“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Preservation Hall.”
The greeting comes, as it always does, minutes after 8 p.m. On this brisk Wednesday night in May, Erin Alexander delivers it to a capacity crowd, which at 726 St. Peter St. means a 100 or so people, most of them out-of-towners. Those fortunate to have made it inside first sit cross-legged at the front of the 620-square-foot, 31-by-20 foot living room, knees almost touching the four-chair front line, backs pressed against three packed rows of benches, with a forest of people on tiptoes behind that. Another dozen fill the side porte-cochere, either packed in the narrow doorway or seated on the banquette next to one of the Hall’s resident white cats, Sweet Sage, who despite the commotion is sound asleep. Outside the gate, half as many more remain in line, waiting for the 9 p.m. second set and their turn.
Alexander, the girlfriend of Hall publicity and marketing head Ron Rona (aka New Orleans Bingo! Show MC Ronnie Numbers), next informs the visitors of some basic house rules, largely unaltered since 1961: no flash photography, no video recording. (Smoking also has joined the outlawed list; beverages, never offered by the Hall and previously forbidden, now are allowed, and some listeners hold Pat O’Brien’s plastic Hurricane cups.) At 8:15 p.m., the portico crowd parts for the seven members of the band, clad in jet black suits and crisp white shirts, carrying their instruments and proceeding one-by-one into the rapidly warming room: singer and trumpeter Mark Braud, the group’s youngest member at 37; singer and clarinetist Charlie Gabriel, at 78 its eldest; singer and tenor saxophonist Clint Maedgen; trombonist Freddie Lonzo; and Benjamin Jaffe, his tuba shouldered. Rickie Monie and Joe Lastie Jr. — the pianist and the percussionist, respectively — enjoy the easiest walk.
Nodding and smiling at the audience and at each other, the musicians take their seats. Three shoe taps, a drum roll and a trumpet charge, and they’re off.
A week later and a world away, Ben Jaffe is giving an interview from the back of a New York City taxicab.
“One of the things as a traveling musician that I find very challenging, when you’re on the road, playing one-night shows every night of the year, is the satisfaction you get when you actually sit down and breathe and let ideas come into your head,” Jaffe, the Hall’s creative director since 1993, says over the din of traffic. “Most of the time you’re just worried about how you’re going to get from point A to point B. You’re like, I got to get in a taxi, I got to do a sound check, I got a show, then I got to do an interview, then I have to go to sleep because I have to be up at 4 in the morning to catch a flight. That’s your job, just going from A to B. The only moment you get to go into this creative cocoon is when you perform, and I want to amplify that. I want to make it bigger.”
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