New Orleans Jazz Fest's Bruce Springsteen coup required extra money, a schedule swap and working emailPublished: Tuesday, January 24, 2012, 9:00 PM
By Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune
The late addition of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band to the 2012 New Orleans Jazz Fest took many fans by surprise. None more so than Quint Davis, the festival's longtime producer and director.
David Grunfeld, Times-Picayune archive
Bruce Springsteen at work on the Acura Stage during the 2006 New Orleans Jazz Fest. That trip apparently made an indelible impression on him. He returns to Jazz Fest, this time with the E Street Band, for Jazz Fest 2012.
At noon on Jan. 2, Davis opened a brief email message at home from Springsteen's booking agent, Barry Bell. Even though the 2012 festival's roster was already finalized, Bell asked, might there still be room for the E Street Band?
In 2006, during the first Jazz Fest after Hurricane Katrina, Springsteen delivered what was arguably one of the most powerful and emotional performances in the festival's four-decade history. His return would automatically rank among the most hotly anticipated bookings of a festival already top-heavy with the Eagles, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, the Foo Fighters and a Beach Boys reunion.
"It wasn't possible, but how do you not?" Davis said of adding Springsteen. "It's not the sort of thing where you say, 'We'll do it next year.'"
Davis crafted a response to Bell: Yes, the festival's schedule was already set. But maybe, just maybe, he could work something out. He forwarded his reply to Bell.
Or thought he did.
At that most inopportune of moments, his new laptop, with its unfamiliar operating system, chose not to deliver outgoing email messages. Bell never received Davis' response.
When Davis hadn't heard back several hours later, he assumed the Springsteen camp was still mulling his offer. Instead, from the other side, it looked like he was snubbing Springsteen.
"There was an 18-hour period," Davis said this week, recounting the chain of events, "when it was a bad time for my email not to talk to people."
On Jan. 3, he opened another message from Bell, essentially repeating the previous day's query. Realizing his initial email had not gone through, Davis quickly got on the phone with Bell, assuring him that the festival was indeed interested in bringing back the Boss.
"A lot of things had to happen," Davis said. "We were booked. We were programmed. To have something like this fit properly and programmatically, where you don't displace other stuff, and not to mention the additional cost ... a lot of things had to happen fast on our end."
Real fast. Believing he had finalized the Jazz Fest schedule in December, Davis had planned a two-week trip in January to the West African nations of Benin and Cameroon. He was slated to depart on Jan. 7 -- which gave him three days to figure out if, and how, Jazz Fest could accommodate another major headliner.
That Bell felt comfortable approaching Davis at the last minute is testament to Springsteen's brief but remarkable relationship with the festival.
New Orleans has factored into Springsteen itineraries since at least 1975, when he rocked the Municipal Auditorium. He's also made numerous unannounced visits, as when he sat in with the Iguanas at the Maple Leaf Bar in 1992.
Times-Picayune archive
Bruce Springsteen during a 1975 performance at the Municipal Auditorium in New Orleans. He has returned to the city numerous times over the years for work and fun.
Team Springsteen acquainted itself with Jazz Fest in 2006. As part of a thorough vetting before Springsteen's appearance, his representatives visited the New Orleans Fair Grounds to, among other details, ascertain exactly what the Boss would see from the stage.
That 2006 trip, with much of the city still digging out from Katrina, apparently left an indelible impact.
Springsteen visited the site of the Industrial Canal levee breach and met with representatives of various volunteer organizations. He donated a small fortune to several local nonprofitgroups, including an $80,000 gift to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic.
At the Fair Grounds with his new, untested Seeger Sessions Band, he dedicated "My City of Ruins," with its message of defiance in the face of disaster, to New Orleans. He mocked President George W. Bush's slow storm response in an adaptation of Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live." He restored two obscure verses to an acoustic, prayer-like "When the Saints Go Marching In."
"I thought it was one of the most extraordinary things I've ever seen, and I've seen thousands of shows," Davis would later say. "Reverend Springsteen held church, and ministered to a flock."
Davis subsequently spent time on the road with the Seeger Sessions Band in Spain, building relationships with members of the Springsteen inner circle. In conversations, it became clear that Springsteen's watershed Jazz Fest moment was as memorable for the performer as the audience.
Columbia Records will release Springsteen's 17th studio album, "Wrecking Ball," on March 6. The album's first single, "We Take Care of Our Own," references post-Katrina New Orleans:
"From Chicago to New Orleans/from the muscle to the bone/from the shotgun shack to the Superdome/We yelled 'help' but the cavalry stayed home/There ain't no one hearing the bugle blown. ... Wherever this flag's flown, we take care of our own."
Given the topical tie-in of the forthcoming album, and the lingering goodwill from 2006, Springsteen's return to Jazz Fest was perhaps inevitable.
David Grunfeld, Times-Picayune archive
At Jazz Fest 2006, thousands of fans gathered around the Acura Stage to hear Bruce Springsteen with the Seeger Sessions Band.
Immediately after his initial exchange with Bell three weeks ago, Davis called his partners at AEG Live, the international entertainment conglomerate that co-produces Jazz Fest and provides the festival's financial backing. Yet another six-figure addition to the talent budget would increase the fest's financial exposure: What if rain washed out attendance that day?
"To a lot of people, risk is an ephemeral thing," Davis said. "But risk is risk. This was a big cost to pile on top of the festival."
AEG's conclusion? Go for it.
The additional expenditure also required the approval of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, the nonprofit board that owns the festival. The board approved, even though only a few committee heads were informed who the new, mystery act was.
Secrecy was paramount. Promotional campaigns for major artists' albums and tours are carefully calibrated and coordinated. Representatives of Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder committed him to Jazz Fest in December, but requested that the festival not announce his participation until other dates on his tour were confirmed. That announcement was finally made Jan. 23.
The potential Springsteen coup was even more top secret. Nothing could leak before the official unveiling of his spring American tour on Jan. 24. Thus, Davis and his team were even more tight-lipped than usual.
The producer envisioned Springsteen as the final Acura Stage act on April 29, the first Sunday, the same slot he occupied in 2006. But guitarist John Mayer was already confirmed for that spot. A clause in Mayer's contract guaranteed he would headline the main stage.
A delicate bit of music industry diplomacy ensued. Mayer's booking agent, Scott Clayton, also represents two other acts on the 2012 Jazz Fest schedule, My Morning Jacket and Rodrigo y Gabriela. Davis reassured Clayton that even if Mayer performed earlier in the day, he could still play his full show. Perhaps more importantly, he would not be moved to another stage and forced into the unenviable position of playing opposite Springsteen.
Instead, Mayer would appear on Acura between Dr. John and the E Street Band, presumably playing to a much larger crowd than he would have as headliner.
Mayer agreed to the new arrangement.
"If the E Street Band isn't big enough, we have Dr. John, John Mayer and the E Street Band, which we never would have had," Davis said. "We have a headliner as the opener."
Davis was on vacation in Benin, eating stewed chicken and rice in the city of Cotonou, when he received email confirmation that the deal was finalized.
"Fortunately, my email worked better in Benin than in my bedroom," Davis said.
Given Springsteen's history with Jazz Fest, he is "part of our festival DNA," Davis said. "We're thrilled that he still has New Orleans in his heart and that he's coming back to play Jazz Fest with the E Street Band."
Music writer Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune or 504.826.3470. Comment and read more at nola.com/music. Follow him on Twitter @KeithSperaTP.
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