Photos by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee

According to a friend of mine, the homes in the Bywater are “so close together you can hear your neighbor reading a magazine.”  This past Wednesday, the two stages of Chaz Fest brought more interesting noises to incidentally overhear if you were in the neighboring blocks.  

It rhymes with Jazz Fest, and it's held on the Wednesday between Jazz Fest weekends. But Alex McMurray, the organizer and mastermind behind the Bywater's Chaz Fest--now in its eighth year--is getting a little weary of the press-ready comparison.

Aura Fedora returns with the second installment of her 504 series, in which she asks five questions of four New Orleans musicians who are playing the Fest. Today, Debbie Davis of the Pfister Sisters and many other acts steps up to Aura's mic.

Today, Irma Thomas will harvest the music, Mr. Okra will get his 12 minutes of film fame and Ann McCutchan will talk Atchafalaya on Maple Street. But way back when, the World Series was broadcast on the radio for the first time (1921), PBS was founded (1970), McDonalds entrepreneur Ray A. Kroc was born (1902), and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis died (1941); On World Teachers’ Day, New Orleans offers the following:

The Saints may take a while before returning to our Sundays, but Treme has come back to fill the void in force. Once again, New Orleanians have an end-of-the-week rite that gives them cause to congregate at local bars.

The Bywater's annual celebration of one facet of the local music scene might be smaller and in a backyard, but that doesn't mean they don't employ some of the same tactics in scheduling. Like the all-star lineups that can be found dotting the JazzFest scheudle, the Valparaiso Men's Chorus is a confluence of downtown talent into a single entity. The ensemble is lead by ChazFest impresario and host Alex McMurray and made up of a lot of the people (including Chaz!) who are in his other bands (Tin Men, Alex McMurray Band, Happy Talk Band),. It's a celebration of a rarely excavated artform in the cradle of jazz: the Sea Shanty.

Hola Nola- and hola Charles Leary, aka Washboard Chaz. The frequent whistler whose washboard has many bells serves as the likeness and inspiration for a Bywater festival set for tomorrow.

April 28th, when Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the army and was thereupon stripped of his boxing title (1967), when Charles de Gaulle resigned as the president of France (1969) and the birthdays of three beautiful people: Jessica Alba (1981), Penelope Cruz (1974), and Shreveport, Louisiana’s Hal Sutton (1958), Golf Magazine’s 1980 College Player of the Year, and a top-10 ranker in the Official Golf Rankings (1986-1987). That would be enough for us to be proud of, if it weren’t for today's Hornets holdin’ down the Hive, and a  Pre-Jazz fest celebration to bring the BayouWear out in full fierce force:

April 16, when Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel (1912), when Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered LSD (1943), when Walter Cronkite took lead over the CBS Evening News (1962), when MLK Jr. wrote his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ (1963), the Virginia Tech massacre (2007), Charlie Chaplin’s birth (1889), and Alexis de Tocqueville’s death (1859). Tough to top, but here goes:

Drink your coffee; it’s a be a long day. Another full day of FQF beckons, Some local favorites are reopening, and there's always the after parties! So, buckle up, and remember to wear sneakers today!