Crawfish Festival Review: The Music Was Funking Great, The Rest Not Quite So

Allen Toussaint (top), Funky Meters and Little Freddy King

Not a month goes by that we don't lose an American roots music pioneer. On Monday, Bo Diddley passed on to his reward only hours after the DF&C and I had an opportunity to hear several of his fellow groundbreaking earth shakers, including Little Freddie King, the Funky Meters and Allen Toussaint.

The occasion was Michael Arnone's 19th Annual Crawfish Festival at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in northwestern New Jersey, which has gotten bigger if not necessarily better over the years. (More about that later.)

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Although 68-year-old Little Freddie King patterned his name and playing style after Freddie King, the immortal Texas Cannonball, he is a true original. His brash style has been honed to chainsaw precision that is not necessarily pretty but conveys his Mississippi Delta blues roots beautifully and reminded me of another immortal, Lightin' Hopkins, who happened to be Little Freddie's cousin.

The original Meters -- one of the progenitors of funk -- were formed in 1965 as Allen Toussaint's house band in New Orleans with keyboard master Art Neville and bass player George Porter as frontman vocalists. They had four Top 10 R&B hits during that decade: "Sophisticated Cissy," "Cissy Strut," "Ease Back" and "Look a Py Py."

The Meters later went out on their own and finally got the wider notice they deserved, opening for the Rolling Stones on their 1975 Tour of America, but inexplicably had trouble staying signed to a record label.

The Funky Meters – again with Neville and Porter as frontmen – were formed in 1994.

Trying describe funk somehow doesn't convey its power to reach into your guts and shake you, but here goes: Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and emphasizes a powerful rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums. The Funky Meters typically do extended vamps on a single cord rather than going through chord changes, and the result is hugely danceable.

The Funky Meters' set on Saturday included New Orleans classics "Aiko-Aiko" (no dear Deadheads, the Dead did not write that song, which traces its routes back to Africa in the time of the Atlantic slave trade), "Hey Pocky Way" and a sizzling rendition of Earl King's "Big Chief," which was popularized by Dr. John.

I had not seen Allen Toussaint, a New Orleans piano and composing legend, since he opened for the original Little Feat in 1973. I was reminded what a huge debt that Feat leaders Lowell George and Bill Payne owed to Toussaint, whose funky influence was all over their music, including "Dixie Chicken," the closest thing this fabulous fringe group ever had to a hit.

Anyhow, 70-year-old Toussaint, who wore his trademark powder blue blazer and an infectious smile, hasn't lost a lick. Not one.

His show-closing Sunday set was a clinic in piano styles, the highlight of which was a wonderful medley of his greatest hits, including "Working in the Coalmine,” "Ride Your Pony," "Brickyard Blues," "Get Out My Life Woman" and "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky." (Tim Carbone, an old friend and the fiddler for Railroad Earth, which had played earlier and seemed a bit out of place on the 20-plus band festival bill, joined Toussaint and his ensemble for three numbers and fell into their groove beautifully, trading rollicking leads with the piano maestro to great effect.)

Touissant's influence on the New Orleans scene cannot be understated.

He has worked tirelessly to preserve the Crescent City's rich musical heritage, has mentored many musicians in addition to the Meters and built an extensive record, sheet music and manuscript collection, all of which was lost in the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

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Waterloo Village in Stanhope, New Jersey was the longtime home of the Crawfish Festival, and while the Sussex County Fairgrounds is considerably larger and has more amenities, including a faint whiff of cow and horse manure that as a one-time farm boy I found to be pleasant, there were aspects of this year's proceedings that made the DF&C and I nostalgic for the older, smaller editions.

One of the draws of this year's festival was the addition of the dance floor from the Rhythm & Roots Festival, but it was laid down in an acoustically dissonant fairground shed that lacked both the accoustics and ambiance of its usual home under a lovely and open-sided tent.

The R&R Festival, which is held every Labor Day weekend in Rhode Island, is for us the standard by which all other festivals are judged. By that high standard, Michael Arnone's 19th Annual Crawfish Festival was somewhat lacking.

Food-wise, the Cajun-seasoned crawfish were said to be delicious by the aficionados we met, although we did not partake. Much of the food that we did eat over two days was mediocre, which was mitigated only somewhat by it being reasonably priced. The beer selection sucked unless you are a devotee of that trademark watered-down Anheuser Busch taste, and I could have done without the presence of the Jägermeister posse, although it did help pay Arnone's bills by helping sponsor one of the two main stages.

Then there was another presence: Teams of jackbooted, Glock-carrying New Jersey State troopers whose glowering demeanors were offputting and more appropriate for a good old-fashioned riot and not the mellow and extremely well behaved crowds.

The weather on Saturday was iffy with thunderstorms in the forecast. This kept attendance down, although the rains held off until right after the Funky Meters' closing set. Sunday was gloriously beautiful, but those troopers should have had their jackboots out on area roads, which were clogged for miles, doing traffic control and not bad vibing people back at the fairgrounds.

The traffic problem was a major logistical screw-up made worse because festival managers did not open more ticket booths to expedite the extremely long lines of people who had been stuck in traffic, some of whom didn't make it inside the fairgrounds until there were only a couple hours of music left. My repeated inquiries of festival staff about who was in charge and why the latecomers were not being better accomodated were met with blank stares.

Memo to Michael Arnone: Let’s do better with the beer and put the cops where they belong next year. But no matter. Great music always transcends its surroundings and it indeed was funking great, so a big thank you is still in order.