A & E -> A&E TUE, NOV 27 12:08PM by IND Monthly Staff
Darden Smith headlines AcA
Photo by Matthew Sturtevant
A move to the suburbs of Houston with his family while he was a teenager planted the seed for what would become a distinguished career in songwriting. Darden Smith retreated into music, studying the songs of Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, John Prine and others, and fashioning his own wide-ranging style.
Soon the Texas songwriting Mecca, Austin, beckoned, and under the guise of going to college, Smith made the first steps toward forging a career in music, becoming a regular headliner and releasing his first record, Native Soul, featuring fellow Texans Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith on harmony vocals.
At the inaugural South By Southwest festival, Smith caught the eye of Epic Records, which signed him on the spot. Eleven celebrated albums later that have yielded critically acclaimed tunes like “Midnight Train” and “Trouble No More,” as well as Top 10 hits such as “Loving Arms,” Smith shows no signs of slowing down, dividing his time between the road and his Austin home.
That road brings him to Lafayette on Friday, Nov. 30 for an intimate concert in the James D. Moncus Theater at the Acadiana Center for the Arts for the Performing Arts Society of Acadiana’s Singer + Songwriter Series.
Tickets range from $40-$55. To purchase tickets visit PASA’s website, the AcA website or call (337) 237-2787.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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