It looks like crawdads are in season around here! There are two bug-based events going on the next two weekends. The first, this Saturday at Riprock’s just off dilapidated Fry Street this Saturday, and the second Uptown Dallas at Tailwaters next Saturday. These aren’t normally the kinds of events I find myself at because the labor – reward quotient has never been right when it comes to crawdads.

I mean, sure they’re tasty, suck the heads … yada, yada, but maybe this time with enough refreshments flowing, I can achieve a cultural balance of effort and reward. OK, the crawdads may just be an afterthought. One thing for sure, I will not make Tailwaters this year as I am booked to shoot that same day. This Saturday is looking very promising though.

Have a great time May 2nd. at the Thirteenth Annual Mudbug Boil in Denton at 1211 W. Hickory. Or, if Uptown Dallas, and the preeminent Dallas Fly Shop – Tailwaters, is your cup of bug broth, don’t miss a day full of events, specials and products – May 9th.

Arc Angels at Denton Arts & Jazz 2009 Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Arc Angels showed up at Denton Arts & Jazz last night, and that’s about all I can say. I would like to say they “tore the place up”, “ripped Denton a new one”, or some other well trodden rock-and-roll cliche’. Alas, they put on a good show, their musicianship was masterful as they dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s, but the feeling was more performance than show. It is impossible to really take anything away from this Texas Supergroup, and that’s not being attempted here. It just seemed, at times, as if there were somewhere else they would rather be on a beautiful North Texas Saturday evening.

Quite honestly, the Festival has outgrown its current layout, and it is now the time to move things around in the interest of accommodating crowds of epic proportions. It may be time to change the location of the main stage, redesign the hodgepodge of booths into a more organized pattern, and give everyone more room to breathe. The bottlenecks are annoying, and potentially hazardous.

I found one particular artist from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, that I found particularly interesting, and will be showing stills of his work tomorrow.

In case you missed it, were in a coma, or have been on some exotic fishing expedition; Denton’s annual Arts & Jazz festival is in full swing.

It is interesting – the “formulas” used to calculate crowds at events, but let’s just say there were more people in attendance last night than ever before.

Headliner Stanley Clarke was well worth the claustrophobic effort to get a little closer than everyone else, and the crowd was quite laid back as I jostled for better position. But things have evolved at the Festival. There are very substantial chain link fences that obstruct a close-up view near the stage, and the same fences create unobstructed paths for the “beautiful people” to move to and from the stage freely.

So my advice for tonight, get there early, stake out a spot on the lawn, plug your ears and get ready for the Arc Angles.