Cajun Fest preview, Celina Record

Good times on tap at fourth annual Celina Cajun Fest Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Apr 8, 2016 If you’ve ever wondered what five tons of crawfish looks like, you may want to check out Celina Cajun Fest this weekend. Terri Ricketts, marketing director for the city of Celina, explained that after selling out its 5,000-pound supply of crawfish during last year’s festival, the city has doubled its order for this year’s event. The hope is to better accommodate the more than 7,500 people expected to attend the popular festival Saturday on the city’s downtown square. Also, “Last year we had lines all the way around the square” of people waiting to buy crawfish that was cooked onsite in one massive pot, Ricketts said. This year, there will be two pots and a pair of service lines. Not in the mood for mudbugs? No problem: Chefs from Gentle Creek Country Club in Prosper have cooked up a menu of Cajun-inspired dishes - including a blackened fish sandwich and a chicken and sausage gumbo - that will also be available for purchase at the festival. Since its inception four years ago, Ricketts said Celina Cajun Fest’s reputation has been set as a place “to have great food. You’re not going to be able to find better crawfish or better entertainment any place within 500 miles.” That entertainment will include five musical acts. Three of them – The Pine Leaf Boys, Steve Ryley & the Mamou Playboys and The Band Courtboullion – are Grammy Award nominees who have previously taken the festival’s stage. The latter also features Grammy winner Wayne Toups, who will for the fourth year headline Celina Cajun Fest. “He’s kind of a guru of Cajun music, so he kind of helps us and guides us with the entertainment lineup,” Ricketts said of Toups, who also secured the Grammy-nominated group Roddie Romero and the Hub City All Stars this year for their first Celina Cajun Fest performance. “I love the music,” Celina City Manager Mike Foreman said of the festival, which he founded four years ago. Cities in which he had previously lived and worked, including Keller and Grand Prairie, boasted Cajun-themed festivals. “I thought it would be something that would be very successful” in Celina, Foreman said. “What’s great about this is as we’ve expanded our city staff, they’ve all bought into this event and they’ve all become part of it,” he said. Several of them “have really taken this event over and made it their baby. … It’s a great event that might have been an idea of mine four years ago, but really has transformed into something that everybody has bought into and wants to be a part of.” The same can likely be said of several of the vendors who return to set up shop at Cajun Fest year after year. Jack Scheib and his wife, Eileen, own Dallas-based Eileen’s Pralines and have sold their sweet treats at the festival each year since it began. “The people seem to like us. They’re very friendly,” Jack said. Celina resident Jane Seay has attended Cajun Fest several times, but this will be the first year the artist will sell her paintings of local landscapes at the event. Seay, an art teacher at Prosper High School, said several of her students plan to sell at the festival their photographs, paintings, drawings and handmade ceramic pieces alongside hers. “I thought the best way to be a good teacher is to model what I want my students to do, and I want them to realize their talent is marketable,” she explained. “I want them before they go to college to be able to market their skills, to learn to talk to people.” A popular Cajun Fest feature is the car show, which this year will be populated entirely by Chevrolet Corvettes belonging to members of the nonprofit North Texas Corvette Club. More than 100 vehicles will be parked along West Walnut Street. “It’s fun to come out here,” Ricketts explained of Celina Cajun Fest’s popularity. “It’s a lovely day trip for people coming from the Metroplex. They get out of the city and into the country a little bit. “When you think of the number of people we have (attending the event) and the number of people who live here (in Celina), we have more people in town for Cajun Fest than we have who live in town,” she said. “That speaks to the reputation that it has built. It is acknowledged as (having) good music and great food.” Follow the Celina Record on Twitter @celinarecord.