Steve Riley hits REWIND on the Mamou Playboys’ eponymously titled debut album—now a quarter century old.

 

“Well, we were a brand new band. We had just formed in 1988 and things were happening really quickly. We were getting a lot of attention and lots of bookings. Rounder discovered us very early on and signed us. Maybe we might have started recording this record in ’89. I remember it took forever. Two years is not forever but we were really excited and wanted the thing to come out really quickly, it being our first CD.

We were about playing and discovering old Cajun tunes that had not been done much and playing the tunes of our heroes, you know the Balfas, Marc and Ann Savoy, and others. And David Greely had just started mining the archives, finding these other old tunes that were even harder to find, you know?
The Michot Brothers did a record with Zachary [Richard] and I thought it sounded great. We were both good friends with the Michots and played with them from time to time back then and so we thought Zachary was a good choice to produce and record the CD.

We recorded it in his garage studio at his house and we were really a smooth-sounding band and what he would do with that recording is he made us sound a little rougher and a little more raw. I really didn’t care for it at the time. He felt we were a little too clean and he wanted to dirty us up a little bit. You know, we were young. I was a teenager. I had just started playing this music and I just loved the clean, smooth sound of the Balfas and Marc and Ann and I just wanted to do something different with it. But it came across great and everyone loved the record.

I remember doing this song from the Balfa Brothers called “Indian on a Stomp.” And he made us stand around at different distances from the microphone and make some Indian sounds [chuckles], kind of weird. It was fun and I’m pretty sure it’s still on there. It just makes the song more fun.

Yeah, even before I heard the Adam Hebert version [of “La Pointe Aux Pins”], I heard the Savoy-Doucet version. The lyrics I sing are the lyrics I learned from Ann. And that song we had always planned for it to be sung in two-part harmony but Zachary added a third part and we have been doing three-part harmony ever since. And that song put us on the map. When the radio stations got the record, they played that song a lot. That song just kind of caught on.

We actually recorded “Parlez-Nous à Boire” (a Balfa Brothers staple) and we got Dewey [Balfa] into the studio to record with us. He came in, recorded it but something happened with the tape or the recording of it. I can’t remember what exactly but it was Zachary’s fault [laughs]. It wasn’t my fault. It was Zachary’s fault. Somehow it just got screwed up and we ended up not using it.

I think I’m a better singer now than I was then. It is something I’ve worked on. I know the French language better. I have better control over my voice than I did back then. I remember Zachary sitting with us at the piano and we had a day or two where we just did vocals and it was the most awkward thing for me to do. I had never done that before, sit and have someone actually have me do scales before I sang. But look, I didn’t consider myself a strong singer back then. I think I am a much stronger singer now and a lot of time has passed.”