul together just fine. Don't ask her exactly who she's dating though. Okay, ask, it's totally worth it. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

If you're looking for a good place to steal hard to find, exotic plants, Ninth Ward Nursery is the place. Mark Sanders started Ninth Ward Nursery, as you might have guessed, in the 9th Ward, as a way to relive his glory days as a child, wandering through the backwoods of Huntsville, Alabama, waiting for the street lights to come on. Mark is also a travel writer and editor so there are plenty of hours when the one-man nursery business is unattended. On the advice of our lawyers, we recommend you buy plants the legit way in the hours that Mark is in attendance at the nursery. You'll recognize him, he's the guy with the yellow Google sunglasses. Havialh Malone is the 4th best looking woman in the universe. It's official. She was named Ms Louisiana Universe in 2018 and was 4th runner up in the national pageant. For most people that would be a crowning achievement. For Havilah it's basically a footnote. You're not even going to believe the list of accomplishments Havilah has racked up in her few short years since graduating from Bonnabel High, but they include running a $160m company, appearing on QVC and Home Shopping Network, and writing a #1 Best-selling book. The last time Danielle Ryce was on Happy Hour she was 50% of a musical duo. Now she's a smaller percentage of, Dianella, a far larger band, but they're still all playing her songs and she's still got one of the world's most impressive singing voices. You would be forgiven for thinking that's hyperbole, but check it out for yourself. Danielle plays two songs on this Happy Hour. Andrew Duhon has had an idea about owning a piece of land in the back of his mind and the riff for a song about it in his back pocket for a while now. On this show Andrew unveils the song that is the sum of those two parts. This one's a keeper. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

It's hard to know which is Travis Laurendine's best story on this Happy Hour. Maybe it's getting punched out by then Saints coach Jim Haslett when Travis was wearing the Boudreaux the Nutria mascot at a Zephyrs baseball game. Or maybe it's meeting Dick Cheney when he (Travis, not Dick) was named the smartest person in Louisiana. Or is it the story about how Travis started and staged Boycott Bowl? Or, try this one, maybe it's the fact that he's a secret super big deal in the music industry and is configuring a whole new aspect of Universal Music's business. And there's more! Jenelle Slobof has some good stories of her own. Jenelle is a psychiatric social worker who specializes in working with super messed up people who are brought into an emergency room with mental problems. The only downside to that occupation - other than possibly getting beaten up or spat on, which is why people are restrained and have something called a spit-hood - is the fact that we don't have that exact occupation in Louisiana. Jenelle blames the Governor of Louisiana, but what she doesn't expect is that the Governor apparently follows us on Twitter and weighs in on the discussion. So how about that?! Ben Shooter spends more time at Wayfare than anyone in the room. And not just at our table. Ben is normally a cook in the kitchen at Wayfare. Just like in a feel-good movie, the Wayfare staff stop work, crowd around and cheer when Ben plays an original song. And with good reason, the kid is good! You can catch Ben with his band, The Bummers. Andrew Duhon is back from the road and premieres a brand new song, about slowing down. By the way, full circle, Andrew and Travis went to high school together and Travis produced Andrew's first show. Photos by Jill Lafleur.

Nick Pejic is a psychiatrist. Nick spends his days treating people with varying issues, including depression and addiction. By the end of the day he's ready to let loose. That's when he gets out the guitar and gets wailing like Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins. Billy is Nick's musical idol and he's met Billy three times. Each time was a little different, but each interaction was pretty successful and Billy seemed to like talking to Nick. That's not how it went down with Nick's other musical hero, Harry Connick Jr, when Nick ran into him in the Quarter. Today is the first time in her life that anybody called Jaime Glas a fashion designer. Despite the fact that Jaime is actually a fashion designer. She started out as an engineer on oil rigs but soon came to discover that the fire retardant clothing she was forced to wear was all designed for men. It didn't only look terrible, it was so baggy and badly cut for her body-shape that it was downright dangerous. And so Jaime's line of fire retardant clothing for women was born. It's called Haute Work. Johanna Divine is one of the hippest singer-songwriters you'll ever hear. Johanna is so hip she doesn't even try to make it in the music biz. Though she's had record deals and released records - which you can find on Spotify and everywhere else music is streamed or stolen - Johanna is happy to pursue her other interests in lieu of the self-promotion and hustling it takes to make it as a musician. But wait till you wear what she sounds like. Laid back, languid, smart, funny, a great guitar player with a sensuous, seductive voice. If you don't know Johanna's work, listen to this, you're going to love her as much as we do. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

Just when you think New Orleans couldn't surprise you any more, you meet Luke Hooper. Luke Hooper is the kind of character a Hollywood screenwriter would dream up. Tall and handsome. A semi-professional iron-man athlete who is also an award-winning inventor. He's invented a new version of delivering wireless power (yes, that's right, wireless power), creates futuristic games for children, designs creative solutions for giant companies like Nike, and has defended his patents in the Supreme Court of the US (yes, the Supreme Court) and won. He invented shoes that do themselves up, called Slaps. And he works out of an office downtown, next to the yoga studio he founded. Even the name "Luke Hooper" is from Central Casting superhero. There's nobody larger than life than Katrina Brees. Katrina is the founder of The Bearded Oysters Mardi Gras parade troupe, the Kolossos Bike Zoo, a do-it-yourself coffin business, and now she's sponsoring legislation that is making its way through the Louisiana legislature. Donna's Law is named for Katrina's mom, Donna. In 2018 suicidal thoughts got the better of Donna, and she bought her first gun and killed herself with it. Donna's Law will allow people who feel they are a threat to themselves or others to self-register on a list that denies them the right purchase a gun. Somehow, Katrina is managing to do what literally nobody in America has accomplished - she is shepherding bipartisan gun control into law. While at the same time retaining her sequined, giant-eyelashes, crown-wearing flamboyance. If you've spent any time in New Orleans and you love going out to hear live music, there's a fair chance you've never heard any bluegrass. Well, you have nobody to blame for that but yourself. Any time you feel like hearing some bluegrass you can go check out The Tanglers. Jacob Tanner and Craig Alexander are the core of the band, which is a 6-piece, and they do a duo gig where the two of them call themselves The Tanglers. Yes, that's confusing but if you never see the full band, the duo version of The Tanglers is awesome, as you'll hear on this Happy Hour. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

There's a fine line between Jesus and The Man. Jesus wants you to do things His way and he holds out the specter of sending you to Hell forever if you don't comply. On the other hand, management and their proxies, consultants, have you buy in to a better way of life for everyone right now: tell us what you want and we'll tell it back to you, how we want. If you're following any of this, you could be a gospel singer, or a business consultant. Or an Israeli-born Wyoming bred, New Orleans-steeped architect. Or you could just listen to them and be entertained. Arrianne Keelen is a star gospel singer. But she's much more. If you are already familiar with Arianne's star career in gospel, get ready for her to break out beyond the confines of the church. If you don't already know Arrianne's music, welcome to A Star is Born (without the Hollywood spin). Arrianne sings an original song and a hymn on this Happy Hour, backed up by Reggie Nic. Lauren Siegel is a business consultant's business consultant. Engaging, charming, frank, self-effacing, honest, and fun, Lauren recently got promoted at Trepwise to a position that's similar to Minister of Propaganda except it's called Director of Brand and Culture. Lauren could probably talk you into anything, as long as you wanted to be talked into it. It's not certain how far this would extend beyond the workplace, but between Lauren and our other Happy Hour guest, Simcha, they could conceivably change the world. Simcha Ward is technically an architect, but listening to him talk you get the sense he's designing more than living spaces. Listen to Simcha in this conversation and you can picture him as a rabbinical scholar, or a politician or a charismatic boss. He's a little of each. Remember his name, you'll be seeing it on a book at some point - this kid is going places. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.

Here's everything you need to know about this week's Happy Hour: if you're disgruntled about the Rolling Stones playing Jazz Fest, there's a subversion plan afoot. Andrew Duhon comes up with this genius idea after ony one drink, and dubs it "Pontchatrain's 11," inspired by the Oceans 11 scam. The plan involves everyone sitting around the table at this Happy Hour to pull it off. The key player is Katherine Klimitas. Katherine is an artist, a jeweler, a graphic artist, and a lover of country music. She's also confined to a wheelchair and because of that she has become the go-to person for Jazz Fest for checking out that the festival is ADA compliant. So the plan is, on the day the Stones are playing, to use Katherine's vehicle as a Trojan Horse, to sneak in Andrew and Georgi Petrov. Georgi Petrov is one of the most impressive jazz guitar players you'll ever hear. He fronts his own quartet and plays with a bunch of other people, including the super-talented Meryl Zimmerman. If you're wondering where you've heard the name Meryl Zimmerman before, you might be thinking of her dad who is a graduate of Ben Franklin and is now of the author of a Long Island New York based contribution to the wide world of Jewish trivia under the title Rashi Rambam and Rama Lama Ding Dong. Anyway, this is all besides the point and we haven't even gotten to Josh Brasted yet. Like Meryl's father and Katherine Kilimitas, Josh went to Ben Franklin and is now an internationally known photographer specializing in photographing musicians. Josh, apparently because he's Catholic, is very self-effacing and describes himself as "Solidly okay," but the big deal here is that he's got a press pass to Jazz Fest to cover the Rolling Stones. You see what's going on here? Okay, here's the bottom line: the deal at Jazz Fest is, while the Stones are playing the rest of the stages are going to be shut down. That's what's really pissing off Katherine. Except all the rest of the stages are not going to be shut down because Andrew Duhon and Georgi Petrov, plus other hand-picked musicians that will form their one-off band for the day, will be smuggled into Jazz Fest with their instruments and will set up and play on the Gentilly stage during the Stones set. In between this plan coming together, Andrew plays a new song, Meryl and Georgi play two songs - one by the inimitable Fred Rogers, which is really going to shock you, in a good and sophisticated jazzy way. Meryl Zimmerman is the real deal. Musically and in conversation, this might be the most quintessentially Happy Hour of all time. And when you see Katherine, Josh, Georgi, Andrew and the rest of the subversives on the news after the Stones play at Jazz Fest, remember you heard it here first. Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.