pt at large

Boston Red Sox 2013 World Champions: America's Team

Boston Red Sox: World Champions

Given how they pumped up a city shaken by unprecedented terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon on the first day of the baseball season, they would have been on a pedestal even if they hadn't won the World Series. Now their pedestal might be a hazard to the International Space Station.

April 15, 2013
The Boston Marathon. The first home game of the Red Sox 2013 season. The Boston Marathon Bombing…all on the same day.  The city is shaken to its foundation.

Last September, this team was mired in last place in the American League East, bedeviled by an egomaniacal manager and a few well paid malcontents. They stunk. Boston fans Waited 86 years to win their second World Series in 2004. They can tolerate losing. They cannot tolerate losers and the 2012 team had its share of them. This year, with a new manager and a general manager who traded shrewdly for talent, they were a quixotic bunch, a team of talented Don Quixotes seeking redemption. As of today, they were living in a city that needed a shoulder to lean on.

April 19, 2013
Boston is still raw from the bombings that killed three and wounded 264 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, less than one mile away from the ball park. The Red Sox, on a road trip after the Opening Day game, return Friday. The city and surrounding towns have been in “lockdown” since Tuesday. Their Friday home opener is canceled. On Friday night, one bomber is killed, another captured.

April 20, 2013
Play ball. A 617 emblem (Boston's area  code) hangs in the dugout. The second home game is preceded by an emotional ceremony honoring the killed and injured in the bombing, the police departments, first responders and runners and volunteers who participated in the marathon. David Ortiz, the most beloved man on the team, is asked to speak.

Fenway Park becomes a chapel, Deacon David Ortiz presiding and a national audience listening.

“This jersey that we wear today, it doesn't say Red Sox. It says Boston,” Ortiz says. “We want to thank you, Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick, the whole police department for the great job they did this past week. This is our fucking city. And nobody's gonna dictate our freedom. Stay strong.”

This goes down with “Give me liberty or give me death.”  Feisty since a bunch of them dumped tea from a British ship into the harbor, Bostonians don’t usually need reminders to tell them nobody’s gonna dictate their freedom. For this moment, David Ortiz achieved the status of Patrick Henry.

During the next six months, players reached out to families of the killed and wounded. Fans cheered lustily, showering the bunch of beard growing men with unconditional love, gifts and talismans.

These guys were fun to watch, a bunch of talented athletes who kept grinding away. A bunch of players who were just as likely to beat you when they were down to their last out as when they came on strong with RBIs falling like rain. A bunch of guys you can lean on.

October 30, 2013

Boston can get some sleep now. After weeks of way late night and looong playoff games followed by a historic World Series, we’ve expended enough adrenalin to launch a rocket ship. You didn’t dare turn off the TV until the last out was recorded. You gladly gave up thoughts of productivity. So what if you needed a derrick to help you struggle out of bed when the alarm rang. The morning paper, every TV station and sports radio station (and we have lots of them) in town told you you weren’t dreaming. Your team, the team of bearded men you’d cross the street to avoid if they were dressed in civilian clothes,has just won all the marbles.

Highlight reel defensive plays. Heroic home runs. Clutch base hits. Timely pitching. A few managerial bumps along the way to prove John Farrell was indeed human. The fourth and fifth World Series games ending on plays you’d scoff at if they were in a made-for-TV movie. The win of game six last night was DESTINY rolling in like thunder.

A team whose combined batting average in playoffs (with the insane exception of David Ortiz’s .733) was around the weight of a skinny adult male, made a handful of hits when they mattered most.  Heroes were born. Sagas with the narrative heft of Beowulf will now be told and retold in kitchens and bars throughout Red Sox Nation for decades to come.

It’s all over now but the shouting.

This Saturday, there will be shouting. Thousands of men, women, and children will line the streets as the team triumphantly boards Boston's signature duckboats and begins its victory tour at the finish line of the Boston Marathon a few hundred yards from the site of the bombings – a journey completed and begun at the same place.

Stay strong. Was there ever any doubt?

"Tribes": Sound/No Sound at SpeakEasy Stage Production

"Tribes"
A Play by Nina Raine
SpeakEasy Stage Company
Directed by M. Bevin O’Gara; Scenic design by Cristina Todesco; Costume design by Mary Lauve; Lighting design by Annie Wiegand; Sound design by Arshan Gailus; Projection design by Garrett Herzig

Roberts Auditorium at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA
October 18, 2013

Growing up in a family of five can be challenging enough. Add a father who has a Mensa chip on his shoulder and a son who is born deaf poses problems this play explores. Communication is as much about what is said (and heard) as how much is not.

The play begins at the family dinner table in a well to do upper middle class home. It’s a lively sarcastically amusing dinner conversation especially if you’re accustomed to four letter epithets being passed around like the broccoli. Although father, wife, son and daughter have equally foul mouths, the other son at the end of the table is not engaged in any of the conversation and left alone as the dishes are cleared away. That would be Billy, a young man we learn has been deaf by birth. Billy (james Caverly, who was born deaf) can read lips and has learned (we’re never clear how) to vocalize. He has not participated in any of the rip-roaring conversation, or even been glanced at by the other shouters. What is his place here, we wonder.

Twenty-something Daniel (Nael Nacer) and his sister Ruth (Kathryn Myles) are living at home. Neither has gained enough air speed to lift off into the world of commerce or relationships – a fact pointed out by their father Christopher (Patrick Shea) with what he considers tough love but we hear as demeaning belittling rants that clip whatever wings his children may be spreading. Christopher’s wife Beth (Adrianne Krstansky) seems immune to his rants, even when insultingly directed at her.

Growing up in this combustible family constellation ruled with gravitational force by the father, Christopher is challenging to say the least.  Christopher uses his sharp intellect to throw words around like bricks, denigrating ideas and people with gusto. By the end of Act 1, you suspect his high decibel rants are emanating from a failed academic who has no room for the company of successful wife, children, or anyone else in his galaxy.

Erica Spyres and James (Joey) Caverly in SpeakEasy Stage Company’s “Tribes.” Photo Craig Bailey

Billy’s family has never made an effort to enter his universe. This becomes clear when Billy falls for a young woman he meets at a social gathering of deaf people. Sylvia (Erica Spyres) is slowly going deaf, as has happened to her parents.

Billy brings Sylvia home to the family. Christopher baits Sylvia, takes issue with deaf ‘culture’, defends the choice not to enroll Billy in schools for the deaf (“out of principle, we didn’t want to make you part of a minority world”), maintaining he wanted Billy to feel ‘normal’, and dismisses deaf the deaf community as being inbred and exclusive… a ‘tribe’ he scorns. To him, their signing is a way that separates them rather than connects them to the speaking world.

When Billy learns sign language from Sylvia, worlds collide. Billy’s family stands by in confused silence as Billy and Sylvia “talk” to each other.  If you’ve ever been in the company of foreign language speakers, had no idea whether they were discussing the weather or the piece of spinach in your teeth, you get the point. Four digital screens set above the stage translate conversations as Billy and Sylvia ‘talk.’  Sylvia gets Billy a high-powered job as a lip reading expert in court cases.

His success, unexpected, unanticipated, upsets the family dynamic. Billy’s making it. They aren’t. Beth is an aspiring opera singer challenged with pitch problems, Daniel is attempting to write a thesis we suspect will never be completed, mother Ruth is working on a  “marriage/detective breakdown novel,” and Christopher, an academic with authorial ambitions. None of them have succeeded yet.

The second act begins with heavy-handed exposition. Billy confronts his father for not allowing him to be in the company of other deaf kids and for dismissing deaf culture. “This is the first time you’ve ever listened to me,” Billy shouts at his father, who belittles sign language. Billy and Sylvia struggle with their differences of being deaf at birth versus becoming deaf as an adult when you know what you’re in the process of losing.

Sylvia, Daniel, and Beth deal with their failures as Billy thrives. Billy is in jeopardy of losing his job as he fabricates parts of testimony he’s lip reading to fit his own circumstances. Sylvia decides to be with hearing people until she becomes completely deaf, even though she despises the tribal hierarchy within deaf culture: the highest level being deaf children born of deaf parents.

The play’s set, a sprawling living room/dining room/ kitchen, is ingeniously designed for theater in the round. The dining room table, living room chairs, at stage level, surrounded by kitchen sink, cabinets, bookshelves, and armoires in a low perimeter that surrounds the stage elicit the feel of well-worn comfort. The music - opera, rock, pop - played before the play begins and during scene changes reminds us of how our ears take in the world around us.

The play’s final scene feels like the only forced moment, although still touching, and seems to find a truce between the tribes of hearing and non-hearing. The ensemble acting is as good as it gets. Add it to the superb sound and set design and you have a rich night at the theater.

2013 Festival Acadiens et Creole: Sunday, October 13

Festival Acadiens et Creole
Lafayette, LA
Sunday, October 13, 2013

Thousands of people flock to Girard Park, an expansive, grassy, island of greenery with rolling hills and abundant flat land smack in the middle of Lafayette. Some come to relax and eat – if the wind is right, the smell of frying food hits your nostrils as you enter the park. A serious concentration of the entire range of Louisiana cooking – shrimp, rice, catfish, crawfish, red beans and rice, jambalaya, gumbo – and sweet stuff like beignets, snowballs, and gateau frit is staked out on one side of the park. On the other is an equally serious concentration of arts and crafts native to Louisiana. Young families mix it all together, bringing their kids to the playground, to picnic on the hillsides, to wander through the arts and crafts vendor tents, and listen to Louisiana music. 

Ahhh, music. The Festival Acadiens et Creole dance stages are scattered throughout Girard ParkYou can hear it from one stage or another strategically located in the 33 acre park.

 
Walter Mouton and The Scott Playboys in the Salle de Danse. Born in 1938, Walter's a legend, played weekends at La Poussiere in Breaux Bridge for over 35 years, began playing when he was 13. These days, he takes it easy, only plays a a few festivals a year -  which is one reason the tent is so jammed. The other reason is he's so damn much fun to dance to. Several years ago, Walter said, " I  consider myself a dance band as opposed to an authentic Cajun band." C'mon, Walter, singing all those two steps and waltzes in Cajun French, let's compromise - you're an authentic Cajun dance band.

The "Salle de Danse", the only covered dance floor in the festival, is situated in a dell, one of the lowest areas in the park. It rained heavily last night. There is an inch of water the size of a ping pong table on the temporary wooden floor.

Look carefully at the photo above left. See that patch of wood in the lower left corner? That's the dance floor.

The temperature is in the 80s. It's humid. Under the Salle de Danse tent, it feels like we are in a hydroponic garden. How hot is it? When couples from the densely packed floor walk past me as a dance ends, their sweaty bodies give off so much heat it feels like a passing warm front. Men and women towel off after a  dance. This is not a genteel environment. We are soaked. Holding a woman close in the sauna that is a SW Louisiana afternoon, slippery skin, garments clinging to flesh, this is my idea of heaven.

Saturday's rain left patches of muddy earth all over the park. Water saturated the lowest area of the park, which, is exactly where the dance stage is located, which explains why there is a slippery puddle covering the makeshift wood flooring. Some happily wade through it, others perform some precise tight maneuvering in order to avoid it.

 

Ray Abshire and Friends - the rock solid present of traditional Cajun music -  and The Babineaux Sisters, traditional Cajun meets the new millenium.

Ray Abshire is a fourth generation accordion player, his sons on bass and guitar working on generation five. Ray played accordion with the legendary "Balfa Brothers Band" in the 60s and 70s. Dewey Balfa played  in the band that introduced America to Cajun music at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1964. Ray has performed at the Kennedy Center in NYC and dance halls over the country. He sings and plays straight ahead Cajun traditional music he learned from  masters like the Balfa brothers. No fuss, no frills. Pure Acadiana.

His mentor, fiddle player Dewey Balfa (1927-1992), believed that "a culture is preserved one generation at a time," but he realized it wasn't set in stone.  "A culture is like a whole tree. You have to water the roots to keep the tree alive,but at the same time, you can't go cutting off the branches every time it tries to grow."

Dewey would get a kick out of The Babineaux Sisters.They're like a box of cracker jacks with the prize in each handful. I am on my way to another stage when I pass by the Ma Scène Louisiane stage and hear this reggae sounding song with an irresistable beat coming from a Cajun music stage. I stop in my tracks. I grab a woman for a fine and sultry dance and head away again. Whaaat? They're playing a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "The Watchtower" - in French!  When's the last time anyone ever heard this at a Cajun festival?

! Iook up at the stage and see these two girls, two teenagers (barely), Gracie Babineaux, 15, on fiddle and Julie Babineaux,13, on rhythm guitar, fronting the band. Next they play a ballad. I missed the title but not the feeling that I need to see them perform again soon, a new band definitely out on their own Cajun limb.

Unpack your camp chair and sit down for a day of Louisiana music. Want to listen to a different band? Drag your chair to one of the other two outdoor stages. Or bring your entire living room to the park!

Girard Park, a bucolic, grassy oasis in the middle of Lafayette, a block from the University of Louisiana Lafayette campus. Who cares about music when there's a big muddy puddle where you can  try out your new boots.

 

 
Food at the vendor tents is a cash business. But - water and soft drinks are mostly donated - tickets to purchase them sold in $5.00 increments. Water or soda- two tickets. That's one way the festival makes some dough. This festival is free, an extraordinary value. The income from the drink concessions is one way the festival is subsidized.

And buy a festival pin for $10.00 to keep this three day Louisiana music extravaganza festival FREE.

Friends from Lafayette dancing on the turf.


pt with Jackie Simien, KBMT  Beaumont, TX news anchor, whom he met at the Festival last year. Jackie has written a lovely children's book, Bon Jour, Tee Belle and was here at the La Place des Petites to read and sign copies. Wayne Toups and Zydecajun finishes the weekend of music as dusk and dew descend upon Girard Park.

Photos © by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Photo of pt and Jackie Simien by Carrington Simien

 

 

2013 Festival Acadiens et Creole: Videos

Festival Acadiens et Creole
Girard Park, Lafayette, Louisiana
Friday October 11, Sunday October 13, 2013

 

 

5:15 PM Friday, October 11, 2013 Scène Ma Louisiane

A few women get inspired to line dance while the rest of the crowd is dancing two step or zydeco or some variation of the two while Geno Delafose and His French Rockin' Boogie with special guest Joel Sonnier sing from the stage. I decide to walk through the dancers, which would be impossible by 6:45 when Geno's set ends and this uneven patch of grass turning to mud will be packed solid. The Official Cutting of the Boudin kicked off the 39th annual event at 5:00.

Another band will follow from 7-8:45. Saturday and Sunday music and dancing will roll on from 10:30 AM until 7:15 PM. If the park had stadium lighting, there is no telling when the music and dancing would end.

PS the grey haired gent at the 1:42 mark is a 90 year young fella from Denver, he and his wife have been dancing for 20 years. Now I have another role model.

 

Sunday, October 13, 2013 12 PM The festival has been open an hour, will continue till 7:15, not very crowded yet.

A walk from the street down toward the Scène Ma Louisiane, the main stage (there are two other stages, one outdoors, Scène Mon Heritage) like this one, another (Salle de Danse) in a tent where the temperature could melt probably melt glass. I pass by one section of food tents, there are fifteen more nearby selling anything fried, baked, boiled or roasted, not to mention a few dedicated to your sweet tooth. Cooking demonstrations go on all day long at the Culture de la Table seen at the 0:38 mark. Three rows of Arts and Crafts vendors are in a nearby section of the park.

 

2013 Festival Acadiens et Creole: Friday October 11

2013 Festival Acadiens et Creole

Friday night, October 11, 2013

How do you explain an event like Festival Acadiens et Creole? To people who live in and around Lafayette, Louisiana it’s just another chance to listen to music, and, if they feel like it, to dance. Music and dance, oxygen and carbon dioxide, inseparable paired combinations.

What separates Lafayette from other cities is the volume of outdoor music. Let’s see. In Lafayette there are the Bach Lunches at noon on Friday, the four day Festival International de Louisiane in April, and the three day Festival Acadiens et Creole in October. Mardi Gras is celebrated here and in every little town within fifty miles of Lafayette.

There are over 400 (no typo) festivals celebrated a year in Louisiana.These people are imaginative. They find ways to celebrate everything that grows or lives here.

Rice? There’s the International Rice Festival in Crowley. Strawberries? The Strawberry Festival in Ponchatoula. Tomatoes? The Tomato Festival in Chalmette. Catfish? Actually two of them - Franklin Parish Catfish Festival in Winnsboro and the Catfish Festival in Washington, LA. Pride in Cajun heritage? The Giant Omelette Festival in Abbeville. Crawfish? The Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival. You get the idea.
http://www.louisianatravel.com/festivals

Festival Acadiens et Creole is a genuflection to the two biggest stars in the southwest galaxy of music: Cajun and Creole music.

“This festival is special. It’s one of the most important festivals because it shines a light on our culture. It’s not just Cajun music, it’s Louisiana music,” says Steve Riley, leader of  Steve Riley and The Mamou Playboys. His band travels has been traveling the world, spreading the gospel of Louisiana music for 25 years.

There is no other festival on earth that spawns such eclectic, authentic, rootsy, music that honors it's past but is not anchored to it. Just look at the names of the musicians on the program.

“Go to to dance halls and you see 20-year-olds dancing with 70-year-olds,” Riley says. “Look in the crowd, it's happening right here, right now. You can go to the Blue Moon Saloon on a Wednesday night an hear a jam session put on by a bunch of 21-year-old kids just learning how to perform. The music is alive, keeps reinventing itself. We’ve been playing together for 25 years, heck some marriages don't last that long."(probably true of the members of the band on stage, too).

I've lost track of the times I've fallen in love during an especially fine dance. A friend of mine calls them "four minute affairs." Judging by the smiles on the dancer's faces, there are plenty of affairs going on right now.

Dance floor? Heck, no. These people are dancing on what unti this morning was an uneven pach of grass. It's turning a little muddy thanks to last night' s rain. Last year, some dancers wore bandanas over their faces to keep from inhaling dust kicked up by hundreds of pairs of feet. A little mud? No one complains.

 

Parents, sometimes grandparents, take kids around the dance floor in their arms, on their shoulders, even have kids stand on their shoes and move to the beat with them. Are they enjoying themselves? Check the smile on the little girl. Some day, they'll do the same thing with their own kids. In southwest Louiisiana, dancing is a birthright.

Friday afternoon 5:30 PM there is Geno and His French Rockin' Boogie on the main stage at Girard Park kicking off the 39th year of Festival Acadiens et Creole. The sky is blue, the sun is lazing its way toward the horizon, the temperature is in the low 80s, the humidity is low, and spirits are high.

Right now there a couple hundred people happily shaking their booty on the uneven, clumpy, grass-beaten-down-about-to-be-mud-or-dust surface in front of the stage, with another 300 sprawled about in camp chairs or blankets listening to Geno's popular music. Geno has been playing steadily for the past 19 years. It's no wonder most of them can lip-synch or sing-along with his upbeat two steps or lazy waltzes.

Geno and His French Rockin' Boogie have been a huge draw for any dance since 1994. They play zydeco and a smattering of country/western and bluesy styles. Geno's the kickstarter for this year's festival. An honest to goodness Creole cowboy, when he's not performing he's raising horses on his Double D ranch in Duralde, LA.

Photos © by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. 

 

Bonsoir Catin at ARTmosphere

Bonsoir Catin
ARTmosphere
902 Johnson Street
Lafayette, LA

October 11, 2013

No doubt about it. These gals rock. Tonight they played some new material, a few covers, and lots of their own catalog. Hard to pin this down. Tonight is high enegry cajun roots rock mixed with some sweet waltzes and sultry ballads. Sweaty dancers love these - a chance to slow down and hold an equally sweaty dancer in your arms.Yes. If you're fussy about your clothing becoming soaked or being in close quarters with a partner who looks like he/she just finished a hundred yard dash in the blazing sun, you probably want to listen to music at home and dance in your kitchen - which actually is fun whether you do it spontaneously while the bacon is frying or with a guest of similar persuasion. But I digress.

Artmosphere hosts some of the best bands in Lafayette. That's saying something because Lafayette has become a petrie dish incubating the next generation of cajun and roots rockers in Louisiana. Like its neighbor The Blue  Moon, they give fledgling singer songwriters and bands a chance to reach for the stars - or at least a niche audience.

Bonsoir Catin used to be one of those fledgling bands. No more. They have a huge following, love and respect the traditions from which it springs, and can play the  bejesus out of their guitars, fiddles, accordion and drums, which are manned by the one Y chromosome in the band.

   

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Ray Abshire and Friends: The Blue Moon Saloon

The Blue Moon Saloon
215 East Convent Street

Lafayette, Louisiana 7050
October 10, 2013
9 PM till ?

The Blue Moon Saloon salutes Louisiana talent across the board. Roots music, Cajun,  funk, a little zydeco, rock n roll, Texas two-step, blues – you’ll hear it all here from young up-and-comers and Grammy nominated (and winning) musicians like Steve Riley, Wayne Toups, Cedric Watson and bands like young Feufollet and The Pine Leaf Boys and The Red Stick Ramblers. The place isn’t afraid to book new talent with bands I’ve never heard of – The Drunken Catfish Ramblers, The Iguanas, The Creole String Beans.

And when it’s Mardi Gras or Festival International de Louisiane or Festival Acadiens et Creole, the Blue Moon Saloon is the first stop for dancers who flock to Lafayette like bees to buttercups. I have no idea what the fire code is for this establishment but I would bet a bucket of boudain it stretches the limit. If you are at all claustrophobic, this would be your nightmare.

Imagine the density of a crowd in a subway car at rush hour. Then imagine some really peppy music and everyone decides to dance. That's what happens at the Blue Moon Saloon on a night like this. The only uniformity is that this dancing bunch of sardines moves to the same beat, not necessarily in the same direction at the same time. Soft collisions are frequent, smiles are offered. Sweaty slippery bodies move along in what looks like slow motion mitosis under the microscope you used in high school biology class. The one cool thing about this is that it is a terrific excuse to dance in close embrace with your partner. Slow, steady, and smile.

Waltzes and two step are done with economy of style. Small steps, often keeping time while barely moving. Lots of hip action, like dancing on a manhole cover. Encourages your inner free spirit.

Tonight it’s Ray Abshire accordion, highly-regarded fiddlers Courtney Granger and Kevin Wimmer, Ray’s two sons on guitar and bass and Ray's friend Lisa Cormier keeping time on the drums.

"Ray Abshire's sons are Brent and Travis and their traditional style is due to Abshire's diligent commitment to our root rhythms and syncopation," says music-lover Abigail Ransonet, born and bred in Acadiana, who was one of the sweetest dancers in the crush.

Ray has played with many of the legendary Cajun musicians including the Balfa Brothers. Today, he's a link to the past, present, and future. Sharing the vocals with Courtney Granger, these guys are a hell of a lot of fun to dance to.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

October 11, 2013 in Dance, Louisiana | Permalink

Mercredi Show in Carecro: Outdoor Dancing SW Louisiana Style

 The Mercredi Show

110 Softball Drive at the Pelican Park Concert Stage behind a huge softball diamond
Carencro, LA ( The Softball Capitol of the World)
October 9, 2013
6:00 - 8:30 PM (non-stop, I might add)

This week: Swamp Pop Extravaganza featuring the godfathers of Swamp Pop: Warren Storm and Willie Tee and Cypress

Southwest Louisiana takes two things seriously: music and dancing. Well, there's also food, fishing, friendships, family ties, and farming, but let's stick with the music and dancing, the most inseparable pair of the bunch. They're not particular about where to combine the two. If you've never danced in a parking lot, in a muddy field, in front of a donut shop, at a county fair, in a city park...well, my friend, you've never been to the parishes in the heart of southwest Louisiana.

The "Mercredi" ("Wednesday" en Francais) Show is into its 8th year, with a series in the Spring and the Fall.

MORE DETAILS and a VIDEO when I return home

"We've got a special guest in the audience tonight. There's a fella who came all the way from Boston to dance to Warren Storm and Willie Tee... Paul, where are you?" says the MC. I wave to the crowd. Murray Conque, MC and well-known Cajun comdien, is the cousin of Richard Conques (see below), who told me about the Mercredi Show schedule this year. When i found them on the hillside, they had a camp chair set up for me and introduced me to their friends. That's typical SW Louisiana hospitality.

 

Richard and Ramona Conques, who I met at the Festival Acadiens et Creole last October; pt and Ramona on the dance floor.

Gotta love this: the beer and soft drink concession is operated by the local funeral home!

Two of the godfathers of Swamp Pop: Warren Storm and Willie Tee

Ramona and Richard Conques with pt; Richard's cousin, Comedian and popular MC Murray Conque, Warren Storm, pt

Owner of KBON FM in Eunice, LA, popular DJ Paul Marx with pt

http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/12/kbon-louisiana-proud-the-voice-of-the-prairie.html

 

La Cuisine de Maman: Vermilionville

Lunch at Cuisine de Maman
Vermilionville, a living history museum and folklife park in Lafayette, LA
October 9, 2013

I've been reading about the food served in this cozy simply designed restaurant at Vermilionville for three years and finally slowed down enough to drive over there and sit down.

The setting is rustic: the floors, walls, tables and chairs all glow of honey hued maple and oak in the main dining room and two smaller spaces, probably added on after the main dining room was built. The glass-enclosed rear dining room features an expansive view of the chocolate brown, rich with silt Vermillion River and grassy patches leading to the historic village.

The daily special for today read -
Wednesday, October 9
Chicken & Sausage Gumbo or Side Salad with Buttermilk Biscuit
Meatball Stew with White Rice
Carrots/Sweet Peas
Bread Pudding or Cheesecake

In my naïve way, I thought it was a choice between the first two then dessert. Nope. The special, at a price of $9.95 was for the works. That is one big bang for your buck. 

The gumbo had an authentic  enough degree of spiciness to make my nose run. The meatballs with gravy over rice were a bit dry, the texture of the carrots and peas was mushy but still had taste to them.  Based on this one experience, I would not consider this a food destination but it certainly is a convenience for the visitors and a cash cow for the village. One exception: the bread pudding was scrumptiously sweet with a crusty baked top.

Also on the menu:  shrimp or crawfish served fried or etoufeéd, fried catfish with fries and cole slaw. If i return that's my target, plus another helping of bread pudding, of course.

Entry house for Vermilionville; entry to the Cuisine de Maman restaurant.

This is a serious amount of food for $9.95, would fuel a visitor for a few hours of touring the historic village a few paces away.


The bread pudding, moist center, crunchy baked top, was a treat for anyone with a sweet tooth

One Man, Two Guvnors: A Half Baked British Farce

One Man, Two Guvnors, a play by Richard Bean
Directed by Spiro Veloudos, Music Director Catherine Stornetta
Lyric Stage Company of Boston
140 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA 02116

Matthew Whiton - Scenic Design;Tyler Kinney - Costume Design; Scott Clyve - Lighting Design; Andrew Duncan Will - Sound Design; Nina Zendejas - Dialect Coach

Running time: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes
with one intermission

Box Office: 617-585-5678     Play runs through October 12, 2013

American writers make screwball comedies, just not as wacky and convoluted as the Brits (whose tastes in comedy you can trace back to Moliere and the Italian commedia dell'arte). This one goes a mile a minute and you need a road map to keep track of the play's route. Neal A, Casey as Francis Henshall, describes himself as "the role model for village idiots everywhere."  Francis is the play's pivotal nutcase -  by turns hapless and wily, makes the most of his slapstick role and fits right in with the blowhards, braggarts, and buffoons who populate the story.

"One Man, Two Guvnors" might also be titled "One Man, Two Plays". The first act of the 2 ½ hour show is pure British madcap comedy. If you enjoyed the Monty Python or the Fawlty Towers series this would be your cup of tea. Running sight gags, pratfalls, byzantine connections linking characters together, and hilarious one-liners delivered deadpan or with a wink to us in the audience, and nutty songs that add frosting to the zany layer cake of a play. Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall, the fellow with two guvnors, is the chief reason to order a slice of this comedy. The trouble is the cake, which rose well enough in the first act, falls flat in the second act.

I confess that I couldn’t understand many of the rat-a-tat lines delivered by characters in the first act but I laughed along at the loopy comedy. Let’s see, there is Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall, Tiffany Chen as Pauline Clench, Larry Coen as Harry Dangle (yes, there are obvious lines thrown about with that name), John Davin as Alfie, McCaela Donovan as Rachel Crabbe, Aimee Doherty as Dolly, Harry McEnerny as Gareth, Davron S. Monroe as Lloyd Boateng, Dale Place as Charlie “The Duck” Clench, Alexandro Simoes as Alan, and Dan Whelton as Stanley Stubbers. Their lives are all connected in some vague way. Each of them has a blast overacting, hyperventilating and playing outlandishly.

Francis, a bit of a flibbertigibbet with an apparent eating disorder, is the man with two bosses. He manages to concoct zany stories to cover up the mistakes that irritate each boss, gets into a love match with one of his bosses secretaries (Aimee Doherty as Dolly steals every small bit she has), cooks up several  moments of playful absurdity with members of the audience, and is an endearingly picaresque space shot trying to make a living by using his wits, which are deficient but swallowed by his gullible guvnors.

Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall and Aimee Doherty as Dolly. Photo Mark S. Howard

Theren are song and dance numbers, sort of Gilbert and Sullivan style, played with a live band in the theater wings, that are meant to underpin parts of the plot, such as it is. The colorful set design is ingeniously devised, swiftly moved about by the actors between scenes, usually accompanied with zippy music.

Oh, and there’s mistaken identity, people who are alive that are supposed to be dead (or was it the other way around). Honestly, at some point it doesn’t make any difference. There’s a familiar ring to the plot. It is based on an 18th century Italian comedy, Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters. It is sort of a Shakespearean Comedy of Errors – multiple plots, mistaken identity, young lovers trying to overcome difficulties, slapstick, tangled sub-plots, and earthy humor.

The second act just doesn’t take off. It almost doesn’t matter. You can see that the coincidences begin to congeal into an absurd but serviceable ending in which everyone is paired up or suitably stationed.

If you like Gilbert and Sullivan with a twist, this might be the tonic for you. If you’d like to see how one man, Neal A. Casey as Francis Henshall, can anchor an air headed (and I say this with love) comedy with a cast of ten characters depending on him to be the sun around which they orbit, this is musical comedy is for you.

Play Me, I'm Yours: Boston, MA

Play Me, I'm Yours

Boston Common
October 3, 2012

Boston has been keyed up for this event for months. Seventy five pianos have been scattered throughout the Greater Boston area, they're waiting for you to tickle them.

What started out as a glitch in 2006 when a family in Sheffield, England had to leave a piano on the sidewalk because it couldn't fit inside their new house has become an international phenomenon.

That's what happens when an artist, Luke Jerram in this case, gets a bee in his bonnet to do some way out of the box thinking. Why not install pianos in public places and invite people to play them. No experience required. It's hard to imagine how many times "Chopsticks" has been banged out on one of the pianos - equally difficult to imagine how many Bach/Brahms/Beethoven/Mozart not to mention Amy Winehouse and The Rolling Stones covers have been pounded out.

This installation has a pedigree and an edge. The "Play Me, I'm Yours" artwork has sparked interest even when sharing the playbill with the glossiest events - including the Pan Am Games, 2010 European Capital of Culture in Pecs, LA Chamber Orchestra,  San Jose Biennial, Sydney Festival, City of London Festival, Faculty of Music at University of Cambridge and Barcelona’s Maria Canals International Music Competition. Over five million people have witnessed the installations. This year alone, "Play Me, I'm Yours" has charmed people in Monterey, CA; Munich; Geneva; Paris; Cleveland; Omaha; Boston right now; and Santiago later in October. That's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on.

One of creator Luke Jerram's goals was to get people talking to one another in urban areas, with the  piano installations "acting as a catalyst for conversation and changing the dynamics of a space." Log onto the website. There are hundreds of videos and thousands of comments from around the world showing that Luke's getting his wish. Over 700 pianos have been installed in cities across the globe.

"Play Me, I'm Yours" comes to Boston in honor of the Celebrity Series of Boston's 75th anniversary. Dozens of local partner organizations "host" the pianos: the City of Boston, the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Arts Academy the Office for the Arts at Harvard and the Prudential Center are among the hosts who commision artists to decorate each of the 75 pianos.

A fellow from my adopted home town, Watertown, is the project manager. Michael Wilson supervises the artists who decorate the pianos. You wouldn't expect to see a plain ol' piano on Boston Common, would you? The pianos are souped up with spectacularly bright paint, plaster, and anything else an artist-type can think of.

pt at large visited two sites on Boston Common today. Who was playing the piano just below the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial, a stone's throw from the gold domed state capitol building? A homeless man who says his name is Billy. Billy's got a bit of a buzz going on, he's been living on the street for years ("a church here, a doorway there,"  says his friend, another homeless man) but he's intent on making music. His focus may be fogged by afternoon swigs from the bottle in his pocket but his sense of concentration is profound. He is going to coax music from this piano.

Billy takes a break to sit with his friends, two other homeless people. A young man, stops, sits down, plays a classical piece, gets up, takes a bow and  briskly walks away. A few minutes later, another young man dispatches another classical piece. Tour buses motor down Beacon Street and stop at the Memorial to the first regiment of black soldiers to fight for the Union in 1863. They can't see or hear the piano below. Strollers pass by, some with barely a nod, others stand and watch for a few minutes, some chatting. It's hard to cut through the barrier of anonymity. In the two sites on Boston Common this afternoon, it appears that we're a culture of observers. Our first instinct is to whip out our smart phone, snap photos, record a video. The communication is second hand, zipped along via The Cloud to our friends in distant places.

Oddly, it's Billy who connects in real time, announcing, "I want to make people glad!" to anyone within earshot (at the 1:14 mark of the second video below Play Me, I'm Yours2). Luke Jerrod would be pleased with that.

Down the hill, another piano, garishly painted, am image of a painted lady brushed on top, is in the hands of a young woman with a serious calling to play Amy Winehouse covers. She refers to her little red and white notebook for a few seconds then belts out a cover of "Bleeding Out" by Imagine Dragons.The Boston Common Visitor Center is visible on the right side of photo below.

 
Most passersby hustle past, giving the pianist a passing glance. They are destination-oriented. There's a guy on a soapbox fifty yards away proclaiming the end of the world and the words of Jesus. He's not drawing much of an audience either. Neither he nor the young lady at the keyboard care. They're here because they need to express themselves, take advantage of one of the best public stages in Boston.

None of the performers is in this to get noticed for stardom. No business cards, no hype. Just the urge to say YES to the invitation to sit down and play something. Homeless Billy may never get another chance to play a piano but his long dirt-caked fingers have shared the keyboard with fingers of people to whom he is all but invisible. Today, he was easily the most inspiring player on the Common, his inner little boy Billy wanting to make his music on his piano.

"Play me, I'm yours," the piano whispered to Billy. "I accept," Billy seemed to say. He was last seen, all by himself, trying to find the right chords to make people glad.

 "What's your name?" he says as I chat with him. "I'm Billy," he says, extending his big paw. He's playing at one of the two pianos on Boston Common, this one just below the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial, a stone's throw from the gold-domed state capitol building on Beacon Street. http://streetpianos.com/boston2013/pianos/boston-common-54th-regiment/

 

"I want to be better...to make you glad!" Billy says with conviction at the 1:14 mark of the video.

 

This pianist next to the Boston Common Visitor Center covers Amy Winehouse. "I take requests," she smiles, in a brief ten second lull. She refers to her little red and white notebook for a few seconds then charges into another cover song, totally comfortable in this outdoor setting, a fire engine blaring down Tremont Street one minute and a street evangelist preaching loudly on a soapbox nearby. http://streetpianos.com/boston2013/pianos/boston-common-visitors-center/

  

 "Bleeding Out," a cover from Imagine Dragons.

 

Some serious classical playing, he sits, plays, gets up, acknowledges applause, takes a bow and hits the road. http://streetpianos.com/boston2013/pianos/boston-common-54th-regiment/

 

Under the shade of a huge oak tree, the golden dome of the state house three hundred yards behind us, another pianist sits, plays, then wanders off, having added his signature to this piano.http://streetpianos.com/boston2013/pianos/boston-common-54th-regiment/

The homeless woman with the two men is another comrade-in-arms."Billly had a place of his own, but he got lonely there, " she says.  "Sometimes he'd invite people to stay, some of the the wrong kind of people, some of the good.When we get places to live, we're scattered from East Boston to Jamaica Plain and Boston, and we don't see each other on the street as much. Maybe that's a good thing," she says.

She has a foam container of take-out food. Relaxing on the bench in the shade of  a huge oak tree beside the piano,she shares it as they listen to the random piano players. They might be the most closely knit trio on any bench on Boston Common this afternoon.

 

(L) A pianist takes over when Billy takes a break; (R) "I've known him since I was  kid, we've been on the streets for years, he's like a big brother to me," says his friend.There are a few teeth missing but his smile is genuine. "We live on the street, this church, that doorway, every night," he says.

The smell of liquor wafts through the air when the gentle breeze blows just right. Billy hauls out a pint from a deep pocket in his jacket and takes a pull from time to time. His concentration is fierce, his imagination on fire. Will he remember this tomorrow? It will certainly live in the memories of the scores of people who've passed by, the sight of a homeless man, limbering up his fingers as he concentrates, imagining what the next chord he's about to play will sound like in his own clean, warm, bright concert hall.
 

The piano Billy was playing on is under the tree just in front of the  gold-domed State House in the upper part of the photo. The young lady below is playing in front of the Boston Common Visitor Center to the left of this gorgeous fountain.

 

"I take requests," she smiles, in a brief ten second lull between songs. She refers to her little red and white notebook for a few seconds then sings another cover song.http://streetpianos.com/boston2013/pianos/boston-common-visitors-center/
 
 

The Robert Gould Shaw 54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial across the street from the state capitol on Beacon Street.

Without fanfare, Billy keeps playing well into the afternoon. The distance between the State House and him and his piano is less than five hundred yards geographically and one light year away in terms of soclal status. Billy is in another world. The piano has whispered, "Play me, Billy, I'm yours." He does. He is.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.