On Thursday April 25th, the gates at the New Orleans Fairgrounds will open and a venue known for horse racing will welcome music lovers for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
For Quint Davis, it’s a magical time. He’s been the producer of Jazz Fest for decades. But all those years haven’t made any aspect of the annual festival seem routine to Davis. It probably helps that Jazz Fest consistently features some of the biggest acts in the music industry.
“Who am I excited to see? I’m excited to see Queen Latifah. I’m excited to see Chris Stapleton, all kinds of stuff, but the sum is greater than the parts and I’m really excited to see the festival come back to life. My most emotional moment, so to speak is when the gates open. The festival has been hibernating for a year we’ve been in here in the hive working. So, you go out there. You build the city. I think it’s the sixth largest city in Louisiana when it gets really big. It’s a lot of stages and food booths, so it’s vibrating,” Davis told me.
Davis is the CEO of Festival Productions Inc.-New Orleans, the company that produces the New Orleans Jazz. It also created the annual Essence Music Festival in New Orleans and produced that festival from 1995-2007. The company has gone on to produce music festivals outside of New Orleans and musical elements for sporting and civic events, but Jazz Fest remains its main feature.
This year, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has added an extra day of music. Historically, Jazz Fest has taken place on the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May. One of those weekends would include a Thursday, which became known as “locals Thursdays” because local people could get discounted tickets for that Thursday. There will be an extra Thursday for Jazz Fest 2024. The second Thursday of the festival, May 2, will be particularly special for Davis because the Rolling Stones will be headlining that day. He explained to me why landing the Rolling Stones for Jazz Fest was not only a professional milestone, but one that was also personal in nature.
Ahead of Jazz Fest, I sat down with Davis at the festival’s headquarters on Canal Street in New Orleans. There, he told me why he feels like he hasn’t grown up yet, and why a third weekend of Jazz Fest would potentially be what he called a disaster. Listen to the podcast here.