An Unlikely Year
Heaps to celebrate in 2018—and we couldn't have done it without you
Another year has slipped by and despite all the warnings by earnest prognosticators that 2018 would be the year in which people finally gave up reading words printed on paper, Country Roads continues to flourish. No one is more delighted about this than Ashley Fox-Smith and me—not only because we like publishing a magazine, but also because when it comes to earning a living, this is just about the only thing we’ve ever done. As I’ve admitted in this column before, when I got involved with Country Roads (with the title of ‘Editor,’ on account of being a better speller and a worse ad salesman than my wife or my mother-in-law), the only other things I’d ever been paid to do were to wash dishes, serve drinks; and, one summer when I had a job as a college gardener, to mow my name in fifty-foot-tall letters when I was supposed to be mowing the lawn. Now nearly twenty-five years later I’m still not sure what else I’m qualified to do. So since we continue to create copies of a meticulously curated cultural magazine in an age where, theoretically, some benevolent algorithm can deliver all the world’s information to the glowing little screen in the palm of one’s hand, it comes as a relief that there continues to be an audience for what we do. As someone smarter than me observed, these days magazines are like sailboats: no one needs one to get from point A to point B anymore, but people continue to love them and be drawn to them. Why? Because aesthetically, a sailboat reminds us that part of the pleasure of going someplace is the journey itself.
If all this sounds a bit like self-satisfied navel-gazing, please forgive me—2018 marked a milestone for us in many ways. This year brought about Country Roads’ thirty-fifth anniversary. It was the year that CR’s founder and my mother-in-law, Dorcas, finally traded her publisher’s pen for a seat at the Mahjongg table and a variety of eccentric hats. It’s also been the year in which we launched an online ticketing platform, BonTempsTix.com; and that the Country Roads Supper Club proved to have a life all its own.
Of all the things that took flight this year Supper Club is the one we get most excited about. During 2018 we hosted eight Supper Clubs. We presented events on the banks of Lake Martin in Breaux Bridge, beneath a canopy of live oaks on the grounds of a Creole plantation on the Great River Road, on the grounds of the new riverfront Water Campus in downtown Baton Rouge, in a restored juke joint in Port Allen, high on the bluffs in Natchez at sunset, and at more of the most spectacular locations we’ve happened upon during thirty-five years of covering this region. We’ve coaxed visionary chefs including Jeffrey Hansell of OxLot 9 in Covington and David Crews, founder of the legendary Delta Supper Club, out of their kitchens to prepare elaborate meals in unlikely surroundings. We’ve paired their menus with terrific wines, unique cocktails, and entertainment by irreplaceably great performers including Smokehouse Porter, Gal Holiday, and the legendary storyteller Adella Gautier. Most recently, no fewer than five hundred of you took time out of a rainy Sunday evening to come join us at The Myrtles in St. Francisville to eat, drink, dance, and raise a glass to thirty-five years of shoestring independent publishing, to celebrate all that makes this place like nowhere else on earth. Each time you sat at communal tables and shared these experiences with diverse people from different communities, different generations, different backgrounds, and I’m fairly certain, different political persuasions; and found that your shared appreciation for fine food, good music, and cultural discovery does more to unite than it does to divide—a function that sharing a meal has served throughout human history. In this time of fractious politics and heightened partisanship, that feels like a good thing.
None of this, of course, lives without the sustaining energy of the wonderful audience that has rallied to Country Roads’ banner over the years. So to all of you who continue to find something of value in these pages, and to all who attended one of our Supper Clubs in 2018, thank you! We’re hard at work on the 2019 series now. Stay tuned; the January issue will have all the details. Happy holidays, one and all. We’re proud to call you our friends.
—James Fox-Smith, publisher