Festival International in Lafitte, La. is the biggest international music and arts festival in the U.S.A. I have wanted to go for years but until retirement I was always working that weekend or if I was off the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival was drawing me but this year we made it down for two days of great fun.
The festival is five days starting on a Wednesday evening around 5PM and ending each night by about 10pm. That's good, not too late and not too early. We hit two weekdays, Thursday and Friday and the crowds were very manageable. By Friday night it looked like the weekend would be busy so those two weekdays were just right for old folks that have lost their hang chops for the mosh pit in front of a Flogging Molly show or lack the endurance to stay standing in a crushing crowd while trying to touch the hem of Jack Black's garment at a Tenacious D concert. It's OK to bring a lawn chair.
This is a free festival and it's set up all around downtown Lafitte. We did contribute to the fundraising by purchasing one of the VIP perks which was a wrist band that granted entrance to air conditioned bathroom trailers which were nice, had no waiting and were as clean as any public restroom in a major chair restaurant that has been used by an American.
I'll be writing more about the bands later but here's a few photos.
It order of appearance so you can get your playlist together are the Flying Balalakia Brothers, Lakou Mizik, Zackery Richard, Robert Finley, Sonny Landreth, Natu Camera and Delgres.
I give this festival 5 stars. They have been doing it a long time and it is well run and laid back.
Probably The Last April Fishing Report And Then We Start May...
Once again the shallow water catfish pattern held on today's fishing trip. Slip corks fished 4' with a drop to 9' nearby, a little sour maize for chum and JPigg's punch bait. Wind could have been a bit better as we fished across it instead of with it which would often put a bow on our line as the corks drifted over structure and there were many hook sets with slack line but I'm not complaining. There would have just been more cleaning. The total for the day was 31 and we threw back a lot of 14" and below fish. We spend two and a half hours fishing. I imagine we could have had a three man limit easy. Photo is the fish Cathy caught on her first cast.
Cathy's brother Matt landed this 4 pounder a couple of casts later.
I caught several sho-nuff fat channels before I finally landed this blue from what someone referred to as the "bitch seat." Hey! My doc did a skin check and said I was looking pretty cooked so I sit in the shade while fishing.
I think when everything was sorted out there was one more fat blue cat that did not make this group photo. Cathy named a couple of the biggests "Butterscotch and Mr. Lewis." We fried up a pile of fillets, frozen a few of these big girls for grilling later and ran the rest over to the Joseph House Hospice as we have occasionally done in the past so the residents and staff get a good fresh fish dinner.
By the way this has been my go to rig lately. It's a Lew's spincast reel on a pretty good rod that has had a tip broken off. I have not been as lucky as my wife with the 8 pounders and such to see how it fares in the big leagues but my big worry is that one of the grandkids prefers this rig and I don't know how we resolve this next time he's on the boat. I guess I'll use something else.
About 15 years ago or so a friend living in the big city thought he had a finger on a pulse of society and believed he was detecting an arrhythmia that indicated a coming collapse of all as we know it.
Another indicator he spotted as he researched his options and made his preparations and calculations that seemed useful was the fish photos of our catches I post on the internets. He decided that if the barbarians were at the gates I would be someone who held them off and survived the onslaught because I was practically living off the land.
I told him to live off the land I need society to provide good roads so I could drive to the lake, well maintained public parks with sturdy boat launches and governmental authority to ensure clean water that was good fish habitat.
My friend is still in the big city, at least I assume so. I have not heard a word in about 6 years. Society has not collapsed but my expectations have remained consistent and I'm still living off the land.
I probably first saw rock and roll/rhythm and blues/boogie woogie piano player Marcia Ball about 40 years ago. I know that dates both me and her but let me tell you nothing with her show has changed in that time. Nothing in the way I enjoyed the show has changed either except for the fact that I sat maybe just a bit further back due to the ringing in my ears (which is my own fault) than I did at those long ago festival and Texas road house shows when you could not youtube but had to be present for real fun.
Marcia and band played Spring Fest in Lufkin Saturday. It was a show brought to town by the Angelina Arts Alliance and funded by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. It was a show free to the public. The Commission states it's mission on it's web site:
The mission of the Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) is to advance our state economically and culturally by investing in a creative Texas. TCA supports a diverse and innovative arts community in Texas, throughout the nation and internationally by providing resources to enhance economic development, arts education, cultural tourism and artist sustainability initiatives.
The Commission gets it's funding from The National Endowment for the Arts, The State of Texas General Fund, State of Texas License Plate Sales, Texas Curtural Trust Council Texas Women for the Arts and private donations.
I was a little disappointed in the turn out for this show. There were about 150 in attendance and I think the people that were there were like me. They have been listening to Marcia Ball for a long time and they came because they knew it would be good. I doubt there were many who said, "free show, let's go." Maybe since this was your government working for your benefit and for free some may have thought there was something socialist about free music in downtown Lufkin but this show is a $35 to $60 ticket depending on the venue and probably if you catch her set at the New Orleans Jazz Fest in a couple of weeks a day pass will set you back even more.
Marcia is a Grammy nominated performer and I think every recording she ever made is still available on her website. That's pretty good, a throw back to the days of no social media where you got your name out there in person and you sold your records out of the trunk of the car.
If you are local I suggest you support the Angelina Arts Alliance. If you never heard of the attractions they sponsor I suggest you do the research. It's real live big city stuff. I used to travel all over to see music like this and that was fun but now thanks to their work it comes here and that's good for all of us.
Opening for Marcia was local entertainer and friend Joe Cuellar and joining him for a jam was my friend who hosted a Spring Fest drum circle and is an occasional drum and tuba collaborator Casey Muze.
There are many things to do in Lufkin. I am enjoying them.
I was sorry to hear of the passing of Sabine River Brass Band drummer Jason Carriger this past weekend. It was unexpected. Many that knew him better than I have written fine tributes but I write for my own remembrances that though I saw him play and we hung out only a handful of times Jason was the kind of guy that made you feel like a close friend. He made his personal interactions important.
I made this photo at the 2015 Brass Band BBQ.
Jason was the funniest guy on social media. He won the internet every time he posted his observances of human nature.
They always tell you to hold people tight because you never know what will happen. I'm sorry Jason that we never got to develop the tuba-tooth paste idea or we did not get that chance to trade my fresh caught catfish for your home made sausage.
Ramble on dude. I'll think of you every time I hear a brass band.
The Angelina College Riff Runners Community Big Band is a great show. It's a free show. It's local musicians from the East Texas area and sometimes a little beyond really showing out on a great song selection. Hudgins Hall at the college was almost full. Probably all it would take to get people up dancing would be jello shots served from the trunk of a car in the faculty parking area that is closest to the front door of the facility. Don't ask me how I know about serving drinks from car trunks just go see the show.
Lots going on onstage. Dancing back up singers, slapping and popping bass, drum, sax, trumpet, harp and guitar solos, dobro with a big band and a funky Brick House. What's not to like?
Next show will be in the fall semester on Nov. 11th. Mark your calendar. Be there and support our college. There is great music happening.
Strange things around here. We arrived home from a fishing trip Easter Sunday evening and as we backed the boat into it's garage we spotted the cat sitting in the window. He's an outside cat but there were a lot of people at the house Sunday, grandkids running around and he does use opportunity like that to slip in.
We proceeded to do the post fishing trip duties We put up gear and cleaned fish. While my brother in law was getting the fish out of the boat a pick up truck with two kayaks in the back turned around in the driveway and a woman shouted at him, "God Bless."
Inside the house we noticed the temperature seemed cool and on a check the air conditioner was switched on with all the windows open. Again we thought lots of people around, kids it must be some kind of accident. When Cathy put the kids to bed she noticed a pillow case missing off one of their pillows in the guest bedroom.
Next morning I looked for a change jar I drop my spare coins in and it was missing. I also noticed a small bedside throw rug in the bathroom. As we were preparing to take the grandkids to a park I looked for the man purse I carry my camera in for trips like this and it was missing. The camera had been in a dry bag for the lake trip. There also seemed to be a Swiss Army pocket knife missing but a missing pocket knife sometimes turns up.
I started adding up all these occurrences and decided someone had been in my house. There was maybe $50 of change in the jar. Cathy's purse was undisturbed on the kitchen table but things of value inside, cash, credit cards, fishing license had gone to the lake. Our guitars, used for Easter church services were leaned up by the front door in cases and nothing else of value seemed to be missing.
I did not report the crime since there were no signs of breaking and entering. We had left the door unlocked. I notified my neighbors of mischief in the area and not locking doors seems to be a custom we all share on this street. One neighbor reported returning home the same day and switching on the TV to find the volume maxed out and said a few things seemed to have been moved around.
The cat was in the house again this morning. There was a party last night out here and he may have used the opportunity to slip in but there was something that happened around here and I am trying to teach this animal to talk because he knows what it is.
It's been a busy weekend. We played music for all services at our church on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil which lasted till 12:30am. The big grandkids came in from Lake Jackson today for a big week which we kicked off by a quick run to the lake. We were looking more at relaxing but the blue cats put us to work.
Cathy caught a channel cat right off the bat slip corking punch bait in about 6' of water with a slight drop to 9' nearby. Her second fish was an 8lb 7oz blue.
Several more smaller chucky ones followed.
I've got a pretty decent personal best largemouth bass to my credit. I've caught striped bass in the 7-8-9 pound class. I have caught some pretty good reds surf fishing and I really shine on lunker breams. I can't compete when it comes to the 8-10 pound class of catfish Cathy has put in the boat the past several years. My only consolation is that I always pick the spot.
My brother in law Matt and Grandkids Warren and Coraline. Sometimes we catch the cats close to the bushes. In this particular spot they seem to prefer to be at the drop slightly off the bank. I suspect it is because the lake level is a bit lower than normal and they are a bit shy (I usually have a boat full of grandkids banging around) in the shallows, especially the bigger blues.
Warren lands a fish.
This scene has a repel all boarders feel to it.
With the help of my trusty net crew even I landed a nice blue. Once again we used Jpiggs punch bait. Fishing time was from 4pm to 5:30. If I decide I want to fish and I hook up the boat, stop for a bag of ice and then launch I can be on my fishing spot in an hour. Then about an hour back to the house and with the bigger blues which take a bit of time to clean all that and disposing of the carcasses which took most of an hour and a half I did not really spend a lot of time fishing today.
Final count was 15 fish. Ten channels and five blues. I figure that big one was $40 worth of meat not counting the old belly meat for nuggets. $100 plus of fillets all total.
Cosmic Debris, Magic Smoke, Tone Holes and Do You Use Them Also...
I have a couple of nice guitars. Nothing too fancy but American made utilitarian instruments that would be equally at home in a hillbilly band or riffing with some jazz hep cats in the key of G#. I also have a bunch of cheap guitars. Some are from budget instrument lines made in Pacific Rim countries that may not have actually flown off the shelf into the itchy hands of capitalist consumer culture slaves but along with the junky thrift store and garage sale instruments I have repaired all of them bat above their average indicating the presence of reliability engineers, a consistent manufacturing process and good quality control.
My grandson Cullen pounds this old Emperador guitar. It's ok but if he comes to your house and you have a Gibson or a Martin guitar sitting out he's going to think it's ok pound that to because that's what we do and you have heard of Murphy's Law haven't you? It applies double to expensive instruments.
I've pounded this guitar pretty good myself. A thrift store rescue by my late father in law Bill Cooney, I put new tuners on it, a new bridge pin and installed electronics. That required some hole drilling and in the process I discovered the same system of bracing that violin makers came up with in the 1700s to counter act the string pressure on the thin wooden top is actually in use on this guitar. See consistent manufacturing process.
Needless to say some of the holes I drilled turned out to be exploratory holes because of brace placement and I drilled other holes and considered leaving the original holes and calling them tone holes to spin the holes in my guitar construction knowledge but decided that like the magic smoke that exists in old tube amps (which I have mistakenly let out before) these old guitar holes needed to be covered to keep in the cosmic debris that probably lives inside.
I filled some holes by gluing colorful beads over them and others I covered by attaching Mardi Gras doubloons picked up off the streets after the seasonal parades in southern cities where sin, repent, sin more is a lifestyle and a personal jigsaw puzzle that only yourself can know how to put together. Tone secured.
I'm not sure how secure the tone is in your nice guitar but I'll send Cullen over to see about it. He will wonder why you don't have beads and doubloons.
You've heard of that 10,000 hour rule by now. Spend 10,000 hours with the guitar and you can probably play something in G#. I actually wrote a song in the key of E, namedropped bluesman Jimmy Reed in it and used a G# chord in the progression. That might be a blues sin but I'll probably do it again.
Scientific Fishing Tips, Rod Tips and and Recipes...
The wind was a howling but with warming temps there has been no outrageous snows in East Texas this year and the spring catfish bite is fully on. Because of the wind we hit the bridge riprap for some bank fishing on our last time and while that provided supper for the evening the real action is close to the bushes fishing with the wind. We avoided rough with a launch at Monterrey Park and scooted around the corner for some fast afternoon slip cork action.
We don't need a new folk singer, we don't need no new Frank Sinatras (we could use a new Louie Armstrong), we need another picture of Cathy holding a catfish. We fished from 2pm till close to 5 using punch bait under slip corks tied up on a little 4' deep hump with 6' ahead of that, 6' behind us and a little draw to the side dropping to 8'. Water was the perfect temp of 69 degrees. We culled anything under 14 inches and while last year produced lots of 4-6 pound fish those spots have been too shallow for the spookier big ones and these will fillet just fine.
So ya'll all go "mudbelly what's your secrets?" Here's one of them, take your fishing pole, I don't know what kind you have so this is a decision you have to make when you put my ideas to use but you break off 1 to 3 inches of the very tip. Take that top eye attached to the broken piece, heat with a cigarette lighter removing it and reinstall on what is now a shorter, stiffer rod. I have done experiments demonstrating that this increased stiffness speeds up the hook set when a catfish starts monkeying with a slip cork in shallow water which sometimes can be a shy bite barely reveling visible notification. As I say, the amount broken off can vary but grand kids seem to know the exact amount.
Here in this photo Cathy is using an unmodified pole. See the bend in the rod? That's a slow hook set. I have not experimented with other fish species so if you are a bass fisherman and are reading this I urge you to proceed scientifically. Develop a theory, spend time in the lab documenting methods, catalogue your results in real world applications and avoid watching youtube videos that purport to teach shortcuts to success without science.
Note the type of cork in use here. It's from Henry's Tackle Shop in the Bridgeport Neighborhood of Chicago when our daughter, son in law and grandkids live. It's where we get live bait when fishing that neck of the woods.
That's a bass pro shops cork in this photo and she is using the large size but I rigged a smaller one for a shy bite rig. I've fished the water behind Cathy since 1978 and have caught seven different kinds of fish in this spot, once doing it all in one day.
Final count was 20 fat channel cats. We threw back small but legal fish and they were full of eggs.
I had a wellness check the morning of this trip and the doc said cut back on the carbs and salt but I had lost 10 pounds in the last 6 months. It must be the catfish diet.
Today's recipe is grilled catfish seasoned with Cavendar's Greek Seasoning, butter and lime with a side of grilled mixed veggies marinated in Tiger Sauce.
Someone, an old friend told me the other day, "come over I want to record you. Bring tuba, cigar box guitar and your resonator and let's capture what makes mudbelly mudbelly." I was honored and flattered at this idea thinking, wow my stichk must really be good or either he's thinking my music is like a painting by the early peoples of the desert that you might find hidden in a West Texas canyon. It's worth noting, seeing and documenting because one day old mudbelly will join them peoples to dance around a fire in the many rooms of the afterlife and while we won't want his sun baked cave paintings to hang in our living rooms it will be good to know they existed.
Music has been picking up for Cathy and I. I think it has for all musicians with the easing of covid and vaccinations and I am seeing many friends busy also. All this spittle spraying from tuba blowing and yelling into microphones has not given me covid or made anyone else sick.
Depending on where you see us playing you might see anything going on and with this blog entry I thought I might try to cover the range of musical activity that has been underway for the last few months. It might not all be rock and roll but as a musician I think you let your talent guide you and most of all you put music in places where it might not be.
Of course there is the tuba playing that has been an ongoing cross to bear since 1969. Our Lufkin Brass Quintet has not been much active this year but we are going to begin again after Easter. In the meantime the Angelina Civic Band has been busy with rehearsals each week and a concert is scheduled May 1st at 2pm in Temple Theater. Here is a video of Leonard Bernstein's Danzon by our band from the last concert.
I also had a chance to jam with the Stone Wall Rockers and the Brazos River Rats and Bluegrass Orchestra to make a big racket to celebrate the re-election of Judge Travis Kitchens to District 258. There's a lot of rules in these jams like this. You can't use music, I think they make you sing a song you don't know or at least have never performed (that's what they do to me) and then you go back and see the rule about no music. I don't know if this politician we honored with all this chaos is a Republican or a Democrat and I've known him for 30 years and it's never come up but there certainly seems to be a spirit of all men are equal as long as they have an electric guitar in their hands which sounds like something the Founding Father probably would not say.
That's Chris Edwards in the background on the Stonewall Studio stage. I'm reading his book "Nobody Come to Visit Anymore" and you should also.
After a couple of years of slowed activity playing at church retirement has helped us pick it up. Cathy is the musical director in this and the music is bilingual English and Spanish. We don't play a regular Mass but play anytime bilingual music is required. I just stand behind her and if her foot comes down and I'm not playing I start, if I'm playing when the foot comes down I stop.
We've played music for a lot of funerals during covid, I wish I would have counted but thankfully we are seeing more weddings these days. The last two weddings have had good parties afterwards. We play real good for our supper and the food was excellent at both of these.
With the Lenten Season coming to an end we furnished music for a couple of retreats. I think the fact that we both chose yellow shirts was as impactful as the music this day. It does not matter if it's church or a sweaty VFW stage somewhere this just reinforces my rule that you should always dress like you are with the band.
Mary sings with us here and has shown a real talent for organizing retreats.
This is a youth retreat group. I messed up and did not wear the yellow shirt fut the music was fun and the kids sang well. .
Youth retreat group.
Cathy and the other adults Mary, Maria, and Jose lead the kids. I worked the sound board.
Speaking of soundboard we have a new one, it's sounding good and also a camera to improve the livestreaming of services. Live had been done from a phone in the past and it's all been some new things to learn but I can compare it to my instruments. You have to put in the practice.
We will be doing Easter music on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil. Cathy blew her voice last week and between singing and yelling at grandkids she has had laryngitis but reports this morning, "better."
Hopefully she is back to full strength by Thursday. I will sing and actually my Spanish is getting better but it will sound nicer if my cave paintings are not hanging out front in the living room.
"...I know I've seen that face before," Big Jim was thinking to himself
"Maybe down in Mexico or a picture up on somebody's shelf..."Bob Dylan from "Lilly Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts
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