Festival Spotlight: Exclusive NolaFunk NYC Contest: Win a Pair of Tickets to Michael Arnone's Crawfish Fest

In order to win, just leave a post or email me with: your name, email, and the band you're most excited to see at this year's Fest! I'll be picking a winner at random and will send email confirmation to the winner only.

Here are this year's NolaFunky headliners...

Allen Toussaint Pianist/singer/songwriter/producer Allen Toussaint has been a musical legend for more than 40 years but is currently at the peak of his popularity as a live performer based on his recent festival performances at Bonarroo and The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. His collaboration with Elvis Costello, The River In Reverse, is one of the most musically powerful post-Katrina statements to come out of New Orleans. Toussaint will bring a 8 piece band for his first Crawfish Fest show. Toussaint's enduring legacy is his work as one of America's greatest songwriters, penning such classics as "Southern Nights," "Mother-In-Law," "Working In A Coal Mine" and "Fortune Teller." After writing the instrumental hits "Java" and "Whipped Cream" in the early '60s Toussaint wrote and produced a treasure trove of timeless New Orleans hits for the city's greatest R&B singers, including Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas, Lee Dorsey and Aaron Neville. A few years later he recorded a series of top 10 instrumental hits with his house band The Meters. One of Toussaint's most important roles came in adapting New Orleans R&B to the funk and dance music styles that became popular during the 1970s. In addition to working with The Meters and Dr. John, whose "Right Place, Wrong Time" was another huge hit, Toussaint produced LaBelle's Number One disco hit "Lady Marmalade" in 1975 and worked with major artists from The Band to Robert Palmer. During the 1970s Toussaint also recorded under his own name, producing the album classics From a Whisper to a Scream and Southern Nights. When Glen Campbell covered "Southern Nights" in 1977 the song became a crossover Number One hit on the pop, country and adult contemporary charts. Toussaint was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

funky METERS The funky Meters continue the tradition of legendary funk coined by Art Neville, George Porter Jr. and company over 40 years ago. Keyboardist, vocalist and songwriter Art "Papa Funk" Neville was the architect of The Meters' sound and George Porter Jr. coined the style of New Orleans funk bass playing that is still the city's musical lingua franca today. Powerhouse drummer David Russell Batiste Jr., from one of the city's greatest musical families, has carved out his own variation on original Meters drummer Zigaboo Modeliste's style. The band's guitarist has always been one of the leading lights in New Orleans music, beginning with Leo Nocentelli, whose distinctive rhythm/lead style had people thinking there were two guitars playing at once. Former Neville Brothers guitarist Brian Stoltz brought a unique virtuoso guitar style to the group when he joined in 1994. When Stoltz left the band last year Art's son Ian brought a new generation of Nevilles into the mix with his expansive guitar playing. Art Neville, one of the stars of New Orleans R&B since he cut "Mardi Gras Mambo" in 1954 with The Hawkettes while still in high school, put the original band together in 1967. The group quickly became New Orleans' answer to Booker T and the MGs, the preferred backing band on Allen Toussaint's productions and a hit instrumental group that recorded "Sophisticated Cissy," "Cissy Strut," "Ease Back" and "Look a Py Py" -- all top 10 R&B hits -- between '67 and '69. During the 1970s The Meters recorded five albums on the Warner/Reprise label including the classic Fire On the Bayou and provided the backing band on a series of timeless recordings by The Wild Tchoupitoulas, Dr. John, Robert Palmer, Allen Toussaint and Paul McCartney and Wings. The original band broke up in 1979 and Art Neville went on to form the Neville Brothers, but the group reunited with Batiste replacing Modeliste in 1989 and Stoltz replacing Nocentelli in 1994, at which point they officially became the funky Meters. This group has been at the forefront of every important evolution of the groove from 1950s and '60s R&B to the jam band aesthetic of the new millennium.

The Radiators The Radiators are simply the greatest rock band in New Orleans history. That fact is underscored by the honor paid to the band by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which annually asks the Radiators to close the ultimate celebration of Louisiana's music along with the Neville Brothers. 2008 marks the 30th anniversary of the Radiators, who own the distinction of being the only rock band to have recorded for a major label that's still touring with its original members after 30 years. The truly great American rock bands are beyond styles and trends, and the Radiators fall squarely into that category. The band's music, an amalgam of influences ranging from Jelly Roll Morton to 1960s soul to country and western to modal jazz, twin-guitar histrionics and the undulating rhythms of New Orleans R&B, is a mysterious brew that has captivated audiences across the country. Principal songwriter Ed Volker, the architect of the Radiator's identity, describes its sound as "fish head music," the product of living a lifetime in a city below sea level. The mind-bending musings of Volker's mystic vocals and keyboards are embellished by the high voltage guitar interchange between Dave Malone and Camile Baudoin and driven home by the funky rhythm section of bassist Reggie Scanlon and drummer Frank Bua. The Radiators struck the kind of magic balance each player in the band had been looking for. Bua and Scanlan locked in immediately and have become an institution in a city noted for its rhythm sections. Malone and Baudoin arrived at a two-guitar sound that blended rhythm and lead parts, harmony playing and respect for the song and the improvisational elements that transcend it in equal measures. Volker and Malone complement each other as singers, trading off between Malone’s extroverted, big-voiced good nature and Volker’s swamp music invocations. Volker’s sinuous keyboard work stirs the pot in strange directions based on the Quixotic moods, William Blake visions and voodoo lore that informs his body of work. The sound is the sum total of a lot of complex parts, not the least of which is the kind of aesthetic risk-taking that bands like the Grateful Dead championed. The Radiators have never abandoned that experimental attitude. After an association with Epic records into the 1990s that produced such classic New Orleans albums as "Law of the Fish" and "Zigzagging Through Ghostland" the band took a page from the Grateful Dead playbook and went directly to its fans for support, recording albums that were independently distributed and relying on mind-boggling live shows to spread the word on a person-to-person level. Today, with a book that has expanded to more than 2,000 original songs and countless covers in service of an approach to performance that allows no two shows to be the same and no song to be played the same way twice, the Radiators have built an audience around the country that would walk on gilded splinters to see them. The Radiators deal with covers the way Louisiana traditional musicians deal with folk culture, appropriating whatever they deem fit into the mix and making it their own. The kind of fanatic appeal the band instills in its followers is evident from the groups around the country whose annual private parties center on Radiators performances, with Volker composing songs to match each party’s theme. The grandest of these is the annual Mardi Gras bash thrown by the Mystic Orphans and Misfits and known as the M.O.M.’s ball.

Bonerama Bonerama, with its massed trombones on the front line, has developed one of the most distinctive New Sounds in New Orleans music over the last decade, a combination of traditional brass band, rock, jazz and R&B. Virtuoso trombonists Mark Mullins and Craig Klein were two of the city's most respected players when they founded Bonerama in 1998 to develop a new funk rock vista for the trombone. Mullins and Klein were well known for their work in the Harry Connick big band, but they needed an outlet for their desire to rock out and party down with a second line funk sound. Mullins and Klein fleshed out the concept with two more outstanding trombonists, Steve Suter and Rick Trolsen, as well as bass trombonist Brian O'Neill. They added a potent bottom line with the addition of the imaginative and dynamic sousaphone player Matt Perrine, some edge with guitarist Bert Cotton, and the propulsive groove laid down by various New Orleans drummers. In 2001, Bonerama released its debut album Live at the Old Point and began to play sell out performances from New York City to San Francisco. A performance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival earned a rave review in Rolling Stone. In March of 2004 Bonerama recorded Live From New York with special guests including Galactic’s Stanton Moore on drums, and the legendary trombonist Fred Wesley of the JB Horns. The band overcame the death of Brian O'Neill to make a third live album, Bringing It Home, recorded at Tipitina's and featuring Bonerama-ized versions of Led Zeppelin and Beatles tunes alongside originals and a Thelonious Monk composition. The band made history when Mullins, Klein and Trolson made up the "Best Trombonist" category at this year's OffBeat awards, the first time all the nominees in a category were from the same group! This past Mardi Gras the band released a collaboration with OK Go, "You're Not Alone

Tab Benoit Tab Benoit's distinctive swamp rock guitar playing, superior songwriting and soulful vocals make him one of Louisiana's most appealing musical stylists. Benoit has been nominated for Grammy awards and last year won the Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year and B.B. King Entertainer of the Year Awards at the Blues Music Awards, formerly the W.C. Handy Awards. Benoit developed his style playing regular gigs at Tabby's Blues Bar in Baton Rouge, where he learned from venerable Louisiana bluesman Tabby Thomas. Benoit, a native of Houma, Louisiana, grew up listening to the Cajun music popular in his hometown as well as rock & roll and blues. He put all those elements together to forge his own style. Benoit was discovered by New Orleanians when he competed in a blues contest at the bowling alley that became Mid-City Lanes, the home of Rock 'n Bowl, where Benoit is now a regular performer. After signing a multi-album deal with Justice records, Benoit began to place songs on television shows including Northern Exposure, Melrose Place, Party of Five and Baywatch Nights. More recently Benoit has been an avid campaigner for preserving the Louisiana wetlands. Last year Benoit released what is widely considered his best album, Power of the Pontchartrain.

Little Freddie King Fans of Louisiana blues are in for a special treat when Little Freddie King makes a rare trip outside the state to perform at this year's Crawfish Fest. King was born in McComb Mississippi in 1940 and learned to play the blues guitar from his father Jessie James Martin. He moved to New Orleans in the 1950s, where he played frequently with Polka Dot Slim and Boogie Bill Webb and backed up national blues acts when they hit New Orleans. King built up a reputation as one of New Orleans' best blues guitarists by playing regularly at local clubs, but didn't make his official recording debut until 1971 on the obscure New Orleans label Ahura Mazda Records. It took more than a quarter of a century for his next record, Swamp Boogie, to be released on another local label, Orleans records. In 2000 King put out the breakthrough album Sing Sang Sung, a definitive stylistic statement that included a terrific song about one of the New Orleans bars he played at many times, "Bucket of Blood". King reached a larger audience in 2005 when the progressive blues label Fat Possum records put out You Don't Know What I Know, a crackling set highlighted by the outstanding "Crackhead Joe." King's new album, Messin' Around tha House (MadeWright) should be available at Crawfish Fest.