December 26, 2003
New Orleans / Baton Rouge, LA
Tracy Shedd Tour
Writer/Photography: Steve Frank
The
day began for me at around 4:30am to head out with Tracy Shedd to go to
New Orleans and Baton Rougé, LA. for a short trip. The day before
I had been invited to Her and Her Husbands to celebrate Christmas with their
Family.
The whole trip was a lot shorter than Jimmy (Tracy’s Husband and ex
Audio Explorations front-man) had calculated. Which was a good thing, I
would guess. That gave us more time to find our way to Tulane University’s
radio station -after seeing where they would be playing later in the evening.
(From my notes: We had a 4pm radio interview, by that I mean Tracy Shedd.-
This took place @ Tulane University’s radio station. This is where
we had some difficulty pin-pointing the exact street address. After a few
times around the general vicinity and a phone call to the station we eventually
made it.) Oh..., I forgot to mention that Tracy had not been feeling all
that well the past couple of days, and was not feeling that much better
today.
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Back to the trip, it was nearly 7pm, Cash & Richard (two members of Tracy Shedd's touring band- ed.) were going to grab a bite to eat at this place called Angeli’s, I asked if I could join them. We were told that the food there was really good, inexpensive and nice sized portions. We were correctly informed. We finished our meals and made our way back to the venue ‘El Matador’ in the French Quarter. There was still plenty of time before the show, so I decided to take a little walk around, and on my way back I stopped in to this bistro styled place ‘envie’ about a block from the venue. The Barista at envie’s was a little cutie, oops, I mean both Barista’s are. Anyway, I placed my order of a mocha latté, sat down and started doodling. I looked up and noticed these two women sitting across from me, one of them sounded as if she were from Staten Island or Queens, but Nooo, Her and her friend (Karen & Memory) are locals. These girls were very nice as we talked, Karen had recently gone to Italy and was putting together a photo book, and Memory works for a plastic surgeon and was in the midst of studying some booklet on a piece of equipment she would be using.
Tracy
Shedd had been asked to play these two shows by this other band ‘the
Myrtles’, the reason why they were asked to play is due to the building
in which the bar (El Matador) is part of is being sold. This information
was relayed to me by way of one of the lovely bartender’s working (Zaran).Well at nearly 11pm Tracy Shedd took the stage, and with all the efforts to make the evening more of a success, at the end of their set, the fatigue and persisting cold that Tracy had prevailed in creating a feeling throughout the rest of the band, of not giving as good of a performance. Although I found this not to be the case via the audiences response, it was merely what the band felt. The next evening Tracy Shedd will be playing in Baton Rougé, and we’ll be leaving after the Myrtles finish playing for Baton Rougé.
