Friday Nights at the Mag Return
Tentatively, triumphantly, a community institution dances back in
In the late nineties when I moved to St. Francisville, the most fun you could (legally) have on a Friday night was to be found in the back room of an old gas station. It was low-roofed and dark in there, and hot in summertime. In a corner there would be a gaggle of musically aspirational locals (early on it was a stretch to call it a “band”) gamely tearing strips off “Piece of My Heart,” “Proud Mary” or some other landmark of the American songbook. The rest of the room would be thronged with singing, laughing, flirting, dancing people from all walks of life and in varying stages of intoxication. In one of those rare, neutral grounds where bluebloods and hippies, rednecks and tourists all seem to peacefully coexist, many would be folks you might also have spotted here at lunchtime, gossiping and holding court over Turkey Specials and French dip poboys in the pepto-bismal-pink main dining room. There might also be tourists from places like France or Germany who, having followed muffled sounds of revelry in from the street, would now be regarding the goings-on with interest. As the evening wore on and the drinks flowed these tourists would gradually reveal their true natures: some lurking in dark corners like anthropologists observing a strange tribal ritual; others joining in the singing and dancing with varying levels of comprehension and gusto. Always there was singing. Some nights it seemed like so many people were singing along that the whole crowd was part of the band … like a Greek chorus echoing everything that’s good about a place. Always there was dancing too: in front of the band, in the aisles, between the tables, sometimes on the tables, people would dance. Some would be tentative, some clumsy, some madcap, some drunken, some heartfelt and sweet. And among it all would always be one tiny, straw-haired little girl, no more than three or four years old, whirling joyously right in front of the band, weaving in and out of the grownups’ legs and somehow managing never, ever to get trodden on. To some, the presence of so small a child on a crowded dancefloor might have seemed wrong, or against the rules. But hey, this wasn’t a play-by-the-rules kind of place. It was, of course, The Magnolia.
Always there was dancing too: in front of the band, in the aisles, between the tables, sometimes on the tables, people would dance. Some would be tentative, some clumsy, some madcap, some drunken, some heartfelt and sweet. And among it all would always be one tiny, straw-haired little girl, no more than three or four years old, whirling joyously right in front of the band, weaving in and out of the grownups’ legs and somehow managing never, ever to get trodden on.
As origin stories go, the Magnolia Café has a good one. Opened in 1982 by Robin Marshall as a health food store in a town where no-one had ever seen a bean sprout, The Mag became a restaurant when Robin learned that sandwiches made with fresh-baked pita bread sold better than the pita bread itself. By the late nineties, lunch at The Mag was a community institution, a part-time job there a rite of passage observed by half the teenagers enrolled in West Feliciana high school. The Friday night music started in the late ‘nineties as a kind of informal jam session for musically inclined locals, a core group of whom gradually coalesced to become the Magnolia House Band once locals caught wind of the fact that you could come along, get a beer and listen. By 1999 or 2000 those back room Friday nights had attained a mythic quality—more community-wide house party than gig—fueled by a heady mix of goodwill, alcohol, and raw enthusiasm. The result was a perfect storm of end-of-the-week celebration that a visiting friend once described as “something you wish you could bottle. Then, anytime you need cheering up, you could just open the bottle and take a sniff.” One night in late 2003 a fire started by a wiring fault burned the old gas station to the ground. But home-grown spirit isn’t combustible. The Mag moved across the parking lot and gradually reconstituted itself in its current location. Lots changed but the menu, and the Friday night music, endured. By the late 2000s, the Magnolia had a proper, purpose-built music stage, the house band had a name (The Delta Drifters); and on a Friday night you couldn’t find a parking spot within half a mile.
Another hallmark that carried over from the old location to the new was the presence of kids on the dancefloor. All through the 2000s and 2010s, Friday night at The Mag functioned as a weekly bookend and community living room that packed the restaurant with a high-spirited mix of locals and visitors, and its dancefloor with a crew of pint-sized regulars who developed their dance moves while weaving in and out of the legs of their elders. For that we have to thank Lexi: granddaughter of Magnolia founder Robin Marshall; daughter of Skye Willis, and therefore the third generation of Magnolia family to have more or less grown up in the restaurant. Lexi was the straw-haired little girl tearing up the dancefloor on Friday nights in 1999. Her accidental presence there made bringing your kids in to dance on a Friday night a cherished weekly ritual that bonded families together, and taught children not just some dance moves and the words to “Proud Mary,” but also the priceless value of community. So, in early 2020, when COVID closed The Mag and everything else, it felt like losing the use of a limb. Later that year when the restaurant reopened it was only for lunch. In St. Francisville, the hard reality of post-pandemic restaurant staffing seemed to have finished off Friday night’s Music at the Mag tradition once and for all.
[Read another of St. Francisville local James Fox-Smith's love letters The Magnolia Café here.]
So, it feels good to report that, beginning September 23, the stage lights at The Magnolia will be on again for “Magfest,” a fourth-Friday-of-each-month return to the ritual of shared tables, high spirited sing-alongs, the Delta Drifters onstage, and a dancefloor full of children. The creative force behind this development: Lexi of course, who grew up on the dancefloor of the old Mag, and who now has daughters of her own. On a Friday night in late July, Lexi and her husband, Trey, opened the Mag for a one-off trial run. The kitchen was closed but the bar was doing a roaring trade, the Delta Drifters were on stage, and the place—no surprise—was packed. At one point on the dancefloor were four generations of Magnolia women: Robin, Skye, Lexi, and her little girl, Ember—joyously whirling as her mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother looked on. If you want to know what community looks like, look no further. And get your tickets. On the fourth Friday of any given month, this will be the hottest table in town.