It Came From The Porch : Tales of a Theraflu Junkie : Bienville Blast

Beinville Blast

T-shirts for $15.00 About the best deal in town.

Intent on using the free tickets that we got from Dawn & Stacy from Forelocks hair Salon, Amy and I wandered downtown to see what all the fuss was about. As it was, the fuss wasn't about anything.

We handed our tickets to the guy at the entrance to the festival. He tore off the two marked Saturday (the BLAST went on all weekend) and stamped our hands with a strange blue ink that looked to be exactly the same shade as the USDA GRADE A BEEF stamp that you see on huge pieces of meat before they are cut into civilized bits. I don't know, maybe you don't see those. It's probably best. Anyway, he stamp ed us and told us to have a nice time. We went in. Only it wasn't really in. It was still out, but the kind of out like a heard of Catttle in a corral. Hmm, that's two meat references in a row. Probably a sign that I eat too much bacon.

So there we were in a huge festival with booths to buy stuff, stages to hear stuff, and interesting bits to do (like the ever popular bungee trampoline). Would've been a hoot except there was all of about 60 people there. I looked at Amy. Amy looked at me. We looked at the cameras we'd brought to Cattch some interesting photo opportunities. We looked at the dog rubbing it's ass on the ground with it's back two legs extended over it's head like some sort of strange antenna. Interesting true...but not quite the opportunity we had in mind. We walked on.

The main stage had gathered quite a crowd. Why there must've been 20 people there. I was going to see if I could get close enough to snap a photo when the band started up. They were playing a rendition of the county music song, "Elvira" that wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that we could hear it. I considered the picture and put the lens cap back on my Holga (yes that's a camera).

Deeper...deeper into the valley of death we strode. There were grilled sausages, hamburgers, oriental bits of meat on a stick (Uh oh, more meat references), and various others things that you would only think of as appetizing if you were at a fair or festival. Those booth guys were cooking like hell. You would have thought a crowd of Ethiopian refugees were about descend upon them with a fervor unseen since the great highschool toilet paper rationing of the mid eighties. I looked around, half expectant that a large crowd was sneaking up behind me and that I would have to dive to the side to get from between them and the meat-on-a-stick booth. There wasn't. It would have been funny though, me flailing about myself with a plastic camera in a huge crowd of Ethiopians while Amy calmly snapped photos and yelled, "Hey! Stop your whining! ART is not all pretty." Maybe it would only have been funny to me though. We walked on.

Deeper...deeper we rode (this is starting to sound like a poem about Lord Cardigan isn't it). Finally we happened upon a friendly face. No, not Martha Stewart, rather it was Catt Sirten (photographer, DJ, and all-around hoopy frood). He was carrying more photo equipment than a Weekly World News reporter at the Betty Ford Clinic and telling us about how he had scaled the CLIMBING WALL that had been set up by the bungie trampoline (See? there really IS such a thing as a bungie trampoline). Seems he had gotten incredibly bored and gone over the edge. That's okay though. Amy and I don't like to hang out with anyone unless we can verify that they have gone over the edge at least twice in the past month. Normal is boring. Cat is not boring. His eloquence is made even more remarkable by his creativity and caring for his fellow humans. If you get the chance to meet him you should. He's one of the important ones. We walked on.

Around 5:32, as the light was starting to fade from the sky and our ankles were only just noticing the cool spring evening, Gretch And The Modern Day El Dorados took to stage.

Specifically, they mounted the Digiph Smart Phone stage. It was far enough away down a side street stage to mostly block out the country music strains that still drifted to us on the breeze. Gretch is an odd character. Probably in his mid to upper twenties, he looks like the poster child for the 1950's. I don't really know him, but it seems I've known OF him for about 8 years or so. In a small town like Mobile, the creatively aberrant tend to build up a smallish reputation as local icons. For someone with the cool fortitude and casual style as Gretch it means that even the people who don't know you, know of you. That's how I know about Gretch. Legally named Gretch Rocking Cat to be precise.

Gretch wore a long-sleeved green open collared shirt and matching pants with long off-white tassels on the sleeves and around the breast area. He had sort of an extreme rock-abily style with yellow horses embroidered above the tassels. He had jet black hair swept back into a pompadour, and it just kinda looked right on him. I don't know what kind of guitar he had but it's what you would guess it would be. A classic early 1950's style, it was white with gold trim.

To his left, on a gorgeous shiny brown upright was another guy, call him El Dorado 1. ED1 was strumming be-bop in a leopard shirt and khaki pants. He had a black scarf tied around his neck and seemed cool in a way that only guys that play upright can be.

To Gretch's right was ED2, a guy in black with white embroidery playing lead guitar. Behind him was a guy in all black (ED3) playing slide guitar with a piece of copper. He managed to look somehow sinister and indifferent at the same time. It think it must have been the chewing gum.

Behind Gretch was the drummer, ED4. Umm...he had drums.

They fit the bill right down to the mikes, which were the oblong ones with the horizontal stripes of metal that they used to have on the Ed Sullivan Show. They were rocking.

After the song, Gretch addressed the audience.

"Don't forget we've got T-SHIRTS! At $15.00 it's about the best deal in town! And now for the most beautiful song you've ever heard."

A larger crowd had collected near the stage and Catt wandered up again to snap a few picture of the band. He had a lens on his camera that was about a foot long and about as wide as my hand. I imagined that he was really a spy from a strange European country that ended in "ia," spinning around madly and firing armor piercing bullets into the crowd from his obviously oversized camera. The screams were incredible, but that was all in my head. The band finished the song, oblivious to the carnage that was going on inside my brain.

"And now we'd like to play one we wrote for Hank Williams."

"Your Cheetin heart
Will tell on Youuuuuuu..."

Did I mention that they all wore cowboy boots?

"How are we doing on time? 45 minutes? That's good. How are y'all doin out there? Can I get you anything? No? Okay this next song is for our sponsor Harold Allen, of Harold Allen Mobile Homes. Out at Harold's, you can get a brand new double-wide trailer for...how much guys?"

Gretch glanced back over his shoulder at the band.

"59 cents? Hell, something like that. THIS ONE'S FOR YOU HAROLD!"

"Stood up,
Broken hearted,
Again..."

It can't be easy to play a slide guitar, but the guy in black was doing a solo anyway. I wondered if the other guitar players ever made fun of him because he was different. It's funny, what happens to the face of a guy who's doing a slide guitar solo. His head tilts to the side like one of his ears suddenly just got really heavy and he squints his eyes like he can see something a long way off. Looked okay on him though.

We wandered off before they were finished, but it wasn't because we were tired of listening. We had another place to be, a photography exhibit at the Mobile Museum of Art. Eluding the eager stares of the Meat-on-a-Stick vendors, we made our way out of the festival and to the car. Not a bad night thus far.

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