Beer on Bourbon

We finally got to the French Quarter, the famed and commonly visited tourist centre of New Orleans and the only area we really saw on a previous visit.  First up for drinks in a swish hotel then a meal at a bar at another hotel after not gaining entry to an eatery of dinner suits.  I feel there's an quiet class hierarchy hidden in New Orleans that we saw years back and it comes out in restaurants and grand hotels.  You tend to miss it as a white Australian but you can imagine it.  Our dinner at the bar was open if business-like and we chatted with a pair of women down from Detroit.  They feared Aussie spiders but recognised that American bears can be pretty scary too.  Bourbon Street itself was rocking: busy, varied with locals and ring-ins, music in bars and some on the street, roamers and roarers and speeders.  I enjoyed a marching band crew (various horns, sousaphone, drums) with a crowd and occasional dancers and considerable life and chops.  Then the drummers on buckets who can be quite impressive and plenty of live music from bars although not much jazz.  NOLA jazz does tend to be early and there was some of this, but mostly it was R&B, pop-rock, blues and the like.  Perhaps Stevie Wonder was the most covered: I heard Superstition at least 3 times.  Then a longish walk to Frenchman Street, but this was Christmas Eve on Wednesday night and it was fairly quiet.  Again a few bands but also closed establishments.  I mostly sat for Armani Smith leading a quartet playing R&B styles, an effective singer and guitarist with sparse and defining drums and very effective bass and keys, both quite understated but telling, the bass being variously gentle slap or fingerstyle and the piano just adding lovely harmony colours and the whole being finely balanced by a very involved soundman.  Nice.  And their take on a jazz ballad request didn't quite get the chords but it didn't matter given a very effective groove and delicious dynamics.  So I liked them.  There was a trio of trumpet, guitar and double bass (one of only two doubles on the night, as I remember) doing a lovely soft, folky take on early jazz set and they were worthy.  There was one interesting lineup on Bourbon St: a trio of drums and two keys.  Otherwise, mostly standard rock/blues lineups.  But the Preservation Hall still has gigs, although pricey and short and frequent and presumably very oriented to the tourist trade.  And Jason Marsalis will play a gig (a tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys!) at Snug Harbor on Frenchmen St on Boxing Day evening (no one's heard of Boxing Day) but we will be gone.  So it was an interesting and lengthy walk around the French Quarter but nothing particularly new for me second time around.