Long Tall Marcia Ball Rocks Phil Brady's in Baton Rouge

Long Tall Marcia Ball

Phil Brady's Bar & Grill
4848 Government St
Baton Rouge, LA 70806-5907
(225) 927-3786

Friday night, October 15, 2010


Long Tall Marcia Ball barreled through Phil Brady’s Bar & Grill like a cannon ball Friday night.  Phil Brady’s is one of those priceless hole-in-the wall bars where music, food, and alcohol mix organically every night to produce some kind of magic.  A guy or a girl might get lucky; a loner can sit and listen to music, daydream or forget the cares of the day; the gregarious can always find a willing audience.

But, when Marcia Ball comes to town, she alone is the magic that draws everyone but the halt and the lame to this generically cool bar on Government Street in Baton Rouge. (Note: when we walked in at 9:20 pm, I walked right by a woman well over six feet tall in her short heels with short gray streaked hair.  Guess who that was.  She was having a conversation with an older gent, cool and casual, saying hello to friends on their way to their seats. Marcia Ball is no prima donna.  Her home is in Austin, TX, but she lived in Evangeline dorm while going to LSU and these are her kind of people.)

Louisiana is one of the only places in the USA that seems to have figured out how to accommodate musicians, dancers, and listeners.  Set the band up on a small elevated stage, set the tables up far enough from the band stand to give them a good sight line to the stage, and in the middle of this sandwich, have a clear space for dancers to come up and let it all hang out.  People in New Orleans may prefer to free style to the sounds of  brass and funk bands on Frenchman Street, but west of there the music is like a magnet that draws partners dancers like iron filings to the dance floor and keeps them there.

Tonight, Phil Brady’s is standing room only at $15 a head. $75 got you a table for the night. and every table to the back of the hall is jammed. Standing roomers found space on the bar side, or way in the back, or, like us, scored a great space in a doorway not ten feet from lanky Marcia Ball.

There she is, long legs crossed, sitting side-saddle on a tattered red stool and pounding the daylights out of her trusty electric piano. Her rollicking piano style has the deeply ingrained sound of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Her ballads and blues range from wistful longing to downright sexy. Two minutes after Marcia steps onto the stage, she had us in the palm of her long fingered hands. From then on, the dance floor becomes a tidal zone.  She begins to sing, the dance floor fills up, she finishes a song, the dance floor empties, again and again.

Marcia is short on patter and long on her glorious repertoire of swamp pop, blues, and boogie-woogie.   Raised in Texas, Ball has a genetic feel for the music of this region. In two giant one and a half hour sets, she plays every song I’ve ever heard on her CDs. Except better.

When this woman gets going, she’s a force of nature. Her one leg atop the other pulses like a metronome. Being so close to the dance floor, she looks up from time to time, makes eye contact with couples on the dance floor, and grins at the boomerang effect her energy is creating. Her four-piece band is tighter than the springs on a swiss watch. The sax man and lead guitarist routinely reel off riffs that cause dancers to pause mid move to hoot and the audience in the chairs to holler. Live music like this could be dangerous to your health if you had a heart condition.

For her encore, Marcia Ball returns to the stage alone to sing an elegaic ballad, “My Father Was A Fisherman,” about the shrinking Louisiana wetlands and its economic and cultural effect on the Pelican State. It’s a sad lullaby for the evening, a reminder that we are the wardens of our regions and need to stand up to end the devastation of the wetlands if Louisiana is to keep its heritage intact for its children and grandchildren.

Message sent loud and clear, her band steps back up to the bandstand and rips into Ball’s well-know anthem, “It’s Party Time.” There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that’s precisely what we’ve been doing for the past three and a half hours.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Yep, your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's Marcia herself talking with fans ten minutes before she steps onto the stage.
 

Here she goes, her long legs pumping to the rhythms of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast

Limbs and hair fly as dancers revel in Marcia's boogie woogie style.
 

Next time I'm at Phil Brady's, I've got to try one of those 25 cent jello shots!

And sit down here outside to recover.

Comments

[Jan]

Thanks, Paul, for thinking of me and sharing your great time with me. I've had the extreme good luck of seeing/hearing Marcia Ball in several special places and I love her every time. Anytime I eat watermelon I think of her (and her song). Hey, I'll tell you a story about watermelon sometime.

See you on the dance floor.

[Paul aka pt at large]

Yep, Watermelon Time was one of the songs she sang.
I'm looking forward to a dance and your watermelon story.