Eclectic Company: Wendy Colonna Record Release Party Graces Our Local Music Scene

The most disappointing things about the live alternative and original music scene in Lake Charles are that it takes place in too few venues, and too few people know about it. Oh sure, the family and friends of individual artists and bands come out to local gigs wherever they happen, well organized musicians do e-blasts on Facebook or their own mailing lists, and the press (including The Jambalaya News) offers listings with info about whatever the clubs send them about who’s playing when. But news about local bands is usually heard after the fact of well-attended events, when the gossip filters down through Facebook and Twitter posts, and photos with brief taglines appear in the scene and heard columns of our local papers. And I’ve noticed that it’s mostly the same faces time after time who’re in the audiences for the great music I get around town to hear.

One unfortunate side effect of the limited outlet for alternative and original music is that with so few places to play, artists don’t get much face time with audiences made up of strangers, which is absolutely necessary for artistic growth. How else will a performer learn to entertain and communicate with an audience, if s/he always preaches to the choir, and is never exposed to indifferent or even hostile faces? Sure, if you’re in a cover band, you’ve got loads of places to play, both public and private, and you can gauge your entertainment prowess by the speed in which the audience hits the dance floor. But if you’re in an alternative music group, you might not appeal to dancers anyway (I’m thinking of course of all kinds of alternatives — it’s obvious that a square dance or contra dance caller expects to play for dancing, and if you’re playing Celtic music you’ll inevitably attract a few of those cute step dancers who do all their moving from the waist down, while their hands hang tensely along their sides, and their mouths wear a perpetual grimace of concentration). In fact, depending on what you’re doing – concertizing, arty performance stuff, odd-tempo jazz fusion, moody ballads — you may not want an audience to distract you by dancing. So taking the stage at a local dance palace is not the place to practice your trade. So where does a musician go if s/he wants to learn how to work a crowd?

Most of our best and brightest alternative and original music artists go out of town. Oh, not to play a few gigs and then to return. No. They move on to cities with bigger alternative and original music scenes. And the better a musician is, the more likely it is that s/he’ll leave town right after building a local following. That’s what happened with Wendy Colonna, singer/writer and yoga instructor, who moved away to Austin, home of Whole Foods, UT, and the SXSW music and media extravaganza; where it’s almost impossible to walk downtown without bumping into a bunch of musicians at all hours of the day and night. Alongside El Lay, Nashville, and New York, there’s almost a palpable musicality to the streets of Austin, and Austin has been very, very good to Wendy Colonna.

Over the years that I’ve been in Lake Charles, Colonna has come back regularly to play wherever someone is willing to showcase live acoustic music, and I’ve heard her new material whenever she’s released it. This time around, with the release of We Are One, her fifth record (which will be featured at a release party, June 18th, at 9:30, at Luna’s on Ryan Street), I’ve found more than earnest and pleasant songs that made me hungry for more music an hour after listening. In fact, with Papa Mali’s production surprises, Colonna’s come up with an album I just might be able to dance to.

Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welborne is an Austin-based blues and funk guitar and bass player with years of Louisiana roots music gigging and producing under his belt, and he’s used his ears to good effect on Colonna’s reflective songs of “love, loss and transcendence,” as they’re self-described. Using an earthy mix of soulful blues and country, the album’s dozen cuts chart familiar territory in new measures. I don’t know another woman apart from Bonnie Raitt who would have had the balls to cover Robert Johnson’s “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day,” which Colonna does to a slide guitar and cymbal-heavy rhythmic roll that adds just enough electronic overtone to heavy-up the straightforward vocal arrangement. And there’s a smoky barroom sound that reminds me of Betty Boop’s slinky “St James Infirmary Blues” on “Hurricane,” with its honky tonk piano and horn solos and throwback to the forties vocals. Colonna’s recently been named best singer songwriter by the Austin American-Statesman, and this time around I’m going to agree with them, and go a step further. She’s the best singer songwriter to come out of Lake Charles, Louisiana, anytime in recent memory. Get down to Luna to hear her on the 18th and get yourself an earful of and a hand full of We Are One. More Wendy Colonna info on her website www.wendycolonna.com.

Oh, and just a postscript on the live music downtown curfew problems of recent months: Complications arising from misreading the ordinance by both club owners and members of our fine constabulary caused some consternation and too-early shutdowns of live music in various indoor venues. A few concerned musicians and their supporters braved City Hall with a petition a few weeks back asking for repeal of the noise ordinance in question, and since then some of the misconstruction has been cleared away. More official corrections promised soon. So go out, hear live music, patronize the clubs that offer it, drink their beer, eat their meals and snacks, and don’t forget to tip your waitpersons. And show the City parents that live music venues and performers have the support of many voting and tax-paying citizens.