Arlo Guthrie once sang, ‘You can get anything you want,,.at Alice’s Restaurant…”
Well, the same can be said of FM radio.
FM radio offers news, daily commentaries, thoughtful programs like TED Radio Hour, The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, and The New Yorker Radio Hour.
American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!
The weekly radio program is produced in New Orleans by Nick Spitzer, who created it in 1998.
Over the years, Spitzer’s had conversations with Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, B.B. King, Dr. John, Dave Brubeck, Elvis Costello, Ray Charles, Randy Newman, McCoy Tyner, Lucinda Williams, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis and scores of musicians and singers you may never have heard of and will google because they’re characters whose life stories are as compelling as the music they make.
When the April 24 program is titled “Music-Circus”, I’m thinking what the heck does circus have to do with music. Circuses are visual experiences, music essentially an aural one.
What follows is an astonishing array of songs loosely related to the Big Top plus interviews with the aerial artist who defies gravity in the most inventively curated show I’ve ever heard…I mean who else could fill two hours with songs related to the circus, one of the most red white and blue pieces of Americana, in such a lovingly cohesive 120 minutes.
The theme is universal. While most of American Routes shows dig into music he connects broadly to Louisiana, this show is a bouquet to America, Americana music, American entertainers and the most recognizable piece of American culture, The Big Top, that has thrilled and chilled children of all ages for 146 years.
How creative? Check out the set list… makes you dizzy with wonder to how Americana ring master Spitzer pulls you in with everything from Ella, The Coasters, Everly Brothers, Al Jolson, Randy Newman, Los Lobos, several acts you’ve never heard of plus a segment of organ grinder music. Geez, everything but the popcorn.
Pairing interviews with New Orleans singer and former circus glass eater Meschiya Lake with high-wire trapeze artist Dolly Jacobs in two separate interviews, Spitzer makes sure you know that the circus isn’t ready to be covered in cobwebs like a piece of furniture in an abandoned Victorian mansion. It’s still a thing. Shot out of a cannon.
One more star is twinkling in the firmament tonight and one fewer icon is holding down the unvarnished street character of the New Orleans French Quarter... one more magnificent voice is in the celestial choir, with a New Orleans accent and spin on everything he will talk about up there...Grandpa Elliott Small.
Known for decades as Grandpa Elliott, the man was a living legend, dressed in his trademark denim overalls, red shirt, floppy hat, his bushy Santa Claus beard poking out from under it. Most nights, there he was at the corner of Royal and Toulouse, sitting on a milk crate, his suitcase by his side.
Born in the Lafitte Housing Project, the man everyone calls "Grandpa Elliott" had been making music for years. Locals knew him by sight and shouted hello as they pass by. Tourists on Royal Street stop in their tracks when they walk past the legend, crooning and playing his harmonica. If street musicians are royalty, some like Grandpa Elliott wear their crowns with nonchalant elan.
Music is the rosetta stone of New Orleans. One of the best places to hear it is on the streets of the French Quarter. He would have been a top tier memory if you happened to walk by the corner of Royal and Toulouse and hear him croon and back it up with his harmonica.
The man was an embodiment of New Orleans spirit, warm, full of stories, outgoing, engaging, accepting. He unfailingly lifted the spirit of any who come in contact with him. Totally blind since 2005, he doesn't seem to miss much of what's going on around him.
December 2012. The man gets around.
There's Grandpa being transported in a wheelchair to the same American Airlines flight as mine at Louis Armstrong International Airport.
"Hello, Grandpa, it's PT from Boston. I really enjoy listening to you sing in front of Rouse's on Royal Street. A million people have clicked on the Playing For Change 'Stand By Me' video."
He laughs, says thank you, adjusts his glasses, right side an empty frame, left side a deep sun-glass tint to block light.
"Since I recorded that video, Aaron Neville has sung it, Dr. John has sung it."
He holds out his big hand, says thank you. "I'm heading to Spain to make a 'Playing For Change' video."
“You’re really stirring things up,” says I, "see you back in New Orleans. I'll get you another Dr. Pepper at Rouse's!"
Grandpa was one of the musicians playing Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" on the uplifting award-winning documentary, Playing For Change: Peace Through Music, (the late Roger Ridley sings the lead and Grandpa Elliott is featured at the one minute mark sitting next to Jackson Square as he sang) the first of many 'Songs Around The World' produced by Playing For Change. That song has been viewed 177 million times.
It could be an anthem for the times we live in.
"My eyes hurt me," he said to me one night.
"Do you mean pain?" says I.
"No, that I can't see."
It was a rare admission from a man who overcame growing up in rough circumstances to occupy a seat of royalty on Royal Street in New Orleans. This is a man who performed to a crowd of more than 40,000 at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, California, on June 30, 2009. He couldn't see them. He sure felt them.
Music can help in healing, in breaking down barriers and borderd, in reconciling, and it can also educate. s a cultural right, music can help to promote and protect other human rights (civil, political, economic or social). There are many amazing examples of music being used as a tool for social change around the world.
How Grandpa Elliott got connected with Playing For Change. I couldn't remember the name of Playing For Change.I couldn't remember the name Playing For Change. Grandpa helped me out.
It may be tricky to download this link but New Orleans writer Keith Spera's story encapsulates the ironies, contrasts, and spirit of New Orleans today.
The vapor trail from Santa's sleigh heading back to the North Pole may be dissipating but the music in his wake is still ringing in my ears thanks to American Routes...
This week's edition of American Routes - Two hours of Americana that celebrates a whole range of songs for the season.
Tune in and feel the pulse of the season in as many flavors as you find in a fruitcake - rhythm & blues, blues, ballads, country and rock, in as many tempos as the number of ornaments on your Christmas tree, Hanukah bush or colors on your Kwanzaa candle holder.
Spitzer is the equivalent of a Santa Claus with a bag of gifts that satisfy the soul thirsting for seasonal sentiments only quenched by voice and instruments. Not to mention that a few of them are played as universally as Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.
From the first selection to the last, Santa Spitzer dispenses gifts he has shopped for all year long, hidden in his closet, and gleefully stuffed in the bag he opens for us today.
The first hour features several artists you'd never hear on your radio and rock or croon righteously. The second hour is loaded with familiar artists moved by the spirit of the season and deliver chestnuts disarmingly recast from the original versions. Eartha Kitt, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding, Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, John Coltrane all slide into the program as easily as the big man with the round belly slides down our chimneys.
The second hour is more dedicated to songs celebrating Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and New Year. Opens with lyrical Andy Statmam's Klezmer clarinet solo "Old Brooklyn" followed by a marzipan collection of Carole King (Hanukkah songs), New Birth Brass Band, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding, Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, Bruce, John Coltrane, among others.
Spitzer doesn't just drop presents under the tree. While you open his carefully wrapped gifts he tells you stories of where he found them and how they fit so synchronously with the other presents. After Chuck Berry's bluesy "Merry Christmas Baby" ... "Berry is covering in 1958 the original that Charles Brown made famous in 1947. Other covers were made by Elvis, Otis Redding, and Mae West..."
After the first of John Coltrane’s two compositions," This is a 1963 take on 'Greensleeves,' the old ballad from 1580 with Coltrane joined by his legendary quartet, piano McCoy Tyner, bass Reggie Garrison, and trumpet Freddie Hubbard."
I love this. Music has roots, songs and interpretations have antecedents. Every week Nick Spitzer digs in and tells us about them on American Routes.
"With Kwanzaa upon us, we'll close with music from the Georgia Sea islands, Lord Invader and his calypso composition Father Christmas," Spitzer says. Up comes West Indian singer Lord Invader joined by playful saxophone, drums, hand cymbals and hand clapping followed by the Georgia Sea Island Singers "Join the Band" with an up-tempo penny whistle and hand clapping song that carries the message just fine.
My memories of Christmas past evoked by this day's American Routes is as intense my memory of incense wafting over the pews at Midnight Mass at Mount Carmel Church when I was a kid.
Listening brings home to me that the grip these secular songs have on me is as strong as any traditional or religious songs recalled from my youth. And reinforces how deeply embedded the contributions of Black musicians and singers are in our Christmas songbook and culture.
On Nov 28, 2020, at 4:25 PM, Bernard Ussher sent: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/28/938574647/covid-19-hits-hard-for-south-louisianas-cajun-musicians
My reply to my good friend Bernard who lives in Lafayette, LA.
All I have to do is look around my own city to see the economic effects of the pandemic. Many of my favorite family owned restaurants shuttered, maybe for good. Having eaten at their places so often, I know the owners. I feel their loss and and grieve for lost connections to them...my favorite bars, dive bars, small dance venues, my own barber shop all closed. Some are gone for good. That hurts.
Practically having a second home with welcoming friends with whom I've stayed in Lafayette for years, what's happening with economic scene in Lafayette is what's happening in my own home town except on a broader scale .
The ubiquity of music and the merriment of dancing is crumbling as fast at the chunks of ice falling into the sea from icebergs at the poles of the earth. Music and dancing have been embedded in this culture for generations, from farmers and fishermen to everyday folks. For as far as they can remember, they've relied on it to ease everyday tensions and, as they say down there, "laissez les bon temps rouler"...Let the good times roll. No more.
Some readers of this blog live there. Some of you were born there. Hundreds of people from around America head to SW LA for the sole purpose of joyfully dancing to the music in those parts.
You've all experienced the dancing, the music, and the inner glow of emotional sustenance that lights us up like two-stepping Roman candles when we partner up on the dance floor. There's the manifest joy of dancing in the dust, in parking lots, muddy fields, dance halls with floors old enough to remember Prohibition, and the camaraderie between dancers and musicians that’s as natural a combination as red beans and rice.
The pandemic hurts musicians in the pocket book and in their own hearts. I’ve danced to so many bands there that I feel like those musicians are part of my family. I know they’re not giving up. It's not in their DNA. Sure they can find a job to put food on the table. Their hearts will still beat but not in 4/4 time. They'll breathe the oxygen but it won’t have whiffs of sweat and BBQ and beer-soaked wood dance floors.
My last trip to Lafayette was to visit Bernard and Rubia on the last days of February and first few of March 2020. If not for the pandemic, I’d have been down there for festivals and any ‘ol weekend of good company and rousing music a dozen more times. I can still dance in my kitchen. I worry about the people in Lafayette who struggle like my people here.
I worry about the musicians who animate the culture, give it a common rhythm, and don’t get paid to play in their kitchens and don’t make very much on Zoom performances.
Men and women in SW LA miss their Cajun and Zydeco music. Music in this part of the country is not just a weekend thing. And it’s not only a night-time thing. Dancing begins right after your first cup of coffee on Saturday and Sunday mornings and happens every night of the week, and at weddings, public parks, and BYO house parties. Most of the musicians who played on Saturday and Sunday mornings played somewhere the night before, If you think you’re tired, think about that…then leave a good bunch of folding money in their tip jar and buy their CDs.
To me, the gift of music is a survival mechanism. Listening to it juices me up, takes me into an orbit high enough to put the pandemic into a far away box.
John Burnett's NPR story that I read ended with the words "Music — like seafood and family — is the nucleus of Cajun culture. It's not going away. It's just gone virtual.”
Honestly, I doubted that the music and musicians could rebound…until I listened to Burnett’s story with the music embedded inside it.
That’s when I began to believe that, like the crawfish that begin to emerge from the mud of the rice fields that are flooded every autumn, Cajun and zydeco music will survive until the pandemic is controlled enough and then re-emerge to resume all over SW LA.
In the meantime, think of the money you have not spent when flying to Louisiana, staying at motels, dining out, renting cars, paying to enter the dances. Find out a way to send money to the musicians you love and have danced to.
THE BIG PICTURE... Like looking through binoculars to see in detail, turn the lens around to look at the big picture.
The story is way beyond Lafayette. This is a coast to coast story. You feel it wherever you live. And you can do something about it. Whether it's musicians who've raised your spirits, mom and pop stores or locally owned eateries or dive bars that are on your weekly glide path, find a way to pay forward your gratitude.
Keep ordering that take out food. Find a local source for what you found on Amazon. Let's transform "Let The Good Times Roll" to "Let The Pecuniary Gratitude Roll". You can do this.
Give the kind of love that will ensure that all your local faves will be there when the coast is clear and you need them to feed the hole in your life that has become deeper and darker than you'll admit.
Louis Armstrong is said to have signed his letters “Red beans and ricely yours” . I follow suit, Red beans and ricely yours, Paul Tamburello
Today would have been Irma's 37th (yes, 37th) annual Mother's Day performance at the Audubon Zoo. New Orleans does not give up its sense of tradition for anything, a pandemic included.
The two-hour program that Thomas usually performs is being broadcast on flagship radio station WWOZ....a virtual feat that uses a fabulously curated collection of her songs over the years.
Just as WWOZ did with Jazz Festing in Place, the radio station today is one giant PSA sending love to moms and thousands of listeners sheltering in place. I have watched Irma light a place on fire.
Sadly, my internet is down until 1:15 PM… then
...finally Thomas's still poignant “Cold Cold Rain” (Katrina) pours down from the ionosphere and here’s the Mother’s Day Salute by Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans. If New Orleans has an earth mother, it has to be Miss Irma.
"You Can Have My Husband but Please Don’t Mess With My Man” 2011 continues the set that spans from resilience to rejoicing. “Can’t Break Away From You,” 2011, “Time On My Side,” a proclamation of female resilience charged with comeuppance for an inattentive lover, I am listening to one in-charge woman. #metoo, meet Ms. Irma Thomas.
Listen to that cackle at the end of “I Wish Someone Would Care About Me.” Right about now I am throwing bouquets to the engineers and producers who integrated pace and style of this salute as mightily as the Mississippi River threads its way around the city.
Here comes “I Done Got Over It.” When the Queen says, “This is the audience participation part, we’re gonna have an indoor second line. We celebrate everything in New Orleans with a second line, births, deaths, weddings, funerals, when a pregnancy test comes back negative! Get out your hankies, shake your tail feathers (cackles)” the audience needs no encouragement.
“Iko Iko,” another New Orleans anthem.
I can’t stand it. I’m bounding down the stairs, JBL Flip speaker blaring in hand. Out the front door to dance in the sunlight on my front porch. Someone in the audience shouts, “We love you, Irma!”
After listening to Detroit Brooks sing (more or less) a favorite song E La Bas and then the Bruce (as in Springstein, 2006, 7 months after the storm) inspired set..I’m blessing the 'hood with music of New Orleans. The now amplified speakers will probably levitate when the Neville Brothers take off right now. I bow to your people who created these six days of music with an alchemy of intentional solace, grace, and joy…an accomplishment that in my mind equals the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes.
Guarding the groove in the ‘hood.
Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
PS. Those speakers did virtually levitate. The Neville Brothers had the honor of closing Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1980. That honor had been lovingly given to Professor Longhair from 1971 till 1979. "Fess," born in 1918, died on January 1980 before the next Jazz Fest. Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd to this day is revered for his impact on New Orleans music. The Neville Brothers are equal to the honor.
Right from the pages of unedited running commentary of Friday, May 1, 2020.
FRIDAY MAY 1
12:30 PM Catch last part Michael White 2011 performance
All day long, WWOZ delivers vignettes and back stories, wonderful windows spilling sunlight into corners of Jazz Fest we’ve never known about. These need to be archived, will do my best to find them or ask WWOZ to add them to the website.
Jazz Fesstoid: Louis Armstrong 2001 was his 100th birthday celebration. Louis never played at Jazz and Heritage Fest, he had been invited in 1971 but was recovering from a heart attack at home in NYC and died months later.
Samantha Fish vocals then Roy Hargrove 2007
Jazz Fesstoid: Jazz fest poster history, first was b/w poster given out free and posted around the city. now silk screen posters and collectibles prices up to thousands of dollars as revenue to support Jazz Fest, see then at www.art4now.com says Lena Prima of WWOZ https://art4now.com/collections/jazz-fest-posters/products/jf-13
Big Frieda’s gospel roots at 1 PM rock n gospel, hip hop meets revival meeting.
1:25 PM Aaron Neville, Charles Neville in Blues Tent 2014. Aaron sings Summertime, a classic, how such a burly man can croon with such high frequency is a stunning contradiction,1966 song that made the Longshoreman into a household name, “Tell It Like It Is,” delivered with heartfelt pain, his bluesy falsetto floating over the tent, Neville sing talking a roman candle of scales up and down the all time doo woppy shimmering rendition and as if this isn’t enough poured into your emotional pool then the same stunning emotive octane on turbocharge cover of “Amazing Grace”.That tent is floating and has taken every damn person inside it half way to heaven.
Neville’s voice up and down the scales has traveled with more range than a camel through the Sahara, a thing of inestimable beauty, “Let’s Get Together” closes it out. During three songs with absolutely no warning, I weep. Joy? Deeply buried emotions of past? Dreams of my future? I don’t know. And I don’t care right now. I’m sitting at my desk, listening to music that creeps up on me with the power of a religious experience. Blues, gospel? A fine line Neville through which Neville’s voice flows as if it is a permeable membrane. Lord have mercy.
Little Freddie King in the Blues Tent 2018 seems like just yesterday as I sit in isolation.
2:15 PM New Orleans trademark rambunctious “Get Together” second line by TCB Brass Band. If that don’t get people steppin’ up, kerchiefs, parasols, arms waving like sheaves of wheat, i don’t know what all will.
Gambling addiction PSA by WWOZ
2018 Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show on Gentilly Stage tribute to Alan Toussaint, “Louisiana” , ok everybody knows this gentleman legend, can sing the refrains from “Mother In Law” easy as the national anthem (to some may be more relevant) and another song in memory of Arthur Robinson, “My Name is Mr. Okra” , in honor of this particular street vendor and street vendors of fresh fruit and vegetables who used to walk neighborhood streets. People would come out their doors when they heard the vendor’s singsong voice proclaiming what was in his cart that day. Get a side order of Mr. Okra, value you could not afford but got gratis with your bag of fresh produce.
From time to time the upbeat voice of WWOZ general manager Beth Arroyo Utterback, best i can remember “ Glad you’re tuned in and enjoying Jazz Festing in Place. WWOZ is a community and public radio station. We rely on listener support from generous people just like you. We’ve been broadcasting Jazz Fest for nearly 40 years. Join us and become a member.”
Next, Ruthie Foster, Blues Tent 2018 reliable as always. “Back to the Blues” to prove it. Then a Mississippi John Hurt cover, “Richland Woman Blues,” complete with banjo strumming, can’t make out the title but no trouble grooving in my chair with a terrific little percussion brushes riff, this song rocks, quite an upbeat addition to the tent. https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2017-03-31/ruthie-foster-joy-comes-back/
John Mooney 1998 House of Blues Stage, My Creole Belle, uptempo om pa pa do pah slide guitar rollin drum kit ratatat bass thrummin rollercoaster. “Walkin On Sacred Ground” upbeat gotta get up and dance number propulsive drum pounds the beat guitar slide sirens underpin with slinky sinewy slide riffs not gonna sit down any time soon, whoa baby! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Y05TR30wk
I bow in gratitude for whoever it is who picked out all these songs/performances from almost 40 years and thousands of performances then arranged them in a satisfying order to entertain us for in same hours Jazz Fest take place every year.
What the heck follows Mooney? Then a recipe from an African American kitchen from a WWOZ presenter/chef! This whole shebang’s mega sponsor is Shell followed by big time local companies and individuals.
Congo Square Stage 2002 Wynton Marsalis starts w Pedro’s Getaway, a very modern jazz arrangement, another facet of New Orleans quilt of music heritage, way different from anything that’s been played for the past five hours. Not danceable groove, has a groove and of course Wynton’s trumpet takes the lead followed by piano, saxophone solos in quick succession and Wynton making sounds on trumpet you’ve never heard from a brass instrument before but since this is New Orleans, should not surprise you in the least. This sounds right out of a Blue Note stage in NYC.
Jazz Fesstoid: paraphrased bc i can’t write fast enough. Spring of 1970 George Wein has idea to showcase New Orleans music and heritage. First one was held on steamboat President on Mississippi River, with Pete Fountain as honorary captain. Wein needed help so asked young Alison Minor and Quint Davis, who were knowledgeable and had reverence for the music and culture, to help him promote the fair. He knew that New Orleans future depended on the unique talents of its musicians. They lined up 100 musicians that many had never heard of and set up stages on what was then Beauregard Square now Congo Square. Every day Big Chief Bo Dollis led Mardi Gras Indians through the square in big second line parade.There was a gospel tent with musicians no one had heard of. One day Mahalia Jackson who was performing at the Municipal Auditorium, heard the second line parade and came out, ended up singing A Closer Walk With Thee. What would you give to have witnessed that! The first fair made no money. Wein planned a second one even though its success was an unknown quantity. Over time it grew, moved to The Fairgrounds Race Track 140 acres. Wein, Davis, and Minor’s vision to show the unique musical heritage of New Orleans now almost 40 years for all to see in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
Papa Grows Funk: as advertised.
Jazz Fesstoid: Cajun singer Louis Michot of The Lost Bayou Ramblers talks about the introduction of Louisiana rural music from Cajun and Creole performers generally unknown to city dwellers in the 1970s. No way can i write fast enough. This needs to be archived too. By the 1980s the best cajun and creole musicians began to play at Jazz Fest. https://kreolmagazine.com/music-entertainment/musicians/louis-michot-a-true-creole-musician/#.Xqzb6i_Mxgc
5:15 pm Blind Boys of Alabama Blues Tent 2018 How these guys in their various incarnations can be so damn good is quite a miracle in one way but the fact is that the kind of music they sing whether a cappella or with a churchy organ and percussion is uplifting, spiritual and that, my friends, is never out of date. They get into a souped up gospel song and you can feel that tent rock, hell i feel it a couple thousand miles away. A version of Stand By Me gets them off the ground then they slow the train down with a rhythm n bluesy song that shows me the well beaten path between music of the black church and rhythm n blues I used to hear on juke boxes back in the 1960s and still knocking me out in 2020.
The final notes of this song are delivered by what i imagine is a host of gray haired angels stationed at the Pearly Gates. You say ‘Amen’ and you get admitted. Could not pick up the title but the feel of it will be seared in my memory for a long long time. Next “I Saw The Light” The first three songs were a dazzling combination of gospel that shifted into rhythm n blues styling that showed the straight line from white washed clapboard churches to popular music.
5:34 GREAT story about Professor Longhair, WWOZ needs to put these little stories on their web site. Think i missed the beginning. 5:40 pm story Jazz Festoid: in 1971 George Wein wanted to go to a practice of Mardi Gras Indians along with Alison Minor and Quint Davis. Sitting somewhere to wait, Wein hears a song on radio, says who is that? Professor Longhair , the two young guides say. Find him, Wein says. Longhair had performed from 1940s to 1960s but his star had faded. They found him in plain sight working as a janitor at a record store. The second year 1971 Jazz Fest outdoors April 21, 1971, Longhair agree to play. No one knew who the heck Prof Longhair was. In Congo Square he’s set to play. Well that stage was a small platform set up a a foot or so from the ground. Jazz Fest was still more of an idea about to be born than a rolling well oiled production. First day Fess shows up wearing a blue short sleeve shirt. Probably surprised by the enthusiasm, he shows up the next day wearing a suit. Lord knows where he got it. Long story short, the crowd loved him. Look up his songs. “Tipitina” for example. Fess was the festival’s closing act from 1971 till 1979. All in the way of embracing your heritage says WWOZ Kyle Roussel (not at all sure of that). 1918-1980 https://www.discogs.com/artist/18394-Professor-Longhair
in April 1974 Professor Longhair’s story burned down, everything he owned except the clothes on his back gone. New Orleans takes care of its own. A benefit for the man was held in a warehouse to raise money for new home rebuild.The tapes of that show have never been heard. Tonight is the night they see daylight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-lsiDJWMsQ
Great raw performance with remarks about Professor and musicians having fun. I think it was Earl King who introduces the man who wrote Mother in Law, The Fortune Teller, Sittin’ in Ya Ya, no other than Alan Toussaint (1938-2015) 36 year old Toussaint sings “Why Cant You Come Home” a little off key, maybe more practiced as a composer not performer. The with the host doing great job of pushing the band, firing up the audience, to give Toussaint a little love. Next song Earl King sings Toussaint’s “Fortune Teller.”
You can feel the make it up as you go along vibe of the night. People probably straggling in little by little, no one knows yet how it’s gonna work out, King is making a super effort to charge up the audience who by now have woke up and are screaming for more. This tape is totally unedited. All of it. Pauses and all . A masterpiece of history The Wild Magnolias are next. Next The Wild Magnoiia’s. New Orleans audiences have always known that they’re part of the show, that it’s their job to send energy back to the stage and the more they send the more they get back from the performers.
The Meters Hey Pokey Way! Wow. This song might be in the curriculum of the public schools in New Orleans. The choruses come back and forth like the waves in a swimming pool after a good time Charlie plunged in with a cannonball.
Next Earl King so I have no idea who the MC is. with Dr John and Earl King THEN PROFESSOR LONGHAIR HIMSELF in a mighty upbeat original of his, “Big Chief,” his trademark whistle solo and all. How the heck does he whistle like that and rock that piano. The house band, probably the best musicians in town. Thank you, Thank you, Fess modestly says. Then with that voice that no one can imitate, that can bump up and down an octave when you’re not expecting it, sort of like a New Orleans yodel. A rocking swing tempo “Since My Baby” ?? Those long fingers pound out another solo sliding up and down the keyboard like a seal surfs a roller. With guitar hitting as many notes as Fess can play. His modest thank you again non plussed that the audience is in full voiced adulation, cheers, screams, lustily. Now what? Whoa! Fess comes up with a Longhaired version of something that ends up as Stagger Lee! Lost connection for a minute. Miss the last minutes! Geez!! about 7 PM end of today’s Jazz Festing in Person. credits.
Personal opinion: the man made up his own lyrics or what can be called lyrics which were actually riffing with sounds he heard in his brain and channeled into his mouth. You’ve heard of the harmonica being called a mouth organ? Well The Professor’s mouth was his primary organ that he channeled through his fingers to make sounds emerging from a pre-conscious brain in spontaneous warblings with an infectious Afro-Caribbean beat. With a distinct element of joy, the kind of joy that may only be attained after suffering of equal magnitude. Many of us can relate to that with some degree of personal experience but I think it informs black music in a way that beyond the racial experience of a white middle class guy like me.
More great responses from WWOZ radio hosts. Their answers lead to travels down memory lane.
Email to Brice White, DJ of Block Party
Brice, I'm loving listening to Jazz Festing in Place up here in the Boston area, just became a member of WWOZ last night. Great opening Cajun song tonite, My Far Away Pal? on Crazy Cajun label. (could not find) so the question...is there going be a set list of your show tonight. I tried checking "Last 100 songs" no luck but I sure do love listening to New Orleans music, the original melting pot of American music.
From a fellow sheltering in place citizen:)
Two hours later...
Thanks for listening and supporting! Normally I post my playlist. I'll look for a way to do it since things are different now and I prerecorded. That track was My Far Away Cow by Abel on Crazy Cajun, it was a Dan Penn tune!
Take care!
Brice
Two hours later...
THIS started out as a thank you note until i got down the Dan Penn rabbit hole after reading your reply.
Thank you, Brice! That was the most unusual Cajun song I ever heard so wanted to track it down and you did it with attribution to the writer as well. RE playlist, I don’t want to give you more work to do, you’re doing enough to supply us with vintage music from your own collection . I appreciate you’re curating from your stacks of 45 rpms at home, possibly a silver lining to organize them, likely would never have happened in normal times.
I haven’t seen a 45 rpm for ages but that’s where I got my introduction to rock n roll…at Sammy Vincent’s in Pittsfield MA. That was the place to go for a bunch of us high schoolers after school. We were allowed to thumb through the disks in two large bins, take one out and play it on one of several small turntables and buy the ones we liked. Lots of cross pollination as we listened to choices we made. We knew about Elvis but it might have been the first time i heard “Tutti Fruiti” and then “Be Bop A Lula” by Gene Vincent.
While writing this, I discovered that the ‘fight song’ the high school football captain sang to an auditorium full of teenagers was actually a lift from Lionel Hampton’s Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop… thus ”Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, we’re gonna win this game tomorrow!” So it’s only taken me 50 years and a pandemic to suss this out!
WWOZ is coming to the rescue by re-imagining how to host Jazz Fest. I spent most of my afternoon looking our the window and playing Festing in Place. I’ve sent a blog post to my friends encouraging them to tune in. Who knows, they might be dancing around their kitchen tables just like me by the time Festing in Place is over.
I got a response to a query to WWOZ yesterday from Dave Akers, way cool. I became a dues paying member as I was listening to my first day of Festing in Place. WWOZ is the best!
Keep on keepin’ on! Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
PS This link has the Dan Abel 1966 song on it. Upon second listen, it’s a double entendre isn’t it, I don’t believe he’s talkin’ about Bossy the cow... , this was an eye opener and written by a guy from Alabama…love the line "since that day there’s been an extra large Milky Way" https://www.discogs.com/Abel-My-Far-Away-Cow/release/8745805
MORE! I just discovered this guy Dan Penn is a major hit machine! I was gobsmacked to see the list of his songs familiar to anyone who has listened to radio for the past 50 years, hits recorded by luminaries from several genres. https://www.tablyrics.com/artist-dan-penn-chords-lyrics Serious credentials! this list is crazy good! 117 songs composed!
Dan Penn's Lyrics & Chords from the same site. Wallace Daniel Pennington (16 November 1941 -) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and sometime guitar player who co-wrote many soul hits of the 1960s including "Dark End of the Street" & "Do Right Woman" (with Chips Moman) and "Out of Left Field" & "Cry Like A Baby" (with Spooner Oldham). Penn has also produced hits such as "The Letter" by The Box Tops, amongst others. Though he is considered to be one of the great white soul singers, Penn has a meagre recorded output, preferring the relative anonymity of songwriting & producing.
In Boston (Watertown to be precise), loving listening to Jazzfesting In Place, brilliant gift to music lovers worldwide. If there was ever a time I needed it, this is the time, a respite from important news I need to know but… I need music to balance frame of mind and remind me of the palliative pleasure of listening to music in times when i can’t leave the house in the time of stay at home mandate, let alone listen to it and support it in live performances..or to go out dancing. As much as I dearly miss all this I value my life and the lives of those I walk by even more. Sooo, i hope you can answer this question.
Listening to a Patricia Boutté backed by Paul Longstreth funky rolling classic New Orleans take on a traditional song as I write this and I am boogying along in my chair in front of my desktop. QUESTION what was the title of this song Patricia sang just before her “Bourbon Street Parade”?
Many many thanks from a grateful listener Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. PS have visited New Orleans and SW Louisiana for years, one muddy weekend at Jazz Fest as well. Just contributed to WWOZ at Saxophone level $100. I am right on key with y’all:)
April 25, 2020
Paul - thanks for reaching out! And for your very generous support. It's because of music lovers like you that we can keep doing what we do!
The Tricia Boutte cover song you're looking for was "Dreamland," originally a classic 1966 reggae track by Bunny Wailer, but now given a New Orleans feel. Her version of the track is on a CD called "Oh New Orleans Here I Come." It was a great set, wasn't it?
I hope you can keep listening, and that you stay safe
Thanks for your reply, another reason to love WWOZ.
There are no known counterparts anywhere in the world to New Orleans music, food, people, and radio stations. Anyone with a beating heart will tell you that after a visit to New Orleans where you keep your eyes and ears open, talk to folks on the street cars, get used to being called “Baby” by women and men who you’ve known all of ten seconds, smell the food, and feel a vibe that hums just at the bottom threshold of hearing and resonates in your heart like a tuning fork every time i visit. My Lafayette friends took me to the Krewe du Vieux parade into Frenchmen Street in 2019. I still have an Abita Beer bottlecap with image of Brett Kavanaugh inside w caption “I still like beer.” You get the picture.
I tuned in during Tricia Boutées set.
"Hey Siri, What’s the name of this song, I asked.She was stumped. I suppose i shoulda known better than to ask.
Trust me, after watching a few hours of news, I am so ready to tune in to Jazzfest in Place, a brilliant idea. You rose from the debris to stage Mardi Gras in 2005. You figured out a way to gift it to the world this week during the time of the virus.
It appears that you all dove into the archives of thousands of performances and cherry picked the ones that would give us the medicine we need in the time of the virus. What a mammoth undertaking. In truth, you could probably thrown darts at the list and come up with winners because the depth of New Orleans talent is deeper than Stellwagon Bank off the shores of Boston. And bravo that you pick New Orleans musicians and singers not headliners from ‘out of town’. I’m throwing a bouquet to Boutée and Thomas and Cleary and Barker and Ball and Richard and the Nevilles, each and every one will make my stay in place at home life richer not to mention give me a workout. You ever see a man second lining around his kitchen table? No? Well, you ain’t been lookin at me. Parasol and all, baby.
It is a pleasure to support a station so tuned in to the psyches of of New Orleans and New Orleanians at heart.
Thanks again, Dave. I’ll be listening. Next to a face mask and washing my hands, this is the best way to stay safe, sound, and find joy at the same time. No small accomplishment.
2010 - my first Jazz Fest. I haven’t been the same man since.
A BRILLIANT WORK AROUND...NEW ORLEANS FIGURES OUT HOW TO KEEP ITS CROWN JEWEL SHINING IN THE TIME OF A PANDEMIC!
"Jazz Festing in Place" April 23 – 26 and April 30 – May 3
With over 130 festivals a year in New Orleans, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is the colossus of them all - "One of the world's greatest cultural celebrations. The annual springtime event spanning 10 days, with thousands of musicians playing on 12 stages and attracts almost 500,000 culture-crazed fans from around the world."
What does Jazz Fest mean to New Orleans? In 2001, favorite son Louis Armstrong's 100th birthday, 650,000 people packed the 145 acre Fair Grounds Race for one weekend of the celebration of music and culture.
In 2006, the festival was held 6 months after Katrina devastated the city. No Jazz Fest? No way! Tradition holds New Orleans together like a roux holds together gumbo.
A plague in 2020? Jazz Fest was cancelled. But...
WWOZ FM, the umbilical cord to New Orleans music on the air waves, created Jazz Festing In Place, two weekends of curated performances from way back. Put a camp chair in your living room, soak some red beans, boil the rice, put on your dance shoes when the spirit moves you. Jazz Festing In Place happens in the exact hours the two weekend festival would have gone down. Hallelujah.
Friday, April 24 4 PM...at home
After a few hours of counter-balancing the voices of CNN and Fox News, I was worn down.
Chloroquine may or may not be a palliative to treat Covid-19. But music...oh baby, in a nanosecond, my psyche is on a chariot ride to exuberant cosmic heights. Jazz Festing Online is on the radio runway. Fasten safety belt. In seconds, I'm lifting off, circling the earth in my own Jazzfest skywriter.
I'm flying on Air WWOZ and Jazz Festing In Place...Online!
New Orleans' bid to keep the juice of Jazz Fest, the most enduring gift that city gives to its residents and people from all over the world, is alive and well.
This is the brilliant Plan B, cherry picked rock the house performances from as far back as 1977, online and in the same time slots as they would have been at the Fairgrounds Race Track. New Orleans is arguably the well from which American music was drawn. The set that closed Friday's Festing In Place was Fats Domino's 2001 performance. The Fat Man from the Lower 9th ward was in great form.
Reproducing the energy of Jazz Fest on the radio is a daunting task but these performances taped live, dang, you can hear the crowd's unabashed shouts and cheers to performers on the outdoor stages. The energy came in waves from people in camp chairs, or sprawled on blankets, umbrellas popped up to ward off rain or the beating sun. From the heavens, it must look like a carpet of mushrooms topped with rainbow sprinkles.
Jazz Fest has always been an interactive experience. Now we just recreate it virtually, listening in our living rooms, kitchens and porches as we shelter in place. Interactive with distance!
Today, late Friday, I tuned in to listen to Patricia Boutté, backed by Paul Longstreth, with a funky rolling classic New Orleans take on a traditional song as I write this and boogying along right in my chair in front of my desktop. Boutté follows with the ultra classic "Bourbon Street Parade" written by drummer Paul Barbarin in 1949. Followed by her cover of "Going to the Mardi Gras" , originally recorded by Professor Longhair in 1959, a monumental figure in New Orleans history. By the way, here's his recording of "Tipitina," whose rolling rumba style is so totally New Orleans.
NOTE: Reason I love WWOZ: Siri couldn't figure out the name of Patricia Boutée's first song so I shot an email to the station. A few hours later..."The Tricia Boutte cover song you're looking for was "Dreamland," originally a classic 1966 reggae track by Bunny Wailer, but now given a New Orleans feel. Her version of the track is on a CD called "Oh New Orleans Here I Come." It was a great set, wasn't it?" From Dave Ankers, Director of Content, WWOZ 90.7 FM New Orleans and wwoz.org
How cool was that!
Boutée's rambunctious energy is followed by Kenny Neal's slow groove "How Time Slips Away," recorded at 2018 Jazz Fest. It is so eerily perfect for life in the time of pandemic. Time is indeed slipping away, but not in a way we ever imagined.
Friday's Jazz Festing in Place ends with Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans, 2006 set. It was the first Jazz fest since Katrina ruined New Orleans in August 2005. The city still smelled like mud that day. Irma kicked it off with my favorite, "It's Raining In My Heart." New Orleans audiences, especially at Jazz Fest, take it as an obligation to shout out to the singers. Irma stokes that fire, calls out, "We're still here!" You can imagine the response.
By this time her set closes, I'm dancing in the kitchen, grateful for the gift of music and its power to heal. An odd piece of synchronicity. Katrina's shadow still hovered over New Orleans, bruised and perhaps broken and caked with mud, in 2006.
The Covid-19 virus is killing us in 2020. We're in a mandate to stay home. Unprecedented. A nightmare with a death toll. On that day in April, Irma delivered the sermon, a lesson in survival and resilience and succor. New Orleans needed it then. We can use that same sermon today.
"Put your handkerchiefs in the air," she shouts, a signal she's ending her show and the day at the mandatory 7 PM closing time.
Here comes "Iko Iko." You know damn well the crowd was shakin' what the maker gave 'em and second lining on what is left of the grass on the infield of the New Orleans Fairground and Racetrack. New Orleans survived Katrina. Covid-19 is another order of magnitude.
"Would you email me quote about what Gambit means to you?" publisher Jeanne Foster asked me after I subscribed recently (her email under the story).
The Gambit provides exactly what it promises - news, events calendar, film, music, food, drink, lifestyle, design/decor, free and fun stuff, info for tickets to just about everything going on in the city (during the pandemic hardly anything).
My response...
Hello Jeanne,
In response to your request, I started sending you a quote about what the Gambit means to me and this is what happened as I thought about it.
Especially now, I want to feel the energy of New Orleans and its people.
In 2008, I asked a girlfriend, born and raised in Baton Rouge, to take me there for a long weekend. “Honey, if we go, we’re not going for a few days, we’re going for two weeks!” Sort of like the analog to Me and Bobby McGee but instead of singing every song that we knew to that trucker, she took me to every good place that she knew from Tipitina’s to a favorite restaurant in Lake Charles to Phil Brady’s and her sisters' homes in Baton Rouge to the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette and the reknowned Whiskey River Landing (that sadly closed in August 2018) in Henderson. I've written about all of these places.
“I haven’t been the same man since,” I’ve joked with her. It’s no understatement. That the trip changed the course of my life (subject for another story). I’ve visited NOLA and SW Louisiana scores of time since then.
I’ve seen the struggle New Orleans has been going through since the storm. I have a sense of what is being lost as New Orleans gets to its new normal. The forces of the tourist industry aiming to make New Orleans a tourist destination and the struggle of neighborhoods like the Marigny and Tremé losing the battle with gentrification and resulting dislocation of generations of the people who represent the core of New Orleans spirit, have consequences.
So what keeps holding it together? Music and everything associated with it, musicians, second lines, the recharging value until recently of Satchmo Summerfest (that I’ve witnessed several times) and French Quarter Festival (which i have not witnessed…yet) and the street performers and buskers of just about every type that are like cultural musical fairy dust sprinkled over street corners in the French Quarter day and night. And in spite of the harshness of trying to make a living with limited resources, the unfailing open hearted friendliness of everyday people I encounter on street trolleys, casual conversations with taxi drivers or hotel workers or on street corners in the French Quarter or buskers on Frenchmen Street, represent New Orleans in style and substance.
What else? The still strong bond that keep families together through thick and thin, held together by food, music, love, and fish fries and crawfish boils in back yards or sidewalks that have been going on for as long as anyone can remember. All of it is elusive to define but like the smell of frying catfish and wafts of aromatic smoke from the grill and the smell of your clothes after you’ve spent a few hours hanging out on a stoop or your camp chair or maybe even the couch that someone drug out of their living room and plunked on the sidewalk for the occasion...that's the spirit of New Orleans
My friends from Lafayette took me to the Krewe de Vieux Mardi Gras parade in the French Quarter in 2019, the most recent visit. I don't have to tell you about the wonderfully outrageous creative decidedly non politically correct satire - and the throws to match - floating around the corner and on to Frenchmen Street.
Full of contradictions, New Orleans has the nation’s highest official poverty rate (18.6%) among the 50 largest metropolitan areas according to the 2017 census. Admittedly I see only part of the city and base everything I’m saying on my limited experience. What if it were possible to determine richness in terms of spirit or attitude or determination to keep on keeping on despite income? I don’t know. I don’t want to be Pollyanna-ish about it to diminish its effect on New Orleanians. I guess what I’m thinking is that there’s a difference between poverty in dollars and poverty in spirit.
The New Orleans in my limited experience is rich in spirit.
I never tire of telling friends about New Orleans and SW Louisiana.
Jeanne this was my first impression of New Orleans on our trip August 6, 2008
I intended to send you a short response to why I read Gambit. Not possible. Every time I read that story in the link, I get a flashback to a memory impressed like a watermark on my Yankee psyche. It makes me happy, no small achievement these days, and pine for the day I can return.
Writing this response was great therapy in this time of pandemic, staying indoors as per the state orders didn’t mean i was prohibited from takin’ ride down to New Orleans.
Be safe
My heart goes out to Louisianans suffering from COVID-19
Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
xxxxx
Dear Gambit Community,
I wanted to send a note, thanking you for becoming a Gambit Community Member and /or Adopting-a-Small Business. My inbox is always open to your ideas on what you would like to see in Gambit (in print and online), I take your feedback to heart.
GAMBIT has been a staple in many New Orleanians’ lives for almost 40 years, and I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to work alongside talented journalists, creative designers and brilliant marketing professionals to bring journalism and entertainment news to our readers for more than 18 of those years.
This month we are trying to reach 1,000 new members, please help us share this campaign on social media and invite your friends and family to support local journalism too.
RESPONDING TO THIS REQUEST below, this my mini campaign to support New Orleans by suggesting you get a splash of New Orleans goings on and support journalism in the time of pandemic. Journalism was on shaky ground even before the pandemic. If you'd like to support one of the main outlets trumpeting the range of the city's goings on and the spirit infused in it, consider signing up to become a Community Reader for $5.00/month. That's what I did.
COVID-19 has closed down gatherings of more than 5, 10, 25 depending on your source. No contact closer than 6 feet, stay close to home. For sure, no public dancing.
I needed a dance fix.
8:00 PM Text my friends Bernard and Rubia in Lafayette. “Put on your dancing shoes, The Revelers are in the CD rack, we’re gonna have a party in our kitchens!”
“Call us in 15, we’re finishing dinner.”
8:15 PM Sent them a set list of 4 songs. A brief phone conversation about logistics ensues. "We’re going to connect a cell phone to a little boom box on the counter," they say. They are all in.
8:20 PM Crank up the volume on the speakers in my kitchen. Dial Lafayette on my cell phone. Cue up the music… whoop and holler dancing around the stools around my kitchen table as if they were other dancers crammed into the tiny dance floor at The Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette. I'm in the moment in my own alternate reality, feel the energy of the crowd, imagine the band on the stage about two feet above the dance floor, the musicians taking turns with their solos and me and my imaginary smiling dance partner in synch, styling away with spontaneously invented moves that draw smiles from the other dancers. I can hear Bernard and Rubia doing the same thing together in their kitchen.
Our little fais do do finishes with a waltz, often a way the band in a Cajun dance hall ends an evening.
The best dance in Lafayette that night…maybe in all of southwest Louisiana and probably the only one!
Facetime, Zoom, Skype…we’re gonna get creative. We’re not going to miss a beat. Danses virtuelles, la vague du futur
Based in Lafayette, this band has a national following. These top notch musicians play a mix of Cajun, Zydeco, swamp pop, covers and original material in one of the most musically alive cities in America.
PS
Asked Bernard to tell band members he knows what we just did... could be a wave of the future!
Krewe du Vieux Mardi Gras Parade Marigny and French Quarter Neighborhoods in New Orleans February 16, 2019
Oh, my…The Krewe du Vieux (pronounce Voo) is about as New Orleansy as a Mardi Gras Krewe can get. Wildly politically incorrect, satirically magnificent, it is more like a no holds barred SNL propelled by brass bands. Like most of the parades in New Orleans weeks before Mardi Gras day, this is a walking/marching krewe.
The floats are pushed or pulled along by the marchers themselves (link to parade route). A few are drawn along by mules, paying respect to the parade tradition before mega krewes got the idea to build floats the size of The Queen Mary, transported aboard 18 wheelers, and so mammoth that they can’t navigate the narrow streets of the French Quarter.
Fearless lunacy abounds. Sacred Cows? The 17 sub-krewes of Krewe du Vieux gore them all with their interpretations of this year's theme, "Yes,Yes, Oh God, Yes," (a vaguely tongue-in-cheek reference to Mayor LaToya Cantrell's positivity campaign to brand New Orleans as "The City of Yes.") Yes, indeed...but best to leave the kids home when you head for this one. The list of sub-krewes speaks for itself.
SUB-KREWES SEEDS OF DECLINE Theme: Let us Prey (Priests) KREWE DU MISHIGAS Theme: Red, White and Jew (RBG) KREWE OF SPANK Theme: Bead Busters KREWE OF THE MYSTIC INANE Theme: RoadwerkNOLA.gov KREWE OF UNDERWEAR Theme: Hop On, Get Off KREWE OF K.A.O.S. Theme: Objection Overruled (Gender Equality) KNIGHTS OF MONDU Theme: Robbin' Goods: Irvin Mayfield KREWE RUE BOURBON Theme: Domino PotHo KREWE OF L.E.W.D. Theme: Submission Control: In Space No One Hears Your Safe World MYSTIC KREWE OF SPERMES Theme: Entergize the Pussy T.O.K.I.N. Theme: Bong Voyage KREWE OF DRIPS AND DISCHARGES Theme: Screw Dat KREWE OF C.R.U.D.E. Theme: The Lyin' King KREWE OF SPACE AGE LOVE Theme: Pot for Potholes KREWE DE C.R.A.P.S. Theme: City of No No oh God No (Priest Abuse) MYSTIK KREWE OF COMATOSE Theme: Kills the Story (Kashoggi) KREWE OF MAMA ROUX Theme: Mama Roux Sees You
Gotta love the names of the krewes and the spirit of satire - international, local, political, zany, and gleefully delivered by the costumed marchers. Their floats are hand-made, also a throwback from the earliest Mardi Gras parades.
Krewe du Vieux's purposeful goof ball sub-krewes are the most unfettered, unflustered, uninhibited gang of merry makers…the only thing they take seriously is maintaining the spirit of satire and organic homemade theatricality and pointed humor that was an ingredient of many original New Orleans Mardi Gras parades.
Mardi Gras spectators are the Laurel to the parade’s Hardy. They play their roles to perfection, often decked out in wild, absurd, outfits, lustily cheering the goings-on in the street, and an instant flash mob of convivial bon vivants. In these smaller parades with spectators three or four deep for blocks along the parade route, bonhomie rules.
“Sure, come on up!” is the response every time I want to get a photo and I’m at the back of the pack.
No “Throw me something, Mister!” beseeching from the crowd….no plastic beads flying to the crowd. Tiny paper handmade something-or-others, cards or pamphlets with scurrilous drawings are handed out to us on the parade route.
One of my favorites. “Do you like beer?” a krewe marcher asks. “Have one,” and he hands me an Abita Beer bottle cap with a tiny color cameo of Brett Kavanaugh pasted inside the cap. They must have been putting these together for months.
In the closing days of Carnival, the parades are huge and attract visitors from all over the country. In the earlier weeks like this, it’s a local party that began on January 6 (The Epiphany) and gains steam steadily until Ash Wednesday (about 58 days this year). If you want a taste of time tested traditional New Orleans Mardi Gras Carnival Season, book a flight right now.
Krewe du Vieux "throws", no beads, no plastic, small bits of fierce satire handed out to spectators along the parade route. There were a few political hand-outs so scurrilous I declined to include them...not because I'm a prude, just don't want to scandalize readers who may not share Mardi Gras' wild west humor as much as I do.
Mardi Gras in southwest Louisiana… it’s a whole dang season, called “Carnival Season.”
Mardi Gras Catechism: Carnival Season always begins on January 6, (The Feast of the Epiphany). Mardi Gras day (French meaning “Fat Tuesday”, also known as Shrove Tuesday) is always on the day before Ash Wednesday. The date for Ash Wednesday changes every year because Easter Sunday is never on the same Sunday each year. Easter can fall on any Sunday between March 23 and April 25. Mardi Gras day always takes place 47 days before Easter. Got that?
In my Yankee thinking, I thought the Mardi Gras parades always happened on Fat Tuesday. Mais non.
Not in this part of the world. There are 50 parades in New Orleans that roll between January 6 (Feast of The Epiphany) and March 5 (Fat Tuesday). Back in the day, the parades used to wind their way through the French Quarter. Then came along Super Krewes that hired tractor-trailers with enough muscle power to haul the Queen Mary, and say goodbye to big parades in the French Quarter.
These big rigs that resemble floating islands roll through the wider streets in Uptown and Mid town. Smaller parades and floats still roll through the narrow streets of the French Quarter.
The level of frivolity, creativity, unconventionality, political lampoon and/or social commentary is evident in just about any parade in the season.
The krewes often adopt a theme for the year. Being New Orleans, there are no sacred cows…the more sacred the cow, the larger the lampoon.
The rest of SW Louisiana is no slouch. There will be hundreds of parades from Slidell to Lafayette to Lake Charles and in every small town in between. There’s a parade in Iota whose population is about the same number of the seating capacity of the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette.
For research pt at large is going to investigate a few parades in New Orleans this weekend.
The Burren Back Room at The Burren https://www.burren.com 247 Elm Street, Davis Square Somerville, MA 02144 February 7, 2019
You could be blindfolded but when you hear that voice you know damn well that’s Jesse Lége singing. He’s in rarified territory in the voice department. Deeply sonorous, freighted with emotion that channels the pains and joys of his Cajun forebears, Jesse projects his music like an old soul, all the way back to the enormously emotive Améde Ardoin.
His piercing singing register comes physically from his voice box and his diaphragm but psychically from DNA rooted in a rural upbringing, no electricity, in a one room house deep in the prairie. The week’s entertainment – tuning in the Grand Ole Opry or The Louisiana Hayride if the batteries for the family’s transistor radio had enough juice.
This is not a pretend act. He was born at home near Gueydan, LA, was suckled on the sounds of music heard on the porch on Saturday nights under skies so black you could see all the way to the Milky Way, back in the days when electricity hadn’t reached the prairies of Louisiana.
Tonight he’s playing with his trusty band mates The Bayou Brew who bring their own Cajun sensibilities to the stage. Jesse’s as much a story teller as a singer. He’s an ambassador to Cajun culture, especially in places far flung from Louisiana, where his audience knows such history.In an accent as thick as a good roux,he’s likely to introduce a song with an anecdote, background about the song, and who first sang it. A good one tonight was his explanation of the subjects of many Cajun songs. "The Rayne Bounce" - getting the title since Rayne, LA, is called the "Frog Capital of the World".
Usually, to hear music like this you have to be at the Café des Amis in Breaux Bridge, LA, or the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette. Not tonight.
Kudos to the manager of The Back Room, who cleared away enough tables for the roomful of dancers to whirl the night away while Jesse and Bayou Brew played from the stage.
The Blood Red Moon expected to illuminate the firmament on Sunday was preceded by a blazing comet streaking over the skies of Lafayette on Friday, January 18. The comet had its own virtual soundtrack, familiar to local residents, the songbook of Jimmy C. Newman, born in a small Louisiana town far from the bright lights of Nashville. His songwriting output of American country music, later infused with songs influenced by his Cajun upbringing, covered as much territory as the comet that streaked over Lafayette.
I can’t read the notes I scribbled in the dark interior of the Acadiana Center for the Arts but I can tell you that I witnessed a night of dazzling music sung and played with cohesion, presence, expertise, and genuine love that swirled between spontaneity and synchronized beauty.
“Farewell, Alligator Man” was a tribute to Jimmy C. Newman (August 29, 1927 – June 21, 2014) a man whose type of rootsy music is never going to go out of style. I was surprised at the solid country sound and feel of his songs. I expected to hear music that sounded like the iconic Cajun singer Dewey Balfa and here I got a night reminiscent of Hank Williams. What else would you expect from a man who listened to Gene Autry when he was growing up in the small town of Mamou, LA.
This was one special night of music. It had superstars Marty Stuart and Doug Kershaw who played Newman’s music with sparkling energy but the night belonged to local musicians Kelli Jones (Fiddle, Guitar and Vocal), Joel Savoy (fiddle, vocals), Gary Newman (Bass and the son of Jimmy Newman), and Chris Stafford (Piano and Guitar), who were joined by Caleb Klauder (Mandolin, Guitar, and Vocals), Reeb Willms (Guitar and Vocals, half of the Klauder/Willms Duo), Rusty Blake (Pedal Steel and Guitar), Matt Meyer (Drums), and Jesse Lége (Accordion) all of whom played Newman’s music and sang his lyrics with utter affection and supremely original takes on old time music.
The carousel of Newman’s songs was played at what felt like rehearsal level and that’s a compliment. Every musician was in the moment, waiting to cover a song, add a lick, take a solo, or just beam a wide smile as they listened to a band mate interpret a Newman song with breathtaking freshness. This was way more than a concert, more like a piece of in-the-moment performance art for voice and instruments.
There is something universally appealing about Newman’s pure, direct singing and writing from half a century ago. Savoy, Jones, Klauder and Willms discovered Newman’s music independently, fortuitously met at venues across the country, and bonded over their mutual admiration.
Joel Savoy, fiddle player extraordinaire, and founder of the Louisiana-based label Valcour Records in Eunice, LA, promotes music and musicians with similar sensibilities. One of his first grand ideas after being named curator for the esteemed Louisiana Crossroads concert series at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Downtown Lafayette was to put together “Farewell Alligator Man, A Tribute To Jimmy C. Newman.”
Valcour Records had last year just recorded “Farewell, Alligator Man: A Tribute to the Music of Jimmy C. Newman” with Savoy, Caleb Klauder, Reeb Willms, and Kelli Jones. Savoy asked heavy hitters Jesse Legé, Marty Stuart, and Doug Kershaw, who had known Newman over the years, to come along for tonight’s ride. They were honored for the invitation and had a blast playing alongside the whippersnappers.
Newman got his start playing on the radio program Louisiana Hayride out of Shreveport. You might know the names of a couple other young singers who launched from the hayride, George Jones and Elvis Presley. In an astonishing 50 year run at the Grand Ole Opry, Jimmy C. Newman had a big run of country songs. The song that launched his career was “Cry, Cry Darling’” in 1956.
From 1954 to 1970, he hit it out of the park and charted 33 songs on the Billboard Country Chart. He began to integrate Cajun influences into hit songs like the 1961 release of "Alligator Man" and a year later, "Bayou Talk." He claimed that the C in his name stood for “Cajun” and the man never forgot his roots and never stopped including Cajun songs in his shows.
Tonight’s “Farewell, Alligator Man” might have been more aptly titled, “Hello, Cajun Country Man.”
A loping rendition of “You Didn’t Have To Go,” opened the show firing on all cylinders, Savoy, Jones, Klauder, Willms trading lyrics and virtuoso solos. As they would do all night, Rusty Blake’s eloquently mood setting pedal steel, Gary Newman’s rhythmically thumping standup bass, Matt Meyer’s steady subtle drumming, Chris Stafford’s solid work on keyboard/electric bass, provided the musical roux, the perfect atmospherics for Newman’s songbook.
Kelli Jones, with her soaring Appalachian tonality that must have come from listening to music in her hometown of Raleigh, NC, mesmerized us with “I Wanna Tell All the World.”
This short sweet song was as country it comes. The dye was cast. We were in for a night of pure, heart on your sleeve, inspirationaLly delivered music played by musicians who have found what, for them, is the Holy Grail.
Swapping vocals and playing jaw dropping solos on mandolin, fiddle, accordion, guitar, and keyboard, they covered just about every song on the Alligator Man CD and several chosen by the performers. SET LIST BELOW
Hall of Fame musicians Marty Stuart (whose elegant black tour bus was parked in front of the ACA for two days) and Cajun legend Doug Kershaw knew that tonight they were part of the show, not THE show. They knew they were part of this campfire evening in which musicians took turns shaking new life into old songs or recreating them with the same purity Newman wrote them. "I've Got You On My Mind"...exhibit A.
Most of the songs were about three minutes long, just the way they were played on the A and B sides of the 78-rpm records back in the day.
Willms can swing sweet or sassy depending on Newman’s lyrics. Klauder and Savoy match Newman’s intent with vocal range and back it up with their crafty playing. Savoy and Jones fiddle playing was crisp, spritely or plaintive depending on the song. Part of the fun for me was watching their eye contact as they played duets standing close together as one unit on stage. Caleb Klauder’s mandolin playing was melodic or insanely flying fingers picked.
Marty Stuart and Doug Kershaw were inspired choices. There was Stuart representing Newman’s country side, wearing his white suit with black piping around lapels, black shirt, and flowing gray and black scarf, and 83 year-old Kershaw representing Newman’s Cajun side wearing a bright yellow open collared shirt with crawfish embroidered above the black pockets.
Then there was Jesse Lége. Lége is the Caruso of Cajun singers, his voice at once raw, sonorous, plaintive, and richly evocative. When he sings Jimmy C. Newman waltz, I feel like I’m embedded in amber listening to a house party on a porch down in Gueydan, LA. Descended from the tradition of Dewey Balfa, the man is the most senior balladeer carrying the flag of Cajun music still touring around the world.
My belief that SW Louisiana is Cajun and Creole music territory into which country sounds were imports from honky tonks across the state line in Texas has taken a serious revision. Jimmy C. Newman was an authentic country star, not as luminous as Hank Williams, but bright enough to light up the Grand Ole Opry and the sky over Lafayette tonight.
The evening’s last two roof- raising songs saluted Jimmy C. Newman with hits that celebrated his Cajun roots. “Alligator Man”…do I have to tell you how a title like that resonated with this crowd?
Doug Kershaw put a foot stomping charge in the evening’s final song, Newman’s spirited Cajun anthem, "Diggy Liggy Lo", that featured the entire cast singing and playing the daylights out of the song, and the audience standing, cheering, and singing along.
People from these parts revere music that celebrates their roots and musicians that proudly call Louisiana home. The Alligator Man crossed over country and Cajun genres. His star still shines bright in the Louisiana night.
Set 1 (courtesy of Joel Savoy)
You Didn’t Have to Go- Key of G I Wanna Tell all the World- Key of D I thought I’d never fall in love again- C Let’s Stay together- Key of E Got You on my Mind- Key of E Jolie Blonde Ayou Toi T’es- Key of A Great Big Fais Do-Do- Key of D Cry Cry Darlin- Key of Bb If you Tried as Hard to Love Me- Key of G Cajun Baby- Key of D
Set 2 (courtesy of Joel Savoy)
Louisiana Man- Key of D Colinda- Key of A Day Dreamin- Key of A Let the Whole World Talk- Key of D Blue Darlin- Key of G H Brown Shuffle - Key of F Hole in my Heart- C/G after 2nd Chorus Again in your Arms- Key of C Alligator Man- Key of A ENCORE: Diggy Diggy Lo Key of A
Tim’s Kitchen 1000 Albertson Parkway Broussard, LA
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
I can always count on my friends Bernard and Mark to take me to good ol’ classic restaurants when I visit Lafayette. Today’s excursion, Tim’s Kitchen at 1000 Albertson Parkway in nearby Broussard.
“This is one of our favorite ‘Plate Lunch’ places”, says Mark as we drive by barren sugar cane fields and new condo developments springing up as older cane fields disappear around the outskirts of Lafayette.
The interior of Tim’s Kitchen is fresh and new since it’s been in business since early November 2018. What’s on the menu however are staples of down home SW Louisiana food for decades.
The first thing you see after entering the well lit place featuring a counter and about a dozen tables is the list of Plate Lunch Specials detailed in beautiful colored chalk writing on the wall at the back of the room. Monday – Friday. Today, Wednesday, Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, Smothered Liver, Hamburger Steak, Baked Chicken and Chicken Fried Steak.
“I had the Chicken and Sausage Gumbo the day Beverly and I found the place,” says Mark, a devotee of Plate Lunch restaurants. That’s all I needed to know – Gumbo for me today.
Four women enjoying their food are animatedly chattering at a nearby table. Since Tim’s Kitchen closes in half an hour, we’re the only customers.
Our waitress Maggie, born and raised in Lafayette, recites other items on the menu with an accent as distinct as the aroma of home made food wafting from the kitchen.
Five minutes later, Maggie cheerfully delivers Bernard’s Hamburger Steak, Mark’s Stuffed Cabbage, and my Gumbo.
I spoon the side of rice into the tasty bowl of gumbo filled with generous helpings of chicken and sausage, start chewing on the fresh roll and every so often take a bite from the cup holding potato salad. This is where my Yankee knowledge of traditional Louisiana food gets an upgrade.
“Down here, people put the whole lump of potato salad into the gumbo, “ says Mark with a grin. One minute later, potato salad floating in gumbo, I’m eating like a regular.
Plate Lunches have been part of SW Louisiana culture for decades. They feature staples of Cajun and Creole home cooked basics. Since they’re cooked ahead of time, they’re served quickly, are affordable and fill your belly with satisfying comfort food. And of course, they’re served on a single plate.
Crystal, our personable hostess, who found her way to Lafayette 10 years ago from Jacksonville, FL, fills me in on Tim’s history.
“His mother owned three restaurants in Lafayette, all named Ruby’s, and closed them all a few years ago. Tim, born in nearby Church Point, was head chef at the most popular Ruby’s.”
The business is in his blood. It’s hard work but there’s no vaccination to make you immune from wanting the rush of creating good food for an appreciative audience.
Opening Tim’s Kitchen hit the sweet spot for this man who’s been in the business for decades. It's open five days a week from 10:30 AM to 2 PM. Tim, trim and friendly, is as comfortable talking to customers as he is whipping up food in his kitchen. “Want some gravy to cover the gumbo you’re taking home with you?” he says as he eyes the cup of gumbo I couldn’t finish.
“Come back on your next visit to Lafayette,” says Crystal.
I’m a Plate Dish kind of guy. Next time, I’m going to leave enough room to sample the home made Banana Split Cake.
A pastor opens meeting with a prayer asking the Almighty help us to find those in need and give us energy to do today’s work. The prayers are one part Jesus and three parts encouragement, statistics that show what a difference we're making, and at least one anecdote that brings it all home.
Pastor Jacob Aranza brightens our spirits (already pretty high in my opinion); he reports that last week we did 25 houses...as of this morning we’ve done 42!...calls us heroes, says it is likely that we are the only organization that is giving direct relief to so many people right now.
PT from Boston gets a shout out...Ken Myers, one of the prime movers of the Our Savior's Church recovery effort says, "I walked in here this morning and one of my favorite teams is the Boston Red Sox because I played semi-pro baseball up there. I introduced myself to a guy with a Boston Red Sox hat, he says I’m PT from Boston. I say I used to live in Wareham, MA, what are you doing down here? He says I came down here once, fell in love with the people and when I saw what happened I had to come down and help…You hear in church about the five gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John… and you!"
"I guess you could call me St Paul now!” says I, a lovely moment which I savored.
Crew chief Rob Babineaux talks over today's work with Bryan Rhinehart
Our Savior's Church is organized...all we have to do is show up ready to work...everything we need to get the job of mucking out flooded homes. The equipment is here. We've got the spirit pitch in and make a bunch of people's lives brighter.
Rob reviews today's assignment with the crew. Really specific details are printed on our work sheets, name of owner, address, jobs to be done, equipment needed, likely obstacles to deal with, length of time estimated for the job.
This house is a bear to clean up. Looking at it from outside, you wouldn't know it had taken on several inches of water since it is quite elevated from the road and there are no streams or creeks or rivers nearby. The drainage ditches that run along Bald Eagle Drive and every house in Lafayette were overwhelmed with a surge of water that started in Denham Springs from the north and like an enormous tsunami rolled into neighboring parishes.
Stealth mold: at casual glance, house looks intact. Close inspection shows that standing water inside for a period of days meant that anything that had been soaked had to be removed.
Sheetrock and insulation, all of it; time for lunch.
Homeowner and mom; crew before we leave first house on Breton Road in Lafayette.
The garage was holding area for salvageable items: when a moisture meter detected water behind this kitchen cabinet it had to be removed, a task that took several hours.
same thing in the bathroom...
and a bedroom...
and parts of the garage...
determining the most efficient way to remove kitchen cabinets took most of the day
so the cabinets are now piled in the street
and the debris needs to be cleaned up
standard procedure: cut away sheetrock at the 4 foot seams and remove insulation if its an outer wall
Fast effective method to remove wet sheetrock...
There's satisfaction of getting the job done but still...it's such a huge stress on everyone in Lafayette and the parishes surrounding it.
Many say there were plans to mitigate such flooding. Cities and towns got the message now. One hopes that late is better than normal. Deep down, everyone wonders if this is the new normal.
Loads of people, especially out of town visitors like me, know about the courir du Mardi Gras of rural French Louisiana, sometimes referred to as the Cajun Mardi Gras. Few know about the African American Trail Rides that take place during Mardi Gras and weekends during the year.
This guy really gets it - the culture, the history, the pride in a tradition he calls “a sub culture” in southwest Louisiana.
His black and white photos, sharp and velvety at the same time, don’t just show or tell but have an ineffable sense of ‘feel’ to them. The artist’s choice to shoot and print in black and white achieves a delicate balance to show a tradition that is generations old and very contemporary at the same time.
A sense of quiet unassuming dignity is riding easily in those saddles. I feel the pleasure they enjoy from each other’s company, hear the laughter, and I’ll bet the music that might be playing from speakers in a rider’s saddlebag.
Finish looking at the gorgeous prints and I come away with a sense of family, community connections, bonds between fathers and sons, and yes, importantly, women, in the generations old tradition of trail riding. What is so impressive is how Ariaz’s sly documentarian's eye makes the ordinary so extraordinary. A few of these photos could stand alone as remarkable. As an aggregate, they knock you off your feet.
Every group has traditions that define it, keep it alive, show a quiet sense of pride and belonging. You could say this is a celebratory story about race and culture. What I feel after looking at these photos is a strange sense of kinship. I am an outsider looking in, but I am reminded of traditions in my own family that keep us together in the same way that the Louisiana Trail Riders connect in their rides.
The fact that a man not of that culture can see and be trusted and produce such exquisite photographs is a testament to his sense of mission, his deep respect for the people he’s documenting, and the friendly openness of the men who welcomed him along for the rides. Powerful stuff.
There wouldn’t be as much joy in the Joie de Vivre Café without the bigger-than-life paintings that give the place a special sense of identity…you can thank Darryl Demourelle for that.
Joie de Vivre Café August 18, 2018
The first thing I think of when a guy tells me his nickname is 'Demo' is that his closet if full of blasting caps and his idea of a good time is blowing something up.
Partly correct...but certainly not dangerous.
When Darryl Demourelle talks enthusiastically about blowing things up, he’s talking about his paintings you can see clear across the Joie de Vivre Café, which is where I met him.
“There are two types of paintings I do here, ‘up close’ and ‘at a distance’,” says the artist.
He points out two paintings that have become the visual calling card of the café “They're ‘at a distance’ paintings, usually one big portrait or subject in the frame. You get the idea all the way across the room.”
He leads me over to the small bar area in an adjoining room. “For the ‘up close paintings’, you need to walk up to them to see the details and they are in smaller frames.” Right now he is busy working on three portrait commissions and a razzle-dazzle painting he wants to airbrush onto his truck. “The work is never boring!“
Demo is the Kilroy of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. His signature style is all over town - murals splashed across the sides of buildings, wild looking trucks and automobiles, T-shirts, boats, RVs, oh, and an airplane and a bridge.
His career started by accident. In the Air Force, he began to paint his boots and service T-shirts with big bold colors. Guys in his outfit admired them so he offered to sell them, “I sold my stuff so fast I never needed to change my clothes!“
Self taught, he’s been painting since he was a kid. After his stint in the Air Force, he was hired to make signs to advertise Tupperware parties they were popping up all over in the 1980s. He opened his own company. He hasn’t been lacking for business since.
Demo sort of likes the idea of being an outlier. His Facebook page proclaims him to be “the best unknown artist in Breaux Bridge”. Unknown maybe. But good, oh yes.
He started working in Lafayette but moved to Breaux Bridge which, like himself, has a personality all its own. The little outpost of about 8000 is sprinkled with a surprising share of entrepreneurs, musicians, and artists along with farmers, fishermen and Cajun and Creole families that have lived there for generations.
He will paint anything. “I’m about to airbrush my truck so it looks like it has tractor treads running along the sides.” That should make a splash around town. Anyone with a lick of sense will give him the right of way at every intersection along Rees Street.
“Everybody needs signs!” Demo did the lettering for the Jim Bowie Museum in the Vieux Village in his hometown of Opelousas, 24 miles north of Breaux Bridge.
“Younger artists come to me when they are having trouble with their work and I show them tricks that I know. I’m not going to lose any business. Sooner or later everybody comes to me.”
Spoken by a man comfortable in his own boots, even though he doesn’t paint them any more.
May as well say Coffee & Culture & Art Café
"At a distance" ...you can almost get a whiff of that huge cigar.
and one "up close" lower left
What do you do with former truck transmission cartons? Make outlandishly colorful guitars that would steal the show from a musician brave enough to compete with it.
Papier mâché fish from Demo's studio, not the Bayou Teche!
Walk out the door of the café...you won't see that bemused fellow but you will see those buildings right across the street!
Walk inside the café on a Saturday morning...you just might find Darryl Demourelle sitting under one of his fabulous paintings.
The Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking is made up of onion, celery and bell pepper. There’s another Holy Trinity in southwest Louisiana: food, shelter, and music. The first two are self explanatory. Music - playing it, singing it, dancing to it, was the way the first French speaking settlers from the maritime provinces countered the trials of life living on the bayous in the early 1800s. If they couldn’t hunt it, trap it, fish for it, they went hungry. On Saturday nights, a family would put whatever furniture they owned outside, invite a fiddler or accordion player and their neighbors to sing and dance the night away. Amazing how working up a sweat doing waltzes and two steps could lift their spirits, remind them of their roots, and invigorate them for what lay ahead.
Yvette Landry doesn’t have to worry about her next meal but she's damn proud of the music that’s bound up with her Cajun roots. You better believe that Swamp Pop stole a place into her heart when she first heard it in dance halls and on the radio. A bunch of those songs are featured on her latest CD, Louisiana Lovin’.
When dancers hear the first eight beats of a Swamp Pop song, the same thing that happened when Swamp Pop was introduced sixty years ago happens tonight. Chair legs squeak as they’re pushed back and men and women look for a partner to hold in their arms for some good belly rubbin’ music.
Yvette and Roddie Romero sang most of the song's on Yvette's 2018 Louisiana Lovin' CD. Yvette got on a swamp pop roll with "My Last Date With You." The title alone gives you an idea of the Swamp Pop genre, just one of the kinds of music gifted to dear 'ol USA by the musicians and singers of southwest Louisiana.
Recording on an iPhone can't do justice to the performer's voices and the high caliber musicians around them but Karl Fontenot, the man in charge of tonight's sound at the one-of-a-kind music venue called The Whirlybird in a little town north of Lafayette, gave us a cloud of sound that combined vocals and instruments that put us in Juke Box Heaven.
And yes, that's 83 year old Warren Storm, the Godfather of Louisiana Swamp Pop, on stage with Yvette. The legend can still bring it.
The sound is distorted since I was standing right next to a huge sound stage speaker. What's not distorted? The fervor these big time musicians from New Orleans and Lafayette are bringing to the stage with Yvette Landry and Mr. Swamp Pop.
Back in the mid 1950s, when teenagers around Lafayette tuned in to the radio, they heard singers who changed the course of popular music. Fats Domino, Elvis, Little Richard were knocking on the door. Like they were whipping up a good roux, those teenagers stirred up everything in their music cupboard - Cajun, Creole, country, New Orleans, and rhythm 'n blues - and came up with a totally original sound. It’s not too far a stretch so see how they cranked up the emotion and slowed down the pace to invent Swamp Pop. To this day, it's one of the signature sounds of southwest Louisiana.
Warren Storm was one of those kids. Road trips to New Orleans as a teenager in the mid 1950s was a game changer for Storm (born Warren Schexnider in Abbeville, LA). He credits those visits to New Orleans's nightclubs to the formation of his drumming and singing style that at first sounded like this. Over time, he developed his distinct style and repertoire and never again had to look for work.
You could write a book about how tug-at-your heart Swamp Pop music and singers like Warren Storm have carried the emotionally tuned freight for three generations of men and women who grew up in Acadiana.
Storm stepped on stage and pretty much wrote chapter one tonight. Yvette was paying attention.
"Rainin' In My Heart" (number 17 on R&B chart in 1961) ... the energy on stage is pegging the needle on high...wailing sax, perfectly tuned fiddle riffs and guitar solos... a band on fire. A man enshrined in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame a Grammy nominated singer/songwriter on stage together...what else would you expect?
Yvette Landry had a coming out party last night. The Yvette that’s been on slow boil for about eight years, creating her singing voice, her stage persona, her style, got stoked to a full rolling boil tonight. She has sung with lots of really great musicians and been part of shows with lots of other fine voices.
She’s always sung with whatever the song called for, tender Cajun ballads and frisky two steps, classic country, Americana, dyed in the wool rock ‘n roll, a touch of rockabilly, and classic swamp pop.
A couple of years ago, Yvette’s teaming up with Roddie Romero and his band to create The Jukes sparked a transformation. Roddie Romero, guitar; Eric Adcock, keyboards; Chris French, standup bass; Beau Thomas, fiddle; Derek Huston, saxophone; and Gary Usie, drums, can light up any stage with the best of them.
When they play together as The Jukes, the stage all but ignites….and they are decidedly Yvette’s band.
“This group met at 4 PM for a sound check. We've played together at different times but not on the same stage. What ever you hear tonight is going to be the first time we’ve done it together,” she says.
You could’ve fooled us. What ensued was full-bore heavenly music that traversed genres from one end of the rainbow to the other, swamp pop in one pot of gold and southwest Louisiana rock 'n roll dating from the 1950's and 60's in the other.
The sense of occasion is not lost on the band. Born and raised in Breaux Bridge, Yvette has an ardent following. Playing to this particular audience, they were damn well going to pull out all the stops. The solos from Roddie Romero, Eric Adcock, Chris French, Beau Thomas, Derek Huston, and Gary Usie, can always mesmerize with sheer talent. Tonight they dug in to deliver inventive, inspired musicianship that all but levitated the Whirlybird and at its peak sprinkled us with rapturous fairy dust.
The Jukes sang every song from their new album and a bunch of rock and country classics, including Yvette's rowdy rock 'n roll-y “Do Anything But Stay Offa My Cowboy Boots.” When Yvette and Roddie launched into Swamp Pop, Louisiana’s gift to the American songbook, the thermal capacity pegged the meter on the compact Whirlybird's dance floor.
If the seven stars of the Pleiades were to form a band, Yvette Landry would be its most luminous. Tonight, in the hothouse August atmosphere inside The Whirlybird, she sang from a deep place in her core that I’ve never heard before.
I said as much as I talked with her as she signed the cover of “Louisiana Lovin’” after the show.
“I didn’t have to play guitar that much, it gave me time to let it all come through my voice,” she says after the show. Oh, yes.
Yvette has always had a streak of Loretta Lynn in her. Tonight she unleashed her inner Wanda Jackson. She went from singin’ pretty to singin’ gritty.
Roddie and tonight’s band were the gasoline. Yvette was the match. To my ears, this was a defining career moment, a voice and a presence whose depth that quite possibly took her by surprise, a new benchmark from raw, to raucous, to lyrical, to lonesome and back again. She’s never gonna’ be the same. And that’s a good thing.
The Whirlybird...the lull before the Jukes Storm...that tiny dance floor was mighty packed with deliriously happy dancers all night long.
The Jukes on stage...oh, my… and I haven’t even begun to talk about special guest, godfather of Swamp Pop Warren Storm…stay tuned...
I’m ready to leave after my visiting my friend Doug, who is recovering from a hospital stay. The sky has opened, it looks like Niagara Falls outside with occasional thunder rumbles to boot.
“I’ll make you a Cajun raincoat,” says Doug. Born and raised in the bayou, he knows a thing or two about improvising.
He pulls a 30-gallon trash bag from the cupboard. “Poke a hole in the bottom to put your head through,” says he.
“Hold still,” he says as he cuts holes in the corners. ”Put your arms through here.”
“Now for a hat,” and he rummages through the recycle bin for a plastic WalMart bag.
Trying to match my style with his sense of ingenuity, the bag I tie looks like a chef’s toque with a fashionable tilt.
“You’re ready to go for it!” says he.
I bolt through the deluge, into the car just as dry as you please. My outfit cost about 2 cents and kept me as dry as any expansive creation from REI.
Let’s hear it for Cajun ingenuity. Thank you, Doug!
A fiddle and an accordion are all you need for a night of entertainment around here. The people in the audience will partner with the musicians to fill the place with energy. Dancing, not required, certainly adds a layer of oomph, not unappreciated by tonight's duo, Forest Huval and Jonno Frishberg..
“The name of that song was ‘Reel de Coquin’, it means Dance of the Thieves,” Forest Huval says. It was the last dance of the evening at Joie de Vivre Café in Breaux Bridge, and he and Jonno Frishberg got into it.
“It was a tune originated back in the day by Dennis McGee (January 26, 1893 - October 3, 1989) and has been played by fiddlers ever since,'” says Forest. McGee was one of the first Cajun musicians to record music on 78 rpm disks. His influence is felt by every musician who wants to feel the span and breadth of Cajun music from the time it was recorded.
The first time i heard Forest play December 31, 2012, when he was playing accordion with the late great and dearly missed Al Berard at a house party in Breaux Bridge. Since then he's taken up the fiddle. Al would be impressed.
Group Therapy at the Joie de Vivre Café Joie de Vivre Café 107 N Main Street Breaux Bridge, LA 70517 August 4, 2018
Happens every Saturday morning at the Joie de Vivre Café in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. No need to lie down on a therapist’s couch, just pull up a chair, and breathe easy. The pharmacology here is music.
A big circle of music makers is sitting on a small dais. A Cajun jam is in full swing. By tradition, all are welcome to join. By all, I mean men or women who’ve been playing for a few weeks, accomplished players who know the lyrics and chords of the songs, and pros like Gina Forsyth or Christine Balfa who live nearby and show up once in a while. No one bows or curtsies to the pros, who just sit down with everyone else and play.
By custom, the jam is led by a fiddler or an accordion player who sings the ballads and two steps as everyone else plays along ensemble style. It’s a bundle of egalitarian energy.
Whether you understand French or not, you grasp that the high-pitched mournful keening voice has got to be a response to hardship, dislocation and gritty survival after "The Grand Derangement" forced the Acadians to flee British ruled Canada in the mid 1700s. The frisky two-step tunes show that they knew how to let loose and let joy seep into their lives before they headed home to tend to the uncertainties of weather and life.
There's a mountain of research that listening to music makes us feel better. . That’s what’s happening at a table where Elaine and Jim are sitting. Elaine takes turns strumming her guitar with the group on the dais. Her husband Jim, in a wheel chair, isn’t moving a muscle. “He was diagnosed with ALS five years ago,” Elaine says, “recently he’s had trouble speaking.”
Jim, who has the lean frame of a man who has run 43 marathons, is having no trouble taking in the music. Jim is dancing with his bright blue eyes.
“Jim looks for the gifts in life, “ Elaine says, “coming to this café and listening to the music is one of them.”
The joyous sound echoing through the Joie de Vivre is a gift to all of us. For Jim, it’s a therapy to stay in the moment, moments that get more precious each day.
ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a neuromuscular disease. Muscles waste away. Total immobility ensues. There is, as yet, no cure. Ability to speak goes. When the diaphragm can’t keep up, breathing stops. All of our days are numbered. Jim’s number is smaller than ours.
The music, camaraderie, and cozy confines of the Joie de Vivre Café are an uplifting mood enhancer, nourishment for soul and body. The world and its cares will be there when we walk out the door. We’ll walk into them with a lighter step.
John Armstrong, a Scotish inventor (1709-1779), wrote, ‘Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, expels diseases, softens every pain, subdues the rage of poison, and the plague.’
Today’s Cajun jam will not expel Jim’s ALS. But nothing will keep him from looking for the gifts in life, a soaring example of the will to endure. Jim is living life in C major…C for courage.
PHOTOS and VIDEOS
Fiddles and guitars make up the majority of the instruments played in the Cajun jam.
Today's jam led by Joel Breaux (fiddle), Ryan Simon (accordion, also drummer for Pine Leaf Boys and plays with T’Monde), Lester Gautier (washtub bass)...leading ballads and waltzes. If you close your eyes, you can imagine neighbors trekking to a friend's home on a Saturday for a night of music of bygone days in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Every skill level is welcome...
From 8 AM till about noon, people gather for food, dancing, and old time music, in what Cajuns call, "Passing a good time."
Glen Fields (drummer for The Revelers and T'Monde) and Russell Ducote, both play the "T-fer", the Louisiana French name for a triangle, originally made from tines of a hay fork and used to provide rhythm in a Cajun band. "He's one of the best," says Russell,who is pretty darn good himself.
Conversations between songs...
Antoine Melancon...
an institution all by himself on the dance floor...leaves the building.
Cheerful decor, cheerful atmosphere...
The music is good medicine for all of us, the smiles say it all...
Jim and Elaine...Jim looks for the gifts in life. This is a big one for him. So is his presence for the rest of us.
No better example of the range and depth of the pervasiveness of music in the lives of a chunk of people in southwest Louisiana...Alan Crochet. Alan Crochet has been playing harmonica "off and on" for most of his 80 years. "I was born and raised in Loreauville, about 30 miles from Breaux Bridge." He’s been coming to the jam for ten years. " i drive here by myself," he says with quiet dignity.
He explains how to use the tongue to block some holes while blowing through others in the harmonica. To give an example, a moment before, he played "Begin the Beguine." In this video he plays what sounds like "It's The Loveliest Time of the Year" but Alan says its title is "Over the Waves." He shows me his German made Hohner Big River Harp. "Most players use the key of C harmonica; it has ten holes. This harmonica cost $35, my first one cost about 35 cents!," he says.
Today’s fiddle player and one of the jam leaders Joel Breaux is his cousin. "Joel’s grandfather and I are first cousins, my mother was a Breaux.”
"Who's your Mama?” or “Who are your people?” are the ways people connect the dots around here. The concept Six Degrees of Separation operates robustly in southwest Louisiana. When it comes to musicians, it’s more like Three Degrees of Separation.
Fellow musician Russel Ducote says that Alan spoke no English for a long time. "Do you speak French?" Alan asks as we part. "Oui," says I and we have a brief conversation. "I can understand you," says he, encouraging me, then, as he walks to his car, "Au revoir"and in case i didn't get it, adds "It means I’ll see you again." I look forward to that.
Take a stroll down Jefferson Street on a Saturday evening ArtWalk and you get an idea why. The city feels lit up and it’s not just the lights pouring out from galleries, restaurants, bars, and storefronts like Sola Violins on East Vermilion. Doors open wide, art galleries give a come hither vibe that makes you want to walk in. Even if the art isn’t your cup of tea, the smiles on the faces of the hosts whose goal seems to be hospitality first, business second, make it easy to sashay inside. In case you hesitate, nothing says, “Come on in” like tables filled with tasty appetizers.
The appetizers are floating atop an ocean of civic pride, something on the endangered species list in some cities …I’m sure you have your own list.
Lafayette is a certifiable hotbed of music. Tradition runs deep. Cajun and zydeco bands play the old stuff and plow into new ways of presenting it. If Hank Williams, or Roy Orbison, or Ed Wills, Willie Nelson, the late Professor Longhair or Allen Toussaint were to pass by, they’d find someplace in town that would be music to their ears.
Whoa! On the corner of East Vermilion Street and Jefferson I stop in my tracks. That’s live music.
Inside Sola Violins, there’s Luke Huval, deep in the moment, pumping that accordion and totally locked in to the emotional charge of the times in which they were first sung in the late 1700s. Cajun ballads sound more like a plaintive keening expression put to music of fiddles, accordions, and guitars that describes dislocation, loneliness, heartbreak, hard times on one hand and explosive playful joy at others.
Back in time, all of it was played at a Saturday night fais do do in which families trekked to a neighbor’s house, put the furniture on the porch, put the kids to bed, and sang and danced away their shared cares and trials.
Voices have stamps. There aren’t a ton of singers that you can recognize after a few phrasings. The last time I heard that voice was in 2012 at McGee’s Landing in Henderson, LA.
Along side of Luke is the same kid who played accordion in 2012, Zack Fusilier, with the same drive that keeps this music alive. And Megan Brown, a contemporary who has grown up with the music and has the same feel for the emotional territory from which it sprang. You have to feel this music to sing it. They feel it.
Sola Violins is owned and operated by Anya Burgess, fiddle player on two Grammy nominated Cajun bands, Bonsoir Catin and The Magnolia Sisters, and a formally trained violin maker. Her shop, originally in her home outside Lafayette and now in Lafayette, has been a destination for musicians since 2002. It's is the perfect place to showcase Cajun music.
Darlene and her young son are sitting next to me on a line of chairs against the store wall. A woman slowly twirls her young daughter to the beat of the music. "I’ve seen little kids dancing on the feet of their father or mother to learn how to dance,” says I.
“I’m teaching my little boy the same way,” says Darlene, from a Creole family in Lafayette, “that’s the way I learned from my grandfather," another way culture is prized and passed along here in southwest Louisiana.
My pal Bernard and I head down the street for some food until something way better happens. Music from Rêve, a coffee shop. Gotta check it out. The Cedar Crest Ramblers are playing fine music. No one on the dance floor. We change that. First time I’ve ever danced with a belly dancer!
Femme: A Celebration of Women in Acadiana Music Acadiana Center for the Arts Lafayette, LA March 7, 2018
Women’s voices have always had a place in this part of the world. In the rural areas of southwest Louisiana, surviving was a challenge. Women were in charge of managing home and hearth. Cajuns and Creoles settled here, two distinct cultures, not always seeing eye to eye, had one thing in common, the way music lightened the load.
Singing dispelled grief, spoke to the almighty, sang fancifully about love, sadly about loss, gave women who sang together a sense of community, and made the tedious hours of cooking, laundering, and tending the garden pass by easier. A woman needn’t have a great voice. That was not the point. Finding a place in her emotional center, a place to live vicariously, express hope, desire, dreams... that was the point.
Anna Laura Edmiston, musician, mother, has lived in those internal places. Her experience singing in a popular French speaking band is the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface was her desire to uncover the roots of music that saturates this city every day of the week and acknowledge the women for whom it was a staple of everyday life.
Watching Linda "Ronstadts’s Canciones De Mi Padre," a production that used visual backdrops and staged performances, inspired her to create an homage to the rich regional history of Cajun and Creole music. Femme is a quietly powerful acknowledgement of the deep roots of the music of two cultures that rang true so naturally.
Edmiston's collaboration with stage manager Lian Cheramie, video editors Chris Segura and Pudd Sharp, original illustrations by Erin Broussard, and digitization by Anne Boudreau animated "Femme" in a singularly satisfying production.
Finding women to fill out the cast of Femme: A Celebration of Women in Acadiana Music must have been difficult. Not because there weren’t enough women who are tuned into their culture and perform it but because there are so many that she ran the risk of offending women not invited to sing in the program. Most of the women are members of well-known bands and skilled players on accordion, fiddle, banjo and guitar.
Edmiston arranged the program in four parts: Kitchen, Outdoors, Church, and Living Room. The stage setting was as simple as the kitchens and living rooms in which they were sung. A few small tables, a bench, a few chairs, the women sang and we filled in the rest with our imaginations. Edmiston’s sense of pacing was pitch perfect, balancing the emotionally charged songs with those with humor and levity. Since the songs were mostly in French, for the non-French speakers, the facial expressions and tempo of the songs were enough to tell the difference and respond accordingly.
Some of the songs in the Kitchen set were sung a cappella as two women folded the laundry, probably just the way they would have been sung in the countryside. The Broussard Family’s demonstration of Juré dancing and singing was kinetic, playful and soulful all in one. https://thecurrentla.com/2018/in-her-words-a-zydeco-heiress/
As good as the singing was, some of the most poignant moments in the program were three video and audio excerpts used with permission of the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, courtesy of The Association for Cultural Equity. Watching Mercedes Vidrine explain how to make a roux (1987), Dorestine Ledet explain Juré music and dance (1979), and Lula Landry hilariously explain her memory of “Le Petite Anna à Mogène Meaux “(1979) were positively captivating and perfectly calibrated to tune us into a mindset whose explainers have passed away but whose cultural presence is alive and flourishing.
Lafayette is still the cradle that holds the traditional music and women who cherish it. Tonight’s multi-generational musicians sustain it, and remind us of women’s seminal role in holding it together with their voices lifted in song.
The full cast (missing the Broussard Sisters). The visuals projected behind the performers added a sense of time and place.
The women of FEMME: Ann Savoy, Jane Vidrine, Kristi Guillory, Anya Burgess, Megan Brown, Desirée Champagne, Anna Laura Edmiston, Sasha Massey, Lori Lemelle, Christine Balfa, Amelia Powell (Christine's daughter), The Broussard Sisters Juré, Lisa Trahan, Renée Reed, Jill Merkl
A Y NOT Cajun Vittles 1217 Park Avenue Breaux Bridge, Louisiana 70517 February 13, 2018
Sometimes the answer to "Hey, Why Not?" is to create a quirky way-off-the-beaten-path destination that ought to have comfort food lovers beating a path to find.
The food landscape is filled with entrepreneurs, risk takers and dreamers. Tonya Marsocci is all three.
If I hadn’t left La Poussiere in the late afternoon daylight after dancing to a great zydeco band, I would never have seen the quirky hand painted sign hanging on a white picket fence right across the street. The bold red letters A Y NOT Cajun Vittles certainly gets points for folksy originality.
No sign of a restaurant. Halfway down an aging cement driveway, I see a small cedar framed shack, apparently closed, that leads to another street parallel to where I started. I walk up three steps to an aluminum framed ordering window covered with the names and prices of offerings. Still no sign of life. A smooth metallic swoosh later, I’m startled when the window slides open and I’m greeted cheerfully by a woman whose blonde ringlets fall casually from under her white Nike visor.
Forty-five minutes later, I’ve devoured a Triple X Cajun Dog, listened to the story of a woman who is living her dream, and doing everything possible to give it a happy ending.
Connecting via geography and family seem like the first things people ask in order to get acquainted in these parts so I’m not surprised when she asks, ”Where you from?”
“Boston” says I.
“What’s your name?”
“Paul Tamburello”
“That’s a good ‘ol paisan name!” she says with a raspy laugh right from her gut. “I was married to an Italian from Boston.”
Fewer than six degrees of separation later, we’re connected and practice reciting our last names by squeezing out every vowel. It helps that I can pronounce Marsocci the way they do it in the old country.
Tonya is one big bundle of bubbling energy. “I want you to try my Triple X Cajun Dog and brag on it when you get back to Boston,” she says. She means it. Tonya is as hungry for acknowledgement as I am for dinner.
Tonya’s been tinkering with the menu and drumming up business since she opened last August.
“Everybody does hamburgers. I want to have a Cajun specialty.” I hear her words but I feel the unspoken conviction that’s saying, ‘I want to be different, to become a household name, a destination for local families and people who live within driving to roll down my driveway, stop at the drive-up window and order food every day. And brag about it’.
She tried selling a hot dog with crawfish topping but learned customers didn’t go for the combination. Keeping a price point when filling the bun with crawfish wouldn’t work since crawfish prices swing wildly during the year. The same creative juices that thought up A Y NOT Cajun Vittles name for her business - a clever play on her first name - invented her signature “Triple X Cajun Dog,” fried catfish, melted cheese topped with crawfish etoufée.
Swoosh, the window slides opens again. Tonya hands me a hot packet wrapped in heavy aluminum foil. And waits.
“I think you’re going to enjoy that, it’s a big piece of Louisiana right there."
I take a bite. The cheese and liquid from the etoufée have been absorbed into the fresh bun. I taste the catfish and feel its fried texture then the cheese and savory crawfish flavors and a sly kick of piquant sauce. A mouthful of southwestern Louisiana indeed. "Everyone who orders it says it makes their taste buds dance," she says with that throaty laugh. I'm no exception.
When you’re struggling to make it in a tough business, it’s not every day that a customer from a big city a thousand miles away literally stumbles onto your tiny drive up shack then gushes about the food you put your heart and soul into. One compliment like this throws dry kindling into the will to succeed that burns within her.
This isn’t her first rodeo. Her family operated a business in Lafayette in the 80s that could routinely sell out 40 gallons of her mother’s gumbo every day during the Festival International. She's all done with sit-down service, lots of overhead, and managing employees.
It’s Ash Wednesday tomorrow, Lent begins. “I want to specialize in Cajun food for people on the go. I’ll be making crawfish etoufée and shrimp stew on Friday since no one eats meat. I’m thinking about opening up a food truck, bring food to the people instead of waiting for them to come to me, gives me more than one option.” Gotta love this woman’s gumption.
“I’m 54 years old and its time for me to do my own thing instead of make money for everyone else,” Tonya says, a Triple X dream wrapped up in a battle plan.
Tonya’s a fussbudget when it comes to food. She cuts her own French fries, hand forms every hamburger from beef she buys from the same butcher (“I don’t buy from the supermarket”), makes her own natcho sauces, does everything but milk the cows for the ice cream.
Then she tells me she designed her drive-up shack and helped put on the roof! The layout inside is clearly designed by someone who knows how to set up a workflow that can be operated smoothly by one or two people. It is positively spotless. Tonya has something to do with that too. ("If I go out to eat and the bathroom isn't clean, I walk right out the door.")
A Y NOT Cajun Vittles is a gem with tasty well-prepared food and ridiculously inexpensive prices. The cost for lunch for everybody in the family van competes with any fast food outlet and is way healthier. I paid $6.78 for my Triple X Cajun dog and a cup of really good vanilla ice cream.
If success is predicated on location, Tonya (now Tonya Berry) is facing headwinds. Although her property is zoned commercial, there are no other destination businesses along the street. The dance hall attracts a night crowd and she’s open Monday - Friday from 11 AM to 5 PM. She advertises on Facebook and leaves flyers where she can. In person, she’s a positive force of nature, energetic, enthusiastic, edging toward charismatic.
Business is slow. "Some days it gets you down. I advertise and get word of mouth business and people who come here tend to come back. I don’t want to throw the towel, I want to strive to make it better," she says in a rare moment of doubt. A moment later, the entrepreneur, risk-taker and dreamer perks up.
“My mom said you can’t call it a Triple X Cajun Dog, that sounds crazy. I sure can, I told her, it’s my business!”
That pretty much sums up what Tonya is all about. If pride and quality had a price point, no one could afford to eat here.
When I walk out the door of La Poussiere Dance Hall, it's hard to see the drive-up shack at the end of the driveway. No way you're not gonna notice those folksy signs!
"I designed everything here, the signs, the building, even this mailbox!" Tonya says with no small sense of pride.
The side entrance to her business? By now, I'm not surprised that Tonya designed that too. It's another piece of her business she says I can brag about.
The La Poussiere Dance Hall (red building) is across the street from the drive-in entrance (in my case, the walk -in entrance). If A Y NOT Cajun Vittles isn't your destination, you might drive right past the big sign tacked on the fence right in front of her house, the white house in the background.
Tonya's Triple X Cajun Dog. There are tons of interesting foods served around here but this one's an original.
"My grandfather built this house," Tonya says. "I bought it from my father." Her commute to her business is about thirty seconds.
Since the land is zoned for commercial, why not build my drive-up business right behind my house, Tonya thought. The entrance to her work kitchen is on left, a walk-up window on the corner, and the drive-up window to pick up food you ordered is at the opposite side of the shack.
The menu covers the basics: hot dogs, hamburgers, cheese sticks, ice cream, sweet potato fries, nachos, Bobbie's special praline cookies and a Louisiana sweet tooth favorite - Snow Cones. "Lots of snow cone places are seasonal. I'm open year round. Some days are hot, some cold, I've got the machine, if they want them, I've got them."
Open for business.
Stop at the drive-up window, pick up your food, continue to Park Avenue and be on your way.
La Poussiere Dance Hall in the background, Tonya's house between the dance hall and her drive-up business.
PT ready to brag about the food.
Tonya's son John, her mom Bobbie, Tonya on the steps of the entrance into the kitchen.
She hands me a tear-off sheet she distributes everywhere she goes. "You're gonna take that flyer back to Boston and brag on me, right?" Tonya says. Here's the answer!
Late breaking development...this will soon become A Y NOT on wheels!
Stop The Clock Cowboy Jazz Band Feed ’n Seed Lafayette, LA February 11, 2018
Text, photos. captions to follow!
Gary Newman, bass John Buckelew, fiddle Gary Granger, guitar Paul Anastasio, fiddle Charlene Howard, vocals Sabra Guzman, guitar, vocals Kurt Boudreaux, keyboard Wayne Leblanc, drums
In New England, our BBQs are usually feature burgers, hot dogs and the occasional rack of lamb and steaks for summer gatherings. A quick trip to the market, fire up the gas grill or charcoal and you’re good to go.
In southwest Louisiana, people go whole hog for a pig roast… an order of magnitude more time consuming and a test of old fashioned outdoor cooking skill. A man or woman's reputation is on the line. Weddings, birthdays, and holidays are prime times for a roast. Mardi Gras is a perfect time for a roast.
Whoever hosts a roast has to be a seasoned veteran, know the art and science of digging a proper roasting pit, a slab or spit on which to roast, the right kind of wood to smoke and cook the pig, an enclosure to act as a lid to keep the pit at cooking temperature and a few other things that this Yankee didn't see am positive went into the production.
Our host, and this year his son, has been masterminding roasts for years. By the time we arrived, the suckling pig had been removed from the pit, artfully sliced, laid up in huge plates for us to feast upon.
It is a matter of etiquette and traditional that in the south guests bring a covered dish that will serve as an appetizer, a dessert, or often a well planned main dish to complement the roast.
You can count on the fact that there will be enough food to feed an army.
For a dancer, having The Revelers contained in a tiny place like the Joie de Vivre Café is somewhere along the lines of The Second Coming.
They just about dare you to sit down when they play their brew of Cajun two-steps and waltzes, honky tonk, swamp pop, a dash of country, and the occasional rock ‘n roll number. Every time I sat down to take a break, they cranked out another song that insisted, “I don’t think so, PT.” I was not alone in this regard.
You want a great sound mix? How about accordion, fiddles, guitar, bass, drums and saxophone that’s so resonant that some it is probably embedded under the quirky murals on the walls?
Some of the musicians have come from far from CajunLand but they all ‘get’ the music. They’ve made their bones around Lafayette, respect the roots of Cajun culture, and sing in French and English.
Accordionist Blake Miller is the engine of the band and the other Revelers throw in musical anthracite to keep it chugging full steam ahead. The best thing about the Revelers? They are kaleidoscopically fresh. Their pacing, range, and stylings pivot on a dime. Ho-hum is not in their lexicon.
“Can you feel the difference in the energy in different places you play in?” I ask saxophone player Chris Miller.
‘When we play for a seated audience it’s a different level but when we play to an audience of dancers who are really into it , we feel it. We love playing music with each other and that alone fires up our playing.”
Every one in the café adores their music. The fact that this is Mardi Gras week adds extra combustion to the atmosphere. There's a handful of out-of-towners present but most of the audience is men and women who were born and raised here or who have moved here because they were struck with what I call the magic of the Breaux Bridge Stick.
Make no mistake about it, this place is Brigadoon without the time constraints.
Chas Justus, guitar; Chris Miller, saxophone; Daniel Coolik, fiddle; Blake Miller, accordion; Trey "Boom Boom" Boudreaux, bass; Glenn Fields, drums
Great organic fusion of music, musicians, dancers, listeners...a wrap around experience of rhythm, melody and harmony.
Age? Everybody dances!
Picking up on their own energy...
the band is feelin' it.
And we feel it too when Chris Miller gets into a smokey swamp pop number f
Singing in French or English, Blake Miller leads the way.
with Trey "Boom Boom" Boudreaux, bass; Glenn Fields, drums hitting every beat that keeps the train rolling
Family friendly
Cafè, yes...and a fabulous music destination, check them out.
The smiles say it all...
there's genuine joy in the Joie de Vivre.
Larry Miller, Blake's grandfather and builder of world class acccordions, talks shop with his grandson.
Blake Miller's mom and his nephew getting a head start on the accordion!
Katy Richard and Chris Hinchliffe’s House Party Lafayette, LA December 30, 2017
Whoa, Baby, this was the great grandmother of all house parties, a lalapalooza!
As a generic term, a host invites friends over for convivial evening of food, hospitality, and socializing and everyone goes home. Then there are house parties around Lafayette, LA.
First there’s the matter of the guest list. Once the word is out, invitees tend to tell their friends, who tend to come along too. In other parts of the world, this might cause dyspepsia to the hosts. Maybe it’s a southern thing but here it's not only tolerated but taken for granted.
Houses have interior dimensions. There seems to be a law of proportionality that states that there will be enough room for everyone. And once inside will know how much space to take up. When my hosts asked if I could come with them, Katie Richard asked, "Is he skinny?" No matter what the answer, I would have been welcome. So there’s corollary number one. Everyone will manage to fit inside.
Hosts prepare food. Guests always bring food. Not stuff they bought at the store on the way to the party but dishes they’ve spent time preparing, bring utensils to consume them, and find a place to situate it on tables piled with entrees, appetizers, gumbo, soups, and desserts. People talk, eat, drink, and eat…for hours. Corollary number two: There will always be enough food.
An unimaginable pile of plates, glasses, cups, and serving bowls accumulates in the kitchen. Not to worry. Women (and a few good men) take it upon themselves to stand at the kitchen sink and wash them out for reuse. Corollary number three: guests pitch in to manage the gigantic flow of food.
This part of the world is like a petrie dish for music: Cajun, Creole, country, Americana, with sides of blues and rock n roll. Guests will bring a guitar, accordion, fiddle, stand up bass, the occasional flute and harmonica. Corollary number four: Music will break out after food has been consumed.
The musicians may not know each other or ever played together. No matter. The language of music appears to be some kind of universally understood Esperanto . They mumble things like E flat or C major and tap out the time with their feet and once they get going it sounds like they’ve been practicing in the cellar for a week. So there’s corollary number five. The music will be spontaneously fabulous.
People around here, unlike my hometown of Boston, will dance at the drop of a hat. If there’s a tiny spot between the chairs and tables, a couple will ease on up and fill it with their best dance moves. Corollary number six: there will be dancing.
Tonight’s event at Katy and Chris’s house is filled with guests from far and wide. musicians from Ottawa visiting Lafayette for New Year festivities, play side by side with men and women who play in local bands.
The evening is launched with a Cajun jam led by accordionist Ray Abshire . Ray's cousin Nathan Abshire played with the Dewey Balfa Band that single-handedly brought Cajun music from a regional to a nationally recognized genre. Close your eyes and listen to Ray's plaintiff. resonant voice and you're listening to a culture distilled by music.
Cajun music and dance, ballads, waltzes, two steps, have been a staple of southwest Louisiana since the mid 1700s. Anyone who’s brought an instrument joins in, from beginner strummer to advanced players.
Hang on, boys and girls. The next two hours are a mellifluous jamboree.
The Ottawa duo of Michael Ball and Jody Benjamin (Ball and Chain), pile on to a Louisiana Hayride with hosts Chris and Katy, guests Phil Kaelin (of the Has Beans), Gina Forsyth, Major Handy, and other pros. This is our own Lafayette floor show but no one is having more fun than the musicians. Forget candy stores. This is Big Rock Candy Mountain for them.
There’s a ton of music happening all over Lafayette tonight. It’s a safe bet that no one is having more fun than we are.
Guests have filled their plates with delicious appetizers and entrées, accordionist Ray Abshire leads a Cajun jam.
Axiomatic around here, music happens, dancing breaks out.
Katy and Chris make fine music; Major Handy leads "Stand By Me."
Everyone's into it; first hour or so, food piled high, conversation and consumption.
In the kitchen and outside; the temps are in the fifties but the fire pit and temporary tents keep guests dry and warm.
On this cold and damp night, a few guests socialized outside around the fire pit. Beverages and appetizers were close at hand.
New Orleanians, even living miles from home, know that January 1 is not complete without a traditional meal of collard greens, black eyed peas, cornbread, and pork. My Lafayette, LA, hosts and great friends Rubia and Bernard hail from New Orleans and Dublin respectively, where people take food and drink seriously.
Rubia remembers the meaning of the meal. retold almost as a catechism, as she ate the dinner with her parents and siblings in New Orleans' seventh ward.
Collard greens symbolized folding money; black eyed peas represented coins; cornbread with its gold color represented riches; if you could afford pork you were living high off the hog - if you were poor, your mother would find a piece of pork to drizzle into the beans or greens. Rubia added pickled pork that added a salty flavor to the greens and beans.
Back in the day, money for many was scarce. Families could grow the greens and beans in their garden, cornmeal was inexpensive.
I’m not so sure history is invoked but black-eyed peas might still be a touchy subject. During the War Between The States, Union soldiers grabbed up all the food they could carry to feed themselves and laid waste to the rest on the way to Atlanta in 1863. Black eyed peas were plentiful but grow on scraggly looking bushes. Northern soldiers had no idea of their value and left them alone. They were practically the only kind of protein left, were easy to store, and fed those southerners through thick and thin for the rest of the war.
Life seems be changing at warp speed these days. This chance to share a meal freighted with such regional history may or may not be recreated in another generation or two.
But right now, as I cut into a perfectly done breaded, fried then finished in the oven pork chop, collard greens, black eyed peas, pickled pork and a mound of corn bread, I feel about as southern as a Yankee from Boston is ever gonna get.
New Year’s Eve Dance at Vermilionville Lafayette, LA 11 PM
I don’t have to remind you that 2017 has been a year of tumult. If ever the world were in need of an act of kindness, this was the night and this is precisely what we got. A little miracle.
What’s happening on the stage? The band is rearranging its configuration. A moment later a caregiver is wheeling a man onstage and setting him up between Geno and his rub board player.
Wow. This is the same young man who has been sitting against the back wall of the dance hall in his wheelchair, two fingers covered with the metal thimbles that have been making his rub board sing since the dance began at 9:30 PM. Cerebral palsy hasn't dented one bit of his love of the percussive throb of zydeco music.
Geno’s manager noticed him, asked if he’d like to join the band on stage. A dream is about to come true.
Geno, leader of Geno Delafose and French Rockin'Boogie, one of the most popular bands in southwest Louisiana, welcomes him warmly and off they go with a lively zydeco song.
“Philip Meaux!” Geno shouts as they finish. We cheer.
What happens next is even better.
"Let's slow it down a bit," Geno says, pulls up a chair next to Philip so he’s at eye level with him. VIDEO Watch Geno nod and make eye contact as they play and watch Philip glance at Geno.
This is as warm a connection as you're ever going to see on a stage. Look at the smile on Philip's face as they finish the song and watch Geno tell everyone, "Philip Meaux! Give him some love, everyone!"
A moment after Geno has helped him off the stage, he turns to us, his face beaming.
" 'This is a dream come true', Philip just said to me."
For anyone with a beating heart, this was a wave that lapped the shore of our own sea of dreams. The act of kindness was a mini sermon reminding us that small gestures can make a big impact on the lives of others. New Year's Eve was a good place to start.
PS Once he’s settled back in his chair at the back of the dance hall, he tells me music is in family, his father plays bass and his uncle plays guitar. Philip’s caregiver Rachel, who’s been amazed and happy at the turn of events, says Philip is self-sufficient, lives in a condo, and has daily caregiver visits. Men and women like Philip often seem invisible or isolated.
There’s a message here. I may have had to ask Philip to repeat his answers to my questions so I can understand them but he’s sharp, observant, and personable. He has dreams of success and acknowledgement and fulfillment as we all do. One of his came true tonight.
Horace Trahan and The Ossun Express La Poussiere Dance Hall Breaux Bridge, LA December 29, 2017
Horace Trahan and The Ossun Express is one tight band tonight. Horace is a big guy so when he stands tall with his band mates left and right, he’s the anchor on stage.
He may be known for playful songs like “That Butt Thing” published early in his career but more often than not, he’s singing not just to us but also about us. “Keep Walking” released in 2010 is all of that.
Horace’s music is often characterized by themes of human connection, bonds between people and what, on some occasions, might be called sermons set to music.
Don’t get me wrong. He’s making any dance crowd very happy with a range of zydeco, two steps, waltzes and what Herman Fusilier calls ‘belly rubbin’ music.” (Fabulous smoky blues) complete with riffs by saxophone player Doug Garb.
Horace Trahan is an old school accordion player. He stands at center stage, no wasted motions, sings one song after another, and keeps patter at a minimum.
So, when he gives an extended introduction to a song, you listen up. I couldn’t hear his words from the back of La Poussiere’s dance floor and made my way toward the stage. Here comes “Seven Spanish Angels,” written in 1984 and sung by Ray Charles and Willie Nelson on Ray Charles album titled “Friendship.”
Musically, the song, with its lovely Mexican accordion flourishes played by Horace, is unlike any other song in his catalog. But the theme – love, loyalty, redemption - is right up Horace’s alley. Horace arranges to have the whole band sing the lyrics together, a Zydeco choir in full voice.
The gauzy lyrics invite you to make up your own narrative about the man, the woman, their desperate situation, and those Seven Spanish Angels.
Contemplating end of life isn't one of my favorite topics but when it's time, it's a toss up between a brass band or those Seven Spanish Angels to take me home.
The Brass Room: A Monday Night Neighborhood Jam 1301 Surrey Avenue Lafayette, LA Monday, November 13, 2017
8:45 PM
“That’s the President of the United States and the First Lady of the Brass Room.”
So says Gloria LeBlanc Wheeler, proprietor of The Brass Room in Lafayette, LA, as I point to the two portraits hanging prominently on the wall. I don’t know who was the boss inside the White House but I damn well know who calls the shots here.
Thirty seconds after I entered the door and navigated to the back of the room, a man whose biceps strain the sleeves of his T-shirt holds out his hand.
“I’m Alex Montgomery, how you doing?”
“Paul Tamburello from Boston. My friends call me PT,” says I.
“This band is old school,” Alex says, “ you’ll see.”
Actually, I can hear it as I’m trying to listen to him over the decibels the band is cranking out.
When’s the last time I walked into a bar in Boston and been greeted like that by a perfect stranger?
My usual haunts in Lafayette are dance halls and bars where I know the bands, people by face if not by name and know the territory. The Brass Rail is far from that territory. There’s not much open on this stretch of Surrey Street far from downtown Lafayette. I was the only guy my color in the place and not many patrons blinked an eye.
Several men nod a hello as they walk past my chair at the far end of the colorfully decorated room and just in front of a tiny window revealing a small kitchen.
I’m an outsider, a northerner, a visitor here, have no close black friends. My life experience may be a world apart from Alex’s or Gloria’s. But I feel welcome.
An old school front line saxophone, trombone, trumpet, keyboard, backed up by drums is playing a catalog of hits from the 70s and 80s. The guitar player and lead singer directs the show with buoyant enthusiasm. Covers of Smokey Robinson and James Brown and others of the era come one after the other. My guess is that most of the men in the band play here after they finish their day jobs. They’re not professionals but they’re certainly having fun.
Despite the fabulous dance beat, I’m surprised the dance floor is empty. Two women at a table in front are busting moves as they sit in their chairs waving arms and wiggling their behinds in unison with the music.
The two dozen tables are filled with couples, singles sit at the ten stools at the bar. The men are dressed casually, the women in slacks and carefully chosen tops have put more effort into it.
“Hope you’re hungry, food’s coming out later,” says Gloria as I order a Bud Light.
The Brass Room has a lively vibe, feels like a Monday night hangout and destination. Men arrive and give hearty sometimes elaborate handshakes and bro hugs with their friends and hugs to the women they know.
The Brass Room won’t be found on the Trip Advisor list of must see locales. But it’s as integral a part of Lafayette music and culture as any of them. I never would have found it at all had I not met Chester Chevalier and his wife Mary the night before at Mr. Rodney Bernard’s 80th birthday party in Scott, LA.
Chester had just played with one of the bands, his commanding guitar getting my attention.
I introduce myself, he confirms that he plays at The Brass Room Monday nights, his wife Mary wife encourages me to head over there and here I am.
“Chester isn’t here because his wife has to get up at 5 AM tomorrow, to help with a food drive at El Sido (another neighborhood bar on the other side of Lafayette),” says Gloria. No matter. I’m getting a feel for Lafayette nightlife I’ve never seen before.
Lo and behold at 10 PM, three women emerge from the tiny kitchen with a cart filled with bowls of gumbo. Another custom as it turns out in neighborhood places like this.
A sixty something woman from Opelousas is introduced and sings and shimmies, covering “Don’t Mess With My Man”, “Boney Maroney” and a few other oldies.
As the night progresses more guitar, bass, accordion and even a washboard player show up. Some of them well known professionals. There are about 20 people present when I arrive and by the time I left twice that many have dropped in to what appears to be a weekly event that’s circled in their calendar.
Music switches genres as an energetic fellow bounds up to the stage around 10:30. Laurie Sigu and the Creole Stompers have arrived. And my goodness, there’s Lee Alan Zeno playing bass in the back row. Does that man ever sleep or take a day off?
“Meowww!” I hear the woman shout from the kitchen when the zydeco band is announced.
“What’s that mean?” says I.
“It means ‘I like it’” exclaims Betty LeBlanc, Gloria’s sister.
A few minutes later there she is playing a frattoir (rub board) with a big meow grin on her face and a few minutes after that we’re dancing together. Live music has a way of lifting our spirits and lowering the cultural walls between us, even if for a few hours.
One last vignette. “May I sit here?” A young fellow asks about the empty seat at the deuce I sitting at.
“Ronald Paul,” he says and shakes my hand.
“Paul Tamburello,” says I.
“Thank you for introducing yourself. It doesn’t happen like this in my hometown Boston. Its a really friendly gesture, several men who’ve never seen me before have done the same thing,” says I as I get up to leave.
“That’s what we do,” he says. “My friends call me RP.”
I grin. “My friends call me PT.”
After a bunch of days in Lafayette, I usually leave for home on Monday morning. Next time, I’d like to return to the Brass Room, say hello to the First Lady and Ronald and maybe even see Chester Chevalier. Even better, I’ll try to take a page out of the Lafayette playbook and introduce myself first.
The band covers pop music from the 70s and 80s...
while patrons relax at the bar...
presided over by proprietor Gloria LeBlanc Wheeler...
with help tonight from her sister Betty
who helps serve the tasty gumbo rolled out around 10 PM...
and plays the rub board for a tune by Laurie Sigu and The Creole Stompers.
November 12, 2017 Mr. Rodney Bernard—Rubboard Elder Statesman--Music Celebration Cowboy’s Nightclub Scott, LA 3 PM until the cows come home
If you ever doubted that music in southwest Louisiana is a family thing, consider the party for Mr. Rodney Bernard, "Mr. Bernard's Past to Present Throwdown Throwdown." The man’s been playing music since he was 8 years old and is known for the quiet kindness of his nature and the less quiet way he can make a spoon sing as he drags it across a frattoir (rub board).
There are scores of musicians around here who are playing well into their seventies and a few right into their eighties. People don’t defer to them because of their senior status. They defer to them because they can still play the daylights out of their chosen instrument or vocal chords.
Rodney’s pals, 70 year-old guitar player Paul “Lil Buck” Sinegal, 63 year-old youngster bass player Lee Allen Zeno, and 69 year-old keyboard player Lynn August, who sang and played a glorious set with Mr. Bernard, are a prime examples.
Mr. Bernard has played with some of zydeco’s best bands, including Thomas “Big Hat” Fields (his long-time great band mate), accordionist Marcel Dugas, keyboard player Lynn August, had his own career as a band leader, and since 2009 has played the frattoir (scrub board) with Horace Trahan and The Ossun Express. Mr. Rodney is Horace’s father-in-law. Did I mention that music down here is a family thing?
Today's party was a Who’s Who of Zydeco. You don’t get musicians like Lil’ Buck Sinegal, Lynn August, Kevin Naquin, Lee Allen Zeno, Horace Trahan and the Ossun Express, Dexter Ardoin, Jamie Bergeron, Jeffery Broussard, Eric Singleton, Corey Arceneaux, Rusty Metoyer, Tiger Dopsie, Gerard Delafose, Randall Lee Jackson II, and Kaleb LeDay make time to celebrate your birthday unless you’ve earned their respect. Hanging out at the side door is like watching stars arrive at the Oscars as musicians say hello to the family and get ready to play. The red carpet is replaced by a simmering vat of gumbo.
Music and food around here go together like roux and gumbo. Outside the side door, a constellation of Bernards and their close friends are tending to a huge vat of gumbo they’ve been simmering since 9 AM. Chantelle Bernard Trahan, Horace’s wife, is the field general, checklist in hand. She’s good at this stuff. Chantelle also handles marketing and PR for Horace’s band, The Ossun Express.
The scene out the side door under the small blue and white striped tent looks like a family reunion. Chantelle’s sister Sheila Bernard Nelson and her husband Peter and long-time friends Mike Hurst (of Mike Hurst & the Zydeco Cut Point Band) and his wife Carolyn Hurst are ladling gumbo into bowls for a line of grateful celebrants.
“I did the cooking, she did the stirring!” Peter says playfully as they serve bowl after bowl. Louise Begnaud (married to Doug Garb on saxophone and flute in Horace's band) along with two of her sisters, joins the tag team serving gumbo for several hours.
Today, with all these luminaries of zydeco performing on stage, Mr. Rodney is the brightest star.
Around 4:30 PM he’s front and center with a positively stellar group, singing a set of zydeco classics and a some sultry awesome Swamp Pop…with energy, class, and a huge smile as he gives a nod to Lynn August (keyboard), Lee Allen Zeno (bass), Paul “Lil Buck” Sinegal (guitar), Shane Bernard (drums), Gabriel Perrodin, Jr. (Horace's newest guitar player), and Doug Garb (saxophone), take their solos to the roof.
This is stunning. When Rodney sings or Lynn August sings and jams mightily on his electric piano, I don’t know whether to dance to the lights out music pouring from the stage or stand still and witness history.
August and Bernard have traveled the world together playing their music. During a presentation (VIDEO) in the program, August (who is blind) thanks Bernard for his friendship, recalled that he idolized Mr. Bernard's playing when he was ten years old, notes their mutual musical heritage, and recalls how they bonded as they toured Europe promoting zydeco.
Nattily dressed in black hat, jacket and slacks, physically fit Rodney Bernard doesn’t look like any 80 year old I’ve ever seen. For a precious half hour, he powers joyfully through a set of music that by now is buried deep in his DNA. Rodney is in his element, fully in the moment, and he’s carrying us along on his shoulders for the historic ride.
Rodney’s sister Rose, and his daughter Cheryl LeMelle from TN, sit with spouses and close friends at a big table at the edge of the dance floor the size of a small skating rink. It's packed with friends and admirers. Daughters Sheila and Chantelle, who’ve been planning this for months, are outside greeting well-wishers, friends and dozens of musicians.
Every time Mr. Rodney walks off stage or meanders through the crowd, cell phones are hoisted, cameras flash, selfies are taken, group photos with Rodney front and center are guaranteed to happen.
His son-in-law Horace Trahan senses that today belongs to his father-in-law. After The Ossun Express’s first set at 3 PM, he’s relaxing out the side door where the food is being served and his fellow musicians arrive and hang out.
Horace greeted me by name, remembered that I volunteered with Our Savior’s Church to muck out homes ruined by the flood of August 2016. He enthusiastically tells me that his father in law picked out 20 hens for the gumbo, informing this Yankee that hens would not fall apart as fryers would as the gumbo was cooking!
The bond between musicians around here is deep. They’re united by their craft, their respect for the music, whether traditional or evolving, and the hard work it takes to succeed.
An outsider like me sees only the stagecraft part. I don’t see the fact that most, including Horace (Cajun and Creole Lawn Service), need a second job/income to make ends meet. This story by Herman Fusilier about veteran sidemen like Lee Allen Zeno and younger musicians like Chris Segura opened my eyes to the less glorious aspect of a musician's life.
A terrific story by Daily Advertiser Music and Entertainment editor Herman Fusilier recounts Mr. Rodney’s career arc and the times a young Rodney would drive back from a gig in Houston to return an hour or two before his full-time, day job at Schoeffler Cadillac. Popular as he was, his music earnings would not support a growing family.
If there weren’t masters of ceremonies, with this many bands showing up, the party could go on for a week. Herman Fusilier and Todd Ortego, local radio personalities who have their own loyal followings, keep the show on the rails.
They’ve known each other for decades and know the music and the musicians. As a duo they’re like the buddy act of NFL’s high profile announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. They have great chemistry as they introduce each band with patter that connects the band and its musicians to the occasion and about 20 minutes later give them the ‘one more song’ signal.
Hundreds showed up at Cowboy’s to celebrate Rodney Bernard's 72 year career and listen to some of the best zydeco musicians on the planet honor him by playing today. For $10, you’re never going to get a better bang for your buck and a bowl of homemade gumbo to boot.
I first met Rodney Bernard at Mardi Gras 2012 where Horace Trahan and The Ossun Express was playing a late morning gig in a parking lot in front of Meche’s Donuts (yes, I said a donut store) in New Iberia.
I’ve witnessed this kind of southwest Louisiana hospitality since my first visit in 2009. Today was a celebration of a man who has been part of the fabric of music for nearly 8 decades.
The lovely glass engraved plaque presented to Mr. Bernard reads, "Celebrating 72 Years of Playing Music....presented to Rodney Bernard......In Grateful Recognition of Dedicated Contributions to Louisiana Music and Culture......November 12, 2017."
Mr. Rodney Bernard: Musician, Legend, Father, Grandfather, Mentor, Role Model… who picked cotton as a youngster in Carencro. LA, has traveled the world as an emissary of Louisiana’s cultural and musical heritage, and can still command a stage at 80 years young.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
Rodney Bernard, flanked by daughters Chantelle Trahan and Sheila Nelson, had the kind of party that musicians (and fathers) dream of. Family from near and far, friends of a lifetime, fans and music lovers, gathered for a "throwdown" that delivered all it promised.
Some of the hundreds of attendees step out the side door of Cowboy's Nightclub in Scott, LA, to line up for free gumbo served by Sheila Nelson...
family friend Carolyn Hurst...
and Peter Nelson, Sheila Nelson, and Louise Begnaud (married to Doug Garb on saxophone and flute in Horace's band). Mike and Carolyn Hurst got the gumbo going at 9 AM in a vat the size of a small bathtub, enough to serve hundreds. Rodney Bernard and Mike chose 20 hens from Breaux's Mart in Lafayette, LA (because hens wont fall apart in the long cooking process, Horace tells me). This event has as many details to plan for as a half time performance at a Super Bowl and, thanks to Chantelle, her family and friends, it ran just about as perfectly.
Highlight of the day, Rodney Bernard is the man, singing classic zydeco and swamp pop songs with a cast of all-stars.
and Gabriel Perrodin, Jr. (Horace's newest guitar player) on the right side.
Rodney can still bring it...his swamp pop rendition of "Irene" rocked the house. I've said this before but forget 'Six Degrees of Separation'...in the southwest Louisiana scene it's more like two or three degrees of separation. Band member Gabriel Perrodin, Jr.'s dad, Gabriel Perrodin, Sr., known as Guitar Gable, recorded "Irene" with songwriter King Karl this Swamp Pop classic song!
He enjoys every minute playing with this fabulous band...I have to wonder if memories of his performances as a band leader and drummer over the years flash through his mind as he feels the energy of the crowd.
Swamp Pop: Cajun and Creole Rhythm and Blues, by historian Shane K. Bernard, describes the history of Cajun and Creole Swamp Pop music and lyrics of songs like "Irene," (VIDEO) that Rodney sang today for the how many hundreds of times he's probably sung it.
including Paul "Lil Buck" Sinegal. He toured internationally with Clifton Chenier, Buckwheat Zydeco and is known as a consummate blues player. He was one of the musicians featured in the film "I Am The Blues", a film that took years to make as it traveled the Deep South to spotlight rural blues musicians in places you've never heard of but were petrie dishes for what we now know as The Blues. The unanswered question is what becomes of the blues tradition when these men and women pass on. Lil Buck Sinegal was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Louisiana Hall of Fame in 2012. Everybody was lovin' the show including John and Bunny Broussard of Lafayette, LA (good friends of Horace).
Rodney Bernard's sister Rose, Peter and Sheila Nelson and Carolyn Hurst
Teamwork. Sunday was a sunny, gorgeous shirt sleeve day in Scott, LA.
Radio host Todd Ortego, sales director at KBON-FM, escorts Lynn August to the stage. August began playing music at 12 years old, has played drums, piano, accordion, led his own band, played with the late Stanley "Buckwheat" Dural and tonight kills it when he plays the Hammond B-3 on swamp pop and blues when he sings with Rodney Bernard.
A student of music, he studied the field recordings made by Alan Lomax in 1934. The result: two songs done in the Creole 'juré" style (rhythmic singing, hand clapping, foot stomping) on each of two albums released in the early 1990s.
Cowboy's Nightclub was packed for this extravaganza.
Herman Fusilier, music and entertainment editor of The Daily Advertiser and host of The KLRZ Zydeco Stomp, and Todd Ortego, sales director at KBON-FM and host of Swamp and Roll program, are the perfect choice to MC the long line up of top bands today. They know the music and the culture heritages of southwest Louisiana. Their easy camaraderie and personal connections to the musicians keep the long list of bands on track. The best 10 minute summary of Zydeco and Cajun music you'll ever hear is captured as David Dye interviews Herman Fusilier.
Todd Ortego introduced me to Horace Trahan's music on my first visit to KBON-FM in Eunice, LA, in 2010. Ortego and Fusilier are two walking, talking encyclopedias of southwest Louisiana music.
Herman Fusilier, host of the weekly Zydeco Stomp on KRVS FM and Todd Ortego, host of Swamp and Roll on KBON FM with a man Herman says is known simply as "Bird."
Swamp and Roll on KBON and Zydeco Stomp on KRVS are the two best ways for a newcomers and long time listeners to learn about the life blood of southwest Louisiana, its music and the culture that produces it.
pt, Lynn August, Rodney Bernard
Highlight of the day: presentation of this award to Rodney Bernard, presented by Herman Fusilier and Todd Ortego, A big hall filled with hundreds paid rapt attention as Lynn August paid a heartfelt tribute to his longtime friend and touring companion from America to Europe.
A smile of accomplishment for recognition of seven decades and counting for spreading the joy of zydeco music on at least two continents.
Rodney Bernard, Gerald Gruenig, Lee Allen Zeno
A big table filled with Bernard family members and friends.
Jamie Bergeron keeps the pedal to the metal...
Rodney and Jeffery Broussard after Jeffery's performance.
Horace enjoys moment with James "Jim" Sepulveda. Jim hosts a "Horace Trahan and the Ossun Express" fan page on Facebook.
and of course a photo opp!
By the time the crowd had left Cowboys late in the night, everyone had "passed a good time."
The Nouveau String Band Infuses Joy into the Joie de Vivre Café
There was explosion of joy in the Joie de Vivre Café in Breaux Bridge, LA. The Nouveau String Band hit the bandstand with melodic mischief in their hearts and red hot instruments in their hands. OK, the instruments might not have been that hot but the music…well, that’s another thing. . These five middle-aged guys are old enough to have heard the rich cloud of music that floats around Lafayette and southwest Louisiana. We’re talking a stew of Cajun, honky tonk, pop, and blues and, wonder of wonders, jazz.
Most bands around here have range. Put the Nouveau String Band in the ICBM category. Don’t be surprised to hear them cover Hank Williams, Count Basie, Robert Johnson, Marvin Gaye, Oscar Peterson, Jimmy Martin, and a raft of others. And every damn bit of it makes me want to find a woman and squeeze onto the dance floor.
What makes these guys special? In a small café like Joie de Vivre, their bandstand is a few feet from the tables that surround it and the slice of worn brown wood floor that fills up with dancers. That’s where the nitro meets the glycerine. The energy rush of this band and the nearly involuntary response of the audience creates an atmosphere that can be measured by a seismograph under the old floor boards. And don’t think the guys in the band don’t feed off the energy.
Any one of these musicians could hold an audience’s attention for an evening. Put John Buckelew (fiddle), Dave Trainer (fiddle, mandolin), Jimmie Duhon (bass), Lee Tedrow (guitar) and Danny Kimball (drums) together and you’ve got a killer band.
“I’ve heard these guys play dozens of times, “ says a regular from Lafayette, “tonight they were especially tight and full of energy.” I watched them smile at each other, nod in approval at each other’s solos and play the daylights out of every song.
In this part of Louisiana, you can find music live music performed in bars, restaurants, saloons, dance halls and best of all, tiny places like this café where dancers navigate with the precision of self driving cars around tables, chairs and each other.
Around here music might be a form of therapy from a troubled world. I’ve met teachers, oil field riggers, hydrologists, FEMA workers, nurses, therapists, photographers, waitresses, farm workers, aviation mechanics in places like this. The only politics allowed in the door is party politics, and I mean Party.
The music is the conduit. Sit down where you please, I guarantee someone will ask, “Where you from?”and pretty soon you’ve met a cultural ambassador who makes you feel welcome.
Which is why I’ve kept returning here since my first visit in 2009. There are dozens of places in and around Lafayette where this kind of vibe flourishes. As it turns out, “Laissez les bon temps roulez,” is the ritual that keeps us centered in a fragile world.
Tables have been pushed back a few feet from the raised stage...
so dancers weave through any patch of floor they can find. Creativity is useful.
To quote one regular, " the band is on fire tonight!"
And by the way, this is a café, with a side of great music on a regular basis.
SAD UPDATE...Joel Sonnier took his show to Cajun heaven on January 13, 2024
Jo-El Sonnier: Warming Hearts at River Ranch, Lafayette, LA November 9, 2017
I arrive at my host’s home in Lafayette at 7 PM. “Here’s a quick snack," says he, “Jo-El Sonnier is playing over at River Ranch until 8:30 PM!”
Unsaid, no lollygagging. This is gonna be good, stow your luggage in the guest room, we’re leaving in a few minutes.
7:35 PM Park the car. I can hear music a block away. Loud music… carrying sonically through the moist air on this chilly November evening. Which is when I discover the show is outdoors. A five-minute walk away, we’re in the center of an upscale development called River Ranch. The music is pouring out from a brightly lit bandstand in a tiny park in the midst of the development.
And there’s Grammy award winning accordion player Jo-El Sonnier cranking out some good ol’ Cajun songs upbeat to ballad, a sprinkling of waltzes, a few country two steps, and a surprising song or two with a distinct rumba beat heard in saloons like Tipitina’s in New Orleans.
Born to French speaking sharecroppers in nearby Rayne, LA, Sonnier, like so many other musicians from this region, could play the accordion not long after he learned to walk.
He began his career as a country singer-songwriter, switched to Cajun mid career, has won several Grammys and is in the Louisiana Hall of Fame. No wonder there’s a sweet vein of country in his repertoire. And here he is playing to a local crowd who understand the music, respect the musicians whose music is a natural fit with what they grew up with and certainly how they relax and let off steam.
A crowd of listeners wrapped in blankets sit on their camp chairs. It's around 55 degrees F, which certainly doesn't stop people from spending a Thursday night outside, in their winter coats, to enjoy the kind of music they listen to on KBON-FM. Teenagers and their grandparents stand around wiggling to the beat and a bunch of them dancing on the grass or the little strip of brick sidewalk in front of the bandstand.
In other words, a typical scene in Lafayette, LA, where music and dance are as much a part of life as grocery shopping and doing the laundry.
My flight arrived in Lafayette at 6:10 PM, I picked my baggage and rental car by 6:45 PM and at 7:45 PM I’m dancing on the grass with women I’ve never seen before. I smile, hold out my hand, they say yes, and off we go.
Satchmo Summerfest, New Orleans, LA Saturday, August 5, 2017
Benny Jones, Sr., leader of the Tremé Brass Band, checks in to the festival grounds. An hour later, as they began their third song, the rain intensified, thunder then lightning rolled in like a rowdy and scary cosmic second line parade. An organizer stepped to the stage, "We are canceling the show. Please walk into the U.S. Mint building, we want you to be safe. Take your camp chairs with you, they might not be here when you return." Standing in a couple of inches of rain, it occurred to me that one lightning strike could fry about 300 of us under the tent.
"Didn't It Rain" Oh my, it was pouring buckets, I'm thinking that John Boutté put this on his playlist as he heard the rain pelting down on the pavilion over his head.
Boutté and his band of first line New Orleans musicians...Oh yes, one hour later, lightning, thunder and ten inches of rain canceled Satchmo Summeriest, organizers told us to leave the tent, head inside to the shelter of the U. S. Mint...an ironically prophetic song choice.
Rain cascades off the tent covering the stage and audience sitting inside.
Fifteen minutes later, The August 5 pounding torrential rain drowns out John Boutté singing "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught," a song whose theme resonates more today than the time in which it was written for Rogers and Hammerstein musical "The King and I" first performed in 1951.
New Orleanians love their music but this is getting a little crazy. Proof is that here they are huddled under a pavilion while a monsoon rages outside it. They might even stand in the rain to twist and shout to the lyrics of the theme song to the TV series "Tremé,"practically a New Orleans anthem. The lucky ones are under the tent, stay there partly because of the fabulous music, partly because they'd be drenched the moment they tried to exit the tent. The grass is squishy super saturated - I am up to my ankles in water as I stand in it.
By the time the Tremé Brass Band sets up, thunder and lightning are on the way, sanity will surface when the promoters tell us the festival is canceled and to head for shelter inside the brick U. S. Mint (now a museum) immediately for our own safety. We do that.
Shortly after John Boutté and band end their set, The beloved Tremé Brass Band takes the stage.
Three songs later, the show is cancelled. The torrential rain has won this round. Street flooding begins.
Everyone has a hustle, figure that Jackson Square is as good a place as any to make a buck, tarot card readers, psychics, brass bands, painted pantomime artists, and now, tap dancers.
Thursday afternoon August 3...a man of the street steps up to sing impromptu verses of "What A Wonderful World." He'd been clapping time as he listened to the music and sidled up in front of the band to sing the first choruses of the song. "I've been singing all my life," Rodney says when I chat with him afterward, "someday I'd love to sing with a group on the street."
It's a fair bet that he's never studied music but, like just about everyone in this city, feels entitled to express himself with a voice that makes up in conviction what it might lack in finesse. When you think about it, Louis Armstrong's own voice was honed in the streets, not the choir, and he made his gravelly voice one of the most distinctive in the world.
"Sing it, man!" says the trombone player as the fellow steps up to sing, and later, "Let's hear it for the man!" Only in New Orleans.
Friday night August 4, same corner, 9:30 PM. The last act at the Satchmo Summerfest at the old U.S. Mint concluded at 8:00 PM but music around here hardly ever takes a breath. Lo and behold, here's The Swing Band holding court in front of Rouse's Market again.
One by one, New Orleans' siren call drew members of this band into the streets of the French Quarter and Jackson Square last year. Kismet and a stew of years of the tradition of busking in the street collided by happenstance when they met and found a groove together.
"We met in New Orleans last year, played on the streets for about three months, then the trumpet, guitar, and drummer traveled the country in an RV busking tour around America. The band all met up again in February." So says Sarah Shaffer, wife of the trumpet player and artist of their lovely CD cover, as she chatted with me and kept an eye her three-year-old daughter.
All of them have moved to New Orleans, some share living quarters, and they're here to stay. Some of New Orleans' best known musicians got their start on the streets. It's hard to fathom this from afar. I would never have understood the power music has over this city had I not witnessed it myself.
Jim Shaffer, trumpet; Rob Montgomery, drums; Tyler Hotti, guitar; Vincent ?, trombone; name?, tuba player.
It may not be an easy life style but for young men and women like this, it's all about the music, and it's all that matters.
Twenty four hours after Doreen Ketchens played, the streets of the French Quarter were flooded when 8-10 inches of rain fell in a three hour period. I was in the midst of it at Satchmo Summerfest, when the festival was canceled as torrential rain, thunder and lightning tore through New Orleans, the streets flooded, and the city’s pumping stations could not drain the water fast enough. Story to follow.
The remnants of Harvey are heading toward southwest Louisiana and New Orleans. Doreen’s version of “The Sun Gonna Shine On My Back Door Someday” (link below) may be a fateful and wishful foreshadowing for southwest Louisiana, and are certainly so for coastal Texas all the way inland to Houston, America’s fourth largest city and flood prone. Scary.
August 4, 2017 Corner of Royal and St. Peter Street New Orleans, LA
You can hear some of the finest music in New Orleans right on the streets of the French Quarter. Free. Fabulous. Soulful. Traditional to Funky.
Once you’re under its spell, you’ll gladly reach into your pocket and drop some green into the tip bucket. You’ll be rewarded by a hearty ‘Thank you’ or a grateful nod as a musician is in the midst of singing or playing a tune that stopped you in your tracks. New Orleans has a music heritage as rich as any cream sauce you’ll get at the dozens of restaurants that serve to die for food every day.
In a city with scores of bars and clubs devoted to music, this is not heresy, it’s a fact.
Exhibit A: Doreen Ketchens, whose spot on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Street is her permanent bandstand. Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans Band has played there so long and so successfully that it’s inviolable territory to any other act if she’s there.
Like many other New Orleans bands, Doreen’s band is made up of family. Husband Lawrence plays sousaphone and trombone and of late, teenage daughter Dorian Ketchens-Dixon sits in on drums.
Try to square this up, Since 1987, this stout woman rocking out in her camp chair in the street (literally) has played for four presidents, in every continent except Australia, and in concerts sponsored by the Jazz At The Lincoln Center and the U.S. Department of State.
She’s played before audiences of thousands. I’ve watched her play to a street audience of a dozen and I’m telling you, she still brings it with the pride, force, and heritage into which she was born in the Tremé neighborhood a few blocks away. Her energy is palpable. The size of the audience makes no difference to the volume of her voice and clarinet and her commitment to serenade the street with the vibrant music of her heritage.
It’s surreal. Cars roll past her band on Royal and St. Peter Streets, customers enter and exit Rouse’s Market ten feet behind her, destination-oriented tourists walk past and I feel like I’ve got a better seat than I’d have if I were watching her in Economy Hall at Jazz Fest.
Doreen’s made over two dozen CDs. Doreen’s Jazz Volume XX gives you an idea of her range, traditional jazz, Dixieland, gospel, popular, a good helping of Louis Armstrong covers, all of it stamped with her vocal styling that set her apart from other vocalists in New Orleans (and that’s saying something). She’s developed a touch of Armstrong gravel with a unique pitch that you can hear a block away. The signature sustained high notes she pipes from her clarinet make me hold my breath.
If you can’t make your way down to Royal Street, this gives you a good idea of what you’re missing.
Admirers chat after songs, many pose for photos and, more importantly, drop folding money in the tip jar - notice the three different labels on the jars! As culturally entertaining as the scene is, it's a main source of income for Doreen and other musicians who busk in the streets here and on Frenchmen Street, a fifteen minute walk away.
Sales are usually brisk here. CD sales are musician's bread and butter; Husband Lawrence Ketchens on tuba and daughter Dorian Ketchens-Dixon on drums. Doreen and Lawrence bring the culture and music of New Orleans to classrooms across America and the world as they travel.
"Saint James Infirmary" Listen to the clarinet at the 2:30 mark.
As sweet and gracefully swinging version of "The Sun Gonna Shine On My Back Door Someday" that you're gonna hear.
The corner of Royal and St. Peter Streets - note that one lane of the street is marked off for musicians to set up and play...ever see that anywhere else? Several bands play in that space, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans, one of its most widely known acts, has a lock on that space any time they want it.
And when rain threatens, Doreen's band, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans, moves under the porch across the street, in an intense version of "Home of the Rising Sun," complete with her signature solos.
Hours later, a flash flood would cancel Satchmo Summerfest and flood the streets.
Bayona Restaurant 430 Dauphine Street New Orleans, LA August 3, 2017 French Quarter
2 PM New Orleans, LA Some days pass by in linear order, others organic with a hit of synchronicity. In the French Quarter, bet on synchronicity, which is how this traveler ended up eating at Bayona on this night. I happily dine in places like Déjà Vu, comfort food New Orleans style, so my interest in reading the Bayona menu across the street from my hotel was more out of curiosity than intent...or so I thought.
“There’s a full menu of tonight’s dishes just inside the door, consider having dinner here tonight.” The woman with a distinct presence, a green tilak painted on her forehead, is on her way inside. I don’t often eat at high-end restaurants, but there’s something direct in that invitation. She means it.
8:30 PM A thunderstorm is raging. I really want to head to The Rock 'n Bowl for a great dance. Walking from my hotel on Dauphine Street to Canal Street and waiting for the streetcar to take me 13.2 miles to the end of the line on Carrollton Avenue then quarter mile walk to the Rock 'n Bowl is beyond crazy.
That invitation from the concierge at the Bayona Restaurant is a downright rational option. Laurie recognizes me with a smile. A minute later, she’s seated me at a finely set table for four.
The interior is low-key elegant with burgundy painted walls, white trim around windows and moldings and recessed lighting, and wall sconces that give off a glow inviting and intimate - let's call in an aura. The mirror on the wall next to me makes the room appear larger, capturing the warmth of the burgundy walls. Understated elegance soon followed by attentive but not overbearing service. One look out the window and I'm ready to settle down for a long meal.
A couple of families and their daughters are celebrating a birthday at a nearby table. The chatter is indistinct, white noise, sort of like the persistent sound of waves lapping onto the beach.
“What do you like on the menu tonight?” says I as my waiter approaches.
“The Berkshire Lamb Chop with smothered greens and a French Creole sauce.” says my waiter. “There’s usually some variation on a pork dish on the menu, tonight's is an exceptionally good one.”
“That’s the one for me,” says I. Of note - no bread or rolls served before dinner.
Sometimes I hesitate before digging in because the presentation is so carefully laid out. Then the aroma takes over and so does my knife. The first cut through the nearly 2-inch chop needs no pressure and reveals a pink, moist chop. The sauce…that’s when I begin to consider the thunderstorm and the chance meeting with Laurie as a sign from above.
Those smothered collard greens and Creole sauce are made from smoked onion, Crystal Worcestershire sauce, bay leaf, reduced game stock, Creole mustard, Dijon mustard, cream, I learn from my waiter… “I make it all the time at home!” says my born and raised New Orleans friend Rubia. This city is quite possibly the sauce capital of the world.
Serendipity, synchronicity...however I got here feels right. Maybe this aura business began the moment Laurie invited me to the restaurant this afternoon. And it seeps into mine as I leave. "You were a teacher? A noble and underpaid profession. Several members of my family were teachers." Her mother taught at the grammar school across the street from Louis Armstrong Park. My grandmother was the first Italian American to teach public school in my hometown.
Born and raised in the Tremé, Laurie reminds me that it is the oldest community of free people of color in the country. The Candlelight Lounge on North Robertson deep in the Tremé, not far from Armstrong Park, is always one of my first stops on any visit to New Orleans.The Wednesday night residency of the world famous Tremé Brass Band is not to be missed.
"Do you like poetry?" she asks, and says that her poet grandfather was the first to use the term ‘beatnik’ and spent most of his life around San Francisco. Next thing you know and we're talking about The City Lights Bookstore.
This is getting pretty amazing. It has a tendency to happen in New Orleans with frequency. And one of the only upsides of big time thunderstorms, at least on this night.
Mother’s Day with Irma Thomas, WWOZ, May 10, 2020
May 10, 2020
Mother’s Day with Irma Thomas, WWOZ, 12 PM - 2 PM
Today would have been Irma's 37th (yes, 37th) annual Mother's Day performance at the Audubon Zoo. New Orleans does not give up its sense of tradition for anything, a pandemic included.
The two-hour program that Thomas usually performs is being broadcast on flagship radio station WWOZ....a virtual feat that uses a fabulously curated collection of her songs over the years.
Just as WWOZ did with Jazz Festing in Place, the radio station today is one giant PSA sending love to moms and thousands of listeners sheltering in place. I have watched Irma light a place on fire.
Sadly, my internet is down until 1:15 PM… then
...finally Thomas's still poignant “Cold Cold Rain” (Katrina) pours down from the ionosphere and here’s the Mother’s Day Salute by Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans. If New Orleans has an earth mother, it has to be Miss Irma.
Listen to that cackle at the end of “I Wish Someone Would Care About Me.” Right about now I am throwing bouquets to the engineers and producers who integrated pace and style of this salute as mightily as the Mississippi River threads its way around the city.
“Iko Iko,” another New Orleans anthem.
I can’t stand it. I’m bounding down the stairs, JBL Flip speaker blaring in hand. Out the front door to dance in the sunlight on my front porch. Someone in the audience shouts, “We love you, Irma!”
“So do I! Happy Mother’s Day Miss Irma!”
Photo top PT, bottom courtesy of WWOZ
Irma Thomas at the Regatta Bar, Cambridge, MA April 9, 2009
May 10, 2020 in Commentaries, Louisiana, Music | Permalink | Comments (0)