<\/p>\n
I moved to Louisiana the same year the Blue Moon Guest House and Saloon opened in Lafayette. First, my family stayed there. Then I started going to performances and fun events there. I even organized a couple of them, but I never even considered the possibility of singing on its legendary stage.<\/p>\n
Until last week.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, I went to a songwriting workshop<\/a> with legitimate musicians. Josh Brashear, Mary Alice Vanderwaters and I wrote a little ditty. A couple of weeks later, Brashear invited me to \u201csing the bridge\u201d at the Blue Moon.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n So, I went \u2014 contributing 19 words in song to his performance during Storyteller Night, which happens every other Tuesday night at the Blue Moon in Lafayette.<\/p>\n The crowd was generous, and the evening was a blast.<\/p>\n Nancy Nicholson, who runs Acadiana Talent, organizes the Storyteller Night, which she calls a listening room. That means no talking\u00a0\u2014 and she’s serious.\u00a0<\/p>\n Musicians play original music, and the audience actually pays attention. Jason Harrington is the on-stage host and backs up musicians with his guitar and\/or harmonica. He\u2019s an incredible talent and moves the evening right along.<\/p>\n Steve Judice, whom I met briefly at the songwriting retreat, also performed at the event. After the workshop, a mutual friend \u2014 who turns out to be Judice\u2019s cousin \u2014 sent me a link to a YouTube video of Judice performing a piece he wrote called \u201cThe Camel Song.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n The song recounts an actual event that anyone in Louisiana who was paying attention in 2019 surely remembers. A woman visiting the Tiger Truck Stop<\/a> in Grosse Tete \u2014 the one that once housed a live tiger, replaced it with a camel, and kept the name \u2014 entered the camel yard to retrieve her dog and found herself pinned.<\/p>\n What she did next, and what she bit, became legendary on the internet. Judice wrote the song within a day or two of the incident. He needed material for a show opening for a humorous songwriter named Kipp Adaway, and the incident arrived, he said, like an answered prayer.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n