The Castellows Hurricane, New Orleans Jazz Festival, May 2, 2025

Описание: Hurricane is the single cover song on The Castellows debut EP A Little Goes A Long Way. The Band of Heathens did a great cover of this Levon Helm song    • The Band of Heathens - "Hurricane" | Conce...  . The Castellows put their stamp on it - as in their official video shot around New Orleans:    • The Castellows - Hurricane (Official Music...  

… there we no old men with whiskey bottles in the video but the Balkcom sisters, Powell, Lily and Ellie did get to walk along a levee! Wonder if it’s high enough :)

I got to visit NOLA and see the band at the New Orleans Jazz Festival!!! It was a 50 minute set on the main Festival Stage - Santana played the night before, Pearl Jam the next day. Before the festival I walked the levee along the Mississippi River - take the public ferry across the river. We booked the Creole Queen cruise (because it is in ‪@thecastellows‬ Hurricane video!!!) but a generator was down, the river was at high flow and it was not safe to cruise so it was cancelled. We did the St. Louis cemetery tour, like the crypts in The Castellows video too! Its a must-see.

Fitting with this song, I did see a few drunk old men in The Quarter - we are staying 10 days at Place D'Armes hotel right in the French Quarter. Most beautiful courtyard and pool ever :) Also fitting with the song there was a flood warning - the river should crest in a few days and they are thinking of opening up some relief flow.

Also fitting for the song it rained just before The Castellows set. But the sun broke through for them - the big guy looking out for them. It was hot enough for Lily to comment the catwalk was too hot on her bare feet and she would not go out on it again - she did though - that a trooper :)

For a water resources engineer like me New Orleans was a dream city - the cool flood doors on tracks to close the flood wall downtown, the levees along The Mississippi when we traveled upriver to the Whitney Plantation, seeing Lake Pontchartrain on the way to the plantation, House of the Rising Sun sites, the flood walls on channels in the city on the way to the festival too. The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) how design and upgrade these flood control features really rock too IMHO. The USACE and the Hydrologic Engineering Centre write software engineers use around the world (including me), making communities safer .. you know, like making levees 3 feet higher when necessary like in the song. Those engineers would be equivalent to this song's "man came down from Chicago", advising on levee heights. Yes, they can always be higher for more protection, and they have been redesigned post-Katrina to be more resilient to breaches.

Enjoy :)

PS - do you think Hurricane will ever NOT BE the super show closer for @thecastellows? One day maybe, but not for a while I think.