Performing at Jazz Fest a dream come true for Lady Chops
Courtesy photo
From left, Amanda Roberts, Elizabeth “Lady Chops” Vidos, Terrance Mogan and Torrez Hypolite will travel to New Orleans Saturday to perform at the historic Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Elizabeth Vidos grew up in Morgan City in a house filled with Louisiana music ranging from blues to jazz to classical.
Also known as Lady Chops, you could understand how much it meant to her to receive a call that she would be performing her unique percussion show at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival Saturday.
A veteran of percussion performances from New York City to just about every small-town library in Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, Vidos is teaming up with three fellow veteran summer reading performers for the Jazz Fest show at 2:45 p.m. at the Kids Tent.
“Being from Morgan City, my parents always had instruments around and there was always blues, jazz and zydeco music playing,” Vidos said. “Growing up in south Louisiana, this is a dream come true.
“I’ve been to the festival before, but this will be my first time performing,” she continued. “It’s an honor to be booked for this.”
Performing in front of large crowds isn’t anything new for Lady Chops. She honed her show while living in New York City and touring with the percussion extravaganza “Stomp,” a show that ran for 29 years on Broadway featuring anything from brooms to wooden poles to hammer handles, garbage cans and even a kitchen sink.
“The cast that came up with ‘Stomp’ were all street performers, and they originally did what they call ‘busking,’ on the streets in New York. One day I thought I would go to Times Square and earn a little street cred. I played the buckets and sort of came up with the name Lady Chops then,” she said.
When family needed her to return to Louisiana, Vidos decided to relocate in Ruston after performing with “Stomp” for nearly a decade.
She was familiar with north Louisiana after visiting her grandparents in Monroe. She eventually went to college at UL-Monroe as well. So moving to Ruston was a natural fit.
Vidos put Lady Chops away for a while, though. “I didn’t touch a drum or anything for about five years,” she said. “I became involved in community theater and expressed myself that way.”
When it came time to return to the music she loves dearly, Vidos resurrected Lady Chops and developed a one-woman show that she now performs all across the region in libraries, theaters and festivals.
In fact, Lady Chops and the “Drumroll Please” show is high demand. So much so that Vidos said she is booked for 96 performances this summer across Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Today, she’ll be performing a closed show at the Louisiana Methodist Children’s Home before leaving for New Orleans to meet up with three other performers who make up the Jazz Fest show of “The TMM Project featuring Amanda Roberts and Lady Chops.”
Her next local performance will be on June 12 at the Lincoln Parish Library Events Center in Ruston. Visit her Facebook page facebook. com/ladychops or follow her on Instagram @theladychops.
Vidos said she has performed with Roberts before over the years. Roberts, who is a Monroe native, will feature a Jazz Fest performance of the hammer dulcimer, an unusual percussion instrument featuring 111 strings stretched over a sound board. The instrument is played with small wooden mallets in the shape of spoons.
Vidos said she is bringing a wide array of percussion instruments to New Orleans, about 20 different percussion pieces, to be exact. That includes a travel drum kit and a cajón, which is a box drum that is worn over the shoulder with a strap.
Roberts and Lady Chops will join two dancers from Iberia Parish — Terrance Morgan of Coteau and Torrez Hypolite of New Iberia — at the Kids Tent Saturday.
The four performers met at a library in Iberia Parish and immediately struck up a friendship and a performance chemistry that began with an impromptu set at that library where they met.
Morgan and Hypolite make up TMM Project, or True Mission Matters, described as Louisiana’s newest performing arts and educational collective with a mission to inspire Louisiana’s youth, a common thread they all share.
Saturdays at Jazz Fest are pretty prestigious. You can tell by who will be performing at the same time as Lady Chops. While she and her friends are at the Kids Tent, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Deacon John, Bruce Daigrepont Cajun Band and BeauSoleil avec Michael Doubt will be either performing on other stages or warming up.
Whether it’s for several dozen children in a library or in front of thousands at Jazz Fest, Vidos just loves to become Lady Chops for an hour or two.
“This goes back to my roots. This is what we do,” she said.
