On the heels of the 2025 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, The Big Easy Cruise announces artist additions to the 2026 line up to continue the celebration of the spirit, music, food and culture of the Crescent City. Grammy Award-winning artist Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Marcia Ball, Johnny Sansone and Pine Leaf Boys will return for their second consecutive voyage, while Grammy-winning duo Larkin Poe and New Orleans native Kyle Roussel will perform on board for the first time.

Following the overwhelming success of the sold out 2025 voyage in only its second year, StarVista Live’s Big Easy Cruise will set sail again January 18 – 25, 2026. The ship will depart from Ft. Lauderdale and will stop in New Orleans and Cozumel, Mexico aboard the luxurious Holland America Line m/s Eurodam.

Blackbird Presents is thrilled to announce Life is a Carnival: Last Waltz Tour ‘24. This epic tour continues the tradition of capturing the excitement of The Band’s historic 1976 Thanksgiving concert at the famed Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, hailed as the greatest live concert event of all time.

My first visit to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (a.k.a. "Jazzfest") was sort of a happy accident. In 1988, I was a young 20-something Grateful Dead tourhead, and I heard rumors that Little Feat was going to play their first show since the death of Lowell George a decade earlier. The allure was heightened by the fact that the reformed band would play on a riverboat floating on the Mississippi in New Orleans.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival stands as a radiant beacon of America's diverse musical scene. This multifaceted gathering represents an immersive journey across the musical map of America and beyond. Describing its innumerable treasures can prove daunting, as there is a veritable banquet of sound that is impossible to fully consume, let alone encapsulate in a single piece. But in attempting to relay the highlights of the 2023 festival's first weekend, one must reconcile with the abundance of excellence presented.

Today Petaluma Records released the official video for “Carnival Time” featuring Irma Thomas, Cyril Neville, George Porter Jr., Ian Neville and Ivan Neville. The new recording is the third single unveiled from the upcoming soundtrack release Take Me To The River: New Orleans.

On March 3 & 4, Jon Fishman of Phish, George Porter Jr. (Meters) & Cyril Neville will come together for 2 nights of shows in Portland, ME to raise money for the Maine charity, Go Big For Hunger (gobigforhunger.com).  Go Big For Hunger was founded in spring 2016 by life-long Mainer and live music madman, Greg Martens. He was inspired by Imagine There's No Hunger, a global campaign created to realize John Lennon's vision for a world without hunger.

Trombone Shorty’s Voodoo Threauxdown is a curated mini-festival, a history of New Orleans music and a vision of where that music is headed in the 21st century. “I want to share the music and the vibe of my city,” Trombone Shorty says.

Grateful Web has the first exclusive music video from the new, hard groovin jamband, DAGNASTERPUS, created by road warrior/composer Tree Adams. "Crawlin' With Vipers" is the band's first single from their self-titled debut record.

Singer/songwriter Lisa St. Lou has just released a scathing new video for “Ain’t No Good Man,” the title track off her debut full-length album, out now.