On the surface, The Promised Land: A Swamp Pop Journey is the tale of Lil’ Band O’ Gold trying to make a splash in a world of fads and mud puddle-shallow products. It contrasts this struggle to making music with the joys of standing in front of a Saturday night crowd. The film collects snapshots [...]
In Lafayette’s slumping indie rock scene, young band Brass Bed is a decent size fish getting bigger and bigger in a pond that grows smaller and smaller with each lackluster crowd. In the past 10 months, Brass Bed performed at two of the state’s biggest festivals, first Voodoo Music Experience, then a main stage spot [...]
Probably because of the way the story ends, Drew Landry doesn’t often brag about how Kris Kristofferson called him the best songwriter he’s heard in 30 years. Landry impressed the legend by playing him his “Last Man Standin” backstage at a Kristofferson concert. Afterwards, Kristofferson called him out, repeating his praise to the crowd. The [...]
On one page of One Generation at a Time: Biography of a Cajun and Creole Music Festival, a pre-fame Steve Riley stares up from the foot of the Festivals Acadiens stage. Two chapters later in the history of Festivals Acadiens by Barry Jean Ancelet and Philip Gould, a two-page photo captures an accordion showdown between [...]
Out on the road some 200 days a year, the Red Stick Ramblers—based out of Baton Rouge and Lafayette—noticed a component missing from the horde of Louisiana’s music festivals: camping. “What we discovered is that in the campgrounds is where the music gets played and the tunes get swapped,” says drummer Glenn Fields. After their [...]
The debut album by Lafayette’s Arbor Vitae is a surprising record that defies expectations. It stands out in a world of fast-paced, plastic and overloaded rock by taking its time, slowly drizzling layer upon layer. Once it starts a convincing approach to ambient rock, it builds to a subtle, tense pitch then levels off to [...]
The studio efforts of The Lost Bayou Ramblers are simply phenomenal—raucous tunes that both stay true to Cajun simplicity and employ complicated interplay between fiddle and accordion, plus a swing-era style rhythm section. Recorded over a two-night stand at the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette, their new live CD release, Live: à la Blue Moon, [...]
When the Figs perform, the female group takes the stage in vintage-themed dresses in the style of the 1920s through the early 1960s—each a page from a catalog from days gone by. For the look, they scour thrift stores and three members sew their own dresses. “The fashion aspect of the band is something that [...]
When Tina Pilione turned a collection of old tapes into Maurice Barzas with the Original Mamou Playboys: Live at Snook’s, Volume I and II, she confessed its production values were not stellar. Some of the tapes Pilione made on her Sony Walkman during the 1980s, others came from recordings by drummer Vorance Barzas in the [...]
Anyone who knows about cooking realizes that nothing can be done in a hurry. By that measure, Roddie Romero and the Hub City All-Stars must know their way around the kitchen. Their new double CD, The La Louisianne Sessions, took a decade to complete, including some eight years of conceptualizing the record over burgers at [...]
