Fats showed up, though just to let folks know he was okay and sorry he couldn't perform in what would have been his first show since being rescued by boat from his Lower 9th Ward home in the days after the flood. The "Ain't That a Shame" and "Walkin' to New Orleans" legend was supposed to be the year's headliner and was the literal and figurative poster boy for JazzFest and the musical recovery hereabouts, but at 78 he was in frail health even before the evacuation.

So on the big Acura Stage, that left Paul Simon to provide the emotional climax.

The skies opened up, the rains poured down and just as it stopped Irma Thomas stepped on stage singing her old hit "It's Raining." Irma can stand a little rain. Her Lion's Den club was washed away, she had to relocate, but she's here now and singing her heart out for her city.

"This next number's dedicated to New Orleans," she said introducing her best-known hit, "Time Is On My Side" (it was her version the Stones used as a blueprint for theirs). Smiles broke out all over the crowd. Time IS on New Orleans' side, and Thomas', manifest in the timeless quality of her great R&B and her own continued strength as a singer and performer, including on a couple selections from her new album, "After the Rain."

Meanwhile, word is that she and legendary producer-writer-performer Allen Toussaint will be joining Paul Simon in his set that's about to start.

Rumors proved true. Fats Domino is unwell and unable to perform, so Lionel Richie will move from Congo Square to the Acura Stage. Nothing against Lionel, but can you say "anticlimactic"? Suggestion: Go to the Blues Stage instead to see Ivan Neville. The Neville Brothers aren't here in their traditional closing set, but the Neville SON can handle it.

(Nicholas Payton has also canceled from the Jazz Tent headline slot, with a brass jam session filling in.)

Rumor starting to fly that Fats Domino is canceling his closing appearance. Official word is that it's still on, but rumor is spreading nonetheless. Updates to come.

Every year that he goes to JazzFest, a friend makes sure that before he leaves on his last day he buys a ticket for a softshell crab po'boy. (At that stand, to keep things moving, they sell tickets to people waiting in line which are exchanged for the sandwich at the counter.) He doesn't get his food though, instead just sticking the ticket in his wallet. It's a hedge against inflation, he's said. But it's also a promise to himself that he'll do everything he can to make it back next year, when he can redeem the ticket for a tasty crab.

Hard to blame him. Where else can you walk into a fairgrounds and stumble upon the Amina Figarova Septet from the Netherlands (here actually a mix of Holland and New Orleans musicians) playing Eric Dolphy-esque modern jazz in part inspired from pianist Figarova's experience in New York on 9/11 and now dedicated be her to this city? And then wander over to the Gospel Tent to see the Leviticus Gospel Singers resplendent in pink praising Jesus, introducing the six-year-old girl representing the fourth generation in the group and re-introducing one member who had relocated to Nebraska and was reuniting with her family of singers for the first time here? And then to the explosion of white, pink and blue feathers of the Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indians surrounding their recently ill but now recovered Big Chief Bo Dollis, in white silk shirt and pants, sounding as raspy and strong as ever on "Iko Iko" and other Carnival classics as their hard-rocking band churned away? And from there  just a short hop to Congo Square where Ni Tettey Tetteh & the Kusun Ensemble of Ghana giving a lively African tribal dancing performance. And yards away rural zydeco master Geno Delafose was on the Fais Do-Do stage pumping out the "Eunice Two-Step" on button accordion?

And the fest has barely been going for two hours today.

Hey, why not buy a bunch of softshell crab tickets? They make great stocking stuffers.

When Bruce Springsteen got hands to rise up for New Orleans last week at the fairgrounds, it was one thing. Saturday, though, when first clarinetist Alvin Batiste in the Jazz Tent and later JazzFest producer Quint Davis introducing Jimmy Buffett on the Acura Stage spurred similar gestures, it was different. Each wanted to know how many people in the audience were from New Orleans. And in each case there was an overwhelming show of hands -- perhaps not the 90% local count represented among the performers, but an impressive turnout of residents nonetheless. Such sights as the huge crowd at Congo Square for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's scintillating set were also joyous manifestations of the homecomings.

Remember, as JazzFest shakily took shape from a long-shot to a triumph this year, the question wasn't only whether enough people would come from elsewhere to make it happen, but whether enough residents would be here. Would it be purely a tourist event built around national headliners? The hotels and restaurants came into shape, but what about the homes and schools and stores and churches and other bedrock elements to any community?

So those hands shooting in the air yesterday meant just as much, maybe more, than a week ago.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Acura Stage line-up today also reflects the local-visitor balance.

Gotta hand it to Jimmy Buffett. Hours after the weather reports said thundershowers for certain this afternoon, Buffett managed to get the clouds to part and the sun to emerge shortly before he took the Acura Stage. Okay, that's giving him too much credit. In fact, despite telling the crowd that he was a "very lapsed Catholic," he thanked two nuns, Sister Jane and Sister Blaise, for helping with the conditions.

"That's what 18 years of parochial school will do for you," he said, before saying to the crowd, "I want to thank you for putting in the work to get here."

Buffett's heart is clearly in the right place -- right here. He was, per JazzFest producer Quint Davis, the first major artist to commit to playing this year, calling back in November when the fairgrounds was still a soggy mess. Buffett has long-standing ties to the city, the place his career really started and home to one of the main franchises of his Margaritaville restaurants and clubs. He's played JazzFest a few times before, always drawing a huge crowd of his Parrothead followers.

So when he opened with an acoustic version of the late Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans" (technically not about the city but about a train that comes here, though still fitting), it was hard to have anything but good feeling for him, despite any sense that his wry music adds up to not much more than a good time for his fans. Heck, nothing wrong with that anyway, and he and his Coral Reefer Band delivered it exactly as expected. He made frequent references to New Orleans (a shout out to the club Snug Harbor in "Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude") and just seemed like an all-around, unpretentious nice guy.

In fact, such a nice guy that he probably wouldn't mind hearing that some on hand sneaked away to hear other acts on at the same time, hypothetically. Like maybe to get over to the Jazz Tent in time to see Donald Harrison Jr. do a lyrical yet abstract sax duet with special guest, the great George Coleman, and then bring out Latin jazz legend Eddie Palmieri to lead the band from the piano through a smoking Afro-Caribbean jaunt. If one had actually sneaked away from Buffett, that is. Just in theory. Certainly he wouldn't mind. He probably would have done the same thing if he wasn't otherwise occupied, nice guy that he is.   

You may have missed the news that Ernie K-Doe, the "Emperor of the World" and the man behind such great New Orleans classics as "Mother-in-Law," has been running for mayor -- and is continuing to do so even though he failed to get enough votes to be in the runoff between incumbent Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. It makes no difference to K-Doe. After all, he died nearly five years ago. But his widow, Antoinette K-Doe, put him in the race in part to make a statement, but mostly as a fund-raising effort for the Musician's Clinic.

Technically, as Antoinette explained it while giving a gumbo cooking demonstration this afternoon at the booth sponsored by seasonings company Zatarain's, it's the mannequin statue of Ernie she has that is running. The statue has had quite the life since its model passed, making public appearances and holding down the fort with Antoinette at the Mother-in-Law Lounge, the club Ernie founded and that she has maintained at 1500 N. Claiborne.

The statue kept her company back when she rode out the flood and storm upstairs at the club in August and September as five-and-a-half feet of water filled the downstairs.

"I was trapped seven-and-a-half days before being rescued by the National Guard," she said before the cooking demonstration. "I'm really glad I stayed. I save all the old pictures, and saved the statue. What I did was break it down in three pieces in a garbage bag and put it in the closet."

She thought about leaving it out to "watch over" the place, but was "afraid the National Guard would come in and think it was a real person and start shooting."

Since then, she's regularly cooked her gumbo in big batches to give free to people working and even just visiting around town. She served 600 bowls of it and red beans and rice at the Mid City Lanes "Rock 'n' Bowl" club/bowling alley on Wednesday. She has a strong desire to give back to her city, not in small part because she's receiving help herself. She and the Mother-in-Law were "adopted" by Hands On, the foundation started by rap/R&B star Usher, which is currently refurbishing the club. She says it could re-open in three weeks. Make sure when it does you go visit her -- and Ernie.

They're here, the Jimmy Buffett acolytes collectively known as Parrotheads. You can tell from the increase in the number of Hawaiian-print shirts (as opposed to the official annual JazzFest "HowAhYah" print shirts) and clothes with such slogans as "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere", a higher presence of men in shorts and white socks and a lot more hats decorated with gators, crabs and, of course, parrots. 

But the incursion of this set of followers reminds that there's another related though very different demographic that seems largely missing this year: the jam-band kids, latter-day Deadheads and neo-hippies. Just not seeing a lot of hacky-sack circles, white kids in dreadlocks and tie-dye and definitely less hemp-based apparel. In some past years they've literally been hard not to trip over on the fairgrounds. (Don't ask veteran festers about the year Phish played unless you want to see teeth-grinding and throbbing forehead veins.) Have the prices gotten too high to accommodate the drifters? Has the jam-heavy Bonnaroo festival coming up next month in Tennessee simply siphoned off much of that crowd? Fact is that JazzFest just isn't catering to them musically much this year. There's no Widespread Panic, no Phil Lesh or Ratdog or other Grateful Dead-related acts, no Phish pholk. Only Robert Randolph & the Family Band, playing later today, is really in that scene -- and ultimately transcends it in appeal with his gospel roots and mind-blowing talents on pedal steel guitar.

All in all it seems something of a void, if not in the music then in the audience landscape. Maybe it's just that given what's gone on around here since the last JazzFest its easy to notice and lament anyone who is missing. Who ever figured there'd be nostalgic feelings for the jammers?

Is there any stretch in the world more packed with better music inch-per-inch than Frenchmen Street on a Friday or Saturday night? Last night along the three blocks in the Marigny just outside the French Quarter was no exception, starting with Ellis Marsalis' weekly gig at Snug Harbor. The Marsalis patriarch pianist and noted music educator led an exciting, young post-bop quartet (including son Jason on drums) through a series of vivid explorations of tone and color. And at the end, the elder Marsalis stepped aside, allowing Marcus Roberts (who first came to prominence with Wynton Marsalis) to take over the ivories for a stunning number, the band's front line expanded to three with two young trumpeters joining in.

Across the street, the New Orleans Jazz Vipers held their regular gig at the tiny, funky Spotted Cat, as many people chatting, drinking and dancing to the '20s-'30s-'40s swing and le jazz hot on the sidewalk as inside. What has always made this ensemble stand out is not just its spirited, purposefully unvarnished approach, but the fact that it prefers when practical to go like the old cats, with no amplification. Only Neti Vann's fiddle was mic'd here, with the rest (bari and tenor sax, guitar, trombone, trumpet, bass and both solo and group vocals) going au natural, just as Louis intended. 

[thanks to Chuck Taggart of GumboPages for generously contributing the photo]

As is often the case at JazzFest, one of the definitive moments today happened not on the big stages with national stars, but at one of the smaller ones, before hundreds -- not thousands -- of people. This one came from Fi Yi Yi & the Mandingo Warriors Mardi Gras Indians, one of the long-running "tribes" of African Americans that grew out of the exclusion of blacks from New Orleans' official Carnival events years ago, affecting Native American styles and competing with each other through the elaborateness of their colorful feathered and beaded costumes and through singing and chanting showdowns. The highly ritualized subculture is clearly one of the most fascinating in America. And the power of the performance and message Friday was way beyond the numbers witnessing it.

With his clan  chanting and drumming behind him, Big Chief Fi Yi Yi (Victor Harris) became a sternly poetic spokesman for a community reaching far outside the Indian world, well past the communities where most of the Indians lost their homes, embracing and entreating the entirety of New Orleans and all who love it. This was no surprise to anyone who saw him on the steps of the Backstreet Museum and Cultural Center in the Treme on Mardi Gras day, imploring all to ignore matters of color and class and work together to rebuild the city. This day he took it further.

(Photo used with permission of Chuck Taggart of GumboPages. Thanks, Chuck!)

The loud, LOUD red plaid outfits worn by the Wimberly Family group in the Gospel Tent on Friday afternoon may have been the only things in the vicinity that could have made Wing of Life's hand-made togs seem conservative. Wing, as any JazzFest veteran knows, is the guy who spends much of the weekends dancing and skipping through the aisles of the Gospel Tent, the rainbow shreds hanging off his waist, shoulders, head, anywhere flapping and flying (last weekend one day he was wearing essentially a head-to-toe chain mail suit made from knotted, white shoelaces, making him look like an albino Rick James). For some of us, it's not really JazzFest until we make our first Wing sighting.

Stopping to chat for a minute as the Wimberly Family sang a slow, soulful "A Change is Gonna Come," Wing -- who lives north of San Francisco when not at Fest -- said this was his first time back in town since Katrina.

"I have friends who live in Lakeview," he said of the neighborhood on the shore of Pontchartrain that was hit pretty much as hard as the Lower 9th Ward. "We drove through there first thing when I arrived. Yow."

Startled at how "defoliated" the city is, with many trees having lost much of their leaves and many branches to the wind and waters, he was encouraged at how much new growth has started. He's also noticed with chagrin, as have many others, the relative lack of African Americans at the festival, and he's also a bit upset that despite the corporate sponsorship element brought in this year, the ticket price increased -- though $40 for this much music and culture still seems a bargain.

The bottom line: "I'm glad to be here."

Meanwhile, the Wimberly Family shifted gears into a terrific, classic gospel-quartet style with just drums backing for the hand-clapping spirituals "Moses Smote the Water" and "Wading in the Water."

A friend of mine noted, "A lot of people seem to be doing 'water' songs this year!"

Last weekend felt like an historic occasion, with the varying degrees of anxiety, celebration and relief.

Today, so far at least, seems like -- well -- JazzFest. And that's fantastic. People are spreading nicely around the various stages, big crowds for the Cajuns on Fais Do-Do, the New Orleans Nightcrawlers brass band in the Jazz Tent, Otra at Congo Square and a big gathering for Marcia Ball at the big Blues Stage area. But it seems all a little more local, fewer first-timers than last week, kinda normal. The musicians seem to feel less of a need to make profound comments, there's less of an instinct to read "special" meaning into every song.

The Pine Leaf Boys and Savoy Family Band (with overlapping Savoys) spanned generations of tradition with the lively two-steps and sad waltzes of Acadiana, the fiddles and accordions evoking spreading oak trees and whispering grass on the bayous, the hard work and hard play of a very distinctive culture unlike anything else in the U.S., if not on the planet. (Disclaimer: My wife and I have special attachment to this music and these folks, having gone to a crawfish boil near Eunice, Louisiana at the home of the Savoys for the past 16 years between JazzFest weekends, including the one 11 years ago where we held our wedding.)

Of course, it was hard not to read some things into at least a couple of Marcia Ball's songs. New Orleans culture has always been forward in her boogie 'n' blues music, but mid-way through the set she offered a new song, apparently titled "The Saints Will Rise Again," a somber but optimistic elegy for generally overlooked Bucktown neighborhood. And yes, she brought her show to a teary climax with Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927," a song about a devastating flood in this region nearly 80 years ago that Ball has been  performing herself for years (including at past JazzFests) and that she noted in her introduction Newman himself (who wrote the song in the '70s) performed on the very same stage a year ago when a repeat of the past event seemed beyond comprehension.  Heck, the song was capable of bringing tears BEFORE Katrina. Now it's a given.

"This song makes me feel very said," one older woman was overheard saying to a companion as Ball sang. The friend replied, "It seems everyone has one of these kind of songs here."

Yeah, it's back to normal to some extent. But normal may never be the same.

So here's a notion about how to make the second weekend just as special as the first: Avoid the big-name acts. Don't take that the wrong way. Nothing against Paul Simon, Jimmy Buffett or Keith Urban -- just to mention the three most prominent artists coming up in the final three days. Their contributions to the renewal of JazzFest, and to the city, are no less than those of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan or Dave Matthews, the headliners from last week.

But . . . how to put this kindly? . . . they don't need us. Their mission is already accomplished. Their willingness to play sent the message that New Orleans was ready. They sold tickets, brought in the media, essentially helped underwrite the event. Much of the national attention given the first weekend won't be there for the second in any case. Major newspapers from around the country sent reporters last week but will rely on wire copy this weekend, if anything.

So give the attention to the acts that are the heart and soul of JazzFest, year in and year out. Today's line-up is the perfect opportunity.

The rain stayed away, but the tears flowed freely when Bruce Springsteen capped a rousing, moving, inspiring and all-those-other-adjectives-that-long-ago-got-overused-for-the-Boss-at-his-best performance with "My City of Ruins," turning the key line of his song associated with post-9/11 New York into a very present tense as "my city is in ruins." And in the process he showed that he was indeed the perfect artist to close the first weekend of the first JazzFest coming as the city tries to recover from ruin. The tears came in his first encore song, following 90 minutes that had already touched with grace and power on hope, frustration, anger, gallows humor -- in other words, all the things left floating around New Orleans after the waters receded -- exactly in the tradition of Pete Seeger, the folk singer Springsteen has paid tribute to with his new "The Seeger Sessions" album. None of the rumored guests (Edge, Elvis Costello) materialized, but they weren't needed.

In full hootenanny mode with as many as 19 backing musicians wielding fiddles, banjo, pedal steel and horns among other things, he brought old spirituals (the opening "Mary Don't You Weep" with its line about Noah being shown a rainbow and the stern prophesy of "no more water but fire next time"), workers tales of tragic nobility ("John Henry," a tale of sweat equity if there ever was one) and civil rights anthems ("Keep Your Eye on the Prize"), making them all relevant to the immediate surroundings not just with the lyrics and tone, but with dips into New Orleans music traditions. The horns in particular mixed Dixieland and second-line funk, and Springsteen's own early '80s song "Johnny 99" was turned into something that could have been a rollicking number from the late New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair, under a portrait of whom Springsteen performed on the Acura Stage, well over 70,000 captured by every note. 

As for the anger, he offered a revision of the Depression-era Blind Alfred Reed song "How Can a Poor Man Stands Such Times and Live," writing three new verses specifically themed to the Gulf Coast renewal. Introducing the song, he told of having toured the areas of devastation on Saturday, saying he never imagined he'd see such a thing in an American city, condemning the "criminal ineptitude" and "political crony-ism" that contributed to the disaster and dedicating the song to "President Bystander."

And then there was "My City of Ruins." How does one follow that? The frivolous sing-along "Buffalo Gals" would seem a strange choice, but this is Bruce and he and his band made it perfect, with the whole audience now showing broad grins. After that was his own "You Can Look But You Better Not Touch," a fun if trivial rocker, but here turned into a celebrative zydeco hip-shaker. And then he went into really dangerous territory, as he himself admitted, taking on the song most associated with the city, "When the Saints Go Marching In." But he spoke of his own love for the city (noting that he and wife Patti Scialfa came here when they were first "fooling around" and, with a laugh, that "no one found us either") and he played it slow, with band member Mark Anthony Thompson sharing some of the vocals and focusing on some lesser-known verses -- "I am waiting for the morning, when the new world is revealed . . . "

The tears returned. And the smiles.