Eclectic Company: One Weekend In Lake Charles

When I flew back to Lake Charles from New York in early October, I discovered I’d landed a couple of hours before my luggage had been rescheduled to arrive. Not an unusual Lake Charles occurrence – in eleven years of flying into LCH, my bags must have followed later at least a dozen times – but over five months’ absence, I’d forgotten how likely that would be, so I wasted time getting upset, filing a late baggage report, and venting my frustration on the poor overworked ticket agent. Which is why although I hotfooted it over to McNeese’s Shearman Fine Arts Performing Arts Theatre, I missed all but the tail end of a concert by the MSU Jazz bands. So apologies to the talented Little Band and Big Band members, and to Patrick Sheng, the accomplished new Director of Jazz Studies and Assistant Professor of Saxophone, whose tenure is already proving to be lively and refreshing, and whose students are definitely on an exciting musical path, if their program that night is a useful measure of their coursework. I admit to being a diehard bebop fan with a taste for the jazz master classics, but how great it was to see the range of big band compositional voices. I got to hear solos by Bill Ishee (sax) on Matt Harris’s “The Last Dive,” and by Stephanie LaCoste (trumpet) and William Christian (sax) on Frank Mantooth’s “The Stone Lizard.” All three deserved and earned enthusiastic ovations. Performances of the jazz bands and in fact of all McNeese student and faculty performances are free; check the McNeese website and The Jambalaya News for their schedules.

The following night was the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and as always for the High Holy Days, services at Temple Sinai were celebrated with musical enhancements by Fred Sahlmann on organ, Sharon Allured, soprano, Michelle Martin, alto, and Jan Scott, on clarinet (a worthy replacement for retired Maestro William Kushner, whose once-yearly clarinet solo always brought me to tears), who together ushered in the annual day of communal confessional prayer with the majestic opening Hebrew prayer “Kol Nidre.” Visiting Rabbi Brian Zimmerman spoke movingly about this text, and in his “d’var Torah” – a lecture on a religious theme that is more than a sermon, but less than a study session – he reflected on the relationship between wo/men and God in a way that I had never before heard. His voice, rising and falling as he read this lesson to us was itself musical as well as profound.

The sounds of the Yom Kippur prayers always fill me with peace, but this year, as we recited our sins and asked for forgiveness, I found I was especially comforted. I admit to missing the familiar prayer tunes from the Orthodox Jewish tradition in which I was raised, but one song, “Mishebeirach,” in which the community prays for those who are “in need of healing” that I’ve only learned to sing in this congregation, touched me deeply. It is our tradition to recite aloud the names of those we want the community to keep in mind when singing this prayer. In this last year the wider Reform Jewish community lost the song’s composer, Debbie Friedman, who over the course of thirty+ years wrote contemporary settings for traditional Jewish prayers that have offered “transformati[on], joy and comfort, hope and faith, healing and inspiration” to the Jewish community – especially those in Reform movement – and created a new genre of vernacular Jewish music. This, I must admit, has not always been my cup of tea, as much contemporary spiritual music, much of which is sung in major keys (which don’t sound sufficiently awestruck or mournful to my ears) has left me cold. But Debbie Friedman’s “Mishebeirach” is on my lips at every Sabbath and holiday service, and I am grateful to have learned it, and to have had the opportunity to regularly lift my voice in prayer with its melody. More music from this composer can be found at www.debbiefriedman.com.

From the sacred to the profane, or at least to the somewhat sinful, it was a short leap to Dash Rip Rock, appearing before a tiny crowd of the faithful at The Porch, careering through Johnny Cash covers and closing, as always, with their jetspeed hit “Let’s Go Smoke Some Pot,” set to the tune of “At The Hop,” without which I could have lived happily another three or four decades. After seeing their show – an energetic punked-out set of country-tinged rock and bluesy rockabilly featuring Dash Rip Rock originals from a twenty-five-year repertoire and covers as they occurred to bandleader, songwriter and slide guitarist extraordinaire Bill Davis, who contorted himself to use a chair leg (still attached to chair) as a slide, when he got bored with the shot glass he plied most of the time – I was really confused about the limited audience. Football? Church? Where were their people?

But I had a fine time out on The Porch’s patio, where I got to discuss Roddy Doyle with another literary fan, in between songs and during a brief set break. And as for Dash Rip Rock’s showmanship, funnily enough, although the music pounded joyfully from bass, drums and guitar, their whole performance, including the chair balancing feat, felt unhurried, almost laid back, and I really don’t believe Davis or bassist Patrick Johnson even worked up a sweat during several heavy numbers (drummer Kyle Melancon may have glowed a little, but since drumming takes all four limbs, and uses some big muscle groups to boot, that wouldn’t be surprising no matter how many beats per minute he was putting out). For years I had confused Dash Rip Rock with North Carolina-rockers Rod Dash and Rick Rock, and so I missed most of the band’s early efforts at inventing country punk and generally making a musical nuisance of themselves around the southland. But maybe it’s better to have seen them this way, in the presence of a few of the curious and the fans, as a mature, witty, smart-assed trio in command of their instruments, making musical reference to just about every major song and major star of the last decades, proving they’re now at the height of their powers. As the set wound down, or rather, up, to its boffo ending, just hearing “Stairway to Heaven” sung to the tune of “Freebird” about made my year. Rock on, dudes.