NOLA Trip: Jak Locke Rock Show in Hammond
Wlep... it's been a while since I did a New Orleans Trip Log. Each of those posts take a while, and when you are trying to find time while juggling work commitments, taxes and good old human fatigue... On the other hand, you don't want to take too long, or the log becomes completely irrelevant. So...
Just to refresh your memory, I took the train to New Orleans back in March 19-20 to see phoenix_anew and jaklocke, and they showed me a bunch of interesting things, both in New Orleans and in the suburb of Matairie.
As I've mentioned before, Jak is a musician. I've heard some of his music, but I've never actually seen him perform live. So, when Angie and I were planning the trip, I said that I'd love to remedy that.
Jak has several music projects going on, each one showcasing a different facet of his music. One of those projects is a band called the Jak Locke Rock Show. They were scheduled to perform at Hammond on Saturday, March 21. Hammond, as you may remember from my earlier post, is a town north of New Orleans, the penultimate stop of the City of New Orleans train before it reaches the Crescent City itself. So not only would I get to see Jak perform, but I would also get to do something I rarely get a chance to do - walk around in a city I passed through on a train.
But before we headed off, we had to get some food at Short Stop PoBoys. I got a chance to do something I wasn't able to to do earlier that day - get myself a Po'boy sandwich. And a local soda that Angie said she's never seen before.
Angie, by the way, got a Po'Boy that looked an awful lot like the classic Chicago Italian Beef sandwich. Down to it being dipped in juices. From what I understand, there are differences, but I'm not sure what they are. In retrospect, I wish I would've gotten that Po'Boy instead of the Italian Sausage po'boy I actually got. Just for comparison-contrast. (The sandwich I got was pretty good, so don't think I feel too bad).
But next time Angie is in town, I'm going to see if I can get her an Italian Beef sandwich.
After we ate our sandwiches, we loaded up the Jak's supplies into the car and headed north.
Now, remember how, when the train was coming into the city, there was a highway running over water right next to it? When I told Angie and Jak about it, they told me that we'll cross something like this on our way to Hammond.
That didn't prepare me for the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway,
Imagine, if you will, a highway that runs right through the middle of the lake. Two lanes north, two lanes south, and nothing but water on both sides. The Causeway is a bridge, but it looked like a freaking highway over a freaking lake.
Angie explained to me that it was built to make it easier and faster for people on the north shore of Lake Pontchatrtrain to get to New Orleans for work. The towns on the north shore became suburbs of New Orleans. While Chicagoland's North Shore tends to be wealthy, this North Shore seems more middle-class. Angie said that the residents tend to treat New Orleans kind of the way residents of Detroit suburbs treat the Motor City - holding their noses and staying there for as long as necessary and not a second longer.
I admit that part of me couldn't help but feel more than a little nervous. We were driving over a lake. A lake that's shallower than Lake Michigan, sure, but still a large, cold body of water. I was trying really hard not to freak out, which manifested in me rambling about crazy people who had the crazy idea to build a highway over a lake. Angie and Jak, who grew up with the causeway being a fact of their day-to-day lives, simply shrugged.
I suppose it's kind of like tourists worrying that Chicago 'L' trains would fall off the elevated tracks. Sure, it's possible, but it happened so rarely that I didn't think it was something anyone should worry about. There are measures in place to keep trains from falling off even if they do slide off the rails (that's what the extra rails inside the tracks are for). But when you're facing something unfamiliar, saying all of this might not be comforting.
So I breathed a sigh of relief once we drove onto the North Shore.
Throughout the day, the weather has been positively Chicagoesque in its fickleness. It was sunny when Angie took me to see the cemeteries in the morning. It got cloudy while we were at the East Bank library. And as we drove past the North Shore suburbs and toward Hammond, it started raining. Hard. Since I was wearing light shoes and didn't think to bring an umbrella, I started to worry.
Turned out that I shouldn't have been. In, again, a truly Chicagoesque fashion, by the time we arrived in Hammond, the rain quieted down to a light drizzle.
Jak Locke Rock Show was going to play at Augustina's bar. What none of us realized until we actually got there was that the bar was located downtown, less than a block and across the street from Hammond Amtrak station.
So, of course, I had to go take a picture.
Inside, Augustine's was... a bar. Honestly, I have so little experience with those things that I'm not sure I'm qualified to judge them one way or the other. All I know is that it's not one of the slick, high-end Boystown bars. No, this was a more down-to-earth place, with darts, billiard tables and well-worn furniture. The stage was located to the left of the entrance, and there was a seating area of sorts with tables in front of it.
Oh, and a Augustine's men's restroom had a very interesting sink
And a urinal-type thing that I can only describe with a Russian word корыто
I honestly struggle to find an English equivalent that would capture that quite as well.
But I didn't see the bathroom until much later. First, I walked toward the seating area, and saw the ad for the show we were going to watch. And that's when I realized that Jak Locke Rock Show wouldn't be performing alone.
Jak and his bandmates went to set up. Well, more like rehearse the set-up. As I realized during the course of the night, each band brought its own audio equipment. So before they went on stage, they had to set everything up. But none of them wanted to be in a position where something wouldn't work properly minutes before they were supposed to play, so they had to run through it ahead of time.
As Angie and I sat down at one of the tables, I glanced at my watch and realized something. The show was supposed to start at 10:00 PM. This was about 7:30 PM.
"We have to wait for two and a half hours?" I asked Angie.
"Welcome to my world," she smirked.
"So how do you not get bored to death?"
"Oh, I play games, check Twitter..."
I looked outside, and saw that the sun hasn't quite fully set, so I asked Angie if it would be okay if I walk around a bit before it gets completely dark. She said yes, and I went to explore the area around the train station (and bar)
This is the view across the tracks from the bar. The building is currently a bank, though I later learned things that it suggested that it had a long, turbulent history, and that it may have started out as a hotel.
Before we got to Hammond, Jak and Angie had been telling me that it was a boring college town, that it has Southern Louisiana University and not much else. But I thought that it was kind of interesting. The downtown area had some neat architecture, and some interesting stores and coffee shops
I stumbled across a nice-looking mural
and a wind turbine, out of all things. On the same block.
Hammond kind of reminded me of Valparaiso, in that it may be a college town, but it had rich history and neat architecture.
Oh the other hand... Thinking back, I can see why Jak and Angie didn't think much of the city. Aside from the bars, everything was closed. Which was boring. Say what you will about Evanston and its passive-aggressively co-dependent relationship with Northwestern University, but at least is business districts don't virtually shut down as soon as the sun goes down.
The SLU newspaper I picked up while wondering around Hammond had an article complaining that Hammond would be more fun if there was anything to do, anything at all, that didn't involve bars.
I could have wandered around some more, but, to be honest, I was starting to feel bad about leaving Angie all alone in the bar. So I headed back...
... Only to get a call from my mom as soon as I came up to Angie's table.
The conversation would up taking way longer than I expected (for reasons I'm not going to bet into in a public post), but I did eventually wind up rejoining Angie. And, before long, Sarah, wife of one of the other band members joined us. I would say we chatted, except, to be honest, Sarah did most of the talking. I wasn't sure what to say. It's not like she or Angie would care all that much about Chicago stuff, and I kept thinking back to tweelore's advice not to use my Russianness as a crutch.
Don't get me wrong - I did talk some. In fact, we wound up having an interesting conversation unexpectedly delved into some MoF-related stuff, which is always gives me a bit of "wow, worlds are colliding" feeling. It's just that, looking back, I wish I would've said more.
As we kept waiting, other spouses, significant others and friends of band members joined us. And it was nice. Except for one thing.
In Chicago, smoking has been banned in bars for years. In Louisiana... not so much. Which is a problem, since the smell of tobacco bothers me. When Randi and Don first visited Chicago, I knew that I couldn't ask them to stop smoking, but I did ask them to open the window when we were hanging out at the hotel where they were staying. It wasn't ideal, but fresh air kept the smoke from building up, and I could deal.
In a bar, that obviously wasn't an option. It didn't really bother me that much at first, but the longer I sat, the more I started craving fresh air. I wound up going to the bathroom more than I had to just to get a little break from the smell.
I suppose I could've gone outside, but I didn't want to be too anti-social. Bad enough that I left Angie at the bar to explore the city.
Thankfully, by the time I started to get antsy, it was almost 10:00 AM. The first band of the night - Modern Language - was about to start playing.
It was a curious thing - a rock band with lots of guitars and a DJ. And this combination of rock and electronica led to some very interesting melodies that I actually kind of dug...
...until the vocalist started singing. he guy wasn't bad - just so very, very average. And he lyrics were painfully average. Honestly, I might have seriously considered buying their CD - if there was a way to mute the vocals.
On second thought, I will add one more thing. Their music makes a good indie soundtrack fodder. Seriously - if you told me that their songs were featured in some local production I saw in Gene Siskel Film Center, I wouldn't even question it.
And then, it was time for the thing we actually came here for - the Jak Locke Rock Show.
Since Jak is my friend, I won't blame you for taking what I say next with a grain of salt... But I really quite liked it. The sounds were energetic and fun, Jak turned out to be a very charismatic lead singer, and everybody not only put their heart into every note, but they sounded like they had lots of fun doing it. And heck - anybody who could turn a mic check into an auction routine gets huge props in my book.
Out of the stuff available online, this track comes the closest to capturing the feel of their performance.
And thing is - people seemed to be enjoying it, too. Some even came up to dance. Well, the woman dragged the man onto the dance floor, but still...
And, after the band finished playing and they came back to where we sat, several people came by to tell them how great they were. And at least one person bought their CD.
Afterwords, it was the Bad Moon Lander's turn.
It turned out that Bad Moon Lander and Jak Locke Rock Show played at the same shows for years. so unlike Modern Language, they were a known quantity to the people I was hanging out with. Hearing them talk about the other band and things so and so did so-and-so years ago couldn't help but perk my interest as a reporter, in an abstract "this could be an interesting article if I was even remotely good at music journalism" way.
But were they any good? Well, they weren't bad. But once I heard two songs, it started to dawn on me that that there wasn't really that much to grab my attention. It was perfectly decent background music, or a perfectly bland soundtrack, but would I pay for it? Nah.
Once thing for sure - their sounds weren't enough to distract me from tobacco smell. And it was really, really starting to bug me, like to the point where I was seriously thinking about excusing myself to go outside. So I was infinitely relieved when Sarah suggested we do just that.
It's not often that a phrase "breathing a sign of relief" feels so literal.
Jak and the other band members hung out at Augustine's until 2:00 AM, because they had to wait to get paid, and so long as they had to wait, why not socialize, try to sell stuff and otherwise engage in a bit of self-promotion. Angie, Sarah and I wound up hanging out outside the front door, chatting and watching drunk people be drunk. When that got boring, we walked around for a bit. Ironically, we wound up hitting a lot of the places I passed by a few hours earlier.
Along the way, Sarah mentioned that there was a tree that city founder Robert Hammond was buried under with his wife, daughters and his favorite slave boy.
Yeah.
By the time we got back to Augustine's, it was getting near closing time. And we were surprised to see a street musician set up shop right where we stood earlier. His strategy seemed to be working - some people did give him money. Still, it was... odd.
We still had to wait a bit for the band to actually get paid. And loading the gear back into the car took time. I have been known to stay up that late, but as we drove back to Metairie, I allowed myself to fall asleep in the car.
The next day, I was going to have to wake up early. Angie was going to take me to a real, honest-to-goodness Southern plantation that got turned into a museum. So I figured I might as well get a bit of extra sleep in the car.
So tune in next time to see what the plantation looked like.
Hopefully, it won't be too long before the next post goes up.
---
Just to refresh your memory, I took the train to New Orleans back in March 19-20 to see phoenix_anew and jaklocke, and they showed me a bunch of interesting things, both in New Orleans and in the suburb of Matairie.
As I've mentioned before, Jak is a musician. I've heard some of his music, but I've never actually seen him perform live. So, when Angie and I were planning the trip, I said that I'd love to remedy that.
Jak has several music projects going on, each one showcasing a different facet of his music. One of those projects is a band called the Jak Locke Rock Show. They were scheduled to perform at Hammond on Saturday, March 21. Hammond, as you may remember from my earlier post, is a town north of New Orleans, the penultimate stop of the City of New Orleans train before it reaches the Crescent City itself. So not only would I get to see Jak perform, but I would also get to do something I rarely get a chance to do - walk around in a city I passed through on a train.
But before we headed off, we had to get some food at Short Stop PoBoys. I got a chance to do something I wasn't able to to do earlier that day - get myself a Po'boy sandwich. And a local soda that Angie said she's never seen before.
Angie, by the way, got a Po'Boy that looked an awful lot like the classic Chicago Italian Beef sandwich. Down to it being dipped in juices. From what I understand, there are differences, but I'm not sure what they are. In retrospect, I wish I would've gotten that Po'Boy instead of the Italian Sausage po'boy I actually got. Just for comparison-contrast. (The sandwich I got was pretty good, so don't think I feel too bad).
But next time Angie is in town, I'm going to see if I can get her an Italian Beef sandwich.
After we ate our sandwiches, we loaded up the Jak's supplies into the car and headed north.
Now, remember how, when the train was coming into the city, there was a highway running over water right next to it? When I told Angie and Jak about it, they told me that we'll cross something like this on our way to Hammond.
That didn't prepare me for the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway,
Imagine, if you will, a highway that runs right through the middle of the lake. Two lanes north, two lanes south, and nothing but water on both sides. The Causeway is a bridge, but it looked like a freaking highway over a freaking lake.
Angie explained to me that it was built to make it easier and faster for people on the north shore of Lake Pontchatrtrain to get to New Orleans for work. The towns on the north shore became suburbs of New Orleans. While Chicagoland's North Shore tends to be wealthy, this North Shore seems more middle-class. Angie said that the residents tend to treat New Orleans kind of the way residents of Detroit suburbs treat the Motor City - holding their noses and staying there for as long as necessary and not a second longer.
I admit that part of me couldn't help but feel more than a little nervous. We were driving over a lake. A lake that's shallower than Lake Michigan, sure, but still a large, cold body of water. I was trying really hard not to freak out, which manifested in me rambling about crazy people who had the crazy idea to build a highway over a lake. Angie and Jak, who grew up with the causeway being a fact of their day-to-day lives, simply shrugged.
I suppose it's kind of like tourists worrying that Chicago 'L' trains would fall off the elevated tracks. Sure, it's possible, but it happened so rarely that I didn't think it was something anyone should worry about. There are measures in place to keep trains from falling off even if they do slide off the rails (that's what the extra rails inside the tracks are for). But when you're facing something unfamiliar, saying all of this might not be comforting.
So I breathed a sigh of relief once we drove onto the North Shore.
Throughout the day, the weather has been positively Chicagoesque in its fickleness. It was sunny when Angie took me to see the cemeteries in the morning. It got cloudy while we were at the East Bank library. And as we drove past the North Shore suburbs and toward Hammond, it started raining. Hard. Since I was wearing light shoes and didn't think to bring an umbrella, I started to worry.
Turned out that I shouldn't have been. In, again, a truly Chicagoesque fashion, by the time we arrived in Hammond, the rain quieted down to a light drizzle.
Jak Locke Rock Show was going to play at Augustina's bar. What none of us realized until we actually got there was that the bar was located downtown, less than a block and across the street from Hammond Amtrak station.
So, of course, I had to go take a picture.
Inside, Augustine's was... a bar. Honestly, I have so little experience with those things that I'm not sure I'm qualified to judge them one way or the other. All I know is that it's not one of the slick, high-end Boystown bars. No, this was a more down-to-earth place, with darts, billiard tables and well-worn furniture. The stage was located to the left of the entrance, and there was a seating area of sorts with tables in front of it.
Oh, and a Augustine's men's restroom had a very interesting sink
And a urinal-type thing that I can only describe with a Russian word корыто
I honestly struggle to find an English equivalent that would capture that quite as well.
But I didn't see the bathroom until much later. First, I walked toward the seating area, and saw the ad for the show we were going to watch. And that's when I realized that Jak Locke Rock Show wouldn't be performing alone.
Jak and his bandmates went to set up. Well, more like rehearse the set-up. As I realized during the course of the night, each band brought its own audio equipment. So before they went on stage, they had to set everything up. But none of them wanted to be in a position where something wouldn't work properly minutes before they were supposed to play, so they had to run through it ahead of time.
As Angie and I sat down at one of the tables, I glanced at my watch and realized something. The show was supposed to start at 10:00 PM. This was about 7:30 PM.
"We have to wait for two and a half hours?" I asked Angie.
"Welcome to my world," she smirked.
"So how do you not get bored to death?"
"Oh, I play games, check Twitter..."
I looked outside, and saw that the sun hasn't quite fully set, so I asked Angie if it would be okay if I walk around a bit before it gets completely dark. She said yes, and I went to explore the area around the train station (and bar)
This is the view across the tracks from the bar. The building is currently a bank, though I later learned things that it suggested that it had a long, turbulent history, and that it may have started out as a hotel.
Before we got to Hammond, Jak and Angie had been telling me that it was a boring college town, that it has Southern Louisiana University and not much else. But I thought that it was kind of interesting. The downtown area had some neat architecture, and some interesting stores and coffee shops
I stumbled across a nice-looking mural
and a wind turbine, out of all things. On the same block.
Hammond kind of reminded me of Valparaiso, in that it may be a college town, but it had rich history and neat architecture.
Oh the other hand... Thinking back, I can see why Jak and Angie didn't think much of the city. Aside from the bars, everything was closed. Which was boring. Say what you will about Evanston and its passive-aggressively co-dependent relationship with Northwestern University, but at least is business districts don't virtually shut down as soon as the sun goes down.
The SLU newspaper I picked up while wondering around Hammond had an article complaining that Hammond would be more fun if there was anything to do, anything at all, that didn't involve bars.
I could have wandered around some more, but, to be honest, I was starting to feel bad about leaving Angie all alone in the bar. So I headed back...
... Only to get a call from my mom as soon as I came up to Angie's table.
The conversation would up taking way longer than I expected (for reasons I'm not going to bet into in a public post), but I did eventually wind up rejoining Angie. And, before long, Sarah, wife of one of the other band members joined us. I would say we chatted, except, to be honest, Sarah did most of the talking. I wasn't sure what to say. It's not like she or Angie would care all that much about Chicago stuff, and I kept thinking back to tweelore's advice not to use my Russianness as a crutch.
Don't get me wrong - I did talk some. In fact, we wound up having an interesting conversation unexpectedly delved into some MoF-related stuff, which is always gives me a bit of "wow, worlds are colliding" feeling. It's just that, looking back, I wish I would've said more.
As we kept waiting, other spouses, significant others and friends of band members joined us. And it was nice. Except for one thing.
In Chicago, smoking has been banned in bars for years. In Louisiana... not so much. Which is a problem, since the smell of tobacco bothers me. When Randi and Don first visited Chicago, I knew that I couldn't ask them to stop smoking, but I did ask them to open the window when we were hanging out at the hotel where they were staying. It wasn't ideal, but fresh air kept the smoke from building up, and I could deal.
In a bar, that obviously wasn't an option. It didn't really bother me that much at first, but the longer I sat, the more I started craving fresh air. I wound up going to the bathroom more than I had to just to get a little break from the smell.
I suppose I could've gone outside, but I didn't want to be too anti-social. Bad enough that I left Angie at the bar to explore the city.
Thankfully, by the time I started to get antsy, it was almost 10:00 AM. The first band of the night - Modern Language - was about to start playing.
It was a curious thing - a rock band with lots of guitars and a DJ. And this combination of rock and electronica led to some very interesting melodies that I actually kind of dug...
...until the vocalist started singing. he guy wasn't bad - just so very, very average. And he lyrics were painfully average. Honestly, I might have seriously considered buying their CD - if there was a way to mute the vocals.
On second thought, I will add one more thing. Their music makes a good indie soundtrack fodder. Seriously - if you told me that their songs were featured in some local production I saw in Gene Siskel Film Center, I wouldn't even question it.
And then, it was time for the thing we actually came here for - the Jak Locke Rock Show.
Since Jak is my friend, I won't blame you for taking what I say next with a grain of salt... But I really quite liked it. The sounds were energetic and fun, Jak turned out to be a very charismatic lead singer, and everybody not only put their heart into every note, but they sounded like they had lots of fun doing it. And heck - anybody who could turn a mic check into an auction routine gets huge props in my book.
Out of the stuff available online, this track comes the closest to capturing the feel of their performance.
And thing is - people seemed to be enjoying it, too. Some even came up to dance. Well, the woman dragged the man onto the dance floor, but still...
And, after the band finished playing and they came back to where we sat, several people came by to tell them how great they were. And at least one person bought their CD.
Afterwords, it was the Bad Moon Lander's turn.
It turned out that Bad Moon Lander and Jak Locke Rock Show played at the same shows for years. so unlike Modern Language, they were a known quantity to the people I was hanging out with. Hearing them talk about the other band and things so and so did so-and-so years ago couldn't help but perk my interest as a reporter, in an abstract "this could be an interesting article if I was even remotely good at music journalism" way.
But were they any good? Well, they weren't bad. But once I heard two songs, it started to dawn on me that that there wasn't really that much to grab my attention. It was perfectly decent background music, or a perfectly bland soundtrack, but would I pay for it? Nah.
Once thing for sure - their sounds weren't enough to distract me from tobacco smell. And it was really, really starting to bug me, like to the point where I was seriously thinking about excusing myself to go outside. So I was infinitely relieved when Sarah suggested we do just that.
It's not often that a phrase "breathing a sign of relief" feels so literal.
Jak and the other band members hung out at Augustine's until 2:00 AM, because they had to wait to get paid, and so long as they had to wait, why not socialize, try to sell stuff and otherwise engage in a bit of self-promotion. Angie, Sarah and I wound up hanging out outside the front door, chatting and watching drunk people be drunk. When that got boring, we walked around for a bit. Ironically, we wound up hitting a lot of the places I passed by a few hours earlier.
Along the way, Sarah mentioned that there was a tree that city founder Robert Hammond was buried under with his wife, daughters and his favorite slave boy.
Yeah.
By the time we got back to Augustine's, it was getting near closing time. And we were surprised to see a street musician set up shop right where we stood earlier. His strategy seemed to be working - some people did give him money. Still, it was... odd.
We still had to wait a bit for the band to actually get paid. And loading the gear back into the car took time. I have been known to stay up that late, but as we drove back to Metairie, I allowed myself to fall asleep in the car.
The next day, I was going to have to wake up early. Angie was going to take me to a real, honest-to-goodness Southern plantation that got turned into a museum. So I figured I might as well get a bit of extra sleep in the car.
So tune in next time to see what the plantation looked like.
Hopefully, it won't be too long before the next post goes up.
---