More Summer Music

Dixie Power Trio is a Fredericksburg-based band, playing New Orleans-style jazz, zydeco, Cajun, blues, and boogie woogie. The group, a quartet actually (go figure), has been playing for about 15 years, and we’ve seen them perform several times. They played a solid set at the library last night (I've spared you yet another grainy, out of focus band picture in favor of this photo of my view of the libary's fountain), putting on their usual energetic show that got the whole crowd in a good mood. And while I suspect that the accordion is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of instrument, I happen to love it. I’m a big zydeco fan. They played Iko-Iko, a Mardi Gras tune with a chorus I could never understand, so when I got home I looked up the lyrics, assuming they were in a form of French and actually meant something. Turns out some phrases are based on Mardi Gras Indian chants (Indians as in tribes of Mardi Gras revelers, not Native Americans), and there’s some Creole dialect in there, too, but the chorus isn’t really translatable, and the lyrics are just written out phonetically, like this: “Talkin' 'bout hey now! Hey now! Iko iko an nay. Jockomo feena ah na nay. Jockomo feena nay.” So now you too can sing along!

The summer concerts are winding down, with only a couple of weeks left. One of my favorites was One Horse Town, an alt-country group that played Spotsy Bluemont. With major thunderstorms moving through the area, the concert was moved indoors at the Marshall Center, into what was the former cafeteria of the old high school, then old middle school, and now old community building. The bright fluorescent lighting, the bad acoustics, the limp air conditioning system, and the miniscule and mostly geriatric crowd of about two dozen made this one of the worst venues I can imagine a band working in. Nonetheless, the concert was fantastic. I had never heard this band before, but it was one of the best Bluemont concerts I’ve ever seen. We got on their mailing list, and hopefully will catch them again sometime in a venue that does them justice. At least there was one advantage to the low turnout for the show...I won a doorprize! A Carvel ice cream cake, a traditional favorite in my family since I was a kid. Can you say “free snacks”?