Mitch Woods, Jambalaya are Crawfest hits

Mitch Woods played an outstanding set Saturday at the Pavilion, cajoling and joking with the crowd and playing a hotwired set of jump blues and boogie woogie, featuring music from his new album, several of his older records and a number of hot covers, including "Rocket 88," "I Want You To Be My Baby" and "Crawfishin'." Woods is perfectly suited to this event, putting on a show that featured some hard driving New Orleans piano and plenty of crowd-pleasing banter. "These crawfish are tough," he joked, "they had to swim up the Delaware river!" Later, when delivering a pitch about the Delta Music Experience tours, he got sassy with the crowd. "People, do yourself a favor and get out of New Jersey once in a while," he told them.
The funky Meters played with guitarist Eric Krasno from Soulive sitting in and played a set that they enjoyed to the full. Their show included a lot of extended jamming on familiar themes like "Fiyo On the Bayou," "Iko Iko" and "Big Chief."
Keith Frank played a hard charging zydeco set with several members of his family including a young girl who tap danced as part of the rhythm section. Food highlights outside of the crawish included the Gumbo and Jambalaya and the fruit cups and smoothies.