John Butler Trio
House of Blues
New Orleans, LA
This past weekend the boyfriend (Wade) and I drove to New Orleans to see our decidedly favorite band, the John Butler Trio.
The Trip
What a trip. 11 hours of driving later, after leaving Saturday morning, we ended up in New Orleans at about 12 A.M. on Sunday. This was with a few hours at our pit stop in Pensacola to take care of some other business and see some old friends. I was looking forward to seeing New Orleans anyways, because the last time we had both visited had been before Katrina had hit. The city has bounced back. For the record, I saw a guy, casually walking and throwing up at the same time. It was at this that I definitely decided not to wear my flip flops whilst walking.
I'd also like to mention my near-visit with a State Trooper, for laughters sake. I was going about 7 over the speed limit when one of our infamous uptight Florida State Troopers clocked me, and started to pull off the median to come get me. Thanks to an exit that led to one of our bumfuck towns in Fl, I sped off the exit, pulled around the corner into a gas station, and watched as the trooper pulled off the same exit after me, and went the wrong way in his search. Go me. Don't worry, I don't make this a habit.
Anyways, off of I-10, we were in the middle of the French Quarter, at an intersection that had hundreds of people milling around and drunkenly weaving around (Jazzfest crowd), so it took us about 10 minutes of waiting at a simple, non-traffic-light intersection before we could drive through and find parking.
After about an hour, we finally found a parking garage that wasn't full. So, we park, ask a resident which direction Decatur Street is on, and head in that direction. Little do we know that Decatur forks, and we end up walking past the House of Blues and all the way down to the very end before we figure that one out.
When we finally get to the Music Hall entrance, we were in line for about 30 seconds before we were asked for ID. Oh, shit. I left mine in the car.
We had been up since 8 that morning, I had blisters, was sweaty, and hearing someone ask me for something I didn't have nearly started the waterworks, especially after our unplanned walking detour and the hour it took to find parking. That and the show started in like 20 minutes.
Wade, who will forever be my hero, grabbed my arm, looked me straight in the face, and said, "I'm gonna run."
So he took off sprinting through the French Quarter to go back to the parking garage and get my ID. About 10 minutes later, he calls me to tell me he's lost and can't find our parking garage, and asks me where it is. "Fuck if I know", says I, and starts walking. I walk one block and see him across the street, and he asks me on the phone, "How did you get there so quick?"
He really was lost. The next 30 minutes are spent walking around trying to find the mysterious parking garage, and we finally found a resident who knew where the street was. We had in that direction and still can't find it. We finally find it, get my ID, and start heading back, carefully.
Wade's feeling like crap after sprinting, as he doesn't exercise much due to his love of playing guitar, and I'm emotionally thinking that we won't be able to get in because it will be full.
We do end up getting in, yay. Persistence is key.
The Show
The show was awesome, as expected. I saw JBT a year ago in Mobile, and I have to say that show was probably better than this one. I think this for two reasons:
The venue. At the Mobile show, we were all in the sand, on the beach, and JBT played on a wooden stage that was underneath a restaurant on stilts. Way cooler. HOB was hot, full of drunk people, and very 'done-up', i.e., there was a curtain, a bar, yadda yadda. Being outside appeals to me much more.
The time. This show started at like 2:30 in the morning. I was tired from our days driving, and I can't imagine how tired JBT was after whatever travel and setup they had to do.
They started off with 'Used To Get High', which was slightly ironic, considering our setting.
Here's the setlist (unsigned, nothing too special):
Daniella rocked the house, especially because John broke out the harmonica for that one. They played several tracks from "Sunrise Over Sea", when I was hoping for more tracks from the new album, Grand National. I didn't expect him to play Ocean, but he did. Ocean was strange; I've noticed that he plays it different at almost every show, but this time it stood out particularly. Usually he starts off pretty slow, with some slap-tap guitar and fingerpicking, and then slowly builds up to the strumming of the high notes. I noticed that this time he just stopped fingerpicking, 
and then started madly strumming all of a sudden. John got mad applause when he was done, though, per usual, as Ocean is an amazing instrumental. If you haven't heard it, you need to. I was happy they played 'Better Than', as that is one of my favorites. After an unannounced break (they just left the stage and said thank you, which to me is always quite curious. It appears they're done.) The crowd cheered and cheered and cheered, and then John came back out, said thank you, and sat down to start playing 'Peaches and Cream'. 
This was my favorite part of the show. Michael and Shannon joined him later on, further into the song, and as we were all singing along, they slowly stopped playing and just let us sing it. This was my first time seeing Peaches and Cream live, because they didn't play it last year.
Gov Did Nothin was pretty special, too, I was looking forward to this the whole time. Gov Did Nothin is a song about how Katrina hit New Orleans, and how…the government did nothing, obviously. The energy during this was great. He dedicated the song to all of us and the residents of New Orleans. Awesome, awesome.
Funky Tonight was last, and a good end to the show. The guys did a good job, they looked a bit tired, John in particular. I'm always amazed at what drummers have to do to play; its so much more high energy that playing guitar. Michael seemed to be completely unfazed by the time. I know I couldn't have done that at 2 in the morning. I managed to snag the setlist, and then me and Wade hightailed it out of there. Its hard to believe, but we were too tired to hang out longer to try and 
see the guys and get autographs and such, especially facing a 3 and half hour drive (during which we almost ran out of gas).
You can click on any of the pictures for a bigger size. I'd like to apologize for the crappy quality. Don't buy a Canon Powershot 520A. My batteries were almost dead and I had a crap angle at the stage for shots, especially with my flash. I wanted to take pictures this time for myself and for you guys, as last year I forgot my camera and ended up with none. Well, except for when I got pictures with John after the show. Yes, I've met him. Lucky me.
Related Links:
John Butler Trio Official Website
John Butler Trio on MySpace
Buy Grand National
Other LovetheMusic posts on JBT:
Funky Tonight EP Review
Grand National Review
About JBT
Related Audio:
Daniella
[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/Grand%20National/02%20Daniella.mp3]
Good Excuse
[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/Grand%20National/05%20Good%20Excuse.mp3]
Gov Did Nothin'
[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/Grand%20National/07%20Gov%20Did%20Nothin%27.mp3]
Another very well-conceived but poorly-named concept from LovetheMusic: Mashup Madness. I like mashups in a very similar way to how I like cover tunes [I have more tribute albums than is healthy], so I thought I'd share one of my all time favourites. Danger Mouse's Grey Album sparked about a billion similar projects, none of them nearly so inspired. The big gem that I pulled from the heap was this bonus track from the Black & Blue Album, it hasn't gotten nearly as much exposure as it deserves. Give it all your lovin'. Also, if you got time, dig "Surf Wax Off Your Shoulder", it's the best non-bonus number.
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