I was strolling across the Louisiana State fairgrounds in April of 2001, digging all the sights, sounds, and smells of the Jazz and Heritage Festival. I was having the time of my life. I was pleasantly buzzed, stuffed to the gills on crawfish, and learning more about music than I'd ever before learned in one weekend. As I walked along, I heard a beautiful ruckus coming from one of the side stages. This band was really jamming! Everyone in it was obviously putting their all into it, and the guitar player was really going for it. I stopped and found the stage, determined to watch the rest of the set and find out who it was. To my disappointment, that only lasted about four more minutes - I'd gotten there right at the end. When I asked someone nearby who I'd just discovered, she gave me a look that said she knew just from the question, let alone my northern inflections, that I wasn't a local, and said "That's Anders Osborne".

Within ten minutes, I owned his Ash Wednesday Blues disc.

Born in Sweden and coming to America via almost everywhere, Anders Osborne has become an indelible part of New Orleans. His style reflects the gumbo that is the richest music scene in America, by my reckoning. Take one part blues, one part jazz, one part rock, and sprinkle with funk, and you've got his band. This week you'll hear him with Doug Belote on drums, Tim Green on sax, and Kirk Joseph, an original member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, on sousaphone. That alone makes this band a bit unique. No one sounds quite like Anders.



I haven't had the fortune yet to see an entire Anders Osbourne show. He doesn't seem to do the southwest. He tours but also spends a lot of time writing songs, many of which  done by others such as Keb' Mo', Johnny Lang, Sam Bush, and Tim McGraw. When performing, he makes it clear that it is the song that is the focus, not him. While he's a terrific guitarist, his live performance isn't a series of solos. Tim green probably does more soloing in the boots I have than Anders does.

This weeks selection comes from an October 23, 2002 performance at a venue that, by my reckoning, seems to get a LOT of great shows - the State Theatre in Falls Church, Va. This show also featured Big Chief Monk Boudreax (the guy in the feathers below) but he isn't on stage yet during this song. This song is called Burning on the Inside, and features some interesting interplay between the guitar and the sousaphone. I hope you'll tell me what you think of it. Here it is.



In two weeks: One of the projects he embarked on in his 37-years-so-far career was an attempt to record music with monkeys.