Jake Clapp

1 week ago | nola.com | Jake Clapp

Last summer, Toups' Family Meal served up 70,000 meals to kids across Orleans Parish who were at risk of going hungry while school was out. The initiative, which is run by Toups' Meatery founders Amanda and Isaac Toups, recently restarted its work for summer 2025 and is facing an equally busy June, July and August. To help raise funds for its work delivering food to food insecure families this summer, Toups' Family Meal is throwing Toups Fest on Sunday, June 22, at the Broadside.

1 week ago | nola.com | Jake Clapp

Not long after Frank Perez’s book “In Exile: The History and Lore Surrounding New Orleans Gay Culture and Its Oldest Bar” was published in 2012, the New Orleans historian was sitting in Cafe Lafitte In Exile when Rip and Marsha Naquin-Delain came into the French Quarter gay bar. Perez had known the couple from seeing them at neighborhood bars and interviewed them for the book. Rip and Marsha had met in 1973 and, in 1993, became New Orleans’ first same-sex couple to register as domestic partners.

2 weeks ago | nola.com | Jake Clapp

It can be a little intimidating at first to record at Royal Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, says Big Chief Gerard “Bo Jr.” Dollis of the Wild Magnolias. “Going in, you see Al Green’s Grammys in there. You see his gold records and Tina Turner’s [records],” Dollis says about the storied recording studio where Green, Turner, Chuck Berry, Buddy Guy, Keith Richards and other music greats cut albums.

3 weeks ago | nola.com | Jake Clapp

Jess Joy’s new album “Won’t Be Kicked Out The Garden” is about learning to live in a world of constant crises. The New Orleans musician and artist began working on what would become her third full-length album during the Covid pandemic, while she was living in Los Angeles, but was still working on it up until a few months ago. Just those five years saw global lockdowns and health emergencies, political and economic instability, climate crisis, natural disasters and devastating war.

1 month ago | nola.com | Jake Clapp

In 2022, Samara Joy’s album “Linger Awhile” brought a lot of attention to the then 23-year-old vocalist. The album, Joy’s second full-length and her first on the Verve record label, won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album and helped Joy win the Grammy for Best New Artist — the first jazz-focused artist to claim the award since Esperanza Spalding in 2011. The success of “Linger Awhile” presented new opportunities, Joy says. But it also came quickly and unexpectedly.