We spent the afternoon at Sunrise Resort in Moodus yesterday for the Great Connecticut Cajun and Zydeco Music and Arts Festival. The afternoon could not have been more splendid - sunny, bright, low humidity. Lots of dancers under the big tent for Step Rideau, whom I hadn't seen perform since a sunny day in October a few years ago at a street festival in Eunice LA. He was playing an early set, so he said, because he had a gig later that evening in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I re-connected with Al Berard, who, with the current lineup of the Basin Brothers played a set of old-time twin-fiddle fueled songs.
Now that this festival is and the one last week in Preston, are on consecutive weekends, there is an itinerant dance crowd which hangs out in Connecticut for the week, and dances until they drop on the weekends. It's amazing how this New England-Louisiana connection has sustained and grown since these bands first came north to play at the Newport Folk Festival, and later at the Cajun and Bluegrass Festival in Escoheag RI.
We were leaving as the black clouds of a thunderstorm cell pushed in from the West. Fortunately, the rain didn't last long, and with the sun breaking out again later, I'm sure the crowds were elbow to elbow for Keith Frank's set later in the evening.
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