The NOLA Pipe Show Recap
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Kevin Godbee - Oct 13, 2015
- 5 min read
E. Roberts
The road to New Orleans was (sort of almost) a rocky one. Organizing an event of any size is never an easy task; James, Toby and Wes know that no good party goes off without a hitch, and the first iteration of their pipe show was no exception. Back in January, the New Orleans City Council had passed a smoking ban making it illegal to indulge in lighting up in enclosed public spaces including bars, casinos, and hotels, and then amended it to include festivals and public parks. According to the wording of the ordinance, this should have had no effect on the show because of the nature of the venue at Harrah’s and the nature of the show, and Harrah’s confirmed this with Toby Ducote. The week before the show, though, they caved in to some political pressures and put a kibosh on the entire affair. Toby didn’t miss a beat, though, and secured Generations Hall, an even better venue in my humble opinion, as well as coordinating several other local hotels to offer a discounted show rate. For that alone he deserves a golden pipe, in my book.
The Generations Hall scene © ShutterHog Photography
Thankfully, that was the extent of the drama for the show and everything else came off without a hitch for over 200 exhibitors and attendees that made the trek—well, except that the restaurant supplying lunch on Saturday burned down that morning, and again a last-minute replacement was enlisted. Aside from that, it was all good. The Hilton Garden Inn and Generations Hall were superbly accommodating, and the Perique factory tour, which will be detailed in another article, was an amazing experience and really built up anticipation for the show for those who were lucky enough to attend.
Jon David Cole of The Country Squire © ShutterHog Photography
Tu Combs (R) with Toby Ducote (L) (and an enormous check!) © ShutterHog Photography
James ‘Pylorns’ Foster and Steve Monjure
Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name. With 65 exhibitor tables filled, the vendor turnout was exemplary for a first-time show. For the most part these are small businesses, and the expense of hauling one’s wares around the country for a chance at sales is a dicey proposition. Nearly everyone I spoke with did all right, and some exceptionally well. Steve Monjure, who sponsored the gift bags along with SmokingPipes, is my personal gauge on a show’s success—if he’s there, then it’s a success. He had a great time and looks forward to next year. Other familiar faces from the show circuit included Sally from The Pipe Tart (thepipetart.com), the SmokingPipes.com contingent with Chip and posse, the indefatigably opinionated Brian Levine, Scott Thile, Tom Dinelli representing the UPCA, Phil Morgan of Missouri Meerschaum, and of course Russ Ouellette. The single best thing about this (and any) pipe show is the personal contact with folks from our little corner of the industry, and being able to renew those friendships at the next show.
The inimitable Pipe Tart herself. © ShutterHog Photography
The one (of many) that got away. AldenPipes.com
Zack24 of the forums – Z Hamric Pipes zhamricpipes.com
© ShutterHog Photography
In the end, it’s all about the pipes (and tobacco). Some amazing carving talent was evidenced at the show, both from old standards and some new up-and-coming talent. The official NOLA show pipe, a robust billiard done in golden morta by Davorin Denovic, is still available at the time of writing. The crowd favorite in the carving contest was Tu Combs, and my personal favorite was Ryan Alden’s take on a blowfish that not only made me not hate the shape, it may very well have caused me to fall in love with it—if only I’d picked it up in time! Let that be a lesson: when you see something that you like at a show, BUY IT. Walt Cannoy debuted his new line of Cardinal House pipes, while father-and-son-in-law team NP Pipes debuted their wares for the first time ever. McClelland tobacco sponsored the pre-show slow-smoke contest on Friday night, and The Country Squire’s Jon David Cole was kind enough to formulate an official tobacco for the show, called Fleur de Lis, which will be available by request from the shop.
The official show pipe by Davorin Denovic
Russ Ouellette & Scott Thile
New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin. —Mark Twain
What kind of show would it be without some product announcements? Topping the list is BriarWorks International’s upcoming blends that include bacon. No, not actual bacon; rather, they’re releasing a line of blends that includes a concoction with a decidedly bacon-y, bourbon-y flavor appropriately named Bacon Old Fashioned. It includes a goodly hunk of dark-fired leaf that lends that smoky character we all love, and visually mimics a pork rind. God bless ’em. Smoker’s Haven had a few limited-edition, numbered tins of a Syrian Latakia blend that I can only equate with absolute heaven in a tin, which debuted at the Chicago show. Russ Ouellette presented some soon-to-be-released blends for the Hearth & Home Signature Series, to be available in bulk only: Summer Harvest, a vanilla / caramel / fruity aromatic; Porch Swing, an American English with Perique; Delta Days, a VaPer including some choice mahogany burley; and Drawing Room, a Turkish blend featuring some superbly floral Oriental leaf. He’s also working with Mark Ryan to produce four blends that feature distinct variations of Perique, aimed at defining and illuminating the subtle differences available in this most wonderful of leafs. Many other projects that I can’t tell you about were discussed or hinted at, and for my money, that’s one of the most exciting things about hanging out with folks in the industry (and getting them drunk).
Yes, that’s a tin of Smoker’s Haven Syrian on the table. © ShutterHog Photography
The PipesMagazine.com community was well-represented at the show. It’s always good to put a real face behind the handles we get to know each other by. If you met an old forum friend for the first time at the show, give them a shout out in the comments section! In fact, forum member James ‘Pylorns’ Foster’s nascent cloud-based app, The Pipe Tool (thepipetool.com) was really how this whole party started, in a way, by involving him more in the piping community. Be sure to check out more web content available through countrysquireradio.com, and bookmark the show home page (nolapipeshow.com) in preparation for next year. Many thanks to Toby, James and Wes for organizing the show, extra special thanks to Wes Brown for providing the amazing photographs (shutterhogphotography.com) accompanying this article, and a resounding round of applause for the gracious show sponsors and enthusiastic attendees for making this weekend in the Big Easy one to remember.
Wes Brown’s Shutterhog Photography—mind it!
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Well done E. Roberts!
A tip of the hat to Toby and the New Orleans Pipe Club for putting on an excellent event! James Foster (pylorns), Mr. Marketing! Great site, social media presence and communication leading up to the event.
I appreciate the accolades but I was just an attendee with a camera! Certainly didn’t do the “heavy lifting”. Toby and team deserve all the credit! Looking forward to next year!!!
~ Wes Brown – ShutterHog
Kevin, very nice write up on what looks like a wonderful show.
Many,many thanks to all who worked so hard to make this a successful show. Thanks also to the pipesmagazine.com crew for the pictures and reports from the show as well as the webcam. Even though I couldn’t attend the show I felt as if I was there.
Yep, great article, Toby and the New Orleans Pipe club did all the heavy lifting, I just made them look good with a little flair in the marketing department. Great show all around!
No one writes as well as E. Roberts! I was impressed the number of East Coast club members I saw at the event, that really says something. After every show, I lament not spending enough time talking to someone. Time does fly at these shows. Toby, James and crew deserve a lot of praise for making the first show such a first class event. Hopefully I can make it back down for the 2nd annual show.
What a great read! Thanks.
Great job all! Looks like a fun time was had by all!
Thanks again to Toby Ducote & the NOLA pipe club for their huge endeavor, I’m really looking forward to next year’s show. And don’t be so shy, Wes, without your images that captured the spirit of the show, it would only be a memory!