The Highs, Lows, and Mehs of the 2025 Jazz Fest Lineup
Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Luke Combs, Lil Wayne & The Roots, Lenny Kravitz, Kacey Musgraves. That’s the top line of this year’s Jazz Fest talent announcement, and the only names there that promise anything new to the festival are Lil Wayne and Musgraves. Pearl Jam sparked excitement once, but the buzz diminished on the band’s third visit. Dave Matthews Band has become the answer to a Jazz Fest trivia question when his draw and that of Mystikal led to 160,000 people, setting the attendance record in 2001, and some combination of Dave Matthews Band has played Jazz Fest for more than 20 years. Lenny Kravitz first played Jazz Fest a year later in 2002.
If Luke Combs seems familiar, it’s because he played Jazz Fest two years ago. The talent roll-out sparked less conversation than you might expect. Nobody provokes the sense of aesthetic betrayal that Bon Jovi sparked among the faithful, but there’s nobody to prompt excitement of something new. Judging by other stops on Pearl Jam’s upcoming tour, their fans will be buzzed by the New Orleans date since tickets to other shows on the tour have sold out and are going from $500 apiece at the cheapest and closer to $800 or $900 in some venues.
In the abstract, the lineup’s fine. It will never look more exciting because those artists won’t really be available to you once the talent is divvied out into days and schedules. Some acts that excite you will play opposite each other, and some will be on days you otherwise don’t care about.
Why isn’t the lineup more exciting? A lot has to do with the specific nature of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell [editor’s disclosure: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation advertises with ANTIGRAVITY]. It was created to bring tourists to New Orleans at a time of year when they didn’t visit the city. From the start, the emphasis was on heritage acts, not the R&B heroes that recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s studio. They were too modern. In the late ‘60s, the same archaeological impulses that led Bob Dylan to dig into the Anthology of American Folk Music led musicians and music fans to explore the living connections to Cajun and traditional jazz practices. Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson were the sole concessions to the marketplace when Jazz Fest started in 1970.
The need to bring in tourists has never gone away, so lineups have been crafted first for their out-of-town appeal. Admittedly, local talent is one of those draws (as was originally intended) because for many festival fans, Jazz Fest is the one time they can see them. But the headliners are also chosen with their national draw in mind. Why not bigger draws? In terms of gross earnings, there aren’t many. Last year, The Rolling Stones played Jazz Fest and they were the top-grossing American tour of 2024, followed in fourth place by Luke Combs, who’s playing this year. If you look at Pollstar’s international list, you also get Jazz Fest semi-regular Bruce Springsteen.
Those lists skew older when you focus on gross, and I can imagine Coldplay and Zach Bryan from that international list playing Jazz Fest some day. It’s harder to imagine P!nk, Bad Bunny, Madonna, or Taylor Swift from those lists performing on the Festival Stage because they can’t get the kind of production they’re used to at the Fair Grounds. No rear screens, no special floors, and little lighting other than natural light. Part of what made The Rolling Stones a big deal in 2024 was the band’s willingness to perform with little more than the usual Jazz Fest backdrop, and acceptance of the slightly enhanced backstage accommodations. That set up makes it hard to get many acts. The often-repeated rumor is that Paul McCartney doesn’t want to play without the lights and lasers he has used since the mid-‘70s, and the late afternoon sun makes it hard to create the show and ambience many acts want. Beyoncé, Adele, Rihanna, Billie Eilish, and many of the top concert draws are less likely to play Jazz Fest unless they specifically want that presentation.
At the same time, Jazz Fest can’t throw around infinite money to coax them out of the indoor spaces that are more luxurious and allow them better control of their show. The festival’s ticket pricing doesn’t give the producers that kind of budget. The outrage machines rev up each year to complain about the price of tickets, but compared to other festivals, Jazz Fest is a deal. In 2024, a three-day pass for Austin City Limits cost at least $350, and a four-day package for Bonnaroo this year starts at $435—more than $100 a day in advance in each case. This year, a general admission four-day pass bought at early bird prices is $82.25 a day, and if bought at its most expensive price, it’s $92.25 a day. Jazz Fest has also instituted a new Louisiana four-day pass for buyers with a Louisiana zip code tied to their charge card, and those break down to $72.50 a day at early bird prices and $76.25 after that. That’s good for Jazz Fest attendees, but it means that promoters Festival Productions can’t spend as boldly on talent as other festivals can. According to promoter Quint Davis, managers who look at Jazz Fest’s attendance think that the festival should be able to afford one number, but because the ticket prices aren’t as high as other festivals, it doesn’t have the same spending power.
That means Jazz Fest lineups these days look good but not great. They still tend to embrace a conventional notion of talent that ultimately breaks down to good singing and good playing. Dig down in the lineup and you can find more adventurous, contemporary acts, particularly in the international music, where this year you can find more club-friendly music, including Mexican Institute of Sound, who merge live instruments and DJ-inspired production, and producer/DJ El Dusty, who used his mom’s collection of Mexican records to help him reshape trap and dubstep as electronic cumbias.
Etran de L’Aïr of Niger and Zar Electrik of the Maghreb should both play music from this century that we haven’t heard at Jazz Fest yet, and locally, People Museum and LeTrainiump stretch the Jazz Fest model. Jourdan Thibodeaux et Les Rôdailleurs make Cajun music rock, in part because Thibodeaux will be among the best rock stars onstage at the Fair Grounds.
But really, how exciting could any lineup be more than 50 years after Jazz Fest started? Much the same way that Jazz Fest has become part of the city’s routines, the lineups and their announcements aren’t the events they once were.
photo: People Museum at Jazz Fest 2023 by Brandon Robert
For more other Alex Rawls musings, check out myspiltmilk.com.
