Eclectic Company: Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me

Downtown At Sundown is one of the nicest things the City parents provide for us under the stewardship of the Arts & Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana. For a month of Fridays just as the spring starts to heat up and turn into our (always) early summer, beginning at 6 p.m. and going strong until about sundown, come rain or come shine, they treat us to a free concert by some of the Lake Area’s finest bands. Held in a strip of parking lots on the east side of Ryan Street south of Broad (and if rain, sometimes undercover elsewhere), the music is always lively, merry, and highly danceable, which is appreciated by the ever-changing crowd of families, teens, couples of all ages, and seniors, who plant themselves on canvas chairs to watch the dancing that breaks out up close to the band, and in pockets around the local restaurants’ food concessions and Arts Council’s fundraising soft drinks and beer trucks.

This Friday is the 2010 season’s Downtown At Sundown closer, featuring Static, a rocking party band that’s gigged around the Lake Area since 1999. Started up as “Cowlick,” the first incarnation of the band was intending to play fifty percent honky tonk country outlaw music, like George Jones, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson material, adding some Conway Twitty ballads and ‘90s pop songs from bands like Stone Temple Pilots, Hootie and the Blowfish, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and the like — essentially forming a progressive country rock band — but they hooked up with accordion player Eustac Ledet in their first week, and from there, the plot thickened. Starting with that first lineup, and in different ways throughout the past eleven years, the band’s refined a unique mashup of country rock classics, hard rock anthems, and Cajun and Zydeco sounds and rhythms, finally creating a style they now call Zydecore. “It’s good time dancing music, in service to the dancer,” said Alastair White, bassplayer and vocalist, who co-founded the band with Jamie “Cash” McCabe, their lead guitar player and vocalist. The current group includes Garrett “Possum” Judice on accordion, Jonathan Johnson on lead vocals and acoustic and rhythm guitars, and Jacob “Lil Jakob” Robles (son of famed A2fe drummer Julian “Catfish” Robles, and nephew of Static’s first accordionist Eustac Ledet) on drums.

Over the years, many Static members have come from or passed through a musical group that might surprise you — the Trinity Baptist Church Celebration Orchestra. White’s played bass there most Sunday mornings for as long as I’ve known him, and some years back he brought McCabe along to join him in the church’s Orchestra. Trinity drummer Bill Ney, uncle of “Possum,” connected his accordion-playing nephew with Static, while Static bandmembers have filled in at Trinity in several musical roles. Former Static drummer Trey Newmiller, who now plays with The Kadillacs, fronted by Trinity Cavern guitarist Joe Tartaglia, was one such Static-to-Trinity substitute. Jonathan Johnson, who’s now Static’s frontman, played acoustic guitar with White and McCabe at Trinity before joining the band, and now, Sara Beth, Johnson’s sister, will join Static as a special guest at Downtown At Sundown to add her interpretation of Taylor Swift and Mary Chapin Carpenter material. One last Trinity member, 17-year-old vocalist Katelynnn McCartney, will also guest at Downtown, joining Static on harmony vocals and tambourine.

From their first Mardi Gras ball season, Static found their footing and became a fixture on the special event circuit, performing for civic groups, private and public holiday parties, and weddings, as well as bar and club dates. For those shows, Static’s covers of well-known contemporary good time rock music has been key, but the band have also played original music, with each lineup tweaking the material to its own strengths. Last year, the current group laid down eight tracks of originals and a couple of special interpretations of others’ songs; you can expect them to flesh out the EP they’re selling at their gigs (released on their own Shrimpboat label) to a full length record in due course. Meantime, you can also get copies of their “Mudbug” release, featuring many of the originals and earlier specialty covers their fans still shout for. You can get a taste of Static’s sound from their myspace page, www.myspace.com/staticlapartyband, but to truly appreciate their effervescent fun, you have to come out and see them live.

Which brings me back to Downtown At Sundown. There’s nothing quite like a block party to bring a community together. If you eat and drink and dance under the sun, babies bouncing on dad’s shoulders, kids chasing each other to new heights of underfootedness, you can’t help but pass a good time. My highest standard against which all other block parties shall forever be measured are the annual eleven-day Little Italy (New York) celebrations of the Feast of San Gennaro, the Saint of Naples, featuring the procession of religious relics and statues, followed by sausage and pepper sandwich vendors and cheap souvenir booths in ample quantity to satisfy the one million annual visitors to the festival, and the permanent block party that runs for miles along Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue, with its endless string of ethnic restaurants barbecuing in the street while music of unnamable weirdness pours out of makeshift PAs and tinny CD player loudspeakers from everywhere, but focuses each spring on a mile-long section from 37th to 57th streets, and calls itself the Ninth Avenue International Food Festival. Well I’m here to testify that Lake Charles’ version of the block party — four glorious sessions of Downtown At Sundown — stand tall and proud alongside the block parties that are New York’s finest. You bring out the babies and grandbabies this Friday night and check it out.