Gregg Fells (Mobile) closes out the Hank Becker Tribute and SouthSounds 2012 with “Grandma’s Hands,” “Wade in the Water” and “Georgia.”

Borland on Food: Butch Cassidy’s Cafe
Timothy Borland

“Robbing a train takes time and preparation…So Do Our Burgers!” Butch
Cassidy’s Café is a popular Midtown destination established by Roy Seewer in 1993.
The name of the café pays tribute to the classic Paul Newman and Robert Redford
movie, as well as Seewer’s favorite biker bar in Houston, Texas.

“Its what’s between the buns that counts,” says Seewer in reference to
his ‘soon to be famous’ Butch Burger. The nearly plate-size 9 oz masterpiece comes
fully dressed with bacon, cheese, lettuce, onion, tomato, and pickles. The popular
order has won multiple local awards from Mobile Bay Monthly and the Mobile
Press-Register.

In addition to burgers, other customer favorites include the Rio Grande
Nachos and Baggs Wyoming Buffalo wings. The legendary chicken wings were
voted “best over all wings” in Bob Baumhower’s Wing Bowl 1 and 2 in 2006.

For those 21 and up, happy hour is from 3-7pm mon-fri featuring 2 for 1
wings and drink specials such as $1.75 domestics and $6 pitchers of Miller Light and
Yuengling. The restaurant also offers a low-carb menu for the health conscious, daily
specials, and discount coupons via restaurants.com. Patrons are often treated to
performances by some of the best local musicians in Mobile.

Butch Cassidy’s Café is an example of another independent business
continuing to do well in spite of the recession. This success can be attributed
to local media support, loyal customers, and an emphasis on quality ‘cooked-to-
order’ food. “I think our customers appreciate that we have always kept our prices
reasonable,” says Seewer.

Butch Cassidy’s Cafe
Monday thru Saturday 11am-10pm
60 North Florida St
251-450-0690
www.butchcassidys.com

The dust has settled, the decibels have subsided and the missing sleep has been caught. So how did the Big Weekend go? Did it meet expectations? Was Mobile transformed?

Yes and no, well, maybe. Sort of.

If you were downtown Friday night, you were likely blown away by the number of people on the streets. I’ve never seen an Artwalk like it. The parking situation seemed to rival BayFest, with spaces taken up nearly to Broad Street by 7:30 p.m.

Cathedral Square was swarming with folks from all walks. The mood was bouyant, music and activity lifting the night. Buzz was heavy about Space 301’s Memory Project, in particular the massive video installation in the back room. I heard one person describe it as “life changing.”

SouthSounds made a huge difference and the venues can attest. Word has it the Theresa Andersson show at Callaghan’s looked like St. Patrick’s Day, with a crowd spilling into the street. The Blind Mule and the Haberdasher had record nights. Festival organizers say they managed to basically break even, which is actually a success for an inaugural outing.

Most importantly, the bands that came to town for the event had glowing responses for the weekend. Mobile came out ahead in one favorable comparison to Nashville and Austin’s SXSW. That’s the kind of buzz we need.

The Rumor Union estimated they doubled attendance for Temporal City Festival, up to around 500 or so. It was difficult getting an accurate count because while maps were sold and tours engaged, many attendees wandered into venues on happenstance or shared maps among each other.

The Mobile Symphony’s production of Carmina Burana was packed on both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

The Fluxus Project’s Hatching on Saturday night was located in one of the coolest cubbyholes I’ve seen in downtown. From reports, things didn’t wind down until about 2 a.m. so if that’s any gauge, someone had a good time at least.

Caveats? I heard SouthSounds attendance waned at times for some of the non-Mobile bands, but that can change if people get beyond their comfort zone. By some reports, there were folks courageous enough to venture into new experiences, that is if the older faces in nicer duds at Alabama Music Box are an indication.

The only other quibbling point was what appeared to be reduced attendance at the Art Alive nexus in Cathedral Square. After spending the entirety of Saturday and Sunday in a booth on its northern border, it seemed the number of browsers was down from years past. Reasons for such might be readily apparent.

You see, Creole lineage isn’t all we share with New Orleans, there’s also calendar difficulties. The nearly six-month summer is too hot for anything and the latter part of it – July through September – is too fraught with tropical peril to make concrete plans.

Winter is loaded up with other activities, holidays, Mardi Gras and so on. Plus, the weather can be wildly schizophrenic, with beautiful days severed by drastic temperature plunges.

That leaves spring and fall, April and October being the heart of it, for large-scale outdoor events. That’s why JazzFest and BayFest bracket the swelter.

But there’s more considerations when trying to lure attendees. In the South, autumn belongs to football, something that is as much a social opportunity as it is a sporting event. It wreaks havoc on weekend plans.

So that gives us April and it’s packed. Looking up and down the Gulf Coast, it’s easy to see. During this past Big Weekend, there were a couple of cook-offs and other events in various locales around the Mobile area, in addition to the fact a mild winter has brought beach season early.

Compounding all of this is our tendency for our tastes to outpace our numbers. Regardless of how important Mobile may be to many of us, it’s not a large city. According to the 2011 estimate from the United States Office of Management and Budget, the Mobile Metropolitan Statistical Area is ranked 126 nationally with a population of close to 415,000. It’s on a par with Ft. Hood, Texas and Reading, Penn.

One of the attributes I often hear cited by Mobile’s proponents and detractors alike is that it has elements of both big city and small town. Part of it is that we have folks here with some big city tastes, residents who yearn for cultural pursuits, art, music, food on a par with what can be found in larger markets.

Remember the fevered pursuit of a Whole Foods a few years ago? There was a slice of the local populace who would have wholeheartedly (rimshot, please) shopped there along with their friends. To them, all those pleading voices seemed sufficient to support a market but Whole Foods’ unbiased research showed it just wasn’t enough.

The same can be said for a lot of endeavors here. Think of all the perfectly good business ideas, eateries and the like, we see pop up, gain a little headway, but just not make it in the long haul. Sure, some of it is mismanagement but a good deal of it is due to the idiosyncrasies of a market dwelling on the cusp between city and town.

That’s just a fact of life here. It’s something you take into account when you make the decision to remain.

But being what it is, it also tells us what is needed to make these endeavors on our Big Weekend work in the long haul. It’s going to take looking beyond our borders.

Whether it’s insufficient numbers or local predispositions against going downtown, that’s the maze that’s in place, the barriers to be breached. Therefore, it’s imperative we market our big arts weekend to outsiders. Depending solely on the masses that crowd BayFest stages or squirm for trinkets at Mardi Gras isn’t going to cut it.

Build up the critical mass with visitors and curiosity will lure in the reluctant locals. After all, Mobilians love nothing more than a crowd, regardless of what brings it to life.

Trombone Shorty at Soul Kitchen Friday 4/20

3 years ago New Orleans’ Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews & Orleans Avenue were playing to a lucky 200 people in Mobile’s Bienville Square at the Gulf Coast Ethnic & Heritage Jazz Festival. Now he is touring the world and playing on Treme, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien. His 2010 release Backatown was one of the best albums of the year nationally, followed by 2011’s For True. Troy is the grandson of Jessie “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” Hill and is a graduate of NOCCA.

His 2011 DeLuna and Hangout Fest performances were some of the most talked about:

“I had the great good fortune of spending a large part of my boyhood wandering through beautiful mixed woods of south Alabama.”

In This new book, The Social Conquest of Earth, Mobile native E.O. Wilson describes how social creatures like ants, bees and humans were able to thrive and conquer the earth. He describes this as a balance between the individual’s selfish gene and altruistic behavior in groups.

According to Scientific American:

In The Social Conquest of Earth, Wilson offers a full explanation of his latest thinking on evolution. Group dynamics, not selfish genes, drive altruism, he argues: “Colonies of cheaters lose to colonies of cooperators.” As the cooperative colonies dominate and multiply, so do their alleged ”altruism” genes. Wilson uses what he calls “multilevel selection”—group and individual selection combined—to discuss the emergence of the creative arts and humanities, morality, religion, language and the very nature of humans. Along the way, he pauses to reject religion, decry the way humans have despoiled the en­vironment and, in something of a non sequitur, dismiss the need for manned space exploration. The book is bound to stir controversy on these and other subjects for years to come.

Hear the NPR interview here.

Wilson was born in Birmingham, and grew up in Mobile. He began a survey of the ants of Alabama as a teenager, including the first report of red imported fire ants in the U.S. in 1942 (the lot at 552 Charleston St., Mobile, next door to his house at 550) at the age of thirteen. He attended the University of Alabama as an undergraduate and received his Ph.D. from Harvard. His autobiography is titled Naturalist. Other books include Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949-2006.

A biography Wilson “Lord of the Ants” on PBS’ Nova, can now be watched online.

Bay City Brass Band
Soul Kitchen: Friday 4/13 7pm
Alabama Music Box: Saturday 4/14 11pm

————————————————————————–
Cockfight
Alabama Music Box: Sunday 4/15 9pm

————————————————————————–
Digital Organix with Venom and Regenerates
Hopjacks: Sunday 4/15 6pm

————————————————————————–
El Cantador
Alabama Music Box: Friday 4/13 1am
Bienville Square: Saturday 4/14 1pm

————————————————————————–
Garrett Thornton
Bienville Square: Saturday 4/14 12pm
Serda’s: Saturday 4/14 8pm

————————————————————————–

Gregg Fells

Soul Kitchen: Saturday 4/14 7pm
Cathedral Square: Sunday 4/15 3pm (Hank Becker Tribute)

————————————————————————–

Handsome Scoundrels
The Blind Mule: Friday 4/13 10pm

————————————————————————–

Lane Fisher
Hopjacks: Sunday 4/15 3pm

————————————————————————–

Rudy Andrews
Serda’s: Friday 4/13 7pm

————————————————————————–

The Suzies
The Blind Mule: Friday 4/13 11pm

————————————————————————–

Underhill Family Orchestra
Cathedral Square: Friday 4/13 8pm
The Blind Mule: Saturday 4/14 11pm

————————————————————————–
Wide Eyed Walker
Cathedral Square: Sunday 4/15 1pm
Hopjacks: Sunday 4/15 4pm

————————————————————————–

Wallace
Alabama Music Box: Saturday 4/14 2am

Birmingham’s Ol’ Elegante label recording artists Jackie Lo and Beitthemeans will be performing Sunday 4/15 at 7pm at Alabama Music Box – with free crawfish starting at 5pm.

Jackie Lo is a solo project by guitarist/singer Jacklyn Loquidis Hamric of Twinside, Sunny So Brite, and former front woman/bassist for One Minute GO. Jackie, a classically trained musician, picked up an electric guitar and didn’t look back. Her album Until I’m a Ghost was released December 2011 on Ol Elegante Records.

Beitthemeans, swaggering out from a dark shed somewhere deep in the pines of Sylacauga, cracks the whip on Southern rock. Bassist Casey Wilson, drummer Nathan Kelley and singer/guitarist Josh Jones partnered with Birmingham’s Ol Elegante studios and producer Lester Nuby for the band’s latest effort, Head Held High, which includes the infamous “God Wears a Houndstooth”.

Life’s fulfillment hinges on recognition, realizing what’s at hand and grabbing it. It’s the only way to savor opportunity. Failure to do so births a little rat named regret that gnaws at your soul until your chest of memories taps hollow and echoes empty times and days lost.

The French call a particular kind of hindsight l’esprit de l’escalier, the wisdom of the staircase. It’s that flash on your way out, after the moment passes when you realize what you should have done or said.

Mobile’s good with that. Our hindsight’s crystal clear but our regret’s a fat rodent, too and his little teeth are razors.

That changes now. Now, we starve the rat. Now, we wake up. Now, we see it coming. Now, we seize the day. Now, we do what we’ll never regret and never look back and never accept that we will be less than we wish.

Next weekend, April 13 – 15, can be a watershed for Mobile’s cultural history. Forces have converged, efforts coordinated and agendas harmonized into a coalition of activity for any and everyone.

However it’s going to take all of us to make it happen. No exceptions. No excuses.

Arts Alive will kick-off at its usual time and place, but this year it’s joined by events that look to stoke the fire that festival began almost a decade ago.

Temporal City Festival will fill a scattering of downtown’s unused properties with dreams and artistic aspirations for the weekend. It’s the second version of this ambitious adventure that is opening up the local arts realm into lush and edgy territory for viewers and creators alike. Hopefully, it will result in hordes of participants wandering downtown seeking artistic symbiosis and also finding a familiarity with the area that pares away fear.

A local effort to make public art a more tangible reality in Mobile has its big debut on Saturday night. The creators of the Fluxus Project will launch their new venture with the Hatching, a party/event/happening downtown. As of right now, I have no particulars on the exact locale but their description of what to expect – industrial space, installations, DJs Adam Taylor and Trey Stein, food cart – certainly sounds like a little bit of what’s been happening in larger markets for years now. One of those Fluxus honchos was a prime force behind the Priest art show at Max Morey’s decidedly cosmopolitan digs last year and that event had more of a “big city” feel that anything that’s occurred here in a while.

The Centre for the Living Arts will unveil the first big installation of the Memory Project, an overarching idea brought to life by director Bob Sain. Space 301 will hold an exhibit that ties in with the project and locals are anxious to see what all the murmur is about, whether the reality meets the gossip.

Then there’s SouthSounds Music Festival, something that’s been covered relentlessly here on Mod Mobilian. It’s clear what’s hoped for is something to bloom into our own version of SXSW. Auspicious aims, for sure, but nothing shameful in that.

I can’t ever remember a weekend in Mobile’s history that sounds quite like this. Not Mardi Gras, not BayFest, not anything.

Folks, the time for the complaining has ended. Let’s put a ceasefire to the carping that seems as much a part of Mobile life as mosquitoes and sweat and get off our collective posteriors to pitch in and make something worthwhile work, just this one weekend. Then on Monday, you can go back to whatever waterfall of vitriol pleases your cardial cockles.

For years, too many of us have visited other places and sensed a vibrancy we sorely miss in Mobile. It’s bittersweet to encounter, fun in the moment but laced with regret you can’t share it with the souls you know from home.

“If only we had something like this…” This weekend can be the first step toward changing that.

We’ve seen creative talent flee our town in a panic to find places already pulsing with life. We’ve been laconic for too long. This can be when it stops.

One of the most rewarding things I ever did was make a decision to get involved in the arts in Mobile. The way it has paid me back, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve shared with my fellow Mobilians are unquantifiable in terms of dollars and cents, immeasurable on flow charts and graphs, but they’ve showed me who really cares about cherishing life here and who’s content to watch it waltz on by.

And it didn’t take a wad of cash. It didn’t take a name with pedigree. It was only a matter of commitment and resolve. It was something everyone can do.

If you’ve ever bitched about this place, wished there was more, next week is the time to do something about it. If you’ve lamented as better entertainment and art graced stages and galleries in New Orleans, Pensacola or even Hattiesburg, next week, is your chance to change it.

Contact everyone you know who lives within a few hours’ drive and demand they come to Mobile next weekend. Start spreading word now. Treat this like a revolution and it will become one.

Let’s pack downtown with people who want something new, something creative, something constructive. There’s no shame in trying and certainly none in failure if you pull your weight. The same can’t be said for complacency.

Let’s manifest a progressive Mobile, show we’re no longer obsessed with a romanticized past but determined to build an inclusive and spectacular future.

The moment is here. Let’s rise to meet it.

Since forming in 2003, Gravy (Marcus Burrell, Stephen Kelly, Aaron Walker, and Phil Breen) has quickly climbed the ranks of the New Orleans music scene, playing a mix of styles and genres. They have played events such as French Quarter Festival, along with numerous late night shows during the New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Gravy has released a self titled EP and two albums, their latest being The Hard Way.

“…This album is truly entertaining, and these natives of our great city are a reminder that not only do we have our own thing going on down here, but that there are musicians to perpetuate a groove that is here to stay…” – Brian Serpas, Where Y’At Magazine

“Naming your band after that strange liquid which fills the streets of the Quarter is a dicey proposition—“Gravy” is a funky, homegrown name for a funky collegiate collective, but the French Quarter version of gravy is half beer, half dumpster water, and half piss. (That actually adds up if you’ve ever stepped in it.)” – Robert Fontenot, Offbeat

Digital Organix was formed during Mardi Gras 2011 by Fragment (B. Khorman), & 535 (M. Maness) of SubjecTmAtTerS. They have brought Mobile the newest form of Southern Space Hip-Hop. They have already opened up for Up Until Now, Sir Charles, Fusebox Funk, Flight Risk, Greenhouse Lounge, Ying-Yang Twins, Zoogma, Archnemesis, Mob Towne Revival, Ryan Balthrop, & DJ Lord(Public Enemy), as well as 535 sharing the stage with Mr. LIF.

Live Show is the first studio release by Digital Organix and recorded at Grave Danger Studios with Brian Graves. Says the band, “Taking this ride will lead you on a journey through a night at the club, a rise through an alternate reality, coming full circle, what it means to be Hip-Hop, creating a mark that will last throughout history, starting a new revolution, & ultimately the struggle of the everyday constant grind that can sometimes leave us forgetting that everything we ever needed has always been right here inside of us.”

Released March 31, 2012 – download it for FREE at their website digitalorganixmusic.com