We started in NOLA on Thursday night, where we had a very special meal at Gallatoire's. Our waiter, and sommelier, Mark (shown with us below) was a big fan of Paso Robles wine. When he found out that Kevin and I had been bottling there five days earlier, he rolled out the red carpet. Amazing meal, and all the wine stewards, treated us like celebrities. We promised bottles of Bin 504 for everybody!
After another day in NOLA, we headed out Saturday morning to Lafayette for Festivals Acadien, the best Cajun festival in the world. Each year a band called Les Traiteurs, made up of some of the best Cajun musicians around, play a charity gig there. Their picture is below. Some of you might recognize the guitarist. He's Sonny Landreth, clearly one of the best guitarists you'll ever hear. He opened up Eric Clapton's Crossroads festival this year...and is probably best known as the guitarist on John Hiatt's classic albums, including "Slow Turning (thanks Bluesgirl!)." Amazing slide guitarist...just draw-dropping. Well worth checking out his solo albums.
Another favorite, Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, played Saturday night at a club called the Blue Moon Saloon, a great place to hear live music. Steve, who is a great friend of ours, and one of the best accordion players around, can be seen below smooching with Renee. The band smoked Saturday night! Just rocked the house.
That car shown below was our rental for the weekend, shown here piled high with treasures we bought on our annual pilgrimage to a shop in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, which you can see in the background. That's usually our final stop on the way back to New Orleans, right after brunch at Cafe des Amis, one of our top ten restaurants. You'd know why if you ever had the andouille cheese grits!
By the way, the quarter looked great! So clean it practically sparkled...you can get the idea from the picture below of the great balcony on Dauphine.
Needless to say, we left very reluctantly on Monday morning!
1 comment:
Happy Anniversary!!!
I went to FA too. It was GREAT!!! I love that festival! If you go, bring stretch pants to wear home because the food is as awesome as the music.
Ry Cooder is the guitarist on "Bring the Family". The Goners (Sonny Landreth, Dave Ranson & Kenneth Blevins) first CD with John Hiatt is "Slow Turning", the one after "Bring the Family", but the Goners did the BTF tour.
If you've seen Sonny live with his "regular" band, you should see him with Les Traiteurs. It's a different thing. You can see and hear the joy. Les Traiteurs is a totally charity band, with any thing that they might get paid going to the Tommy Comeaux Memorial Fund to endow a chair in traditional music at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Post a Comment