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Jazzfest in Jersey
Some expatriates know what it means to miss New Orleans - and their friends are learning
Crowd at Michael Arnone's 10th Annual Crawfish Fest, June 6, 1999 Photo by Ellen G. Brier
By Steven E. Brier
Contributing writer/The Times-Picayune
June 13, 1999STANHOPE, N.J. - It was a scene from any number of Jazzfests, with the sounds of Boozoo Chavis floating over the field, the crowd by the stage stirring up a cloud of dust while two-stepping, and Mojo poles held aloft as signposts. The aroma of boiling crawfish and alligator sausage being barbecued tantalized tastebuds as it wafted over the crowd, pushed along by the breeze rippling the maple trees as it rolled off the Allamuchy Mountains in northwestern New Jersey. Wait a minute here. Maple trees? Mountains? New Jersey? That's not Jazzfest.
Well, yes and no. It's Michael Arnone's 10th Annual Crawfish Fest, an event that began when some folks who left Louisiana during the oil bust of the 1980s got homesick for crawfish, good music and maybe a little beer.
"It's like a Jazzfest with elbow room," said Gordon Scallan, looking across the crowd on the afternoon of June 6 as Clarence "Frogman" Henry played in the background. Scallan, of Marksville, La., should know from Jazzfest, having been selling crawfish bread and other items there for 13 years.
And like Jazzfest, it was a chance for people to listen to good music, eat good food and yes, drink a little beer.
But unlike Jazzfest, there was only one stage, parking was plentiful and the crowd was not too big, with about 12,000 people showing up for the two-day festival.
The weather was perfect for an outdoor event, with a weekend normally reserved for weddings lending its pastel skies, wispy clouds and moderate temperatures to an old-fashioned crawfish boil, albeit one about 1,000 miles out of place.
Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys helped get Saturday's crowd of about 4,000 off their lawn chairs and on their feet, two-stepping with more enthusiasm than style, stirring up dust that cool breezes rolling off the adjacent hills quickly blew away.
Doreen Lysebo, from nearby Liberty Township, was enjoying her unplanned exposure to Louisiana. "I think crawfish boiled tastes better than Maine lobster any day," Lysebo said, swaying to the sounds of Boozoo Chavis. She and her husband, Martin, dropped by the festival because it was a pleasant afternoon and they wanted to see what a crawfish festival was.
What this particular festival was, was 10 bands, 15,000 pounds of crawfish, four beer trucks and a handful of chefs from Louisiana, set up in an open field near the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border, about 50 miles west of New York City. What once was a handful of friends hunting for some food has grown into an event sponsered by local (New Jersey) newspapers, cable channels and a radio station, as well as Offbeat magazine, Louisianaradio.com and the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, taking months to set up. Once held in people's back yards, it now covers several large open fields in Waterloo Village, a business development in Stanhope. Or, since it's New Jersey, you can say it's Exit 25 off I-80.
Instead of fighting for a parking place near the Fair Grounds, hoping that their parked car won't break one of New Orleans' obscure parking rules, festival-goers here show up by car or bus, driving down a two-lane country road, past a Boy Scout retreat and park in the fields near the stage. Coolers are strictly forbidden, but most of the items long banned by Jazzfest as crowds choked the Fair Grounds are welcome here. Groups of people pulling wagons loaded like a scene from "The Grapes of Wrath" show up in late afternoon and find good spots to spread out. Those less enthralled with Louisiana culture than their parents -- or spouses -- decamp to the edges of the field to read books, play baseball or watch in amazement the obscure (to New Jersey) foods being prepared in the various booths.
The food ranges from the aforementioned crawfish -- cooked in 1,000 gallon tubs and requiring a crane to lift them out -- and alligator sausage to red beans and rice, crawfish bread, po-boys, shrimp Creole and barbecued shrimp, to name but a few. For the less adventuresome, two booths sold hamburgers and hot dogs, mostly to the younger set.
Ashley Cigali of Covington, La., came up with her parents to sell her original jewelry at the request of her sister, one of the festival organizers. In an effort to broaden the lineup in the booth, the Cigalis also had Mardi Gras Beads, chicory coffee and other New Orleans tchotkes for sale. The beads, priced at a dollar and up, were an instant hit, being cleaned out in a couple of hours, leaving the family scrambling for more to sell on Sunday.
Shon Sims, president of the NY/NJ chapter of the LSU Alumni Association, set up a table and banners early Saturday, hoping to track down some of the 3,500 alumni in the tri-state area. Other LSU alumni staked out a section of the field stage left, serving as an impromptu crawfish-eating etiquette headquarters for the New Jerseyians around them. Sims said he expected to see the Tulane and Loyola associations at some time during the weekend, saying it was too good an opportunity to pass up. "I've met 25 new people (LSU graduates) already today," he said, just two hours after the festival gates opened.
And though the festival started as a way to help homesick expatriates deal with the bayou blues, the majority of those attending had little or no connection to Louisiana.
Steve Ginsberg, 39, a graphic designer from Montville, N.J., had visited New Orleans twice, and that apparently was enough to give him an appreciation for the music and food. His platter of crawfish didn't stand a chance, being devoured while Ginsberg tapped his feet in time to music from Rosie Ledet. His daughter Sharona, 12, was not as enamored of either, watching in amazement (with a touch of disgust mixed in) as Ginsberg peeled, pinched and sucked at the crawfish, retreating after a bit to the safety of a book. "I finally ate some," she later said. "I might try them again, sometime."
More appreciative was Charlie Sjoberg, a warehouse manager from Dover, N.J. "This is the first time I've eaten crawfish," he said, sitting up close to the stage where John Mooney and Bluesiana were playing. "I like it."
There were other signs that The crowd seemed perplexed to see a washboard used as a musical instrument and equally befuddled when band members switched in and out of Cajun French both in song and when talking with the audience. More than a few people went looking for some sort of utensils to use on the crawfish, and the people serving the etouffee, boudin and po-boys seemed to spend as much time explaining the food as they did serving it.
Louisiana colloquialisms used by the emcee and food vendors stopped several people in their tracks, but one of the easiest ways to tell the Orleanians from the locals, easily as good as watching them eat crawfish, was to watch the beer lines.
Anyone who wanted a beer had to go to a tent and show two IDs to get a wristband. Before they could get in line to buy a beer, they had to pass an army of security guards there to ensure that no one without a band got in line. There was a two-beer limit per trip (open plastic cups only), taking the services of five people to collect the money, pour the drink and hand over the cups, causing some griping among those accustomed to the speed of a French Quarter bartender on Lundi Gras.
But the music kept everyone moving.
Alan Grunstein and Denise Lang had come with Denise's younger brother Chris. Chris, who said he used to live on Maple Street in New Orleans, was balking at demands to leave when George Porter came on stage. Within minutes, Grunstein and Lang were dancing at the front of the stage, their earlier demands to leave floating away with the dust from their feet.
The little festival that could
By Steven E. Brier
Contributing writer/The Times-Picayune
June 13, 1999STANHOPE, NJ - In the mid 1980s, the price of oil plummeted, and thousands of people who made their livings either in the oil industry or catering to it had to scramble to find work.
Many of those latter-day Okies ended up in the Northeast where there was work to be had, but the lifestyle -- and food -- was different from what had been left behind.
Michael Arnone, an electrician used to working on large industrial and commercial projects, had come to northern New Jersey when his work in Louisiana dried up. He immediately found that though work was available, some other things he valued were not.
"I came up here in '85 and stayed for a few years. Back when I first came up here, you couldn't go out and get the foods I was used to," Arnone said. "I'm used to catching my own catfish and frying it right up. You couldn't do that here.
"If I wanted fried catfish, I had to go to the seafood place and have him order it. It would take a week and you'd never know how fresh it was and where it came from."
So Arnone said he did what came naturally.
"I was homesick. So I started getting together with friends," he said. "You know how we do it at home. I just wanted a crawfish boil with a few bands, a few friends, and a few kegs of beer."
When their backyard boils started getting bigger, he decided to make it slightly more formal.
"We moved to Suntan Lake," he said. "I had two bands and 300 pounds of crawfish. I expected 1,000 people. I got 70."
But those 70 were very happy people, so he did it again the next year. And the next. And the next.
"It was mostly a party. But it's been big for the past couple of years. Now I have all these vendors I know, mostly friends of mine from New Orleans and Marksville come on up."
Arnone can still remember the people who were at the first party, and said some still show up.
And business has gotten better, too. Arnone says he spends about three months a year in New Jersey, mostly setting up for his crawfish festival, and some of his vendor friends say they run into him around the country, setting up other Louisiana-themed festivals.
© 1999, The Times-Picayune.