Lafayette/Baton Rouge visit ground me a bit in the non-NOLA sounds of Gumbo YaYa

To mix it up on Gumbo YaYa, I often played music from acts from Baton Rouge and Lafayette. But until this week, I had barely passed through those towns. A musical evening in Lafayette and a quick blues festival stop in Baton Rouge began the process of remedying that experience gap.

Kim and I have been driving about a bit since the last show and we’ve caught music in Bend, Oregon (The Pinehearts), some stray live tunes in Moab, Utah and Santa Fe, and a hoedown at the Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin. But we hit the main music vein when we got to Lafayette.

We caught a few bands downtown and at the Blue Moon Saloon but the big strike was the “Medicine Show” a showcase of student and faculty performances from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Traditional Music Program. The program was celebrating 25 years of providing guidance to young musicians in the history and practice of Cajun music, zydeco, bluegrass, blues and other root styles.

Accomplished students with famous last names such as “Benoit,” “Sonnier” and “Guidry” offered up songs such as “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” “Give Him Cornbread,” and “Zydeco Stomp.” In all, five distinct student groups took the stage led by some of the all-star cast of this amazing music program.

The faculty includes, among others, Nathan Williams Jr. of Lil Nathan and the Zydeco Big Timers, Chas Justus of the Revelers, Chad Huval with Beausoleil, Blake Miller of the Red Stick Ramblers and Pine Leaf Boys, Gina Forsyth solo fiddler/songwriter and Lee Allen Zeno who played with Buckwheat Zydeco. All of the faculty performed, including coming together for an “Instructor All-Stars” performance. That was followed by another long set by an ad hoc group that included Zachary Richard, Sonny Landreth, Henry Hample, Ward Lormand, Gary Newman and Danny Kimball.

The next day, Kim and I drove into Baton Rouge, hooked up with Bill Boelens who co-hosts Dirty Rice on KRVS in Lafayette and Back Down the Bayou on WPVM in Baton Rouge. We got on downtown for the blues festival and caught Roddie Romero and Michael Juan Nunez as they were performing Romero’s “The Creole Nightingale Sings” from his excellent Gulfstream release from 2016 (Show featuring my interview with him.) This fan boy moment of meeting these two musicians after their set (and getting Nunez new record) was made even greater when Bill introduced me to Larry Garner who was sitting in the audience preparing to catch the next act. This Louisiana Blues Hall of Famer has three of his records on the KAOS blues shelf and I’ve drawn from them regularly over the years.

Wrote more than I really wanted to do, just needed an excuse to show off these pictures.

Me, Roddie Romero and Bill Boelens