pt at large

Rich Girl: Smart Money Says You'll Be Impressed

"Rich Girl"
Lyric Stage Company of Boston
Playwright Victoria Stewart
Directed by Courtney O'Connor
NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE
March 28 - April 26, 2014

Running time: Approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission.
FULL REVIEW LATER THIS WEEK!

I just returned from a press opening for Rich Girl...really strong production, loved it. Good story, well told, powerfully acted and directed. I'll put together a review later this week that says so...

Playwright Victoria Stewart does a fine job of recasting this drama/comedy, based on "Washington Square" written by Henry James in 1880, made into "The Heiress," a film in 1949 with box office stars of the era...women, men, money, love... there's a volatile combination for you.

Stewart changed father/daughter relationship in the original to a mother/daughter relationship and this mother/daughter pulls it off with increasing layers of complexity. The other two roles are strong, one adding a wonderful element of farce, the other, the love interest, kept me guessing till the final moment and then some!… satisfyingly resists the notion of tying it all together in a neat bow.

 

Lists, Notes, Random Acts of Happiness

A random post stimulated by a random moment in the car...

I'm a car radio kind of guy. I play my share of CDs, do fabulous imaginary dances rolling along at anywhere between 7 and 75 mph. As a rule, I always have a pen and the back of an envelope handy, never knowing when something strikes a nerve, sparks a memory, makes me smile or reflect on something from the ridiculous to the sublime and I'll want to remember it.

Today I found one under the seat of my C 300. It was a barely legible note (writing while driving, put pen on paper, write without looking, letting the kinetic sense of penmanship take over, better to find an undecipherable mess than end up in the evening news traffic report) on which I scrawled "Nick Lowe Dollar Short of Happy". I don't recall ever listening to the man's music.

I googled "Nick Lowe Dollar Short of Happy" a few minutes ago and came up with two of the most wistfully funny Christmas songs I've ever heard. Turns out Nick is sort of like Leonard Cohen with a dance beat.

A Dollar Short of Happy
Christmas At The Airport  priceless...

I'm an inveterate writer of notes, maker of lists, jotter down of ideas. I find them, crumpled or folded, in coat pockets, car seats, on the back of credit card receipts. Every once in a while, I assemble a pile and perform triage: decide what has expired its shelf life, what I've completed, and what I want to keep in my big list of everything to be done. Most items are practical (buy LED lights for the kitchen), some are aspirational (manage my to-do list better).

I usually make a little to-do list for each day, an exercise to keep my big lifetime list from reaching biblical lengths. I love the feeling, somewhere between smug and satisfied, as I draw a big  line through an item when I complete it. I long ago gave up on the aspiration of getting everything on my list accomplished. Not gonna happen unless I join the Hare Krishna group and divest myself of all worldly possessions. Actually, it's pretty out of control right now. Lists of books to read, movies to see, stories to write, homeowner tasks to accomplish, dates to remember, bills to pay... I could go on.

Every so often I get a surprise like this - two videos of a guy singing musically appealing, clever, catchy little songs that make me laugh, touch a nerve somewhere between my funny bone and my heart strings. On the back of a credit card receipt in the same pile I found a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "A man is about as happy as he wants to be."

Well, Abe, I'm happy that I found you and Nick in my pile of notes. I'll never stop taking notes, being happy to cross things off or add new items to "the list" and know that the list will keep on growing as long as I do. With any luck at all, that will be a long time.

Soul Mates: Original, Provocative, Fabulously Acted

I saw this play last night, wrote this review in 30 minutes. The play's last two nights are tonight and tomorrow night. Time is of the essence.

Soul Mates
Boston Center for the Arts
Black Box Theater next to the Calderwood Pavilion
March 21, 2014
Approximate Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes with no intermission
Cost: $30, $15 for Seniors


Look, I’ll write more about this by tomorrow but right now I want to tell you one thing. Get yourself down to the Boston Center for the Arts Black Box Theater next to the Calderwood Pavilion and see "Soul Mates". The last two shows are tonight and tomorrow.

This was the biggest bang for my buck I've had at the theater all season.

Funny, touching, poignant, provocative, the four actors, in pairs of two for each of the eight vignettes, are all in for every single minute. During the 90-minute play, I laughed, I winced, I had a lump in my throat, and I stood up to cheer at the end of the play. All four actors, no matter how they are paired, connect solidly with each other. The premise of the play, acted out in each scene, is that a soul mate is not that one solitary person on the planet who resonates with you in that deep, enduring, satisfying way.

Playwright Kirsten Knisely believes that and, by the end of the play, so do I.  We can feel completed by a friend, a lover, a family member. Love, loyalty, and friendship, even if it is for a brief but important period in your life, add up to be moments in time with a kindred spirit, a soul mate. It doesn't have to an epiphany with a spectacular 'Ah Hah!" halo surrounding it. Whether you acknowledge it in the moment or with the benefit of hindsight, you were loved and accepted by someone who saw you exactly as you are.

From the first of the eight vignettes to the last, the play is intensely acted, occasionally electrifying, often touching or wildly funny, and always feels right and true. Watching the actors, it was easy for me to recognize my own awkward moments of feeling embarrassed or shy,  or lacking the words to express my true self when trying to break through emotionally with a friend or lover… and the soaring sense of relief, joy, and satisfaction when I became myself rather than the person I thought I should be.

I’ll say more about the actors, directing, lighting, stage managing, and will probably edit this first draft in a post tomorrow.

Right now all I want to tell you is that this play is in the lead for my choice of "Hidden Gem of the Season."
++++++++++++++++++++++

POST SCRIPT written a week after seeing the play…

The Cast (playing multiple characters):
Angela Keefe, Laura Menzie, Joe Kidawski, Brett Milanowski

Playwright: Kirsten Knisely
Director: Caroline L. Price (www.carolinelprice.com)

Producing Artistic Director/Set Design: Danielle Lucas
Props Design: Paul Ezzy
Sound Design/Publicity Photos: Vincent  Morreale
Costume Design: Julia Dauber
Graphic Design: Matthew Scheumann
Program Design: Jeremy Goodman
Stage Manager: Samantha MacArthur

Playing roles from kids to adults, gay and straight, love struck and love struck down, is challenging for any actor. Some of the vignettes hit the mark more squarely than others but there are kernels of truth to be explored in each.  

Laura Menzie and Angela Keefe solidly set the play’s premise (the possibility of having more than one soul mate/pivotal character in life) with great chemistry as two pre-teen girls. The audience lit up with laughter when the two broke into a song and dance rendition of “How Will I Know?”

Angela Keefe managed to consistently inhabit every character she played, from grade school kid to adult. She choreographed the dancing in “An Awesome Dancer” to boot. Director Caroline L. Price does a fine job of holding together a play spanning years 1946 – 2011. Brett Milanowski’s mugging to portray emotional discomfort is just right in some scenes, overdone in a couple of others because he has the range to suggest it without the exaggerated facial expressions. Joe Kidawski and Milanowski are at the top of their game in the vignette “Boys Will Be Boys.” Kidawski and Angela Keefe shine in “The Arrangement.” Laura Menzie is affecting as she acknowledges her complicity in a relationship that came apart (The Beginning To An End.")

It’s amazing what a company on a shoestring budget can accomplish with sets. All this play needed was an 8x10 red rug, a few chairs, a blanket, anda few all-purpose wooden boxes. The actors and our imaginations do the rest. The audience spanned 20s to 70s, good to see several non-white spectators in the crowd (the Black Box Theater seated 70 for the show, was almost full).

This was the kind of production that reminds me that Boston is an evolving theater city with lots of small, unheralded companies daring to try new material or remix standards. It may be unevenly acted or produced and has its share of successes and failures but it is vital, undaunted by lack of attention from major outlets, and driven to create stimulating work.

"Hello, Again": A Disappointing Introduction

“Hello, Again”
Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston
Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA Studio A
March 19, 2014 runs through March 29, 2014
90 minutes, no intermission


“Hello, Again” never quite put it all together to create a complete production. The fledgling Bridge Rep’s concept is advertised as " set in an immersive, cabaret-like environment, Bridge Rep’s production of HELLO AGAIN will create a unique, intimate experience for the audience — the perfect setting for a sung-through musical chronicling ten different erotic encounters, each set in a different decade of the 1900′s.”

The intimate setting in Hall A in the Calderwood Pavilion is an excellent choice, replicating the feel of a cabaret, complete with a small bar in one corner. We in the audience around the center of the room are asked to keep the tables next to our chairs clear because they will be used for props in the production. Those of us at the very edge are asked to keep belongings under our chairs since the actors will be moving amongst us. "We call this immersive theater because the action goes on all around you, but it is not interactive, we don't pull you from the audience to be a part of the play." says an actor when I ask him to describe immersive theater.

The acting was decent, although uneven, the singing seemed aimed at volume rather than emotion. Some of the choreography was funny but mostly functional.

The intent is to connect the ten sketches with the mini themes of loneliness and the need to connect with others. Plays are meant to make you feel something or stimulate your intellect. I never developed any feeling for any of the characters, nor was I moved by any of the 10 sequences in the 90-minute play. Since every sketch involved some type of erotic encounter, that was a surprise.

The segues between each of the 10 encounters were often fuzzy, making it difficult to tell where one left off and the other began. Each of the 10 encounters was meant to take place in a different decade in the 20th century, differentiated by the songs and the costumes. To my eye, it was hard, with two exceptions – World War I and the 70s disco era - to pinpoint exactly what decade was being represented.

My emotional barometer seemed to be stuck somewhere in neutral. The few scenes meant to be humorous elicited tepid laughter from the audience. The scenes meant to show heartbreak, empty relationships, rejection, loss were sketches that did not carry emotional punch. Maybe these emotions can only take hold within the structure of a standard musical held together with a strong narrative thread…a thread this production did not make convincingly enough.

It's fascinating that this play is based on an 1897 musical La Ronde by Arthur Schnitzler. The play is buoyed by live music, piano, clarinet, drums, that give the sung lyrics a good jolt. Music undergirds the choreography, much of which depicts sexual congress, from comical to desultory.

 In the modern adaptation the music and lyrics and dialogue are meant to tie the characters and their sexual experiences together. The fact that the 10 sketches are about unrequited love, love gone cold, extramarital affairs with no joy, doesn't make for a rewarding evening at the theater. There’s connection all right, but it’s a heck of a downer. Does the director’s concept miss the mark, is the chemistry between actors off? There must be a more powerful way to present this play, which has had several revivals recently.

Boston is a great petri dish for young independent theater companies. The Bridge Repertory is one of them. They just didn’t hit the mark with me tonight.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The ten scenes representing each decade of the 20th century, not in chronological order:
The Whore. The Soldier. The Nurse. The College Boy. The Young Wife. The Husband. The Young Thing. The Writer. The Actress. The Senator.
Settings: everywhere from an abandoned Hudson River Pier at the turn of the century, to a 70′s disco, to an affluent 50′s suburb.

Actors: Jared Dixon, Lauren Eicher, Sean Patrick Gibbons, Andrew Spatafora, Sarah Talbot, Aubin Wise. Gibbons, Spatafora, and Wise stood out, doing the best they could with the material they were working with.

Death Of A Salesman: Mighty Production at the Lyric Stage Company

Death Of A Salesman
Lyric Stage Company
March 15, 2014, ends March 16
Running time 2 hours 45 minutes with one 15 minute intermission
Director Spiro Veloudos
Janie E. Howland - Scenic Design; Gail Astrid Buckley - Costume Design; Karen Perlow - Lighting Design; Dewey Dellay - Original Music


You have to be brave and bold to mount a production of this play, thought to be one of the best of the 20th century. It would be easy to descend into sentimentality or veer into a political statement about the cold-hearted nature of the American enterprise system.

Director Spiro Velouldos does neither, thanks to a superb cast and careful adherence to playwright Henry Miller’s two pages that specify precisely what the play’s set should look like… a worn-down apartment in Brooklyn in 1949 in which much of the furniture and appliances are already old.

The Lyric Stage Company nails the set right down to the junky off-white Hastings refrigerator, shabby linoleum on the kitchen floor, and two other rooms in the apartment. It feels small and cramped, much like the lives of the Loman family.

The cast does the rest. It doesn't take long to realize that Willy Loman has transformed the American dream into an ongoing American nightmare. While it's painful to watch him descend into delusion and play out his final get rich scheme, it's even more disturbing to watch how Willy's dreams have stunted the lives of his wife Linda (Paula Plum) and his two sons Biff and Happy, solidly acted by Kelby T. Akin and Joseph Marrella.

Willy has never been able to connect the dots between his lofty dreams and what it takes to achieve them. He never really understood that a smile and a shoeshine were not enough to forge a successful career as a salesman. You had to make the numbers.

The beauty of Henry Miller's play is how artfully, through dialogue, flashbacks, and voices imagined by Willy, that he leads us to understand how Willy’s dreams for his sons have unwittingly stunted them as young men yet kept alive his wife's love for him. She knows he’s a good man, does not know of his infidelties, a secret that has consequences.

Willy’s accounts of his prodigious days as a salesman are countered by small bits of reality that seep through every scene Henry Miller has written. It’s not pretty. Willy has been a mediocre salesman at best. Humans are dreamers by nature. Most of us know the difference between our dreams and our realities. Many of us have had moments like Willy in which we realize our lives and our dreams for our lives don’t match perfectly. We adjust.

The Willys of the world don’t adjust. They self -destruct. Watching Willy deconstruct is painful enough. Watching his sons run the same pattern is unbearably sad.

Ken Baltin carries the play on his shoulders from the first moment he shuffles into his dingy apartment after an awful trip on the road. His mixture of bravado, bonhomie and self-importance, is clearly tinged with desperation and the ominous realization that he has failed as a father, husband, and, worst of all for him, as a salesman. Willy has died on his feet long before he dies at the play’s dark final scenes.

For my money, Paula Plum is the Meryl Streep of Boston theater. I've never seen her been anything less than exceptional. Her portrayal of Linda Loman is extraordinarily shaded. Willy doesn’t give her the chance to interrupt him when he’s talking which is most of the time but Linda is Willy's chief cheerleader. She’s also firm and perceptive. Linda tries to broker peace between her sons and their father, seeing what she believes to be their lack of understanding of the man at best and their contempt for him at worst. “Attention must be paid!” she demands of her sons when Willy begins his final slide. And is willing to banish them from her home when they don’t.

Every little thing about this play works. The team of Janie E. Howland - Scenic Design; Gail Astrid Buckley - Costume Design; Karen Perlow - Lighting Design; Dewey Dellay - Original Music gives the play an authentic period feel.

The entire cast, especially Kelby T. Akin and Joseph Marrella as Loman's sons, Charley (Larry Coen) and Willy's brother Ben (Will McGarrahan) make the mark. Credit Veloudos with casting young African-American Omar Robinson as Howard Wagner, the son of Willie’s former boss who now runs the sales business. There was one black face in a full house audience of 240 tonight. Boston needs to expand its audience in terms of race and age. Unusual casting like this can help turn that around.

Photos courtesy of Lyric Stage Company website

Appendix:
The cast:
Ken Baltin -Willy Loman
Paula Plum - Linda Loman
Joseph Marrella - Happy Loman
Kelby T. Akin- Biff Loman
Victor L. Shopov - Bernard
Eve Passeltiner - The Woman
Larry Coen - Charley
Will McGahhahan - Uncle Ben
Omar Robinson - Harold Wagner
Margarita Martinez - Jenny
Jaime Carrillo - Stanley
Jordan Clark - Miss Forsythe
Amanda Spinella – Letta

The Mardi Gras Miracle of 2014

March 4, 2014
Lafayette, Louisiana

The Mardi Gras Miracle of 2014
It may not rival the miracle of five loaves and two fish chronicled in the New Testament but it certainly fed the needs of hundreds of dance pilgrims in need of an exclamation mark to cap Mardi Gras 2014.

PART 1 The Unthinkable

The unheard-of descended upon southwest Louisiana this morning. Freezing rain and ice gripped the region on, of all days in the year, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras Day.

Residents feel like they have woken up in one of Ernest Shackleton's expedition camps in the Antarctic. People down this way rarely see snow let alone black ice and icicles. Warm rains? There have been plenty of Mardi Gras parades in the rain. But ice? The most people down here know about ice is that they fill beer coolers with it.

Tree limbs glisten with translucent layers of ice. People slip on steps as they exit their houses. They have no idea how to scrape ice from windshields. One man describes attempting it with a credit card. You have to give him credit for ingenuity. Interstate I – 10 is closed, ice making traffic over dozens of overpass bridges impossible.

The Tee Mamou Mardi Gras Festival in Iota is canceled. When the proud, tough, independent people of Iota cancel their heralded Tee Mamou Mardi Gras day, you know something catastrophic is occurring.

Street dances and fairs across the region are cancelled. Parades go on in Lafayette and surrounding towns, but floats move more rapidly than usual, bead throwers and krewe members layer up with every article of outerwear they own.

A street cam capturing the parade route in downtown Lafayette shows Mardi Gras floats lumbering with all due speed through town with only the hardiest of partiers watching from behind the barriers set up along the parade route.

Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, is a huge event in southwest Louisiana, probably bigger than Christmas – sorry Jesus. Mother Nature has slipped the region a Mickey. Cancellation of Mardi Gras celebrations? Never heard of. But it happens today.

Hundreds of out-of-town dancers from red and blue states across America peer disconsolately out of their Lafayette hotel rooms and pray for a miracle to deliver them a dance they can drive to without fear of ending up in a ditch.

Today is the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae known as Mardi Gras week. They have been gearing up to dance to this final blast of joyful Cajun and zydeco music since they arrived last week. For some unfathomable reason they do not push the panic button. This is Mardi Gras. Nothing short of the second coming of the aforementioned Jesus shall deny dance destiny… surely someone will organize something.

PART 2 The Miracle

Somewhere around 10 AM a giant cyclotron begins to whir mightily. What transpires in the next 20 minutes shall be known henceforth as "The Mardi Gras Miracle of 2014".

The play-by-play goes like this…

10:09 AM
Bernard Ussher, an Irishman via Boston and Dublin, now a Lafayette shaker and mover of the first order, calls the proprietor of Randol's Restaurant and Dance Hall in Lafayette. Perhaps she would rent the dance hall, Bernard and others could bring a stack of CDs and party on.  Ussher calls Gerry Spanger.
10:12 AM
Gerry Spanger, host of a huge Mardi Gras week party in Breaux Bridge, calls the owner of La Poussiere in Breaux Bridge.
10:14 AM
 Gerry Spanger confirms La Poussiere is available to rent for the afternoon. Ussher and Spanger call Dick Brainard.
10:18 AM
 Dick Brainard, organizer of serious music events in Portland, WA, and supporter of the annual Carrier Family Tribute to the late Roy Carrier, contacts Chubby Carrier, who says his gig in Franklin, Louisiana, has been canceled because of the ice on Interstate 10.
10:21 AM
Dick informs Bernard and Gerry that Chubby Carrier is available to play and they book La Poussiere from 2 PM to 5 PM on Freezing Fat Tuesday
10:29 AM
Bernard cancels effort to secure Randols Restaurant and Dance Hall.

Ussher to Spanger to Brainard, a modern day version of Tinkers to Evers to Chance, the Chicago Cubs infield trio renowned for their lightning-smooth, well-executed teamwork back in the day and memorialized by Franklin Pierce Adams's poem in 1910.

10:42 AM Dick Brainard announces the dance to the crowd at the Ramada Inn and the first broadcast email via acadiana@googlegroups announces the dance followed by a Facebook blast.

2:00 PM
Grammy Award winning musician Chubby Carrier and his Bayou Swamp Band sets up to play at what some consider the best dance floor in southwest Louisiana, La Poussiere.

3:00 PM VIDEO
Nearly 200 dancers are sweating in La Poussiere and the dance floor is bouncing like a Louisiana Hay Ride.

And thanks to a Facebook plea issued by Bernard Ussher, everybody brings food!

“Enough money was taken in to cover the hall rent plus a good payday for the band. Everyone was so happy, as exhibited by the great smiles all round. The event saved the day for all those who had flown in for Mardi Gras, ” Dick Brainard reports.

“Considered one of the best turnouts at La Poussiere ...certainly for one of a few hours notice ...” Bernard Ussher says.

And, by any dancers account, a Mardi Gras Miracle.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dancers braved the slick roadways, the parking lot and nearby streets filled with cars by 2:00 PM. The dance floor sprang to life when Grammy Award-winning Chubby Carrier and His Bayou Swamp Band lit into their first song and stayed that way for hours.

Chubby Carrier, an A-List performer, played drums with his father Roy's band when he was 12, began playing accordion and toured the world with Terence Siemien when he was 15, started his own band at the tender age of 22. He's got great patter going on with every audience. Chubby reads his audience well, mixes zydeco of different paces with pretty waltzes, and swampy belly-rubbin' blues. Chubby's been called "The World's Premier Zydeco Showman." No one would disagree this afternoon.

and a good time is had by all...

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

Bonsoir Catin Rocks 'n Rages at Artmosphere

Bonsoir Catin
Artmosphere
902 Johnston Street
Lafayette, LA
March 3, 2014 - Lundi Gras

Any show Bonsoir Catin performs is a foot-stomping, dance-your-ass-off affair. Tonight’s was all that plus a musical howl into the night, temporarily tempering grief and loss with the best medicine people in this area know, music.

It’s not often a show on any occasion, let alone during Mardi Gras, combines entertainment with a rebound from a death in the family. Bonsoir Catin’s show at Artmosphere in Lafayette on Lundi Gras, the night before Fat Tuesday, was just that. The sudden, untimely passing of 53 year-old Al Berard, one of the region’s most beloved musicians on February 26, rocked the music community in southwest Louisiana to the core.  Hundreds mourned at his funeral on Saturday March 1.

The loss hit the band hard. Al Berard was the father of guitar player Maegan Berard, youngest member of the band. The flowers laid on his grave on March 1 are still fresh when Bonsoir Catin makes its first appearance after his death.  

Anya Burgess, Kristi Guillory, Christine Balfa, and Yvette Landry of Bonsoir Catin needed a release valve from the pressure cooker of grief steaming within their hearts. And they were looking out for bandmate Maegan.

Dancers from all over the country have descended upon Lafayette for Mardi Gras, feasting on great music morning, noon, and night for the week preceding Fat Tuesday. Many know about the loss of Al Berard. Artmosphere is packed.

The dancers are locked and loaded. Bonsoir Catin pulls the trigger, unleashing two hours of kick-ass music. They’re one of the most cohesive bands around, tons of eye contact, smiles, whoops and hollers while they play. They’re letting their hair down tonight. They’re putting everything they’ve got into this show, expelling sorrow with song.

“We really needed this show for a bunch of reasons.” Christine Balfa says at the end of the show. My guess is that Maegan did too.

Atmosphere is a quirky place, caters to a young crowd, and books bands that they love. It has a weird inside configuration, but it works. And it's good competition for the Blue Moon Saloon one block away.

Bonsoir Catin is primed and pumped. Time to let some good times roll and put aside the sudden death of Al Berard, a dear friend to all of them and guitar player Maegan Berard's father.

Anya Burgess/fiddle, Maegan Berard/guitar, Kristi Guillory/accordion, Danny Devillier/drums, Christine Balfa/guitar, Yvette Landry/guitar.

Kristi Guillory introduces the songs, plays the hell out of her accordion, and sings with conviction that comes somewhere between her heart and the soles of her feet. She really gets it going with other players during their solos or her duets with them, great body language, synchronized with her playing. She is clearly a catalyst for energy, the spark that ignites the band’s onstage presence. They are dependably full-tilt boogie but tonight are hell-bent on expelling the pain of loss with the power music.
Maegan takes a solo. Her bandmates clearly support her big time.

Kristi Guillory takes most of the vocals and plays a rousing accordion; Anya Burgess, Maegen Berard.



Maegan Berard finishes an emotional night. Her bandmates know the toll taken on Maegen, wrap her in their arms.

The videos taken on my digital camera don't do justice to the singers or the band's sound.

VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
VIDEO 4
VIDEO 5

Photos and Videos by Paul A.Tamburello, Jr.

 

Fred's Lounge: A Mamou Mardi Gras Tradition

Fred's Lounge
420 Sixth Street
Mamou, Louisiana 70544
March 3, 2014 (Lundi Gras in Louisiana)

Fred's Lounge is a small brick building on the main street of rural Mamou, Louisiana. Somewhere in the distant past it acquired Cajun sainthood, most particularly on the weekend before Mardi Gras. If you're fastidious, you might want to skip the place. If you want a whiff of down home Cajun craziness, including cigarette smoke, beer, and, if there's a good band playing, perspiration, this is your place.

Fred’s has a small bar on the left side with about sixteen stools and a bunch of rickety folding chairs against a wall on the other side of a low partition. That's where the dance floor is. In the two hours I am here today, I never see the floor. Wall to wall people, I can't see my own two feet.

It takes me fifteen minutes to see where Ray Abshire and his band are playing. It takes me five minutes to get from the front door to the edge of the bar (distance approximately ten feet) but it is fun. The place is exploding with energy. It’s about 40 degrees outside, 80 degrees inside, thanks mainly to the over 100 celebrants giving off all kinds of radiant heat. Fire code? What fire code? It’s Mardi Gras for chrissakes.

Every out of town dancer genuflects at Fred’s. When they all worship together, it is a miracle no one gets hurt. If you happen to pass out on the dance floor, your body would be propped up for several minutes by the press of dancers jammed into the 12x16 floor.

Dancing today is not for sissies. Two men mistake the dance floor for roller derby and try to bull their way through what, in effect, is a crowd of dance partners shuffling their feet in time with the fabulous music. Using their partners as a battering ram or their shoulders or elbows as prods, they mistake staking out their path on the dance floor as a sign they are unimpeded by a wall of dancers as thick as a crowd draining from a Boston Red Sox game. Several times I get into a holding action with one of these stevedores. Dance around me, ok. Dance through me, not gonna happen.

The smart men use the conditions as an ideal opportunity to get as close as possible to their partner. If both partners are in agreement about this economical use of space, some pretty sensational body mapping can occur in time with the music. I tell you this from personal experience.

But I digress.

Tante Sue (ex-wife of Fred, who died 20 years ago), a sprightly and saucy seventy-year-old Cajun, runs the bar. She teases, wiggles to the music, jokes with locals and tourists, all likely to to be subject to her brand of country humor. Faded signs, posters, postcards, and photographs are plastered to the wall behind the bar. If you were to inspect the premises before the crowd arrives, you’d see as fine an example of a Cajun dive bar as exists in southwest Louisiana.

To say that Fred's is crowded is an understatement.

No problem hearing Ray Abshire and His Family Band - but it took 15 minutes to actually see where they were, wedged into an alcove at the far end of the dance floor. "They do a pretty good job of protecting us," Ray says. "The guitar player is my son Brent. The bass player is my son Travis. The fiddle player Courney Granger and the drummer Drew Simon," Ray tells me in an email.

Ray could have played for three days straight without repeating himself. He knows about 340 songs. He doesn't try to gussy them up, plays them the way he played them with the Balfa Brothers Band in the 1960s and 1970s.

Interest in folk music was just getting national attention the 1960s. At the Newport Jazz Festival in 1964, Dewey Balfa wowed the audience with authentic Cajun  music. He was invited back again in 1967 after he founded the Balfa Brothers Band. While Cajun music is branching off with interpretations by young southwest Louisiana musicians, Ray keeps the torch burning with the kind of Louisiana music that Dewey Balfa and two generations of Balfas before him played.

Even in this din, Dewey would recognize any one of those 340 songs Ray knows by heart.

 

The fellow in the black hat offers to move aside so I can get a clearshot of the "Fred's" sign. Bobby and Karen Hebert (pronounce à bear) talk with me over the din. "We're from Dedan," Bobby says (clearly I got that wrong since i can't find a town like that listed on the map). Bobby is amazed there are so many out of towners here. Fred's is renowned for it's Cajun music on Saturdays, the only day of the week it's open and  a regular radio broadcast (on KVPI 1050 AM) has been recording it since 1962.

"Dancers from all over the country know about Ray Abshire's show here the day before Fat Tuesday," I tell Bobby. His mother is on the dance floor somewhere. To have a prime seat at the bar, he had to get here early. The Monday before Mardi Gras is the only other time Fred's is open for business other than Saturdays.

 

"Tante Sue" runs the bar. In a few minutes, she'll don a purple and gold cape and lead a procession through the crowd - EVERYBODY steps aside when the diminutive lady heads their way.

pt with Bobby Hebert's neighbor (it's about 40 degrees, they've stepped out to take photo since there's no room to take one inside, they scoot back a minute later); and the band plays on.

VIDEO 1

VIDEO 2

"Tante Sue" leads puts on a conical Mardi Gras hat and leads a procession through the bar.

VIDEO 3 (really poor sound, forgive me Ray, this is from my little digital camera)

 
Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

"Stop The Clock Western Swing Cowboy Jazz Band" Swings 'n Sways

Stop The Clock Western Swing Cowboy Jazz Band
Feed and Seed
106 North Grant Street
Lafayette, Louisiana
March 2, 2014
6:00-9:00 PM

A 9 Piece All-Star band with 2 female vocalists
Charlene Howard (vocals), Kelly Feehan (vocals), Kurt Boudreaux (behind Kelly, keyboard), Kenny Menard (fiddle), Lee Tedrow (guitar), Buck Buckelew (fiddle), Wayne Le Blanc (drums), David Greely (fiddle), Gary Newman (upright bass), Ted Broussard (guitar), Joe Rogers (steel guitar)
The two regular guitar players are Sam Broussard and Gary Granger.

Yet another reason to head to Lafayette, Louisiana...a cowboy jazz band playing classic Western Swing tunes from Bob Wills, Cindy Walker, Spade Cooley, Fats Waller, Hank Thompson, Ray Price, and Patsy Cline, among others. A collection of musicians and vocalists got together a few months ago to play this fabulous music the first Sunday every month. Whoooeeee, are they fun!

Stop The Clock indeed. They stop you in your tracks with infectious, playful, dance your boots off tunes from the golden age of western swing, which, in a music-crazy city like Lafayette, will never feel dated.

I doubt that they play together any more than this one Sunday a month but muscians of this caliber figure out how to play together - and with pizazz - in a hurry. They take their solos, adding onto whatever the guy before just played, and add their own touch, often making the others chuckle and grin. If you're a dancer, this band holds up to the best cajun, zydeco, or honky tonk bands in town (heck, some of the musicians on stage play with those bands).

Let me tell you. This band swings big time and it’s been duly noted around here. Only six months since inception, they’ve been asked to open this year’s Festival International de Louisiane, a premier festival drawing bands from all over the world. Impressive.

 

Gary Newman, the man who wound up Stop The Clock Cowboy Jazz Band

“I came up with the name because I wanted something to indicate that there is timeless music out there that needs to be played and enjoyed. Fortunately, we live in Lafayette, where the people really appreciate and know how to enjoy good music. And we enjoy playing it too! It seems like it's catching on, as each gig draws more and more people,” chief clock winder Gary Newman says.

Newman’s inspirations for STC are Asleep At The Wheel, who’s been at it for a long time and The Time Jumpers. “They’re the best band out there, top of the line Nashville musicians and friends of mine,” Newman says.

"...People who come to the Feed and Seed to listen and dance to our music help to create a magical, wonderful scene from the past. Kind of like we stopped the clock somewhere around 1949."

These guys have pedigrees. They’re members of Mamou Playboys, Nouveau String Band, Traiteurs, Louisiana Purchase Bluegrass, The Gary Granger Project/ODYSSSEY, The Twangsters Union, among others. Western Swing wouldn't have the same twang without a steel guitar, Joe Rogers makes the most of his solos.

Buck Buckelew (fiddle) does most of the song introductions. They play for a solid three hours with one 20-minute break.  A free bowl of jambalaya comes with a $10 admission charge. C’mon, what a deal.

Tonight is the biggest crowd in the bands history since September, pretty amazing considering this is Mardi Gras week and there are a ton of other places people could be going tonight. Great energy.

Vocalist Kelly Feehan, the daughter of Kenny Menard (guitar/vocals), has never sung on stage before last September. “I never sang before except in church. My dad asked if I wanted to join the band. He thought a younger crowd would like the music and having a younger singer would be a drawing card,” Kelly says.

My guess is that after STC hits the stage at the Festival International de Louisiane the younger dance crowd will find them. Kelly can belt or croon - she's a great addition to the band. Good idea, Kenny!

Holy smoke, I just realize that Charlene Howard is singing with Kelly. I'd heard she sings with TK Hulin and had been looking to find them play. She has great pipes, can cover everything from R&B to Soul to Country to Swing. It would have been great had I captured a video of "Sweet Memories" she sang with Kelly and Kenny, sweet harmonies.

Stop The Clock can raise the roof when they get crankin' it up. I  believe the  Feed and Seed building was a former granary and suppy depot - a perfect venue for a Western Swing Band! That's David Greely taking a solo. Greely, Sam Broussard, Kurt Boudreaux, and Charlene Howard are established single acts.

Ted Broussard takes a solo; Kenny Menard and Buck Buckelew sing. Lafayette is a music-loving town, people here know good music when they hear it, whether it's Cajun, or zydeco, or now, Western swing.


Wayne Le Blanc (drums) and Kurt Boudreaux (keyboard) out of view behind the front line, add two powerful elements to the sound. Gary Newman anchors the beat on his stand-up bass.

Kurt has a fan club. “Kurt Boudreaux is the best keyboard player in the world,” a fellow standing behind me says as I shoot video. A minute after that, Kurt calls out a rumba for the second to last song of the night. I put down my camera, find a fabulous partner, and bust all the rumba moves I learned in my sessions at my local Fred Astaire Dance Studio. People applaud after we finish. Kurt’s playful rendition kept me right on the beat.

Not only does this band make fabulous music, but they have fun doing it... just look at 'em.

VIDEOS (Recorded on litle digital camera, don't do justice to the band's or singer's fine sound)
Shame On You
Honeysuckle Rose
There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens
Blues For Dixie 
Waltz Across Texas 

PARTIAL SET LIST (not in order)
Sugar moon
Outskirts of town
Honeysuckle Rose
Route 66
Milk Cow Blues
Shame On You
Right or wrong
Blues for Dixie
Smile - Charlie Chaplin
Sweet Memories
Crazy
Waltz across Texas
Bottle Baby Boogie
There Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens
Crazy
Autumn Leaves
My Blue Heaven

 Photos and Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Mobile Systems Failure: A Cautionary Tale

March 1, 2014
Lafayette, Louisiana

A complete system failure last night. Zooming out from my motel in Lafayette, I plug 1717 Veterans Memorial Highway, Eunice, Louisiana, about 50 miles north, into my Garmin GPS system. A few minutes later the GPS the system runs out of power and refuses to be recharged.

Okay, we have redundancy aboard in the form of an iPhone. "Siri, give me driving directions to 1717 Memorial Highway, Eunice, Louisiana."

Siri to the rescue, heroically rescuing  a lost pilgrim, shows me a map and crisply gives instructions. Siri apparently prefers back roads to highways.

She sends me north on the Evangeline Thruway, then west on I-10, then north on Louisiana 367, which is a 20-mile stretch on a very narrow two-lane road through the heart of pitch-black rice country, vast tracts of rice fields, hardly any homes.  About 12 miles along this stretch of road, the lights go out. I don't mean the lights in the countryside, which were few and far between. I don't mean the headlights on my nifty little 2014 Nissan Sentra. I mean the celestial lights and fiber-optic wires that talk to the 3G system in my iPhone.

"Siri, what's going on?" I ask, a slight tone of desperation in my voice. I have no redundancy Plan C.

"Sorry, something seems to be amiss. Try asking me again in a few minutes."

Hurtling north, I keep driving. Surely Siri will finish her coffee break and have me aiming with precision toward the big ol' barn at Lakeview RV Park in which the Pine Leaf Boys then Horace Trahan and the Ossun Playboys are laying down some great Cajun and zydeco music for hundreds of dancers celebrating Mardi Gras week.  

Eight miles later, no Siri as I come to a screeching halt at a T intersection of Louisiana Route 190. Following Horace Greeley's advice of yore, I head west. Hallelujah, the lights of Eunice appear in the distance. For the next 6 miles then onto the length of the main street of Eunice I drive in hope of reconnection.

"Siri, I am totally lost, I need little help here."  The little icon next to the 3G symbol on my iPhone is twirling around like a pinball machine on steroids. This is not good.  

"Siri, you can't just abandon me here, I need directions to 1717 Veterans Memorial Hwy and I need them now. The Pine Leaf Boys have already started without me."

Next, I do something you may also have done but are too embarrassed to admit.  I utter some pretty foul things to Siri.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," she says with detachment.

Dejected and rejected, I pull into a parking lot near a Wal-Mart.  Not only am I going to miss the dance, but I have no frigging idea how I'm going to make my way back to my motel in Lafayette.

"Siri, show me a map of Louisiana."

Three maps appear, one of which is a roadmap of major highways (which 1717 Veteran's Memorial Highway is definitely not). Lo and behold I see that if I turn around and head east on Louisiana 190 I will connect with US Route 49 with a straight shot south right into Lafayette, around 50 miles south. All major highways.

Siri, I'm thinking, why the hell didn't you send me up this way in the first place? At least if I got lost, I'd know where I was and not worry about sleeping in my car until daybreak next to a rice field on the White Oak Highway, better known as Louisiana Route 367.

I plan on driving to Iota, Louisiana for Mardi Gras day. You better believe I'm going to have a heart to heart talk with Siri  - and a good old-fashioned paper roadmap of Louisiana - before I try that.

Gerry Spanger's 2014 King Cake Party

Gerry Spanger's 12th annual King Cake Party
321 Baldwin Street
Breaux Bridge, LA
March 1, 2014

Both sides of Baldwin Street and all the side streets nearby are lined with cars and trucks, the great migration to Gerry Spanger's King cake party has commenced. Like primordial imprinting that guides birds, mammals, and fish at certain times of the year, the path to 321 Baldwini is embedded in dancers' memories and kicks in the Saturday before Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday). The timing of this ritual has become as predictable as the swallows returning to Capistrano.

A long line of men and women, bearing camp chairs slung over their shoulders, the occasional ice chest in tow, a musical spring in their step as they head for the second to last house on the left side of the street that ends at the railroad tracks. About 100 revelers are staking out their territory on the lawn well before the sound of Geno Delafose's  accordion draws most of them onto the dance floor under the shed at Gerry's house. It's well before the official start time of noon.

With the right chemistry, there can be dancing at its peak: lascivious courtship, safe and salacious, extemporaneous and explicit, dirty and divine. I say this from experience.

Baldwin Street was jammed with cars and trucks way before noon. People arrived early to meet, greet, and eat.

Many have traveled from afar... Ireland for example.

Partiers arrive early to chow down. There are four hours of dancing to fuel up for.

"As long as I'm healthy and have a few pennies to rub together, I intend to keep this party rolling," Gerry Spanger says as he introduces Geno Delafose and His French Rockin' Boogie.

The dance floor under the shed Gerry and Don Walker built is packed for each and every dance.

The good times are a'rolling...

 

Bernard Ussher passes the hat for those who want to donate to the afternoon's entertainment.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.