Still in New Orleans: Rainouts, Funk Royalty, and the Festival Choice You’ll Argue About Later

On his final night in New Orleans, Brian Wise files a slightly frayed dispatch that captures Jazz Fest’s defining tension: a festival big enough to feel infinite, and a schedule brutal enough to make you choose your regrets in advance.

Episode 22 of On The Record becomes a story about how festivals actually unfold—less like neat recaps and more like a sequence of weather calls, crowd-panics, and last-minute pivots.

Thursday is disrupted by rain and early closures, but still delivers one of the trip’s peak moments: Fred Wesley and the New JBs, shifted earlier in the day and sounding, to Wise’s ears, like a party that’s been waiting decades to restart.

The day also introduces Wise to Isaiah Collier, a saxophonist he frames as essential listening for anyone drawn to the extended, high-energy modern jazz continuum that runs through artists like Kamasi Washington. Collier’s set is cut short when the festival shuts early, but it’s enough to leave an impression—and a local hook for Australian listeners, with Collier slated to play Bird’s Basement in Melbourne.

If Jazz Fest is the daylight grind, the nights belong to Wilco, seen twice at the Saenger Theatre. Wise doesn’t deliver a full review, but he doesn’t need to: the stats and the reverence do the work. A 33-song night, split into two long sets, and a reminder of how much craft (and budget) matters when a band can tour with its own trusted sound engineer.

Wise singles out Nels Cline’s solo work on “Impossible Germany” (hear the live recording in the show notes) as a personal obsession, and both hosts land on the same larger claim: Wilco as a band capable of building an entire world onstage—one that converts casual fans into true believers.

The episode’s closing Jazz Fest narrative is built around a single, contentious decision: Wise scraps a carefully plotted late-day route—Tedeschi Trucks, Steve Earle with Anders Osborne, even a possible Herbie Hancock finish—because the crowd triggers a fear familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to “stage-hop” in a packed field. He goes straight to the blues tent to secure a spot for Mavis Staples, arguing simply: you don’t get infinite chances to see an 85-year-old icon.

Staples rewards the choice. Wise calls her set “inspirational,” highlighting a brief but pointed political moment—rejecting authoritarianism, defending women’s bodily autonomy, and condemning ICE—that draws a strong audience response.

With the festival reckoning done, the conversation swings to another kind of canon-building: Joni Mitchell. Sparked by a Mojo “top 50 songs” feature, the hosts trade favourites (Wise namechecks “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” and multiple Court and Spark staples, plus “Magdalene Laundries,” “Amelia,” and “River”), and Wise recalls seeing Mitchell at Jazz Fest in 1995, performing with her VG-8 guitar setup.

They also discuss an attention-grabbing industry development: a Joni Mitchell biopic being directed by Cameron Crowe, with Meryl Streep cast as the older Mitchell and Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger. The enthusiasm is tempered by a journalist’s instinctive question: can a close friend make an objective film?