while packing up things for the dorm this evening, i came across an unused $10 gift certificate to “da bayou”. now out of business, “da bayou” was the coolest cajun restaraunt ever—a place for all the musicians to hang, eat, and jam at night for crowds varying from 5 to 75 people. the jams were the next best thing to the food—even though something would always go wrong, like losing form, breaking strings, keyboards not booting up—it was still the best way to learn the art of interaction in a group.
unfortunately, the suitcase-college-summertime-business-closing-virus hit the business pretty hard, leaving what used to be the most awesome place in town an empty building. as the scent of cajun jambalaya, blackened chicken po-boys and fresh remoulade phantomly finds its way from my memory banks to my nose, i leave you with an audio memoir of “da bayou”: a recording of my acid-jazz group hard quartet’s version of the Sonny Rollins classic, “St. Thomas”. This infamous “deharmonized” version, complete with not-so-even 13-lets and somewhat microtonal guitar solo, managed to please the 30-some drunken people there that night, and that was good enough for us. There’s even an added bonus at the end!
“my boys told me they’d rather play than practice.“
-jimmy smith
bc
August 14, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I only played at da Bayou once, but it was a great experience. The music was great, and the food was even better. Da Bayou is dead–long live da Bayou.