Down on the Bayou

Pictured: A Cypress swamp near New Iberia, LA. A 1930's era Dobro. Colin with the Theus Krewe in Alexandria.

Earlier this month, I played a house concert in Alexandria, LA, about a three hour drive west and north of New Orleans. The concert was hosted by Graves Theus who runs the Alexandria Music Project. Graves is a good friend of my friend in Portland, Fabio Apolito, which his how this gig came to be.

The show was a great success and I was introduced to all sorts of new people.

After the show, I was invited to head down to Bayou Teche, a bayou (slow moving river) near New Iberia, for an oyster feed and party the next day. So rather than heading back to New Orleans on Saturday, I headed south through Lafayette and onto a series of swampy, backwoods roads that eventually led to Bayou Teche. I was greeted by a great goup of folks and some of the best food I've experienced down here yet. After dinner I played for a while with a zydeco musician named Mojo who tours the world with his band, The Bayou Gypsies (http://www.redhotmojo.com/). Mojo was patient with me as I followed him through a couple of Cajun and Swamp Pop tunes that I was hearing for the first time.

My new friends were kind enough to put me up for the night and in the morning I was greeted in the kitchen with a glass of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice from grapefruits that had been cut down a few minutes earlier. I spent the rest of the morning playing on a 1930's era dobro that Joel, my host, had picked up at a pawn shop in northern Illinois many years ago.

This was quite a weekend and I look forward to my next trip to Alexandria and/or New Iberia... who knows what could happen.