Basin Street Blues

Won't you come along with me
To the Mississippi?
We'll take a boat to the land of dreams
Steam down the river down to New Orleans

The band's there to greet us
Old friends will meet us
Where all the dark and the light folks meet
Heaven on earth! They call it Basin Street

Basin Street is the street
Where the elite always meet
in New Orleans, land of dreams
You'll never know how nice it seems
Or just how much it really means

Glad to be, yes siree,
Where welcome's free, dear to me
Where I can lose
My Basin Street Blues

I've been to New Orleans three times. First time was for the 1984 World's Fair. I remember eating my first (and best) fried oyster po' boy and the most phenomenal meatballs, which remain my gold standard. Without exaggeration, I've been trying to recreate them for over 20 years now. Too bad none of us remembers what the name of the restaurant was.

Second time was during college years, around 1990, a musical spring break.  Sitting on the floor of Preservation Hall, hot and sweating but awash in the vibrancy of the music-making. First gay bar I ever went to: "Vogue" on big video screens, and boys falling in love (if only temporarily!) on a Bourbon Street balcony—a revelation. Singing a set in Muddy Waters, and then chowing down on a bottomless bowl of crayfish. Drinking (a lot of) hurricanes from the Court of Two Sisters.

Third time was a decade later, a reunion of old friends. Reconnecting over cocktails at Columns. Po' boy at Domilise's, shrimp remoulade at Clancy's, and a mind-blowing bread pudding for brunch at Commander's Palace. Music everywhere that was jazz, not jazzy. Old-school burlesque at the Shim Sham Revue. More hurricanes at Two Sisters, still there after all this time. Walking down Bourbon Street, all the women disappear in one short block and the guys suddenly get better looking—hey, I'm back at that bar! Spending hours at Louisiana Music Factory, and being struck by how much of American musical culture was born in this city.

It's been a Louis Armstrong night. I continue to be awestruck by the sights that are coming out of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and utterly sickened by the complete failure of our elected representatives to take care of the people who entrusted them with power.

New Orleans, the land of dreams. You'll never know how nice it seems...

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