Happy Mardi Gras. Party up today, for lent is nigh. It is the season of discipline, not indulging in something you love until Easter. Can you give up meat or cigarettes, or a luxury of some sort, for the forty days of the Lenten season? Yikes, discipline, my dear! But today, you have to get it all out of your system. Party until midnight, when Cinderella’s coach turns into a pumpkin at day’s end. Have you ever been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans? They take this revelry thing mighty seriously, ya know. And you can go from a refined dinner with the family; pearls and dinner jackets; to frontal nudity in the street. To each his own.

Tommy Womack would be fun to take to New Orleans. His eccentric observations would be quite worth the price of admission. His might even be the voice of reason, the counterpoint to the debauchery. Tommy’s new CD comes out today. It is the sequel to There I Said It!, and is called Now What! Music Fog had the great good fortune of doing the intro video for it, which you can watch above. And we had the honor of filming Tommy at Folk Alliance in 2010, which you can enjoy below. (By the way, the Folk Alliance is just kicking off in Memphis this week.) So we bring you the Music Fog recording of one of the songs that you will find on the new album. “On & Off The Wagon,” one from the Fog Bank, with Lisa Oliver-Gray. Maybe the “wagon” starts at midnight. Forty days, huh…?

- Jessie Scott