Sounds like it was a party sponsored by Gibson... read all the way to the bottom.
New Orleans Preservation Hall reopens on wary note
Fri 28 Apr 2006 1:53 PM ET
By Russell McCulley
NEW ORLEANS, April 28 (Reuters) - The Preservation Hall jazz shrine reopens this weekend for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, and for a stellar group of musicians it is more than a New Orleans homecoming.
"That's my purpose in life -- to keep this music alive," Preservation Hall Jazz Band trombonist Lucien Barbarin said.
With a lineage that includes legendary New Orleans drummer Paul Barbarin, a great uncle, and composer and guitarist Danny Barker, a second cousin, it is no surprise Barbarin, 49, is a man on a mission.
But it will take more than one man's ambition to keep the nightclub and jazz alive in a city still struggling to recover from America's costliest natural disaster.
The Aug. 29 hurricane destroyed the homes and instruments of hundreds of musicians and closed the venues where they played, shutting down the music scene at least temporarily.
Preservation Hall, the tiny 45-year-old French Quarter club nearly synonymous with the city, is home base for Barbarin and his band. The members were scattered across several states after the storm.
The venue's owners are unsure whether it can make enough money to stay open, even as large crowds are expected for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which started Friday.
"There still is uncertainty," said Ben Jaffe, whose parents founded Preservation Hall. The club has received enough private donations to keep operating for a few months, he said. But the outlook for autumn, the end of the New Orleans tourist season, is less certain.
"We feel we will make it through the summer," Jaffe said. "Then we'll see what happens.
"It's exactly like it was when my parents opened the place in 1961. We have absolutely no idea what our future is here in New Orleans."
That uncertainty permeates much of the city's music scene. Clubs are open in repopulated parts of town, and musicians are finding work. But many still live outside the city, and the tourist trade that kept many local musicians employed is in a major post-Katrina slump.
Moreover, many artists are finding more lucrative work in cities like Houston and Atlanta, where thousands of displaced New Orleanians evacuated.
"A lot of people are not even coming back," said Preservation Hall Jazz Band guitarist and banjo player Carl LeBlanc, who now lives in Houston. "A lot of New Orleans musicians, the ones who need this place's soul, they're coming back just to refuel every once in a while."
LeBlanc and many others are struggling with insurance companies and uncertainties over rebuilding devastated neighborhoods. "They're giving us so much trouble trying to get back," he said.
Still, the mood at the hall's reopening party on Thursday night was celebratory. The club received a donation of instruments from guitar maker Gibson USA, which flew in U2 guitarist The Edge for the occasion.
He joined several New Orleans musicians for a version of U2's "Vertigo." Later, the house band and several dozen party-goers paraded through the French Quarter to Bourbon Street, then circled back to end with a lively rendition of the Professor Longhair standard "Mardi Gras in New Orleans."
I´m so proud of Edge´s attitudes, I´m so happy cause Edge performed wearing his wonder Music Rising shirt and guitar. I just knew he was there...I had a feeling he could be in New Orleans to support, with his best, his charity foundation. Everyday I post in my blog the things from New Orleans. 
