K.C. Jones
Lake Bigeaux, Lafayette, Louisiana
I know Kelli, ‘K.C. Jones’ through Joel Savoy, a Cajun musician I’d only ever met by email. He liked the idea enough to introduce me to Kelli and his mother, Ann Savoy. Kelli is from Appolaacia and has spent the better part of two decades playing music in Lafayette, the heart of Cajun country. She delves into all the varieties of music that inspire her creativity. One of her latest songs sums it up in “The Queen of the In Between”
I met Kelli on a spring afternoon in the town of Henderson at a boat ramp that butts up to Lake Bigeaux. This was the same lake, but a different boat ramp that I had filmed Ellen Magellan in February. This lake is part of the Atchafalaya basin and the cypress trees grow thick out of the lake, and in some places, it looks like a cathedral. I’d seen the cypress leaf out during my stay in New Orleans from the burnt orange of winter to the lime green of spring, but to have the side-by-side comparison of the majesty and quantity of cypress was stunning.
Kelli’s dress reminded me of some kind of incredible flower I hadn’t seen before but seemed to belong in this floating forest. Where the February light shone hard and bright through sparse dry cypress needles, the spring filtered the sun and left us dappled and not too hot under the canopy of shade.
Kelli sang in Cajun French, a song from one of the old Alan Lomax recordings and then one of her own inspired by the pandemic. It seemed to fit well for the solitude as we floated between the silent giants around us.@787_kc_jones__