The City of Gulf Shores is expanding its September Sunset Series at Gulf Shores Public Beach this year to include interactive community experiences alongside the music.
The Lineup
The Sunset Series runs from 6 to 8 p.m. each night, with three dates:
Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band on Sept. 3.
Spank the Monkey on Sept. 10.
Frank Brown Songwriters on Sept. 17.
The 6-to-8 p.m. window is deliberate. It puts the music into the hour before and after sunset on a Gulf-facing beach, which is both the most comfortable temperature of a September day and the most striking setting the venue offers.
What’s New This Year
Attendees will have the opportunity to connect with local businesses, organizations, nonprofits and community partners through activities, demonstrations, educational displays, giveaways and other interactive experiences during the concerts.
The Coastal Alabama Business Chamber is typically on site, selling beverages for all ages and featuring a food truck for patrons who wish to purchase food.
The addition of a community component turns what was a concert into something closer to a small festival — and it gives local nonprofits access to an audience already gathered rather than requiring them to draw one.
Who Chubby Carrier Is
“Ain’t no party like a Chubby party” is the theme of every set from Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band. The high-energy, swamp-funky zydeco sound is a familiar pleasure for his longtime following and a revelation for anyone who has not yet heard zydeco played at that level.
Once the accordion-playing virtuoso takes the stage with his band, audiences get a show built from a mix of blues, 1970s funk, rock and roll and traditional zydeco. The band’s release “Zydeco Junkie” won a Grammy for Best Zydeco or Cajun Album.
A Family Tradition
Carrier played his first gig on drums with his father’s band at age 8, and his first gig on accordion at 14. By 1989 he had formed his own band, which has since played shows around the world.
That path is characteristic of zydeco, a tradition carried forward largely within families in south Louisiana. Musicians typically learn on the bandstand alongside relatives rather than in formal instruction, which is part of why the music has retained its distinctive character across generations.
What Zydeco Is
For anyone encountering the genre for the first time, zydeco is Creole dance music built around the accordion and the frottoir, or rubboard, and shaped by blues and R&B as much as by French Louisiana tradition. It is fundamentally music for dancing, played at tempos that make sitting still difficult.
On a Gulf Shores beach at sunset, that is an unusually well-matched pairing.
Planning to Attend
The concerts are held at Gulf Shores Public Beach. Attendees typically bring low chairs or blankets, and beverages are available for purchase on site along with food truck service.
September evenings on the Alabama coast are considerably more comfortable than midsummer, and the shoulder season means smaller crowds and easier parking than the same event would draw in July.