2020 has not been much about Festive Living. It's more about quiet living and reminiscing of festivals from the past, dreaming of when we can go back to them. This year during the cancelled Jazzfest weekend, I made a big board of all the "Lagniappes" that people have given me over the years, and hung it on my wall to remind us of the good times. Last week I was saddened to learn of the passing of Joe Perez, aka Big Chief Pony Dancer, who is tied to many of my festival experiences and had given me many of the buttons and other trinkets on this board.
There are two sides to my festival family, which I will call Home and Travelling. “Home” includes all the northeast festivals stemming from RI Cajun/ Rhythm
and Roots, Grey Fox, and more. Travelling
festivals are the New Orleans Jazz Fest
& other destination festivals around the country. As a
founding member and face of the Petdekat Krewe,
Joe was at the top of my Travelling
festival family tree. Back in 1998,
preparing for our second trip to New Orleans Jazz Fest together, My husband Joe and I were
searching for information on the internet, using the first computer we bought
the prior year (which was so expensive we couldn’t afford a return trip to Jazz
Fest in 1997) . We came across the Jazz
Fest Forum, a chat board hosted on the Jazz and Heritage website. It had a purple background with white text so
some people refer to it as the Purple board. Here you could exchange all kinds of festival
info and travel tips with others from all around the country. They had handles or nicknames, usually incorporating
their home state or city like Stevemiami,
Neenatlanta, and Bethesdaboy. There was one named Ponydancer who was always
talking about something called Petdekat.
He and stevemiami were selling T-shirts online with a really cool design
of a sax-playing cat partying late into the night. On the back it said “Petdekat Krewe”. While we were a little skeptical of dealing
with people online, we wanted to get the shirts and meet some of these people,
so we sent a postal money order to a
Florida address and received our
shirts in time for fest. That year,
wearing the shirts at the fairgrounds, we met dozens of other like-minded folks
from all over, and that was the beginning of our travelling fest family.
Over the years, the Petdekat Krewe, whose mission is to seek out live music and have fun in a “loosely disorganized” fashion, put together many events and get togethers, like crawfish boils in Audubon Park on the Tuesday between festival weekends, shows at night clubs, group dinners at restaurants. Joe was at the helm of many of these events, with help from other members. Because of Joe and Steve and Petdekat Krewe, I had an instant family of festival friends from all over. While most of the meetups centered around New Orleans Jazz Fest every year, we could also go to festivals in other parts of the country and hook up with other people from the Krewe that we had initially met in New Orleans and communicated with through the online chat forum in the off-season, learning about festivals in other states. We travelled to south Florida a few times for blues festivals and most memorably the Fiesta Tropicale, which was a New Orleans themed music festival and Mardi-gras style celebration in Hollywood Florida in February. This was my favorite memory of Joe – as he rallied the krewe to be in the parade with floats, costumes, beads etc.
Some of
the musicians playing at the festival, and the out of town folks, stayed at the same hotel and it was there I
met the NJ branch of the PDKK. There are
so many friendships that grew out of the Petdekat Krewe. Because of the PDKK, we could go to a festival
anywhere and usually find people to hang out with, and get some knowledge of
the local area, which always makes it better.
We went to the first Austin City Limits festival because of a tip we got
on the board, from Swag, and hung out with him when we returned 2 years later. In 2006 we went to the Tall Stacks festival
in Cincinnati OH based on another PDK tip, and had a great time with Bryan,
Patti, Greg and Kathie from Canada, and Rhea (who has since passed). The Threadheads, a broader, more organized festival
group with a philanthropic side, arose out of the Petdekat Krewe. It was through PDKK I first met Jenn and Dave, who lived in MA for
a while before moving back to New Orleans and becoming the nucleus of many
Threadhead gatherings. Her “board name”
was IBJamn so their home became known as Chez-BJamn. Sadly, we also lost her 2 years ago due to
illness.
On the fairgrounds, Joe
was an unmistakable character, always
colorful, dancing around, passing out
“Lagniappes”. He also was in a marching
krewe at Mardi Gras called Mondo Kayo and made many elaborate costumes for
that. There are tons of photos on the
Petdekat and Mondo Kayo Facebook pages of him dressed in all his festive
regalia.
Would he had lived longer if he hadn’t lived so large?
Maybe… but then he wouldn’t have been Big Chief Ponydancer. Fest in Peace, brother. We’ll
miss you!
Right: me with Joe at Mike Arnone’s Crawfish fest in NJ.
Left, top to bottom:
1. 1. The last “lagniappe” from Joe, which I received
through another original PDK Member, at
the 2019 Threadhead Patry.
2.
Joe at the fairgrounds during Bruce
Springsteen’s Jazzfest set in 2014.
3.
With a group of Kats including Neenatlanta and some
of the ‘Lanna krewe. I’m wearing my 2001
PDK shirt.
4.
Bluekat,
Dave, Joe Perez and my Joe in
2004, one day when the fest was rained out and people gathered at the Chez-B’Jamn
