We heard from 62 readers this week on our live music survey. The responses range (y’all got a lot of opinions), but for the most part what we’ve heard is things aren’t quite what they used to be.
Music
Seen and Heard
A symposium celebrates the creative work of women and “unpacks” how Cajun and Creole culture have traditionally approached gender.
5 min read
You’re gonna break 5,000 eggs: The Current Calendar 10/31 – 11/6
For Abbeville’s Giant Omelette Celebration, 5,034 eggs will be cracked. That’s 4,984 more than Paul Newman ate in Cool Hand Luke.
5 min read
Current Calendar 10/10-10/16
Festivals Acadiens et Creoles is a great place to eat. Victoria’s Secret spokesman Bob Dylan plays the Heymann Center.
5 min read
Current Calendar 10/3-10/9
Cosplay and cult classics at Louisiana Comic Con, ASO’s symphony in the sky, Brew Paddle’s fall weather teaser.
5 min read
Current Calendar 9/26 – 10/2
This week: Fleetwood Mac Revisited gets revisited at DTA. Ulysses Owens takes his jazz odyssey to AcA. Documentary Date Night is ready for nerdy romance. The Acadiana Food Hub hosts a Farm to Table Showcase.
4 min read
Current Calendar 9/19-9/25
This week around Acadiana: Folksy blues at the Heymann Center, parking spaces come alive, Keith Frank does DTA, raising money for Cite des Arts, and an experiment in networked music making.
4 min read
‘Rift’ in the scene
No matter the stats, the hustle, or the popularity, Forming the Void has built around its five-year-run, the hometown shows don’t pull the same response the band finds around the rest of the globe.
8 min read
Special session — Joel Savoy talks new release with Kelli Jones, ‘Toi, Tu Joues à L’amour’
Joel Savoy and Kelli Jones have played music onstage and on records together for more than a decade. Until last summer, however, the duo had never made time to record their own project.
4 min read
And just like that, the moratorium lifts: Artmosphere is now a bar
▸ The gist: It’s been a long and strange journey, but Artmosphere’s regulatory limbo is now over. The council voted to allow the popular Downtown venue to operate as a bar rather than a restaurant.
2 min read
▸ Some background: Artmosphere, in a sense, is the poster child for Downtown’s tribulations associated with a 15-year-old moratorium on new bars in the district. The venue has operated for years on a restaurant’s liquor license, running afoul of regulations that require a restaurant’s food to make up more than 50 percent of its sales. Recently, Downtown officials and advocates have lobbied for an end to the moratorium, which they say created a monopoly for existing bars and grossly distorted the real estate market.
▸ “Have we now lifted the moratorium on bars Downtown?” Councilman William Theriot asked Mayor Joel Robideaux from across the council’s crescent desk. “Certainly, I would say the moratorium was lifted at a previous council meeting,” the mayor replied, indicating the official end of the practice was the creation of the conditional use permit itself.
▸ Can you spell C-U-P? In his interrogative with the mayor, Theriot referred to the new permit class as a “cup,” as in something you drink out of. Opening a new bar Downtown? Now you need to go to the city and get a cup.
▸ What to watch for: Yes, this is the visible end of the moratorium, but it’s hardly an opening of the flood gates. Artmosphere’s case continues to illustrate the effort required to crack the still-standing limitations on new bar licenses Downtown. Councilman Pat Lewis, who in May voted against putting the permit up for a final vote, amended the permit to stipulate that, among other things, Artmosphere must serve food when operating and must operate five days a week.
“I congratulate her for being persistent. She was very persistent,” Lewis said at the meeting. “You can ask the owner. I made it very difficult for her. It’s not just a rubber stamp.”
Will this Downtown venue fill the rock and roll gap? A new club takes a stab at restoring Lafayette's lost tour stop glory.
The Pearl, a planned venue affiliated with New Orleans music house One Eyed Jacks, will open Downtown this spring, the third stage announced or opened in the district in the last year.
4 min read