It's not easy to make Minnesotans get up and dance

The first time I went to Preservation Hall, it was purely by chance. That's the beauty of traveling when you're young and stupid--you stumble upon things that the whole world has always known about, and in the ignorance and self confidence of youth, you think you discovered them.

My friend Katy and I were in New Orleans on vacation. We spent a lot of time in the French Quarter, wandering the narrow side streets, poking our heads into bricked courtyards and voodoo shops, listening to the swirls of music and laughter, the sharp brassy sound of a trumpet as we passed an open doorway. We vowed to decorate our apartments back in Duluth with plastic beads and feathered masks.

We browsed for t-shirts and postcards at midnight--midnight! the gift shops were still open at midnight!--and ate crawdads and shrimp etouffe. We drank hurricanes in plastic cups as we walked down Bourbon Street and felt the thrill of doing something vaguely illicit. (I did, anyway; Katy was always a bit more worldly than I.)

One night we saw a line of people waiting to get into a small, nondescript place, an old wooden storefront that looked like it hadn't been painted since it was built 300 years ago. A wooden sign swinging from a wrought-iron bracket identified it as Preservation Hall. So we joined the line.

The place is tiny and crowded. There are a few chairs in front; everyone else stands. We learned, through the course of the evening, that eventually those in front leave, and the people behind them get to sit down, and everyone else moves up. We waited it out, craned our necks, shuffled forward from time to time, and eventually scored seats.

Preservation hall is spartan, with a plain wooden floor, crooked doorways, tobacco-colored walls. There's no food, no drinks, no smoking, and, as I recall, no bathroom. But there is music!

Great jazzy, lively, ebullient music that makes you want to get up and dance, except you don't want to lose your chair and there is no room anyway.

So you sit and jiggle your legs and your feet and sway your shoulders and listen to this wonderful traditional jazz band in about as intimate a venue as there can be; the band is not on a stage, but sits only a few feet in front of you, and they play and play and play--"Down in New Orleans," "Go to the Mardi Gras," "Bourbon Street," "St. James Infirmary," and all kinds of other tunes I had no titles for.

There's one song they don't play: a tattered yellowed sign thumbtacked to the wall behind them notes that if you want them to play "When the Saints Go Marching In" it'll cost you five bucks. Or maybe it was ten bucks. No matter. The drums, tuba, clarinet, slide trombone, trumpet and piano had enough tunes in them without "the Saints."

Katy and I finally crawled out after the last set was over. This was New Orleans music in New Orleans. This was fun. And we discovered it!

This past weekend, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band came to the Twin Cities to perform with the Minnesota Orchestra. Doug and I had free tickets, and so there we were, in the tenth row. There was the band, same old drumset, same slide trombonist, same piano player, same short guy on the moody clarinet. A few other musicians were new--the wild-haired bass player, for instance, I didn't recognize, but it turns out that his father, Alan Jaffe, was the tuba player back in the day.

Just like at Preservation Hall, the band played and played. But unlike in New Orleans, here in downtown Minneapolis on this chilly spring night, the crowd was much bigger, and everyone had a seat. And this time, the band had a full orchestra playing behind them.

It was great fun. I bopped in my seat. I tried out the "low light" setting on my Christmas camera. (Worked pretty well, don't you think?) And then, the last tune of the night, free of charge, they played "The Saints." The saxophone and clarinet hopped off the stage and wound up and down the aisles of Orchestra Hall, trying to get a conga line going.

Oh, Minnesota. The symphony crowd shifted uncomfortably in their seats, smiling uncertainly, clearly tempted, but not enough. In the end, about twenty people followed, up one aisle, down the next, across the stage. The rest of us stayed where we were, watching with disdain and envy.

I think if you are a true Minnesotan, you have to be in the French Quarter to act like you're in the French Quarter.

Here's a link to a radio interview with Ben Jaffe, the curly-haired bass player and artistic director of the band--and the son of Alan Jaffe, who made the band famous.