What I love about the Rainbow Inn has been detailed in a recent issue of this very magazine, so I asked Clarke Gernon, my frequent co-explorer of feral Louisiana culture, to explain what strikes him about the place. Clarke is by trade an architect, so naturally he started with the building.
“When you first approach the Rainbow Inn, a few things set it off as visually interesting. It sits at the intersection of a highway and a bayou, turned at an angle where it faces that intersection. I remember the massive four-foot-wide door set in flat concrete block wall. I had a sense of that door being there since the day it was opened. It holds the history of all the people that walked through that door.”
The Rainbow Inn is less a building than it is an embodiment of something that happens to take place in a certain building. “What’s remarkable isn’t related to how it looks, pretty unremarkable if you remove it from its context. I imagine it as a South Louisiana pub. Every kind of person that lives in Pierre Part was there to do the thing they want to do in this catch-all place.”
The Rainbow Inn has weathered years in Pierre Part since the 1930s, one of the few old guard Cajun dance halls still in operation. Clarke noted, “Out of all the South Louisiana clubs I’ve been to, the ones that really embrace this region, the Rainbow feels like the beginning of all those clubs, yet also feels contemporary. It feels like it’s of then and of now at the same time. If someone opening a new bar tries to capture that spirit, what they’re imagining is the Rainbow Inn.”
One of the really special things about the place is the three generations of bartenders serving drinks to three generations of customers. “There was a family experience behind and in front of the bar,” Clarke said.
The other special thing about the Rainbow is swamp pop legend Don Rich, who has played there nearly every Thursday night since he was a teenager. “It was nice to know it’s his home bar, Pierre Part being his back yard,” Clarke said.
Clarke and I have discussed many times what separates swamp pop from average cover bands performing Fats Domino and Van Morrison tunes all over the world. For me, swamp pop is a specific embrace of the music in this region. It is an artist using those chestnuts as a medium for self-expression. “Any good swamp pop band is able to do that, and that’s what makes swamp pop great,” Clarke said. “The better the song gets, it becomes swamp pop.”
The best swamp pop I’ve heard so far was Don Rich at Rainbow Inn. I look forward to seeking out places and performers that can challenge it.
The Rainbow Inn
LA Highway 70 South
Pierre Part, LA
(985) 252-8069
Open Wednesday and Thursday evenings with live music most Thursdays.
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