Louisiana: Cigars and Guitars

Mobile Cigar Lounge at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

September 2017


On a pleasant Saturday afternoon, after I'd spent the morning dancing at the new-to-me location for the zydeco breakfast in Breaux Bridge, I visited the LA Brewery in Arnaudville for its weekly music draw.

A bucolic scene:

I arrived early; Major Handy and his most wonderful and versatile band were setting up:

Major Handy and the Louisiana Blues Band at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

It was durn hot, but I got a good seat in a rocking chair by the fan.

Major Handy and the Louisiana Blues Band at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

But whoa, whoa, whoa ... what was this shiny thing rolling in?

Mobile Cigar Lounge at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

Mobile Cigar Lounge at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

The band continued getting itself sorted.

Major Handy and the Louisiana Blues Band at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

And I went over to investigate this flashy object.

Mobile Cigar Lounge at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

A mobile cigar room!

Mobile Cigar Lounge at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

It's the Smokin' Room.

I chatted with the owner and he kicked one of my assumptions to the curb right quick. I'd figured that he'd have to pay the business owners (in this case, the brewery) some sort of compensation for setting up shop there. But no! The Mobile Cigar Lounge has a sizable number of patrons who will go where the lounge goes. So, actually, the Mobile Cigar Lounge brings customers to the business!

Mobile Cigar Lounge at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

 The owner, John Johnson, relates the story of the lounge's pregnancy and birth here.

 I don't smoke cigars, but I do like shiny things, so the Mobile Cigar Lounge was mighty cool.

Lil Buck Sinegal at the LA 31 Brewery, Arnaudville, Louisiana. September 2017.

But Lil Buck Sinegal, playing with Major Handy's band on this day,  is cooler.

Louisiana Lit: The Music of Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines. Source: Academy of Achievement interview, 2001.

Alcoholic Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux, as channeled through author James Lee Burke, was an important cultural guide for my first year in South Louisiana. 

For my second year in South Louisiana, author Ernest J. Gaines was my guide. 

Like Dave, Mr. Gaines receives inspiration from music. 

Of the classics, he likes Mozart, Hayden, Brahms, Chopin, Bach, and Schuman. In Mozart and Leadbelly, he reports: ".. Mozart and Haydn soothe my brain while I write ..."

 
In Mozart and Leadbelly, in the first essay, "Miss Jane and I," Mr. Gaines says:   

… I think I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have learned by reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crying, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie’s big band – all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature. But the rural blues, maybe because of my background, is my choice in music.

 

 Video above: Leadbelly: We're in the Same Boat, Brother. 

 

In the second essay in Mozart and Leadbelly, he says: 
 

I started collecting blues records while attending San Francisco State College in the mid-fifties and inviting friends to my room to listen to the music. Most of the whites would listen to the records out of curiosity; this was before the Rolling Stones of England had made white America aware of the art and value of black blues singers. The white boys and girls of San Francisco wanted to listen because it was “exciting.” However, very few of my African American friends from the college wanted to listen to it at all because they wanted to forget what those ignorant Negroes were singing about. They had come to California to forget about those days and those ways.

and:

…. [classical music can’t] tell me about the Great Flood of ’27 as Bessie Smith or Big Bill Broonzy can. And neither can [Mozart or Haydn] describe Louisiana State Prison at Angola as Leadbelly can. And neither can tell me what it means to be bonded out of jail and be put on a plantation to work out your time as Lightnin Hopkins can [as in Mr. Tim Moore's Farm]. William Faulkner writes over one hundred pages describing the Great Flood of ’27 in his story “Old Man.” Bessie Smith gives us as true a picture in twelve lines [in Backwater Blues]. ….

Where to Go in 2012

The New York Times proposes this list of 45 places to go in 2012.

On my short list for 2012 are: 

• More of Georgia (Svaneti, Kazbegi, Vardzia, Davit Gareja, Batumi, Kutaisi)
• Turkey (Istanbul)
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan (if I can afford the $200+ visa for Americans, which is what we charge Azerbaijanis to come to the U.S.)
• Iran (if things quiet down to the default level of tension)
• Albania
• Mexico
• Guatemala
• New Mexico

Some time ago, I wrote about:

• Least-visited countries in the world; and 
• Syria as a destination

I can't get enough of this video on Syria. I love when people mix incongruent features in their art, like when Blind Boys of Alabama sing Amazing Grace to the melody of House of the Rising Sun. In the case of the video below, the creator mixed Syrian images with a Creedence Clearwater Revival song. It works.





And as a lagniappe, here are the Blind Boys of Alabama singing Amazing Grace. I heard them live at the first Roots 'n Blues Festival in Columbia, Missouri. 




What's on your domestic or international travel list?

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 3: To Vicksburg

Highway 1, Mississippi

Checked out of my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. Glorious sunny day. I asked the staff person which road was prettier to drive down to Vicksburg, Highway 1 or 61. She said 1, so that's the way I went.

Highway 61 is the Mississippi Blues Trail; Highway 1 is the Mississippi River Trail.

As I passed flat, bright-green fields of ... winter wheat? .... with tree stands in the distance, I listened to a slow, beat-ful song by Ali Farke Toure, which seems to reflect the rhythm of the Delta. I don't know why the flatness of the Delta evokes different feelings than the flatness of, say, Kansas, but it does. Maybe the mixture of spilled blood and rich river soil that brings up stories, written or sung, and deep rhythms.

This song came up during my drive (from my new "Mix 1" created last night) --- Nana Mouskouri singing Casta Diva --- and it fit the Delta, too:

Didn't do much today except drive from the park to Vicksburg, about an hour and a half trip. Checked into the Battlefield Inn, which is right next to the Vicksburg National Military Park. The reviews on Tripadvisor were all over the place, so I wanted to look at a room before I forked over any bucks. (Did the same thing at the hotel in Oklahoma City on a trip with Carol.) The room was adequate for my needs and I quickly set up housekeeping.

I'm reading a selection from my dwindling stockpile of classic science fiction, Arthur C. Clarke's book of stories, The Wind From the Sun.

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 2: Gators and Greenville

Alligator Lake, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Leroy Percy State Park

I awakened this morning to a beautiful lake and wood view from my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. (Remember the Percy name for later.) The lake is Alligator Lake, and gators do live here, though this time of year, they're likely snuggled under mud for a long winter nap. Still, the park staff told me that on especially warm and sunny winter days, some gators emerge to enjoy the sunshine.

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

View of Alligator Lake from Cabin 2 screened porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 backyard, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Beautiful, yes?

Alas, the two park trails were too sodden for walking, so off to Greenville I went.

Greenville

Greenville is on the Mississippi Blue Trail ...and the Hot Tamale Trail.

Remember, a week or so ago, Carol and I made an abortive attempt to get us some Delta-style tamales. Today, mission accomplished at Greenville's Hot Tamale Heaven.

Yes, they tasted good. Pretty much like tamales in the Southwest, I think. But I'm not a tamale connoisseur.  

I ate them in the parking lot of the Winterville Mounds, a mildly interesting Indian site from the 1300s-ish.

I climbed atop one of the mounds. Reminded me of the ruins near Tlaxcala that I visited with Kate and Pam. What a walk that was from one set of ruins to the other! The Xochitécatl ruins looked so close!

View of Xochitécatl ruins from the Cacaxtl ruins, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The endless walk.

The long walk from the Cacaxtl ruins to the Xochitecatl pyramids, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

And finally. The view from one of the Xochitécatl pyramids:

View from Xochitecatl pyramid, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The view from the Winterville Mound isn't as dramatic as that from the Xochitécatl pyramid. But it was fun remembering that day in Mexico while I looked out over the green Mississippi flood plain.

Despite my recent epiphany about museums, the 1927 Greenville Flood Museum looked intriguing. The museum is in the carriage house of a former plantation. In fact, this carriage house is believed to be the oldest structure in Greenville (the oldest still surviving, that is). Mike Bostic, the museum docent, screened a PBS documentary about the 1927 Greenville flood, called Fatal Flood, which told a disturbing story about how economics, man's inhumanity against man, and family betrayal factored into the town's flood response. Remember Leroy Percy? He and his son, Will Percy, played a prominent role in the story of the flood. One of the people interviewed in the documentary was John Barry, who wrote Rising Tide: The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America. Apparently, the surviving Percys were livid about Barry's portrayal of them in the book.

Mike and I had a short but interesting conversation about "Southern writers." I didn't know this, but there is evidently so much cachet attached to being a "Southern writer" that there are authors who perhaps exaggerate their Southern ties so they can self-identify as such.  (When will the stalwart Midwesterners get their deserved glory?)


Next I went to the Cypress Preserve, a pretty park with a trail through a virgin stand of cypress. As I walked, I breathed in the pungent fragrance of fallen cypress needles.


 















Getting rid of stuff. It was almost dark when I returned to my cabin. I spent an enjoyable evening decluttering the music list on my laptop and mp3 player, culling songs and musicians I no longer wanted to hear.
For example, I could not abide the no-nuance voice of blueswoman Susan Tedeschi one more day.

And though I love Carolina Chocolate Drops, I have come to despise Trampled Rose, one of the songs on their Genuine Negro Jig album. (I loathe the song so much that I had a story in my head that went like this: One of the Drops guys didn't feel as if he'd gotten his share in the group's limelight, so he complained and complained to the other two about how he'd written this song, and they owed it to him to record the awful thing, and they gave in. I didn't know til today that the damn song is actually an old standby and multiple artists have covered it. For God's sake, why?)

Now gone, all gone. Very satisfying.

Talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops gives me the excuse to play a favorite, Snowden's Jig:

 

"I'm On My Way, Baby!"

Lunch and blues

In Jackson, we went to F Jones Corner to have lunch and to listen to some blues. Carol ordered fried grits and a chili dog. I got a spinach salad.

Fried grits: Small, dark-golden cubes. The outside crunchy; the inside mushy. Devilishly good.

Virgil Brawley, F Jones Corner, Jackson, MS

 Virgil Brawley sang and played his guitar while we ate. Virgil's good. He has a mature bluesy voice that lets you know he's already paid his blues dues, so he doesn't need to do anything to fancy things up. He played several Robert Johnson songs, in honor of that musician's birthday. Robert Johnson is one of the fathers of Delta-style blues.

Below is Robert Johnson himself singing his Hellhound on My Trail:  

Love the music, but I'm not a big fan of Robert Johnon's voice. If I think of it as a woman's voice, I can kind of get into it, but that's a lot of work.


Now, same song, this time by Big Joe Williams. Gives you shivers.   

The 10 Best Robert Johnson Covers offers one person's view of same. Some passionate arguments for alternatives are in the comments at the bottom of his page.

Farish Street Project

F Jones Corner is smack in the middle of the Farish Street project. It all looks like it'll be standard-formula gentrification to me, but there seems to be an effort not to make it so.

I'm on my way, baby! 

As we left the Farish Street area, we saw a terrific billboard for Big Mama Bail Bonding with her genius tag line.

 

Vicksburg - National Military Cemetery

In the afternoon, we drove to the National Military Park in Vicksburg. It was a crime we didn't have more time to spend at that remarkable place. As we drove the winding auto-trail, past "camp" after camp,  it was easy to imagine the exchanges of fire, the hunkering down in the trench, the smoke, the sounds of war. The cemetery really brought it home: Of the 17,000 people buried there (and that only includes the Union soldiers), 13,000 are unidentified.

The good that came out of that rushed visit was that if I return to the area in the future, I'll devote a day to its exploration. I'm glad Carol wanted to see it; otherwise, it wouldn't have made my list of things to do.

On the Mississippi Blues Trail

Abe's BBQ, Clarksdale, Mississippi. December 2011.

 

 

 

Carol and I left for Jackson, Mississippi, this morning a little after 5:00 a.m. to take the secondary-road route.

Destination: Jackson, Mississippi

Purpose: Carol wants the free whiskey sour she's gonna get at the Cabot Lodge. This hotel brings fond memories of past free-happy-hours-with-room she's enjoyed when traveling to the Gulf Coast for vacations. Also, Jackson is closer to Missouri than Savannah and has more of interest than Hattiesburg, which were other destination contenders for this tiny holiday.

The bulk of our travel today was in the Mississippi Delta. The Delta is flat. Sometimes one can appreciate flat; sometimes not. We experienced both feelings on the way down to Jackson.

When we crossed the Mississippi River on the Arkansas-Mississippi border, it was swollen wide. We frequently saw high, lesser rivers that had breached their usual borders, flooding trees' lower trunks.

Til I did a little research for this trip, I didn't know about the Mississippi Blues Trail.  If I get an offer to join Teach for America and they place me in the Mississippi Delta region, I can see myself exploring the Blues Trail on many weekends. (Note to gods: New Mexico is still my first choice.) 

We stopped for lunch in Clarksdale with the plan to buy hot tamales (Delta style) for lunch on the road and to pick up dinner for later from Abe's BBQ.  We accomplished half our mission, Carol getting chili dogs and me a BBQ'd pork sandwich. Hicks Tamales, a famous tamale vendor, was closed. Sunday.

We agreed that Abe's makes tasty food.

That was the most eventful part of the drive down to Jackson. When we arrived at the hotel, I poured myself some delicious Georgian wine and Carol got her satisfying whiskey sour.