Big Easy Express

Big Easy Express

Big Easy Express lacks the dramatic arc familiar to documentaries. There's no low point, no conflict, no falling apart. "Everyone is so happy to be on the tour, like it's the tour of dreams," glows Mumford & Sons banjo player Winston Marshall. Following Mumford, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros as they hit the rails for a weeklong train tour, the film captures trackside shows, including a local stop where the Mumfords recruited the Austin High marching band for a massive collaboration of "The Cave." In between the pristine concert footage, there are superb train jams. "The quality of music being played on this train ... it's all getting my heart," reflects now-departed Old Crow Willie Watson. The cinematic and often profound doc peaks in New Orleans with an ecstatic curtain call of the tours' adopted anthem, "Bound for Glory." They were.