Chuck Fest aims to help catalyze area culture

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Chuck Fest aims to help catalyze area culture

David Ryan Palmer

Editor-in-Chief

First of all, this isn’t about any one person. That needs to be made perfectly clear.  Yeah, it’s the brainchild of Dave Evans’ – the guy behind Luna Bar and Grill and Luna Live – and initially it was about celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Evans’ beloved downtown eatery and watering hole.

But now, according to Tyler Walker and Derek Williams, the duo behind marketing for Chuck Fest, it’s become so much more. 

Chuck Fest, scheduled for Oct. 4, is their first client, and both Walker and Williams are helping to take the fledgling festival in surprising directions.

“We are not the face of Chuck Fest,” Walker was quick to say.  In fact, it was the first thing out of his mouth during this reporter’s interview.  “It’s about celebrating ‘the Chuck,’ especially the art, the music and the food.” 

The metrics

Chuck Fest is going to be set up on Ryan Street between Broad and Division, right in front of what most would call the center of downtown Lake Charles, according to Williams.

“There’s going to be two outdoor stages and then one inside Luna Live,” he said. 

Oh yeah, and it’s free to attend, something that both Walker and Williams hoped would entice college students to make the trek downtown.

That, and the 15 bands that are slated to perform, including the now Austin-based but LC-bred Ashes of Babylon.

“They are all local, that’s the thing,” Walker said.

“We just want a good representation of music and art in Lake Charles.”

There will be alcohol, along with the music, art and food.  Chuck Fest is aiming for a pub-crawl atmosphere.  Drinking isn’t compulsory, of course.

Shades of a destitute pony

This sort of thing has been tried before, of course.  In the middle of the last decade, an organization called Poor Pony sponsored pub-crawls, art events and music extravaganzas in the very spot that Chuck Fest will be setting up.

Poor Pony was famous for their Halloween pub-crawls, though towards the end of that organization’s run, according to Walker, it began to become too much.

“The pub-crawls were great, but they burned people out.  We want to concentrate the art and music of Lake Charles into one festival,” Walker said.

There are a quite a few festivals in and around Lake Charles, Williams added.  “But there is not something that showcases the locals,” he said.

“This is for the Lake Charles acts that are doing original stuff.  That are making art,” Walker said. 

“No Houston bands, no Lafayette bands.  It’s not about what the state is doing, not what the region produces.  This is Lake Charles centric,” Williams said.

Both were quick to say that, of course, the acts on display isn’t all that’s available in Lake Charles.  “There are a lot of people left off the list,” Walker said.  “When The Word Was Sound, my favorite local band, isn’t going to be at the festival.”

That means, however, that Chuck Fest has room to grow.  “This is just the first year,” says Walker.

A moral imperative

Williams and Walker would consider Chuck Fest a success under the simplest of terms: engagement, participation, excitement.

“It’s a success if we had a large group of people out there.  That’s all it’s about, really,” Williams said.

“Think of it as a call to arms to represent your city and what we are doing here.  Every report that comes out puts Lake Charles really high up.  We have an opportunity here, and we are going to either take advantage of it, or be left behind,” Walker said.

Both believe that Lake Charles is on the cusp of exploding into a cultural and artistic powerhouse, and Chuck Fest is part of that explosion.  At least the beginning stages, anyway.

“All you have to do to do that is to participate,” Williams said.  “Just go!”

“Put your money where your mouth is,” Walker added.