meet me behind the mall

Snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate

Taylor Swift will headline some of the nation’s largest stadiums when The Eras Tour launches in March. But over the weekend, she attended a far more intimate performance in New Orleans.

On Saturday, Swift caught the 6:15 p.m. set at Preservation Hall, the ancient traditional jazz shrine on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter that barely has room for 100 spectators.

From a back-row pew, Swift watched as drummer Shannon Powell led a band that included 90-year-old clarinetist and saxophonist Charlie Gabriel.

Swift didn’t wear any sort of disguise, or even a hat, to hide her identity. Yet no one seemed to recognize her, possibly because nobody thought one of the world’s biggest pop stars would be hanging out at Preservation Hall on an unremarkable Saturday evening in December.

📸: Erika Goldring

“It was completely random and unexpected,” said photographer Erika Goldring, who happened to be in the audience that night. “You never would expect to see Taylor Swift at Preservation Hall. Maybe during Jazz Fest, but not in December.”

Swift’s boyfriend, British actor Joe Alwyn, was with her. Alwyn has been in New Orleans for several weeks filming director Yorgos Lanthimos’ “And” with a cast that also includes Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe.

Producer and songwriter Jack Antonoff, a frequent Swift collaborator, was also reportedly in attendance at Pres Hall. Antonoff’s fiancee, actress Margaret Qualley, is part of the “And” cast.

Swift headlined the Caesars Superdome as part of her Reputation Tour in 2018, but this was apparently her first visit to Preservation Hall.

When Powell and company performed the song “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It,” Swift made her way from the back row to the front bandstand and deposited multiple bills in the band’s tip jar.

And still, no one seemed to realize who she was.

“Nobody gasped,” Goldring said. “I didn’t get the sense that anybody put two and two together.

“It was refreshing that somebody who everyone should know could sit in a room with less than 100 people and not be bothered.”

evermore | Taylor Swift [Dec. 11, 2020] ❄🍂🤎 It feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music. We chose to wander deeper in. … I have no idea about a lot of things these days and so I’ve clung to the one thing that keeps me connected to you all. That thing always has and always will be music. And may it continue, evermore.

Just between us, did the love affair maim you too?

taylor swift photographed by beth garrabrant for her album “midnights”, 2022

I can still make the whole place shimmer

Best believe I’m still bejeweled.

HAPPY 59TH ANNIVERSARY!