July 8, 2025
André Michot and Louis Michot (of the Lost Bayou Ramblers and other configurations) joined DPRAM in recording five Tracks for LOUISIANA STORIES at the Dockside Studio with Justin Tocket as our Engineer, Wednesday afternoon, July 31.
“Dang! Magic!” Louis exclaimed more than once when we’d just finished recording a Track.
True that!
‘COLORS CHANGING COLOR’ with DPFTC
Part 1 “Glimmering like a Fiddlers’ Choir” 0:01—2:01
Part 2 “Platform-Rigs Check the Gulf in Field of Blocks” 2:01—6:43 (4:42)
Part 3 “Men of Crossed Races Call Each Other Sugar and Babe” 6:43—9:43 (3:00)
Part 3 “Angels Winking in the Lights Strung through Trees / […] / All Our Ancestors with Us Now” 9:43—13:52 (4:09)
Glimmering like a Fiddlers’ Choir
Bayou, Crescent and the Delta,
Land lies low,
White Tombs memorial
Over Communities’ Fields
Legally less than
Half a man’s arm deep.
Air inspiratory with heat,
Blood-flow and blood-shed quick,
Where graves slip into water
And dancers pick the tunes
That shake their rumps toward Heaven
Or that glimmer like a Fiddlers' Choir,
Dressed in robes of White
And Stripes and Feathers,
While Angels wink in branches
Like the lattice-work of Towers.
Colors changing color
Colors changing color / Colors changing color.
Lou-eez-ee-an’a!
Lou-eez-ee-an’a! / Lou-eez-ee-an’aPlatform-Rigs Check the Gulf in Field of Blocks
Platform-rigs check the Gulf In Fields of Blocks, Always lighted, Plumes of flame flaring gas. Come May, Cajuns can shrimp Past three miles offshore. Be’foh, “Coon-asses” hunt frogs, Trap muskrats and nutria. Once’t, a man could make big money, Doing that, the Captain of one Tugboat said. Southwest, along Highway 90, Beside the Intracoastal Waterway, Thousands park in yards of Companies’ Building Ships and Rigs, Platforms On their sides with legs consecutively canted Like dark steel spars of fantastic Armada! Cranes hoist pipe and cement, Marine toilets and heaps of rusty scrap. Oyster shells serve like gravel On shoulders of roads flat as your belt. The Live Oak grows out of supple and still fertile earth. Farther south, by old Jean Lafitte’s hideaway, Land-Rigs drilling beside rows of broken-stalked Cane and Sugar and Sulfur Refineries Contrast more with fishing-people’s sleek new boats. While—from itty-bitty Kaplan To New Orleans’ broad Canal— The same kind of come-quick thing— Neon gauds for Burger King et al—sticks, To me like a wrecker’s ball, Burst ands hanging, through one chaste white wall Of a former Hotel’s Court along Royale (1974) These things, put on, Don’t really belong, You’ll hear, but the money’s Good, and almost any man can make it. The weather, too--ah, it shifts quick. Out of Lounges tempers loosed Going to Cut and Shoot, Trans-Ams flipping on tract-house lawns. Trucks and happy Pennants sinking under Bridges. Their decals and ruffles pretty as girls, Soaking blood. "Man, I was too hot to think.”
Men of Crossed Races Call Each Other Sugar and Babe
Amidst all of the above, Men of crossed Races Call each other “Sugar” and “Babe” while they work, Everyday warmth of natives living beyond tradition. We’d just off the boat from our Hitch off-shore, Driving up from Grand Isle beside Rigs and Cane And Boats that kept their shine, When Jack Groves, my first Driller, from Lake Charles in the 1930s and then from Broussard, Said: “You know, Don, children And grand-parents of these Cajun people— And I’m a Coon-Ass, too, Coon-Ass black and blue, No matter where I am—they can hardly talk to each other. They speak different languages.” What was its own fertility— Evangeline to Amédé Ardoin To Iry LeJeune to Hank Williams, And Balfa and Savoy and Michot Families and Zydeco too— Turns like the lurid glare Of water under oil And yet keeps pushing through With each “Sugar”, “Babe”, “Bro”, "Sister", and "Boo." We know better now. We better know now. We know Better how to dance together now
Angels Winking in the Lights Strung through Trees / […] / All Our Ancestors with Us Now
Who are those thousands angels,
Winking in branches
Like the lattice-work of towers?
Thousands, thousands, angels!
Winking, climbing,
In the towers we make of trees.
Winking in the black of morning,
Winking in softening of evening.
Winking, climbing, every morning, noon and night.
It is your mother with you now.
It is your father with you now.
Alive they are inside you.
Your mother and your father and all your ancestors,
Family or other, alive, inside you, now.
Their voices sound like Trains.
Their voices arc like Cranes.
Their voices drum like Rain.
Their voices more than Brains
Are ever more than A.I., say,
Assisted Idiocy, say, can ever be.
Ever more than Robots can ever be.
Never can A.I., Robots, say,
Cry with Shakespeare
Or walk with Gran-Papas and Grandmas.
The deepest forces and sources.
Shades brighter than Rigs' stages,
Any outward light,
Guide us throught Nights and Dawn.
Colors changing color
Colors changing color
Colors changing color.
September-November, 2023 in New Orleans; first drafts March and April 1977
in Morgan City, Louisiana and Ann Arbor, Michigan
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