Shreveport - Bossier, Louisiana's Other Side

The 2010 Red River Dragon Boat Festival. Photo by Jim Huckabay.

The Red River Dragon Boat Festival returns 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Saturday, September 10. Dozens of dragon boat teams from Shreveport-Bossier, as well as visiting teams from places like Lafayette, LA and Houston, TX, will compete. In addition to the competition, there's a festival vibe to the event. Last year, I showed up early, set up lawn chairs, grabbed a tasty breakfast taco from Columbia Cafe, and enjoyed some great company while watching the teams battle it out. Admission is free, and the weather should be incredibly nice (i.e. still in the 70's and 80's) for this kind of event. As is detailed in today's story in The Times, there's a dynasty champion here - the Shreveport Fire Department have walked away from this event as champions every year to date. Several teams have been very public about seizing the title this year, but none of them strike me as having anywhere near the combined muscle mass of the SFD gang. We'll see!

Whether you're a dragon boat enthusiast or a complete newcomer, this event makes for a great excuse to enjoy the riverfront that we're so lucky to have in Shreveport-Bossier. I recommend bringing lawn chairs, sun block, and possibly a bullhorn with which to encourage (or discourage) the team of your choice.      

A view of the main room at the McNeill Street Pump Station, snagged from an anonymous Flickr profile.

On Friday, October 14, Shreveport's McNeill Street Pumping Station (142 North Common Street) will host the 2011 MSPS New Music Festival, an evening-long showcase of site-specific performances, installations and recorded compositions by some of the world's most revered experimental musicians and sound artists. The roster of performers has been finalized, and includes the likes of ambient music legend Tim Hecker, multimedia artist Mark Fell, and a smorgasborg of about 26 others, including locals like Pete Fetterman and Dacoda Montana. The theme of the exhibition is “Architectural Explorations in Sound” and the concept of the entire show is to "play the building" as an instrument. At a planning meeting last night, event co-curator Bob Greenwood said that two performers were planning to string 100 foot-long piano strings between buildings at the Pumping Station and pluck them using pulleys of some sort. Another act will perform utilizing an eight-channel mix - an 8.1 surround sound system. It all sounds pretty fantastical and completely strange and wonderful.

The fest will run 7 p.m.-11 p.m. Admission will be $10. Carpooling is highly recommended. If you're not familar with the McNeill Street Pumping Station, an 1887 steam-powered water works that was retired in 1980, take a look at their website. To get a sense of the beauty of the building, I recommend checking out this Flickr photoset.

Lagniappe
Visit the McNeill Street Pumping Station website
Visit the MSPS New Music Festival 2011 website
"Like" the festival on Facebook

Shady Grove Brewing's "El Hefe," a Bavarian-style Hefeweizen with flavors of banana, clove, and citrus.

Shreveport-Bossier is home to a thriving community of home brewers and home brewing clubs. While some of these organizations are completely unknown to the public (such as Highland's mysterious Port City Bootleggers crew), some of the larger groups have found a place to showcase the fruits of their labor at BREW, downtown Shreveport's annual beer festival. One of the groups who will be bringing a variety of hand-crafted beers to the 2011 BREW event on Saturday, October 15 is the Malt Munching Mash Monsters (MMMM), a local home-brewing community that serves as a support system for beginning brewers and a sounding-board for more advanced brewers looking to hone their craft.

I recently spoke with members of the Malt Munching Mash Monsters about how and why the home brewing movement seems to have exploded in Shreveport-Bossier, and how interested parties can get started brewing their own beer. They suggested that newcomers to home brewing sign up for their on-line discussion board and join the conversation, which typically involves peer-to-peer troubleshooting and the exchange of tips, advice, and best practices.

If you'd like to taste some of Shreveport-Bossier's finest home brews, as well as a variety of foreign, domestic, and microbrew beers, mark your calendar to attend BREW, 3:30 p.m.-7 p.m., Saturday, October 15 at Festival Plaza in downtown Shreveport. For more information, visit BREW on-line.

Lagniappe
View a slideshow of photos from BREW 2010.
"Like" BREW on Facebook to receive regular updates from organizers.

Musicians perform at the 2010 Red River Revel. The Revel is an eight day festival featuring 100+ art vendors, dozens of live bands, and food booths galore.

More details of the 2011 Red River Revel live music schedule will be announced soon, but a handful of confirmed performers have been announced by Revel organizers. The opening night performance on Saturday, October 1 will feature Better Than Ezra with special guests Super Water Sympathy. Other highlights include country-rock bad boy Colt Ford, R&B crooners The S.O.S. Band, Whiskey Myers with the Wes Jeans Band, Christian rockers Red, Civil Twilight, and many more. The line-up on Sunday, October 2 will focus exclusively on bluegrass music, combining well-known touring acts with local bluegrass performers.

The Revel staff is currently preparing a press release with a more complete list of performers. The 2011 Red River Revel will be held October 1-8, 2011 in downtown Shreveport's Festival Plaza. The Revel has also just created a Twitter profile - if you're a social media user, you may want to follow them for updates directly from the source.

What are you looking forward to at the Revel? We're fans of the sometimes-outrageous food (fried Snickers bars?), the live music, and the art vendors. Mostly, we're fans of seeing huge crowds enjoying themselves on the downtown Shreveport riverfront.

Lagniappe
Visit the Red River Revel's website.
View a gallery of photos from past Revels.
Follow @RedRiverRevel on Twitter.     

Six year-old Woo-Hoo Whoopie Pie fan Waylon Carter enjoys a mighty large snack - maybe we should cut that into quarters for Waylon?

With the highly-anticipated opening of the 2011 Shreveport Farmers’ Market right around the corner (7 a.m.-12 p.m., Saturday, June 4), we thought we’d make today’s food post about a local snack tradition that grew out of the farmers’ market.

Becky Abner’s Woo-Hoo Whoopie Pies are fresh-baked chocolate cake sandwiches filled with homemade butter cream filling. “Whoopies” sell for $3 each (or 2 for $5 at the farmers’ market) and come in original, double chocolate, peanut butter, strawberry, and coconut crème flavors. Abner, who brought these traditional snacks from Maine to Louisiana when she moved here 13 years ago, says the pies are best enjoyed “with a glass of ice cold milk and a stack of napkins.” We recommend the delicious peanut butter flavor or the original butter cream.

“Whoopies date back to the 1920’s, and originated in Maine,” Abner said. “There’s really no comparison to any traditional southern snack – people ask if they’re like Moon Pies, but they’re completely different.”

The Shreveport Farmers’ Market will be held 7 a.m.-12 p.m. every Saturday, June 4-September 3 and 3 p.m.-6 p.m. every Tuesday, June 7-July 19. Items available for purchase range from fresh produce and locally-sourced meat and seafood to bonsai trees, art and more. All markets are held at Festival Plaza in downtown Shreveport.

Lagniappe
"Like" the Shreveport Farmers' Market on facebook.
View a Youtube video of the 2009 market.

It's been a good year for Cajun and Zydeco music fans in Shreveport-Bossier. Sam's Town Live! has hosted multiple visits by the likes of Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. and the phenomenal Jo-el Sonnier, and now the 28th annual Mudbug Madness festival has arrived, bringing with it tons of great live performers. As with any festival, it's hard to pick favorites, but here are a few videos from some performers I'm excited about seeing:


Lil' Nate & The Zydeco Bigtimers
Thursday, May 26, 4:30 p.m.

On record, these guys are a hybrid of hip-hop, R&B, and Zydeco - check out their Myspace page and you're likely to encounter hip-hop remixes and autotuned vocals. Live they seem more likely to stick to tradition. I'm a big fan of several songs, especially "Dead Wrong." For fans of contemporary R&B or hip-hop, this will be an unusual treat - I mean, the guy has an album called Zydeco Ballin'.


Wayne Toups & ZydeCajun
Thursday, May 26, 8:15 p.m.

This guy's a legend. One of the most commercially successful Cajun singer/songwriters, Wayne Toups has recorded albums for Polygram and Mercury Records, has appeared in a Super Bowl broadcast (in 1990), had several songs featured in major motion pictures (including Steel Magnolias), and more. His tunes are fast-paced and more accessible than some Cajun music, with most lyrics sung in English. The obviously dated clip above is taken from Les Blank's film seminal Cajun music film J'Etais Au Bal.  


Dwayne Dopsie & the Zydeco Hellraisers
Sunday, May 29, 8 p.m.

Lafayette, LA native and son of Zydeco pioneer Rockin' Dopsie, Dwayne has played the accordion since age 7. He's a notoriously rowdy and out-of-control player, prone to flashy solos that demonstrate his virtuosic control of the instrument. Live, he's known for breaking out bizarrely awesome rock covers that substitute the accordion for the guitar, such as Jimi Hendrix's "Hey Joe," seen in the video above.

Click here for the full line-up of Mudbug Madness performers.

The late Sister Margaret McCaffrey, who founded Christian Service in 1970.

My inexhaustible fellow blogger Robert Trudeau just beat me to this one with a post of his own, but the first annual Sister Margaret Music Festival is scheduled for 3 p.m.-7 p.m., Sunday, May 15 at 516 Texas Street. The line-up of musicians features some true Shreveport-Bossier legends, including 2011 Blues Foundation Award-winner Buddy Flett, the Shreveport All-Stars with Maggie Warwick, A.J. & Tony Cascio, and many more. Admission is a $5 donation, with all proceeds benefiting Christian Service. 

Organizer Dan Garner, founder of the NXNWLA Music Foundation, says the event was designed to help Christian Service “get a little bump of support for the summer months,” due to the fact that their other annual fundraiser, the Christian Service Telethon, takes place in November. Funds raised at the telethon are typically exhausted by summer. Christian Service provides emergency services such as food, shelter and clothing. They also operate the Hospitality House soup kitchen and several literacy and housing programs – all on a very meager operating budget.

One highlight of the music program is the first band scheduled to perform, Artscool. Artscool consisted of Garner alongside a rotating cast of some of Shreveport’s best-known local musicians. They haven’t performed live since the 80’s, when they recorded an album for Stan Lewis' Jewel/Paula Records and regularly performed on the Christian Service telethons.

For a full schedule of performers, visit the NXNWLA blog.
RSVP or invite friends on facebook.

"Juanita Montoya Cortez," just one of many mind-bending assemblage sculptures by Bennett Sewell on display at the Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College beginning Sunday, May 1.

When it rains art and culture in Shreveport-Bossier, it pours. We have dry spells, just like anywhere, but those spells tend to end in a veritable gullywasher of art openings, festivals and performances. Take this weekend, for example: the 27th annual ArtBreak festival (the south's largest student art exhibition, April 29-May 1), the Texas Avenue Makers Fair (Saturday, April 30, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.), and the 4th annual ASEANA Spring Festival (also Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.) are all happening at the exact same time within blocks of one another in downtown Shreveport. Notably, all three of these phenomenal events are free to attend.

And just as certainly as you can count on three or more major art events falling on the same day in Shreveport-Bossier, you can bet that some small but wonderful art exhibit's opening will come and go in the shadow of these better-publicized events. This weekend, that quiet, largely unheralded event is the opening of Bennett Sewell's "It's What You Make Of It" exhibit at Meadows Museum of Art. The inexhaustible Robert Trudeau pointed out the opening in this post just a few days ago, giving Shreveportblog readers a small glimpse at the beautifully bizarre creatures that live in the zoo of Mr. Sewell's imagination. Inspired by a conversation with Meadows Museum of Art Director Diane Dufilho, I went in search of more images of Sewell's work and found this phenomenal gallery by photographer Brian Lewis. If you have five minutes to spare, explore that gallery of photographs. You'll end up as thrilled as I am about seeing these pieces, which are assembled from garage sale and garbage pile finds, in person on Sunday, May 1, 1 p.m.-5 p.m. The exhibit runs through July 31, so you'll have plenty more chances to catch the show. Meadows Museum of Art is located on the Centenary College campus, just north of the intersection of Kings Highway and Centenary Boulevard.

I'd like to thank photographer Brian Lewis for being so happy to share his work for the purpose of promoting Mr. Sewell's show. Every artist should have such an unselfish friend who also happens to be a gifted studio photographer! Thanks, Brian!

What are you still reading the internet for? Get out there and see how many festivals it's possible to attend in one day!

Come face-to-face with history at the Barksdale Air Force Base's 8th Air Force Museum in Bossier City.

Confession time: I've lived in Shreveport-Bossier for nearly 15 years and, until last week, I'd never visited the 8th Air Force Museum at Barksdale Air Force Base. With the 2011 Defenders of Liberty Air Show coming up May 7 & 8, I thought I'd remedy that situation by paying the museum a visit.

To visit the museum, enter Barksdale Air Force Base by the Northgate Entrance, just off of Industrial Drive. The gentlemen manning the guard station will need to collect someone's ID, but they'll return it as you exit the base. The museum is located just inside the base entrance. It's a surprisingly nondescript building, inside which visitors can explore the well-documented history of Barksdale Air Force Base. Dedicated in 1932, Barksdale houses the oldest Bomb Wing in the United States Air Force, and is known as the "home of the B-52 Bomber." One particularly interesting exhibit inside the museum building features a photographic timeline of the events of September 11, 2001, when President George W. Bush flew to Barksdale AFB and addressed the nation.

But it must be said that the glory of the 8th Air Force Museum doesn't reside inside the museum. Exit the building and take a walk just north of the entrance gate, and you'll find yourself surrounded by historic fighter planes, bombers, and "flying fortresses" from nearly every era of modern miltary history, from the P51-D (the "Mustang" fighter, which escorted bombers in WWII, ensuring Allied air superiority) to an incredible Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" stealth bomber. There are nearly 30 aircraft on display on the museum's grounds. It's a powerful, humbling experience to walk this row of aircraft.

For anyone who has taken this museum for granted, like I did for so many years, I highly recommend visiting. A great time to do so would be May 7 & 8, during the air show. Admission and parking are free.

Lagniappe
View a brief slideshow of images of the vintage planes on display at the 8th Air Force Museum.
Visit the 8th Air Force Museum website.
Learn more about the history of Barksdale Air Force Base on Wikipedia.

Pardon the image, un-glamorously copied and pasted from the Cork website.

CORK: A Red River Revel Wine Event returns Saturday, April 2, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. for a sixth year of celebration and libation in downtown Shreveport's Festival Plaza. Event organizer Kip Holloway said Thursday that a limited number of tickets were still available at $65 each. What do you get for $65? Live jazz by the Winston Hall Quartet, delicious food from nine of our area's leading locally-owned restaurants, and - of course - tastings of over 80 wines. This year's wine selections are all from the West Coast, stretching from California to Washington.

When I confided to Mr. Holloway that I don't know enough about wine to distinguish a Screaming Eagle from a Little Penguin, he took the opportunity to point out that CORK isn't just for wine snobs. Guests should speak with the wine reps who'll be in attendance, and ask for recommendations.

"Talk to the representatives and let them know what you like, and they'll advise you on what to try," Holloway said. "CORK is educational, it's a great way to learn how to handle yourself in a conversation about wine." So, you need not be a wine snob to attend CORK, but you may well be able to impersonate one at the end of the day.

Past CORK events have sold out, so if you're interested, we'd recommend cruising on over to their ticketing website. Salud!