Yegor Romantsov doesn’t know anything about collusion with the Russians – he’s from Ukraine. Where they have shrimp as big as dogs. Little dogs but they’re still dogs. Er, shrimp.

Yegor is the front man for The Russian Mafia Band Debauche. He’s also the most energetic musician ever to play on Happy Hour.

Along with Debauche bass player and semi-professional Bloody Mary consumer, Scott Potts.

And the newest member of the band, Monique Pyle on spoons.

When she’s not playing spoons in a Russian Mafia band, Monique books bands for Bayou Boogaloo. If you’re wondering how bands get a gig at the festival, or even if if the question has never crossed your mind, you’re going to be fascinated to hear how it all works.

As if playing the spoons and booking bands isn’t enough for a day’s activities, Monique is also the Managing Director of what is probably the coolest non-profit in New Orleans, The Positive Vibrations Foundation. They’re a little bit like the Jazz and Heritage Foundation without Shell Oil. They’ve just launched a new app that is the brainchild of Anders Osborne, called Send Me A Friend – a way for recovering musicians and entertainment industry folks on the road to stay sober.

Aaron Frumin is charming and charismatic enough to head up a massive corporation. You could imagine him running something like Facebook. But what he actually founded, heads up, and runs, is the other coolest non-profit in New Orleans: Uncommon Construction. It’s a bit hard to describe this in a sentence but fundamentally, Uncommon Construction works with high school kids to build houses. The kids get paid, get course credit, learn a skill, and out of all of that, a real house gets built and sold. It’s pretty cool. And Aaron is still single if you can believe that.

You can go back through the nearly 8 years of Happy Hour shows and you’ll find a few that match the fun, wit, music, and energy of this 60 minutes, but this is a classic.

Photos at Wayfare by Jill Lafleur.