Louisiana’s Lost Bayou Ramblers will be in our neck of the woods next month when they perform at WXPN’s XPoNential Music Festival on the Camden waterfront. If you can’t make it to their Friday night set on July 24th, though, you’ll have a second chance to see the Grammy Award-nominated Cajun band at Tellus 360 in Lancaster, PA the following night. Read more
For two years, Soul Creole, a Cajun and zydeco jam band, created a buzz that captured attention from gigs before movie stars in New Orleans to NPR. But commitments to other bands and family matters have forced members to put the group on “indefinite hiatus,” according to founder and fiddler Louis Michot. Read more
Dwayne Dopsie remembers that fateful day in 1999. Dospie, then 16, told his mom he was quitting school to play zydeco.
His father, zydeco legend Rockin’ Dopsie, had died six years earlier. Dwayne had a burning desire to follow in his footsteps.
“After he passed away, it seemed like everything changed,” said Dopsie, 36. “My interest for school went out the door. I told my mom that I wanted to play. She said ‘You’re going to need that schooling to fall back on.’ Read more
When I first heard Beau Jocque in 1992 at the Quarterback Lounge in a rundown neighborhood of Lafayette, Louisiana, I felt as if I had been transported to a primeval moment in which all the music I loved—funk, blues, R&B and zydeco— had coalesced into a single, relentless groove. I was also a little bit scared. Read more
Last February, Amy Nicole left Opelousas, La. on cloud nine. She was headed to Boston, Richmond and other cities on the first East Coast tour of her two-year music career. Read more
Nicole had no idea four snowstorms and record cold temperatures were waiting. Three-hour trips between gigs turned into eight-hour nightmares.
Born to a family of sharecroppers in Carencro, Louisiana in 1940, the late Fernest Arceneaux learned accordion early. He later dropped it and took up the guitar, playing rhythm & blues. Legend says that Clifton Chenier himself persuaded Arceneaux to go back to the accordion. He played mostly triple-row accordion, smaller than the piano key type. Read more
Photo of Rockin’ Dopsie, Jr. by Kelsey Stanger Marcus Ardoin and Da Zydeco Legendz and Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and The Zydeco Twisters played a rousing, high energy live concert for WXPN’s Zydeco Crossroads at World Cafe Live on Thursday, April 2nd.