New Orleans Band Better Than Ezra Welcomes us to Mardi Gras

by Gadling Staff on

Ever thought about going to Mardi Gras, only to quickly reconsider? Daunted by the idea of drunken crowds and inadvertently turning up on an episode of Cops? Well New Orleans-based rock band Better Than Ezra is inviting newbies and veterans alike to a Mardi Gras experience that promises much more than the balcony-hanging, bead-throwing debauchery one might expect.

The event is called Krewe of Rocckus – a play on the name of the legendary Krewe of Bacchus – and offers visitors a weekend chock-full of New Orleans food, drink, and music, all seeped in Mardi Gras tradition.

Better Than Ezra bassist Tom Drummond took some time to introduce us to the Krewe:

Gadling: So you’ve just finished up the Road to Mardi Gras tour, and in early March you’ll kick off the Krewe of Rocckus. We have to admit, Mardi Gras is a bit new to us…

TD:…you see, this is exactly who we are trying to reach! Through our travels we’ve seen that there are a lot of people – probably like yourself – who considered going to Mardi Gras in the past, but were kind of on the bubble and just never committed. I think it is definitely something that everyone should do, at least once in their life. A lot of people think it’s like, “Oh, I did that in high school, or college,” well it’s really not. Sure, there’s a lot of that going on, but it’s also a great time to come to New Orleans and have a great time, get some good food, and hang out with a lot of people. It’s just a lot of fun.

Gadling: Ok, but what exactly is a krewe?

TD: Well a krewe is basically a group of individuals who have organized themselves to put on the Mardi Gras parades, and then typically those same krewes have balls that either follow the event or the night before. Most of the older parades are krewes. Those are social groups, and typically you have to be invited into those groups. I’m involved in one, we have a ball every year, it’s actually a secret society you’re not supposed to know you’re in. We have to wear a mask when we parade on the floats. They have video cameras set up along the routes to know whether or not everybody wore their masks.

Gadling: And this is the first year for the Krewe of Rocckus?

TD: Yeah, you know the band has played Mardi Gras every year for twenty something years. We’ve had the idea for a while, and we finally decided to commit and get on with it. We have a lot of people who fly in from out of town for these shows, because these shows are very unique for Better Than Ezra, because the atmosphere is so great. There’s a lot of debauchery going on, you just get a different take on the band from one of these shows.

Gadling: So the Krewe of Rocckus is born of your Mardi Gras shows, and now you’ve built it into an event.

TD: That’s exactly right. You get a hotel – you get three nights at the Hilton Riverside – we’ve planned everything to be within walking distance, which is one of the great things about New Orleans, that if you stay downtown, you’re within walking distance of the French Quarter, the Warehouse District, and just about anything you want to do. Not a lot of cities are set up that way, which is why it’s great to have big events here.

We did a few of these Rock Boat cruises, where you go, hang out on the boat for three or four days, and all you do is see bands the whole time you’re there. Well that kind of gave us the inspiration – how can we use the city if New Orleans as a giant ship, imagine it as a giant Rock Boat. So we have all the venues, all the restaurants, all the bars, everything that we’re going to send people to, all within walking distance during Mardi Gras.

We’re trying to offer things that you can’t just walk up and get when you come to Mardi Gras. It’s going to start off with a very unique event, which is brunch with award-winning chef John Besh, who owns a number of restaurants in town. We’ve got private viewing stands for the Friday night parades, all you can eat and drink, we’ve got a very large private balcony on Bourbon Street.

You obviously get the two Better Than Ezra shows Friday and Saturday night, and then Friday night we have Pat Greene performing, who’s a big country artist from Texas. We’ve got Big Sam’s Funky Nation, who was also on the Road to Mardi Gras tour, he’s playing with us on Saturday night. And at each party and event, we have local bands playing as well. You’re definitely going to get your music fix out of this trip for sure. Which I think is one of the biggest attractions in New Orleans.

Gadling: Is the band actively participating in the whole weekend?

TD: Oh yeah, we’ll be at every event. We’ll literally be holding your hand, walking you from one event to the next. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Gadling: What’s this about a Bloody Mary contest?

TD: Yeah, apparently I’m involved in it! Everybody that comes down is going to be the beneficiaries of free Bloody Marys that morning. It’s going to be me and some other celebrities, and everyone is going to taste them and decide who’s the best.

There are a lot of those little things we have planned. On Friday we’re going to meet at one, and we’re going to second line with the Mardi Gras Indians to a restaurant called Michaul’s where we have a private viewing stand on Saint Charles Avenue. We’re going to literally walk 400 people through the Warehouse District to the viewing stands, with the Mardi Gras Indians, and a brass band leading the way.

We got Krewe of Rocckus beads made, really nice big beads, the kind you want to hang onto after Mardi Gras. We also have a poster that the artist Jamie Hayes has designed for us. He’s a really well known New Orleans artist.

We think it’s going to be a really great event – it seems like no brainer, really – to have the biggest band from New Orleans walk you through Mardi Gras. This will be fun!

Gadling: Speaking as a New Orleans native, what would you recommend first-time visitors to do, aside from Mardi Gras?

TD: I think one of the great things about New Orleans is the food. There are so many great restaurants here, so many great places to have a great time, even if Mardi Gras weren’t going on.

Gadling: Oh? Are you a fan of crayfish?

TD: What, crawfish?

Gadling: Ok, I’m from the north.

TD: Yeah, they’re awesome here.

Gadling: And you suck the heads?

TD: Of course! You have to!

You can sign up for Krewe of Rocckus here. Note that the all-inclusive package is only available until February 4. After that, the locals-only package will remain available without hotel reservation. Hotels may still be available, but the prices will have increased after February 4.

Top 10 travel spots in the United States

by Tom Johansmeyer on

So, Orbitz noted when we like to travel … but where do we go? The top 10 destinations in the country were mostly predictable, with big tourist-magnet cities dominating the list. There were a few surprises, according to the information supplied by Orbitz: Boston, for example, didn’t make the list, after having ranked ninth in 2009. Los Angeles, fifth in 2009, also fell off in 2010. New Orleans and Honolulu debuted last year.

In the top 10 U.S. destinations last year, average daily hotel rates rose, yet some spots, like Las Vegas and San Diego, still offered great bargains, with rates well below 2008 levels still.

So, which cities are among our 10 favorites? Let’s take a look below!

1. Las Vegas, Nevada: Vegas was hit hard by the financial crisis – expect to see some deals there for a while

2. New York, New York: how can the Big Apple not be an ongoing favorite?

3. Chicago, Illinois: the top city in the Midwest just had to make the list!4. San Francisco, California: forget Los Angeles, this is the place to see out west

5. San Diego, California: again, this is a great alternative to Tinseltown

6. Orlando, Florida: remember that there’s more to Orlando than the theme parks

7. Honolulu, Hawaii: if you’re going to spend some time on the beach, do it right

8. New Orleans, Louisiana: it may have taken a while, but the recovery following Hurricane Katrina is definitely under way

9. Washington, DC: the allure of the nation’s capital can never be resisted

10. Miami, Florida: where else can you see and sample so many great bodies in one place? You have to check this out!

[photo Fabrizio Monaco via Flickr]

Civil War secret message decoded

by Sean McLachlan on


A coded message sent to the beleaguered Confederate commander of Vicksburg has been cracked, the BBC reports.

The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond has had the message in its collection for more than a century. It had never tried to decipher the code of seemingly random letters until this year, when they sent it off to retired CIA codebreaker David Gaddy. While Gaddy is trained to break sophisticated modern codes, this early cipher was still tough enough to take him several weeks.

It turns out the message was sent to Confederate General John Pemberton telling him he wouldn’t be getting any reinforcements. The city was the key to the Mississippi River and had been under siege by Union forces for months. The message was dated 4 July 1863, the same day Pemberton surrendered. The bad news was probably the last straw. With his men short of food and munitions and the city in ruins, Pemberton’s last hope was getting reinforcements.

The fall of Vicksburg opened up the Mississippi River to Union gunboats and cut the Confederacy in half. It was one of the turning points of the Civil War.

[Photo courtesy U.S. Army]

Bowermaster’s Adventures: Checking in on the BP spill cleanup

by Jon Bowermaster on

Reports last week from the beaches of Alabama and Mississippi suggest that the post-BP gusher cleanup continues, with varying degrees of success, and that new oil continues to show up.

Near the Alabama-Florida border, a placed called Perdido (Lost) Key, BP-contracted crews have been sifting sand for more than six months to try and get rid of tar mats buried nearly three feet beneath the sand.

Having suffered 50 percent losses in tourist’s dollars last summer, the effort is being made to insure the areas renowned white sand beaches are pure white by the first of the New Year. The idea is to next move the process west along the coastal islands of Mississippi and the marshlands of Louisiana, using slightly different systems.

But locals in Perdido Key tell the Times that while a BP spokesman says he expects to eventually get “99 percent of what’s out there,” all the sifting and shifting of sand is not getting rid of the oil, just spreading it around.

Near Harrison, Mississippi, crews have been cleaning oil and tar balls off the beach for 200 days and the work continues, with expectations that it will last through next summer. A BP spokesman there says each crew is picking up 20 to 30 pounds of tar balls a day, by hand, since machinery has proved inefficient against the “small, oily clumps.” Along with the visible tar balls scattered along the shore, there is also concern about possible sub-surface oil buried beneath a layer of sand.Just offshore Harrison, the low-lying sand barrier called Horn Island took the brunt of the oil spill; heavy machinery is still being used there to try and clean it up.

Suggestions that the oil from the spill and its long-lasting impact is mostly gone seem to be exaggerated. About 135 shrimp and fishing boats are still at sea aiding in the cleanup; another 1,200 boats are waiting to be scrubbed clean and decontaminated at more than 20 dry docks across the Gulf of Mexico. Approximately 9,000 square miles of federal Gulf waters remain closed to fishing; bad weather has kept crews from getting enough species to sample and decide whether to reopen some of that area. It’s estimated that the daily cost of the cleanup has dropped to $27 million, from a high of about $67 million … a day.

Different cleanup concerns are being voiced about the Chandeleur Islands at the mouth of the Mississippi River off Louisiana. That’s where Governor Bobby Jindal and his troops attempted a quick fix at the height of the spill, bulldozing thousands of tons of sand in an effort to build-up berms to try and prevent the oil from reaching the marshes and shores.

Unfortunately, according to my friend Ivor van Heerden, a coastal restoration expert who’s been monitoring the impact of the spill since the very first day, that berm-building process buried oil as deep as seven feet. Since it was halted no effort has been made to retrieve that buried oil. He predicts normal winter erosion will unearth it and send it on to the shoreline.

He is concerned that local politicians may be purposely dragging their heels on proper clean up as a way to keep attention – and federal dollars – focused on the state.

“A few weeks back I had the opportunity to speak to some researchers at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and in their opinion Louisiana has become a ‘victim’ state. It cannot manage its resources well enough to generate sufficient income; instead it looks to get ‘payout’s’ from time to time. They also pointed out that this is a very slippery slope for a state.”

Flickr image via GT51

Bowermaster’s Adventures: Five reasons we should not believe the BP mess is “cleaned up”

by Jon Bowermaster on

Three months ago, on August 2, the White House – citing an in-house National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study – announced that 74 percent of the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico by the BP mess was gone, had either been cleaned up or simply disappeared.

Few seriously believed the report at the time, including many NOAA scientists; even fewer think it’s true today.

It was six months ago that the Deepwater Horizon sank below the surface and impacts of the disaster are still being felt daily along the Gulf Coast and across the U.S.

While 90 percent of the federal fisheries are open, processors are finding little demand for what much of the nation’s populace still believes are damaged goods. While much of the oil appears to be gone from the surface, there is more and more evidence that there is a significant amount on or near the ocean floor. Oil remains buried on sand beaches and marshes and bays are receiving new oil daily, still impacting migratory birds and marine life. That $20 billion compensation fund BP set up has so far only doled out $1.5 billion; many are still awaiting a first check, many more still struggling with an unknown future. The moratorium against deepwater drilling has been lifted, with some new rules and guidelines in place, but there are no guarantees against a repeat performance by one of the 4,000 wells still drilling in the Gulf.

Five reasons we should not believe the BP mess is “cleaned up”:

1. Photos taken this month in Barataria Bay, 40 miles south of New Orleans, which is fed directly from Gulf waters, show the edges of the marshes are as heavily soaked with oil today as they were mid-July. According to Plaquemine Parish coastal restoration manager P.J. Hahn, “we are averaging about 30,000 gallons of recovered oil a week from the marsh, mainly around Bay Jimmy. We’re also picking up about 8,700 bags of tar balls a week along the beaches, mainly in Pass Chaland and barrier islands. It is definitely not over!!”

%Gallery-107702%2. In Pensacola, environmentalist Gregg Hall has been collecting video of the impacts of the BP mess on the white sand beaches of Florida since the first week of June. With 600 hours of video and photo documentation, he asserts that BP … and the government … are not allowing a true clean-up of the beaches there, by not allowing its clean-up workers to dig more than six inches into the sand “or they will be fired, and now they’ve taken their shovels away as well.” By not putting their heads – or their hands — in the sand, by allowing the oil that has washed ashore to stay buried, at least until the next storm uncovers it, the clean-up of Florida’s beaches is something of a mirage. A collection of Hall’s videos can be seen on YouTube.

3. Similar concerns are being raised in Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal initiated late-in-the-game rebuilding of offshore berms – at the cost of nearly $400 million – ostensibly to help keep the oil from reaching shore. The construction didn’t work – too little, way too late – but still continues even though, as the Times reports today, many in government and scientists contend it is “pointless.” Blocking the oil that remains is with dirt and san berms is futile … unless you happen to be one of the contractors hired to do the digging and building, many of who turn out to be big campaign supporters of Jindal. Opponents say the digging and building is actually harming wildlife and squandering money that should be used for real and necessary coastal restoration. My friend Ivor van Heerden has been scouring the coast since the spill began and tells me, “They’ve now buried oil by as much as seven feet and will not allow us to clean it up. With this winter’s erosion this buried oil will be released” and ultimately wash onto shore.

4. There is ongoing concern about what happened to all that oily waste collected along the beaches. BP contracted with Waste Management to properly dispose of the thousands of tons of plastic bags filled with oil-soaked sponges, etc, which were supposed to be treated as hazardous waste and put only in landfills prepared to receive such. Mike Stiers writes to suggest that the waste has continually been dumped in non-hazardous waste landfills and questions whether the company that is supposed to authorize the disposal – TestAmerica – is the best outfit to be overseeing that side of the clean-up since it is a BP partner.

5. If you’d like to hear what it’s like living on the Gulf these days from those who actually live there, the Natural Resources Defense Council has hooked up with StoryCorps to “record, share and preserve the stories and experiences of those living through the BP oil disaster.” Listening to these very recent stories from fishermen, tourist guides, filmmakers and average folks on what it is like today to be living tomorrow’s headlines is the most eye-opening reporting of all.