Donaldsonville, LA

April 26, 2022
Population: 6,762

Once I picked up Daniel from the airport, we immediately hit the road. In the previous 11 days, I had done a big loop around Louisiana, from the southeast tip along the southern coast to the northwest corner. I only had four full days left of tour, and now I wanted to do a smaller loop in a different direction. I decided to drive north along the smaller road that goes along the Mississippi.

It was a different feeling on this road than elsewhere I’d been yet in Louisiana. I guess this was more of the stereotypical Louisiana I had imagined - less suburban vibes, more remnants of plantations, dilapidated corner stores/gas stations which were bustling (relatively) with folks milling about around pickup trucks. There were countless plantation-turned-museums, so we stopped at one. It was way overpriced so we didn’t go in, but I got the yucky sense that they weren’t really a place to reflect meaningfully on the history of slavery…rather some place that still profits off this terrible past. Plantations are still popular rental wedding venues, after all.

We stopped for lunch and hopefully to play in the first small city we encountered after a long stretch of plantations, Donaldsonville. The main drag had a few pretty historic buildings, but most were abandoned. There was an unfittingly upper-scale restaurant, and we went in for a great meal.

I didn’t know where to play, but I needed a couple screws. At the ACE Hardware store, I asked the employees where I should play and they (the white employees) said “You’ll get shot.” I laughed and they insisted they were serious, that crime was rampant and the city keeps turning abandoned buildings into housing projects.

Anyway, for an otherwise desolate town, the hardware store seemed to be getting a lot of traffic so I asked to play there, and the owner had no problem. The store was a historic building as well - it used to be the only synagogue between New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

The employees were full of curiosity, and they were all quite the characters. It was by far the most successful sidewalk pop-up of tour! It made sense - it’s a locally run and beloved place, pragmatic yet personal - the employees knew mostly everyone that walked through the doors. It was a weekday afternoon - workers came in for supplies and families were running errands.

There was the man that yelled “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!!” as he walked past me. Another man (the town clown, according to ACE employees) kept singing along to my Bach and adding lyrics…he even went home and put on a collared shirt before coming back once he found out we had a camera. An older gentleman sang the most beautiful and quiet Amazing Grace with me before we shook hands and praised each other’s talents. A man drove up and tried to sell me a cooler full of blueberries he had foraged for $20, passionately describing the local ecosystem to me (I settled for a $5 cup).  

Then there was the ACE employee who refused to be photographed, yelling at us every time he thought we were sneaking behind him. From the beginning he was self-deprecating, a smart-ass and annoying, frankly. He gave me the “How can you call your music classical if you’re not playing something from the Classical era” attitude, talked about how he lived in Boston and went to music school for bass and was an obsessive practicer, but that he’d lost the use of his right hand. He’d regularly poke his head out of the store to talk to me - telling me the music resonated inside the store and it sounded good, that my rubato was tasteful, giving me life advice and questioning my career as a musician because he regretted the choices he made as a young musician and look at him now - stuck in Donaldsonville (they all seemed to have a disdain for this place, which was ironic, because they were clearly community builders). 

His rough demeanor that showed bits of softness all made sense when at the very end, he told me that he’s 50 now and starting to regain use of his fingers after surgery. He said he hopes to be back to playing bass by the time he’s 60 because “What was the point of this life otherwise?”