{"id":30539,"date":"2016-01-11T14:52:34","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T19:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=30539"},"modified":"2016-01-11T15:17:01","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T20:17:01","slug":"bonerama-in-baltimore-new-orleans-jazz-festival-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/bonerama-in-baltimore-new-orleans-jazz-festival-north\/","title":{"rendered":"Bonerama in Baltimore: New Orleans Jazz Festival North"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 1962 movie Kid Galahad<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0Elvis Presley<\/strong> belted it out like so.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/em>A poor man wants the oyster, a rich man wants the pearl, but the man who can sing when he hasn’t got a thing is king of the whole wide world\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

On January 16\u2014at a South Baltimor<\/strong>e venue called GAME<\/strong> on Warner Street<\/strong>\u2014there will a bit of singing accompanied by a plenitude of brass and bi-valves during a show by the New Orleans<\/strong> combos Bonerama<\/strong> and Panorama Jazz<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Nick<\/a>
Nick Schauman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nick Schauman<\/strong> of The Local Oyster<\/strong>\u00a0in Mount Vernon<\/strong> will cater the gig with more than a thousand St. Mary\u2019s<\/strong> County oysters both raw and grilled from the True Chesapeake<\/strong> farm on St. Jerome Creek<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey harvest to order,\u201d said Schauman, 43, munching an apple while shucking a half-dozen Malpeque<\/strong>\u2019s [from Prince Edward Island<\/strong>] for a customer\u2019s breakfast.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, oysters had become a special treat,\u201d said Schauman. \u201cYou\u2019d have to go to a fancy bar and eat them with a tiny silver fork. So I started shucking them on the street and taking them to music festivals. Once the line starts at the oyster tent, the party is on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Deep South will also be represented at the festival with ribs and other grilled meats from Big Bad Wolf<\/strong>\u2019s House of Barbecue<\/strong>\u2014the cool shack on Harford Road<\/strong> made of yellow brick\u2014in Hamilton<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take it from another local\u2014Nawlins, not Crabtown<\/strong>\u2014raw oysters and the dirty funk of New Orleans brass bands might need to be experienced a few times before the beauty and brine hit the spot.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re both an acquired taste,\u201d said Charley Allen<\/strong>, a Los Angeles<\/strong> drug and alcohol counselor who grew up in Buras<\/strong>, a Louisiana<\/strong> fishing village near the mouth of the Mississippi<\/b>. \u201cThe first time can be quite a shock, but if you relax, both of them will get your blood flowing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

How does an oyster man wind up selling his wares in the shadow of Ravens Stadium<\/strong> while a six-piece Crescent City<\/strong> combo called Bonerama blows the bottom out of Edgar Winter<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein<\/strong>\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

The way R&B legend Rufus Thomas<\/strong> [1917\u2013to\u20132001] taught the world\u2014by walking the dog.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAbout two years ago I was still doing landscaping and odd jobs,\u201d said Schauman. \u201cI was walking a client\u2019s German Shepherd and met one of the neighbors. I told him I had started doing oysters and I guess he remembered me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The neighbor was David <\/strong>Shulman<\/strong>, a physical therapist who specializes in treating musicians, noting that six hours on stage can be as rough on a body as half that time playing ball.\u00a0 Schulman is the promoter of the January 16 event, billed as the \u201cFirst Annual New Orleans North Jazz Festival<\/strong>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Schulman has a lot riding on the event, the success of which determines if a second annual comes to pass. He believes that the $30 ticket price and Schulman\u2019s price of $18 for a dozen raw oysters in a cost-conscious town like Baltimore to be fair.<\/span><\/p>\n

Minus great and organic music rooted in the very soul of the nation, the city on the Patapsco<\/strong> has much in common with the one where the Mississippi<\/strong> dumps into the Gulf of Mexico<\/strong>: a plethora of eccentrics and cheap bars to keep them inspired, a rich history of Catholicism, an inordinate amount of crime (much of it heinous) and, grandly, local seafood.<\/span><\/p>\n

The distinction between a New Orleans oyster and its Maryland<\/strong> cousin, not counting in which waters they originated?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the difference between Tabasco<\/strong> and Old Bay<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to raw oysters, Schauman will be serving the delicacy grilled.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou put\u2019em on the grill on the half-shell, cup-side up and fill the shell with butter and parmesan cheese, that\u2019s the New Orleans way,\u201d said Schauman, noting the way it\u2019s done at Drago<\/strong>\u2019s in Metairie<\/strong>, one of Charley Allen<\/strong>\u2019s oyster haunts when he\u2019s back in the Pelican State.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Baltimore it\u2019s just the same, except for a sprinkling of Old Bay atop the cheese, which is the way Schauman did it for native Cajun Ed Reed<\/strong> when the former Ravens defensive star was inducted into the team Hall of Fame.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEd likes\u2019em grilled,\u201d said Schauman, who worked on the crew of The Wire<\/strong><\/em> during season three and cherishes the day Method Man<\/strong> taught him to juggle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cgrillers\u201d will cost a bit more than the raw on January 16\u2014$2.50 each. Schauman is also thinking of boiling up some crawfish for the occasion, which will end with members of both bands on stage together.<\/span><\/p>\n

But raw\u2014not battered, not fried, not dipped in this and that\u2014is the way the Lord of Salty Waters intended the oyster to be eaten.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can taste the difference in each oyster from where it comes from,\u201d said Schauman. \u201cWine experts say they can taste the dirt from where the grape was grown. Oysters are distinct like that. If you don\u2019t adorn them and you know what you\u2019re looking for, you can tell by the waters they grew in.\u201d\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 1962 movie Kid Galahad,\u00a0Elvis Presley belted it out like so. \u201cA poor man wants the oyster,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":30543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[3113,7598,7078,7599,5832,642,896,4,7600,3819,3],"class_list":["post-30539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-baltimore","tag-bonerama","tag-creative-writing","tag-elvis-presley","tag-free-jazz","tag-ms","tag-new-orleans","tag-oxford","tag-oysters","tag-rafael-alvarez","tag-the-local-voice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/bonerama-no.-1.jpg?fit=600%2C542&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}