Country Roads Magazine

06/18/2026

JonBenét Ramsey, Princess Di, Anne Frank, and Amy Winehouse—all tragic muses to the artist Terry Gibson, and beloved.

Even a cursory glance at any one of his necklaces, tributes to the departed, might make you wistful and cheery at once. The works are colorful and memorialize these and other public figures readily familiar to students of modern history and fans of pop culture.

Read on at countryroadsmag.com

Story by Lauren Stroh

Photos by Aimee Farnet Siegel

06/16/2026

Starting this Sunday, cool off and chill out at the Freyhan Center's summer indoor concert series in St. Francisville, LA. This three-session lineup of themed musical performances by Magnolia Strings includes small bites, signature cocktails, and air conditioning.

5:30 pm - 8 pm. Tickets at BonTempsTix.com.

Magnolia Strings returns to our historic stage for a three-night summer concert series, bringing new life to beloved classics and contemporary favorites. This early evening, casual musical experience, will include exceptional talent, great music, and a relaxed summer atmosphere.

Attend all three evenings with a discounted series ticket or purchase tickets for individual performances. Admission includes small bites and a signature concert cocktail, with additional beverages available for purchase at our cash bar. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and music begins at 6:00 p.m.

https://bontempstix.com/events/summer-sundays-with-magnolia-strings-6-22-2026

06/16/2026

Tupelo, Mississippi, is positively the place for a weekend getaway!

Enter for your chance to WIN a Tupelo getaway fit for a king, including:

• A two-night stay at Hotel Tupelo

• Two tickets to the Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum

• Two tickets to the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo

• A Tasting at Queen's Reward Meadery

• A one-of-a-kind gift basket of goodies

https://subscribe.countryroadsmagazine.com/mytupelo/

Winner will be drawn on July 6, 2026

Sponsored by My Tupelo

Tupelo, Mississippi, is positively the place for a weekend getaway!

06/12/2026

Two of reality television’s most anxiety-inducing concepts come together in a thrilling new series from the Food Network. Like its famed predecessor, "Chopped Castaways" asks twelve of the country’s most accomplished chefs to concoct delicious works of art under the duress of mystery ingredients, a ticking clock, and top-notch competition. But this time, they’ve got to do all of that on a remote island, over open fire, and while participating in survival-style physical challenges to earn their keep. The new show premiered in May, and among the competitors was familiar face, Louisiana’s Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois, a native of Thibodaux and graduate of the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute who was recently nominated for the James Beard Broadcast Media Award for his own cooking series, "Duck Camp Dinners."

Watch Bourgeois draw from his Louisiana bayou boy skills in upcoming episodes, airing weekly on Tuesday nights on the Food Network, available to stream the next day via HBO Max.

Story by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

Photo courtesy of Jean-Paul Bourgeois

06/11/2026

"As a gardener here in Louisiana—where rain, water, and flooding are seemingly stitched into our DNA—rain is on my mind nearly always," writes "Our Sustainable Garden" columnist Jess Cole. "Most every action I take when planting trees, which makes up the bulk sum of my work, is dependent on rain—flooding or the lack thereof."

Read on at countryroadsmag.com

06/10/2026

The homage to the iconic La Provence is a single thread in the tapestry of Chef John Besh’s narrative vision for Feliciana Bistrôt and its upstairs sister, the Paradise Cocktail Lounge, both of which opened in February as part of Besh’s BRG Hospitality Group on the former site of Downtown Covington’s circa-1942 Star Theater. Thematically homing in on how place, and the South especially, has a tendency to shape identity and the pursuit of meaning, Besh turned to Covington’s own National Book Award winner, Walker Percy.

Find the full story by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot at countryroadsmag.com

Photos courtesy of BRG Hospitality.

06/09/2026

Have you ever wondered what treasures a museum might have hidden from view? After all, many museums contain hundreds, if not thousands, of objects in their collections. These objects are tucked away from curious eyes and probing hands within conservation-friendly boxes and bins in darkened, climate-controlled, securely locked rooms. Considered holistically, a museum’s collection represents a microcosm of the public it serves, maintaining unto perpetuity those objects in which the community places value—monetary value, sure, but even more so in the priceless stories that each represents.

Discover more art in the vault at countryroadsmag.com

Story by Elizabeth Chubbuck Weinstein

06/08/2026

The heart-soul-toil of the Delta is what made many blues musicians, and in the same way the hard farm work made heartbreakingly beautiful music, so too did it create its artists. On their Mississippi road trip, writer Marshall Blevins-DeLoach found the folks among the folk art.

Tag along at countryroadsmag.com

06/08/2026

Shreveport-Bossier first began hosting the U.S. National Hot Air Balloon Championship in 2016, then caught a new wind in hosting the Louisiana State Ballooning Championship soon after. In the decade that has followed, the annual event has made the sister cities a prime summertime destination for many of the country’s most accomplished hot-air balloon pilots.

That summer saw another new tradition take flight in Shreveport-Bossier: the Red River Balloon Rally (July 10–11 this year), which today draws tens of thousands of attendees who come to celebrate humankind’s oldest means of taking to the skies.

Click the article below to learn more.

Sponsored by Visit Shreveport-Bossier

RSS Print For a week during the height of the sweltering summer of 2016, folks in North Louisiana’s sister cities of Shreveport and Bossier found themselves suddenly transfixed by the sight of giant, colorful globes drifting silently through clear, morning skies. High above his hometown, hot air b...

06/04/2026

In late 2024, the board of the Venice Biennale—the world’s oldest and most prestigious international exhibition of contemporary art and architecture—announced Koyo Koyoh as the official curator of the event’s 61st iteration, to be held in 2026. Among Kouoh’s 110 artists—who hail from locales such as Nairobi, Kingston, Beirut, and Bangkok—are two representatives from the Gulf South, both from New Orleans.

Read on at countryroadsmag.com

Story by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot