Country Roads Magazine

09/20/2024

"Lacking the longstanding foundational support of major theater scenes like New York’s or Chicago’s, New Orleans has attracted a collective of theatermakers often interested in experimentation, in pushing boundaries. Operating outside the paradigm of traditional theater, several grassroots organizations have emerged on the scene, championed by artists driven by a need to explore, through the art of performance and storytelling, the things that impact their community the most: sense of place, social justice, complex histories, and looking toward the future."

—Read Alexandra Kennon Shahin's survey of New Orleans's experimental theater scene, featured in Performing Arts issue.

In the "Wild West" of New Orleans theater, innovative and non-traditional works thrive in unexpected places

09/19/2024

Not only did the Tony-nominated Lear deBessonet go from Baton Rouge's vibrant local theater scene to Broadway, she did so while bringing the spirit of South Louisiana shared spectacle with her. Since coming onto the New York City theater scene in the early 2000s, she as been a fierce advocate for accessible arts programs across the nation, founding the Public Works program at The Public Theater and Arts For EveryBody.

Read more about deBessonet's journey from Playmakers of Baton Rouge and Theatre Baton Rouge to where she is today in our Performing Arts issue.

How growing up in Baton Rouge shaped the career of Tony-nominated director Lear deBessonet

09/18/2024

Ever since Eric Cook was a child, his mother has made him chicken and dumplings on his birthday. "That’s real stuff. That’s fifty years of family food on the table, right there, for everyone to enjoy," he said of the dish.

"My Mom's Chicken and Dumplings" has long been a favorite at Cook's restaurant Gris-Gris, and is one of the featured recipes in his new cookbook "Modern Creole: A Taste of New Orleans Culture and Cuisine".

Find it in our September issue.

From "Modern Creole: A Taste of New Orleans Culture and Cuisine"

09/17/2024

Happy pub day to Chef Eric Cook, whose cookbook "Modern Creole: A Taste of New Orleans Culture and Cuisine" hits the shelves today!

The book is a culmination of Cook's lifelong mission to "get people back in the kitchen," and comes on the heels of the soon-to-open new location of Saint John on St. Charles.

The recipes inside are “dishes that represent the evolution of culture over hundreds of years, the influence of tradition and local ingredients. It’s a food culture that continues to become more and more diverse. It’s evolving and it’s relevant, and it’s happening right now. It’s modern. It’s a story. That’s what it is. I don’t just want to tell you my story, I want to feed it to you. I want you to understand it, and smell it, and taste it.”

With a new cookbook and a new restaurant on St. Charles, Chef Eric Cook is having a moment

09/16/2024

"The story of the Angel Oak is one of nature’s quiet power, a living testament to the enduring spirit that connects the past, present, and future."

Read more about the story of the Angel Oak on John's Island in South Carolina in our September issue.

by Bob's Tree Preservation

On John's Island in South Carolina, this majestic oak stands as a beacon of positivity

09/15/2024

For years, playing live music to enthusiastic crowds has brought joy to Emmett Haas, 63, longtime bassist with the popular regional cover band, The Electrix.

But it became especially important after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2022.

“That changed everything,” he said.

Read more about Haas's cancer journey with Mary Bird Perkins in our September issue.

by Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center

Local musician keeps performing throughout cancer journey and clinical trial

09/14/2024

As the new Interim Director of Development and Community Engagement at Opéra Louisiane, Elizabeth Cortes plans to preach the gospel of “more opera!”

With an overarching goal of making opera more accessible to more demographics in the Greater Baton Rouge region, she hopes to break down the barriers that make the artform intimidating or unfamiliar.

Read more about Cortes's background and goals in Baton Rouge in our Performing Arts issue.

Meet Elizabeth Herlitz Cortes, who has big plans for Opéra Louisiane

09/13/2024

This month's Plant Spotlight is on the Oakleaf Hydrangea:

This understory flower is much taller and with a more wild form than most of its Asian relatives typically found at the local nursery. It is a lovely native to add to a back corner of a shade garden or to plant en masse.

A lovely native with creamy ivory blooms to complete a shade garden

09/12/2024

In this month's edition of "Our Sustainable Garden," columnist Jess Cole writes about the difference between plants' scientific, Latin names and their common names—and the knowledge found in both.

All a name holds

09/12/2024

It’s when the air turns crisp and the leaves start to turn that the allure of Houma's bayou legends and scintillating folklore tales shine brightest. So with the fall festival season upon us, it’s time to kick our dancing, running, and walking shoes into high gear—mark your calendars for these upcoming fall festivals.

September 20–22: Hero Fest at the Barry P. Bonvillan Civic Center

October 5: MawMaw Walker in Downtown Houma

October 11–12: The Bayou Regional Arts Council's Bayou Arts Fest in Downtown Houma

October 11–13: Bayou Dularge Knights of Columbus Cajun Fair at Knights of Columbus Hall in Theriot

October 18–20: Rougarou Fest in Downtown Houma

Get all the details at the link!

by Explore Houma

With cooler breezes come the coolest community gatherings in the region—from the Bayou Regional Arts Fest to Rougarou Fest, and more

09/10/2024

Since 2016, Basin Arts has grown into a genre-agnostic arts hub in Lafayette, a beacon that draws artists together in the name of art-making as much as art-made; and inspires participants to explore new ways to inject art and artists into the larger community.

To get a sense of what this looks like in the day-to-day, Managing Editor Jordan LaHaye Fontenot asked founder Clare Cook if she could haunt Basin Arts over the course of a few weeks—to spend time observing the world Cook’s created, and the sorts of ideas and individuals that pass through it . . .

Inside the multi-faceted Lafayette arts incubator

09/09/2024

For over a decade now, the professional circus artist LadyBeast Productions has made New Orleans her playground. Wonder is her craft, and her body is her tool. In addition to producing state-of-the-art productions like last May's "Vaudeville Revival"— a marvel of juggling, aerial rope performances, cyr wheel, escapology, and more—she works to share her knowledge of the old world crafts with other artists and young people. Next year, she'll open Beasttown—a circus arts training facility in the Bywater, something she's made-do without for years, training on rigs in her backyard and at the Marigny Opera House.

Her goal, she tells writer Sam Krieger, is to “transport audiences” so “time and space float away."

A look at the life of a circus artist in New Orleans

09/08/2024

"Like the stained glass windows that adorn religious institutions across denominations, the Stephen Wilson window at Pennington Biomedical Research Center reflects the values and mission of the institution, delivering its message using the language of beauty—a mode of communication all humans can understand."

Read more about the story and science behind the stained glass window at Pennington in our September issue.

by Pennington Biomedical Research Center

The story, and science, behind Stephen Wilson's stained glass window at Pennington Biomedical Research Center

09/07/2024

It's gameday at LSU, and we've got the perfect pregame read.

In 1899, in an effort to catapult Southern college football to national prominence, the Sewanee Tigers set out on a 2,500-mile, nine-day train excursion to play five games in six days—from Sewanee to Austin and back. All five opponents—Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, LSU, and Mississippi—were larger schools with physically larger players than Sewanee’s. But the scrappy Tennessee team shut out the five teams they faced, scoring 91 points and allowing none.

The spectacle ignited a new excitement around Southern college football that eventually gained the momentum and prowess of the SEC as we know it today.

Back in 1899, the football team at Sewanee sparked the beginnings of SEC football as we know it today

09/06/2024

The International Dance Festival New Orleans, produced by BODYART, returns for the second year to the Crescent City—giving international artists a platform through which to share their work with Louisiana, while engaging and exchanging with local dancers and dance organizations.

This year's festival will also feature the inaugural International Dance Film Festival—featuring screenings of dance films from across the globe at The Broad Theater.

Read more about the festival, which takes place September 12–15 at venues across New Orleans, in our Performing Arts issue.

The International Dance Festival New Orleans Returns

09/05/2024

In the latest in regional food news:

Chef Hunter Evans takes over the Mayflower Cafe, Kenner launches its own restaurant week, and Red Stick Farmers Market's Main Street Market renovation is complete.

Get the details in our September issue.

Jackson's Mayflower Café enters a new era, Kenner launches its restaurant week, and BREADA re-opens Main Street Market

09/04/2024

Upon learning that The Onion was returning to print, CR publisher James Fox-Smith made a headline of his own: “Area Publisher Subscribes to Someone Else’s Newspaper.”

"Because if ever there was a time for satire, surely it is now. There is just so much to make fun of. Besides, after spending thirty years stubbornly printing Country Roads against a drumbeat of “print is dead” techno-futurism, the news that a beloved periodical is coming back to print feels like a turning point."

Read more from Fox-Smith's latest "Reflections" column in our September issue.

Area Publisher Subscribes to Someone Else's Newspaper

09/03/2024

From now through February, the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi in Cleveland, MS will display many of Taylor Swift's tour outfits, guitars, and other memorabilia as part of its "Taylor Swift: Through the Eras" exhibition. Fans can see, in person, iconic ensembles including her 2018 "Reputation" tour bodysuit, the coat from the cover of "evermore," and the Maticevski gown and gloves from the “Fortnight” music video.

The Grammy Museum Mississippi announces the opening of the “Taylor Swift: Through the Eras” exhibition

09/01/2024

In Alexandra Kennon Shahin's survey of New Orleans’s experimental theater scene, Monica Harris from The Nola Project says, “You’re just kind of deciding your own fate. You’re the master of it, and you take the resources that are around you. One of the greatest resources in this city are people, and seeing what you can create together.”

This sentiment resounds throughout this year’s Performing Arts issue, which celebrates the theatrical culture of our region and the grassroots, gritty, community-centered art it inspires.

On our cover, dancer Rebecca Allen breaks through the end of her introductory solo as the lead in choreographer Clare Cook’s new work “Rounding the Edge”—to be performed at the International Dance Festival in New Orleans on September 12 and at the Acadiana Center for the Arts on September 13.

Read more about more performing arts projects and organizations in the issue, linked here: https://countryroadsmagazine.com/topics/september-2024/

08/29/2024

Adventure calls from Monroe-West Monroe!

Enter our latest giveaway for a chance to win a special gift basket courtesy of the folks at Discover Monroe-West Monroe, including a blanket, a water bottle, sunglasses, Cory Bahr's signature hot sauce, and more!

Sign up at the link:

A collection of unique souvenirs inspired by Monroe-West Monroe!

08/28/2024

By the tales Wayne Norwood, the 83-year-old owner of the Louisiana Treasures Museum, spins—one might imagine he has lived a dozen lives: serving in the army and FBI, working as a police officer and recovering bodies in the water as a diver, starring as the sheriff in "Cryptid: The Swamp Beast," and climbing Mount Rainier, among others. Each life comes with an accumulation of collected artifacts. About ninety percent of the displays in the museum are Norwood’s; friends and visitors donated the rest.

The Louisiana Treasures Museum in Ponchatoula is an archive of a remarkable life

08/26/2024

In early 2025, one of the Gulf Coast’s most anticipated architecture projects will finally be complete, after almost twenty years. The Ohr O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi, designed by one of the country’s most preeminent architects Frank Gehry, has faced funding, zoning, and disaster-related delays that go all the way back to Hurricane Katrina, when the storm threw the Grand Casino Biloxi onto the museum’s African American Gallery.

Progress has been ongoing ever since to realize Gehry’s hyper-modern, podlike design, which echoed the aesthetic of the “mad potter” George Ohr for whom the museum is named and envisioned the building “dancing” among the property’s massive live oaks. In the spring of 2023, the museum received a $1 million grant from the Mississippi Gulf Coast Restoration Fund to finally realize Gehry’s complete vision.

In our Deep South Design issue, learn more about a key friendship behind the museum's origins, between Gehry and artist Robert Tannen.

Celebrating the artistic collaboration behind the Ohr O'Keefe Museum, a project twenty years in the making

08/24/2024

Whiskey Properties got its start when Michael Craven clicked on the wrong link while exploring vacation homes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast—and wound up with the historic Hotel Whiskey in Pass Christian. Today, the consortium of properties also includes Hotel Whiskey Pascagoula and the off-grid Whiskey on the River in Pearl, Mississippi.

Learn more about Craven's plans for future Whiskeys, and his commitment to historic preservation and energy efficiency at his properties—all in our Deep South Design Issue.

Whiskey Properties are passion projects of hospitality, preservation, and renewable energy

08/23/2024

Next weekend, Acadiana artist Denise Gallagher will premiere the dramatized adaptation of her book "A Tip Tap Tale" at Wonderland Performing Arts. Learn more about the creative process in this sneak peek from our September issue!

Denise Gallagher’s journey from page to performance

08/22/2024

Amidst the sidewalks, parking lots, and the glass, steel, and concrete structures of the 300-acre University of Southern Mississippi’s Hattiesburg campus, one finds a sudden oasis; a verdant healer’s garden, filling a circle of approximately 1,000 square feet, right in the middle of everything.

Learn more about the campus's traditional Medicine Wheel, created by Tammy Greer to reconnect Native American elders with native plants, in our Deep South Design issue.

A traditional Native American Medicine Wheel in Hattiesburg re-establishes ancient connections with native plants

08/22/2024

“In Mississippi there’s a few days in late summer when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not just from today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere. It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone.”
- William Faulkner

08/21/2024

Follow the Cajun folk, find le bon temps. With its coastal ambiance and work-hard, play-hard way of life, Port Arthur has long been host to a good party. This creates a ripe environment for delicious cocktail menus, and in recent years has inspired the opening of half a dozen winery and breweries in the area—many of them boasting the claim of being the very first. Follow us on the beverage trail to spots like Neches Brewing Company, Buckstin Brewing Company Nederland, Hop Avenue Brewing, and Meridian Wine Bar (and bring a designated driver).

by Visit Port Arthur, TX

RSS Print Follow the Cajun folk, find le bon temps. With its coastal ambiance and work-hard, play-hard way of life, Port Arthur has long been host to a good party. This creates a ripe environment for delicious cocktail menus, and in recent years has inspired the opening of half a dozen winery and br...

08/20/2024

"The sycamore is an excellent shade tree and a great choice for fast gratification. Do not shy away from their majestic size… we need more large trees than anything these days." —Jess Cole, Country Roads' gardening columnist

08/19/2024

This month, sustainable gardening columnist Jess Cole reminds us of the many roles trees serve in our local environments.

"There is the understandable fear of trees falling during storms on top of homes. There is the obsession to plant trees in 'the perfect' space, at the 'ideal' time. Then, there are the decisions of which tree species to plant in a world of thousands of options. I find, more often than not, the average person consumed with these worries ends up not even planting the tree at all, or planting less trees than they could have."

Stop overthinking it, just dig the hole.

08/18/2024

When the vinyl revival came in 2008, artist Joel Scilley was ready. He'd just created his own custom redwood turntable. “I had these friends, artists, who would come to the place and say, ‘That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’” So he began making more, each one unique and carefully constructed to balance optimal functionality with beauty, using high quality, sustainably sourced materials.

And Audiowood was born.

Read more about New Orleans artist Scilley's work in our Deep South Design issue.

Where nature meets technology meets design, and sounds great