If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to play the fiddle, Tom’s Fiddle and Bow in Arnaudville is offering a rare opportunity to study with two masters of Cajun fiddle. Mitch Reed and Al Berard will teach violin lessons on alternate Monday nights starting December 1. Although Reed was classically trained on cello and bass, he learned fiddle the old way, studying with Cajun fiddlers like Dennis McGee, Calvin Carriere, Canray Fontenot, and Dewey Balfa. Reed formed Charivari, a traditional band in the 1980s. He also currently plays with Beausoleil and Racines. A native of Cecilia, Al Berard has been playing music since he was a child. He too studied under masters of Cajun fiddle Dennis McGee and Dewey Balfa, and started his band, the Basin Brothers, with accordionist Errol Verret. To sign up, and for more information, call 754-5528 or 322-5402.
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.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
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.
Subscribe to this comment's feed