pt at large

"The Sidewalk Swing Band" on Royal Street: A Satchmo Warmup

"The Sidewalk Swing Band" on Royal Street: A Satchmo Warmup

Thursday afternoon, August 3, 2017, French Quarter, New Orleans

One of the most popular corner for street buskers to play, corner of Royal and St Peter. It's the permanent spot for the iconic Doreen Ketchens, whose camp chairs are stacked on the side of Rouse's Market. "Little Miss Liza" is a staple of swing and brass bands all over town. My singing on the video will not get me invited to sing along with the band anytime soon. The enthusiastic fellow in the black cap and New Orleans T shirt (clapping along at around the 4:45 mark and throughout) will become a self-appointed vocalist for the next song. Things like this happen in New Orleans, where from time to time it seems like music is the glue that holds the city together.

A man from the streets named Rodney, who's been dancing along with the music, steps up to render his impromptu version of "What A Wonderful World," at the 1:28 mark a band member shouts out, "Sing it..." in acknowledgment. The spirit of Louis Armstrong still casts an upbeat life enriching shadow over many parts of this city, especially the French Quarter.

Video by Paul A.Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Sunday, August 7, 2016, PT volunteers

South entrance to Jackson Square Park

Saturday afternoon, August 6, 2016

"Would you take a minute to take a survey with me?" asks a smiling fellow as I sit on a bench in the shade of the trees in Jackson Square Park. Clipboard in hand, Richard Eglé from Lafayette now lives in New Orleans, is associated with the French Quarter Festival Board of Directors, and makes it easy

"Why don't you volunteer tomorrow, we can always use the help," he says after we compare notes about the lively music scene in Lafayette. He is so good at it that I want to take him up on the offer. Besides, I loved the fabulous blue volunteer T shirt he wore and figured this was a good a way to snag one (an admittedly lame reason for volunteering).

1 PM Sunday, August 7, 2016

I arrive at the volunteer tent, offer to take surveys and am greeted with a cheer from the women at the desk.  A fellow named Tucker Mendoza hands me a clipboard, explains the survey sheet, and dispatches me into the park. But not before handing me a bright blue "Volunteer" T shirt, identifying me as a bona fide volunteer.

In the outside world, approaching a perfect stranger and asking for their time to do a survey, or actually anything, has a high rate of refusal (trust me, I've refused to talk to strangers who ask me to do this kind of stuff myself).

But here, in the confines of this lovely park with fabulous music and singing echoing in the background and the gregarious spirit of Louis Armstrong as strong as the sunshine overhead, people are much more receptive.

After a few tries, I develop my own introductory patter. “Good Afternoon. I wonder if you'd mind taking three or four minutes to take a survey that will help the organizers of this event make it even better next year and convince the people who are sponsors that it will be worth their while if they continue sponsoring next year.” I was an official volunteer, who could refuse such an entreaty?

No one declines. The next two hours are a blast. I survey 20 people, young and old, black and white, local and from afar. My first is with a woman that went so well that daughter asks to take a survey too. I’m on a roll. I spot her sponsor tag, she works for Chevron. They ask me to take their photo. I'm out of the gate and rarin' to go.

On a day like this, finding candidates cooling off in the shade is a breeze.

Hmmm, there's a young woman relaxing on a bench in the shade - thus begins a survey with one of the most important people at the festival, the professional piano tuner who keeps every piano just the way the performers want them to sound.

“I get up early to tune the pianos in the morning. The keys go sharp because of the humidity, 85% today, and I tune pianos several times a day.” Kimberly Gratton came here from the Florida Keys via Atlanta five years ago, doing what she called, “a rebuild of my life… and what a better place to do it!” www.Kimberleykey.com

The six degrees of separation story of the day: a woman with her daughter, relaxing in the shade, agree to take a survey. Marta and her daughter are scouting colleges.

“Ah, you’re Italian!” she says as she spots my name tag. “We are from Rome!”

Marta and her daughter Elena (my mother’s name!) have been on a major road trip, driving “on the shoestring,” she says. Elena, 16, is applying next year to Harvard, a few miles from my hometown. They’ve been on the road from Miami to Cambridge and were heading back but, after 4000 miles of listening to music on radio, they veered off to listen to the real thing in New Orleans.

“This is like a dream!” Marta says.

Marta listens to popular music in Rome. “You can’t listen to radio without hearing Louis Armstrong at least twice a day,” she says. “I grew up with this music and had a piano in house that continually needed 'a doctor' to tune it and was costly!” Harvard could be even more costly.

We trade addresses. I’m on the lookout for a place that covers Satchmo's catalog and know some great places to hear music in Cambridge. If Elena is accepted to Harvard, we'll all be singing, "What A Wonderful World"!

All you need to know about Satchmo Summerfest

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Satchmo Summerfest Sunday, August 7, 2016 Comes to a Close

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Leroy Jones, a veteran horn player, New Orleans ambassador, and man who’s good at connecting the dots in this historic city. "Give Me a Kiss That I Can Dream on"

“This is the kind of song that played a part in our rebuilding efforts after Katrina,” he says as an intro to this well-worn song. “Lots of the songs in the Armstrong catalog were made before we were born!”

“Paradise on Earth For Me,” a love song to the city Jones was born in, written by The Helsinki Connection, with local references to Donna’s Bar, and Creole food that tastes so good. Jones sang and played trumpet on this catchy number. originally recorded in New Orleans in the 1920s, and must have been known to Armstrong  - Leroy Jones has plenty of respect for this song written in 1914.

This year, he’s the recipient of the Harrelson trumpet presentation, a handmade trumpet by the famous   instrument maker Marcy Schramm (French Quartet Festivals, Inc) is one of the presenters (photo to follow)

Wendell Brunious  Chop Suey Stage NO PHOTO

There are many trumpet princes in this town, Brunious is one of them, with a deep sense of New Orleans culture, history, and the legacy of Louis Armstrong. This isn’t a cursory acknowledgment, it’s coming right from the man’s heart. He knows how damn hard this city is for poor people and Louis was one of them, grew up the streets, was sent to reform school, found finding food in garbage cans. The whole story is improbable and true. And incredibly unlikely. No one on any stage today, including Brunios, will reach the status of a Louis Armstrong.

Brunious is still amazed that Armstrong was invited to play in Copenhagen in 1932. “Imagine that…being invited to travel and play that far away in that day and age!”

"That was Armstrong - What else can you say? My God!"

Ironically, Louis was derided at the end of his career, berated for being an Uncle Tom in the decade of the activist 1960s. Being an entertainer who could mesmerize an audience with his impromptu patter, inventive scat singing, saying paragraphs with the contortions of his eyes face and mouth, camaraderie with guests and his musicians. This is not to say he didn’t experience racism, see it, hear it, feel it. Listen to his song, “Shine.”

Red Beans and Rice Stage Last act of the day, James Andrews and the Baby Dolls and a bunch of all stars who’ve graced the stages all weekend long.

When a New Orleans band leader says, “Are you ready to sing?” it’s is a rhetorical question – you join a few thousand others and chime in on “Happy Birthday” to Louis Armstrong (a ten foot tall white birthday cake has been on stage all day) and “Ooo Pa Pa Do” and a score of other songs I've heard all weekend long.

Music is it participatory Sport here. Kid Merve, Yoshio Tamaya, a few trumpeters from Tremé Brass Band and between all of them they sing and play the most delightfully disjointed rendition of “Happy Birthday” you've ever heard.

My goodness, there's Yoshio Toyama, who just performed with James Andrews, walking from the Red Beans and Rice stage after the finale. I ask a spectator to take photo, priceless memento.

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr and one friendly stranger

Satchmo Summerfest: Saturday August 6, 2016, Sun and Song

Out of the archives, written last year and never posted. I'm here again on August 2, 2017 for this year's edition of Satchmo Summerfest!

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

Walk to Jackson Square in the heat of the day. Upper 90s feels like 100F, this is New Orleans in August, baby! Here's a sampling of today's music.

1:45 PM Catherine Russell, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage
http://www.metrolyrics.com/catherine-russell-lyrics.html

"Give Me a Kiss That I Can Dream On" wafts over the lush grass in Jackson Park. Great day to begin a Satchmo Fest. More of Russell’s songs like "Everybody loves my baby (but my baby don't love nobody but me)" get the afternoon off with just the right calibration.

3:45 PM Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage
Yoshio Toyama and wife Keiko and the New Orleans Jazz stars. Toshio and Keiko discovered and fell in love  with New Orleans jazz while they were studying music in New Orleans in 1963. They werevbefriended   by their neighbors, learned to enjoy Creole food and were invited to return by then owner of The Preservation Hall Jazz Hall, Alan Jaffe, to return and get deep into it. The story is the stuff of legends and certainly a documentary film. Their Wondeful World Foundation has been gifting instruments to New Orleans high school bands since post Katrina 2003.
Toshio has known some of the band members for 30 years. Clarinet player Mr. Fischer brings his band to Japan every year.

Yoshio does a great job of mimicking Satchmo's gravelly voice and incredible trumpet style with "Wonderful World" followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In," two Armstrong covers he sings to an appreciative crowd every year.

Yoshio, trumpet, Keiko piano and banjo, Mr. Fisher, clarinet

Incredible how many versions of the songs are played today, each one a blend of the spirit of Louis Armstrong and the imprint of the New Orleans artist covering it. I have heard versions of some of the songs a dozen times and each one has the spirit of Louis and the style of the artist. Louis did the same thing himself – put his own stamp on songs written before him but with a style and delivery no one had ever heard before.

In the midst of all this, I meet  Richard Eglé, who asks me if I will volunteer to do a survey tomorrow.

4:45 PM Chop Suey Stage Topsy Chapman and Soul Harmony

“Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” This was one of Louis’s favorites,” she says. Then a quick march to check out the Pinettes Brass Band.

 
5:30 PM Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage The Original Pinettes Brass Band
http://www.nola.com/jazzfest/index.ssf/2009/05/pinette_brass_band_puts_female.html

"We’re Gonna Rock Tonight, Everything Is Going to Be All Right" followed by a cover of Amy Winehouse “Be My Baby” which they call renamed "Baby." http://www.metrolyrics.com/be-my-baby-lyrics-amy-winehouse.html
Now,we're talkini'! Like Louis, New Orleans bands find material that appeals to them, reshape and remold it into something familiar yet decidedly different. I've heard it all day long and that's why I keep coming back. If you’re turning the dial on your radio, you’ll recognize one of these songs by its distinct New Orleans flavor and stop right there. Amy would love the sassy upbeat New Orleans treatment by this band of young funksters.

"We're going to change it up on you again!" says the bandleader and they romp through a bunch of samples of their songs. I don't know the names of the songs but I know they're playing with an incredible amount of energy skill and talent and the audience is eating it up like grits and gravy. Today we’ve got one guy playing triangle/symbol and snare drum player has symbol strapped to his chest.

6:30 PM Chop Suey Stage Charmaine Neville
The woman sings vocals and plays the percussion rack at her place in front of the stage. She does an amazing version of Satchmo's voice – when I was walking to the tent, I thought one of the men and her band was singing "What a Wonderful World." Next surprise, Charmaine sings "Somewhere over the Rainbow" that ends up with a few funky verses that celebrates Louis Armstrong's powers of interpretation.

"Louis Armstrong brought music all over the world," she says, "It's important that people keep it alive all over the city.” It's no secret that New Orleans is a troubled city. Tourism is ramping up after Katrina but crime rates are also up, education is in flux, politics is messy and most politicians are not held in high regard. The black communities relationship to the police is tenuous. The recent wave of gentrification is leading to displacement of close-knit neighborhoods and the culture and history of generations.

Music remains the lighthouse, the beacon people gravitate to keep steady over troubled waters. Musicians, mostly black, are at the core of what makes this city so special, so unique and performers like Charmaine make sure we remember it.

"Little Liza Jane,"with Charmaine doing a great river on percussion and inviting dancing James whose birthday was August 6, to dance on stage. to the stage. She rolls on with "Mac the Knife," "Gangster Freeze," "This Is a Man's World,” and somehow,"Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead, " upbeat with an ending that has a touch of Broadway in it.
Charmaine signs off, "It doesn't hurt to be kind to each other, Just be nice," then rolls into a rendition of "Altogether Right Now," and leaves the stage saying "God loves you… Peace!" And thanks for volunteers, the police, the organizers, and us in the audience.

Time to head home

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written in 2016 but for some reason, never posted!

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.

The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dancehalls from Frenchmen Street two out-of-the-way places all over town.

1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderfully tapas of traditional songs.

"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue
Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.

"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.
"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.

Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.

A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.

About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html

1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.

"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.

"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and pealsof trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed. Later, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.”

2:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band

“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.

Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”
When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.

3 PM Bill Summers and the JazzSalsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro- Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.

4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!

If Odetta Sang is kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.

“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.

Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."

Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs solos and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VJzHT9nuk

5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

 

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade and one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. A given in New Orleans is you just never hear them complaining about the heat.

Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.

Can you imagine a brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion– The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end.

6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band


Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.

Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?
Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Lewis favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.

This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.
“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.

Wonders never cease around here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest August 3 - 8, 2016: A Look Back

Out of the archives, written last year and never posted. I'm here again on August 2, 2017 for this year's edition of Satchmo Summerfest!

Satchmo Summerfest August 3 - 8, 2016:
A Look Back, August 20, 2016

It shouldn't surprise you that I'm heading there again in a few days...

August 20, 2016
Louis Armstrong is as much a presence in this city as the live oaks that line St. Charles Street and the tip jars that are plopped alongside of every busker in the French Quarter. He was born in one of the poorest most abject parts of New Orleans yet left a legacy that is priceless. The annual Satchmo Summerfest is a huge thank you note to the first important soloist who changed the course of jazz in America.

Every band in Jackson Square from Friday through Sunday, each in its own way, paid homage to Louis (August 4, 1901-July 6, 1971). Along with traditional Dixieland and New Orleans jazz, I can’t tell you how many times I heard songs like “Shine”, “Give Me A Kiss That I Can Dream On”. “What A Wonderful World”, check notes for more were played and sung.

What I can tell you is that the songs were interpreted differently and sounded glorious every single time. My weekend favorite was The Tuxedo Brass Band playing  “What A Wonderful World” to a rumba beat.

The range of voices and instrumentals/band was fabulous. Men and women sang and played their hearts out. All of them, from traditional jazz bands to kick ass brass bands, took time to say what an effect Armstrong’s style and creativity had on them. Louis broke the mold in the 1920s by playing trumpet solos the likes of which had never been heard before – and have become standards since.

Armstrong’s influence is the amniotic fluid in which these musicians were born. The beauty of New Orleans music is that it is informed and inspired by the past but always sounds fresh. These musicians are no copycats. Each is driven to put his/her own stamp on the music. Jackson Square became a petri dish for celebratory creativity.

No nation of musicians can get a crowd going like these in New Orleans. When they shout, “Stand up and shake your butts!” people stand up. When they shout, “You know the words, sing ‘em with us!” Damn if everyone doesn’t sing along, and with gusto. You could probably make a case that Louis Armstrong had something to do with this since his connection to his audiences was filled with humor and a sense of playfulness. Each and every one of the 40 bands who played at two stages in Jackson Square proved that hour after hour.

This was fry an egg on the hood of a car temperatures with humidity suited for hot house tomatoes. In fact, on Sunday, one of the members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band collapsed on stage from heat exhaustion.

Normal summer. Every patch of shade was occupied but hundreds brought their camp chairs, spread out on blankets, or just sprawled in the grass in the midst of the square. Music alternated between two stages. The Jackson Square is small enough so if you camped out in the middle, you could easily hear the bands all day long. At $5.00, it is the best music value in Louisiana.

No outdoor festivity here goes without food. Vendors from the city’s famous food emporiums sold po boys, red beans and rice and collard greens, jambalaya, fried catfish, and more. Ice cream, snow cones…yep… one of my favorite – a banana and nutella crepes. And cooling alcoholic beverages from beer to margaritas, rum and daiquiris. If you weren’t prudent in this heat, you might have snoozed and missed a bunch of music after a couple of pops.

The people of New Orleans, at music events and beyond, are a sub culture to themselves. I have struck up conversations on a street car, at a bar, in a diner, at a music hall, a park bench and after five minutes know where they live, their favorite foods or places to eat or listen to music, an explanation of a cultural or historic or social custom, and tip about the best way to get where I’m going and possibly where to stop off on the way.

On the way to the Louis Armstrong International Airport on Monday, I’m in the front seat talking to the Airport Shuttle driver. She says people keep in touch after such random meetings, still keep in touch because they trade cell numbers. Or that locals invite visitors over for a barbeque on the spot and stay in touch after that. She says that Kermit Ruffins and Jeremy Davenport, two of the best known trumpeters in town, are good friends, that sometimes after a show at Kermit’s place, the former Ernie K Doe Club on St. Claude, he will say, “Come on everybody, let's go over to The Ritz and listen to Jeremy Davenport!” But I digress.

The last time I initiated a conversation on a Boston trolley, the person next to me put his earbuds back on to signal he wasn’t interested.

New Orleans: Lee Circle Without General Robert E. Lee - Mayor Landrieu’s Stand

New Orleans: Lee Circle Without General Robert E. Lee - Mayor Landrieu’s Stand

May 24, 2017

I had heard rumblings about symbols of the Confederacy that remain in plain sight in New Orleans. The tipping point, fueled by unease after high profile police killings of black men across the country and Dylann Roof's murdering of nine black men and women in a Charleston church, raised the ante to make changes.

To me, a frequent visitor, the statue of General Robert E. Lee, was a sort of civic wallpaper, a vague reminder of southern history and as recognizable a site of New Orleans geography as Bourbon Street. To African-Americans and a growing number of white citizens, it was an offensive symbol of the Civil War's racial overtones.

Right thing to do or not, I never thought anyone would have the gumption to remove General Lee from Lee Circle.

On May 19, 2017, Mayor Mitch Landrieu did just that. The words he uttered to describe his decision were more powerful than the cranes that lifted the statue. 

Landrieu's mix of facts, aspiration, history, and personal anecdotes quoting conversations with some of the city's best known African Americans, was broad and inclusive, at times reaching lyrical and poetic heights. It should be required reading for every civic leader and every high school student in the land. It was not a calculated sound byte to be easily digested.

It was the kind of speech you wish politicians and leaders of every stripe would have the nerve to make. My guess is that, like me, you'll read it more than once because it is refreshingly American in the best sense of the term.

History drapes around New Orleans like the Spanish Moss hanging from its live oak trees. It's impossible to disentangle the moss from the trees. But words that Mayor Landrieu used in his declaration to the city that elected him go a long way to disentangle antebellum attitudes from modern day realities. Disappearing Robert E. Lee isn't going to disappear racial attitudes overnight but it's a powerful start.

New Orleans is not your typical southern city. There's nothing remotely typical about New Orleans. From its gumbo history of being owned by France then Spain then France again before being bought in the Louisiana Purchase, and the loads of Italian, Irish, German, and Haitian immigrants that co-existed with descendants of Spanish, French,  and Creole (free people of color) culture in the early 1900s, New Orleans was hard to categorize. It still is.

Shock waves created by Mayor Landrieu's act of civic courage have reached my home town of Boston. Ty Burr, a Boston Globe columnist and film critic, asks, "Are Boston's statues honoring all the right men?" 

Henry Cabot Lodge, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Christopher Columbus have prominent statues in their honor. Burr's profiles about the men's intolerance and views were embarrassing eye-openers. And are timely conversation starters. Should the statues remain? Should they be removed? Should their plaques be rewritten?

The fact that they were deemed worthy of a statue in the past speaks volumes about what the attitudes of the general public were at the time. How we manage their presence today represents who we are now.

What happened in New Orleans is likely to create a domino effect. Our assumptions about our local histories and heroes are about to be questioned. The answers, as in the case of Boston, are going to be hard to reconcile.

The biggest question: will the answers bring us closer together.

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Buck and Johnny's: First Stop in Closing Out 2016

Buck and Johnny’s
100 Berard Street
Breaux Bridge, LA 70157
December 31. 2016

In my book, any establishment called Buck and Johnny’s deserves a visit. If you hazard a guess it’s about food or music or coffee and home made desserts you’d probably be in the ball park. As it turns out, this place offers up all of them.

My first visit is on December 31, 2016 at 11 AM. What I hadn’t counted on is that the place is in the former home of a now defunct auto dealership in Breaux Bridge, LA. And that this morning, it is ground zero for over 100 dancers pounding their feet and wiggling their butts (well, most of the women and some of the men) on the showroom floor to the beat of Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble.

If ever there was a time to let music be the soundtrack of a morning in your life, temporarily canceling out politics, terrorism, and fake news, this is it.

The whole area around Breaux Bridge, about 10 miles from Lafayette, is loaded with places that offer food and drink, feature live music, and in which, no matter what the size of the place, customers find room to dance. I don’t think any of these places used to have shiny new Ford or Chevrolets parked inside them.

People have been here since 8 AM (yes, AM) to dance. Some of them even sit down from time to time to order breakfast. In case you wonder, this is not just a holiday event. Buck and Johnny's hosts music Wednesday through Sunday every week.

A place right next door, Joie de Vivre, has a Cajun Jam Session every Saturday morning from 11 AM until 1:30 PM and offers live music during the week. After Curley Taylor finishes, many walk to Joie de Vivre to listen, eat, dance, or all the above.

A Zydeco Breakfast Dance happens every Saturday. People down here seem to define breakfast as something you do as well as something you eat. And today, there are scads of dancers here from all over the country. For them, celebrating the New Year is synonymous with dancing right through it. Buck and Johnny's hosts music Wednesday through Sunday every week.

This is their first stop. They’ll keep dancing till someone turns out the lights at one of the bars or dance halls sometime in the early hours of 2017.

Original signage from Domingue’s Motors adds a layer of history to the space.

Photos and Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

7th Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance

7th Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance Organized by Troy (Dikki Du) Carrier and Dick Brainard

Last year's Roy Carrier Tribute Dance  http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2015/12/6th-annual-roy-carrier-tribute-dance-at-slims-yi-ki-ki.html

Seventh Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance
Feed N Seed Lafayette
106 N Grant Street
Lafayette, 70501

December 29, 2016

Southwest Louisiana is a petrie dish for heritage music. Mainly Cajun and Zydeco but a big enough dish to include honky tonk, country swing, even some rock n roll. The roots of Cajun and zydeco music are generations deep.

The Carrier family of Opelousas has been steeped in the zydeco tradition since before WWI when the Carrier Brothers played “La La” music at house parties, another piece of traditional life in the region. Over the years, "La La" morphed into zydeco music and, like Cajun music, is played in scores of cities and towns in southwest Louisiana.

In 1980, Roy Carrier, a cousin of the Carrier brothers, opened The Offshore Lounge in Lawtell, way out in the country. Every week, he invited young musicians to play with his band The Night Rockers, helping them learn their craft with the encouragement of the veterans. Somewhere along the way, Roy enrolled his sons Chubby and Dikki Du to join his band. Each son now fronts his own band, something that Papa Carrier would indeed be proud of.

Dikki Du, who, with Dick Brainard organizes the annual tribute, began playing the rub board at age 9 when Roy’s brother couldn’t get to the show. Nineteen years later, Dikki Du is still at it, as is his elder brother Chubby, now both accordion players.

Tonight’s tribute features Dikki Du and The Zydeco Krewe; Double Trouble, a young zydeco band fronted by twin brothers; The Corey Ledet Zydeco Band; and Jeffery Broussard and The Creole Cowboys, all well-known bands in these parts.

You may have never heard of zydeco or Cajun music. For many down here in southwest Louisiana, it’s mother’s milk that nourishes, an oasis where you can leave the troubles of the world behind, and offers a place to meet others who share the joy of listening to and dancing to the music.

Feed and Seed...

Members of Double Trouble; Jeffery Broussard (red shirt, son of pioneering zydeco accordionist Delton Broussard); Dikki Du Carrier; Corey Ledet on stage...gives us a chance to hear how zydeco music evolves over two generations. Speaking of heritage music, Corey  Ledet lists Clifton Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie, Leon Sam of The Sam Brothers Five, Buckwheat Zydeco, Beau Jocque, John Delafose, and Boozoo Chavis as his major influences. Heritage? Check out these links and you'll see the growth of zydeco from its beginnings and be amazed at the family connections - fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, cousins, and in-laws in this unique community.

Laura Carrier, pt and Corey Ledet with Laura...Laura and friends prepared tasty gumbo and red beans and rice that fueled dancers all night long.

Jeffery Broussard and band; Jeffery's son on rub board...another generation on the way...

The band is primed; the whole place is jammed...

Wildly talented fiddle player D'Jalma Garnier gets a chance to shine...

The house is rockin'...

Dikki Du and Dick Brainard invite everyone to the stage for a group photo.

PS

Willis Prudhomme, at 85, joined Zydeco Trouble onstage for a song. As accordionist and vocalist, Willis had his own band in 1970, before most on stage tonight were born. His style was more traditional rhythm & blues-ish with plenty of waltzes. By tracing his history as a son of a poor sharecropper, his own experience as a soybean and rice farmer, learning the rudiments of playing an accordion from Cajun accordionist Nathan Abshire, playing with legends John Delafose and Leo Thomas, fathers of two of today's most popular zydeco accordion players, you can see the arc of this regional genre that now plays before audiences in the USA and abroad.

Every member of every band on stage tonight is within not six but two degrees of separation from other musicians in southwest Louisiana...heritage music by family ties and friendship.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Buckwheat Zydeco: Lafayette, Louisiana Lands in Cambridge, MA

Since January 1, 2016…RIP a hall of fame list of musicians and  some of my heroes.

Prince, Merle Haggard, Maurice White (founder of Earth, Wind and Fire), Paul Kantner (co-founder of Jefferson Airplane), David Bowie, Glenn Frey (co-founder of The Eagles)…and now Stanley Dural, Jr., (1947-2016) better known as Buckwheat, founder of the band Buckwheat Zydeco that brought zydeco music from the bayous of Louisiana to the boroughs of New York City.

These musicians, one of whom is likely on your all time fave list, will never again be heard in live performances. If you’re of a certain age, losses like this are happening all to frequently. They hurt. Celebrate the creators of the sound track of our youth while they’re still rockin’.

Below a REPOSTING of Buckwheat Zydeco appearance in Cambridge,MA, in 2011
Original at http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2011/02/buckwheat-zydeco-lafayette-louisiana-lands-in-cambridge-ma.html

As always, comments welcome.

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Buckwheat Zydeco
The Regattabar, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, MA
February 8, 2011

Imagine James Brown with a big-assed silver and white accordion slung over his shoulders and you get the drift of Stanley Dural, Jr., better known as “Buckwheat,” the leader of legendary band Buckwheat Zydeco. While other roofs in New England are in jeopardy of falling in with the weight of snow, Buckwheat raised the roof at the Regattabar last Tuesday.

Let’s back up a minute. Zydeco is not a household name around here. Lafayette, Louisiana, a hotspot of Cajun and zydeco music, is around 1500 miles away. And here we are with nearly every one of the Regattbar’s 225 seats filled with people who clearly know the music and the man playing it. What’s the draw?

Clue: Dural’s entrance is classic old school showman. The band, led by veteran session bass player Lee Allen Zeno, warms up the crowd with a few funky pop grooves. After he figures he’s greased the skids, Zeno starts to pitch. “2010 Grammy Award winning artist…. Coming all the way from Lafayette, Louisiana,” and pauses.  “I said…2010 Grammy Award winning artist…” and we get the idea. The hollering begins.

The band lays down a good ol’ flame throwing 32 beat intro, the entry door to the Regattabar is swung open and Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural, Jr., on the arm of his son who plays the B-3 Hammond organ, parts the crowd in a slow high fiving royal stroll to the stage. The cheering is universal, heartfelt, and loud. And is not lost on Stanley.

He carefully hangs his black suit jacket at the side of the stage, extends his arms, and his son Reginald drapes a huge gleaming accordion over Dural’s shoulders. There was a day when Dural would have picked up the accordion like a po boy sandwich but he’s getting on in years – and besides, the visual effect is impressive, sort of like watching a surgeon have his sterile gloves fitted over his hands before he begins major surgery. Except you’ve probably never seen a surgeon with a gorgeous pile of silky black hair swept up in a pompadour.

The room is in a state of quiet expectation. Stanley strides to center stage. “ We gonna party tonight, stand up! Cambridge… stand UP!”

Damn, we did. Within seconds, Buckwheat Zydeco digs into a groove that does not quit. People are dancing in the aisles. I rub my eyes. Remind me. This is not Randol’s in Lafayette. This is the Regattabar in Cambridge, a venue not known for audience participation.

A master showman like Dural has Cantabridgians dropping decorum like it’s a hot biscuit. When bassist Zeno says, “comin’ at ya’” he isn’t kidding. For the better part of two hours, Dural banters, he teases, he strides into the audience and peals off sparkling riffs on the keys of his accordion, he projects a megawatt smile. He makes you feel like he came all the way from his home in the bayou just to play for you. And you believe it.

Cross Otis Redding’s passion, Bob Marley’s sense of social justice, and James Brown’s fierce showmanship and you get Stanley Dural, Jr. His veteran band - two guitars, bass, drums, washboard, trumpet, and B-3 organ can turn on a dime. Stanley Dural, Jr. has been playing music since he was 4 years old.  He was tutored by his father’s friend, the late accordionist Clifton Chenier, the godfather of zydeco.

Dural’s Buckwheat Zydeco band has been a presence for more than thirty years. Along the way, their zydeco sound has sampled sounds of funk, R&B, reggae, blues, soul, even country, and bits of all of it are on display tonight. 

When he says he’s about to play a song by his favorite artist and teases us while we guess the identity, he shocks us by identifying “Hank Williams” then rolls into a version of “Hey, Good Lookin” with a rollicking New Orleans beat. With very little prompting, the buttoned down Cantabridgians sing along like it was a Mitch Miller show. A corner of the bar is filled with dancers. My goodness.

Entertainers like Dural feed on the energy they create and by now Dural is feeling the love. The Regattabar has become his sandbox, we’re his toys, and he’s gonna play with us. “OK we’re dividing the room. This half of the room sing…” “Now this half….” Once again, audience reticence has been checked at the door - the lusty response sounds more like a high school pep rally.

Dural talks Lafayette smack a mile a minute and runs his words together faster than those notes fluttering out of the Hammond B-3, which he plays for the last part of the set.

“I feel like rippin’ it up,” Dural says after returning for his encore. I’m not sure if he says this every night and I don’t care. Dural is working us over pretty good.

 “I got this from the swamp,” he says (he’s referenced ‘the swamp’ in his patter several times and seems to want us to know that he’s not far removed from his Louisiana roots).

“Men, you should try this, it worked for me.” And he launches into “Jackpot,” with the refrain, “Honey, I’ve been lucky all my life, but when I found you, I hit the jackpot.” Applause rings out from the women. Once again, we’re singing the chorus.

  Dural’s not done with us yet. He’s got a message. Along with the playful music, I’ve heard snatches of lyrics relating to social issues all night long. Dural digs hard into his B3 and wrings out powerful chords that galvanize a gospel tent - we’re feelin’ it. Near the end of his reggae inflected “Why We Can’t Live Together,” with its refrain, “Peace… Love…and Happiness.” We’re on our feet – again – in a fist pumping, call and response reggae influenced tandem with the man.

“What do we  want?” he calls.
“What do we need?”
What do we deserve?”
“What do we demand?”
“What do we want to give our children?”

“Peace… Love…and Happiness,” we volley back to each call.


The world has become a more hopeful place. Dural is giving us respite from the headlines. It may be an illusion but it’s a potent one that pastes a smile on our faces far into the winter night.

“I got this from the swamp… we gonna be alright. Take this to your best bank, we gonna be alright!” he intones with minister’s conviction and makes his way to the door, shaking hands, taking hugs.

I hope he’s right.

Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural, Jr.: Accordion, Hammond B-3, electric keyboard, lead vocals
Lee Allen Zeno: Bass, background vocals

Sir Reginald Master Dural: Rubboard, background vocals, Hammond B-3 organ
Paul “Lil’ Buck” Sinegal: Guitar

Olivier Scoazec: Guitar

Gerard St. Julien: Drums
Curtis Watson: Trumpet

Bass player Lee Allen Zeno with pt - I met him at Cafe des Amis in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. The man has played with some of the best in the business.

 

Stanley Dural, Jr. exudes infectious energy and connects with the audience from the jump. He's at home on the Hammond B-3 organ - ended the show with a rousing version of "Why We Can't Live Together."
 

This photo pretty much sums up the energy level of the night.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Louisiana Flood of 2016: August 25 - Our Savior's Church Volunteer Crews Roll Into Lafayette

THURSDAY August 25, 2016

An act of God sometimes brings out the god in everyone in its wake...

8:30 AM Head out the door from my wonderful Lafayette friend's house with google maps pointing the way to 1201 East Broussard Road. 

8:45 AM

The lobby of the church is crowded. Most are volunteers who will soon be mucking out houses. The rest are a rear guard who've been making sandwiches, setting out tools, printing work sheets for crew leaders, fielding phone calls. They are the spine of this operation.

Happy to see crew members that I've enjoyed working with, Christina, Francine , Rob, Philip, a new guy Ben Winter and Tamika, wife of Francis the barber. And twenty -something Tyler who it turns out is pretty good at wielding a sawzall. "I'm used to the heat. I've worked in Saudi Arabia," says Philip. Maybe so but I'll bet it was way drier than right here right now. The crew chief job rotates between men with appropriate construction or ability backgrounds who are available for the day. Rob is today's crew chief.

9:00 AM Meeting

Setting the stage: What's needed right now? Money.

Bryan Rhinehart says that many people around the country want to send supplies and are determining what we need. He just got off phone with man from Texas who was about to ship a load of supplies that just were not what was useful. Bryan diplomatically explained what was needed right now is money to purchase the appropriate tools volunteers need to get the demolitions done and buy the kinds of fans and dehumidifiers to help dry out the houses we work in. Bryan reminds us to be sure to repack the orange buckets with flatirons, hammers and other tools, some of which have gone missing, so the next crew will be fully stocked to do the demo work in the next house.

And good news that yesterday there were 60 of us volunteers with their shoulders to the wheel gutting houses.That's a record... so far.

Time for the morning prayer, the kind of fairly non-denominational prayer that covers a lot of territory, from gratitude to reverence to a plea to keep all of us safe while we work.

"Once again, God, we will be your hands and feet and eyes. The church is used to using our mouths to speak the gospel, now we're going to do the gospel...whether it's giving a hug or listening to homeowners stories... what they need is hope and when we show up as your army we do that." I can give an Amen to that.

Pastor Jacob Aranza adds something to cheer about: "Last week we did 25 houses between Monday and Friday. This week we've done 35 houses as of today. We are making a difference. We're getting better at what we''re doing, accomplishing more every day so be encouraged by what you're doing because it's truly being Christ out there." All true but every day we get into a flooded home, the only preaching done is with hammers, mops, wet vacs, sawzalls, shovels, wheel barrows and fans.

A minute later, he introduces a man whose house a crew gutted yesterday and who is so grateful that he showed up to  work on a crew today. What goes around comes around.

I'm happy to be in this army. I may not march under the same flag but I sure do march with the same conviction to be a difference maker. Look, I know darn well that we don't all share the same politics but this is way beyond that. People here have the same DNA as their Cajun and Creole ancestors. That's where the Cajun Navy got its commission during the worst of the flood.When it comes to lending a hand to a neighbor in need, nobody on earth comes close to how people from southwest Louisiana show up and give it.   Including a bunch of non commissioned residents with boats - "The heroes hailed from the Cajun Navy, the nickname for an impromptu flotilla of volunteers who had no admiral, no uniforms, no military medals awaiting them for acts of valor. It was conscience, not a commanding officer, that summoned them into treacherous currents to carry endangered citizens to higher ground."

 

Daily routine: Meet at 9:00 AM, morning prayer then break into work groups.

Humidifiers like these rent for $250 a day. Industrial sized fans for $40 a day. OSC leaves them in houses we muck out, picks them up after the house has dried out...cost? ZERO.

9:15 AM

After a brief morning prayer, a combination of an ask to Jesus to look after our safety and the well being of the homeowners whose flooded homes we are about to muck out, our work groups get assignments - location of homes to be worked on, jobs to be done, tools necessary, likely time frame to accomplish the job, homeowner's names and telephone numbers. There isn't an ounce of doubt in this room. Everyone is rowing in the same boat in the same direction toward the same goal.

Note the crates of humidifiers. Pastor Jacob Aranza, after extraordinary an extraordinary gift of $150,000 from a friend of the church, got his hands on every one he could find. We leave them and/or industrial size fans in every home we visit. Twofold purpose: help dry the home faster, reduce the likelihood of mold growth. Actually, threefold. Those fans, dehumidifiers  and mucked out homes are reminders that someone cares and offers the kind of immediate action and hope  and sense of community and  togetherness and connection in an extraordinary time of need that the Red Cross and FEMA cannot supply right now. Rob reviews the strategy for what's to be done in today's houses.

Time to grab lunches, exchange cell phone numbers and hit the road in a convoy with a mission.

10:15 AM First house  Breton Rd. in Lafayette

A previous crew and the homeowners  have done most of the demolition and organizing. "They asked us to help clean up debris on the floors," Rob says as he reads the punch list for the house, "so we take mops and buckets with us." Then pack all their belongings in boxes, move some large furniture to the dry garage where all is being stored for the time being. Like the others, homeowner John seems a bit dazed but is putting 1 foot in front of the other. His son in his 20s is very helpful. Honestly, I have no idea how they are managing to process all this dislocation and disaster. Most Americans have little idea how devastating this flood from a no name storm has been.

 

Working with another great crew this morning, Rob as leader with Bill Winter, Francis Jones' wife Tamika, Christina, Philip and two men whose names I can't recall. Homeowner John and his son have already cleared out a bunch of stuff and we pack clothing and knickknacks and belongings into crates and put them into the garage. Every sheet of drywall that took on water has been removed by a previous crew. The big guys muscle a refrigerator and a huge atelier into the garage. Every homeowner we meet is vocal about how much they appreciate our help. I think they're in a mild state of shock about how fast their lives have turned upside down. The houses in which air conditioners work are less taxing to work in. Those without feel like being in a hot yoga class without any of the benefits.

 t
Move items to dry areas; several inches of water in this house which was several feet above the street outside; the drainage ditches allow excess water to be carried to larger drainage areas unless they are overwhelmed by a sudden maximal rise in water as in the case of The Flood of 2016.Think about this. "The Amite River at Denham Springs got to 46.20 feet, beating the previous record in 1983 by almost five feet..." Cresting at over 46 FEET.

 

Sheetrock cut along the studs at 4 foot mark, the edge of a 4x8 piece of sheetrock. Now a standard practice, crews remove any sheetrock if the  bottom had been in contact with water that had penetrated the house. Left intact, it would become overcome by mold and lead to a condemned house. We are done in about an hour. The best way to foil mold is to muck out the entire house, remove sheetrock, insulation, carpeting, cabinets and vanities that were sitting on the floor then dry the house out.

 
Assessing whether kitchen cabinets need to be removed...in this case, luckily no.

Tamika, Ben, Christina, Philip, Gary?,?, crew leader Rob,take a breath before we are joined by anoither crew and drive to the next project over at Bald Eagle Drive. All have taken time off from their jobs to roll up their sleeves to volunteer to help.

 

12:00 PM Another crew joins us..Tamika, Christina, Ben, Francine, Rob, Jake, Ryan, Derek?

Time for lunch! Turkey sandwich, some little snickers bars, a mandarin orange, and tater chips. Then a delivery of pizza! 

Today is one of the first days we've had a chance to socialize. I don't remember taking any breaks until lunch. Everyone is in motion, shoveling, bagging, scraping, pounding, sweeping, teaming up to move big stuff out of the way.

Jake has just joined our crew. He works for Allstate and is a musician. He used to live in New Orleans, learns that I've spent time in New Orleans, gives me his iTunes site info. While checking that I discover he's an author too!

Jake understands what I'm talking about about when I repeat why southwest Louisiana is so special, tell him about my first visit, how I would meet someone, how they would tell me their names and where they lived then introduce me by name to their friends and by the way if they were having a BBQ would invite me to join them. That pretty well describes this special part of the world.

I've heard about faith-based faith-based organizations but have never been involved with one and feel lucky, I surprise myself and think maybe even blessed, to have found Our Savior's Church when I was looking for a place to help with the relief work. This group is not only purpose-driven but exceptionally well-organized from top to bottom with clarity of purpose and has the organizational skill to set up teams, identify team leaders, have supplies and tools for volunteers to use, identify locations to visit, what to do when we get there, provide us with lunch and food and tools and if I may say so fill us with the spirit of giving, helping, and volunteering. As far as I'm concerned, this is an efficient, empathic big time humanitarian spiritual mission.

As we are gathered together for lunch, one of the volunteers in the insurance business tries to explain what happens if black mold ruins the house....

My best effort to explain what he said: a house will condemned if it can't pass code because mold has overtaken the house which will happen after about 18 days of not being treated, you have to sell it, you have no money, you will give keys to the bank, they will foreclose, will knock it down because no one can sell it, it becomes the bank's property, owner may be able to rebuild. The clock is ticking for this house, it has been about 13 days since it was flooded.

He continues: FEMA can step in and give relief to people who do not have flood insurance through a combination of, depending on your income level, if in a lower bracket, you can qualify for temporary food stamps, if you did not have flood insurance and have damage to your home, you can get anywhere between $15,000 and $30,000 to help bring things back, it won't cover everything but will help. Also you can qualify for an SBA Loan, a disaster loan not so much on credit worthiness as it is to hurry up and get you some money so you can rebuild and have money to pay contractors at a 7 or 8% interest rate. (A December 28, 2016  FEMA Roundup: Louisiana August Flood Recovery)

I speak up. "I am so impressed with this organization, finding it online, seeing that it is faith based but purpose-driven with leadership and ability to carry it out. The first morning I walked into the lobby, Pastor Jacob gives an overview of what's happening around us, asks us to join hands for a blessing...I'm a Yankee from Boston but let's just say that we just don't do this. I feel  good about holding hands and getting a very clear sense of purpose...There are crew leaders like first day Bryan Rhinehart and second day Ryan Wilbanks and then Rob and Bryan and today, Rob Babineau and Ben Winter who know their way around are the lead guys. Then there are people like Christina who never stops moving. If you're around Christina, you don't stand still or you'd be embarrassed! (laughter)."

"I've read about faith based organizations but haven't known what to make of them, never been in a situation to join one because frankly there aren't as many events like this that demand such organizations. I read on the website what the church was all about and talked to Lindsay on the phone, really great representative,  I said that I'm a retired fourth grade teacher, not a plumber or electrician, don't have skills but i am a skilled grunt laborer, can you use me. She said yes, so here I am and really feel gratitude that I'm here. I'm doing something for someone else but the fact of the matter is that I feel like  I'm doing something for myself. it's really turned my head around."

"When you're serving people the biggest blessing is what happens inside of you," says Gary Morel, the guy who was explaining FEMA.

"I would not have believed it until I experienced it this week. I've been in the Peace Corps when I graduated from college but India was removed from my own culture. I've been coming down to Lafayette for years, I know people here, I know the culture, how special the people here are, and what a unique place this is. When Lindsay said I could volunteer I wanted to come down to help people i really admire, I got excited and packed my bag," says I.

"I owe people," says Gary," people who helped us put things back together after Katrina. In the dozens of houses we've been in if I get tired I say, uh uh, keep going, when people were helping me and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles put everything back together after that storm, they didn't complain."

He continues. "We have three kids, our little ones  are in school now which is huge. Last week when they weren't in school, my wonderful wife wanted to get involved...she went to Costco every morning, loaded up the trunk, I'm in tears thinking about this, I'd be working in a house thinking we're making a difference and I see my five year old walking in the door giving something to people in need, I'm thinking you can't recreate that for your kids, you can't say I want you to be gracious, I'm going to show you what that looks like. They went to their rooms, went through all their stuff, each of them had packed a bag, everything that they loved that they wanted to give other kids went into that bag. You talk about blessing others...it's doing more for me (he is choking up with tears)..."

Murmurs of agreement around the group finishing lunch.

"You reconsider what your problems are, you think I didn't make that sale ...well a problem is when someone doesn't know where they're going to put their kids to sleep tonight, he says." Pretty powerful stuff.

"I don't think you're here by accident, either. You were brought down here to experience this," says Gary.

"I'm not a particularly religious man but the more I do this, and I don't use this word a lot, I feel blessed to be down here and now I feel like I'm gonna cry too. I'm not used to this but to do something that makes me feel so damn (excuse the language) good is an extraordinary feeling. Earlier Bryan said 'Thank you for your sacrifice'. I said I don't feel that I'm sacrificing anything, as a matter of fact i feel guilty by how much I'm getting out of this," says I.

"I wish we could freeze time and help everyone," says Gary.

Sometimes an act of God can bring out the god in everyone in its wake is what I'm thinking.

And there's more.

I go on (again) about the way the way people connect, and I've watched it happen with the crew here...when they first meet they ask, who's your mamma, where you from, you have brothers and sisters, oh your sister is a friend of my cousin (the best one I ever heard is someone described as being her daughter-in-law‘s sister‘s husband!)... it's like Francine says that down here we connect the dots, I love it and I get a kick out of it every time it happens, it's another reason I come here," says I.

"I love that you experience that. It's a reminder not to take this stuff for granted. You're a blessing when you bring this up and tell people how exciting it is for someone from other places to feel that...a lot of people don't venture out from what you see, for a lot of people this is all they've known so it gives them an appreciation that here's someone from the northeast and is completely new to this and say to themselves wow this really is a special place, it's a healthy reminder..." says Gary.

"Last night at dinner I talked about this with my hosts Bernard and Rubia who say, Paul, the reason for that is that Louisiana has the lowest rate of emigration out of the state than any other state in the union. People are born here, live here out of choice. Many move away says and end up returning." says I.

Derek Morel is the brother-in-law of Pastor Jake. They married sisters, met at Derek’s wedding where Jake was playing the music. Gotta love these small world stories.

12:45 PM Second house Bald Eagle Drive, Lafayette, LA

There is mold in the house. Rob goes inside to take photo to send to the church for a determination. Jake, a crew chief who has joined us with several other volunteers to take on this big project, talks about two other products, Sniper (for which you need to use a fogger) and conchromium, effective but expensive because they are full strength. The mold has not advanced to the stage of dangerous black mold yet. We are forbidden to go inside until we all don respirators and N-95 masks.

90 degrees and humid. A familiar scene. What used to be inside many houses is now in piles of pieces of sheetrock, rugs, paneling, torn apart cabinets and vanities. Eerie. There's no sign of water. From the outside, the homes look intact. Inside, ruination. The first house we worked and had its air conditioning working, no so here. This house is going to be a bear to clean up. "They asked us to try to save the cabinets and the vanities but we can't guarantee that we won't break them while we're cleaning up so I have waivers to ask them to sign before we begin."

Joining us are Dwayne and his wife Deborah who moved here 7 weeks ago from West Virginia after Dwayne lost his job as a coal miner. They  know something about loss and dislocation. What timing! Deb, born in Brazil, sees Our Savior's Church online says, "This is the church for us. Helping serve others is the way I was brought up.”  Good choice,Deb.

Another familiar sad scene. The homeowner stands in the garage shuffling recovered items from one place to another. This is one of the most heavy duty demolition places we have worked in. Nearly all the sheet rock at the 4 foot level needs to be removed. All the insulation on the outside walls needs to be removed. We drag hundreds of pounds of torn up sheet rock and molding and insulation to the curbside.

Not a good sign but we can work with this as long as we wear respirators or N-95 masks. We are ahead of major mold growth. Once black mold takes hold, it's a different ball game.

Make a plan, begin tearing out and hauling out sheetrock, insulation and later remove bathroom and kitchen cabinets, big job.
 
Pile the debris over the drainage ditch (coulee) running alongside the street to help keep the water down


Inside out houses, common sights in several parishes.

 

This is the first day we use ShockWave Mold Prevention , a concentrate in which you add a couple of teaspoons per gallon and spray to treat mold and mildew to keep it from spreading. Rob sprays all the wet 2 x 4's that are the framing foundation for the studs all around the exterior house. Before he begins I sweep off the insulation and sheetrock debris on the 2 x 4s on which the studs are erected. It is safe to use, has a pleasant odor but we are not mold specialists and cannot guarantee it will totally remove mold. We will ask homeowner to sign a waiver stating that. Good idea. At lunch we talk about two other products, Sniper (for which you need to use a fogger, says Jake) and conchromium, effective but expensive because they are full strength.

Rob, Jake, Ben and two of the women in the crew use power tools to cut away sheet rock and door frames so we can carry them out. The floors are covered with debris which we don't have time to finish cleaning up today, we'll be back tomorrow.

3 PM a massive thunderstorm rolls in with sheets of rain for about 30 minutes. The drainage ditch level rises about a foot, some of the debris we have put along the roadside slides into it. The lawn is squishy underfoot, the water table is saturated. We will need to return your tomorrow. Rob, Jake and Derek, Jake's brother in law, say that if the houses are not cleaned up within 18 days it will be too late to demo the walls, pull out the cabinets and bathrooms and sheet rock since mold will begin to form, be too dangerous for us to enter. Hazmat teams will be necessary, too dangerous for us to breathe air that has mold.

We are determined to stay ahead, air this home out and make it habitable again. It won't be pretty. But we will beat the mold before it gets up a head of steam.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Louisiana Flood of 2016: Our Savior's Church Crew at work August 24 Afternoon Crew

August 24, 2015, afternoon

Earlier stories begin here http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2016/08/louisiana-flood-of-2016-historic-unprecedented-catastrophic-1.html stories recounting my volunteer work gutting flooded houses on crews organized by Our Savior's Church in Lafayette, LA from August 22-27, 2016

Second house today

12:30 PM Woodlawn Road, Maurice, LA

Roy and Joyce have lived here 50 years, The possibility of a flood was about as likely as being struck by lightning. Their children and another crew already carried roomsful of possessions into the covered carport. After 61 years of marriage and 50 years living in the same house, that’s a lot of accumulated memorabilia and possessions.

 

Overwhelmed with the task, Roy and Joyce sift through fragments of their lives.

When our crew first entered their house, Roy and Joyce were watching TV in a room jammed with dry furniture, knickknacks, books  and anything that had not gotten  wet. They seemed dazed.

The crew assesses damage in the living room, the driest room in the house, filled with possessions that haven't been soaked.

While our crew removes and molding, Roy absentmindedly looks through fragments of his life scattered in soggy piles in the carport. I could tell he was not focusing well and needed to focus on something of the past that he could relate to instead of thinking about the overwhelming task of what lies ahead. That’s a tall order for a man of 82.

We got talking. He becomes more animated the longer we stay. This is the kind of reclamation Roy needed, someone to talk to, someone to tell us how he’d be walking down the street and someone would rush out of a store and say "Mr. Sorbet, you were one of my best teachers,"  and give him a big hug. Pastor Tim would call this preaching the gospel with our ears. 

Angie is in the kitchen washing the pile of pans and dishes in the sink. Standing in the carport, Roy reminisces about  entering college, being drafted into the army and serving in Korea, going back to college to graduate,  teaching for 20 years in local schools then teaching at a jail for 20 years.  He stands a little taller, the weight on his shoulders lightens up. Floodwater hasn't dampened the pride he has in his life's work.

Those stories help ease the sting of watching us drag ruined mementos, heirlooms, sheetrock and debris to their street outside. Joyce is calm and thankful in spite of ruination around her. She feels the respect we have for their property, being careful with what can be salvaged, asking her if in doubt. I watch her calibrate how much she can let go of and what she wants to hold on to.

The crew chief has a huge burden of responsibility. What's not up for discussion is anything the crew chief knows will not pass inspection to be rebuilt if it is not torn out right now. Every piece of wet flooring, cabinetry, wood siding, wall paneling, has to be removed. Mildew is the enemy in this climate and will begin to take hold within days and make a home uninhabitable. Otherwise, Inspectors will deny rebuilding.

The story here is the same everywhere. Miles of coulees (1,400 miles of City-Parish roadside open ditches 500 miles along side city streets and 900 miles along side parish roads) meant to help drain rainwater were overcome with unprecedented rainfall, enough to fill Lake Ponchartrain, got overtopped, greedily spread up and overland and relentlessly and rapidly flooded the land for miles, coming down south all the way from Denham Springs to the parishes around Lafayette.

Most, like Roy and Joyce, say their homes have never flooded, that they have no flood insurance, and are dealing with a this particular fact of southwest Louisiana life, the presence of water in abundance, water that sustains them in farming rice and crawfish and raising cattle and can also destroy them in massive unprecedented floods like what will be known at the Flood of 2016, no official name but a title that will live in searing memory of the tens of thousands of people from Baton Rouge to Lafayette.

People have seen their share of flooding in southwest LA but absolutely nothing compared to this. Nearly every homeowner we work with talks of water rising so fast and so unexpectedly that they had to flee for their lives, water in a matter of hours up to their knees into the typical one story homes that dot this entire area, roads becoming impassable, cars abandoned, lifetimes abandoned as they fled with what they could carry in their arms and pray to god they could get to high ground And survive it. it had to have been frightening to see your entire neighborhood becoming a lake, an unimaginable nightmare.

Speed kills. You often see that as a road sign or plastered on a billboard. After unprecedented rainfall in Louisiana two weeks ago, it applied to water that rose faster than even the oldest residents ever experienced. It killed 14 of them and displaced tens of thousands.

The crew arrives at 1:30 PM. Most of the homeowner's salvageable belongings are in the carport.

 

Crews stashed most of what was dry into the den and any other dry place they could find; fans provided by Our Savior's Church help dry out the wood framing.

A "class picture" of the crew - Kneeling, Stephen, Francine; standing, Tracy, Jake, Ryan, Will, Philip, ?,Bryan, Rob and the homeowners Roy and Joyce(center)

debris removed from the house is piled on the roadside.

Unprecedented flooding

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/15/how-over-2-feet-of-rain-caused-historic-flooding-in-louisiana-in-less-than-72-hours/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2d45d2455d6a

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/us/louisiana-flooding/

in one part of southwest LA more than 31 inches of rain fell in 15 hours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Louisiana_floods

Flooding began in earnest on August 12. On August 13, a flash flood emergency was issued for areas along the Amite and Comite rivers.[10] By August 15, more than ten rivers (Amite, Vermilion, Calcasieu, Comite, Mermentau, Pearl, Tangipahoa, Tchefuncte, Tickfaw, and Bogue Chitto) had reached a moderate, major, or record flood stage.

UPDATE AS OF JULY 2018

An update on drainage, coulee cleaning by LCG

https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/multimedia/photos/collection_7a6a2238-8c36-11e8-89a7-47a45ae896e1.html#13

One of several remediation projects to improve the capacity of the Lafayette city/parish drainage system, a $4.2 million project underway as of July 20, 2018.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. who was on volunteer crews with Our Savior's Church from August 22 - 27

 

Louisiana Flood of 2016: Our Savior's Church Crews On The Move August 24

August 24, 2016

Sometimes it takes an act of God to bring out the god in everybody...

Previous posts about the Louisiana Flood of 2016 begin here

Crews organized by Our Savior's Church in Lafayette, LA get to work in Youngsville, LA

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I doubt any of the words could describe Youngsville today.

8:45 AM Boy, oh boy, is this church ever organized. As a volunteer who asked, by phone from a town 1635.4 miles from Lafayette, to help in a massive cleanup campaign after rain inundated a huge chunk of Louisiana, I never had to spend a minute trying to figure out what to do or how to fit in.

Two days earlier, Monday, August 22, I showed up at 8:30 AM, saw supplies piled up all over the spacious church lobby. Friendly chatter of friends greeting each other did nothing to mask the calm sense of purpose I felt in the room that morning and every morning since. I signed in at a volunteer desk. There would be a meeting at 9:00 AM. We would be organized into work groups. The work each day would last till about 3 PM. Lunches and drinks would be provided. Each team would have a crew chief. The crew chief had a list of houses to be mucked out and a list of what needed to be done in each house. Tools were available if you didn't bring your own. Everyone would find a job they could do.

I had never set foot in this church, or known any of the men and women associated with it before Monday morning. Nervous about how the day would unfold, yes. Nervous because I didn't feel a clear sense of direction and purpose? Heck, no. I took a deep breath. Our Savior's Church had it covered.

By now, I looked forward to the 9 AM group meetings led by a pastor who relayed useful information and gave some love to the four men who were prime movers and organizers and donors to the effort. To my surprise, I began to look forward to the prayer a pastor would lead before we formed work groups.

Prayer can cover lots of territory. Not only ask for our own safety, strength and well being but of compassion for the people we were about to serve. And the fact that in most cases we were the only source of assistance the people would get. The flood destruction was extraordinarily all consuming. Meteorologists don't throw the words "1000-Year Storm" around lightly...or ever.

9:00 AM We form a circle. Next week, workers from out of town are joining the local volunteers. I'm a little ahead of the curve, and frankly, grateful to connect with so many local volunteers.

"The next two weeks are really critical," says the pastor. "There are hundreds of homes that no one has visited. There are hundreds of  homes where people are living where there was three of four feet of water inside. You are such a blessing to them. We're gonna pray, and meet with team leaders. Yesterday we mucked out 13 homes..."  Whoops of applause.

"Anyone who need help, send them to the website.Anyone who want to give, send them to the website. They have no access, take their names and numbers, we will call them. We don't want the internet to be a hurdle to anybody. If anyone wants to help, tell them 9 to 3 at the Lafayette campus here."

"Let's pray. Father thank you so much for this moment we have to serve...we think that the gospel comes only from the mouth but God the gospel can come from a listening ear when someone is overwhelmed, it comes from hands that are ripping out drywall,  it's going to come from the heart when we feel compassion for these people...today we'll use all the parts of our bodies to show the gospel of Jesus Christ. I pray that you protect us, bless those taking time off from work, bless those coming to help from afar, people doing something they've never done in their lives...we're grateful in Jesus' name... Amen."

With that, he sends us off to meet with team leaders, grab our lunches and ice chests full of water and get to work. We are mobilizing.

Five minutes later, today's team leader is going over the check list for the first house we'll work in. We share our cell phone numbers to stay in touch. Today's team: Angie from New Iberia, Philip, Francine from Maurice, Tracy, her husband Steve, Bryan's wife Kimberly,  another Paul, Kimberly Rhinehart, Bryan Rhinehart

My Boston Red Sox cap got some attention. Ryan's wife Katie reintroduces me to Pastor Tim and we have good laughs about the Yankees and the Red Sox, our respective baseball teams. Stephen used to live in Pittsburgh and chips in about the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball stadium. 

Tracy's husband Steven asked me why I came down here from Boston – I tell him the same story I tell everybody – it's all about the good kind openhearted friendly people in southwest Louisiana which is one of the most unique places I have ever been in my life.

Pastor Tim says they will be doing another survey at houses in deed this Saturday. He says that many people from out of town are arriving to help next week. I believe I got here at a perfect time since I'm working with local people. Who are exactly the kinds of people I want to be with.

People have been making jambalaya and gumbo and bringing to neighbors and complete strangers who have been flooded out.

9:45 AM Our convoy rolls up to East Leblanc Road in Maurice LA

The house is built on pilings. A little over two feet of water rose was enough to rise above them. If the house was a "(cement) slab on grade" type, it would have been a total loss.

"I've got moisture meters so we can see where the water problems are," says Bryan as we meet owner Chris."We're going to try to open the house up and get you dry."  The top layer of flooring has to go. What he talks about with the carpenters in the crew is if the under-layer is tongue and groove, they decide to pull up a section in the corner to find out. He asks Tammy if we can move a bunch of furniture in all the other rooms in the house so we can begin.

"I'm learnin' about all of this, y'all,"owner Chris says as she listens to the talk about the flooring in her house. "That makes about all of us!" says Bryan. The wave of laughter pops a bubble of tension. We're ready to see for ourselves and go from there.

"This is an ideal house to work on,"  says crew chief Bryan.

"The way these older houses are built, the walls are hollow with no insulation so the air that gets inside those walls is going to migrate up through the roof and help ventilate the house," says Rob, born and raised not far from here.

"I bought the house just this May. It was built in 1945, no insurance since I was told it is on such high ground that it would never flood." She says now she's going to get it all in really good shape so during the next flood she'll be in good shape and can join people us from Our Savior's Church  in order to do the kind of work we're doing for her. "Praise Jesus," she says. She may or may not show up at the church's Sunday services but when the call goes out for volunteers, you can be darn sure she's going to answer the call.

This woman’s going to be all right. She's  for whatever we can do,  even if we need to remove things that she wanted to save, like an air conditioning unit she just bought. "We'll  will cut it away from the plywood. You can douse it with a disinfectant for the mold after we get done."

9 AM Get organized at Our Savior's Church...PastorJacob, working every angle, contacting as many friends and businesses he knows of, has amassed tools and supplies to equip every work crew, everything needed to muck out a house is here...

crews collect supplies for the houses on the day's work list given to each crew chief..

Arrive at East Leblanc Road in Maurice LA.

Dry is the key. Anything wet has to be hauled out. Bryan has a handheld device that can detect moisture in hard to see places, like flooring and sub flooring and behind kitchen and bathroom vanities and counters. Everything that was under water has to go. Wet sheetrock and flooring and behind ceiling and floor molding leads to mildew then black mold then to a condemned home. And it has to be mitigated within 10 to 18 days or the house is a goner.

10:15 AM ...every member of the team picks a job  removing kitchen and bathroom cabinets, mopping, carrying out carpets, furniture, debris from kitchen and bathroom.

The cajun cottage was built on pilings in 1945.
 
This home was luckier than most. "It's a good old Cajun house with good bones and built for southwest Louisiana," the owner says. As you see from the mildew on at the bottom of the house, the flood water rose over two feet and flooded the house.

My Lafayette host who works for FEMA says that when homes began to be built on concrete slabs instead of pilings after World War II, that made them especially vulnerable to flooding from surface waters.

 
The crew chief's high tech moisture meter told the story. Water seeped under all the vanities and cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, which had to be removed.

 
Bryan's moisture meter detected it. We removed it.

Several inches of water inside means everything that was immersed has to go...if not black mold will form, work will not be permitted without HAZMAT suits and special permits.

The top layer of flooring in the kitchen needs to go. I use a heavy rectangular bladed  shovel, turn it upside down says Rob, to pry up the flooring.  Once I pry up one spot, I   begin to take take long arcing swoops under the flooring to rip up larger sections. Other crew members haul out the pieces as I pry them up. I worked as a carpenter's helper building houses during summer vacations in college. Tearing a house apart is a rueful experience. 

Occasional pow wows to discuss strategy; every room needed mitigation.

A laser beam shows where to cut drywall if it had been soaked at the bottom at where the 2x4s frame is located; repairing the AC unit means that the house will dry out much faster.

Time to smile while working away; conferring with the owner; sweeping and clearing out anything that's wet. Not evident from the photos - the women on the crew were incredibly efficient and tireless, hauled debris and dismantled moldings all day long.

What goes, what stays? Cathryn thanks the crew for the hard careful thorough work that will likely pass inspection later.

Tearing out the wet flooring of the bathroom; same thing happened in the kitchen.

 
An all too familiar sight in southwest Louisiana after the flooding in August 12-14, 2016

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

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

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/18/us/louisiana-flooding/

in one part of southwest LA more than 31 inches of rain fell in 15 hours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Louisiana_floods

Flooding began in earnest on August 12. On August 13, a flash flood emergency was issued for areas along the Amite and Comite rivers. By August 15, more than ten rivers (Amite, Vermilion, Calcasieu, Comite, Mermentau, Pearl, Tangipahoa, Tchefuncte, Tickfaw, and Bogue Chitto) had reached a moderate, major, or record flood stage.

 

Louisiana Flood of 2016: August 23 - Our Savior's Church Volunteer Crews Gut One Home, One Garage, Cleanup One Home in Abbeville

Tuesday morning August 23, 2016 Our Savior's Church Volunteer Crews Mucking Out Homes - Day 2 for me.

The Washington Post noted that the "no-name storm" dumped three times as much rain on Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina on the days after August 11. It dropped the equivalent of 7.1 trillion gallons of water or enough to fill Lake Pontchartrain about four times. Hurricane Katrina, by comparison, dumped about 2.3 trillion gallons of rainwater in the state (though more in other states). The flooding rains also dumped more water than had Hurricane Isaac. According to the National Weather Service Hydrometeorological Design Studies Center, the amount of rainfall in the hardest-hit locations had a less than 0.1 percent chance of happening or was a (less than) 1-in-1,000-year event.

Because the rain was not associated with a named storm, there was less warning to the public for emergency preparations.

9:00 AM

"You are making a difference," one of the pastors says as we gather before heading out.

"A woman asked her neighbor for help, the neighbor said we only do our member's houses but told her about us. When she called, she started crying when we said we could. We're going out there every day from 9 AM to 3 PM Monday to Friday and mornings on Saturday. I know you have lives to go back to. Some of these people have no lives to go back to. You guys are playing such an important role. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

 After driving through neighborhoods totally devastated by flood water, I begin to grasp the utter scale of destruction. And the commitment of Our Savior's Church to help anyone who asks for it. There are 200 homes on their list as of this morning. No one asks whether the homeowners are church folks.

"We started picking people up in dump trucks when the rain started. At one point early on, we had 8 dogs, 2  cats, and a rabbit and a bunch of folks in here." He points out four men who led the rescues from the beginning, tells us that they are organizing crews in this lobby to make lunches to send to the volunteers and hot food for people living in homes with no electricity or ability to prepare any kind of food. Whoever is in charge of logistics here thinks in macro and micro terms.

Before we organize into teams, we join hands as the pastor leads a prayer."Even though we aren't showing up with a suit and a bible, we are speaking the gospel based on our actions today...." This is a big tent blessing.

He prays that we be safe and protected as we work, asks for blessings for men and women putting their businesses on hold as they volunteer today, thanks Pastor Jacob for his leadership...ends with "We thank you in Jesus' name, Amen."  To me, the blessing and prayer feels as secular as spiritual. Everyone here is guided the voice of one of our better angels speaking to us...help thy neighbor.

Prayer complete, we break into teams. The crew chief has a list of addresses for the day, what is to be done, even an estimate of how much time it would take a crew to get it done.

The morning is not without humor."Where you from?" asks one of the pastors. "Wow I was supposed to speak in Boston this month. But I'm from New York City so you can't wear that Red Sox hat here!"

"I'll turn it around when I see you coming!" says I. Laughter. And one of my crew mates says "He found us online and came down to help!"

My home town doesn't seem to matter any more. Fellow volunteer Francine  and I agree that we are both skilled grunt laborers. She asks how i ended up here, told her my story (same reply as the one I replied Tuesday afternoon - below - and several other times this week). "It's  a different culture, it's special, it's different from anywhere you will ever go," Francine says. True.

Glad that several of my crew from yesterday are in my crew today, including Francis who has been a barber in New Iberia for 25 years.'"Y'all can follow me to Abbeville." says Bryan. We're off.

We drive south past fields full of high as an elephant's eye lush sugar cane toward Abbeville. It's eerie to grasp that days before this region was in the midst of a 1000-year storm. Passing homes along the ride, it looks like luck of the draw, some homes inside out, others seem intact. The closer we get to Abbeville, the more pervasive the destruction. I'm in the convoy, cruising down LA 14, pass The Donut Palace, over Bayou Vermilion to Abbeville.

 

10:15 AM Our work convoy arrives at Morgan Street, in Abbeville, LA

Today the  little coulee that runs next to Tammy's house looks like it could barely fill a bathtub. On the days after August 11, it had swollen and grew to the size of a rogue bayou that mercilessly inundated the neighborhood.

Tammy's home on Morgan Street, Abbeville, LA, flooded big time. It had to be gutted floor to ceiling right down to the studs. Walls in the bathroom, utility room, major portion of flooring, wall paper, wood paneling, floor molding, all have to go. Here we are, on a sunny day, robin's egg blue sky, tearing her house apart and carting it onto the yard in front of her street.

Hot as hell inside, everyone works finds something useful to do. Not much chatter. All I hear is the screeching of wooden floor and molding being torn from the studs, scraping of blades to remove wallpaper, hammering in the bathroom to remove just about everything that was inside it. I'm working with Christina and Tracy, both energetic and seemingly indefatigable, scraping wet wallpaper off wood paneled walls.

Everywhere I drive I see ruins. What must be going on inside those homes? As the sense of shock subsides, feelings of utter displacement. loss, and often depression grow as insidiously as the mold in the house.

An ugly truth: I'm stunned when Tammy says people stole stole two room air conditioners from her ravaged home. She tells us not to remove a large piece of cardboard that she will tape in the window to prevent people from seeing inside.  "YOU LOOT, WE SHOOT" signs don't fit with every notion I have about people around here.

Unbelievably common sight. I feel like I'm driving through a futuristic movie set in which the oceans have flooded the world.

Mind boggling to see mountains of debris outside every house in the neighborhood.

Today the  little coulee that runs next to Tammy's house looks like  it could barely fill a bathtub. On the days after August 11, it had swollen and grew to the size of a rogue bayou that mercilessly inundated the neighborhood.

Assess damage and tear out anything that had been soaked in the flood.

 

Walls, floors, plumbing fixtures...everyone picks a job, sometimes working as teams, sometimes alone, but always with a sense of purpose to...

cut out portions of flooring, floor molding, sheetrock, wood paneling, anything the flood water touched. We tell Tammy about a product called Concrobium Mold  Control. At around 12:30 PM, leave Tammy's home after two powerful and active hours in which we gutted her home.

You've heard the expression "Many hands make light work" ...well in this case, "Many hands transform a monumental overwhelming problem to a homeowner into one in which their home has been saved from devolving into mess of black mold."

Like other homes, the flooding happened so fast as water ways from the north were overpowered by 7.1 TRILLION gallons of water that fell on the state.

Tammy breaks down in tears of gratitude as we leave her home. She asks us to leave some debris so she can point out original materials to FEMA when the time comes.

Onward. We head down South Main Street past a huge oil drum with Steen's Pure Cane Sugar emblazoned on its round contours.

I cannot overstate the power of Bryan's blessing before we leave. Holding hands in a tight circle in Tammy's now stark living room, asking Jesus to give some love to Tammy in her time of stress, and let her know that there is a community of people who are willing to help her in her time of need just as he helps others in their time of need. Bryan's not on a pulpit. Matter of factly, he's doing what is important to him, what he feels called to do. He might be invoking Jesus but to my mind he's talking about Jesus the carpenter, the man who put a roof over people's heads.

Tracy and Christine hug Tammy after the short prayer. Tammy sobs, tears of gratitude. Prayer and hugs are the most powerful gift at this moment especially when accompanied by action. I'm not particularly religious but there is something going on here that's very moving and if God has something to do with it, so be it.

"Acts like that are so kind and generous," I say to Tracy. She turns around, looks me in the eye. "You're a part of this too, you know." That's about when I had to hold back my own tears.

In an enormously helpful pro-active outreach program, Our Savior's Church published "a list of documents that will be helpful to you for cleaning out your home, dealing with FEMA, and other issues related to the flood." http://www.oursaviorschurch.com/2016/08/23/helpful-documents/

Tuesday afternoon

Rt LA 167 heading for LA 14

We head for a second job. Crew chief Bryan says it is too easy. We are such a good crew that he wants to bring us to jobs that suits our work ethic! Francis laughs and says he wouldn't mind a piece of the shade under a nearby tree but, like us, he loves the compliment. Bryan pauses to say a brief prayer. Every time he says the word energy he really lands on it. That was us!

On to another house in Abbeville..."A-town" as someone in the group said.

It is surprising how just a few inches of water can cause damage, this house is an example. Chad and Laneta are members of the church. We move furniture from their house to her mother's garage in another  part of town. Six degrees of separation stories ensue.

Lunch arrives (an example of how fabulously organized the church operation is). Everyone begins to connect, SW Louisiana style.

 

Make a plan...

We haul heavy dining room furniture, some kitchen furniture, bedding and blankets, heavy chairs into a U-Haul truck that Chad and Laneta rented. Less than an hour later we've moved it into a house that they had moved from.

Chad, Tracy, Laneta, Laneta's mother Myrtle. After unloading, people begin to talk, and I try to keep track of the connections. Francis knows Laneta by her nickname "Pixie". Tracy and Chad, who, by the way, Francis has known for years, get going about what school did you go to, who’s your mamma, father, who are your sisters and brothers, cousins, where do they live... this is SOOO much a SW Louisiana conversation, before long they find who they know in common or what similarities they have in schools, relatives, locations they live in, friends they have in common!

Late Tuesday afternoon

"What's your story," crew chief asks. I tell the same story a bunch of times this week.

"Well, first it was the music and the dancing in the food. As I kept visiting, it became clear that the most unique thing about southwest Louisiana is the open  openhearted, kind, generous, good-humored,people I keep meeting here."

I got going. "They may not all think the same way the same politics but when it comes down to something where people need help they show up. If they're from Our Savior's Church, they give out a lot of love, a lot of hugs, and while they don't shy away from praising God in crew meetings before and after each job they do it in a way that is openhearted not aggressively religious and actually made me feel really proud to be a member of the group and realize, confirm actually, that I'm doing something important. When I began  i felt like I was doing something for someone else but the more I got into it I realize actually I was getting way more out of it than I was putting into it." 

When I start telling my Lafayette hosts about my experience working with the crew yesterday I get emotional, when I begin telling some of the crew members about it today I nearly cry, tears of gratitude for being just where I want and need to be. I swear I see Pastor Jacob smiling somewhere about that one.

FOURTH HOUSE

2:30 PM 300 Cherry Street Abbeville, LA where the Cathryn lives, Half of our crew is there already, the house was not flooded.

but the garage had loads of stuff stored in it and all of it was soaking wet, pitch black and a little stinky and totally disorganized. Cathryn tells us what stays and what is goes.

We spend about 45 minutes mucking out the garage, removing mostly everything in wheel barrows and by hand and putting it in a massive pile in front of her house. The scene of  gutting a flooded house is being repeated in thousands of houses throughout the region. Once again, a friendly hug goes a long way.

 

PT and Francis the barber from New Iberia

Our crew...back row Philip, Stephen?, Francis, Ryan; front row Rob, Christina, Francine, Tracy

We form a circle and hold hands this circle sort of like an athletic team in which everyone puts their hand of the middle, one the top of the other as Ryan prays. Between the spirit of the blessing and the experience Cathryn has of having a nightmare situation cleaned up by a full crew within 45 minutes moves her to tears. She knows of many people who have not had this kind of help and support and is incredibly thankful. Many of us give her a hug as we leave – it is a scenario that is happened before and will happen again.

At first I came here wanting to offer my help and support a combination of physical labor and a sense of connecting with people in need. The fact is that during each and every minute that I am sweating, stooping, bending, lifting, hauling, scraping, filling construction grade 3 mil plastic bags with all manner of debris from busted up sheetrock to ruined personal possessions, I feel I am being  useful.  The Marge Piercy poem "To Be of Use" comes to mind.

I feel grateful for being able to help, especially help these people from southwest Louisiana who are in one of the most unique subcultures in the country. I've said this before. Kind, welcoming, helpful, good-natured. Many of these people have been through horrible storms and natural events in the past 10 years, everything from Katrina and then to Rita and then to the great floods of 2016. I can see people holding it together while they put one foot in front of the other,  minute to minute, day by day.

I know I am in the right place, at the right time, with the right people, doing the right thing, for the right reasons.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Louisiana Flood of 2016: A Tenacious Crew of Volunteers Guts A Flooded Home August 22,2016

The Louisiana Flood of 2016
Monday, August 22, 2016
Youngsville, LA

First Day of Volunteer Work Gutting Houses in Lafayette Parish with Our Savior’s Church of Lafayette, LA.

Pastor Jacob Aranza welcomes us volunteers warmly, LINK to earlier story, introduces crew leaders, who divide us into teams.

There is nothing haphazard about this operation. Scouts have visited every house that a crew will work in. They've met with the owners, made a precise list of what is to be done, what tools are likely to be needed, possible obstacles to be overcome (rooms crowded with furniture, access into the house), the emotional state of the owners.

My team's fearless leader Bryan Rhinehart reminds us that they're under stress, that we are dealing with all their earthly possessions, they may be in a state of shock or denial or even angry, are facing devastating losses, and that we are still guests in their house offering to lend a hand."This is what ministry is all about," he says, "encourage each other if you get tired. Remember, you're doing this for them.I'm trusting that God is going to give me everything we need today."

A mentor of mine once said, " It doesn't make a difference who gets the credit if the job gets done." All I know is that I'm where I want to be,doing something important to me.

Our convoy heads from the church to a home in Lafayette. The Lafayette home sustained damage with several inches of water inside. Most of the gutting had been done by another crew. After we load possessions onto a truck, a neighbor leads us to his garage where he is storing his friends furnishings until they rebuild.
  

The next home on our list is in Youngsville, ten miles south of  Lafayette. "This is going to be heavy duty. The house took in two feet of water," Bryan says.

There were no  creeks I could see nearby. The overflowing dumpster was my first glimpse of what I would see for the rest of the week, totally unexpected loss of home and hearth. A home that had to be literally turned inside out to be saved.

The smell of wet sheetrock and cement fills my nostrils behind the N-95 dust mask wrapped around my face. Hammers and crowbars pound and pry. A shop vac sucks up a sheen of gray water and plaster dust from the cement slab of what’s left of a bedroom. Every so often a ten-pound sledgehammer in the hands of the crew chief thunders into the kitchen cabinets that had been soaked and needed to be yanked out. Short muffled conversations between the nine of us gutting the house help coordinate who was doing what.

The house set back from the road in Youngsville had taken at least two feet of water. “It happened so fast,” the owner says. “I’ve never been flooded before. I could hardly believe what I was seeing when it got up to my knees.”

You’d never guess that most of the crew had known each other for only three hours. Work is methodical and efficient. Heavy-duty trash bags that weigh thirty pounds and debris by the wheel barrowful are carted out and piled next to the blue dumpster, already full. My first day of volunteering organized by Our Savior’s Church is working like a well-oiled machine.

After a couple of crew members unscrew the plates for the electrical outlets and cut sheetrock at the seams four feet above the floor, the rest of us break it up in manageable pieces and drag it outside. Clothing, dressers, bed frames, mattresses, bathroom vanities, toilets, kitchen cabinets, insulation, carpets, floor molding – everything that belongs inside a house – are in a soggy, pitiful pile outside of it.

One awkward tilt port or starboard while navigating a wheelbarrow full of wet sheetrock, insulation, and debris over a piece of plywood outside the carport and the whole payload will get dumped into the mud below and require precious time and energy to load back into the wheel barrow. I know this from experience – once.

We are soaked in sweat. At around lunchtime someone delivers big bottles of Gatorade and box lunches of turkey and ham and cheese sandwiches, chips, and cookies.

Time to take a breath under the shade of the trees. It feels like a movie reel in which bits of characters are revealed between battles.

There’s Mark, laid off after 25 years in the oil fields, who tells me, “We Cajuns know how to improvise,” while he’s pulling out a bathroom vanity, a burly guy who says he thinks of his father every time he hears Brad Paisley's "He Didn't Have To Be" and his mother every time he smells roses. And Christina, an accountant who used to work with U-Haul and is very handy with any kind of tool she puts in her hand; there's a trim, retired “petro-engineer” who describes how the oil industry has tanked; Robin, a stay-at-home mom, quiet but determined; Ali, a hair stylist, cheerful and sweaty; John the dentist who tells story about bartering some mechanical work on his car at a saw mill in Belize for extracting a tooth of the mill owner right on a table at the mill; Francis, the barber from Lafayette via New Iberia who has four kids who play football and volleyball; Ricki, a retired accountant who looks nowhere near her 72 year age; and Tracy from Youngsville who teaches 2-year-olds at St Anne’s Church and whose dad is a devotee of Pickleball and whose husband’s uncle is Bobby Charles, the guy who wrote the Top 40 song, “See You Later Alligator.” And Bryan, our crew chief with a luminous personality, one of the pastors at the church, a life coach, a flood victim himself, and as good with power tools as with words from the pulpit.

The people in my crew are the kind of Louisiana people that made me want to come down here and help with the volunteer work in the first place, friendly, open, generous of spirit.

By mid-afternoon, everything on the checklist has been completed. We leave two large fans whirring to help dry the house out and load Bryan’s big Ford pickup truck with tools, buckets, wheelbarrows, step ladders, shovels and other necessities the church has provided.

“You’ve got my dad’s number. Call him or call the church if you need anything,” Bryan says to the homeowner. “Monitor that air conditioner. And when the next dumpster comes in, give us a call we might be able to send some people here to get the debris on the ground into the next dumpster.”

Bryan calls us together to hold hands in a tight circle and leads a short prayer. I had no idea what to expect in the way religion would interface with our work. What follows is a heartfelt closure that covers a lot of territory after a day of hard work.

Bryan thanks God for keeping us safe, acknowledges we made progress today, wishes Godspeed to the owner as he continues to clean up and find a contractor to begin rebuilding, that God restore the energy we expended and ease the muscle pains we might feel from the work we’ve done today, says sometimes when we do this work it reveals things in our own hearts that we need to clear out and throw in the trash. (That resonates with me. The work I’m doing feels like the most important thing I’ve done in a long time. Other things don’t need to get thrown in the trash but sure do get re-prioritized.)

Bryan finishes with, “Thank you for your son, Jesus. We look forward to what you have in store for us this week…can I have an Amen?”

“You have restored my faith in humanity,” the owner says as we pull out. I can give an Amen to that, too.

Meet with the owner (blue T shirt); get to work removing sheetrock, floor moldings...once the bottom of 4x8 piece of sheetrock has been wet, the panel needs to be removed before mold grows and removal becomes hazardous.

floor coverings, water, plaster debris;  bathroom vanities and toilet...my Lafayette friend and FEMA planner says that after WWII the US government allowed construction of ‘slab on grade’ homes here, that previously houses were built on stilts or elevated, protected against flood and offered cooling or improved ventilation as air circulated underneath. All but one of the homes we gutted were 'slab on grade'.

break for lunch; pull out kitchen cabinets...anything that got soaked had to go.

insulation and debris by the wheelbarrowful...

 

when necessary, surgically remove the cabinet with a sledge hammer; taking apart the bathroom; the homeowner watches the operation...and says how much he appreciates the help. It's easy to see how overwhelming and disheartening the sight can be to a home owner.

 ....
take a minute for a quick photo; the owner spent three hours in town getting permit to rebuild while we worked. Before we leave, Bryan asks us to make a circle join hand in a compact circle.  "Lord thank you for keeping us safe, that we were able to make some progress today. We wish Jim godspeed in finding a contractor to help him rebuild, that you hold the rains back, that you ease our sore muscles, that you continue to work in our own hearts...sometimes when we this kind of work it reveals things in our own lives that need to be cleared out and thrown in the trash, we wish for that as well...and for your son and look forward to your blessings during this week...can I have an Amen..."

a scene outside thousands of homes in SW Louisiana

Mid afternoon we're done, don't have time to begin another gutting. "You don't need to do this but my own garage about 30 minutes down the road got flooded. If you have time, would you ...?" He barely has time to finish before all of us volunteer to head to his house in Lafayette. His wife and kids are staying elsewhere until everything dries out. One hour later, we've removed anything touched by water in his garage and are off on our separate ways. We have earned our stripes as veteran volunteers.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. and his iPhone

The Louisiana Flood of 2016: Pastor Jacob Aranza Sets The Stage

Our Savior’s Church
1201 E Broussard Road


Lafayette, LA 70508

Monday September 2, 2016

8:45 AM


First day on the job I have volunteered for, far from home, uncertain about everything except that I want to be here. I leave my rented car in a huge parking lot and walk into the in the spacious foyer of Our Savior’s Church in Lafayette, LA. The foyer is abuzz with volunteers ready to muck out flooded homes. All ages, races, backgrounds, and all ready to pitch in for their own reasons. The space is feels like a force field of positive energy. Smiling faces belie a deep sense of intention and commitment for the work that lies ahead.

This church is organized. Tools, wheelbarrows, power equipment, brooms, mops, gloves, safety masks, ladders in orderly piles. They’ve been at this for a week and have logistics figured out. There are 200 homes on their list...and counting.

9:00 AM
A hush descends over the crowd. Pastor Jacob Aranza welcomes us. In a gesture that will be repeated often during the week, we’ve joined hands in a circle. I feel a bond forming with a hundred people I’ve never met.

Pastor Jacob is a master of capturing the big picture. Like a photographer in a darkroom, he allows the details of the picture to slowly come into focus in the developing process.

During the next ten minutes, he delivers a lovely spiritual and social and cultural blessing for who we are and what we are doing and the people for whom we are doing it.

The gist of it is that the median income for families in the parish is $36,518, males have income of about $36,400 and women about $22,700. About 15% of families are below the poverty line.

“Many in the parish do not have more than $500 in savings and they have no flood insurance. Some have friends to help them out but for many we volunteers and this church are the first opportunity they have to get help and relief from the flood.”

People have offered love and clothing but there’s a sense of urgency.

“If their homes have mildew that becomes mold, they may lose everything. Connect personally with the homeowners or anyone you meet who needs help. Use your words or social media to tell people of the out reach the church is making.”

Pastor Jacob, arms outstretched, swivels to look us all in the eyes. “We are the hands and feet of Jesus doing this work.”

We’re certainly the hands and feet of some good power - friends, neighbors, perfect strangers, good Samaritans, the list goes on. If Pastor Jacob wants to call us the hands and feet of Jesus, I’m fine with that. Looking around at the others, most of whom are members of this non-denominational church, I’m feeling it.

Some might say we’re doing god’s work. A lapsed catholic whose only visits to a church are for weddings and funerals, I feel enveloped in a state of grace. I flew here from Boston to be standing right here. I don’t know if the Big Guy ever mucked out a flooded home but if he did he would have done it with apostles like the ones I’m holding hands with.

“Blessings will come back upon us for doing this humanitarian work,” the pastor says.

For yours truly, that blessing began right then and there.

XXXXXX
Pastor Jacob describes the mission at hand
https://www.facebook.com/oscfamily/videos/vb.114604773611/10154115621483612/?type=2&theater#

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQA61uTBxGU

The Louisiana Flood of 2016: Pastor Jacob Aranza, Master of Logistics and Community Relief

The Louisiana Flood of 2016
Monday, August 22, 2016
Lafayette, LA

This story rates right up there with the miracle of the fishes and the loaves of bread. A huge chunk of southwest Louisiana was underwater after a flood of biblical proportions inundated a swath of the state from Baton Rouge to Lafayette. Over 146,000 homes were damaged or ruined.

Much of the state was paralyzed, the damage incomprehensible, the situation dire. Most of the homes affected had never flooded before, were not even in flood zones and had no flood insurance. The Red Cross, FEMA and other agencies offered assistance but were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of needs for food, clothing, and shelter.

After about a week, water receded from most homes around Lafayette, Louisiana. Hundreds needed to be gutted of everything that had contact with water - floors, walls, cabinets, you name it. If left in place, within about two weeks, black mold would grow and the house would need special permits and workers wearing HAZMAT suits to enter. Time was of the essence.

Pastor Jacob Aranza of the non-denominational Our Savior’s Church in Lafayette, Louisiana got busy. He made a tour of the area and was stunned by the devastation. His flock and their neighbors needed help and he was determined to provide it. The man thinks big and is a savvy user of social media. He made a pitch to the members of his church, put it up on Vimeo. The name and spirit of Jesus was invoked, non-denominational doesn’t mean Jesus is left out. But neither was the spirit of southwest Louisiana, renowned for the ethic of helping neighbors whenever they need it. Hundreds of volunteers signed up.

Pastor Jacob scoured the area for shovels, wheel barrows, hand and power tools, trash bags, masks, work gloves, buckets from every supply store that was open. Within days,  instead of a utility closet or two filled with mops and buckets and vacuum cleaners, the church owned enough inventory to remind me of an aisle in Home Depot.

This kind of work is not part of any church’s outreach program. Laying out a day’s work for work crews required near military precision. Crew chiefs were given a spread sheet for the day’s work: location of home, description of work to be done, names and phone numbers of owners. Crews were led by one or two skilled leaders and eight or nine inspired grunt laborers. People who didn’t know each other got the hang of what to look for, divided up jobs then removed soggy insulation and drywall and debris efficiently. This was bible study of the help-thy-neighbor-type in action.

Let me back up a minute. I’ve been visiting the Lafayette area since my first trip there in 2008. I know first hand about their legendary friendliness that welcomes strangers who appreciate their culture. I now have friends there who welcome me every time I visit. I needed to show up and help and somehow found a link to Our Savior’s Church.

Working with a faith-based group is another matter. A lapsed Catholic, the only time I’m in church is for weddings and funerals. I’ve listened to enough radio and TV evangelical programs to know that I wouldn’t be a great fit if every two minutes, someone was shouting “Praise Jesus!” Or asking me about my religious convictions and looking at me with pity at best and disapproval at worst when they discover I’m a modern day heathen.

That changed the first minute Pastor Jacob Aranza introduced himself to me as I reported for volunteer work at 9 AM on Monday, August 22 at Our Savior’s Church in Lafayette. “Where are you from? How is it you want to volunteer?” he asked as about sixty volunteers filled the lobby of the church.

Ten minutes later, the man gave us what amounted to be a spiritual pep talk on civic engagement. He filled in a picture of the kinds of people we would be helping, citing demographics, range of disposable incomes, the fact that most had no flood insurance, no resources to take on flood repairs, that most contractors had either been flooded themselves or were flooded with work, and that for most, we volunteers and this church are the first opportunity they have had to get help and relief from the flood.

By the time he got to exhorting us to be “the hands and feet of Jesus” I was sold on the mission and its intent. Frankly, I was astonished. By sheer luck, I was in the midst of an extraordinarily socially conscious church… a faith-based church that defied easy classification. Dogma was being trumped by civic duty.

Pastor Jacob made sure each crew had request forms to hand to people who needed help. “We’ve already gutted or cleaned up over 200 homes,” he said. By the end of the week, that number would increase to over 400.

A member of the church who was impressed by the results of his pastor’s mission donated $100,000.

“Buy whatever you need to keep helping these people,” he said. Pastor Jacob leveraged that by purchasing every de-humidifier and industrial box fan he could find. Impressed with the practical use of dough and growing scope of the mission, the same member donated another fifty grand. For the rest of the week, our work crews left a de-humidifier and huge box fan in every house we worked in, essential to dry out the premises and prevent mold from forming. Never heard a word about a charge for any of it.

Monday morning, before we dispersed into small work groups, Pastor Jacob asked us to join hands then delivered a moving prayer acknowledging what we are doing and the people for whom we are doing it. He finished with a sentiment other pastors and crew leaders echoed at the end of every day’s work for the rest of the week: that our lives would be spiritually nourished for giving our time and energy into this humanitarian volunteer work. Oh, yes.

Other than the videos on the church’s web site, Pastor Jacob kept a low profile, well under local radar. As far as he was concerned, the actions spoke for themselves. His flood relief update vimeo on August 24 illustrated how his flock responded to the challenge.

I never felt better while working so hard in my life. I was doing something that was important to me, felt good about it, my church-going co-workers felt good about it, and for all I know, Jesus was pretty proud about us being his hands and feet, too.

 

Church lobby filled with tools and materials for gutting homes in Lafayette parish...Pastor Jacob was ready for the business of restoration and hope.

 

A member of Our Savior's Church donated $150,000 that paid for de-humidifiers and huge box fans, critical for drying out homes after they'd been gutted.

   

The last time volunteers will sit down all day; crew chiefs and crews review the spread sheets that identify locations of homes and what needs to be done in each.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Louisiana Flood of 2016: Follow Your Heart

August 31, 2016

Lafayette was hurting. Much of it and the smaller cities and towns all the way to Baton Rouge had been ravaged by a region wrecker named “The Flood of 2016.” I’ve spent some of the best days of my life in Lafayette. To think that the homes of some of the friendliest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met might have been ruined sickened me.  

These are the kinds of people who drop everything to pitch in when a friend, even a stranger, needs a hand. After efforts got underway to rescue and find shelter and food for tens of thousands whose homes were flooded, I spent several days trying to digest the extent of the damage. It was overwhelming.

Donating was an option. Showing up was better. This is the kind of thing that you don’t really think about, just a feeling in your gut that says, Get Down There.

Wednesday August 17.  After hours of scouring the internet, I find a link to a non-denominational church involved in flood recovery in Lafayette. I call, ask a young lady manning the phones if they can use a ‘skilled grunt laborer.”

“We started gutting houses last week. We meet Monday to Saturday every morning at 9 AM, break into work crews, each with a crew chief. After the meeting, crews head for job sites. We try to do two or three houses a day depending on how much damage they’ve had. We’ve got tools, protective masks, power vacs, wheelbarrows and plenty of water. Someone will bring the crew lunch every day. We work until about 3 PM. Some homes don’t have electricity so we want to have plenty of light to work with.  We’re making and delivering food every day to people who’ve lost everything, you can take a job that suits you. We’d love to have you join us.”

Thursday August 18. I call my AAA agent to rent a car.

Friday August 19, a call back from AAA. “Paul, all the cars down there are either underwater or unaccounted for or taken.”

The number for the Hertz counter at the Lafayette Regional Airport is in my phone. I call.

“Hello, I’m flying in tomorrow afternoon, I’ve volunteered to spend a week gutting houses with Our Savior’s Church. The woman I usually work with at Hertz is Della.”

“Well, guess who this is? Paul, I can’t promise you anything. Come to the counter when you arrive, I’ll see what we can do, no promises.” That's Della!

Saturday August 18,  6 PM at the Hertz counter in the airport. Good sign. I recognize Margaret, another woman I’ve worked with there.

“We’ve got a car for you!” Margaret says with a big smile on her face. “Della told me you were heading down here. Thank you for coming from Boston to help out.”

Margaret gives me a great rate for the VW Jetta and sends me off.

I’m two for two in small miracles. The first is finding a link (out of scores of possibilities online) to Our Savior’s Church, a perfect place for me to work.

The second, the rental car, without which, well, I don’t have to explain that one, do I?

By the time I was driving to my good friends’ home in Lafayette, I knew I was where I wanted to be.

Let’s just say that their offer to take me in for the next eight days was what the Cajuns in southwest Louisiana call lagniappe (an extra gift) that topped off the first two little miracles.

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

A common scene all around Lafayette, LA after the flood.

Two blocks from my hosts' home in Lafayette: every house on the street was flooded. The homes were built close to a "coulee" ( a drainage canal dug to channel rain water to pumping stations). 

There are approximately 1,400 miles of City-Parish roadside open ditches (500 miles along side city streets and 900 miles along side parish roads) in Lafayette. All of them were overwhelmed and over-topped in the deluge.

Fortunately, my hosts' home is far enough away from a nearby coulee so it did not suffer flood damage. But they did lay sand bags in a susceptible area in their back yard and dug a French drain around the perimeter of the foundation. Both ideas prevented water from seeping over the foundation slab and into the house.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Louisiana Flood of 2016: Historic, Unprecedented, Catastrophic

August 29, 2016

The Flood of 2016 (photo of Lafayette, LA, from the air August 20, 2016)

I returned last night after a week volunteering with Our Savior's Church, a non-denominational church in Lafayette, LA, gutting houses damaged by what is now called The Flood of 2016. Areas of some parishes (counties) are still under water.

Chances are you don’t know much about this under-reported disaster.

What happened?

• From August 11 to August 13 a massive weather system dropped the equivalent of 7.1trillion gallons of water over Louisiana from Baton Rouge to Lafayette.
• Over 146,000 homes were damaged or ruined.
• At least 30,000 people were rescued from cars and homes by local law enforcement and volunteers (informally known as the Cajun Navy) manning boats over the flooded areas.
• More than 11,000 were forced into state-operated shelters.
• In one of the 20 parishes (counties) affected, it is estimated that 75% of homes were “a total loss”.
• Thirteen died in the flooding.
• 1,400 pets have since been rescued from the deluge
• Because many of the areas that flooded were not in "high flood risk areas", the majority of homeowners affected by the flood did not have flood insurance.
• As of August 19, losses were estimated at $20.7 billion

Virtually every aspect of life in 20 parishes has been affected: agriculture, schools, police and fire departments, commerce and businesses, roads and highways, public transit, hospitals, government offices and services. Thousands are hurting, displaced, have no place to live, and still in shock.

Why did I go?   

Lafayette is one of the most unique cultural areas I've experienced. I love to dance. The music is exceptionally diverse and exceptionally well-played by musicians who, for the most part, were born and raised here. The grub is a foodie's dream. For a dancer, Lafayette and surrounding cities and towns are paradise.

But what sets it apart from anywhere else I've ever visited is the people who live here. They are friendly, outgoing, proud of their heritage, and over the eight years I've visited, have made a Yankee like me feel welcome, introduced me to their friends, and invited me to their barbecues. That's just the way they are.

They may not share the same politics with each other or me, but when someone needs help, they show up.

I wanted to give something back to this special place and these special people that have given me so much.

As I worked with crews from Our Savior Church, I saw the faces of men and women whose material lives are now on the roadside in front of their homes in a mountainous pile of debris dragged outside their gutted homes.

Time is of the essence. Mold is the enemy. When moisture remains inside a home, mold begins growing within 24-48 hours. When our crew chiefs detected water/moisture in or behind sheet rock, insulation, ceiling and floor moldings, floor coverings, wall coverings, furniture, kitchen cabinets and counters, and bathroom vanities, we tore them out.

The week I worked was the last one in which we could enter with only an N-95 approved face-mask that filters out mold spores. The home we gutted on Thursday and Friday August 25, 26 had visible mold growing inside. Our crew chief said homes that had not been gutted and aired out would be overcome by mold and have to be quarantined. Work done after that needs to be done by people wearing Hazmat suits and respirators.

As for me, considering I found a link to Our Savior's Church in Lafayette after searching for hours online, and that it offered me a perfect opportunity to volunteer with them,  it’s probably not an exaggeration to say there were a few small miracles involved. This church was one of the best organized, well-led organizations leading the charge to support an entire parish in crisis. I’ll get to that in the next post.

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, August 5, 2016

Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written but for some reason, never posted!

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, August 5, 2016

With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest, August 5-7. 2016

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.

The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Along with their own catalog, every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dance halls from Frenchmen Street to out-of-the-way places all over town.

1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderfully tapas of traditional songs.

"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.

"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing with a gentle sexy roll to it. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.

"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.

Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.

A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.

About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html

1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.

"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.

"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and peals of trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed.

After a brief pause, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.” Kurt was dehydrated, we are urged to keep ourselves hydrated.

2:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band

“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.

Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”\

When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious, sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.

3 PM Bill Summers and the Jazz Salsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro-Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.

4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!

If Odetta sang this kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.

“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was - along comes "When Things Go Wrong It Hurts Me Too" recorded in 1940. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.

Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."

Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs, solos, and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.

5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

 

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul Rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade - one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. Complaining about the heat would be downright un-New Orleanian...that's only for tourists

Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.

Can you imagine this?  A brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion. The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end. Musicians have a language all their own, including sign language.

6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band


Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.

Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?

Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Louis' favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.

This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.

“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.

Wonders never cease around here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Summer in New Orleans: Flash Floods, Thunder and Lightning

Thursday August 4, 2016
Inside Deja Vu Bar and Grill at the corner of Dauphine and Conti when all hell breaks loose from on high.

3 PM Fabulous mid-afternoon breakfast at Deja Vu Bar and Grill just finishing when a crack of serious thunder shook the place...sounded like a ton of ice cubes heaved into a humongous empty oil drum. I was the only one that flinched. The regulars at the bar kept on their chatter as the sky blackened and rain fell in torrents. Zigzaggy bolts of lightning followed by foundation-shuddering thunder commenced like a furious parade from on high. 

Within 45 minutes the street flooded then drained as the storm spent itself. People on the street scrambled for cover or ducked under storefront entryways to keep from getting soaked, which would have happened in five seconds flat. My cell phone buzzed with an ominous weather alert, later I learned a tornado funnel was sighted over the city. This is normal New Orleans summer weather these days.

Lightning, thunder, then rain cascades in sheets.

Traffic comes to a standstill...

 
as streets flood.

  
After thirty minutes of steady downpours, the rain abates to enough for pedestrians to make a break for it.

These two New Orleanians saw me taking photos from the window in Deja Vu where I just finished eating. Their response is pure New Orleans.

Funnel cloud over New Orleans...page 1 Metro section of The New Orleans Advocate, August 4, 2016.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Candlelight Lounge: The Denver Jazz Club Youth All-Stars Meet the Tremé Brass Band

The Candlelight Lounge, Leona Grandison, Proprietor.
925 North Robertson Street
New Orleans, LA
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
9:30 PM

I was flabbergasted. The high school kids have never played the tunes they are playing right now with the Tremé Brass Band... and here they are playing the daylights out of them. As it turns out, the kids and the band are all talking the same language.

The Denver Jazz Club Youth All-Stars From Centennial, Colorado were pumped. On their one week tour, they’ve played on a riverboat, at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street, The Bombay Club in the French Quarter, and at the Café Beignet on Bourbon Street. I watch them shake off performance nerves and let it all hang out as they absorb the infectious seamless creativity of the veterans around them.

Dr. Ed Cannava, their director/manager, sits at the bar clapping time, nodding, smiling like a proud papa as his kids hold their own with the regulars as they dig into songs that his All Stars have never played before.

Benny Jones, Sr. leader and founder of the Tremé Brass Band, has a vague recollection that they got connected on Facebook.  The Tremé Brass Band plays a regular gig here Wednesday nights. It’s 90 degrees outside and the humidity is thicker than the cigarette smoke outside the front door. A box fan stirs the hothouse air inside. Pretty soon the place will get hotter and no one will give a damn.

What gives?

At the end of the first set, Jon Gross, tuba player with the Tremé Brass Band, explains what I’ve just witnessed.

“The kids (All Stars) practiced the first four songs as part of the repertoire they would play tonight. The rest of the songs were from the Tremé band repertoire.”

Fine, but I’m asking Jon how can these kids sound so great, playing ensemble and solos with vigor, style, and exuberance back and forth with one of the best brass bands on the planet.

“Music is like a language,” Jon says. “I was trained in classical music, learned to read it and interpret it. But when I began playing this kind of music I had to learn to listen.  It’s like a dialogue and works out best when everyone has a say.”

With the kids playing the front line and the Tremé band behind them, the set opens with the All Stars playing “Panama,” published in 1912 and played by everyone from Kid Ory to contemporary brass bands. “Happy Feet Blues,” written in 1989 by Wynton Marsalis, is followed by “Bourbon Street Parade,” made famous by New Orleans drummer Paul Barbarin in 1955, and “Sweet Georgia Brown,” first recorded in 1925, all up-tempo and razzmatazz. A perfect example of the range of brass band repertoire.

Tremé tenor saxophone player John Gilbert and trumpeter Mario Abney are in the front line trading solos with the All Stars with Tremé’s bass drum, tuba, and two snare drums right behind them.

I am witnessing a great conversation.

Here we have amateurs and professionals, Creoles and high school kids, making a fabulous New Orleans racket…joyful, upbeat, creative, insanely happy-making, mood enhancing and, when you think about it, and interactive form of meditation an old-time religion. There is absolutely nothing else like it on this good earth.

Just look at the smiles on these kids' faces after they dig down and wail out solos that pour everything they learned in the classroom, combine it with their own chops and quite possibly pieces of their souls that have never been tapped and now find release in this ramshackle bar in the back reaches of the Tremé neighborhood.

Leader Benny Jones, Sr., who turns 74 this week, is one of the founders of the Rebirth Brass Band and a distinguished member of several others. Benny is an unassuming and proud man, born and raised a few streets away, and one of the few precious living links remaining between the rich musical culture of the Tremé and New Orleans itself.

To have these high school kids sweat and play with Benny should sear into their memory where this music came from, who it came from, and the sometimes dark history in which it was created and now continues to flourish.

“Listen to birds,” Jon Gross tells me. “They have a language, they’re all different and they understand each other…this music is like that.”

Tonight is a perfect example and a lesson for me in how to listen to some of the most spirited conversations in the music universe.

+++++++
The Denver Jazz Club Youth All-Stars
Ellington Jenkins - clarinet
Alex Preston - tenor sax
Brent Ingle - trumpet
Gabby Aragon - trombone
Mika Smith - banjo
Ben Thompson - accordion (usually plays piano)
Director/Manager Dr. Ed Cannava says all the members sing except for Alex the saxophone player.

Tremé Brass Band tonight
Benny Jones, Sr. – snare drum
Anthony Bennett – bass
Aron Lambert – snare
John Gilbert – tenor sax
Mario Abney – trumpet
James Williams – trumpet
Jon Gross – tuba/sousaphone

First set list
“Panama,” published in 1912 and played by everyone from Kid Ory to contemporary brass bands.
“Happy Feet Blues,” written in 1989 by Wynton Marsalis
“Bourbon Street Parade,” made famous by New Orleans drummer Paul Barbarin in 1955 – a staple of New Orleans musical repertoire of all kinds of bands.
“Sweet Georgia Brown,” first recorded in 1925

“My Bucket Has a Hole In It”, which may go all the way back to Buddy Bolden around 1900 and made popular by Hank Williams in 1949 - interesting that Williams probably learned the song from a black street singer who taught him to play guitar.

“Bourbon Street Parade” composed by Paul Barbarin in 1955.

I couldn’t identify the rest of the set titles. I only know that they levitated the place.

 

   

Tremé sax player John Gilbert and trumpeter Mario Abney play in the front line with the All Stars.
  

Benny Jones, Sr. directs solos for "My Bucket Has A Hole In It" ..the ensemble figures it all out after that.

 
John Gilbert sings vocals on "Bourbon Street Parade" and the All-Stars put their chops on parade.

 

Tremé back line of snare, tuba, bass drum and Benny Jones, Sr. on snare keep perfect time all night long.

 
Dr. Ed Cannava loves what he's seeing; the All-Stars dig into every solo they get.

One big time brass band finale...

 
rocks The Candlelight Lounge.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Candlelight Lounge: College All Stars Meet the Treme Brass Band

The Candlelight Lounge, Leona Grandison, Proprietor
925 North Robertson Street
New Orleans, LA
August 3, 2016

The Denver Jazz Club College All Stars meet founder and leader Benny Jones, Sr, and the Treme Brass Band at the iconic Candlelight Lounge. This is the absolute hightlight of the young musicians' two week tour of the South. As you see, they really got into it. Details to follow.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Deja Vu Bar and Grill: Local Patrons, Local Flavor

Deja Vu Bar and Grill
400 Dauphine Street at the corner of Conti
New Orleans, LA 70112

August 3, 2015, 7:30 PM

What a find! A fabulous dive bar, neighborhood hangout, and food emporium that serves comfort food any damn time you feel like it. The concierge at my hotel across the street hesitated to tell me about it. Other places she recommended nearby have fancier décor, more lavish menus, and prices to match. I made a beeline for the place.

It’s not glitzy. The paint around the front door is worn thin, the brass door plate is in need of polish but once you get inside, you’re in a genuine piece of the French Quarter.  The jukebox bounces between funk, rock, ballads, some decent rap and a tad of classic country. The rest of the soundscape is filled with hearty laughter by a couple of guys at the bar and three women and a man having an animated talk about the travails of the day over their drinks. Couples in the booths, dressed casually T-shirts and shorts, act like they’ve been here before.

A bunch of sturdy red straight back chairs and tan and black topped tables for two and four fill the center, three fire engine red booths line the other wall. Framed posters of Louis Armstrong, Al Hirt and Fats Domino cover the walls. The place is totally unpretentious. It could be a neighborhood diner and watering hole anywhere. If you look hard enough, there are handfuls of these small hangouts all over the French Quarter.

 “You doin’ OK, hon?” the tall waitress with the tattooed arms asks me as I check the menu, which I think tops out around $15.

My $8.99 bowl of seafood gumbo, served with a little island of rice in the center and a hunk of French bread, had just the right pinch of cayenne and pepper, and is loaded with shrimp, shreds of crab and crawfish and just enough okra to give it a velvety consistency.

The Deja Vu Bar and Grill is open 24 hours a day. It still bears some of the easy going attitude of one of its first iterations as a store front in the red light district in the 1850s. Honestly, I’ve walked right by that place dozens of time in previous visits. Now I’m hooked - and on the lookout for other gems like it. And I’ll be back.

 

Photos taken next day, August 4, 2016, make the place look less gritty but the local vibe is the same, welcoming and way down to earth - by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Satchmo Summerfest, New Orleans, August 2016 Preview

Satchmo Summerfest
Jackson Square
New Orleans
Thursday, August 5-Sunday August 7, 2016
http://fqfi.org/satchmo

The annual Satchmo Summerfest is a four-day celebration of the life and music of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1901-1971), the favorite son of his hometown New Orleans.  As far as I’m concerned, there ain’t no better place to spend the first week in August. Louis, with his inventive solos and then his trademark gravely voice, began making his mark in the 1920s and remained a beloved icon until the 1960s.

No need to look for headliners with national name recognition at this festival. There are scores of fabulous musicians in this town that can play the daylights out of the Armstrong catalogue and other music by composers and musicians that he inspired, everything from brass bands to jazz ensembles to soloists playing with a trio or quartet. I doubt there’s such a deep well of musical talent anywhere else in the world.

New Orleans is considered to be the cradle of Jazz but it’s a pretty big cradle. Back in the 1950s, black singers and bands began performing the kinds of music (called ‘race music’) that became the foundation of a huge chunk of American pop music embraced by white America beginning in the 1950s and still resonates today, but I digress.

The Armstrong catalogue is deep. If you want to make this a learning adventure or take a break from the music and dance tents, there are seminars given by a host of some of his most distinguished biographers and record producers. The fact that they’re held in air-conditioned comfort a few steps away is certainly a draw. I mean, we’re talkin’ New Orleans in deep summer when temps in the 80s are considered cool. I won’t even bring up the subject of humidity but the quality of music just neutralizes all of that.

Vendors sell food and drink, at really decent prices, that are staples of New Orleans life. This year’s Summerfest has moved from the old U. S. Mint to Jackson Square. I can’t wait to hear the bells in the Saint Louis Cathedral at the edge of the square while listening to the music, sort of like Louis is chiming in from his perch in his bandstand in heaven. Lord have mercy.

The event in 2001 began as a salute tribute to the centenary of Armstrong’s birth. My first visit was in 2010...wouldn't think of spending the first week in August anywhere else.

Satchmo Summerfest 2016

Satchmo Summerfest August 2016 Preview

 

Satchmo Summerfest
Jackson Square
New Orleans
Thursday, August 5-Sunday August 7, 2016
http://fqfi.org/satchmo

The annual Satchmo Summerfest is a four-day celebration of the life and music of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1901-1971), the favorite son of his hometown New Orleans.  As far as I’m concerned, there ain’t no better place to spend the first week in August. Louis, with his inventive solos and then his trademark gravely voice, began making his mark in the 1920s and remained a beloved icon until the 1960s.

No need to look for headliners with national name recognition at this festival. There are scores of fabulous musicians in this town that can play the daylights out of the Armstrong catalogue and other music by composers and musicians that he inspired, everything from brass bands to jazz ensembles to soloists playing with a trio or quartet. I doubt there’s such a deep well of musical talent anywhere else in the world.

New Orleans is considered to be the cradle of Jazz but it’s a pretty big cradle. Back in the 1950s, black singers and bands began performing the kinds of music (called ‘race music’) that became the foundation of a huge chunk of American pop music embraced by white America beginning in the 1950s and still resonates today, but I digress.

The Armstrong catalogue is deep. If you want to make this a learning adventure or take a break from the music and dance tents, there are seminars given by a host of some of his most distinguished biographers and record producers. The fact that they’re held in air-conditioned comfort a few steps away is certainly a draw. I mean, we’re talkin’ New Orleans in deep summer when temps in the 80s are considered cool. I won’t even bring up the subject of humidity but the quality of music just neutralizes all of that.

Vendors sell food and drink, at really decent prices, that are staples of New Orleans life. This year’s Summerfest has moved from the old U. S. Mint to Jackson Square. I can’t wait to hear the bells in the Saint Louis Cathedral at the edge of the square while listening to the music, sort of like Louis is chiming in from his perch in his bandstand in heaven. Lord have mercy.

The event in 2001 began as a salute tribute to the centenary of Armstrong’s birth. My first visit was in 2010...wouldn't think of spending the first week in August anywhere else.

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written in 2016 but for some reason, never posted!

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.

The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dancehalls from Frenchmen Street two out-of-the-way places all over town.

1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderful tapas of traditional songs.

"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue
Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.

"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.
"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.

Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.

A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.

About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html

1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.

"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.

"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and pealsof trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed. Later, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.”

2:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band

“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.

Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”
When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.

3 PM Bill Summers and the JazzSalsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro- Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.

4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!

If Odetta Sang is kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.

“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.

Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."

Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs solos and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VJzHT9nuk

5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

 

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade and one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. A given in New Orleans is you just never hear them complaining about the heat.

Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.

Can you imagine a brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion– The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end.

6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band


Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.

Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?
Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Lewis favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.

This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.
“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.

Wonders never cease around here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written in 2016 but for some reason, never posted!

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.

The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dancehalls from Frenchmen Street two out-of-the-way places all over town.

1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderfully tapas of traditional songs.

"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue
Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.

"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.
"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.

Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.

A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.

About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html

1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.

"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.

"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and pealsof trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed. Later, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.”

2:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band

“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.

Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”
When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.

3 PM Bill Summers and the JazzSalsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro- Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.

4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!

If Odetta Sang is kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.

“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.

Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."

Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs solos and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VJzHT9nuk

5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

 

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade and one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. A given in New Orleans is you just never hear them complaining about the heat.

Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.

Can you imagine a brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion– The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end.

6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band


Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.

Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?
Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Lewis favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.

This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.
“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.

Wonders never cease around here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Mardi Gras 2016: The Tee Mamou Iota, Louisiana Mardi Gras

Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Iota, LA

Drop the area of Iota’s downtown into your standard USA shopping mall and it will rattle around like a BB in a barrel. Throw in its 1483 inhabitants and that mall would swallow them up as easily as the whale gulped Jonah. On Mardi Gras day, however, the steam of three hundred years of Acadian/French culture makes the place explode like a kernel of corn.

This is Louisiana, of course there is music and food involved.  A big time Cajun or zydeco band plays on a raised dance stage set up smack in the middle of Duson Avenue, the main street that divides Iota in two. Dancers from near and far have highlighted this on their calendars and arrive at 10 AM (yes) to start their day. They’re more than happy to drive an hour from Lafayette to party (free) on the sturdy stage with the plywood floor that undulates gently under the rhythmic pounding of feet.  

The Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras is about much more than music and dancing. It’s the annual re-baptism of the little town into its history and culture. The rowdy courir de Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is a day of revelry that precedes Ash Wednesday and the next 40 days of restraints associated with Lent in the Roman Catholic calendar.

Centuries ago, French peasants would dress in colorful costumes, wear masks and conical hats (capuchons) to disguise themselves on this day, and roam (“courir”) to homes of landowners to beg for food, often entertaining them and playing pranks. A prize catch (literally) would be a chicken that would be used to make a communal gumbo for a feast at the end of the day.

Today, men have been at it since 7 AM. Instead of riding by horse, they scour the nearby countryside on trucks on a route planned in advance. Homeowners and farmers are ready for their visitors who might be offered a beer but have to work hard to corral a floppy flying chicken. By the time they return, men hoist chickens as prizes. Tomorrow they may hoist aspirin for a hangover.

Most people think the day is done when at 3 PM the trucks loaded with whooping and hollering costumed revelers roll into town on the special flatbeds made for just this purpose. Escorted by police cars with sirens blaring, this is a spectacle to behold. VIDEO1   VIDEO2   VIDEO3

Little boys and girls riding in pickup trucks throw candy into the crowd along a 300-yard stretch of the street. After off loading from the trucks, first the children then the adults take to the stage to sing the Mardi Gras song (in Cajun French), a perennial ritual that winds down Mardi Gras. No marching bands, no floats with beads being thrown to spectators, just history, straight up.

This is when the heartbeat of Iota takes over. Spectacle coalesces into community as the men and women leave the stage. The courir participants are greeted with hugs, appreciation, and admiration. They’ve participated in a ritual that binds them to their town, their families, their friends, their culture…and are proud of it.

As I wander through the crowd, it seems like everyone in Iota is connected to someone who’s done a courir. A couple of “May I take your photo?” requests bring me face to face with Iota’s past, present, and future.

That’s when I met Katy Comeaux and Shea Lantz and his mom and dad, all from Iota.

“I’ve done the courir since I was 15, now I’m 23. ” Katy says. “There is a woman’s courir on the Saturday before Mardi Gras every year. This year 88 of us went from house to house begging for food and chasing chickens for the community gumbo like the men did today. My family is really involved, some of the men are captains in the courir.”

“My mother made my hat and mask and clothes for this,” she says, “hand made costumes are a requirement.”

At least three generations take part in the ritual. “There’s a children’s courir every Sunday before Mardi Gras. They stay close to town, beg for food and chase chickens, just like the men and women.”

Shea Lantz, now 26, has been in the courir since he was 15 years old. “My dad has been running the courir for 40 years, more consecutive years than any one else. He and I are the only two allowed to sit on the roof of the wagon in the parade.” (photo under paragraph 5)  Troy Lantz is a town councilman and Iota's police commissioner. Shea, a former EMT,  just finished his internship and has his mortician's license.

Shea and Troy point out how they constructed their capuchins (conical hats) with crawfish trap mesh. “It doesn’t collapse like cardboard when it gets wet,” Shea’s dad Troy says. I marvel at the hand stitching of the inner headband. The mask's mouthpieces and eye openings are made from shaker screen, an extremely durable oil field mesh screen used to separate mud and small particles from fluids in the drilling process. The use of these screens is creativity with a distinct Louisiana twist.

Troy's mask fuses family history with Cajun customs. It was sewn by his late cousin 35 years ago. “Hand-sewing the hats and masks is 100% tradition,” Shea says with pride. Shea later tells me that until three years ago he and his dad wore Mardi Gras suits made by the same cousin 35 years ago. "The material became so brittle that we didn't want to ruin them."

“We welcome people who come here to watch us carry on our tradition,” Shea says. "It helps our little festival keep going."

"Where are you from?" they ask. And wonder why I come to this small place for this big holiday.

“Everything in this custom feels so authentic. I can see and feel the pride you have in re-enacting the courir and the way you’re passing it on to the next generations. It’s really unusual to see an entire town connect like this, it just doesn’t happen everywhere,” I say. "And the people, like you and your dad, are friendly."

The earliest arriving Cajuns endured great hardships. They survived by staying connected with their language and customs. They have a fierce determination to carry them on. Find out for yourself. Head for Iota next year on Mardi Gras day.

For most Americans, their heritage is a gauzy memory set in scrapbooks and family mementos. In Iota it’s a tradition that grows as vigorously as the rice fields in the nearby prairies.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Louisiana Mardi Gras 2016: Moments At Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras

Tee Mamou Iota Mardi Gras
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Iota, LA

 

Head down Duson Avenue, camp chairs and supplies in  tow, toward the dance stage, already rockin' at 10:30 AM, in the shadow of the giant water tower in Iota, LA. Host Bernard Ussher says only three other places celebrate Mardi Gras on the scale of southwest Louisiana -  Mobile, Alabama,  Rio de Janeiro, and Venice. 


Buy tickets at a buck apiece for hot fresh beignets, syrup pies, home made cookies and cracklins, The beignets are to die for. Cracklins are an acquired taste. The syrup pies have been sold out for an hour...got to get here earlier next year!

Stroll down Duson Avenue to the American Legion Hall a hundred yards from the dance stage, listen to teenagers play Cajun music under watchful eyes of veterans, line up for red beans and rice, shrimp etoufée or jambalaya cooked by local residents. This is the best place for lunch today. Local people come here for lunch and the day's entertainment. Don't miss it.


Norma from New Orleans practically danced herself from the door to the other end of the room when she entered. A Cajun waltz can do that to you...had to dance with her; chat with two sisters and friends from DeRidder, Louisiana. They are amazed I have come here to this little town in the middle of nowhere for Mardi Gras.

You never know who'll sit next to your crowd. "I sang for six years as the featured vocalist with Buddy Morrow’s Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, lots of time in Boston," says Leif Pedersen after learning I'm from Boston. "I'll be showing my Swamp Kids children's books at the Festival Acadiens et Creole with Candace Alexander of Fleur de Lis art. Children finish their Mardi Gras song.

The children have just finished their Mardi Gras song. Some adults have come on stage to join them as the band plays on. I'm right behind them to take some photos. "Would you like to dance?" I look down to see a little girl with her hands extended, I reach down and we have a lovely miniature Cajun waltz. It feels like I'm connecting with generations of her forbears. "What's your name?" "Emily" "Thank you, Emily!" She gives me a hug. I kneel beside her for a photo. I am at big sap. I have had my my share of fabulous dances with the big girls, the women. This little waltz with Emily tops the list.

Showing off prize catches; hugs for a job well done; photo opp...

teenagers barrage me with questions after I take their picture – Are we going to be on TV? Are you a reporter? Did you come in a bus? (I hadn't realized it but there are actually bus tours that have taken tourists to this event). They see a guy with a camera and a notebook and, even though he is wearing a green wig and tattered Mardi Gras pants, they think they might have a moment on the evening news. Do you all go to school here? Yes. Do you like to dance? Yes! With lots of giggles

Dig into your pockets, pardner, Mardi Gras's not over; time to reflect and relax.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. Thanks to Bernard Ussher for photo of me and Emily

 

 

A Huge Loss for The Camellia Grill and New Orleans: Marvin Day

February 11, 2016

Talk to anyone who ever ate at The Camellia Grill on South Carrolton in New Orleans and the first thing they'll remember is Marvin. New Orleans is known for all kinds of fabulous food but seldom does the memory of person serving it eclipse the wonder of the food. Marvin "Word" Day unexpectedly passed away at the young age of 50. Tributes and a deep sense of loss from all over the country are finding their way to this pink-walled retro restaurant.

http://www.nola.com/dining/index.ssf/2016/02/marvin_camellia_grill_dies.html

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/features/14847889-63/at-the-camellia-grill-tributes-to-a-beloved-waiter-are-on-the-walls-on-the-menu-and-summed-up-with-o

My 2009 post about The Camellia Grill features Marvin with all the charm, levity, and humanity that he served up every day.

Feel free to add your own comment about Marvin or this post.

Online version at http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2009/11/the-camellia-grill-sunny-side-up-in-new-orleans.html

++++++++

The Camellia Grill
626 S Carrollton Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70118-1008
Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sun 8:00 AM - 11:00 PM
Fri, Sat 8:00 AM - 1:00 PM

The food's a good reason to eat here but the real star of the Camellia Grill is the floorshow.

This retro little diner with the Greek Revival architecture could be a museum piece. The pink walls were stylish around 1950. The two connected horseshoe-shaped granite counters and 28 bolted to the floor green vinyl topped stools haven’t budged since the place opened in 1946.

A mean customer named Katrina closed it down on August 29, 2005. Its reopening in 2007 was a sign that New Orleans was bent, not broken. Next to the Saints winning a Super Bowl, this was one of the best stories in town. It’s a destination for locals and tourists alike.

 The favorites - giant fluffy omelets, cheeseburgers, “freezes,” pecan waffles and pies live up to their accolades. What you don’t expect is that your sense of well-being will be fed while you eat.

 After a few minutes, you realize you’re in an interactive environment - not the techie zeroes and ones kind, but the give and take human kind that crackles with repartee between the counter men and customers, the occasional song, and as much banter as you can muster to match the delightful goings on behind the counter.

This morning, Marvin, a slightly built man with the playfulness of a modern day Flip Wilson, is running the show on our side of the Grill. A walking bundle of energy, his wit is sharp as one of the knives next to the grill. He occupies the place as thoroughly as the aromas of ham, toast, and bacon.

 Right now he’s running a blue-plate streak of antic, imaginative riffs with a string of customers. Things get quiet for a minute then and a syncopated bom ba da bum bum, bum-bum clatter of a metal spatula on one of the hot grills freezes forks halfway to the customers’ mouths.
 
There’s Marvin shouting “Aaattentionnnn, everyone!” He leans back theatrically and cups his hands around his mouth for effect. “We have twooooo birthday people in the house…” Seconds later, he leads the 28 bemused patrons in a hearty rendition of Happy Birthday.
 
One of the six cooks, who’s been efficiently ham and egging, seemingly oblivious to Marvin’s antics, turns from the grill and shouts, “Now you've got to dance,” and damn if this middle-aged guy doesn't get up from his ancient green topped stools and twirl his wife around the narrow space in front of the counter. Cheers erupt. This is New Orleans in full.
 
There’s Marvin observing to no one in particular, “Monday's the most important day in the week. Get Monday off to a good start and you're gonna have a good week!” Lord knows, he might say the same thing on Tuesday. With his cadenced elocution he might as well be in a pulpit. You’re listening to the gospel according to St. Marvin.
 
After a few minutes, you feel your core beginning to lighten up, your shoulders let go of that tension you didn't realize was there, and you begin to giggle, for god’s sake.
 
There are no order pads. Marvin, without looking back at the grill, shouts commands in Camellia lingo. Four cooks in front of a long line of fryers, grills, toasters, blenders, pots and pans are whipping up eggs, frying sausage, pouring pancakes and blending freezes. There’s hardly a clue they’ve heard him but everyone’s order appears within five minutes.
 
"I think everyone needs a little magic in their lives," Marvin shouts to a Tulane student sitting with her boyfriend.
 
"That's why we came here!" she fires back. I’m telling you, before long nearly every customer becomes a bit player in this daytime soap opera known as Camellia Grill.
 
"What's goin' ooonnnnn… as Marvin Gaye used to say," Marvin croons to a new customer. Camellia’s is serving soul food, all right. More than your appetite is being fed.
 
“What's the yellow liquid in that container,” I inquire.

"Sweet-as-silk, richly-satisfying buttahh," Marvin declares. "Be careful. We had to call the butter police about a week ago, told 'em to butterize a customer who used too much of it at (he uses his finger to point as he counts aloud one two three four five six seven eight nine stools from where I sit) stool number nine. They started butterizing the guy at stool ten. We had to save him and point out the guy who was sitting where you are at stool nine."
 

All this repartee gets perfect strangers feeling like they’re in an exclusive club. That includes the father and mother from New Jersey visiting their daughter sitting next to us.

Ashley and her Tulane roommates were shopping nearby a while ago and stumbled upon the Camellia. Dazzled by the floor show that came with the food, they decided they'd found the place to eat till they graduate. And the perfect place to take visiting parents. By the time the bill is delivered, we’ve shared tips on other great places to eat.

 Tell me the name of another place where you can come in and ask Marvin or one of his cohorts to charge your cell phone and have them do it and sing you a song when you're about to check out. (I saw this, really.)
 
"This is the place," Marvin playfully sings out, " we give you the love rub, we give your tummy a love rub." Psyches, too, Marvin.
 
The  pink walls are hung with black and white photos of the grill's history. Most of them are of the waiters, past and present, who’ve worked the Camellia Grill for decades. Marvin’s been there since 1992.
 
Later, a native New Orleanian tells us that Henry Thervalon worked at Camellia Grill for nearly fifty years. His son was a superior court judge, but Henry was better known. "When they sold T-shirts, they charged $10 more when Henry signed one," he said. 

I tell you, I would have paid five bucks more for my pecan waffle and my companion’s out of this world fluffy sausage and cheese omelet if Marvin had signed them. 

There are mountains of great food served around this town. There’s only one place you leave with a lighter heart and an ample serving of what makes New Orleans one of the special places on this good earth. Its name is the Camellia Grill. 

 We're in New Orleans for two more days. Guess where we're having breakfast tomorrow.Marvin Day at right in group photos above

Photos by  Paul Tamburello

Louisiana Mardi Gras 2016: Sabra and The Get Rights, Chas Justus and The Jury

Blue Moon Saloon
215 East Convent Street
Lafayette, LA
http://bluemoonpresents.com/web/

Artmosphere Bistro
902 Johnson Street
Lafayette, LA
http://www.artmosphere.co

Lafayette, Louisiana is the most prolific incubator of singers, songwriters, and musical inspiration west of the Mississippi. Most of the musicians have been raised in towns dotting the prairie. Some, like Sabra Guzman, have been drawn here by the creative energy of the music scene, a benign black hole drawing talented musicians from afar.

Groups form, add members, trade members, morph into new groups, honor Cajun and zydeco genres, bend them into new directions, listen to each other’s music and cross polinate to invent hybrids never heard before. From honky tonk, country, old fashioned Cajun and La La (zydeco) to rap or rock tinged songs, they revel in making music that’s made to inspire dancers to invent right along with them.

Sabra (Guzman) and the Get Rights are a perfect example. Tonight’s five piece band are crackerjack musicians familiar with the honky tonk and western swing catalog from the good ol’ days of Patsy Cline, Bob Wills, right down to Dolly Parton and a killer cover of Buck Owens “Cryin’ Time” by fiddler David Greeley.

Sabra was deep into the country music of Appalachia when she felt the tug of Lafayette. She fronts the band with an easy blend of folksiness and a robust voice to interpret the ballads and two step numbers. With influences like Louvin Brothers and Mother Maybelle Carter, you know she can croon and belt it out.

 "What do you guys want...fast or slow?" she asks at one point. The fasts win, Sabra turns to the band, picks a song and off they go, shaking it up on the Moon's living room-sized dance floor.

Tonight’s personnel is awesomely talented. Roger Cash, mandolin; Joel Savoy, guitar; Joe Vidrine, standup bass; Danny Devilliers, drums; David Greeley, fiddle; and Sabra Guzman, guitar and lead vocal.

Mardi Gras is in full swing in Lafayette, LA. The Blue Moon Saloon is a cool place in more ways than one. The back room opens to an outdoor patio. The band is playing with their coats on, many of the dancers are layered up too. Who cares? It’s Mardi Gras week. Lafayette is filling up with dancers from afar who genuflect at the various stages around town playing fabulous music.

After Sabra and The Get Rights finish their set, a bunch of dancers head for the Artmosphere Bistro. Just in case you haven't had your fill of country swing, Chas Justus and The Jury is holding court in this bar/dance hall/ social mecca a three minute walk away. In between the classic swing, they put down some great slow bluesy numbers, with Chris Miller’s wailing tenor sax encouraging intimate encounters on the dance floor. The dance floor is packed. No need to wear your coat inside here.

Chas Justus - Guitar & Vox; Paul Anastasio - Fiddle; Chris Miller - Tenor Sax & Clarinet; Daniel Coolik - Electric Mandolin & Fiddle; Eric Frey - Bass & Vox; Glenn Fields - Drums & Vox

Megan Brown, Kelli Jones Savoy, Cindy McDermott, lovely harmonies

Versatile and creative, every member of this band and the Get Rights plays with other groups around town. Playing different genres or the same genres with different musicians gives each a chance to groove in different ways. For listeners or dancers, this is a definition of heaven.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

6th Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance at Slim's Yi Ki Ki

December 29, 2015
6th Annual Roy Carrier Tribute Dance
Slim’s Yi Ki Ki Lounge
Route 182
Opelousas, LA

One of the most well-worn dance floors in southwest Louisiana is marinated in sweat and beer. A non-smoking dance hall now, years of cigarette smoking cling to every wall and corner right up to the ceiling of Slim's Yi Ki Ki in Opelousas, LA.

This is not a fancy place. In a picture dictionary, a picture of Slim’s would be beside the word “Roadhouse.” The heavy steel and plastic chairs and tables scattered around the dance floor are indestructible. I imagine that when love and jealousy collided on the dance floor the chairs have been used as truncheons and the tables have been used to hide under.

It’s fitting that the annual New Year Roy Carrier Tribute Dance takes place here, where zydeco has reigned supreme for decades. Roy, born in 1947, was a hard driving accordion player and offshore oil-rig worker. His Offshore Lounge in Lawtell, LA, was a smaller version of Slim’s, a place where Roy, who died in 2010, played for fun and was a mentor to a handful of musicians in the Zydeco universe today. Geno Delafose, the son of Roy's friend John Delafose, had his first paying gig at Roy's Offshore Lounge.

Roy purchased the Offshore Lounge in 1981. It was one of the places where traditional Creole La La music morphed into what's called zydeco today. There is no richer place on earth where so many cultures have produced so much traditional ethnic music that has become recognizable American music than southwest Louisiana.

His sons Troy and Chubby, who front Dikki Du and the Zydeco Crew and The Chubby Carrier Swamp Bayou Band, respectively, carry on the Carrier tradition. Several of their children and nephews are the next generation of Carriers that will honor their grandfather well into this century.

Since 2009, Troy Carrier of Opelousas and Dick Brainard of Portland, OR have teamed up to organize the dance, the proceeds being held to renovate Roy’s Offshore Lounge in Lawtell.

This year, Dexter Ardoin (3:00), Dikki Du (4:45), Leroy Thomas (6:15), & Jeffery Broussard (8:00) entertain. Each of them know that Roy Carrier paved the way for zydeco dancing.

Lafayette is ground zero for Zydeco dancers three times a year. Mardi Gras, the Festival Acadiens et Creole, and New Year festivities. “Where did you all come from?” Chubby asks from the stage. Responses ring out: New York, Pittsburgh, San Diego, New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, Delaware, Portland, San Francisco, Atlanta, Harrisburg plus one woman from France and another from Ireland... and others I can't remember!

The crowd is a little more sparse this year than in past years but the energy level is high octane. The Carrier family sisters, wives, nieces and friends, cooked up a great Louisiana feed of gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, fried chicken… the kind of stick-to-your-ribs food to keep dancers on the floor for hours.
 
Dikki Du and Chubby joined forces to sing, “Roy Left Lawtell, And He Ain’t Comin’ Back.” Old Roy’s spirit was never more alive and well.

Slim's Yi Ki Ki, Opelousas, LA; Dick Brainard welcomes one and all...

I missed Dexter Ardoin's set but Dikki Du, aka Troy Carrier, saluted his father Roy again and again in his set.  "One of my father’s sayings was, 'If you can't do right all the time, do right some of the time,' ” Troy says to introduce a song.

The dance floor was shakin' all day. VIDEO

A rare sighting: Troy and Chubby Carrier together on stage...Papa Roy woulda loved this! They joined forces to  sing,"He left Lawtell, and He Ain't Comin' Back". In the midst of this foot stomper, it felt like Roy was keeping time from above. A version by Chubby in 2013 "Found My Woman Doin' The Zydeco with Another Man"

Carrier nephew Mike Broussard on the accordion, Troy on the drums...is there any instrument the Carriers don't play?

 

Dancers from from all over the USA are here; this sample is from New Orleans, Lafayette, Atlanta, Harrisburg, Opelousas and ...?

Leroy Thomas rocked the house; Leroy told me his father Leo Thomas was recently honored at a Pioneers of Zydeco party, showed me a photo of 78 year-old Leo accepting the award in a brilliant ruby colored suit... that man knows how to dress!

Kensey Carrier, Elaine Carrier (Roy's daughter), Laura Carrier; Carrier family members with Marie Carrier, Roy's wife and Troy's step mother at right. The Carrier's cooked up a storm of jambalaya, gumbo, red beans and rice to fuel the grateful dance crowd.

Dick Brainard and friend; Dick and Troy Carrier have organized the event since 2009

Jeffery Broussard closes the set with as much energy as the afternoon began five hours ago. Cover of "Isn't She Wonderful" and Broussard's drummer belts out "Why You Gonna Make Me Cry"

NOTE: SLIM'S YI KI KI CLOSED AFTER THIS GIG, WHAT A GREAT WAY FOR THIS ICONIC BAR TO END ON. THE ROY CARRIER TRIBUTE WILL BE HELD AT THE FEED & SEED IN LAFAYETTE ON DECEMBER 27, 2016

One last look behind the bar at Slim's


Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Allen Toussaint: A Tribute To An Iconic Singer/Songwriter

November 11, 2015

Allen Toussaint, age 77, died yesterday in Spain where he was touring, still entertaining audiences the world over.

The New Orleans Advocate obituary/remembrance by music critic Keith Spera gives you an idea of Tossaint's place in that city's musical hierarchy. If you're unfamiliar with the man's name, it's a safe bet that you've heard his music covered by singers for decades. His songs have been performed by dozens of New Orleans most celebrated artists and covered by musicians from Paul McCartney to Elvis Costello.

A towering figure in New Orleans style music since the 1960s, Toussaint played at Scullers Jazz Club on the Boston/Cambridge, MA, border in 2009. The way the audience responded, you'd a thought you were in a club on Frenchman Street in New Orleans, not the more staid confines of a Boston jazz club. As a salute and farewell, I re-post two reviews of that performance. I imagine he was having the same effect on an audience in Spain the night he died of a heart attack after a performance.

Re-post story 1 below: http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2009/08/allen-toussaint.html

Allen Toussaint: New Orleans Roots, American Music
Scullers Jazz Club
400 Soldiers Field Rd
Boston, MA 02134
August 20, 2009

Allen Toussaint. You may not know his name. You know his music. Music that was born in New Orleans and grew up in America.

Perhaps you’ve heard of The Pointer Sisters, Boz Scaggs, The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Manhattan Transfer, Ringo Starr, Gladys Knight and the Pips, B.J. Thomas, Otis Redding, Little Feat, Three Dog Night, Jose Feliciano, Dr. John, Robert Palmer, Sam and Dave, Johnny Winter, The Judds, Lee Dorsey, Al Hirt, Aaron Neville, The Band, Warren Zevon, Irma Thomas, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant? They’ve recorded his songs.

Toussaint produced and arranged for Paul Simon, Patty LaBelle, Paul McCartney and Wings. Joe Cocker and Maria Muldaur traveled to New Orleans to record in Allen Toussaint’s studio.

I knew Toussaint’s name was long associated with New Orleans. I had no idea his musical footprint was so deep.

Last Thursday, Allen Toussaint graced Scullers Jazz Club with a performance that transcended music. A package of dignity, genius, and humanity, he can light up a place as small as Scullers or as big as a few acres at The New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Lights dim. To the stage walks a man in a dark suit, purple and black striped shirt, lavender and rose paisley tie and pocket square. Right away you see the man with the nappy grey hair and salt and pepper mustache isn’t afraid to mix and match in fashion or music.

“All my life I’ve waited for the red light to come on so I could play my music, ” he says after bantering with the audience over our Haavaad Yaad accents. He hasn’t been on stage for more than three minutes and he has us in the palms of his strong key-striding hands.

Toussaint opens with “There’s A Party Goin’ On” and by the time he gets to “You got nothin’ to lose but the blues…” his fingers have pounded or feathered practically every one of the 88 keys on the baby grand.

Toward the end of the song, Toussaint stops, grins impishly at the audience, and says “Your turn…” The surprised silence that ensued for three seconds was the last time this audience would be caught flat eared. “Well,” he says before the next song, “I heard a lot of silence out there when in was your turn.”

He launches into a medley of his songs beginning with “What’s Her Name.” Every time he pauses and nods our way, the audience roars, “What’s her name, what’s her name!” I’m not talking about a subdued, let’s be cool about this, effort, either. This was as unbuttoned Boston as I’ve ever heard. Toussaint kept it up during “Mother In Law” and ‘Working In A Coal Mine” and the Boomer to Slacker-aged salt and pepper audience nailed every chorus.

First, I had no idea he’d penned those songs (and most of the ones that followed) and second, I was blown away by the crowds unfettered collaboration. I mean you practically have to pay a Boston audience to participate in music of any sort.

Maybe part of it is that rollicking sound that’s been called a rhythm and blues rumba crossed with a second line parade. New Orleans’ French, Spanish, Cajun, Caribbean, African heritage is concentrated in Toussaint’s music and he spins it out in his musical centrifuge.

When Toussaint invites tenor saxman Amadee Castenell, a Katrina displaced New Orleans friend who now resides on the North Shore, to the stage for a soulful medley of  “Saint James Infirmary" (Anonymous), “Just Can’t Take It" (Toussaint), “Dirty Water" (Toussaint), and  “Riding On The City of New Orleans" (Steve Goodman), Castanell proves his New Orleans credentials are for real.

“Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky From Now On” (Toussaint) a swampy boogie rhythm ‘n bluesy song with lots of pedal morphed into quotes from Edelweiss, Chopin, a Christmas carol, show tunes, pop songs of his own, Grieg, to “Chattanooga Choo Choo’, “Tea for Two”, Jelly Roll Morton quotes, Irish jigs, Polish polkas -yes, polkas as in “Roll Out The Barrel”! - , “My Foolish Heart” with a New Orleans rumba tempo and back again to “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky From Now On” all so fast your head hurts from trying to keep up and your jaw is slack with awe and your brain is slapping its knee in joy.

After that, Toussaint settles everybody down again with “So Far Away From Home,” Paul Simon's song built on the architecture of J. S. Bach.

Toussaint often pairs “We Are America, (unknown composer)” a history lesson wrapped in a ballad, with his original of “Yes We Can Can,” (and I couldn’t help thinking of Obama’s campaign slogan) and he does tonight. The piano bench may as well have been a pulpit. The man is preaching what he believes.

When he gets to “The Sweet Touch Of Love,” music used in hot Axe Body Wash commercials, you realize how deeply his music has penetrated the culture.

Toussaint’s “Get Out Of My Life Woman,” a hit by Lee Dorsey in 1966, re-recorded more times than any of his other songs, is an up-tempo song with echoes of Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Professor Longhair and the steeped New Orleans tradition. Toussaint’s thin singing voice has never been his calling card but it delivers his songs with infectious energy.

What happened next is spellbinding, and it isn’t even music. Toussaint quietly talks us through a reverie, a tone poem, about childhood trips in which his father packs the family in a 1936 Buick for a trip to visit relatives far far out into the Louisiana countryside.

Toussaint remembers his father saying, “You need to know where you came from so you know where you’re going.” His richly detailed, extended description of the trip is filled with a rootsy sense of place and of belonging.

I’ll bet Toussaint has played softly on the keys and retold this story a thousand times and I cant imagine it feeling any more authentic, heartfelt, and spontaneous than it does right now. By the time he sets to playing “Southern Nights,” the song it inspired, my companion is in tears.

If you’re old enough, you might remember Joel Chandler’s "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" which Walt Disney made into the film “Song Of The South.” Toussaint’s final song, “Southern Nights,” is a true Song of the South.

The audience is on its feet cheering. Toussaint shakes hands with patrons in the first row and doesn’t head back to the piano. Sustained cheering could not possibly have produced an encore that could top "Southern Nights". Allen Toussaint slowly exits the room, shaking hands all the way out.

One vignette: at the merchandise table, Mr. Toussaint, still perspiring, stood up from his chair every time a new person came up to ask him to sign an album or CD.

Like I said, dignity, genius, and humanity.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Re-post story 2: http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2009/08/toussaints-southern-nights-tone-poem.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Toussaint

 

 

Allen Toussaint: A Tribute To An Iconic Singer/Songwriter Part 2

November 11, 2015

Allen Toussaint, age 77, died yesterday in Spain where he was touring, still entertaining audiences the world over.

The New Orleans Advocate obituary/remembrance by music critic Keith Spera gives you an idea of Tossaint's place in that city's musical hierarchy. If you're unfamiliar with the man's name, it's a safe bet that you've heard his music covered by singers for decades. His songs have been performed by dozens of New Orleans most celebrated artists and covered by musicians from Paul McCartney to Elvis Costello.

A towering figure in New Orleans style music since the 1960s, Toussaint played at Scullers Jazz Club in Cambridre, MA, in 2009. The way the audience responded, you'd a thought you were in a club on Frenchman Street in New Orleans, not the more staid confines of a Cambridge jazz club. As a salute and farewell, I re-post two reviews of that performance. I imagine he was having the same effect on an audience in Spain the night he died of a heart attack after a performance.

Re-post: Toussaint's Southern Nights Tone Poem

Toussaint's Southern Nights Tone Poem
Scullers Jazz Club
400 Soldiers Field Rd
Boston, MA 02134-1805
August 20, 2009

At the close of the raucous “Get Out Of My Life Woman,” approaching what I thought was the end of the set, Allen Toussaint began feathering the keys and talking softy. The room’s energy, having pegged the needle from the crowd’s lusty participation with the choruses of the last song, was brimming with energy.

Toussaint’s tone was reflective. It settled the room down as a parent would calm an excited child at the end of a long day. It took a moment to register that this was not Toussaint tossing off some patter. He’d begun to tell a story in which he spun specific childhood memories into an extended reverie, mesmerizing, deeply personal, about family trips deep into Louisiana sharecropper countryside.

What followed was what amounted to a tone poem filled with  love and a rootsy sense of place and belonging. I'll bet Toussaint has retold this story a thousand times and yet I cannot imagine it feeling any more heartfelt, spontaneous, and veined with pride as it was at that moment.  It really deserves to share a space on a future CD.

I began to scribble as fast as I could. I couldn’t write fast enough to get all the details but here’s what I got. Close your eyes and imagine this being told to you by a gentle man softly fingering the keys on a piano while unfolding a story that goes something like this…

“Sunday mornings my father
whose name was Clarence
would pack all of us
my mother Naomi Neville
my sister Joyce and my brother Benson
into the car
a 1935 Buick
'You need to know where you came from
so you know where you’re going…'
he would say to us

we drove on and on
past old weathered gray houses
unpainted, never new
close together
and as we drove farther and farther
into the country
the houses were farther and farther
apart

it seemed like every house had a porch
that seemed to wrap all around
each one
and people were sitting on the porches
sometimes waving
as we drove by

we saw cows, horses, chickens…
(he pauses)
with all their parts intact
wells with water in them
and frogs
and we’d finally get to our porch
all the uncles and aunties there
and cousins running out to greet us
and I’d listen to the language
of the old folks
the patois, the Creole so thick
I could barely understand it
(Toussaint mimicks some Creole conversation)
but
if I saw an eyebrow raise up
it meant I better listen because
it was going to be important

aunties on the porch
always wearing aprons
even to church
would pick you up and
hug you to their bosoms
and some of them were
quite well endowed
and I’d struggle to breathe
in the soft mass
with the scent of
talcum powder
maybe that’s where the expression
love you to death comes from
(Toussaint chuckles)

after eating we’d all sit on the front porch
the old folks told old stories
an auntie would say
I know that old John
died on his mule
but I heard him jabberin’ and cursin’ out in the dark last night
and an uncle would say
you must be hearin things
and she’d say well he say he gonna pay a visit to you next week
so you find out for youself
and over in the corner by the left side of the door
was the matriarch in her  chair
never talkin

once in a while she’d get real still
and we’d get to worrying
then slowly her arm would move and her hand would reach down
to the floor and she’d pick up a small bottle in a sack
bring it to her lips and slowly put it down
and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief

and I knew that I was in the right place
and everything important
in the world was right there
on that front porch
if there was something wrong with something
there was someone there who could fix it

it was dark out there at night
no light no electricity no gas to light anything inside or outside
and quiet
so very quiet outside
pitch black
but I knew that nothing would ever happen to me on that porch

when it was time to drive back home
I sat in the back seat
looking up at the only light
light that was coming down from the moon
as it filtered through the trees
that lined the road

the moonlight turned the leaves silver
and that’s where the next song comes from….”

He began to sing and play “Southern Nights.” I don’t think anyone in the audience could help but think of the ties that bind us, or we wish would bind us, to our kith and kin.

Southern Nights lyrics (written by Allen Toussaint in 1975, it sold over one million copies when country-pop singer Glenn Campbell covered it in 1977)

Southern nights
have you ever felt a southern night?
Free as a breeze
not to mention the trees
Whistling tunes that you know and love so.

Southern nights
just as good even when closed your eyes.
I apologize to anyone who can truly say
That he has found a better way

Southern skies
have you ever noticed southern skies?
It's precious beauty lies just beyond the eye.
It goes running through your soul
Like the stories told of old
Old man
he and his dog that walked the old land
Ev'ry flower touched his cold hand.
As he slowly walked by
weeping willows
Would cry for joy
Joy

Feel so good
feel so good
it's frigth'ning.
Wish I could,
stop this world from fighting.
La da da da da da la da da da da da da da da

Mysteries
like this and many others in the trees
Blow in the night
in the southern skies.

Southern nights
they feel so good it's fright'ning . . .
Wish I could stop this world from fighting
La da da da da da la da da da da da
da da da da da da da da da da da

Louisiana Flood of 2016: August 23 - Our Savior's Church Volunteer Crews Gut One Home, One Garage, Cleanup One Home in Abbeville

Our Savior's Church Volunteer Crews Mucking Out And Cleaning Up Homes

Stories, Text, Captions coming later this week of January 15, 2017

 Tuesday morning August 23, 2016, Abbeville, LA

 

Tuesday afternoon

Late Tuesday afternoon

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

New Orleans: Birthdays, Dollars, and Pins

August 1, 2015

7 PM at the Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans

So a man orders a crepe at the "Crêpes  La Cart" vendor booth…

And as he’s eating it nearby, the young man who made it runs over to him waving a dollar bill in his hand.

As I am that man, I wonder, did I overpay for my crepe, did I leave money on the counter? A New Orleans moment ensues.

“Pin this on your shirt!” he says. I look at him as if he’s inhaled too much powdered sugar making those crepes.

“What…” I stammer.

“When I asked you if you were having a good time, you said that it was your birthday and you were lovin’it. In New Orleans, you pin a dollar on your shirt to show it’s your birthday.  People will wish you Happy Birthday and even pin another dollar on your shirt.”

Uncertain but game, I wedged it between the buttons of my sweaty polo shirt. Sure enough, a few minutes later, some one shouted Happy Birthday! And so did Henry, the young security guard at the gate when I left a few minutes later.

When I stopped into Envie Espresso Bar and Café to buy a desperately needed cup of coffee, the young lady at the counter says, “It’s your birthday?” reaches into her tip jar and adds a dollar bill to my collection.

By now, I wish I’d known about this custom a few years ago when I came to my first Satchmo Summerfest, created in 2001 to commemorate New Orleans’ own Louis Armstrong’s 100th birthday on August 4th.

Coffee in hand, a few blocks down Decatur, a fellow sitting behind a typewriter shouts “Happy Birthday!” and apologizes that he doesn’t have a single. A bunch of kids on a street corner cheers my birthday a block later.

Jack at the typewriter says the rule is you can wear your dollars until you go to sleep but I want my 24 hours worth. Since I was launched into dollar birthday at 7 PM, I decide to wear my dollars until 7 PM the next day.

Sure enough, I get a Happy Birthday! and a dollar from this family when I started off the next day dancing to Jamil Sharif at the Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage.

This city, full of contradictions and charm, is special. Guess where I’m going to be next August 1st. And I’m going to bring a bunch of safety pins.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. and friends

 

New Orleans' Birthday Dollar Story

August 1, 2015

7 PM at the Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans

So a man orders a crepe at the "Crêpes  La Cart" vendor booth…

And as he’s eating it nearby, the young man who made it runs over to him waving a dollar bill in his hand.

As I am that man, I wonder, did I overpay for my crepe, did I leave money on the counter? A New Orleans moment ensues.

“Pin this on your shirt!” he says. I look at him as if he’s inhaled too much powdered sugar making those crepes.

“What…” I stammer.

“When I asked you if you were having a good time, you said that it was your birthday and you were lovin’it. In New Orleans, you pin a dollar on your shirt to show it’s your birthday.  People will wish you Happy Birthday and even pin another dollar on your shirt.”

Uncertain but game, I wedged it between the buttons of my sweaty polo shirt. Sure enough, a few minutes later, some one shouted Happy Birthday! And so did Henry, the young security guard at the gate when I left a few minutes later.

When I stopped into Envie Espresso Bar and Café to buy a desperately needed cup of coffee, the young lady at the counter says, “It’s your birthday?” reaches into her tip jar and adds a dollar bill to my collection.

By now, I wish I’d known about this custom a few years ago when I came to my first Satchmo Summerfest, created in 2001 to commemorate New Orleans’ own Louis Armstrong’s 100th birthday on August 4th.

Coffee in hand, a few blocks down Decatur, a fellow sitting behind a typewriter shouts “Happy Birthday!” and apologizes that he doesn’t have a single. A bunch of kids on a street corner cheers my birthday a block later.

Jack at the typewriter says the rule is you can wear your dollars until you go to sleep but I want my 24 hours worth. Since I was launched into dollar birthday at 7 PM, I decide to wear my dollars until 7 PM the next day.

Sure enough, I get a Happy Birthday! and a dollar from this family when I started off the next day dancing to Jamil Sharif at the Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage.

This city, full of contradictions and charm, is special. Guess where I’m going to be next August 1st. And I’m going to bring a bunch of safety pins.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. and friends

 

Satchmo Summerfest: Saturday, August 1. 2015: Jewel Brown

Jewel Brown was so special she deserves a page of her own. I'm copying the account of her show from the Saturday's music post.

Satchmo Summerfest
On the grounds of The Old U.S. Mint
400 Esplanade Street
New Orleans, LA
July 31-August 2, 2015

Saturday, August 1, 2015

This is one of the highlights of the weekend... Jewel Brown, former singer in Armstrong's band, salutes Satchmo.

5:00 PM – 6:15 PM
The Ella and Louis Tribute Band With Special Guest Jewel Brown, Cornet Chop Suey Stage

Every so often, if you're lucky, you get to experience a music performance that is transcendent. I had no idea who Jewel Brown was but by the time she got through performing I realized I was in the presence of a legend.

Arm in arm with a musician, she needed assistance as she hobbled to the chair that had been hastily set up for her center stage. In silence, hundreds of people held their breaths. Was this woman up to performing? The moment she took the microphone in hand, she flashed a megawatt smile and proceeded to tear the place apart with the supreme confidence of a woman who is feeling the Satchmo spirit... and totally in charge of the band and the audience in front of her.

My guess, confirmed later, is that Brown is on the far side of 70. In the next 45 minutes, she became stunningly revivified. Her songs were more like salvos, launched with pipes that could command entire armies. Her front line, Wendell Brunios, trumpet, Roderick Paulin, saxophone/clarinet, and Alonzo Bowen, trombone, are New Orleans All-Stars. No matter, they were fans as well, playing their damnedest to keep up with the powerhouse in the purple tunic seated beside them.

In true New Orleans tradition, they responded to her vocals on songs, mugged with her, did some call and response with great humor, and, truth be told, respect for the woman’s talent and standing in the annals of New Orleans music history. The only person who knew what was going to be sung was Ms. Brown, and I wonder if she even knew what she would sing once she hit the stage. Having performed with Armstrong's band in the U.S. and 4 continents from 1961 to 1968, her repertoire is as wide and sweeping as the Mississippi River.

On came  an upbeat version of  "Goody-Goody," then a deliciously torchy rendition of "The St. Louis Blues," followed by an up-tempo "All of Me."

Appearing in front of this huge hometown crowd and singing songs that made her famous was flint and tinder to Brown, who got more energized with each song. Nearly the entire crowd was a generation or two younger than Brown. They were  not cheering because she was doing an oldies show. They were cheering because this woman was bringing more sheer firepower to the stage that just about any other performer in the festival.

Her introduction to "Bill Bailey" was the most tantalizingly brilliant I've ever heard. There she sat for 30 seconds using her breath close to the microphone to make sibilant whooshes and clucks with her tongue, a mischievous grin on her face as she watched her front line trying to guess where the hell she was taking them. When she softly uttered part of the first line of the song, you could literally see the signs of recognition on the front line’s faces, tickled themselves at the utter finesse of the intro. “The whole set was totally impromptu," Wendell Brunios said when I asked him after the show.

Nearing the end of the show, Brown salutes departed masters Bobby Blue Bland and B.B. King, saying how important it is to carry on the legacy of men like these and Louis Armstrong. Brown launches into "Every Day I Have the Blues" a classic B.B. King. By now we are in the midst of a New Orleans moment with Ms. Brown belting out a water into wine version that rocked and wailed.

She is sassy, has terrific timing, an inventive sense of phrasing, and a command of her audience – all hallmarks of the great Satchmo. From the first notes she put us and those grown men playing beside her in the palm of her hand and transfixed us with her charisma, chops and catalog of New Orleans traditional jazz, blues, rhythm & blues and soul.

After she poured out the last notes, Ms. Brown rose from her chair, walked carefully but unassisted to the stage exit, turned back to the wildly cheering audience, and belted out one last chorus...with the timing of a born performer. Lazarus would have to take a back seat to this woman.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/article/Houston-singer-Jewel-Brown-revives-her-career-at-6163659.php

http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/jewelbrown

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Saturday, August 1. 2015

Satchmo Summerfest
On the grounds of The Old U.S. Mint
400 Esplanade Street
New Orleans, LA
July 31-August 2, 2015

The 15th Annual Satchmo Summerfest is a weekend of of music, food, and sypmposiums in honor of Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.  Twelve bands played under two pavilions each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Six symposiums were held each day in the air-conditioned comfort of the Old U.S.Mint on Esplanade Street at the edge of the French Quarter.

A few of Saturday's bands...August 1, 2015

12 PM – 1:15 PM
Steve Pistorius and the Southern Syncopaters,  Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage
http://www.offbeat.com/articles/steve-pistorius-french-quarter-fest-focus/

Pianist Steve Pistorius music favors early ragtime and his favorite composer is Jelly Roll Morton. Today he finds time to honor Satchmo, I wish I could remember the songs he covered! His band is an assemblage of local sidemen who either have their own bands or are regulars in several other bands. New Orleans is loaded with musicians who play in several bands.

12:15 PM – 1:30 PM  
Seva Venet and The Storyville Stringband at the Cornet Chop Suey Stage

Banjo player Seva Venet’s band covers "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," with a great swing groove. Toward the end of the set, Venet says, "We have ten more minutes so we’re going to play 'Give Me Five Minutes More'.” An audience member shouts, "So play a twice!"

The legendary New Orleanian Detroit Brooks on the guitar/banjo here and also with Donald Harrison last night and Steve  Pistorius earlier today. Banjo adds a distinct flavor to traditional New Orleans jazz.

Will Smith, trumpeter in Tremé Brass Band, tells me Venet arrived in New Orleans in 1999, learned the ropes with the late Tuba Fats, and teaches kids music in local schools. Some of New Orleans best musicians are regularly involved in  training the next generation. http://www.sevavenet.com/bio.htm

1:30 PM – 2:45 PM
Butch Thompson’s Goodtime Boys at the Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

Butch’s web site quotes Jelly Roll Morton: http://www.butchthompson.com
Jazz was born in New Orleans, Morton said, from a gumbo of "everything from blues to opera. Jazz music is to be played sweet, soft, plenty rhythm. When you have your plenty rhythm with your plenty swing, it becomes beautiful." Piano player Thompson and band then go on to prove it.

Thompson introduces "West End Blues" with veteran Clive Wilson on the trumpet.  It’s a re-creation of a Satchmo sound from one of his earliest recordings, a solo that in its spectacular virtuosity ushered in the role of solo playing in jazz bands.

Other songs include "Tailgate Ramble," a good old-fashioned New Orleans jazz number.
Piano player Butch Thompson introduces "The Pearls" a composition by Jelly Roll Morton, "a difficult piece because you have to play by feel, there are not a lot of notes" he says, then plays a piece with 1000 well put together notes, in a rambling Jelly Roll Morton style.

Next is "Tomcat Blues" with the orchestra. Quite a zippy number ending with a sparkling drum solo by the young Jason Marsalis. Next comes "Careless Love" with Thompson playing, introducing the song that was another Armstrong piece. I sidle out to the dance floor and freestyle. When you get the urge to dance in this town, no partner necessary. You just get out there and dance. It’s my birthday, partner or no, I'm dancin'.

1:45 PM – 3:00 PM

Jane Harvey Brown, Traditional Jazz Stars, Cornet Chop Suey Stage

http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/shop/compact-disc/jane-harvey-brown-the-trad-jazz-all-stars-live-from-new-orleans-at-the-old-mint/

Good ol’ fashioned New Orleans vocal stylings done with pizzazz.

"Frim Fram Sauce," "Sunny Side of the Street," “Basin Street Blues,” “Baby,Won’t You Please Come Home,” and a pleasing batch of swing numbers fill the set.

88 year old Lawrence Cotton, "one of several octogenarian musicians still playing in New Orleans," says Ms. Brown, is playing piano. The age span of musicians on any set today could be 50 years.

3:00 PM – 4:15 PM
Tremé Brass Band,  Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage
http://www.npr.org/2010/08/27/129452007/treme-brass-band-living-and-breathing-new-orleans

Tambourine Green; Terrance Taplin trombone; John Gross, tuba; Will Smith, trumpet; Benny Jones, Sr. ("The big boss with the hot sauce"), bass drum; Vernon Severin, snare drums; John Gilbert, tenor sax; Roger Lewis, baritone sax; Seve Venet, banjo


 
Above right, that's as big a smile as you'll ever see from band leader Benny Jones, Sr.!

What can you say about this iconic band. “Beloved” is the first word that comes to mind. Every square inch in  and around this tent is packed with handkerchief waving fans. There is a lot of love in this tent, the audience sending it to the stage and the band, feeling it , sends it right back. Tenor sax man John Gilbert introduces “The World Famous Tremé Brass Band” to a hail of cheers then kicks off the set with the classic "I Got a Big Fat Woman." Every person in the crowd knows the lyrics. And they know the drill. When a musician points at them to fill in a chorus, they lustily join in. New Orleanians are not shy. The music is as much theirs as the bands.

Many of the songs are medleys, start as one song then morph into others in the brass band style.  Uptempo "Hold That Tiger" becomes "Bill Bailey". Some songs "Land of Dreams" (up the Mississippi…) get played at a slow and sassy pace, almost dirge like. Then songs like "Basin Street Blues" And "Margie"  with a wicked trumpet solo by Will Smith delight listeners. By the time the band roars into Fats Domino’s "I'm Walking" the crowd explodes. The duels and duets between tenor sax John Gilbert and baritone sax Roger Lewis are epic and classic New Orleans magic, funny, playful, sassy, inventive, same with solos from Terrance Taplin, trombone. Will Smith, trumpet. John Gross, tuba. Vernon Severin, snare drums. Seve Venet, banjo, and a comic silent solo by shy founder Benny  Jones, Sr. Are you listening, Louis?

And no one's surprised when the band closes with "When the Saints Go Marching in" with MC for the day John Gilbert playfully singing "Mama don't allow no trumpet players here…" as a way introduce each band member by name and give them a parting shot at a blistering solo. The love is so thick under this tent that if you were to fall from its highest point it would take you 10 minutes too softly hit the ground.

5:00 PM – 6:15 PM
The Ella and Louis Tribute Band With Special Guest Jewel Brown.

Every so often, if you're lucky, you get to experience a music performance that is transcendent. I had no idea who Jewel Brown was but by the time she got through performing I realized I was in the presence of a legend.

Arm in arm with a musician, she needed assistance as she hobbled to the chair that had been hastily set up for her center stage. In silence, hundreds of people held their breaths. Was this woman up to performing? The moment she took the microphone in hand, she flashed a megawatt smile and proceeded to tear the place apart with the supreme confidence of a woman who is feeling the Satchmo spirit... and totally in charge of the band and the audience in front of her.

My guess is that Brown, confirmed later,  is on the far side of 70. In the next 45 minutes, she became stunningly revivified. Her songs were more like salvos, launched with pipes that could command entire armies. Her frontline, Wendell Brunios, trumpet, Roderick Paulin, saxophone/clarinet, and Lonzo Bowen, trombone, are New Orleans All-Stars. No matter, they were fans as well, playing their damnedest to keep up with the powerhouse in the purple dress seated beside them.

In true New Orleans tradition, they responded to her vocals on songs, mugged with her, did some call and response with great humor, and, truth be told, respect for the woman’s talent and standing in the annals of New Orleans music history. The only person who knew what was going to be sung was Ms. Brown, and I wonder if she even knew what she would sing  once she hit the stage. Having performed with Armstrong's band in the U.S. and 4 continents from 1961 to 1968, her repertoire is as wide and sweeping as the Mississippi River.

On came  an upbeat version of  "Goody-Goody," then a deliciously torchy rendition of "The St. Louis Blues," followed by an up-tempo "All of Me."

Appearing in front of this huge hometown crowd and singing songs that made her famous was flint and tinder to Brown, who got more energized with each song. Nearly the entire crowd was a generation or two younger than Brown. They were  not cheering because she was doing an oldies show. They were cheering because this woman was bringing more sheer firepower to the stage that just about any other performer in the festival.

Her introduction to "Bill Bailey" was the most tantalizingly brilliant I've ever heard. There she sat for 30 seconds using her breath close to the Mike to make sibilant whooshes and clucks with her tongue, a mischievous grin on her face as she watched her front line trying to guess where the hell she was taking them. When she softly uttered part of the first line of the song, you could literally see the signs of recognition on the front line’s faces, tickled themselves at the utter finesse of the intro. “The whole set was totally impromptu," Wendell Brunios said when I asked him at the show.

Nearing the end of the show, Brown salutes departed masters Bobby Blue Bland and B.B. King, saying how important it is to carry on the legacy of men like these and Louis Armstrong. Brown launches into "Every Day I Have the Blues" a classic B.B. King. By now we are in the midst of a New Orleans moment with Ms. Brown belting out a water into wine version that rocked and wailed.

She is sassy, has terrific timing, an inventive sense of phrasing, and a command of her audience – all hallmarks of the great Satchmo. From the first notes she put us and those grown men playing beside her in the palm of her hand and transfixed us with her charisma, chops and catalogue of New Orleans traditional jazz, blues, rhythm & blues and soul.  After she poured out the last notes, Ms. Brown rose from her chair, walked unassisted to the stage exit, turned back to the wildly cheering audience, and belted out  one last chorus and blinded us with her incandescent smile. Lazarus would have to take a back seat to this woman.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/article/Houston-singer-Jewel-Brown-revives-her-career-at-6163659.php

http://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/jewelbrown

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Satchmo Summerfest: Friday, July 31. 2015 - Donald Harrison

This band was so special it deserves a page of its own. I'm copying the account of it from the Friday's music post.

Satchmo Summerfest
On the grounds of The Old U.S. Mint
400 Esplanade Street
New Orleans, LA
July 31-August 2, 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015

7:45 PM – 9:00 PM Donald Harrison's All-Star Louis Armstrong Tribute, Cornet Chop Suey Stage

This is one of the highlights of the weekend... Donald Harrison's vision spans the past, the present, and the future of New Orleans jazz.

Donald Harrison is the quintessential New Orleans musician. Dynamic and creative, he honors and respects New Orleans music history and the men and women who forged it. Deeply involved in its present day iterations, he can range from swing, to bop, post-bop, modern, smooth, avant-garde. A Mardi Gras Indian to boot, he could probably lead a pretty rambunctious second line parade. Harrison carries the torch of New Orleans music and  is one of the most influential musicians actively involved in passing it on (although at 55, he’s in no hurry). His band tonight is Exhibit A.  Many of them are teenagers, all of them are under his tutelage.

A hard-working, intellectually curious, musically adventurous, unflaggingly energetic saxophone player, singer, storyteller, showman, a modern day Satchmo, he’s a perfect role model.

"We're going to do this the hard way," he says of the first number the band plays, "that's the only way we do things." Harrison dives into Scott Joplin's "Make-Believe Blues." What follows can only be described as watching history unfold. Trumpeter John Bradford is 18 years old. Standup bass player Max Moran is in his mid twenties. Trumpeter Christian Scott is barely 30. The teenage drummer is Harrison’s nephew. When one takes a solo, there’s their mentor standing next to him, listening intently, nodding, occasionally blowing a riff in his saxophone, a master class in motion. His gestures signal to them when their solos begin and when they end. He may be the alpha dog, but he is there to showcase the up and comers. The group is complete with veteran guitar/banjo player Detroit Brooks.

The next 75 minutes are a tribute to the depth of New Orleans jazz book and the dedication and white hot energy, a mix of improvisation and tradition, with which it is played at the highest level.

"King Oliver wrote hard music," Harrison says, citing the structure of the number his band will play, "High Society". Actually he and his band don't play anything easy all night long. It is astonishing that after listening to an entire afternoon of Louis Armstrong influenced music that this can seem the freshest, most inventive and expressive set  of the day. They may not play anything easy but they sure play it with conviction and make it sound easy.

During his nephew’s drum solo, Harrison stands right next to him, his body language and occasional grunts undoubtedly sparking energy to an already blazing bonfire. Every listener in the packed Cornet Chop Suey Stage feels there is something special going on here… And they're damn well is. We are watching the future of New Orleans jazz take shape before our eyes.

Harrison and band finish with an all-out version of “Eiko Eiko.” No one working, playing, or singing harder than the bandleader himself who finishes the song standing next to an upright percussion set pounding out a rhythm strong enough to get everyone of the people who've been listening to eight straight hours of music get up on their feet and shout for joy.

"When I tell them to jump 6 feet and they do, then I want them to jump 7 feet," he says about his students. Clearly, he holds the same standard for himself.

"See what happens when you take care of your kids," he says at the close of the set. Music in New Orleans shapes its culture. It also saves lives.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Names of Satchmo Summerfest stages: Armstrong loved food, often signed his letters "Red beans and ricely yours." He loved Chinese food. Once he hunted down the only Chinese restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya! http://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2011/08/04/138991954/red-beans-and-ricely-yours-the-culinary-habits-of-louis-armstrong 

Satchmo Summerfest: Friday, July 31. 2015

Satchmo Summerfest
On the grounds of The Old U.S. Mint
400 Esplanade Street
New Orleans, LA
July 31-August 2, 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015

The 15th Annual Satchmo Summerfest is a weekend of of music, food, and sypmposiums in honor of Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.  Twelve bands played under two pavilions each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Six symposiums were held each day in the air-conditioned comfort of the Old U.S.Mint on Esplanade Street at the edge of the French Quarter.

A few of Fridays bands...

1:45 PM – 3 PM  Sharon Martin, Cornet Chop Suey Stage (see note below about stage names)

New Orleans jazz singer Sharon Martin can sing signature Ellington/Strayhorn songs like“Take The A Train” and  have fun with the Armstrong Song Book and give it a bluesy or very swinging roll. Check this out to see this original stylist at work, and show you how Louis Armstrong's innovative "scat style singing" is alive and well in New Orleans  https://vimeo.com/123146875

3 PM – 4:15 PM The New Orleans Jazz Vipers. Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

Faithful interpreters of New Orleans jazz and Louis Armstrong's catalog. They play Armstrong’s "Sugar" and suggest finding the YouTube version of that song. Here is one version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQQ1MDXyNfE

This band really swings and, like many other bands on the bill, is made up of young and very talented musicians for this day dedicated to honoring the legacy of Louis Armstrong by playing their versions of his music or music that his music inspired. They're one of the only bands with no percussion section.

3:30 PM- 4:45 PM  Doreen’s Jazz - Doreen Ketchens,Chop Suey Stage

 
Doreen Ketchens is a renowned clarinet player, who plays regularly at the corner of Royal and St. Peter Streets in front of Rouse's Market and has played at a slightly more elevated location, Carnegie Hall. Her singing voice is singularly distinctive and her accent is a peculiar New Orleans variation which she employs with great flair. New Orleans...you can hear first rate music on the street corners of the French Quarter and around the edges of Jackson Square every day of the week.

4:30 PM – 5:45 PM Ellis Marsalis, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

The venerable piano player is still going strong.at 81. He’s not known for Dixieland or rhythm & blues but for his association with more modern musicians like Cannonball and Nat Adderly. The closest he gets to traditional New Orleans jazz was his playing with Al Hirt. Marsalis is backed by local musicians.In Marsalis' case, everyone will be younger, although on Saturday, an 88-year-old piano player will accompany Jane Harvey Brown's Trad All Stars.

Marsalis may be best known here as a teacher of musicians like Terrence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, Harry Connick, Jr., and Nicholas Payton. The tent is packed with people in lawn chairs or on blankets and the entire perimeter is lined two or three deep with people looking in and listening. If you’ve heard of Wynton, Branford, Delfeyo, or Jason Marsalis, you know the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

5 PM – 6:15 PM Leah Chase, Cornet  Chop Suey Stage

Big woman, big voice, New Orleans born, Juilliard and Loyola University trained,  like Satchmo, Leah Chase is as adept at communicating with her audience as connecting with her band. She sang scat infused jazz and slow down low down blues. High school senior John Michael Bradford played trumpet with several bands, fit right in soloing on "When You're Smilin'". Bradford is the product of one of the many free music programs offered to aspiring musicians, "that's the way New Orleans brings its musicians along," she says.
True enough, as nearly every band today is made of players in their 20s and 30s mostly and in the case of Donald Harrison who will play later, teenagers, who are studying with him.

6 PM – 7:15 PM Deacon John Moore, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

I catch the end of the set, the tent is packed, people three deep around the sides, the usual adulation for a New Orleans fave. “Do you know about this guy?” a fellow asks. “He’s been playing since the 60’s, he played at my high school prom in 1968 in Covington. And he plays mean lead guitar.” Next song, his last, he straps on a guitar kills it. When he does a ‘duck walk’ across the stage, the place explodes.  “He’s a sought after session guitar player, played with Alan Toussaint, Dr. John, and Ernie K. Doe. You’ve got to  come to the French Quarter Music Festival to hear more of these local bands. And come to Jazz Fest to hear local bands and big time name musicians at the Fairgrounds!” the man says.

I’m scribbling notes. “I’m a member of the Krewe of Thoth. About 1500 of us, founded  in 1949. We do charity work for children and the elderly and parade on the Sunday before Mardi Gras.” People here are natural boosters of their music. They’ve probably heard it since they were floating around in amniotic fluid.

Musicians are accessible at this small festival. They take time to talk with fans who, in this man's case, have been dancing to his music since the 1960s. In the 1950s, Deacon John Moore grew up listening to Bo Diddley, Etta James, Bill Doggett and Howlin' Wolf. Everyone in his family played music. He was a session player in the studio of recording pioneer Cosimo Metassa. Music drapes around the shoulders of places like New Orleans and southwest Louisiana like moss on live oak trees. Having made music since 1960, it feels like Moore is in the same category. In the last decade or two, Moore has been hired to play at weddings, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs and birthdays for men and women who first heard him play for their own special days from the 1960s onward.

6:30 PM – 7:30 PM James Andrews, Cornet Chop Suey Stage


New Orleans second line type music which is fun but not for partner dancing. New Orleanians prefer to freestyle to this kind of music. James Andrews does pour it on real good.

7:45 PM – 9:00 PM Donald Harrison's All-Star Louis Armstrong Tribute, Cornet Chop Suey Stage

This is one of the highlights of the weekend... this musician spans the past, the present, and the future of New Orleans jazz.

Donald Harrison is the quintessential New Orleans musician. Dynamic and creative, he honors and respects New Orleans music history and the men and women who forged it. Deeply involved in its present day iterations, he can range from swing, to bop, post-bop, modern, smooth, avant-garde. A Mardi Gras Indian to boot, he could probably lead a pretty rambunctious second line parade. Harrison carries the torch of New Orleans music and  is one of the most influential musicians actively involved in passing it on (although at 55, he’s in no hurry). His band tonight is Exhibit A.  Many of them are teenagers, all of them are under his tutelage.

A hard-working, intellectually curious, musically adventurous, unflaggingly energetic saxophone player, singer, storyteller, showman, a modern day Satchmo, he’s a perfect role model.

"We're going to do this the hard way," he says of the first number the band plays, "that's the only way we do things." Harrison dives into Scott Joplin's "Make-Believe Blues." What follows can only be described as watching history unfold. Trumpeter John Bradford is 18 years old. Standup bass player Max Moran is in his mid twenties. Trumpeter Christian Scott is barely 30. The teenage drummer is Harrison’s nephew. When one takes a solo, there’s their mentor standing next to him, listening intently, nodding, occasionally blowing a riff in his saxophone, a master class in motion. His gestures signal to them when their solos begin and when they end. He may be the alpha dog, but he is there to showcase the up and comers. The group is complete with veteran guitar/banjo player Detroit Brooks.

The next 75 minutes are a tribute to the depth of New Orleans jazz book and the dedication and white hot energy, a mix of improvisation and tradition, with which it is played at the highest level.

"King Oliver wrote hard music," Harrison says, citing the structure of the number his band will play, "High Society". Actually he and his band don't play anything easy all night long. It is astonishing that after listening to an entire afternoon of Louis Armstrong influenced music that this can seem the freshest, most inventive and expressive set  of the day. They may not play anything easy but they sure play it with conviction and make it sound easy.

During his nephew’s drum solo, Harrison stands right next to him, his body language and occasional grunts undoubtedly sparking energy to an already blazing bonfire. Every listener in the packed Cornet Chop Suey Stage feels there is something special going on here… And they're damn well is. We are watching the future of New Orleans jazz take shape before our eyes.

Harrison and band finish with an all-out version of “Eiko Eiko.” No one working, playing, or singing harder than the bandleader himself who finishes the song standing next to an upright percussion set pounding out enough rhythm strong enough to get everyone of the people who've been listening to eight straight hours of music get up on their feet and shout for joy.

"When I tell them to jump 6 feet and they do, that means I want them to do 7 feet."
Harrison closes by saying, "See what happens when you take care of your kids," he says at the close of the set. Music in New Orleans creates its culture. It also saves lives.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Names of Satchmo Summerfest stages: Armstrong loved food, often signed his letters "Red beans and ricely yours." He loved Chinese food. Once he hunted down the only Chinese restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya! http://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2011/08/04/138991954/red-beans-and-ricely-yours-the-culinary-habits-of-louis-armstrong

 

Satchmo Summerfest 2015: Me and Louis!

Satchmo Summerfest 2015: Me and Louis
http://www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/festivals/musicfestivals/satchmosummerfest.html

The northernmost outpost of the Caribbean, it’s own third world county, the land of dreams, New Orleans is all of those. With food from red beans and rice to five star cuisine, the jazz and its offshoots from the cradle in which they was born, it’s a city of contradictions. It’s high crime rate and pockets of poverty are counterbalanced with a generosity of spirit I’ve never seen in any other city.

Question - why would anyone travel to tropical New Orleans at the end of July when The Central Business District and the French Quarter hold the heat like a brick oven, you could fry an egg on car hoods and the humidity is great for growing tomatoes.

Answer – the 15th annual Satchmo Summerfest, three days of New Orleans style jazz by local singers, musicians who were weaned on the music of Louis Armstrong, who was born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901.

Photos, stories to come...too busy having a grand time in New Orleans to write!

Satchmo Summerfest 2015: The Skinny

Satchmo Summerfest 2015: The Skinny

What:
• 15th Anniversary Satchmo SummerFest, a 115th Birthday Party for Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong.
• Three days of traditional, contemporary and brass band music covering music popularized by Armstrong and contemporaries such as Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson, and Fats Waller and original compositions by presenting musicians.
• Symposiums focusing on different aspects Armstrong’s career
• Exhibitions in the U. S. Mint explaining Armstrong’s youth, ascent into popular culture.
• Food and drink from some of New Orleans favorite purveyors.

• When: July 31-August 2, 2015

• Where: The grounds of the Old U.S. Mint, 400 Esplanade Street, New Orleans
The Old  U. S. Mint:  blessedly air conditioned, bathrooms and drinking fountains inside, three floors containing Armstrong exhibits, a gift store, modern presentation room in which 6 symposiums focusing on different aspects of Armstrong’s career were offered each day.

• How: Festival set up: Two stages under pavilions on opposite sides of the U. S. Mint, each with a small portable dance floor in front of the stages and space for hundreds to sit in the shade (pretty good since the average temps were in the mid nineties each day). Great amplification set up loud enough to provide the necessary juice but well below the levels that crush your inner ear.

Fat Tuesday in Iota, Louisiana: Tips The Scale of Tradition

Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Iota, Louisiana

For the past 28 years, Iota becomes the little town that could every Mardi Gras day. The dust mote-sized town has a population (1458) smaller than that of your standard sized office tower. A good chunk of them are here along with tourists, dance vagabonds, and residents of nearby towns.  The a 300 yard stretch of the main street, Duson Avenue, is turned into a street fair with a raised dance floor being the jewel in the setting.

All the better to listen and dance to the bands playing Cajun music. More importantly, it’s the spot where men and boys sing the Mardi Gras song after returning from the countryside begging for food and making good-hearted mischief since a bit after daybreak. 

At mid afternoon, Mardi Gras wagons carry revelers in tattered wildly colored clothing, screen masks and conical capuchins (hats) that hide their identity. The masks and hats were important since this was the one day in centuries past that common folk in Europe could mix anonymously with upper classes and make fun of the nobles and bishops who lorded it over them for the other 364 says of the year.

Similar festivities are happening in nearly every town and city within a fifty-mile radius of Lafayette, Louisiana, where the population is still predominantly connected by blood and history to the Acadian French who emigrated here after being expelled from Canada in 1755 for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to the British monarch.

Mardi Gras is commercially oriented in some quarters but at heart, it’s Acadian heritage that’s being buffed up. There are few places in America that preserve cultural traditions as tenaciously and proudly as small towns and cities of southwest Louisiana.

Here they come down Duson Avenue, some still begging for coins and folding money.

Saluted like returning warriors, complete with chickens...

in a Mardi Gras pageant repeated in Iota for the past 28 years.

Young children get a taste of the "courir;" somehow a black baby pig has been commandeered during the day's begging for food.

Men and boys have left the wagons and get ready to swarm the stage to sing the traditional Mardi Gras song...

but not before one more round of begging...and showing off prize roosters.

One cupped hand and the other pointing to it, this mute communication says put something of value in my hand...

so a dad hoists his son up to put coins in the outstretched hand.

Dancing after singing the Mardi Gras song...

and relaxing and posing for photos...

and showing some love to this reporter!

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Iota, LA: Small Town, Big Time Mardi Gras Fun

Tee Mamou Mardi Gras Folklife Festival

American Legion Hall Iota, LA
104 Duson Avenue Iota, LA 70543

Iota is so small and out of the way that odds are that you’d never drive through it even by mistake.

Iota, Louisiana, Mardi Gras Day, “Fat Tuesday,” February 17, 2015

I am in the American Legion Hall listening to the plain, unvarnished, below-the-radar Cajun singing that assures that this kind of music isn’t going away anytime soon. The American Legion Hall looks like it’s been here since WWII. And aside from the dates on the plaques on the wall, there hasn’t been a need to change a damn thing since then.

Polished gray linoleum floor, a big American flag pinned to the back wall, plaques along both side walls, it could be an installation piece at the Smithsonian titled, “America Redux.” A few people, mostly local, on one side sit at gunmetal gray folding chairs on two long sets of banged up wooden tables. On the other side – food, of course.

A raised 10 x 8 foot stage is nestled just inside the front door. Men playing guitar, fiddle, and bass join in with teenagers on the crowded stage. Cajun two steps and waltzes like the plaintive strains of  “Jolie Blonde” fill the air. The men aren’t the show: the teenagers taking turns singing and playing drums, fiddles, accordions, and guitars are what people have come to see.

In spite of social media, or maybe even with a boost from it, teenage kids are singing the songs their great-great-grandparents sang when they were teenagers themselves. Radio stations like KBON out of Eunice play southwest Louisiana music day and night. I’ll bet there’s all kinds of music on their iPhones, some of it as far from Cajun as Iota is from New York City. Today’s hits will become tomorrow’s history. The Cajun music issuing from the bandstand is birthright material. Its shelf life spans lifetimes.

VIDEO INTRO to the scene

VIDEO1: Cajun waltz

VIDEO2: Cajun two step with a rock n roll intro!
VIDEO3: The Mardi Gras song

VIDEO4: La Porte D'en Arriere, "The Back Door" written by D.L. Menard of Erath, LA. Folklore expert Dr. Barry Ancelet of Louisiana State University/Lafayette says it's the most sung and performed song in the Cajun song book.

Cajun music has been described as “singing the blues and selling the bad times for the good times.” That seems to be the point of “Jolie Blonde,” one man’s plaintive wail at having been abandoned by his woman.

Since the original was sung by Amedie Breaux and his brother Ophy and sister Cleoma in 1928, it’s been covered and rewritten by an incongruous range of singers from country singer Roy Acuff and rock legend Bruce Springsteen.

A man and two women on the other side stand behind two tables ready to serve shrimp etoufée or maque choux in two homemaker sized cook pots and rice in another, soda and water in big red coolers Three bucks a bowl. Made this morning for the Mardi Gras crowd that would duck in and out all day long.

As soon as I put my bowl of shrimp etoufée down, the place empties out. Trucks carrying men and boys are slowly rolling down Duson Avenue, the very short main street of Iota.

In the countryside since early this morning, they’ve been re-enacting the centuries-old tradition of the Cajun Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”)  "courir," begging for food and making mischief. In olden times, the food they gathered would be cooked up in a communal gumbo and be the last big meaty meal the Catholic Cajuns would eat for the next 40 days of Lent.

Today, the men and boys triumphantly show off chickens, roosters and one baby black pig. Luckily for them, the tradition of the communal gumbo has long been discontinued. They’ll be returned to their owners later today. And everyone in town has been feasting on gumbo and all sorts of Cajun food from vendor stalls along Duson Avenue all day long.

“I’ll be back!”  I shout, spilling some etoufée on my sleeve as I head for the door. This is the highlight of the afternoon. T
 
Two hours later, I return to a nearly empty space. First thing I look for is that bowl of food – and there it is on one of the only tables still in place, the rest and all the metal folding chairs having been stacked against the wall.

“Somebody said to toss it but I said no, I think he’ll be back,” says the woman who sold it to me. Country people in Louisiana don’t give up on you unless you give them a damn good reason.

Two other visitors are sitting inside. Of course, we begin to talk. They’re from San Antonio via New Orleans and Pascagula, Mississippi. The New Orleans fellow’s family immigrated to an area near the mouth of the Mississippi River (now Plaquemine Parish) in the early 1700s with a land grant from the King of Spain. Over time, they settled in New Orleans, been there for generations.

“We met at LSU in Baton Rouge when we were both working in administration. When we got a good job offer in San Antonio, we took it and have been there for 20 years,” says the wife. Talking about Cajun history, she says that Cajun country stretches over to Beaumont, TX because so many Cajuns moved west to work in the oil fields back in the day.

New Orleans question solved: "Is Monday still red beans and rice day?" I ask.
“Monday was laundry day for French women in New Orleans. They needed a meal they could prepare without monitoring it, slow cooked the beans during the day to serve over rice at night.  It’s still a Monday tradition. LSU still does red beans and rice on Mondays.”

The fellow opines that many of the local people here probably have never been to New Orleans, many of them haven’t gone too far afield from home, are in their comfort zone and stay put. A topic for me to talk up when I return to Iota next year.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Warren Storm: Godfather of Swamp Pop

Bal du Dimanche: Warren Storm and Willie "Tee" and Cypress
Vermilionville Performance Center
Lafayette, LA
January 15, 2015

Every Sunday afternoon, the Vermilionville Performance Center in Lafayette, LA, holds a Bal du Dimanche (A Sunday Ball) from 1 PM-4 PM. For many, this is an extension of - or replacement for - religious services that may be scheduled in the morning.

Bands and performers of Cajun, zydeco and swamp pop persuasions light up the stage and there’s lots of action on the dance floor. This week’s performers – Warren Storm and Willie “Tee” and his band Cypress. Warren Storm is the godfather of Swamp Pop. Willie “Tee” Trahan has been along for most of the ride, performing with Storm for years.

Swamp pop was born in southwest Louisiana in the 1950s and 60s. Cajun teenagers and Creole kids heard rock 'n roll and began combining traditional French Louisiana Cajun and zydeco songs with country and western music filtering over from Beaumont, Texas and rhythm 'n  blues creeping in from New Orleans.

“I know it when I see it,” Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography in 1964. Well, just change the word ‘see’ to ‘hear’ and that’s the story with Swamp Pop. There’s no sound quite like it. It’s just as much a staple of popular music in Louisiana today as filé gumbo.

Most bands in Louisiana have at least a handful of Swamp Pop covers in their repertoire. Warren Storm and Willie Tee have a lifetime repertoire, Warren singing it and Willie wailing on his saxophone playing it. Both of these guys are in their seventies!

Whether on the dance floor or taking a break, dancers know how to have fun.

After the first few bars, you know damn well if you’re listening to Swamp Pop. Lyrics decrying spurned love, unabashedly emotional singing, often with bluesy, ultra-danceable or you-know-what-able grooves are backed with a gyrating saxophone. VIDEO

If you’re of a certain age, you remember making out in the car’s back seat to Phil Phillips’ “Sea of Love,”Jimmy Clanton’s “Just A Dream,” Joe Barry’s “I’m A Fool To Care”, Warren Storm’s ‘Prisoner’s Song,” and Cookie and the Cupcakes iconic barn-burner “Mathilda". Swamp Pop songs like Lloyd Price's "Just Because," and Little Richard's "Send Me Some Lovin'," made it to Billboard's Hot 100.

This is music for the eternal teenager that lurks in our hearts and loins.

When I heard songs like “Sea of Love” at the Boys’ Club Friday dances, I died a slow death - too shy to cross to the other side of the floor where the girls were standing, to hold a girl in my arms, to inhale the scent of the shampoo in her hair, and feel the warmth of her body pressed against mine. Some day, I vowed, I would cross that floor. I would lead with confidence, style, and grace.  

I’ve learned to dance my dream. Warren Storm and Willie “Tee” just gave me the chance cross that floor once again.

Photos and video by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
 

Gerry Spanger's King Cake Party: 13 Years and counting

Gerry Spanger’s 13th Annual King Cake Party
Saturday Noon to 4 PM, February 14, 2015
321 Baldwin Avenue
Breaux Bridge, LA

It’s probably a southern thing but southwest Louisiana house parties are as common as roadside gasoline stations that sell everything from fuel to boudain, sandwiches, wine, candy, and an entire aisle of chips, pretzels, popcorn and Fritos to wash down the 20 varieties of cold beer stacked in a case that lines one entire side of the store.

House parties vary in size. During Mardi Gras they multiply like the fishes and loaves in the bible story. Gerry Spanger’s annual King Cake party in tiny Breaux Bridge nine miles from Lafayette is certainly one of the most inclusive.

Gerry came down this way as a visitor years ago, got smitten by the dance culture and the people doing it. Southwest Louisiana has a tendency to raise its eyebrows and give visitors a “Come Hither” smile and before you know it, you’re booking a reservation to return. Gerry not only returned but also bought a house in Breaux Bridge. Backstory here...

One year he and his friends invited a bunch of dancers who’d been working up a sweat at the Saturday morning (yes, morning) dance at the nearby Café des Amis to come by for socializing. Pretty soon a bunch of them started dancing in the yard. One thing led to another. Gerry’s been hosting a huge King Cake party on Mardi Gras weekend for the past 13 years.

Oh, in a covered patio he and his pal Don Walker built expressly for dancing. Gerry hires one of the best bands in the land, Geno Delafose and His French Rockin’ Boogie, to play from noon to 4 PM. The man’s fearless. Advertises the dance on a popular web site.  A couple hundred people show up toting food and camp chairs, pour themselves into that dance patio with a smooth concrete floor and carry on.

Some of them have come up the street from a morning’s dancing at the Café des Amis, some start here and finish the night on a dance floor in Lafayette or one of the surrounding towns. For some, Mardi Gras week is not complete unless they’ve met and mixed at Gerry’s famous King Cake party.
VIDEO1 The big picture

VIDEO2  Dancers in motion until the camera battery went poof.

VIDEO3 Dancers in motion again

VIDEO4 Zydeco dancing pair with big energy on the same wave length

VIDEO5 When Geno and his band put it into overdrive, so do the dancers

The "dance floor" was jammed from noon till 3 PM...after that it was only crowded.

Always time for photo opps...

Dick Brainard thanks host Gerry Spanger...and the dance goes on.

A guest "frottoir" player stands in with Geno Delafose and His French Rockin' Boogie; by 5 PM, Don Walker (brown t-shirt), Gerry's friend who led the first group over to the house years ago, and a small crew break camp. You'd never guess 200 people were packed into the yard a couple of hours ago.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr

 

Krewe de Canaille Kicks Off Mardi Gras Week

The Krewe de Canaille 28th Annual Mardi Gras Ball
La Poussier Dance Hall
Breaux Bridge, Louisiana
February 13, 2015

Customs and traditions run deep and southwest Louisiana, none more revered than the ones associated with Mardi Gras. Small to large, they range from house parties to parades that rule the main streets for an afternoon or early evening to formal balls held by Mardi Gras Krewes. Krewes in New Orleans may have hundreds of members, stage elaborate balls and enter huge floats in Mardi Gras parades. Elsewhere in Louisiana, krewes are smaller, less formal, but no less energetic and dedicated to carrying on tradition.

The Krewe de Canaille in Lafayette has been celebrating a Mardi Gras Ball since 1987.

Let’s pause here for definitions:  a ‘Krewe’ to the rest of us is a crew, but, having its origin in New Orleans history, the spelling is an affectation. The main purpose of a Krewe is to organize Mardi Gras parades and balls. Many have private parties or dances during the year. Being Louisiana, it doesn’t take much prompting to throw parties at any time of the year for just about any reason.

“Canaille”? The group’s preferred definition is “rabble rousers” or “scoundrels.” Gives them plenty of latitude.

Although a handful of its members have been along for the whole ride, some, like this year’s special inductees, came as visitors six years ago, were enthralled with the music and dance culture, the pace of life and foremost, the friendly and engaging people who live here.

The annual ball is held at La Poussiere, a premier dance hall in Breaux Bridge that can comfortably hold 200 or so people and boasts one of the smoothest dance floors in Louisiana.

Cajun dancing is the focus of this krewe, founded in 1986 by Lafayette native Janine Dugas. Their general theme is to pass a good time on the dance floor and they manage that several times a year.

The 28th Annual Mardi Gras Ball gets underway at 7:00 PM. By 7:30 the band steps off the stage and tradition steps in. Rosa Henry, a Queen in 2011, commands all spectators to stand at the sides of the dance floor heralds the annual ritual of introducing the King and Queen.

Court Jesters playfully frolic ahead of the King and Queen, who ceremoniously and to general whooping and hollering, promenade toward the stage from the end of the dance floor.

2015 King and Queen Dwayne "Neggy" Trahan and his wife Linda Trahan. The identify of the "Duke" and "Duchess" for 2015, next year's King and Queen, is a secret till tonight.  The honor is given to Doug and Kathleen McLeod, who were passing by Lafayette six years ago, were swallowed up by Cajun ways, and never left!

Past Kings and Queens, in fabulously glittering attire, are announced and promenade to the stage.

A royal photo shoot precedes a jovial champagne toast. (The girls in their finery get a taste of tradition.) The King and Queen take to the burnished hardwood floor for the Royal Waltz, joined by the former royals and their court.

Formality goes out the window after the ceremonial dance when the whole court opens festive parasols and second lines (parades) around the dance floor with much un-royal joviality.

The lights dim. Kevin Naquin and the Ossun Playboys kick it up a notch and the whole crowd, locals and dancers from all over the country, kick up a storm with Cajun ballads, waltzes and the occasional swamp pop slow drag for the next several hours.

In the midst of this, a purple, green, and gold - the colors of Mardi Gras - layer cake the size of a small carpet is served.

The Krewe and many of the partiers are decked out in Mardi Gras paraphernalia. What others might call costumes are actually representations of colorful attire donned by celebrants from medieval times in Europe. Krewe members take pride in their outfits and the connection they feel with a tradition that is part of the Acadian culture that pervades the parishes of southwest Louisiana.

Combining royalty and mischief, The Krewe de Canaille continues a tradition handed down through centuries of Mardi Gras celebrations.

Photo gallery: Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. photos.

Assorted former Kings, Queens, and Jesters and one party crasher. Janine Dugas and Chris Trahan (photo at left), both former "Royals", are two of the four original members still active in the Krewe.

 

Janine Dugas, founder of the Krewe de Canaille. Janine has updated this banner every year since 1986!

Clear the way...the King and Queen command the dance floor for their waltz.

Rabble rowsers at play...

 
See you next year...

 

Crawfish Harvesting: Up Close and Personal on Highway 367

Thursday, February 12, 2015
Somewhere along LA Route 367
Eunice, LA

There’s another dance besides Cajun and zydeco that is a staple of life in southwest Louisiana. It’s the rice/crawfish shuffle. I’ve learned the moves on the dance floor but have yet to figure out the shuffle that goes on in miles and miles of fields all along the country roads around Eunice and Crowley.

I know the fields that stretch as far as the eye can see grow rice during some months and harvest crawfish in others. And that rice and crawfish are excellent dance partners, co-dependent partners at that.

My hosts in Lafayette tell me we’re in the midst of crawfish season, verified by the number of “Live Crawfish”, “ Crawfish Boil Today” signs along roads around Lafayette.

When I’ve been around here from January to March I’ve driven past huge fields flooded with water and have no idea what kind of partnership is going on between rice and crawfish.

Today I hit the jackpot. Driving along Louisiana Route 367, I spot a wide flat-bottomed motorboat with some kind of paddlewheel attached to its stern. Whoa Nelly! I pull over on the narrow soft shoulder of the two-lane country road. I manage to take a quick photo and video before the boat passes.

Fascinated and mystified, I watch the boat finish its pass and make its way into another field quarter of a mile down the road and stop. I quick march toward the boat. Carefully. Cars and large trucks were whizzing by me a few feet away at 50 miles an hour.

The two men in this boat contraption are taking a break. I wave. One of them waves back. The next 15 minutes are a fabulous introduction to crawfish harvesting 101.

I press the video button on the camera and begin asking questions, some of them dumb since I have no idea what they are doing or how the operation works. The near miraculous bonanza is a man who answers questions as if he were a regular on the History Channel.

The 6-minute video is choppy, it's hard to hear the man's responses so I repeat what he says in order to understand it. Toward the end of the video, Carlos, wearing his sky-blue work apron wades 50 feet from his boat to the roadside, a crawfish trap in his hands. This is fabulous.

I misunderstand some of this but here's the gist of what I learn in the first conversation.

Carlos says this is a daily operation. He pulls a trap from the shallow water, dumps the crawfish into a table on board, and drops the trap back in the water.  Between his Spanish accent and my ignorance of how the process works, the part of the conversation in which I try to understand how he stores the crawfish in the boat is pretty comical.

Part of our conversation is drowned out by the wind and part every time a big truck roars past about 6 feet behind me is a bit unnerving, but I am not giving up this chance to get a first rate glimpse of the goings-on. The information below is from the video – which is hard to hear and hilarious, a city boy trying to comprehend the pas de deux between aquaculture and agriculture.

How long does the season last? Carlos says it begins in January, sometimes December, and continues through May or June then shuts down until next December or January.

When I ask him how often he works the fields, his response is, "Every day, every day, every day, every day… " Unless it's too cold or too hot. Carlos says that since it's been cold lately, the crawfish don't crawl up out of the mud, the cold makes them sluggish even if there's a trap with tasty bait nearby. If it's too hot, he says they might die.

Then it gets great. Carlos, wearing his sky-blue work apron, wades 50 feet from his boat to the roadside, a crawfish trap in his hands.

With one big rubber gloved hand, he reaches in and pulls out a handful of crawfish. "It's cold today (around fifty degrees) so they're not moving much," he says. Crawfish 101 is off to a great start.

In the second video, Carlos takes off his work glove and pulls out a handful of crawfish. "When it's hot, they bite bite bite…" he says, pointing to their tiny claws. “This one is about one month old," he says holding a smaller pale brown crawfish.

Third video: what do you use for bait? Carlos reaches in and pulls out a fish head. “Fish," he says, “ oily fish, when too hot, they stink, the crawfish don't like that." I think he says that when it's warmer they use oily fish for bait and now they use less oily fish heads in the bait traps. Ahhh, the joy of learning this dance.

As the conversation winds down he tells me his name and that he's from Mexico. And that the price for crawfish is now three dollars a pound. Supply and demand. Since the weather is cold, the crawfish aren’t moving around much so there's not much to bring to market. Supply and demand. Carlos estimates that in a couple weeks it will be warmer, crawfish will be in abundance, and the price will go down.

If I manage to find another boat at work, the next question is how do the rice fields partner with the crawfish. And how those boats manage to float along in two feet or less of water and what that paddlewheel is for.

I never did get to the "Cajun Hall of Fame" a few miles north in Eunice, which was my original destination this afternoon. Instead, I barely passed Crawfish 101… and realize there’s way more to learn about the rice and crawfish shuffle.
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Fields are in different stages of cultivation, some bright green with growth of ??, some dry and recently plowed, some more flooded than another right next to it.

A crawfish trap resting in the mud; the flat bottomed work boats can skim along in about two feet of water.

Another work boat in action, this reporter trying to get a grip on the procedure.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.