Marshall "Church Goin' Mule" Blevins
"A Place for Hope"
When Dustin Dale Gaspard first received word that he might get the opportunity to compete on the NBC reality show, The Voice, he stepped out beneath the stars. He looked up and he prayed to his Vermilion Parish ancestors, and he told them, “I’m ready.”
In the original version of Marshall “Church Goin’ Mule” Blevins’s artwork, above her signature mule—a symbol of common ground, of shared experiences the likes of those provoked by the blues—appear the words, “A place for hope.”
Gaspard, in his interview, speaks of a particular place he’s always reaching for when he plays music: a place of conviction, and vulnerability, and yearning, “where other people are invited in.” Renée Reed and Juliane Mahoney allude to it, too, in their own practice playing old Cajun music as The Holiday Playgirls. “There’s this release … it’s passionate. Cajun people, they’re passionate, and they’re heartbroken.” And you can hear it. It’s something shared, between the player and the listener, between all of us. There is hope in it, surely. But maybe what it actually is, is home.
See more of Blevins's work at churchgoinmule.com.
