Music speaks from the heart, shoulders pain and trumpets joy. And there is certainly no better example than the American idiom: jazz, bluegrass, folk and Cajun. Music soothes in times of stress like war and economic hardship, and blooms with love for people and the land. Palisadian Nancy Covey, a lifelong folk music devotee and concert impresario, has decided to carry through with her annual music tour to the New Orleans jazz festival and Cajun country, almost because of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. “These musicians need to feel not forgotten,”Covey says. “They are the heart and soul of New Orleans and need to be encouraged to come back and play.” Covey grew up listening to folk music’Odetta, Bob Dylan and The Kingston Trio. “I was always a folkie; my mom and I would listen to music while we cleaned the house.” After Covey graduated from college, she slummed, traveled and serendipitously landed a job at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, where she had enjoyed the concerts over the years and got to know some people. Strapped for money, she told Bobby Kimmel, who started the concerts at McCabe’s, that she needed a job; she’d clean his house. That lasted a short while, until he commandeered her to help him stage a Doc Watson performance in Santa Barbara. Soon she was making $75 a week, which was good money for a 20-year-old in 1974. In no time, she was organizing concerts for McCabe’s, which entailed scouring music festivals around the country for talent. “I booked musicians like John Hyatt, John Lee Hooker in the days before a lot of bands knew they could play a solo acoustic concert,” Covey recalls. “I Remember Flaco Jimenez played, and a little band who called themselves Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles said they’d play for free.” Los Lobos became friends and later in 1984 played for Covey’s marriage to guitarist Richard Thompson. Covey stayed at McCabe’s for 10 years, and during that time packed them in. Warren Zevon, Jennifer Warnes, T-Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, Van Dyke Parks and Jackson Brown all showed up to Covey’s going-away party concert at the club. While Covey was at McCabe’s, she started Festival Tours, which was a natural outgrowth of her excursions to music festivals, where she’d talk musicians into coming to perform at the club. “My first tour was to the Vancouver Music Festival. We stayed at the hotel with the musicians, rode the shuttle to the site, and that’s what we still do. I even made it to the New Orleans Jazz Festival when Jack was five months old, and I was breast feeding.” Jack is an eighth grader at Crossroads, who “would spend the whole day playing bass if he could.” The Louisiana trip is set from April 27 through May 4, with a second weekend add-on for the final weekend of music at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Covey has structured the two weeks as an “insider’s trip to Louisiana.” Not knowing what events would unfold six months ago, she booked a hotel in the French Quarter, just behind Jackson Square for the first weekend. The group will have tickets for two days of the festival, and a third day on their own so they can explore New Orleans. The tempo changes with a visit to the swamps of the Louisiana bayous, Cajun Country. One night, the guests will be invited to the home of the zydeco musician Geno Delafose, whose band has been voted Best Zydeco Band in Louisiana. On another afternoon they’ll partake in the annual crawfish boil at Marc and Ann Savoy’s country home. “This is one of the great parties of certainly my year and now theirs,” Covey says. “It’s not open to the public, but only friends and neighbors of Marc and Ann’s will join those on the tour.” The couple are central figures in the revival and tradition of Cajun music. The 700,000 Cajuns in South Louisiana are descendants of French Canadians, who by refusing to pledge allegiance to the British crown, which required them to renounce Catholicism, were forced to flee their homes, and eventually settled along the bayous of south central and south western Louisiana, where they could live according to their own beliefs and customs. Today, Cajuns are famous for their unique French dialect (a patois of 18th-century French), their music and their spicy cooking. They continue to preserve their folk customs, which include the old-fashioned crawfish boil. Covey’s friendship with many of these musicians over the years makes the tour intimate and very local. “My tour is for people who don’t take tours,” she says. “I started this tour for friends, not for the cruise types.” For those interested in Covey’s Louisiana Music Tour, call Nancy Covey at 454-4080 or e-mail to festtours@aol.com.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
