Free Republic

Tonight at 9 p.m. the season finale of HBO's "Treme" will screen at Ernie K-Doe's Mother-In-Law Lounge. It will also be a finale of sorts for the Treme landmark, opened by Ernie and Antoinette K-Doe in the mid-90's; today on Facebook, Antoinette's daughter, Betty Fox, announced that after a garage sale on July 10, she will close the bar for good. Antoinette, an experienced bar manager, opened the business as part of a successful campaign to revitalize her new husband's career. The onetime #1 R&B hitmaker had begun to sink into alcoholism and obscurity in the 80's and 90's, but...

Robert “Bobby” Charles Guidry, the gifted, reclusive southwest Louisiana songwriter who crafted hits for Fats Domino, Frogman Henry and Bill Haley & the Comets, died early Thursday after collapsing at home in Abbeville, his manager said. He was 71.

“You’ll be back again,” sang Barry & the Remains, starting their headlining set on Tuesday night at the eighth annual Ponderosa Stomp. It’s a song about a straying girlfriend, but the Remains could have been singing about themselves and many of the four dozen acts — rockabillies, bluesmen, R&B shouters, swamp-rockers, honky-tonkers, psychedelic bands — playing the House of Blues here in the Stomp’s two nights of nine-hour shows. In the mid-1960s Barry & the Remains toured the United States with the Beatles and made an album of crafty, surly garage-rock. Then they broke up, becoming one more rock-history footnote....

'Gatemouth' Brown, legendary singer and guitarist, dies Musician fled to Orange before Hurricane Katrina wiped out his Slidell, La., home BATON ROUGE, LA. - Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown , the singer and guitarist who built a 50-year career playing blues, country, jazz and Cajun music, died Saturday in his hometown of Orange, where he had gone to escape Hurricane Katrina. He was 81. Brown had been battling lung cancer and heart disease, said Rick Cady , his booking agent. Cady said the musician was with his family at his brother's house when he died. Brown's home in Slidell, La., a bedroom...