Casting my thoughts to Louisiana

For the past two years on this weekend, I've been in Lafayette Louisiana at the annual Blackpot Festival, where the natural connection between cooking in seasoned cast iron pots, and Louisiana (and Appalachian) roots music is celebrated.

I'm not there, but Ragtime Annie (Anna Roberts-Gevalt), WESU radio host, banjo fantatic, fiddler and Wesleyan student is. We hope she'll phone in a report sometime this weekend.



But I was happily surprised to see that some of my Louisiana friends have gotten together to create some support for Barack Obama (whom I personally support). Dirk Powell, husband of Christine Balfa (both of the band Balfa Toujours), wrote a song called "Oui, On Peut," (Yes, we can), in the style of a zydeco two-step, and with musician friends (some like fiddler and vocalist Linzay Young of the Redstick Ramblers have been regular visitors to Middletown), recorded, filmed (last weekend) and released the video to Youtube, where, as of this morning, it's had 50,000 hits. It's also been on network TV, and the Obama campaign has asked to use it.



The video was directed by Johanna Divine, edited by my good friend Wilson Savoy (also a frequent visitor to Middletown), and mixed by his brother Joel Savoy, proprietor of Valcour Records.