Where do I begin a blog on the Waterfront Blues Festival? Might as well start at the beginning, the source: New Orleans.

I landed here in the Crescent City yesterday afternoon, between the two ferociously musical weekends known as Jazz Fest. This is the slack time between the bookends of arguably the greatest music festival on the planet, 12 stages of brass bands, blues legends, gospel choirs, Zydeco queens, mega-jam-bands, Cajun fiddlers and rock and R&B stars returning to their roots. The city clears house between shows, sending a couple hundred thousand music fans who ventured down the first weekend back home to make way for a new horde the second. Tuesday and Wednesday fall on the eye of a sonic hurricane walled by two densely packed weekends of round-the-clock musical mayhem.

But even in the eye of the storm, the options on this Wednesday evening are daunting.  Offbeat magazine lists more than three-dozen gigs and concerts at various clubs and concert halls around town that would be worth checking out if I had the time, stamina, and credit limit. But I’m down here, I need to keep reminding myself, not to run amok and run up air-miles on my credit card, but to check out acts for WBF’s future lineups. Among the gigs I’m considering: Mayor Ray Nagin has officially declared April 30 “Walter Wolfman Washington Day,” so the funk-bluesman, his band The Roadmasters, and no doubt hundreds of his fans will be celebrating into the wee hours tonight at D.B.A. on Frenchman Street. Wolfman, one of my all time favorites, hasn’t played the Waterfront since 1999.

The slyly named Never Was Brothers (featuring guitarist Brian Stoltz, who appeared at WBF two years ago, drummer Tony Hall and other non-related alumni of the Neville Brothers band) are funking it up at the Maple Leaf. Zydeco favorite (and instigator of the two-step mosh-pit at WBF’s Zydeco Swamp Romp in 2006) Keith Frank will be sweating up a capacity crowd at the wacky bowling alley/ dance hall, Rock ‘n Bowl. And high on my hit list, a free concert at Lafayette Square featuring Austin boogie-woogie queen Marcia Ball and the neo-Cajun group, The Pine Leaf Boys. (I tried ferociously to pry the Pine Leaf guys away for a few hours from the Port Townsend Fiddle Tunes Workshop, where they are booked over the July 4 weekend this year, to headline our Zydeco Swamp Romp, but no go. Next year, dancers!).

But the big show between Jazz Fest weekends for the past seven years has been the two-night melee known as the Ponderosa Stomp. Produced by the Mystic Knights of the Mau Mau, a crazed but devoted group of local music aficionados reputed to include at least one New Orleans surgeon, the Stomp is dedicated to “celebrating the unsung heroes of rock and roll.” In years prior to Katrina the Stomp took place at Rock ‘n Bowl, with three stages running (typically two or more hours behind schedule) from mid-afternoon until the following dawn, featuring long forgotten soul queens, bluesmen, rockabilly stars of yesteryear with now silver pompadours, and many brilliant and unknown sidemen and rhythm sections who helped turn the Gulf Coast into one of the world’s great cultural wonderlands.

This year the Stomp moved to House of Blues, known to locals as ‘House of Rules’, apparently because the venue checks IDs, pats down for weapons, and tries to break up the gridlock crowds that Nawlins’ other venues seem to encourage. But the production is first rate and the stages run on time. This year’s opening night of the Stomp was, as it has always been, wildly eclectic. On the main stage, Wardell Quezergue and his New Orleans R&B Revue included such heavyweight ’sidemen’ as pianist Mac Rebennac (Dr. John), Meters’ founding drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, and guest vocalist, veteran blues woman, Jean Knight. New Orleans ‘Lost Soul Queen’ Betty Harris, who recorded a string of hits produced by Allen Toussaint before she dropped out of the music business in 1969, proved she still has the vocal power and charisma worthy of her title, and worked the crowd for everything it would give her. The house band backing her, the nine-piece Memphis instrumental group, The Bo-Keys, included trumpter Ben Cauley, the sole survivor of the fatal Wisconsin car crash that took the lives of his bandmates and Otis Redding, and guitarist Skip Bomar, whose scratchy wah-wah one hears on Isaac Hayes’ Grammy-winning “Shaft” theme (and who might very well play that part opening night at WBF with Hayes’ band). The Bo-Keys also backed soul crooner William Bell, best known for writing a string of hits for other Stax Records artists (including ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’ for Albert King) but also a formidable vocalist in his own right.

Out on the patio stage, Lafayette harmonica legend Lazy Lester and guitarist Lil’ Buck Sinegal (both of whom have appeared on our Front Porch Stage in recent years) joined Fats Domino saxophonist Herbert Hardesty in backing Houston guitarist Barbara Lynn, a lefty with a bag full of swampy guitar licks and a powerful voice whose hit, “Oh Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin’)” was covered by the Rolling Stones in ‘65. If I can ever persuade Lynn to ride Amtrak from Houston (she’s turned down huge offers from European festivals rather than fly the friendly skies) Lynn will be on a future WBF lineup for sure.

The Parish Stage featured a host of rockabilly icons and new comers: Earl Stanley and the Stereos; Deke Dickerson and the Ecofonics backing roots-rock legends Joe Clay, Barrence Whitfield, and Roy Head. The stage closed with a radical change of pace—Ornette Coleman’s longtime ‘harmolodic’ guitarist, James Blood Ulmer. Blood, the South Carolina bluesman, ventured long ago into the distant realms of celestial cacophony with Coleman, and seems to have only partly returned. Part Hendrix blues-rocker, part avante garde jazzbo, part delta bluesman, he was a slap upside the head to purists. But I dug the heck out of him.

The surprise hit of the evening, though, was former Shangri-La’s lead singer, Mary Weiss. Girlish, wearing glasses and with straight blonde hair, Weiss looked—despite her black jumpsuit—more like a high school librarian than a former rock star. It was hard to believe that it was over 40 years ago that Weiss, still in her teens, hit the top of the charts with “Leader of the Pack.” Backed by a four-piece that included former members of the Smithereens and Roxxy Music, Weiss belted out her string of hits, and her band rocked behind her. They sounded less like some melancholy oldies group, than the sort of edgy young roots rockers you’d catch at Portland’s Dantes or Duff’s Garage.

Weiss and band won’t be coming to WBF, not this year anyway. But you will be able to check out Portland’s apparent heir to their sound, Julie Strange & the Strange Tones. If the music industry made any sense, the Strange Tones—one of the toughest bands around, with a gal out front who can not only belt it with the best, but also shred on the telecaster—would be stars themselves by now. Look for their blues-rock-surf set, with Julie’s slashing guitar (reinforced by the stunning guitar work of Suburban Slim) on the Festival’s main stage, late afternoon July 4.

Off to catch Wolfman. Stay tuned…