Whisper it, but is real Cajun music coming back into fashion – or indeed, has it ever been away? Certainly since it first began to feature regularly in magazines such as Blues Unlimited back in the 1960s, I’ve read many times that ‘Cajun music needed to develop’, in the same way that many people reckoned that to survive, ‘blues needed to develop’. I’ve never really gone along with that argument however, if music is good, it’s good . . . full stop.

Anyway . . . The Pine Leaf Boys are five ‘boys’ in their early twenties, who live together in the same shotgun house near downtown Lafayette . . . and they play Cajun, Creole and zydeco music (i.e. Louisiana music) . . . full stop. It would be easy to imagine they’d be an equivalent of The North Mississippi Allstars, but with all due respect to that band, they’re not! These boys play really traditional, home grown Louisiana music and they rock the local dance halls and concerts. Each member speaks the ‘local’ French and has played his chosen instrument since a child. They play their music because they love it, and it shows in this issue of rocking ‘back porch music’.

Have a look at their website, at <pineleafboys.com> and you can watch quite a few bits of live footage of the band tearing it up at local venues such as the Blue Moon. Whilst the music is played with youthful energy, enthusiasm, and even attitude, it still stays true to its roots and ancestry, yet exudes freshness, originality and vibrancy . . . and that most definitely salient aspect of Cajun music, a joie de vivre, even in melancholy numbers such as ‘New Family Waltz’.

In possibly the best way for a new band or artiste to create its first album, the band play a more or less fifty-fifty mixture of self composed/ arranged material and covers of earlier recorded numbers, from the likes of Aldus Roger, Iry LeJeune, Canray Fontenot and Belton Richard, but as outlined, their ‘covers’ all have an incredible richness of their own. It’s hard to pick out outstanding numbers, they’re all excellent, but I must mention the band’s tribute to LeJeune on ‘Blues De Bosco’, a number that simply drives along in the manner of Nathan Abshire and Jay Stutes’ ‘Popcorn Blues’, and the superlative double fiddle playing on Fontenot’s plaintive ‘La Valse De Vieux Charpentier’. One of the strong points of the album is that there are no self-indulgent instrumental breaks, and only one of the numbers clocks in at over four minutes (and then by only ten seconds) – I’d love to think there could be a blues equivalent of this band come along, although it’s rare that blues artists malgamate themselves in such associated groups of course. The basic line-up of the group is Wilson Savoy (son of Marc and Ann), vocals and accordion, Cedric Wilson, vocals and fiddle, Drew Simon, vocals and drums, Jon Bertrand, guitar and Blake Miller, bass. However such is the versatility of the members that, especially in concert, they frequently alternate instrumental accompaniment.

A cracking little album then, it’s one of those that were made for such comments as: ‘if you feet don’t move to this, then you’re dead’. I don’t think B&R has ever had a non-blues or gospel issue as CD o‘the Month, but this was close. All we need now is some enterprising promoter in the UK, or perhaps Jools Holland, to be reading this review, and we could maybe catch the band live. Finally, an anecdote from the band’s website, which shows the esteem with which Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label is associated with the genre – this via a quote from Wilson Savoy, who is reported as saying that for the band’s first album: "It meant a lot to see this symbol on our CD.” This symbol being the tiny guitar shape with the word Arhoolie running across it.

Couldn’t put it better myself.

Byron Foulger

Phil Wight (B&R)
39 Dundas Crescent, Eskbank,
Dalkeith EH22 3ES, Midlothian,
Scotland, UK