New Orleans has hundreds of rooms where music happens; Chickie Wah Wah is one of the few built for listening to it. The intimate music bar at 2828 Canal Street in Mid-City, a short streetcar ride from the French Quarter, was opened in 2006 by Dale Triguero, a New York-born promoter who had cut his teeth booking club shows before moving south in the 1990s. He took over the old Canal Bus Stop dive bar and named his room after a 1956 Ace Records single by Bobby Marchan - one of the city's first drag performers and later a Cash Money Records connector - written by Huey "Piano" Smith, whose 1958 follow-up "Little Chickee Wah Wah" cemented the name in local lore. Triguero's formula was deliberately contrarian for post-Katrina New Orleans: an adult music bar with food, where shows started early, smoking was banned before the city required it, and tables and chairs faced the corner stage under walls covered in salvaged signs from shuttered local businesses. The city's roots royalty made it a clubhouse - Anders Osborne, John Fohl and Johnny Sansone held a famed weekly trio residency, Jon Cleary, Tom McDermott, Meschiya Lake, Paul Sanchez, Alex McMurray and John Boutte all kept regular dates - and touring Americana and alt-country acts treated it as the listening-room alternative to Frenchmen Street. When Triguero died in July 2021 at 68, following heart surgery, the club's future wobbled through estate limbo until July 2022, when a group of about twenty co-owners - music industry veterans and regulars among them - bought the property, contents and name for 910,000 dollars expressly to keep the spirit intact. Their renovation improved the acoustics and infrastructure while preserving the room's character, and Chickie Wah Wah reopened on 7 December 2022 with the same booking philosophy: local roots music of all sounds, plus carefully curated touring artists. Small, attentive and quietly essential, the Canal Street room remains what its founder made it - the New Orleans club where the audience is part of the band's equipment.

Type: Bar / Pub

Address: 2828 Canal Street, New Orleans, United States, 70119

Website: https://chickiewahwah.com

Opening Date: 01/06/2006

Serves Food