So, the tour continues, with my return to the open arms of Shreveport, LA, where I arrive on 25th January at 6am after traveling through the night from Austin, TX on the greyhound.
I arrive and am met by David Nelson, who takes me back to his amazing apartment on historic Texas Avenue. After so little sleep you'd have thought I would go to sleep for a couple of hours, but we're straight out and having breakfast!
We go to the venue known as 'The Shop' for around 3pm and the space looks like a challenge. It's a large, high ceilinged room with a stage across one corner and the sound and lighting desk in the other. I decide straight away that I am going to perform from behind the audience – one reason for this is so I am not the focus of the piece, the sounds are, and another is so I can control the sound a lot more from there.
After joining many cables together to allow me to do this I find I am getting no sound from the right speaker – this is following major problems with my soundcard, which lead to my having to buy a firewire cable from Radio Shack for over $40!! After much testing of cables and connections, something tells me to check the actual output of the speakers – and lo and behold, no-one is getting sound from the right hand speaker!! a quick swapping of cables from amplifier to mixer and all is good.... Which leaves no time for me to soundcheck.
I should also mention, The Shop has a tin roof, and all the time we were setting up and solving problems the rain battered down on that roof, which was a great sound, but would have ruined most of the evening's sets.
Thankfully the rain does stop around 30 minutes before the doors open!Opening the evening were Jon Mackey and Brittney Maddox, performing together for the first time ever as Soft Troopers, and they were absolutely spellbinding! Brittney has an amazing voice and Jon accompanies it beautifully. Then the loveable maniac Peter Fetterman steps onto the stage, and plays a noisy yet tuneful set using his new instrument, freshly constructed that week. And I finish up, and the piece sounded great in the space (even though I say so myself). A very good night. Also good to catch up with Carrie, Raiven, Conchita, April and a whole host of others I met in October last year.
Then that evening Andy Ezell drives me out around 30 minutes away to take me to the swamp, which is breathtaking and quite spooky, but the idea was to record sounds, and it was totally dead expect for a constantly barking dog! Ah well.
I spend a couple more days in Shreveport, visiting David's families house in Homer and recording gunshots, oil drilling operations and creeks, as well as visiting Moon's Grocery http://www.zydecocruiser.com/nola/food/foodPages/moons.htm for lunch – I wasn't brave enough to try the pickled pig's lips I'm sorry to say... and thanks to Dillon for a short guided tour of the area around Texas Avenue when we got back.
The following day David and I took his canoe out to another part of the swamp, interrupting filming of a movie called 'The Iceman' which was happening right outside his house – it did mean that we got help lifting the canoe out and onto the top of the jeep! Again, very quiet, but we had fun punting around for two hours or so.
The next morning was another early one, with me catching a bus at 7am to New Orleans, getting in around 3pm where I was met by Mr. James Eck Rippie. We went straight to the French Quarter and had various local delights, the best being deep fried dill pickle slices! We also had alligator sausage, but it was really hard to tell what the meat actually tasted like... A fugitive from Shreveport, Meredith came and joined us and we wandered around the quarter for the rest of the day, taking in the Mississippi, Harrahs Casino, Bourbon Street and Frenchman. We also partook in a local drink known as the 'Hand Grenade'! http://www.tropicalisle.com/shop/oneandonly.html
30th January: James and I head out to a swamp north of New Orleans, which his satnav doesn't seem to want to take us to, leading us up many roads and then telling us to U-turn when legally able to! This time around there are definitely more sounds to be heard, and we take a couple of trails around Tickfaw State Park, also chatting about possible future collaboration...
We hit a few of the late bars and talk into the night, cutting it short as we have to get up around 7am once again, this time to get me to the airport, where I'm bound for Mexico City...
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