Visiting volunteers buoy VOW

Feathered around an icon of a bygone time were dozens of out-of-towners who dedicated last weekend to fuel the music festival that aims to evaporate complacency, lest the water wash us away.

Voice of the Wetlands staged its festival for the 10th time at its traditional grounds, Southdown Plantation in Houma. The juncture of staving off what the future holds and savoring the cultural gumbo of past and present is surreal, the stakes of doing nothing embedded in Johnny Sansone’s harmonica, the contrasting accordions of Jo-el Sonnier and Chubby Carrier, Michael Doucet’s fiddle, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux’s headdress and Houma-grown Tab Benoit’s blues guitar.

So it’s no surprise that music lovers and curious explorers converge on this endangered town from throughout the country: Illinois. Georgia. Massachusetts. Connecticut. Arizona. New Mexico. Michigan. Why, yes, even Hawaii.

All were in town for the music, and of course they were. One of the great ensembles anywhere – the Louisiana supergroup Voice of the Wetlands Allstars – shut down the celebration as they always do, a group of exemplary individuals who know how to maintain homogeneity while serving each other with solos, polished and raw, an oxymoron by nature.

Many of these tourists volunteer to help sustain a short-handed festival, serving beer or food to the thousands in attendance. They seem to outnumber Houma’s helping hands by at least a 2-to-1 ratio.

The visiting volunteers share another common bond: They’ve been touched by Tab.

Why are you here, sweating in a food tent for the better part of a day, the majority of a weekend?

Well, I follow Tab’s career, and … A) I met with him after a show, and he opened up about his hometown, or B) I learned of Tab’s festival through his website.

It’s as if they read from a script. Journalism can be jading, so I owe festival organizer Reuben Williams an apology for rolling my eyes each time he’s relayed that graf to me while pumping the festival. It is true, and Tab’s magnetism is real. Intense, too, considering what goes into embarking on a weeklong trip to place one would never know.

That’s not to say the visitors are stencils. Everyone is influenced by his or her own experiences; generalizations only go so far. Some are more aware of coastal Louisiana’s plight than others, and some volunteer more than one weekend to champion its cause.

One such convert is Paula Stebbins, a caterer from Ohio and eight-year VOW veteran.

Hurricane Katrina familiarized Stebbins with coastal issues. Her cousin was going through her fourth round of breast-cancer treatment at a Jefferson Parish hospital when Katrina wiped clean her medical records. Stebbins invited her cousin to Ohio, and set her up with a nearby doctor. A seed of awareness was planted as they watched coverage of the aftermath on television.

Upon meeting Tab after a show, Stebbins found out how to help. So she uses her professional expertise to oversee the food tent serving jambalaya, gumbo and alligator-sauce piquante. She’s pretty strict about her volunteers working in pairs, which cuts down on shouting orders, which cuts down on duplication, which cuts down on waste. “We don’t want to waste ANY food,” was the second thing she told me.

Stebbins’ voice goes beyond the three-day festival. She has, in fact, taken up public speaking in Ohio. About coastal Louisiana.

“It’s like talking to that post,” she laments. But she doesn’t relent, and she has adapted her presentation to incorporate the wetlands’ protection of national interests, whether cultural or economic. She knows how much land has been lost, she’s knows how much more will be lost in the next hour and she knows that wetlands lessen the strength of hurricanes. Her only problem is getting other people to care.

Three years and four months ago she took her boyfriend Frank Meravy to a Tab Benoit double-show. He’s been at each festival since, overseeing the other food tent, the one that serves up fried catfish and alligator and cane syrup sausage po’boys.

Stebbins’ cousin passed away in 2007. She said she owes it to her to keep coming back, to keep touting the importance of Louisiana’s wetlands to anyone who will listen. Houma, we owe it to Stebbins and Tab and all the tourist-volunteers at VOW to appreciate how they’re shaping their lives around our cause.