Trumpeter Al Gomez, of San Antonio, Texas, joins in with Marcia Ball in the workshop tent.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

CHARLESTOWN — Keb’ Mo’ may have been the headliner at the first full day of the Rhythm & Roots Festival at Ninigret Park, and he and his electric band smoothly blended blues, soul and adult contemporary, but the heart and soul of the day and night came right before him. Marcia Ball and, later, an all-star cast kept the spirit and the music of Louisiana alive at a time when another hurricane is bearing down.

The last half of Ball’s performance was dedicated to The Louisiana-Texas Revue, an all-star assemblage including Ball’s regular band and a group of horn players, fiddlers, accordionist Steve Riley and guitarist and singer Johnny Nicholas, a Westerly native.

It’s rare for one of those all-star deals to actually be any good, but here the players had the taste to lay out when necessary and to let the songs breathe and each other shine. The extra players gave even more of an emotional heft to Ball’s staple cover of “Louisiana 1927,” the fiddles coming together to form an elegant string section in the affecting ballad of natural disaster. And Riley gave more muscle to the two-step “Play With Your Poodle.”

“This is what music is all about for me,” Nicholas said of the Rhythm & Roots Festival after playing in the workshop tent in the afternoon, and he was clearly pumped up as he took over with the big-band swing of “Where Ya At?” and the ballad “Grow Too Old.”

“As we asked you last year and the year before and the year before that, please keep New Orleans in your thoughts,” Ball asked the crowd before tearing into “Party Town,” the opening track of her new record, Peace, Love and BBQ. And Riley finished off by leading the supergroup through Clifton Chenier’s “All Night Long.”

The main stage saw a succession of roots and roots-influenced bands throughout the day, leading up to Ball. Host band The Pine Leaf Boys, led by Cajun scion Wilton Savoy, played quick two-steps overlain with long, languid vocal lines in a drawling French and the occasional antic shout. The Waybacks exhibited prodigious instrumental chops on their own mix of bluegrass, country and hippie-rock, with the highlights coming on the sprawling, swaying pirate shanty “Beyond the Northwest Passage” in the middle of the rain. “You guys have got spirit!” James Nash enthused from the stage.

The weather was rainy enough to be irritating; neither the threatened downpour nor the expected clear skies materialized, but attendance was down to an estimated 3,500. Two other problems hung over the festival yesterday.

The first was the rift between the festival and the town that threatens the continuance of the festival at Ninigret Park. While co-organizer Mary Doub didn’t have a definite agreement in hand yesterday, she was optimistic. “It’s gonna be fine,” she said of the chances that the festival would return to Ninigret Park.

“I blame myself,” she said of the flap. She claimed that all she had ever done was encourage co-producer Chuck Wentworth to look at options, and that that had been misinterpreted by the town as a rift. “It’s all a matter of communication,” she said, adding that her dealings with the town had been “absolutely fabulous.”

The second cloud over the festival was the approach of Hurricane Gustav toward the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. With so many of the musicians coming from the state, and coming almost exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina, the situation was “a little dicey for everyone,” said Jon Bertrand of The Pine Leaf Boys. Cajun king Steve Riley, leading his Mamou Playboys, asked the audience members for their best wishes for the region, “because they’re gonna need it. … Tough times are about to hit our state again.”

“It’s chaos down there right now,” Riley said, between a workshop performance and his main show, of the scene in Lafayette, La., where he and his family live. Most of his family is staying put because at this point there is no way to get gas or a hotel room. “It’s gut-wrenching to have to go through this again.”

It all made for a stressful situation when he got here; Riley said he had been on two rapid-fire phone calls when he arrived at Ninigret Park. But fans continually came up to him to show their appreciation, and he said, “you’re surrounded by people who love our music; how can you not feel better?”

Late last night, word came through that the hurricane would take its toll on the festival. The Pine Leaf Boys, the host band of the festival, who were to play twice today, will instead head to Houston, the closest airport to home as the New Orleans airport has been closed. The rhythm section of the Mamou Playboys is also leaving; co-producer Wentworth said that the rhythm section of The Red Stick Ramblers would fill in. There are still holes to fill in the schedule, Wentworth said, but he was confident he would fill them with the bands that are still around Charlestown.

The workshop tent was the place to hear performers (some of whom also did standard sets on the main stage) explain the stories, history and techniques of the music. It was where The Pine Leaf Boys expounded on the difference between the clean and dirty versions of “Uncle Bud” (“the clean words are kind of stupid,” Savoy explained after singing them); it was where Dennis Stroughmatt, leading l’Esprit Creole, explained the history of the French Creoles in Illinois and Missouri (“the rivers didn’t disconnect people; they brought them together”); and it was where Ball, Nicholas and Danny Levin put on a three-way “Piano-rama” at which boogie and barrelhouse ruled the roost, though trumpeter Al Gomez provided the surprise of the set by starting “Sunny Side of the Street” from the back of the tent and wading through the tightly packed audience to make it to the stage by the end.

All the while, the dance tent kept full-tilt Cajun and zydeco by bands including Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas, The Red Stick Ramblers and more coming thick and fast for the dedicated dancers late into the night.

Two of those dancers yesterday afternoon came all the way from Pennsylvania, and they didn’t mind the iffy weather. Mary Durbano compared the euphoria of marathon Cajun and zydeco dancing with “a runner’s high,” and when it was pointed out that wearing white cowboy boots on the grass in the rain carried certain risks, she waved it off. “They wash off,” she said. “It’s all about the bands.”

Janet Peck said there were about 60 people from Pennsylvania at Ninigret yesterday, and that the power of the Cajun and zydeco music was the draw. “This music makes you be who you really are.”

rmassimo@projo.com