Maple Leaf Bar

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The Maple Leaf Bar is a music performance venue in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Maple Leaf (8316 Oak Street, 504-866-5323 for recorded info) is on Oak Street in the Carrollton neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans. It is one of the oldest and most beloved of New Orleans' music clubs, with live bands often performing seven nights a week. Styles represented on stage include blues, funk, R&B, rock, zydeco, jazz, jam bands, and any combination thereof. Over the years the bar has hosted many of the city's greatest musicians, as well as national touring acts. Frequent performers at the Maple Leaf have included local legends James Booker, the Rebirth Brass Band, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Walter "Wolfman" Washington, The Radiators and Henry Butler. Bruce Springsteen once dropped in unannounced to jam with The Iguanas after one of his New Orleans concerts; Jon Cleary's band was once joined by his frequent employer, Bonnie Raitt. The Leaf has also been an important incubator for the city's many up-and-coming bands formed from the ranks of local musicians and music students at Tulane University, Loyola University and the University of New Orleans. The poet Everette Maddox was a famous denizen of the Maple Leaf, and as of 2006 famed psychologist Dave Corey can often be found holding forth at the bar.

The Maple Leaf also hosts other events, including poetry readings and fashion shows. The Krewe of OAK, a neighborhood New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe, holds its balls and starts and ends its parades at the Maple Leaf.

The Maple Leaf is portrayed in many books and stories by New Orleans writers. It is thinly disguised as "The Raintree Street Bar" in the Ellen Gilchrist short story "The Raintree Street Bar and Washerteria." Poems about it can be found in books and chapbooks such as Mirror Wars and Shards, by Nancy Harris; Body and Soul and Rhythm & Booze, by Julie Kane; and The Everette Maddox Song Book, Bar Scotch and American Waste by Everette Maddox. There have also been three anthologies of poets who have read their work at the Maple Leaf: The Maple Leaf Rag (1980), The Maple Leaf Rag 15th Anniversary Anthology (1994), and the Maple Leaf Rag III (2006).

R&B singer, songwriter, record producer, actress, and fashion designer Beyoncé Knowles recorded a promotional video for her single Deja Vu, which features rapper Jay-Z, at the Maple Leaf in June 2006.

[edit] Hurricane Katrina

The Maple Leaf hosted the Krewe of OAK "Midsummer Mardi Gras" parade and party as scheduled on the night of Saturday, the 27th of August, 2005, although Hurricane Katrina was barrelling down on the city. While attendance was smaller than usual, a crowd insisted on partying New Orleans style one last time. Some came to the event from having spent the day boarding up their homes and packing up their cars, and evacuated from the city after the party.

The Maple Leaf was closed for several weeks in the aftermath of the storm (see: Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans). Owner Hank Staples stayed in New Orleans to guard the bar and his other properties, while vowing in interviews with national media outlets to host the first concert in New Orleans after the storm. And on September 30, 2005, Walter "Wolfman" Washington played the Maple Leaf's first post-Katrina show in New Orleans. (Some other local musicians who were playing in the aftermath of the storm dispute the claim that it was the city's first post-Katrina public performance, but this was the first to generate such sizable crowds and media attention.) The band's equipment was powered by a diesel generator because electricity had not yet been restored to most of the city. The gig was eventually shut down by police and National Guard as the city was still under a curfew. Electricity was restored to this section of the city about a week later.