Creole performers’ return to Big Easy stalled by storm

BANGOR – With two Cajun groups and one Creole jazz band, performers from Louisiana were well-represented at the American Folk Festival last weekend in Bangor.

Unfortunately, returning to the Big Easy on Monday proved not so easy for them after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

Don Vappie and the Creole Serenaders were trying to figure out how to get everyone home.

“We’re stuck here in Bangor,” Vappie said Monday afternoon. “The whole band is stuck here, except for me, because my wife and I drove up here.”

The banjo player and his seven-piece band still were at the Holiday Inn in Bangor and were scrambling to find alternate flights to different areas in Louisiana that were less affected by the hurricane. All flights in and out of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were canceled.

“We’ve been hanging out making sure all the guys would be safe,” Vappie said. “We’re just making sure everyone has a flight to get in before we pull out. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The storm also knocked out power and phone lines throughout the New Orleans area. Vappie had made tentative contact with his family members down south.

“My mother’s in New Orleans,” he said. “We can’t get through to anyone, but I got text messages from my daughter, so I know she’s OK.”

Efforts to contact Vappie later to make sure the band got in safely were unsuccessful, as the hurricane disrupted his Louisiana-based cell phone service.