The Lineup: The band line-up for the festival was extraordinary and included: Lady Dee, Little Porter & The Zydeco Hustlers and J. Paul Jr. & The Zydeco Nubreedz on Friday, and Dora & The Zydeco Badboys Leroy Thomas & The Roadrunners, Lil Brian Terry & The Travelers, Nooney & The Zydeco Floaters, Step Rideau & The Zydeco Outlaws, Keith Frank & The Soileau Zydeco Band and Rosie Ledet & The Zydeco Playboys on Saturday. At the clubs in the evening, you could also go see Boozoo Chavis, Roy Carrier and Brian Jack, as well as the festival performers. In addition, Friday night at the Jamm included a gumbo cookoff, and a dance contest with prizes ranging from $75 to $250 for which I was asked to be one of 4 judges. (more about that later).

The Crowd: The crowd cheered, chanted, screamed their appreciation of the music and bands, danced and was incredibly friendly and mellow, for so many folks hanging out for hours. Friday night the crowd exceeded 3000 and on Saturday I would guess more than 9000 attended. From a dance perspective, anywhere near the stage was very crowded during the headliner acts, but if you didn’t mind moving further back, you could dance between the aisles near your table (or in my case sometimes on my chair!). As a newcomer to the area, I found that most of the dancing was with folks I already I knew from Louisiana, Texas, Denver and San Diego and there was minimal dance interaction with strangers, although lots of friendly conversation and commentary. If you decide to attend next year, I would highly recommend you bring a dance partner, or come with a group of dancing friends.

The Festival Grounds: The festival itself was held in the area of the Crosby Fairgrounds, in what appeared to be a rodeo site. This large outside arena had a covered roof, with bleacher seats on the side. The promoters set up well over a hundred tables and chairs on the main floor, plus left room for a large wooden dance floor (about half the size of Alameda’s Eagle Hall), altho had they tripled it, there would still not have been enough room for all the dancers. It didn’t matter because by the time the main bands got to performing, the area in front of the stage was packed solid with folks who wanted to get up close to the bands, rock show style. There were also lots of good, reasonably priced food booths, and booths selling CDs, festival and band T-shirts, and Western wear. The logistics to park and get in and out of the festival was well organized and security was evident but the crowd was so mellow it almost seemed unnecessary.

The Bands: I was really looking forward to seeing many of the Texas bands whom I’d only known by reputation. These included Little Porter, Lady D and Dora. I was already a big fan on the other Texas bands, J Paul Jr., Leroy Thomas, Lil' Brian and Step Rideau and the Louisiana team of Keith Frank and Rosie Ledet. Talking to the locals, I discovered the bands they were most looking forward to were Nooney, Keith Frank and J Paul.  Nooney was mentioned a lot (including one woman who was overheard shouting repeatedly, "Nooney, I want to marry you".

The opening act on Friday night was Lady D, who started the evening with the ever popular "I Got Loaded". She had a tough task, to get the crowd who was trickling in warmed up, but as her set progressed, folks started moving to the dance floor and at one point she even came down from the stage to join them. Lady D put on a spirited performance. 

Act #2 was Little Porter and the Hustlers, who I hadn't seen before. Because I was a judge for the dance contest that occurred during their set, I was not able to focus on their set; however my friends in the audience said they sounded terrific and thought Porter was very talented. 

Saturday, Dora & the Zydeco Badboys had the challenge of warming up the crowd. But it didn’t take long before the dance floor was comfortably full - good energy but lots of room to dance. The environment was very conducive to meeting folks, switching dance partners and watching everyone's dance style. It was a very friendly crowd. 

The good dancing continued into Lil' Brian's set, a Crosby area hometown boy. I was interested to learn that Lil' Brian & his band had toured Russia & when I asked him about it backstage after his set, he said it was a fascinating trip & that, understandably, very few Russians were familiar with zydeco music and didn't know what to expect when they played.

Following Brian was Leroy Thomas and the Zydeco Roadrunners, dressed up in orange and gold shirts. They looked and sounded terrific, and were enthusiastically received by the crowd.

Next up was a band I'd never heard play before, but which had great word-of-mouth… Nooney & the Zydeco Floaters. And from their first notes, they lived up to their advance press. Nooney is an extremely talented accordion player and vocalist, with a strong command of the stage, and a dynamic, energetic act. He shows ferocious concentration when he plays the accordion and yet his interaction with the crowd is teasing and friendly. The women love him, and he announced to the gals that they shouldn't be shy to come up to him when they saw him wandering around the fairgrounds (yeah, right!). A very tough act to follow. But the show must go on, and it did, with Step Rideau and the Zydeco Outlaws. 

Step was the absolute best I have ever seen him. The structure required to play on a big festival stage did wonders to focus his act. With no time to indulge in the sometimes free-form instrumental solos the band enjoys when they have more time to perform, his show was tight and moved briskly. 

Step has some great songs in his repertoire and the band played them with style. Plus Step has matured into a commanding stage presence: intense in his accordion playing, larger than life in his gestures, glorious in his vocalizations and effective in his interaction with his many fans. It was a bravado performance. 

The last act I saw at Zydeco Jamm was Keith Frank & the Soileau Zydeco Band (circumstances forced me to leave prior to Rosie Ledet's set). And this was one of the most interesting sets to me. I've seen Keith perform similarly structured shows many times, including last year's New Orleans Jazz Festival and Long Beach Cajun-Zydeco Festival. The songs ranged from straight-on zydeco to his pop-songs-set-to-zydeco medleys.  But this was the first time I understood how brilliantly the show could work. It seems Keith's set was made to order for an arena setting. The spotlights and huge stage, with roaring fans in front of him, was the perfect venue for his show, and the energy could not be  contained.  Imagine thousands of people, shouting back "Keith Frank", when the band sang out "What's His Name"…. it was spine-tingling. Keith & the band were dressed in orange shirts covered with Asian designs. I was backstage as the set started with Keith playing accordion off stage while the band warmed up the crowd. During this time, I watched in fascination as Keith gestured to those on stage to adjust the sound. For the Zydeco Jamm, Keith had some show-biz moments as he shared the stage with a karate act. Actually he was part of the karate act, splitting a board with his foot, and later, punching through another board with his fist (all I could think of when he was about to do this was, how could he risk damaging his hands?). He also brought what may be the newest member of the Frank family on stage, a 3 or 4 year old little girl named Julie. She danced around at the front of the stage, flashing smiles, dwarfed by Keith at her side. It was an impressive performance by a seasoned showman with a firm vision of how to present his music.

Judging: Prior to my arrival in Texas I had had some email correspondence with Steve "Red" Delasbour, the festival promoter, and when I arrived, Red asked me if I would like to be put to work. I said sure so he asked me to join the two local residents, Ron Nelson and Jerry Dial, and Greg Benusa from San Diego, to judge the dance contest and the "Battle of the Bands". For the latter, we were given sheets with criteria to rate, including introduction, presentation, wardrobe, crowd participation, and musicianship, and were told to rank each band on each factor and then add up the scores. For the Friday night dance contest, during the first few rounds we were asked to eliminate a certain percentage or number of couples and then, when we got down to 6 couples, to rank them and select 3 winners. The actual process was very exciting. The couples danced to Little Porter and the judges were on stage looking down on the amazing dancers and enthusiastic audience. There was such a commotion of activity it was hard to focus on each couple's particular strength. Eventually however, we did get down to our semi-finalists, and remarkably, all 4 judges ranked the top couples in the same order, with the top 2 couples almost a dead heat. For me, the winners we chose showed great innovation on some moves and yet still managed to demonstrate incredible grace and style in executing ‘the basics’.

The Texas Dance Style: Texas zydeco dancing at its most uninhibited is something to be seen. The best I can do is to say it is more down & dirty than what I’ve seen in Louisiana. A lot of humping and bumping and other moves that I could not begin to describe and still keep this review rated PG. Some of the dancers in the dance contest told me after the judging that they tried to keep their dancing cleaner during the contest because it was a family event.

The Cha-Cha Slide: Between band sets, the organizers provided some great local entertainment, such as choreographed zydeco cheerleaders, and a marching band, to name a few examples. In addition, a DJ played a huge variety of zydeco songs in between acts. But nothing compared to scene that broke out when the DJ played the Cha-Cha Slide, an infectious shuffle that is apparently all the rage, a kick to do, and easy to learn. The slide was played during each break (about 9 times throughout the 2 day festival) and by the last time, I would estimate about 50% of the crowd was doing it, including the jammed dance floor, folks dancing between the tables, on the tables, on their chairs, down the aisles, in the stands, out by the food booths, and even, it was reported to me, the entire line of 30+ folks waiting to get into the restrooms. That's about 4500 people doing the Cha-Cha Slide, folks!  It was a sight to behold.

The Clubs: We only managed to get to one club after the festival, and that was the grand opening for Club Boozoo. Brian Jack played Friday night and Boozoo Chavis played Saturday. The club itself was really nice. Huge murals (maybe 10 x 10 ft) of zydeco musicians were painted in shades of black, gray and white on the walls and behind the stage. The acoustics were good. In addition, there was a large wooden dance floor (although it needed some maintenance to make it more slippery), lots of tables and areas to lean against, a large side bar, and pool tables in the back. One evening our admission ticket even included free crawfish and corn! Brian Jack sounded great and I'm looking forward to seeing him again.

Conclusion: The Zydeco Jamm is a first rate festival, which in many ways resembled a mainstream rock & roll event. I was astounded by the size and professionalism of the festival, impressed by the energy, professionalism and polish of the bands, and charmed by the enthusiasm and friendliness of the crowd. If you go mainly to dance, be sure to bring a dance partner or a group of dance friends, and you will have a great time. Or just go to watch the show… you will not be disappointed.