Fridays at the Mag Return

Reflections: Baby (Dance) Steps

A return to Fridays at the Magnolia Café

James Fox-Smith

In the late nineties, the most fun you could (legally) have in St. Francisville on a Friday night was found in the back room of an old gas station. In a corner, a gaggle of locals with instruments (early on it was a stretch to call it a “band”) would be gamely tearing strips off “Piece of My Heart,” “Proud Mary” or some other American classic. The room would be thronged with singing, laughing, dancing people in varying stages of intoxication. It was one of those rare, neutral grounds where bluebloods and hippies, rednecks and tourists all seemed to peacefully coexist. Many were the same folks you might also have spotted in the same spot at lunchtime, gossiping and holding court over Turkey Specials and French dip poboys. Always there was singing. Some nights it seemed like so many people were singing along that the whole crowd became part of the band … like a Greek chorus amplifying everything that’s good about a place. Always there was dancing too: in front of the band, in the aisles, between the tables, sometimes on the tables, people would dance. And among it all would inevitably be one straw-haired little girl, no more than three or four years old, whirling joyously right in front of the band, weaving in and out of the grownups’ legs and somehow managing never to get trodden on. To some, the presence of so small a child on a crowded dance floor probably seemed wrong, or against the rules. But this wasn’t a play-by-the-rules kind of place. It was, of course, The Magnolia.

So far as origin stories go, the Magnolia Café has a good one. Opened in 1982 by Robin Marshall as a health food store in a town where no one had ever seen a bean sprout, The Mag became a restaurant when Robin learned that sandwiches made with fresh-baked pita bread sold better than the pita bread itself. By the late nineties, lunch at The Mag was equal parts community institution and cultural treasure. The Friday night music started as a kind of informal jam session for musically-inclined locals, a core group of whom gradually coalesced to become the Magnolia House Band. By 1999 or 2000, those back room Friday nights had attained a mythic quality—more community-wide house party than gig—that a visiting friend once described as “something you wish you could bottle, so that anytime you need cheering up, you could just open the bottle and take a sniff.” One night in 2003, a fire started by a wiring fault burned the old gas station to the ground. But home-grown spirit isn’t combustible. The Mag moved across the parking lot and much changed. But the menu, and the Friday night music, stayed the same. By the late 2000s, the Magnolia had a proper, purpose-built music stage, the house band had a name (The Delta Drifters); and on a Friday night you couldn’t find a parking spot within half a mile.

Back to the straw-haired little girl tearing up the backroom dancefloor on Friday nights in 1999: Her name is Lexi Pendley, granddaughter of Magnolia founder Robin Marshall, daughter of Skye Willis. Lexi’s accidental presence at the Mag made bringing your kids in to dance on a Friday night a cherished St. Francisville tradition that bonded families together, and taught children not just some dance moves and the words to “Proud Mary,” but also the priceless value of community.

So, in early 2020, when COVID closed The Mag and everything else, it felt like losing the use of a limb. Later that year when the restaurant reopened it was only for lunch. The hard reality of post-pandemic restaurant staffing seemed to have finished off Friday night’s Music at the Mag tradition once and for all.

So, it feels good to report that, beginning September 23, the stage lights at The Magnolia will be on again for “Magfest,” a fourth-Friday return to shared tables, high spirited sing-alongs, and the Delta Drifters onstage, timed to mark the Mag’s fortieth anniversary this year. The creative kudos go to Lexi, who grew up on the dancefloor of the old Mag, and who now has daughters of her own. On a Friday night in late July, Lexi and her husband, Trey, opened the Mag for a trial run and the place—no surprise—was packed. At one point, all four generations of Magnolia women were together on the dancefloor: Robin, Skye, Lexi, and her little girl, Ember—joyously whirling as her mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother looked on. If you want to know what community looks like, look no further. And get your tickets. On the fourth Friday of any given month, this will be the hottest table in town.