Chubby Carrier Pre-Mardi Gras Blast at Feed and Seed

Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band
The Feed And Seed
106 N Grant St, Lafayette, LA 70501
February 12, 2015

To say that southwest Louisiana takes Mardi Gras seriously is gross understatement. From tonight right through Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras Day on February 17, there are over 200 (no typo) dances planned within a 50 mile radius of Lafayette.

Let's see... Lafayette, Eunice, Crowley, Carencro, Thibodeaux, Mamou, Ville Platte, New Iberia, Scott, Opelousas, Breaux Bridge, Iota, Basile, Egan, Erath...for starters. And I haven't even mentioned parades that each of these cities and towns proudly produces.

Chubby Carrier and His Bayou Swamp Band can get the party going any place from a former granary supply building to a big dance stage at Gator By The Bay in San Diego.

There are plenty of great musicians around here - accordion, fiddle, guitar, vocalists - whose music can turn you inside out with sheer glee. Chubby does all that with stage presence that connects with his audience and always invokes the spirit of his late father, Roy Carrier, one of the great old time zydeco players of the late 1900s, during his sets.

Feed and Seed has been sprouting music and dancing since it was purchased and re-purposed in 2005. Sheet metal roof, barn siding, sturdy wood rafters and a dance floor that can take as good a pounding as a couple hundred dedicated dancers can hammer down with boots and hard heels.

 

All dancers need is the propulsion provided by any one of scores of bands around here. Lafayette's no one-trick pony when it comes to music: cajun and zydeco may be big draws but they share the stage with  honky-tonk, country and western, western swing, rhythm & blues, swamp pop, and I might have missed one or two genres. 

  
Dancers don't care whether it's in a parking lot, outdoor city park, former farmer's exchange or an honest to goodness dance hall.  Lafayette, Louisiana, has them all covered.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Comments

[KBJones]

I hope to learn about swamp pop. Nice story. These are among the things
I never knew about - including Mardi Gras outside of NOLA.