Tales from The Holiday Lounge

[0:07] All right, that’s a tune that I wrote with Charivari years ago, many years ago called The Holiday, or A Trip to the Holiday Lounge. Basically, it was about my memories as a child driving from Lafayette where I grew up to Mamou, where my family was from, and especially driving down Highway 13 at night. Right before you get to Mamou, you see the caution lights to turn, take a right into Mamou. You look to your left and you would see these crazy blue and yellow and green and red lights flashing and dancing and doing all these things.

Either it looked like a mothership had landed in the rice field, or a traveling carnival had settled there for the weekend. I remember really thinking it was a carnival and getting all excited, and asking my mom and dad, you know, if tomorrow we could go there and ride the Ferris wheel. My mother would say, “No, Sha. That’s a lounge. They got liquor over there and they’ve got these girls, and it’s not a good place. It’s not a good place for kids. It’s called ‘The Holiday.'” I just remember always being fascinated with that whole thing. What was it about?

Here we are in the country and there’s this crazy spaceship that landed in a rice field with liquor and girls and drunken people and good times and all that stuff. So, of course, eventually, as I got older I started hearing the stories and the tales of The Holiday, and the owner was T-Ed Manuel, who happened to be my cousin. His son, Eugene, is a good friend of mine and was raised by my grandmother, so very connected to the family and, yeah. And now it’s a really cool place to go. It always was, but it’s kind of hip again.

I’ll be playing there soon with Charivari and definitely go check it out. There’s bands that play there now on a regular basis. Can’t miss it. A lot of interesting stories. One of the stories was that Edwin Edwards, the infamous Edwin Edwards, and T-Ed Manuel were really tight, were really good friends, and T-Ed used to let Edwin Edwards land his helicopter in the rice field, and he’d come by and have a few drinks and dance with a few girls, and then…Yeah, he’d be off on his way.

The whole idea was where traveling salesmen from the ’60s could stop and get a bed for the night, a good steak, a good rare steak, and a good time with a beautiful Mamou maiden. Just like the old Medieval days, you know, the old tavern days. Anyway, that is The Holiday, and just wanted to tell a few stories about that. Then I’m going to end it now with another tune that probably is connected very much to The Holiday stories, and it’s just people fighting with knives. Two guys who…The story goes two guys fighting over one woman in a bar and then having to take it outside. Not with fists, but with pocket knives and whatever knives they made. It went on a lot, so this is a reel, just inspired by those crazy times. It’s called the Knife Fight Reel.

If you like these tunes, I broke them down on my website. Go to MitchReedMusicLessons.com and there’s a section in there where you can subscribe to my videos, and I break down many, many tunes. But these two tunes are on there as well if you like them. So, here we go, the Knife Fight Reel… [5:17]

Alright, thanks so much for joining me today and checking out my vlog, and yeah! Just wanted to talk about The Holiday Lounge and how it’s such an interesting place. Go check it out definitely for sure if you’re brave. The bands start there on Saturdays, I think kind of late now, like 9 o’clock. So stay inspired, keep on fiddling, and hope to see you out there soon! Take care, thanks.