Sometime before dawn, a tugboat, regularly moves its freight up the darkened Vermilion River, south of Lafayette, inching through black woods and inky water. Then a lone red light is spotted in the distance. The tug's crew members mutter with anticipation as they approach the mysterious beacon. Before they pass, they flood the narrow house with white light, as if reenacting the spaceship scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

There, through the curtained window, one man plucks a guit...