DL ON THE DOWNLOAD The down low on Roddie Romero & The Hub City All-Stars? They went all digital, and just in time for Christmas. The band has embraced a decidedly 21st-century way to move their 20th-century South Louisiana sound into virtual stockings everywhere: the download card. Think of it as a gift card, the gift being an MP3 download of the group’s Grammy-nominated double-disc The La Louisianne Sessions, named after the eponymous and iconic recording studio near the McKinley Street Strip that gave birth to many a swamp pop legend in the ’50s and ’60s and provided the soundtrack for a whole bunch of baby conceiving. The record itself is righteous: 23 “Louisiana roots” songs — timeless covers and spot-on originals — that showcase the impeccable musicianship of Romero, the multi-instrumentalist and now-grown former wunderkind after whom the state law allowing minors to play in bars is named, and his crackerjack band (Eric Adcock on organ and keys; Chad Viator on guitar, Chris French on bass and Jermaine Prejean on drums). I’m not sure if La Louisianne has gone digital, but I can imagine these warm, inviting tracks being laid down on half-inch reel-to-reel tape — just like Pawpaw used to do. It’s a damn fine record, and at $10 for the download card, it’s half the price of the double CD. You can purchase the CD Baby download card for The La Louisianne Sessions at the band’s website, RoddieRomero.com. Get it. Then give it. — Walter Pierce
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
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.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
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.
DL ON THE DOWNLOAD
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