DETOURS

In this episode of DETOURS, James and Jordan are joined by Baton Rouge Chef Yvette Bonanno to discuss the ins and outs of Louisiana's challenging 2024 crawfish season.

In this episode of DETOURS, Jordan, Alex, and contributor John Wirt sit down with host of NPR's nationally-syndicated American Routes Nick Spitzer to discuss his career chronicling American music, particularly Louisiana's. Nick shares his tips for cultivating intimacy and trust in interviews with the three journalists, as well as countless tales from his conversations with American music legends from the Grateful Dead and Carlos Santana to Dewey Balfa and Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin. He also fills us in on why he won't be running for governor of Louisiana anytime soon.

In this episode of DETOURS, Jordan and James are joined by Eva Szyszkoski, a wildlife technician with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries who specializes in the state's efforts to reintroduce the endangered whooping crane population to the landscape. One of the rarest birds in the world, the whooping crane's population in North America was down to only twenty-one birds in the wild in 1945. Since then, scientists have combined efforts to raise the birds in captivity while monitoring, and on occasions intervening with, populations released in specific habitats around the continent. Since 2011, Louisiana has hosted a small population—which Szyszkoski has played a major part in monitoring for years now. Over the course of our conversation, she shares the major struggles of Louisiana's reintroduction program, as well as its recent successes—and tells us what it is like to be face to face with these majestic, five-foot beauties.

In this episode of DETOURS, James is joined by contributor Chris Turner-Neal for a conversation with Maida Owens, the director of the Louisiana Folklife Program—a position she has held for nearly forty years now. The three discuss the definition of “folklife” and its iterations in Louisiana, as well as some of Owens’s biggest projects, including the ten-year culmination of folktales collected through the Louisiana Storytelling Project. Owens emphasizes the importance of investing in and preserving cultural practices, especially from the perspective of the challenges Louisianans face today as threats to life in coastal communities increase. Through projects like the Bayou Culture Collaborative and its popular workshops dedicated to bringing together artists, tradition bearers, folklorists, and scientists—Owens is working to provide solutions and infrastructure for the future of Louisiana folklife.

In this season's "Well-Read" special episode—in which contributors and local personalities read some of our favorite stories from recent issues—Managing Editor Jordan LaHaye Fontenot reads aloud her story on Hitachi rice cookers from our July 2023 Cuisine issue. In the article, which has been shared far and wide across social media by Louisiana residents who have memories of the rice cooker, she explores the history of the Japanese appliance's rise to prominence in the rural towns of Acadiana.

In this episode, the DETOURS team is joined by Founder/Creator of Exit Strategy Jody Ray to discuss his experience traveling to Benin, West Africa and making gumbo's predecessor, West African okra stew, which he wrote about for our July 2023 Cuisine Issue. In the conversation he walks us through what it was like purchasing ingredients for the stew in Dantokpa Market, the largest open-air market in West Africa, with the help of his guide Jean-Paul Houndagnon and Jean-Paul's mother Augustine. We also discuss what it was like being invited into Augustine's home to learn how the dish is made, and the many differences and similarities between gumbo and okra stew.

In this episode, the DETOURS team is joined by Country Roads magazine's Creative Director, Kourtney Zimmerman, to discuss the less-than-precise process of choosing covers for our monthly print publication. James reminisces on days of cutting-and-pasting (with scissors and wax), everyone shares some of their favorite covers over the last 40 years, and we discuss the tensions of story vs. iconic image, fame vs. impact, and the old vs. the new—all of which contribute to our monthly slack channel voting sessions to choose the issue's most important image.

For this episode, Jordan meets with three Lafayette-area creatives working in the realm of Louisiana French preservation : Jonathan Olivier, a writer ; Drake LeBlanc, a filmmaker and media artist ; and Jourdan Thibodeaux, a musician. From the starting point of Thibodeaux's groundbreaking song "La Priere" (2023, Valcour Records) we discuss the ways that music, art, content creation, and humor can help to foster a passion for the Louisiana way of life, a way of life that goes beyond language to the fostering of community gathering and oral storytelling.

Kicking off Season 2 of DETOURS, Jordan and Alex meet with Country Roads contributor Nina Flournoy—author of the series "Strange True Stories of My Louisiana Ancestors"—and New Orleans genealogist Jari Honora. From the riveting launchpad of Nina's extensive investigation into her family history, we discuss the importance of researching one's own genealogy—especially here in Louisiana—and strategies to help you learn more about your own family here. Find the shownotes for this episode at countryroadsmagazine.com/detours.

Each season of DETOURS, we plan to include a "Well Read" episode—where we present a reading of one of our favorites stories from our recent issues. For our first, we present Charlotte Jones and Marshall Blevins' collaborative Mississippi Delta road trip adventure, "I Believe in the Delta: A Tour Guide and an Artist Drive Up Highway 61," read by Charlotte Jones and Delta farmer David Wiliford. For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast.

Jordan, Alex, and James are again joined in the studio by 64 Parish's Senior Managing Editor and Country Roads' former Arts & Entertainment Editor Chris Turner-Neal—this time, to unpack the gory facts (and lore) surrounding three historic Louisiana serial killers: Euzebe Vidrine of Acadiana, The Axeman of New Orleans; and Southwest Louisiana's Clementine Barnabet. For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast.

James and Alex are in the studio to discuss one of Alex's favorite eras of theatre and literary history: Tennessee Williams' life in New Orleans. Learn how the playwright came to discover himself, his sexuality, and many of his iconic characters and settings during his multiple periods spent in and just outside the French Quarter—first as an impoverished and repressed young aspiring writer, and later as the acclaimed playwright of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast.

For this episode, Jordan, James, and Alex are joined in the studio by Baton Rouge actor and stuntman Michael Papajohn. Papajohn played baseball for LSU under Skip Bertman's coaching 1986–1987, the first two years the team made it to the College World Series. His life changed forever when he was randomly asked to audition for a small part in a feature film while leaving LSU's weight room one day—which set him off on a lifelong career in major motion pictures, both as a stuntman and in a wide variety of recognizable roles in films ranging from The Waterboy to Spider-Man. For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast.

Introducing the first of our "Between the Lines" episodes, where the Country Roads editorial team invites DETOURS listeners in on conversations we're having about all things magazine-making. In this episode, James, Jordan, and Alex sit down to talk through the daunting beast that is social media: what their personal relationships with it are like, how it has evolved, and how Country Roads can best utilize it (even if that means actually learning how to make a TikTok). For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast

For this unexpectedly wholesome episode, we're joined in the studio by 64 Parish's Senior Managing Editor and Country Roads' former Arts & Entertainment Editor Chris Turner-Neal, to ask him about his day spent getting the full experience at Louisiana's only nude campground, Indian Hills near Slidell. For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast

In this episode, we join Grandmother’s Buttons founder and designer Susan Davis upstairs in the red historic bank building during the business’s final days in St. Francisville, to reflect on the alchemy of transforming antique buttons into jewelry and the many lives the brand has touched since Davis started it in 1985. For more information and related reading from this episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast

In our very first episode, we marvel at how surreal it feels to actually have started a podcast and how we got here, tease a bit of the cultural storytelling that's to come, and trace the history of Country Roads magazine from its inception forty years ago in a deer stand leading up to the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans. For more information and related reading from today's episode, visit countryroadsmagazine.com/detours-podcast.

After forty years of southern storytelling in the form of the written word, the Country Roads magazine editorial team is turning on microphones to share compelling stories from Louisiana and Mississippi in a new format.