About the scene
The Big Easy.
New Orleans doesn't have a music scene so much as a music metabolism. Live music is how the city breathes, seven nights a week. Frenchmen Street in the Marigny is the densest few blocks of live music in America: The Spotted Cat and Snug Harbor for traditional and modern jazz, d.b.a. for brass and roots, Blue Nile and The Maison stacking multiple sets a night. A few blocks over in the French Quarter, Preservation Hall has run all-acoustic traditional jazz sets since 1961, with House of Blues and the Toulouse Theatre carrying the touring calendar nearby.Read more ↓
New Orleans doesn't have a music scene so much as a music metabolism. Live music is how the city breathes, seven nights a week. Frenchmen Street in the Marigny is the densest few blocks of live music in America: The Spotted Cat and Snug Harbor for traditional and modern jazz, d.b.a. for brass and roots, Blue Nile and The Maison stacking multiple sets a night. A few blocks over in the French Quarter, Preservation Hall has run all-acoustic traditional jazz sets since 1961, with House of Blues and the Toulouse Theatre carrying the touring calendar nearby.
Uptown and Carrollton hold the city's funk cathedrals: Tipitina's, founded in 1977 as a home base for Professor Longhair, is still the room every New Orleans musician treats as sacred ground, and the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street has hosted brass-band nights for decades. Le Bon Temps Roulé and Carrollton Station keep the neighborhood-bar end of Uptown alive. Downriver, the Bywater and St. Claude corridor is the scrappy side of the scene: Saturn Bar's time-capsule interior, Vaughan's Lounge (made famous by Kermit Ruffins' Thursday nights), Siberia's punk-meets-brass bookings, and Poor Boys. Mid-City adds Chickie Wah Wah's songwriter-and-blues room and the open-air Broadside.
The CBD and Warehouse District carry the touring tier: The Fillmore, Joy Theater, Civic Theatre, Orpheum, and Saenger for theaters; The Howlin' Wolf, Republic, and Three Keys for clubs; Smoothie King Center when the act needs an arena. What you hear is the point: brass band, second-line funk, traditional and modern jazz, bounce, swamp blues, and zydeco cross-pollinate nightly, and half the best shows are door-charge rooms that never touch a national ticketing platform. The New Orleans feed on Rager tracks it all in one list, from Frenchmen Street sets to Fillmore headliners.
New Orleans doesn't have a music scene so much as a music metabolism. Live music is how the city breathes, seven nights a week. Frenchmen Street in the Marigny is the densest few blocks of live music in America: The Spotted Cat and Snug Harbor for traditional and modern jazz, d.b.a. for brass and roots, Blue Nile and The Maison stacking multiple sets a night. A few blocks over in the French Quarter, Preservation Hall has run all-acoustic traditional jazz sets since 1961, with House of Blues and the Toulouse Theatre carrying the touring calendar nearby.
Uptown and Carrollton hold the city's funk cathedrals: Tipitina's, founded in 1977 as a home base for Professor Longhair, is still the room every New Orleans musician treats as sacred ground, and the Maple Leaf Bar on Oak Street has hosted brass-band nights for decades. Le Bon Temps Roulé and Carrollton Station keep the neighborhood-bar end of Uptown alive. Downriver, the Bywater and St. Claude corridor is the scrappy side of the scene: Saturn Bar's time-capsule interior, Vaughan's Lounge (made famous by Kermit Ruffins' Thursday nights), Siberia's punk-meets-brass bookings, and Poor Boys. Mid-City adds Chickie Wah Wah's songwriter-and-blues room and the open-air Broadside.
The CBD and Warehouse District carry the touring tier: The Fillmore, Joy Theater, Civic Theatre, Orpheum, and Saenger for theaters; The Howlin' Wolf, Republic, and Three Keys for clubs; Smoothie King Center when the act needs an arena. What you hear is the point: brass band, second-line funk, traditional and modern jazz, bounce, swamp blues, and zydeco cross-pollinate nightly, and half the best shows are door-charge rooms that never touch a national ticketing platform. The New Orleans feed on Rager tracks it all in one list, from Frenchmen Street sets to Fillmore headliners.
This week in New Orleans
Upcoming shows
Tonight
House of Blues NOLA · French Quarter
Tipitina's · Uptown
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Tomorrow
Tipitina's · Uptown
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Three Keys · Warehouse District
Three Keys · Warehouse District
Sat, Aug 22
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