It’s raining in New Orleans, and just before I set foot in Jacqueline Bishop’s studio, I’m looking at my shoes. I’m wiping them on the doormat, mostly because I don’t want to track mud inside, but because I’m wearing new suede boots and I want to see if, crossing the puddle-filled courtyard between her Garden District house and her studio, I’ve ruined them. That’s what I”m thinking about when I step over the threshold– shoes.

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It is the first day of the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and I am in my car with John Alexander. Like most of the music-loving tourists in town, he is dressed in jeans and sneakers and armed with a camera bag, but unlike them, and pretty much everybody else we both know, we are not headed in the direction of the fairgrounds.

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