Letters To Patti Ann (Chapter 3) "Behind The Wheel"

hi patti ann,

nice to get a good laugh at that message you sent.  things are great here, feeling a big sense of accomplishment finally.  the sun is shining, and cool.  i'm as tan as uncle winn in the middle of the cane field, well almost.  i got a few new hats too.  they're a lot like the ones the old men used to wear in grand point.  i think todd has one of papere's old hats.  my music is really coming out good.  i can't believe it's my creation.  this is what i wanted to feel since joey died.  i have peace now, because i haven't quit living, you know? evolving.  there's much for us to be thankful for.  hope you're battling and trying to move on.  we have a duty to live truthfully, and honestly with ourselves.  we must fight hard to squeeze out every bit of ourselves while we're blessed with life.  you are a living flower, if you can continue to dig deep and continue to blossom, there will be much life surrounding you.  i'm thinking of you today.  happy mothers day!  it's the greatest mother's day, lil maddy can kiss patti ann.

love,

dut 

They call me an elephant head because I don't forget a thing.  I remember things in detail, like the warmth of Patti's legs when I learned to drive by sitting on her lap.  My first time behind the wheel of a car and it was in the Poirrier's prized Chevrolet Vega.  For some reason, it seems there must have been cigarette smoke because wherever Patti was there was Tina too.  Not that Tina smoked but she was born wild and loose and was free.  It's a hard place to get to as a human, that childlike state.  When I got to the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in NY, that's the first thing they tried to get us back to, was our inner child.  To act on instincts.  

Patti was much more reserved and observed more and let Tina have center stage.  These little road trips were insane for me.  At this time I could only take my bike up to the old school yard where we played baseball but here I was behind the wheel going all the way to the "New Road".  Well it wasn't quite a road yet.  It was a long stretch of dirt that would go from east to west along the River Road about a mile or so north of the river.  The back of Grand Point would be the back no longer.  And we were indeed in the back and Gramercy was the big city.  It was a special kind of freedom when we'd spend a night or two in Gramercy at my maternal Grandparents house.  Two quarters in my pocket headed to the bakery on Main St. felt really good.  It felt like a city. I always took note of the same feelings I'd have years later in NY when I'd take a break to walk down to the cafe.  

In the late 90's,  I was going back and forth to Louisiana pretty regularly.  A new airline was starting called Jet Blue and you no longer needed a booking agent to book a flight.  I'd book a $69 flight one way armed with my portable recorder and my new found perspective and love for Grand Point.  It was absurd.  I was making a record.  Years before while reading many biographies, I convinced my dad that Marlon Brando was just a dude from a  country town and that I was going to the same acting school as him in NY.  My parents were always opened minded, especially with me because I was forever challenging the status quo.  I had a hard time with footsteps and following them.

Ms. Alice Winston came off as a mean old lady at The Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting.  Everyone was frightened of her but I kinda liked her and the way she'd teach the class over looking New York smoking a cigarette and never flicking the ashes.  They'd just drop to the floor.  She was from a golden era. She was getting on in years and we were constantly compared to Marlon Brando cause he was still Stella's prized student and Ms. Alice was around in those times when Stella started her school.  It was grueling for an introvert.  9-5 everyday of the week, up on stage having to perform or put yourself out there in some capacity.  Before long it became natural but I always had a chip on my shoulder about it because I had this Grand Point accent I couldn't get rid of and the European actors had these big open beautiful voices.  Those diction classes gave me a headache, trying to get my lazy Cajun tongue to move and annunciate.  

Much confidence came out of my year at the Conservatory though.  To have these teachers who have seen it all tell me I'm an artist was all I needed to run back to my apartment every night to write music.  These were the things going on for me when I first moved to NY, when Patti first lost her normal life and the letters began.  There was no road map for me.  Everything was instinct.  I had finally convinced my parents I was an actor and now I was sitting outside my East Village apartment telling my mom I'm a musician and I'm leaving the Conservatory.  It was a safe place at Stella.  It was part of New York University and there were many talented, smart folks around and the best thing about it was having a coach again or mentors to push you.  Leaving this behind was really scary cause I'd be on my own now.  Or at least that's what I thought.  

The wolf would begin to howl again and this time Patti would barely escape it's grasp and become my muse.  Trips to Louisiana became very important.  One to see Patti and two to gather information and stories.  Someone told me the old "Daves Store" had been moved behind the Stock Pile Bar and I went to see it before heading back to Brooklyn.  It sat vacant and I peeked in the window.  I could smell the smoke and Little Millers.  I saw Kerry scratching on the 8 ball while the place was packed with bare footed kids waiting their turn to climb the winners bracket.  I saw Mr. Yolande smash his big farm hand on the table and grab the foreigner Pat East by the neck.  (Foreigner=anyone north of the New Road)  I saw myself, Patti and Tina behind the bar grabbing a Pop and some "Grand Isle Candy" (Starburst) after our drive out to the New Road to see the huge airplane that had landed in an emergency so the "Sky King" could run home.  "Bye Mr. Milton"..... "Bye Mang".

"Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art" -Stella Adler

Perique Culture....A letter to Reese Fuller

I just came across more "saved draft" letters in my Yahoo account.  I'm not sure if I ever sent this but I just found Reese Fuller on line and resent it.  Years ago when I was newly signed to Atlantic Records, I was on a plane reading an article in Louisiana Life by Reese on "Perique Culture" and I was excited and had much to say on the matter.  I had just made my first record and was luckily signed by Atlantic Records out of all the artist out there making music they picked little me from Grand Point and my first song was called "Perique".

hi reese,

i was so happy to see you send something my way.  last week in the interview, your name came up and i recognized it from the article in louisiana life magazine.  

one day i was just getting back to louisiana from new york for a quick visit and rest, when i saw t-boy on the cover of the magazine.  i was happy about the angle of the story how someone besides me was talking about "perique culture".  you weren't talking so much about tobacco, but people.

i'm a grande pointe boy who was raised in the back of grande pointe.  i fished in the pointe de cannes, down the red dirt road.  my dad, danny louque, was a little bare foot tobacco boy too.  his papere, clarence, had the good fortune of the factory job late in his life, and so did my mine.  my dad took it one step further out of the field and started his own machine shop right there in the back yard in the field on the rich soil and it grew like wild fire.  

up came from the ground for me was oppurtunity beyond my wildest imagination.  before i knew it, i had a nice car and was headed off to college.  needless to say my world just burst wide open.  

in your story you mentioned perique culture and wether it could be saved or what will happen to it.  man, i see it changing so fast and it scares me.  not that i'm not a progressive man, but because some simple beauty's are dying each day.  my dear friend, mr. pitt just died a little while ago.  he was a from a martin family who farmed perique.  it was he who i worked for as a boy.  when i moved home from new york for a break, i worked the fields with he and ms. bridgitte, what lessons i learned.  i saw a man connected to the earth and her cycles, living in complete harmony with her.  going from grande pointe to new york so many times has been a great study.  in new york i can take my work ethic and attack my weaknesses like a savage lion.  when i boarded the plane leaving new orleans i waved goodbye to my teary eyed mom with my chest out proud without a doubt that it was on and papere knew it too.  

i want to send you a package soon, maybe tomorrow.  i'm not gonna send you the typical press kit from the label, i'm sending it straight from my shed.  i came to new york and found my field, my crop.  perique culture is indeed alive.  alive in a new products.  grande mamere said, geaux dut geaux before she laid her eyes to rest and i haven't stopped yet.  

i would love to sit and chat at some point.  maybe take you further  into perique culture.  i'm headed home for a break on april 27th til the 4th of may for jazzfest.  if you're in town you must get in touch, we're gonna have crawfish.  anyway, i'm thrilled to hear from you.  talk to you soon.

dustan louque 

Letters To Patti Ann (Chapter 2) "Into The Wind"

hello patti ann,                                                                                                   September 11, 2001  Brooklyn, NY

can you believe how life is.  it just goes where it wants.  what nerve.  sorry it has taken so long to write again.  i've been in shock since this morning when i woke up and heard the tv on in my living room.  the first plane had pierced american soil and i was all snug in my bed sleeping heavily about three miles away.  it didn't seem real until i stuck my head out the window and saw the smoke and the people running across the bridge.  i ran into one woman who had just gotten across the bridge, she was in shock.  she didn't know where she was.  then it was real.  realer than i ever wanted it to be.  this wasn't what it felt like when i studied American history.  this was frightening.  i'm strong though.  i've been in my own sort of boot camp during the making of my record.  we all knew that life was about to change.  i knew we couldn't go on cruise control forever.  I hope you're well over there.  i'll probably be moving back to new orleans soon.  it's just not good here. there are guys with backpacks on the subways.  it doesn't feel right anymore.  it would be nice to see you more.  i am of no use to ya'll over here.  no use to the kids.  no use to louisiana.  i'm excited about the challenges that lay ahead.  glad that i have them.  thankful to be free to go head to head with em.  i'll be fighting til somebody takes me.  hope you'll be right there with me.  i'll talk soon.

love,

dut

  It's one thing to make a vow and another thing to live up to it.  When Joey died in the factory explosion, life became something completely different.  I had finally gotten around the fact that grandparents die but tragedy was something completely new, well maybe not completely.  For whatever reason God, the creator or whatever you need to call him/her wanted to expose me to death.  He wanted my face up in it.  Like the time me and my cousin Mudgun were sitting with Papere and we heard a loud screech and when we got out there time stood still and there was a kid suspended in mid air who had flown off the back of a motorcycle and was plunging to his death right before our eyes.  I wondered if I would have run fast fast and dove if I could have made a play to save him.  It was a recurring nightmare for years. Rest in peace little Brandon.

  It was easy living up to vows when playing sports.  It was a little more difficult being a little smaller than most but if you wear bigger shoulder pads and work harder and have that god damn mountain on your back because of these vows, then you play big.  It's easy because we grew up with balls in our hands and that's all we had to do in Grand Point and I was much younger than Joey who taught me to throw floating passes over the defender.  What a clown he was. So funny.  I don't think I can remember him ever being mad or angry or mean to anyone.  He taught me to wear my hat high on my head and throw pitches down the pipe.  Little leaguers had no chance, I was learning from the best. The Poirrier's were well known athletes along the river and taught me  and my brothers how to dress for games and wear our baseball stockings correctly.  We invented so many games. My favorite was garage ball.  The batter stood in the garage and the pitcher just 10 feet out of it and pitched against the wall where a big square strike zone was marked by tape.  In order to get hits, we had to hit line drives and home runs had to soar really low and just carry.  I loved making all of the older ones proud.  

It's easy in sports, because your coach gets up on a table and gives you the speech of a lifetime to get you to rise up way more than you ever could on your own and then your teammates are there to boost each other up.  When my playing days were coming to an end,  I left McNeese State after a year and realized I wasn't 6'4" and that my real work was just beginning.  

  In south Louisiana, football is king, it's what we do and how we express ourselves.  I was a bit lost without sports for awhile. I loved to practice and to feel improvement and see the results. I could be quiet and just let my play speak for itself.  Louque men are traditionally pretty quiet and I wasn't much different.  I began to have all these thoughts of trying to piece the dots together....all these things I saw but I started to let it go.  The task was too daunting. I had no idea what to do with all those things I had learned in sports and life or what to apply it to now.  I think many in the River Parishes can relate to this.

The "911 Letter" was one of the last letters I wrote to Patti Ann before I moved back to Louisiana from New York but many came before.  Years before, when I first moved to New York, Patti fell ill with meningitis and lost her arms and legs just like that.  Those beautiful legs were gone.  I was pissed.  I mean it was enough to take one kid from his mother but to almost take another and leave her so helpless!  It was hard when I went home to visit and I saw her for the first time.  

  When I went back to New York I began writing letters to her.  What do you tell someone who just lost so much?  I knew I needed to be there for her somehow but in the end she was there for me too.  Looking back, in a way, I became the coach standing on the table in tears trying to will his team with their backs to the wall to get on the field and play.  I was on the table for both of us.  I wanted to express all these things I was seeing but didn't know how and it would take so much strength to get through the insecurities of being a guy from Grand Point, Louisiana in New York making a record for the first time.  When I was getting weak and the years were passing since my vows, Patti became the person who wouldn't let me turn from them.  She held my hand as I told my Grand Point story and helped me to believe in it, to believe that we were artist too. Americans.

  Everyday moments became the moment right before the big game when your coach's speech is almost biblical and the walls are coming up around you and you must persevere.  I became like my old coach, "Coach Tim" for Patti.  I stood on the table and told her she could throw farther into the wind and that if she stood in the pocket just a little longer everything would open up.  

"Sisters, human life is the unforeseen, everything is transient and egoless.  Only the world of Enlightenment is tranquil and peaceful.  You must keep on with your training." -Buddha

Letters to Patti Ann (Chapter 1) "Down Grand Point Lane"

hi patti ann,

today is a great day.  i saw you practically running with no legs, somebody else's legs.  wow.  what a sight.  thanks for making me a stronger boy and a wiser man.  thanks so much patti for fighting.  it's your unique gift to the world.  when it is received it is the most precious gift.  hope you kick your feet up tonight.  your grande pointe feet.  

love,

dut

When the "So Long" years came to a close.  I couldn't really look back.  So much had happened.  Some of the scenes were horrific.  It's easy to judge myself when I look back at my work or writings and to think of myself as overdramatic but when I read my last letters to Patti Ann, it seemed apropos. 

    I avoided it for years.  I knew in my old Yahoo account I had saved every letter I had written to her.  And here it is, I'm here crying trying to "effing" put it all down on paper. Put it to rest.  It's so beautiful to me when someone comes to me professing their love for "So Long" because I was able find something beautiful and find some joy amidst all the horror.

  Patti Ann was a smart girl from the country who had that simple joie de vivre.  She loved her dad and kids and was an aerobics instructor in the 80's with those leggings that covered her beautiful natural legs.  I used to be proud to be her cousin when guys from the city would look at her in awe.  I always felt country because Grand Point was truly country back in the day.  The Pointe de Cannes they called it and the strange cars would pass by real slow on Sunday's to observe our simple little lives.  Mamere on the swing with chicken stew on the stove and all the bets were in.  All bets were on Montana and phoned in to Buck's bar.  That was "nip and tucked" like a local's lawn at dusk on a Saturday before LSU kickoff.  Everything in its right place.  Everything was still there.  Joey was throwing spirals in the front yard.  

  Joey was Patti's brother who would be taken from us in the coming years but that's a whole other story, that's a chapter....a lifetime. That life experience is the root of my record, "So Long" and Patti the fire beneath the pot of resilience.  I've never been one to turn from a challenge.  One morning in 1988, we were woken by Aunt Marie's screams and she came running into the bedroom hugging us...he's gone...he's gone.  Now I'm a person that can't talk before coffee and here it is all the screaming.  It was tragic.  It was a howling wolf at your door that wouldn't go away.  Your head was in its throat and that's how it was going to be.  It was loud those screams! When the dust settled, I was standing outside all dressed for school and my dad asked if I was alright and I just shook my head.  I stood in silence and vowed to live a great life and pay whatever the cost to follow my instincts and find myself.  

  Well it's Sunday and the Saints are playing their first game and that's enough looking back for now.  I guess the pot is boiling now and the word is out.  I'm flowing like Marie!  I hope soon I'll have the courage to read another letter.  I peeked at the next one and it was dated September 11, 2001 from Brooklyn.  The world was about to change.  

Thieves of Joy......

You want to see me mad....try to make me follow in someone's footsteps and do what they're doing.  Every cell of my being has to be into the next step for me to take it.  I don't care if massive success awaits, if it's not my step, it's not my steps.

When I was first signed as an artist, I had just spent 3 years running around New York City mostly alone reading, researching and buying records and listening....a whole lot of listening.  I think I spent more time thinking about what it is we were trying to do, than actually doing.  For me, it wasn't music we were making exactly but more of a collage, a painting with sound scapes and mood.  I listened to a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane "Blue Trane" in my little East Village apartment while in acting school.  My appetite remained soaking whet and I was never bored and I was very careful not to become one of those downtown guys chasing models.  It can be done, whole days trauling in the cafes looking the part and getting no work done.  After an early evening stroll for a coffee at Cafe Gitane, it was time to get to work.  In the early days it was really hard to feel like I was getting things done.  An artist has a canvas and he finishes his painting and moves onto another.  We were entering the digital realm and the possibilities were immense.  All of sudden we had too many options and had to start narrowing down the focus.  Looking back, three years is not that long for someone who had never made a record or been in a studio before, not to mention playing instruments and writing lyrics and singing.  

When you make a good record, there is a well worn path to this jackass at the mic and I wanted no part of it.  I hated seeing pics of me, positioned to be the next big thing with images resembling past artist.  All this new technology and we're expected to have careers like the old heroes.  Fast forward to now, I'm on a strange new path.  I don't recognize it and it seems like it could be uniquely mine.  All the different streams are starting to add up to what looks like a sustainable career.  Defining ones own success is very important.  And uh....oh yeah...comparison is the thief of joy!

Make Me Love Again.....

The Bywater, my old neighborhood in New Orleans, feels like a ghost town.  Too many wealthy people bought into the idea of its grand bohemia and chased all the artist away.  I'm a professional surfer of gentrifying neighborhoods and this is not a new occurrence.  I've seen it happen at the speed of light in New York.  When I first moved there, people wore their 212 area code on their sleeves.  It was a thing, til Brooklyn became a brand.  The aesthetic kings were taking over Williamsburg back in the early 00's and the wealthy were buying it hook line and sinker.  The old light bulbs and subway tile and clean lines nodded at the past while embracing modernity but soon became soulless.

It's easy when you study history to see the gentrification of America as a whole.  I've just finished watching Ken Burns' "Vietnam.  Wow.  I had known about it but didn't know anything really.  I can't believe the state of things in the year I reared my head on this earth.  I was feeling like we were living in the darkest of times before I watched this documentary.  It's proof that our government is not always right and how easily it is to fool the people and keep them pacified.  

We are so pacified now with information, man caves and our constant conflict from the left and the right.  We love war.  It is our definition of greatness.  It's hard to look on the past and not be ashamed to be a human.  I have the utmost respect for all the men and women who went off to war for us, especially the most noble of wars WWII.  But lets face it, most wars can be avoided and most conflict is saturated in greed and the need to dominate another.  I went to the African American museum a few weeks ago in Washington D.C.  As the elevator was descending the dates on the wall were going back.  2018, 1918, 1818, 1718, 1618 and then the doors opened to a small room crowded room.  It felt like the bottom of a ship.  I cried before I had even seen an image.  To think that we looked at other humans as a commodity and that our world leaders traded humans and the practice thrived for centuries is mind blowing.  But the most disturbing thing is that the civil rights era didn't begin until the 50's and it was a struggle for desegregation for years.  It's numbing to realize that my parents were kids when that was happening.  Not that far away.  

In order to be great again.  Today's kids will need to realize how technology is affecting them and learn the expanse of their resources and grow exponentially.  It is my hope that they use this great resource to learn from our mistakes, not just our country but the world.  When we learn to love and to accept others that are different than us, when we learn to share and love the land, when there is no war, there will be greatness.  

Bonfire of the Ivories 2017.....

Another year has come to pass.  We burned another piano on Christmas Eve after a lovely show at The Grand Point Music Hall.   It seems this will be a yearly tradition as people are starting to offer me pianos.  Someone offered me a player piano for next year.  

I loved this years show in Grand Point.  Not only was every table reserved, it felt special and I felt that people saw me and I saw them.  It is important more now than ever to be fighting for our culture. I'm all for progress, as I've said before, but there's some great qualities we can't afford to leave behind.  

After three years back on the road, I am reminded of some of those qualities from the past.  Patience being the most revered.  Newlafaya, our record label,  was based on the concept of patience and refinement.  Our label logo was a pyramid of sorts, refining itself to a point.  It's hard to live simply and not rush things in this age.  You need reminders and the National Parks across the country have been a medicine of sorts for me and slowed me down.  

I love our bonfire every year.  No fireworks or extravagance.  Just some music and a torch and real sharing and connecting.   I feel I'm articulating our culture more and more with each passing year.   Light the fire, I'll be coming home.  

This is an ode to the river of song.

An ode to joy.

To the joie de vivre along the German coast to old St. Jacques

All the way to the heart of Acadiana.

   An ode to this piano and the long lost lives who once felt her vibrations.

Sure there were other times, but this ones ours.

An ode to fire

Be cleansed and made new again

Renewed again in life and purpose

An ode to the son of a carpenter

Who broke from the customs of his time to find a new path

           To the season that grips the whole world in a conspiracy of love.