A Hundred Songwriters, Eleven Countries, and Two Dry Days

Good Friday morning from The Seawall. Sorry we’re late.

There is too much happening this weekend, and this time the weather is going to let you do it.

The seventeenth Mississippi Songwriters Festival runs Friday through Sunday across fourteen rooms in Ocean Springs and Gautier — and this year, for the first time in the festival's history, it crosses into Gulfport. More than a hundred songwriters. Nashville professionals and Mississippi writers in the same small rooms. All of it free.

Down in Bay St. Louis, Driftapalooza takes over the parking lot of a motel on Highway 90 for its second year, with a Louisiana roots bill that has no business being that good for a two-year-old festival.

And off Front Beach in Ocean Springs, something most of this coast has not noticed is underway: the Hobie 16 International Championship, sailors from eleven countries, racing here through the twenty-fifth.

Add three arena and theater shows on Saturday night, and playoff baseball at Keesler Federal Park, and you have a weekend with a real scheduling problem.

Here's the good news, and it's been a while: Friday and Saturday are both dry. Sunny, ninety and change, nothing in the forecast either day. Sunday carries a thirty percent chance after lunch — a hedge, not a washout.

Full guide below — plus a nine-bedroom house in Diamondhead that costs about nine times what the average house in Diamondhead costs, and a young Lab at the Gautier shelter named Ghost Crab.

Friday: Sunny. High near 90. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming southeast in the afternoon. Clear overnight, low around 74.

Saturday: Sunny. High near 92 — the hottest of the three. North wind 5 to 10 becoming south in the afternoon. Partly cloudy overnight, low around 76.

Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 PM, sunny in between. High near 90. North wind 5 to 10 becoming southeast. Low around 76.

Bottom line: two clean days and a third you can work around. Friday and Saturday are both dry — no rain in the forecast at all — which this newsletter has not been able to say about a weekend in over a month. Everything outdoors happens on those two days without a contingency, and the only thing to manage is the heat: Saturday is ninety-two, and the Gulfport Arts Festival, the Long Beach sidewalk sale and the farmers markets are all standing outside in it. Sunday is the one to plan around — a 30 percent chance of storms after one, which is a hedge rather than a washout. The Sunday matinee in Bay St. Louis and the Grand Finale indoors at the Mary C. are the smart calls if it turns.

On the water: the Small Craft Advisory that ran Wednesday into Thursday has expired, and nothing has replaced it. No rip current or beach hazards statement is posted either. As of this morning there is no marine or beach advisory anywhere on the Mississippi coast.

In the tropics: nothing in the Gulf, which is quiet end to end. The Hurricane Center is watching a single trough several hundred miles east of Bermuda — 10% over two days, 30% over seven, and moving away from us. (NHC, 8 AM EDT Sept 16.)

17th Annual Mississippi Songwriters Festival · Fri Sept 18 – Sun Sept 20 · Ocean Springs, Gautier and Gulfport · FREE

This is the biggest thing on the Coast this weekend and the easiest to do wrong, because it isn't one show — it's a hundred-plus songwriters playing short acoustic sets in fourteen small rooms across three cities, all at once. The trick is to pick a room and stay in it. Table-hopping a festival like this means hearing a lot of half-songs.

Friday night - Depot District at Dusk, Downtown Gulfport — 5:00 to 7:30 PM. Cary Laine, Jarod McGill, Honeyboy & Boots, Sam Newman. This is the new one: seventeen years in, the festival has never had a Gulfport stage before. It's folded into the Depot District's regular third-Friday street party, which runs 4:30 until dusk and is free. - Ocean Springs, 6 to 10 PM — Keg & Barrel · Julep Room · Murky Waters · Sunset Lounge · Neon Moon · McKinney's Irish Pub · Jobu's · OS1515. - Gautier, 6:30 to 8:30 PM — Cornerstone Restaurant · Aztecas. - Mary C. O'Keefe, 1600 Government St, Ocean Springs — Education Showcase 6:30–8:15, Songwriter Sessions 8:30–10. - Named Friday sets: Cary Hudson, Mary C., 6:30 · Blue Mother Tupelo, Neon Moon, 8:00.

Saturday - Workshops at the Mary C., 10 AM to noon — songwriting and performing, open to anybody. - Youth showcase, 1 PM. - Venues, 1 to 10 PM — OS1515 · Pine Island · Jobu's · Murky Waters · Keg & Barrel · Hickory Hill · Sunset Lounge · McKinney's · Cornerstone · Aztecas · Neon Moon · Julep Room. - Mary C., 6:30 to 9:30 PM — "The Art of the Song," with Hall of Fame members. If you only do one thing all weekend, do this one.

Sunday — and with storms in Sunday's forecast, both of these are indoors - Gospel Showcase, First United Methodist Church of Gautier, 2717 US-90 — 10 AM to noon. - Grand Finale, Mary C. — 2 to 7 PM, six sets.

Featured writers this year include Jeff Bates, Jim McCormick, Dee White, Grayson Capps, Clay Mills, Tommy Barnes, Don Poythress, Ty Taylor & The Kinfolk, Brandon Green and Blue Mother Tupelo.

⚠️ One honest warning, and we checked again yesterday: the festival's own online schedule page is still broken. It is serving placeholder rows reading "TEST EVENT 2," "TEST EVENT UPDATED" and "test delete," and its header contradicts itself on the dates. The venue list on that site is current and correct; the schedule page is not, so don't plan off it. WLOX published a real schedule on Sept 14 — use that, or just walk into a room and ask. Every room is free.

Venues are in three different cities. Treat Gulfport, Ocean Springs and Gautier as three separate nights out, not one crawl.

🎪 Depot District at Dusk · Downtown Gulfport · Fri Sept 18, 4:30 PM until dusk · free Third-Friday street market — vendors, restaurant and bar specials, bring a lawn chair. This month it doubles as the Songwriters Festival's first-ever Gulfport stage.

🎨 2nd Annual Gulfport Arts Festival · Gulfport Arts Center, 1300 24th Ave · Sat Sept 19, 9 AM–5 PM · free, donations welcome Pottery, painting, stained glass, jewelry, woodworking, plus musicians and participating downtown businesses.

🛍 Citywide Fall Sidewalk Sale · Downtown and uptown Long Beach · Sat Sept 19, 9 AM–4 PM · free Long Beach almost never gets a line in this section. It gets one this week.

🦖 Jurassic Quest · Mississippi Coast Coliseum, 2350 Beach Blvd, Biloxi · Fri 1–8 · Sat 8 AM–6 PM · Sun 9 AM–5 PM · ticketed The only big all-three-days family thing on the board. Under 2 free; prices show at checkout.

👻 Terror on the Coast — opening weekend · 3420 Giles Rd, Gulfport · Fri & Sat, gates 6 PM, show 7, close 11 · $25 GA / $35 Fast FEAR Season opener. Not Sunday.

⚾ Shuckers playoff baseball, and the bracket is doing something funny. Keesler Federal Park, 105 Caillavet St, Biloxi.

Biloxi won Game 1 in Pensacola on Monday, 6–3, and leads the Southern League Division Series 1–0. It's a best-of-three. Game 2 is at Keesler tonight at 6:35 — win it and the series is over.

Which produces the strangest scheduling note we've ever printed: whether there's baseball here Friday depends on the Shuckers losing tonight. If they win, the Division Series ends and Friday is dark — but they'd host Southern League Championship Series Game 1 on Sunday the 20th at 6:35. If they lose tonight, Game 3 is here Friday the 18th at 6:35. Either way there is playoff baseball on this coast this weekend; which night depends on a game that finishes a few hours after you read this.

Tickets from about \$23, biloxishuckers.com or (228) 233-3465.

⭐ Driftapalooza — 2nd Annual · The Driftwood Motel, 810 US-90, Bay St. Louis · Fri Sept 18 & Sat Sept 19 · ticketed, Eventbrite A music and arts festival in a motel lot on Highway 90, presented by the Driftwood and Good Earth Records, with a portion of the gate going to the Bay Ratz Marching Battery. The bill is the story: Sweet Crude and the Soul Brass Band headlining, plus Louis Michot — a founder of the Lost Bayou Ramblers — with Swamp Magic, Nonc Nu & Da Wild Matous, Crow The Culprit, Werewolf County, Hollyrock and Jon Marc Burge. ⚠️ We tried seven sources and nobody publishes a gate time or a ticket price for 2026. The Eventbrite page's own metadata is broken and auto-generates a wrong start time, so ignore what it says at the top. The set times we can stand behind, both Saturday: Louis Michot 2 PM, Sweet Crude 4:30 PM. Buy through Eventbrite and call the Driftwood if you need the gate.

🎭 "On Golden Pond" · Bay St. Louis Little Theatre, 398 Blaize Ave · Fri 8 PM · Sat 8 PM · Sun 2 PM matinee · $14.38–$28.29 incl. fees · (228) 467-9024 Closing weekend of Ernest Thompson's play. A Sunday matinee is exactly the right answer to a Sunday with storms in it.

🥕 Hancock County Farmers Market · 3068 Longfellow Rd, Bay St. Louis · Sat 8 AM–noon, or until vendors sell out

🏚 Ground Zero Hurricane Museum · 335 Coleman Ave, Waveland · Fri & Sat, 9:30 AM–2:30 PM · always free · (228) 467-9012 Closed Sunday.

⛵ 2026 Hobie 16 International Championship · Ocean Springs Yacht Club, 100 Front Beach Dr · through Sept 25 Sailors from at least eleven countries — Greece, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Denmark, Canada and the United States — are in Ocean Springs racing Hobie 16 catamarans. Previous editions of this championship sailed in Spain, China, Australia, Fiji, Tahiti, the UAE and St. Croix. This year it's Front Beach Drive.

What's actually happening each day: Friday is the Horn Island Raid, described by the class association as a fourteen-mile trek out to the island with a picnic before the boats race back. Saturday is a shore day — weigh-in, measurement and registration 9 to 4, then a welcome party with a jambalaya cookoff. Sunday is the first day of buoy racing, with the first warning signal at 11:30 AM.

🎶 Mississippi Songwriters Festival — see the section above. Ocean Springs and Gautier, all three days, free.

🥬 Ocean Springs Fresh Market · 1000 Washington Ave · Sat 9 AM–1 PM, rain or shine, every Saturday

🪧 The Story of Pascagoula: A Historical Pathway · Lighthouse Park, under the High-Rise Bridge, Pascagoula · open now, free, any day Unveiled last Thursday. Nine interpretive signs covering roughly three hundred years — Native settlement, the fishing village, the industrial city, and yes, the 1973 Pascagoula abduction report. Eighty thousand dollars, split between the city and a Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area grant. It's free, it's outdoors, it takes twenty minutes, and it's new.

🏈 Ocean Springs High homecoming vs. Picayune · Hugh Pepper Field at Greyhound Stadium, 2730 Bienville Blvd · Fri Sept 18, 7 PM Homecoming week, and the forecast for Friday night is clear and seventy-four.

⭐ The Cold Stares · Ground Zero Blues Club, 814 Howard Ave, Biloxi · Sat Sept 19, 7 PM A heavy blues-rock trio, a real touring act, in a small blues room. Best room on the Coast Saturday night. (Cover not published — call (228) 910-6600.)

King George, with Lyfe Jennings and West Love · Mississippi Coast Coliseum, 2350 Beach Blvd, Biloxi · Sat Sept 19, 7 PM · from $35 Southern soul and R&B, and it has been on sale since August 7. Likely the fullest room on the Coast that night. ⚠️ Confirm the supporting bill with the box office, (228) 594-3700, before you go for a specific name.

Melissa Etheridge — RISE · Beau Rivage Theatre, 875 Beach Blvd, Biloxi · Sat Sept 19, 8 PM · 21+ · from $97 We had two different start times on this last week and chased it down: it's eight o'clock, and it's twenty-one and up. The only show at Beau Rivage Theatre in all of September.

An Evening With Jeff Foxworthy · Hard Rock Live, 777 Beach Blvd, Biloxi · Fri Sept 18, 8 PM · tickets via AXS (No face value published anywhere we could reach. We're not printing a number we can't source.)

Thursday, tonight: Lennon Gainey Project, 6 PM. · Friday: River Eckert Band, 7 PM, doors 5. · Saturday: brunch with Jon Marc Burge, 11–2, then The Cold Stares, 7 PM. · Sunday: Rock The Bald — Conquer Kid's Cancer, a benefit with Them Guys and Love The Hate, noon.

No live-band karaoke this Thursday and no Fuego Latin Night Friday — both are real Ground Zero regulars, neither is on the calendar this week. Sunday brunch music gives way to the benefit.

Silver Slipper, Bay St. Louis — Runaway Train Friday, Joni Compretta and the Baytown Groove Saturday, both 7–11 in the Stage Bar · and Cody Seal, Sunday 1–3 at the Beach Bar, the only afternoon music on the board. Boomtown, Biloxi — STARZ, Friday and Saturday, 7–11 on the Main Stage. Island View, Gulfport — Anderson Domingues, Friday and Saturday, 7–10 at the Sunset Bar. (Property notes all entertainment is subject to change.)Beach View, Gulfport — Old School, Friday and Saturday, 8–11. Hard Rock, Biloxi — DJ Boom Friday 9 at Center Bar · Joel Cooper Rock Show Saturday 9 · DJ Doc Roc Saturday 10 in Live #Remix · karaoke with MC Angie in Roadhouse 777, Saturday 9 to 1, no cover. Nothing Sunday. Palace, Biloxi — DJ Hurricane, Friday and Saturday, 8–11.

Scarlet Pearl and Golden Nugget publish no entertainment calendar at all — same as last week, and the week before. Treasure Bay's own page currently reads "Entertainment will return."

Friday — Chris Hergenroder at Moe's Original BBQ, Ocean Springs, 6 PM (single source, unconfirmed). Saturday — Breland Grocery Block Party, 2200 31st Ave, Gulfport, 3–7 PM, with the Michael Vincent Band. Sunday — Page 9 at Hot Spot Bistro & Lounge, 1948 E Pass Rd, Gulfport, 7 PM.

Follow-up on last week's note: we said we'd keep asking. Shaggy's events calendar in Pass Christian is returning a site error this week and Nine Toes still has no events page. The Shed on Highway 57 has music every Friday and Saturday as a matter of policy but has published nothing for this weekend, and Government Street Grocery books entirely on Facebook. We are not going to invent lineups for rooms that don't post them. If you run one of these rooms: send us your dates and we will print them, free, every week. [email protected], by Tuesday noon.

IP Studio A (Jeffrey Osborne, Sept 25). The Sound in Gautier (Jamey Johnson, Oct 2). The Biloxi Saenger (Zach Rushing, Oct 23–24). 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis (Nosferatu, Oct 3). Beau Rivage Theatre after Saturday. Treasure Bay, indefinitely.

Driftapalooza, Saturday afternoon, the Driftwood Motel lot, Bay St. Louis.

King George will sell the most seats and Etheridge is the biggest name on a marquee, but neither is the show you can only see here. Driftapalooza is a two-year-old festival run by a motel and a record store, in a parking lot on Highway 90, with a cut of the gate going to a Bay St. Louis kids' drumline — and they got Louis Michot and Sweet Crude on the same afternoon. That is a genuine booking coup, and it's Cajun and Creole roots music played one state line east of where it comes from. And the forecast just handed it a gift: Saturday is sunny and ninety-two with nothing in it. An outdoor festival with no rain to plan around is not what this September has been handing out. Michot is on at two, Sweet Crude at four-thirty. Bring water and a hat instead of a poncho. ⚠️ Gate time and ticket price still aren't published anywhere — check Eventbrite before you go, and don't trust the start time its page auto-generates; it's wrong.

One man is building two waterfront rooms on the Bay of St. Louis, and putting a boat between them.

Thomas Genin — who trained under Emeril Lagasse and opened the original Blind Tiger in Bay St. Louis in 2013 — has Tiger Beach coming up at 103 W. Bayview Ave in Henderson Point, Pass Christian: two restaurants, cabanas, a boathouse, fuel docks, boat and jet ski rentals, and a water taxi across the bay to the Blind Tiger. And he's building The Sand Bar on Coleman Avenue in Waveland — two stories, open-air bar downstairs, full oyster bar and patio upstairs, live music, and parking for thirty golf carts. It's billed as the first new commercial construction on Coleman Avenue in more than twenty years, and it's expected by October. ⚠️ On Tiger Beach, here's the honest state of it: the beach, dock and cabanas have been open since spring. The restaurants are the question — as of Sept 5 the downstairs was still doing invite-only test runs with a public debut aimed at Cruisin' the Coast, and on Sept 11 WXXV put the developer on camera saying it's open. Nobody publishes hours anywhere. Don't drive out there for dinner this weekend without calling first. (WXXV, Sept 11 and Sept 5.)

Freddie Mac PMMS, week ending Sept 10: 30-year fixed 6.76% · 15-year fixed 6.09%

Third straight week up: 6.66, then 6.71, now 6.76. A year ago the thirty-year was 6.35%. So the rate is forty-one basis points higher than it was last September, after a year of headlines telling you cuts were coming.

If you've been waiting for the rate, the waiting has now cost you a year and gotten you a worse number. What it has bought you is the other side of the trade: more inventory, and sellers who have run out of patience. Look at this week's House of the Week — listed in late July, still sitting. Look at last week's, which cut forty-nine thousand dollars in June and is still there. That's not a market in trouble. That's a market where, for the first time in four years, the buyer gets to talk.

🏠 If you're thinking about selling. The number in your head for your house is probably from 2022. Let me build you a home value report on your actual address — not an automated guess off a website, but a real comparative market analysis out of the MLS: what's active near you, what's pending, and what has actually closed in the last five months, which is the only window that tells you anything. Free, no obligation.

🔑 If you're thinking about buying. I can represent you on any home on this coast, including this week's House of the Week, which is not my listing. And before we go looking, we run your numbers — I'm a Ramsey-trained financial coach and I've led Financial Peace University classes at my church in Ocean Springs, so I'd rather tell you honestly what you can carry than help you buy a payment that eats you alive for thirty years.

Either way you're talking to me, not a call center. Reply to this email or call or text 228-325-1502.

— Rob

Robert Recio · Licensed Real Estate Salesperson, MS #S-62221 · REAL Broker, LLC · Serving Hancock, Harrison & Jackson counties. House of the Week is a market feature, not our own listing unless noted. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Because "the market" isn't one thing, and days on market is the most honest number in real estate — as long as you know where to look for it.

Start with the trap. The "days on market" figure you see on a listing site resets when a seller withdraws and relists. A house can show six days on market and have been for sale, on and off, for a year and a half. So never read that number by itself. Read the listing history underneath it — the dates, the price changes, the withdrawals. That's the part nobody edits, and it tells you the real story in about fifteen seconds.

Now the answer to your actual question. When a house sits while comparable houses around it move, it is almost never the market and almost never the house. It is nearly always the price — and specifically, it's usually a price that was set against what the seller needed rather than against what recently closed nearby. A house that's overpriced on day one doesn't get more attractive on day ninety; it just accumulates a listing history that makes buyers wonder what's wrong with it. That's the quiet cost of testing a number: you don't just fail to sell, you damage the thing you're selling.

What that means for you as the person down the street: a listing with real age on it and a couple of price cuts in its history is often the best conversation on the block, because the seller has had six months to get realistic and the buyer pool has already walked past. And what it means if you're the one about to list — price it off what actually closed in the last five months, not off what your neighbor is asking. The asking price of the house down the street is a wish. The closing price is a fact.

County: Hancock ✅ (rotation: Sept 3 Jackson → Sept 10 Harrison → Hancock is up)

1332 Poki Place, Diamondhead

The median house in Diamondhead sold for about $249,000 this year, and that number is down roughly four percent from a year ago. This one is $2,200,000.

So set aside whether you'd buy it and look at what it is, because it's a genuinely strange building. Nine bedrooms. Seven baths. 5,685 square feet arranged as two separate living wings joined in the middle by a formal dining room — which is not how anybody builds a house for one family, and the listing doesn't pretend otherwise. It's aimed at large families and corporate retreats. There's a guest wing with four suites, each with a balcony. There's an elevator. Twenty-foot ceilings, a chef's kitchen with a commercial-grade gas cooktop and double ovens, a game room, multiple garages, and a screened resort-style pool with an outdoor kitchen behind it. Out back there's a private dock and bulkhead with bayou access to the bay.

It went on the market on July 22 and it's still here, which is the part that interests us more than the square footage. Diamondhead is a golf community with its own airpark, an unusual town by any measure, and it does not have a deep bench of two-million-dollar buyers. A house like this doesn't sell to the Coast. It sells to somebody from somewhere else who comes looking for exactly this and can't find it anywhere cheaper on the water. That can take a while, and the seller clearly knows it — showings require proof of funds or a pre-approval before you get through the door.

Now the part the listing doesn't tell you, and it's the reason this section exists.

No listing on this house names a flood zone. So we pulled it ourselves, straight from FEMA's National Flood Hazard Layer: 1332 Poki Place sits in Zone VE, with a base flood elevation of 22 feet. VE is the coastal high-hazard zone — the one that assumes not just water but wave action. It is the most expensive designation there is to insure.

That is not a knock on the house. Half the good addresses on this coast are in a V or an A zone and people buy them anyway, with their eyes open. But on a two-million-dollar purchase the flood number is not a footnote, it's a second mortgage payment, and a buyer who finds that out at the closing table found out too late. Anyone serious about this one gets an elevation certificate before they get attached. (FEMA NFHL, FIRM panel 28045C0332D, effective 2009. That's the mapped zone for the parcel, not a surveyed determination — the certificate is what settles it.)

The numbers: $2,200,000 · 9 bed / 7 bath · 5,685 sq ft · built 2008 · listed July 22, 2026 · MLS 4156734 · FEMA Zone VE, BFE 22 ftListed by Ronnie Stelly, co-listed with April Wilcox · Allied Realty Coastal Homes

Ghost Crab

A ghost crab is the pale, sideways, startlingly fast thing that lives in the dry sand above the tide line and scatters when your flashlight finds it. Every person reading this has seen a hundred of them. Somebody at the Jackson County shelter named a young Labrador retriever after one, and we would like to meet that person.

He is ten months old, a Labrador retriever mix, medium-sized, already neutered and vaccinated, and the shelter says he is good with kids and good with other dogs. Their write-up, which is better than most: "a 10 month old sweetheart who is impossible not to adore. This affectionate, gentle boy has a heart of gold and a deep desire to be close to his people."

And he did not come in alone. He came in with his sister.

Her name is Frito, she is also a young Lab, and she is also still sitting in that shelter. They can go home together or separately — the shelter will do either. We are not going to tell you that you have to take two dogs. We are going to tell you that they arrived together, they have both been there the whole time, and somebody reading this has room.

Jackson County Animal Shelter · 4400 Audubon Lane, Gautier · (228) 497-6350 Mon–Fri 10 AM–4 PM · Sat 10 AM–2 PM · closed Sunday. Adoption is $50, which covers a veterinary exam certificate, initial vaccinations, preventative worming, and spay/neuter. (After hours: 228-769-3063.)

And now the seventh ask on Leo.

Leo is the Black Mouth Cur who has been at this shelter since before this newsletter started running him in June. We have featured him or called him back six times. He is still there.

Here is a fact we did not have before this week: Leo is the only senior dog in the building. The rest of the roster is young dogs and adults. Whoever takes him home will not be competing with anybody, and he will not be waiting through another round of puppies getting picked first. An old dog in a kennel is a specific kind of sad and it does not get less specific with repetition.

Virginia and Floral are both still listed too.

Caption: "He doesn't know any songs. He knows there's a green room."

The scene: our two pelicans on an Ocean Springs sidewalk at dusk, outside a bar with a chalkboard sign reading SONGWRITERS TONIGHT — FREE. The tall one has a real lanyard and a blank badge and the expression of a bird who has seen this before. The short round one has a homemade ARTIST laminate hanging from a piece of fishing line, a ukulele he is holding wrong, and the red cooler at his feet.

Forward this to somebody who'd use it. New readers can subscribe at theseawallms.com. Venue owners, shelter folks, and anybody with something happening: [email protected], by Tuesday noon.

And if you know somebody thinking about moving here — a kid coming home, a coworker transferring in to Keesler or the shipyard — forward them the Ocean Springs video instead. Seven minutes on what the town is actually like, tradeoffs included.

A hundred songwriters in fourteen rooms for free, catamarans from eleven countries at the end of Front Beach Drive, a Cajun band in a motel parking lot, playoff baseball, and two straight days with nothing falling out of the sky. You are not going to get to all of it. Pick two.

Pick something. Take someone with you.

— The Seawall