push-me-pull-you

The scene at the Lakeview RV park in Eunice on Saturday.


Mountain Man, Made the Harbor
Louisiana Proud KBON, 101.1 FM
Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms
Peter Case, Wig!

My buddy Clarke and I hit the research trail this weekend, first to the barn dance at the RV park in Eunice which might be at the top of my list of indigenous wonders. I have a story about it in the next Country Roads. There was an amenity upgrade on this second visit - a massive firepit drunken swimsuit-clad campers circled on bikes. Fun, y'all.



We spent much of our trip in the dark roads that knit Acadiana together beguiled by the alien sisterhood that is Mountain Man. They are like if the Be Good Tanyas were so inside their deal that they failed to notice how hot they are. Really, if there is any justice, there will follow some Iron & Wine trajectories foe them, but we wondered what could you add to this that wouldn't ruin it? Maybe it will just pass like a cloud.


Mountain Man,"Animal Tracks"

We switched to the pan-Louisiana clatter of KBON. Usually I stick with the concert rule of not listening to what I am going to see on the way - we'd just taken in Kyle Huval and the Dixie Club Ramblers' twanged-out Cajun at the RV park and were headed a bout of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys vs. Pine Leaf Boys at Grant St.Dancehall in Lafayette. Mountain Man became too precious. KBON is full-on Louisiana self-celebration. Two gals at the Swamp Pop Festival where sportin' these last weekend.


KBON fans at the Swamp Pop Festival.

Anyway, Steve Riley was hanging with CC Adcock at the bar at Grant St. while Pine Leaf Boys tore the place up. I've always thought them a crack Cajun band but in recent years they've transcended that. At one point in a song, they slipped into a modal psychedelic interlude before slipping back into the waltz. Next song, the fiddle player pulled out a heartbreaking old country voice for a Hank Williams tune whose name escapes me right now George Jones' "She Thinks I Still Care,", and, damn it was good. The accordion player took up the fiddle in the tune, speaking to their consummate musicianship. like of course the accordion player can fill in on fiddle.


Pine Leaf Boys at Grant St. Dancehall

The RV park is relatively new. Grant ST. has been around forever - it has been over ten years since I've been there, maybe longer - and thinking about and writing about all of this is a push-me-pull-you of nostalgia and presence and persistence and rhythm and reverberation, all of which was experienced while darting through the first fifth of Imperial Bedrooms while Maya read a book about frogs at the Perkins Rowe Barnes & Noble.


Perkins Rowe from atop the parking garage.

Perkins Rowe is a monstrous mix use upscale shopping thing about which I am also mixed. Part of me hates that it exists at all, part of me hates that the only stores there that hold any interest for me are the bookstore and Urban Outfitters, which is a further conflict. I know one should hate UO for so many reasons but I like the stuff in there and it's post-headshop ethos. The rest of me likes Perkins Rowe. I've never been a big fan of Ellis. I think American Psycho is a conceptual triumph that is nigh unreadable, a better movie. This one, though, has something to it. It is consciously repulsive but it draws you in a little. Like a story, perhaps. I think I'm going to read Imperial Bedrooms entirely in bookstore trips, like I did that Miranda July book. The only way it would be better is if they had it at Urban Outfitters.

Speaking of, the contemporary BEE Tao Lin's book Shoplifting From American Apparel used to be on the tables at UO but now it isn't, and nobody else in town carries it. There seems to be a bit of a schism involved in getting it from Interlibrary Loan - like I'd be missing the point of its pointlessness altogether. Maybe I'll just see if I can get a torrent of it, or maybe somebody has it as a pill.