On Saturday, December 26th, 50+ artists and hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world came together for Georgia Comes Alive, a virtual music festival aimed at promoting voter participation in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections on January 5th, 2021, which saw a record-breaking voter turnout.
As with all Comes Alive events, special collaborations were a highlight of the nine-hour livestream marathon, and perhaps none was more highly anticipated than Dragon Smoke, the supergroup born years ago out of the late-night “superjam” tradition in New Orleans during Jazz Fest. Guitarist/vocalist Eric Lindell is in high demand as a solo act and a hired gun, Ivan Neville leads his own renowned New Orleans act, Dumpstaphunk, and Stanton Moore and Robert Mercurio make up the rhythm section for yet another Big Easy funk staple, Galactic. It typically takes a special occasion—like late nights during Jazz Fest or the Jam Cruise Pool Deck—to pull this quartet together for a performance, and it never fails to produce remarkable results.
Appropriately, the band appeared for Georgia Comes Alive from the Galactic-owned Tipitina‘s in New Orleans for a moving rendition of the Stevie Wonder protest classic, “Big Brother”. With Professor Longhair‘s face peering down on them from the Tipitina’s wall, Neville led the quartet through a tasteful rendition of the Talking Book anthem, the lyrics “You say that you got me all in your notebook / Writing it down everyday / Your name is I’ll see ya, I’ll change if you vote me in as the pres / The President of your soul” ringing all the more true during this highly contentious election season that has largely played out over social media.
Watch Dragon Smoke perform Stevie Wonder’s “Big Brother” at Tipitina’s for Georgia Comes Alive below and subscribe to the Live For Live Music YouTube channel for more Georgia Comes Alive videos:
Dragon Smoke – “Big Brother” (Stevie Wonder) – Georgia Comes Alive
New Orleans music was well-represented at Georgia Comes Alive, as was Tipitina’s itself. In addition to Dragon Smoke, Galactic, Big Freedia, Tank and the Bangas, Samantha Fish, and more staged their Georgia Comes Alive videos at the famous uptown New Orleans club.
Dragon Smoke joined 50+ other performers and speakers as part of Georgia Comes Alive, presented by Live For Live Music in partnership with voter registration nonprofit HeadCount. The marathon streaming event, powered by Nugs.TV and Plus 1, generated more than $170,000 in funds for grassroots voter organizations like CivicGeorgia and Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda that put in work on the ground to get Georgians out to the polls. For more information on Georgia Comes Alive, visit GeorgiaComesAlive.com.