ART, FOOD AND MUSIC MAKE UP COMMUNITY TRADITION

Celebrating its 40th year, the Red River Revel Arts Festival has become a tradition to many in Shreveport-Bossier City.

The Revel will open Oct. 3, beginning with the Red River Revel Run 5K/15K at 7:30 a.m. and will run through Oct. 10 at Festival Plaza in downtown Shreveport.

The Revel has celebrated the arts in all formats with the local community and out-of-state visitors to Shreveport for 40 years. It is now the largest outdoor arts festival in northern Louisiana, attracting more than 100,000 visitors annually. The Revel is ranked one of the Top 10 Events in Louisiana by Top Events USA and a Top 100 Fine Arts Festivals in the United States by Sunshine Artist Magazine.

Christy M. Long, associate director of the Red River Revel Arts Festival, said the festival has plenty to offer this year.

“New this year is The Hangout, a teen and young adult area that will have a zip line and Gaga Ball Pits,” she said. “It will include Koollpics, Party Central activities and a stage for karaoke, dj mixes, and a couple of solo musicians. The Ford Discovery Area is also new, with the Bud Light Beer Garden, the Eldorado Discovery Stage and an interactive component, the Ford Innovation Lab.”

EARLY YEARS

Kathleen Scooter Bellamy, of Shreveport, still remembers her first trip to the Revel. “It was 1976, and I was 15,” she said.

“I remember it as more like a bunch of hippies with card tables and jewelry and pottery. I wanted a little piece of pottery from a funky guy who looked like Jesus. It was $7 or $8 and expensive for me. I just had to have it. I rushed home and asked my mother to lend me the money, and we both went back that night. I showed it to her, and she let me buy it. It was wonderful.”

Long said the Revel is actually created to provide arts education opportunities for area students.

“Every aspect of the Revel supports those efforts. Revenue generated at the festival each year is what allows us to produce three arts education programs during the Revel [that include] the fourth grade, pre-K to second, and the public component on afternoons and weekends for any age or grade.”

MUSIC, NOW AND THEN

This year’s Revel features local and regional performers and national headliners on four stages. Headliners include Cowboy Mouth, Louisiana’s LeRoux, Big Daddy Weave’s “My Story” Tour featuring Jason Gray and Citizen Way, Moon Taxi, Logan Mize, Big Sam’s Funky Nation and Robert Earl Keen. Local and regional headline acts include Black Water Bride, Louisiana Swamp Donky [sic], Cody Cooke & the Bayou Outlaws and Dirtfoot. A complete lineup is listed at redriverrevel.com/lineup. On opening Saturday, the Louisiana Music Prize winners will compete in the Power to the People Showcase from 3 to 6 p.m. on the Eldorado Discovery Stage.

John and Karen Keane are folk performers who are both music teachers in Shreveport, so education is naturally a part of their festival performances.

“This will be our third Revel,” John said. “Our instruments aren’t widely known in Shreveport-Bossier so we enjoy applying them in extremely nontraditional ways. We’ll play blues and other types of music on Mountain Dulcimer and Native American flute. It takes people by surprise.”

One of the couple’s favorite Revel experiences happened their first year at the festival.

“There was a monsoon,” John said. “We had a crowd that had come to see us but we got these other festival goers who just wanted a covered place to escape the rain. They ended up with us. At the Revel, you’re only 15 to 20 feet away so we can interact with the audience. They started asking questions and we all had a really good time.”

Some traditional Revel favorites, such as Trout Fishing in America will also play this year. Guitarist Buddy Flett will perform during one of the popular workday lunch sets Oct. 7.

In fact, many locals’ memories of the early Revels include dancing under a tent to the music of “A” Train with Buddy Flett on guitar.

“We’d play the Revel in front of 1,000 people and 300 of them would follow us over to Humpfrees afterward and cram into that little place,” he said. “We’ve also seen some great shows there. Irma Thomas was probably one of the best. And Delbert McClinton. Delbert made ‘A’ Train sound good. We were always fighting about how to play the songs. And then we’d ask, ‘Well how would Delbert play it?’ But the real reason we sounded so good was because of Miki Honeycutt.”

Honeycutt was “A” Train’s lead female singer and she said, “Back in the day, the Revel was the biggest deal ever. Everybody that we knew and loved gathered at the Revel. It was like a homecoming. We would get to see a lot of people that wouldn’t normally go out to a bar to see us. People brought their kids and they’d be dancing down in front. It was real unity in this city.”

Flett agreed, adding, “The Revel has been so good for our city. Everybody runs into each other at the Revel, and everybody is friends the next day.”

ART

The Revel will feature 108 artist booths with a mix of local and national visual artists creating, showing and selling their work. “Being a juried art show, the Revel truly has quality artists from all around the country,” Long said.

For his 36th year in a row, Stan Routh will return with his historical architectural landmark drawings.

“I’m an architect that is trying to record history with drawings instead of photographs,” he said. “I draw places people remember, buildings that are special for some reason. It might be a country store or it might be Byrd High School.”

Routh said the most noticeable differences in the Revel today as opposed to 40 years ago is the site, Festival Plaza and the expansion. “What hasn’t changed is the spirit of the Revel. It’s special. The staff, the cops, the volunteers and the artists appreciate each other. Everybody has a great attitude.”

A couple of years after Routh starting showing his works at the Revel, his son Craig got his own booth and has come back every year. Now Craig’s sons Brandon and Andrew, both musicians, also help out at the Revel.

“I’ve been doing art shows for over 40 years,” Routh said. “I’ve been all over the Southeast: Tulsa, Dallas, Atlanta, Cincinnati. We’ve been looking for other shows we could do that were as good as the Revel. The Red River Revel is just the best show we’ve ever found. We come to the Revel because we love it.”

Taffie Garsee is a local artist who will feature paintings, prints and wearable art. “T-shirts have done well for me in the past,” she said. “I like T-shirts because I personally love to support an artist without spending a fortune. It’s also like I’m advertising for my favorite artists by wearing their work.”

Garsee likes to use nature themes like bugs in much of her work. “The pieces I do are usually inspired by things that are happening, things I want to make a statement about that I don’t want to have an actual conversation about,” she said. “I like to use bugs to represent people in those situations. Bugs are classically thought of as gross and yucky so I paint them with iridescence to give people a different opinion of them.”

“I love the general camaraderie at the Revel, but it is just a great venue for people to get to meet the actual artists and talk to them,” Garsee added. “It’s one thing to see somebody paint a bunch of roaches on the floor, but you get a totally different opinion once you’ve talked to an artist about his or her work. People get a better understanding of what it means to me.”

FOOD

The Revel may very well be the first place some of the community ever discovered the delicious turkey leg. With 23 food booths to choose from, this is not an ordinary festival food. Festival favorites and new foods include, the donut grilled cheese, boudin king cake and the Wonderstick, which is soft-serve ice cream inside of a crunchy stick.

“This is not commercial food,” Routh said.

“This is the real thing. It’s food with spirit. If anything, it gets better every year.”

Buddy Flett also vouched for the food. “The food there … oh, my God, the food! What is that little pizza muffaletta thing? The best deal is the lunch at the Revel,” Flett said. “There’s great food from all the churches and high schools with some good causes. And then I always like to go through the art. That’s where to buy your Christmas gifts. Take your wife to lunch at the Revel, then go through the art with her. See what she likes and go back the next day and get it. That’s the way to shop.”

For those who work downtown, ride the free trolley and have lunch at the CHASE Entertainment Stage, the audience will be serenaded daily with such bands as Mason Dixon Show Band, Buddy Flett, Danny Wilder and the Bayou Gypsies [sic], the BTAP Jazz band and Trout Fishing in America. The downtown lunchtime trolley will be available 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Want to go?

Admission to the Red River Revel is $5 on weekends, free all day Monday, and $5 after 5:30 p.m. on weekdays. Those with a valid military ID receive free admission. For more details, including operating hours, admissions, food and shuttle information, go to www.redriverrevel.com.