A Special Report

OCEAN SPRINGS — Grand Mag Music, in association with The Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, presents a new and unique live music series coming to South Mississippi this Fall.

“Jazz Fest in OS” will feature artists that have been a part of the greatest music festival in the world over the past two decades that will now be showcased in Ocean Springs.

The five part series will kick off with Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band at TOCC on Sun., Sept 28th. Tickets are already on sale for each show at www.grandmagmusic.com 

Here is the schedule:

• Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band/9-28/TOCC
• The Johnny Sansone Band/10-12/Le Fleur De Lis
• Will Kimbrough/11-9/TOCC
• Louisiana’s LeRoux/12-7/LFDL
• Dec 12th/SAVE THE DATE

Carrier and his talented group have played 25 straight years at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and they have toured the world for the past 30 years also appearing at The Chicago Blues Fest. Summerfest in Milwaukee, Memphis in May, and they have headlined many festivals in Europe over the years including the Utrecht Blues Festival in Amsterdam.

Carrier was among the musicians recently featured on the CBS News program “60 Minutes” in a segment on Cajun and zydeco music. 

“We’re really looking forward to getting over there and starting this great series off,” Carrer said, from his home in Lafayette, La. “We’re fortunate to be a part of Jazz Fest every year, and we look forward to sharing our love of zydeco over to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

Considered one of the best Zydeco Bands of all time, in 2010 Chubby won a Grammy award for Best Zydeco or Cajun album of the year and in 2011 he was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

Carrier has played with Santana, B.B. King, Travis Tritt and Buddy Guy and has shared the stage with many others like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Taj Mahal, Morris Day and the Time, Confunkshun and “Weird” Al Yankovic.

He has been referred as “undeniably the World’s Premier Zydeco Showman.”  

Sansone and his band, featuring John Fohl, will squeeze in their stop at “Jazz Fest in OS” between two separate European tours. He and his crew have been a fixture for most of the past three decades at The Fairgrounds in NOLA in the spring at Jazz Fest.

Sansone is considered one of the Crescent City’s top rock/blues artists whether he is fronting his own band or as the voice of the Wetlands All-Stars and has won numerous Blues Music Association Awards. He blends his deep blues sensibilities, tastefully seasoned with cajun, zydeco, and funky swamp rock into a rare breed of style for an artist, and his engaging stage presence has wowed audiences across the globe.

Fohl, an accomplished musician in his own right, was the longtime lead guitarist for the legendary Dr. John in his band the “Lower 9/11”.

The incomparable Kimbrough, a longtime Jimmy Buffett protege’, will be heading to his first show ever in Ocean Springs after joining The Corral Reefer Band on a two month tour supporting the Doobie Brothers with 20 dates across the country.

One of Buffett’s favorite collaborators, the Mobile native and now Nashville-based singer/songwriterhad had four co-songwriting credits with Buffett on his penultimate release “Life on the Flip Side” and then produced seven co-writes with both Mac McAnally and Buffett on the Pascagoula natives’ posthumous release “Equal Strain on all Parts”.

Buffett was fond of Kimbrough as well, once stating in an interview “Will is a wonderful throwback to the now bygone era of singer, songwriter, musician and entertainer,” he said. “Instead of substituting technology for talent, he has a unique ability to use modern-day tools to produce lasting lyrics and melodies. On stage, he can charm a crowd whether fronting a band or playing solo. That is why you see his songs on my albums and his face on our stage.”

That makes well over 20 Kimbrough or Buffett/Kimbrough songs that Buffett recorded on his last 10 albums. Kimbrough has stepped up even more so in the wake of Buffett’s absence, as Buffett’s personal choice to fill the void he left behind in the band as Kimbrough was featured with the Corral Reefer Band on the main stage at Jazz Fest in front of 75,000 people just eight months after Buffett’s death.

“I always enjoy coming back to the Gulf Coast and playing because of my relationship with Jimmy,” Kimbrough said. “I considered him a friend and I always enjoyed our songwriting sessions together. He really was one of a kind. I like coming home and seeing old friends and playing music for people who enjoy it.”

Louisiana’s LeRoux, who gave the world one of the most celebrated Southern Songs ever with “New Orleans Ladies”, is returning to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

A recording session at Bogalusa’s Studio in the Country in the late 1970’s would produce the signature New Orleans song of the 20th Century. New Orleans Ladies quickly climbed the Billboard charts in July 1978 and ultimately became the band’s signature anthem.

Along with that anthem to women that sashay by “from Bourbon Street to Esplanade”, LeRoux produced major hits such as “Take a Ride on a Riverboat”, and “Nobody said it was Easy”, the latter of which garnering much video play time on MTV back in the early 1980’s, as well as “Addicted” and “Carrie’s Gone”.

LeRoux was considered one of the foremost members of the “Southern Rock” music scene at one point touring with The Allman Brothers Band, The Amazing Rhythm Aces,  the Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels, Jerry Jeff Walker and Wet Willie as well as the Doobie Brothers, Foreigner, Heart, Journey, Kansas, the Little River Band, Kenny Loggins and Willie Nelson among many others.

SAVE THE DATE! Dec. 12th!

The “Jazz Fest in OS” series will conclude its 2025 run with a show on this date featuring yet another longtime Jimmy Buffett collaborator!!!!!!

Grand Mag Music would like to thank our local sponsors; Liquors Unlimited of Pascagoula, Burnham Drugs, James Heidelberg, Attorney at Law, Gulf Coast Tree Consultants and David Minkler, Lina Walsh of Coldwell Banker/Alphonso Realty, and The Brenda Simkins Agency with State Farm Insurance along with The Beau Rivage, Cathead Vodka and Lagniappe Weekly.