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The Pine Leaf Boys: real Cajun
Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, Fall, 2006 by Herman Fuselier
Some people worry about bird flu and if enough vaccine will be around when the epidemic hits. The Weather Channel is concerned that more killer hurricanes will strike in its always-on show of impending doom.
But the Pine Leaf Boys of Lafayette, Louisiana, have more serious concerns. The Boys want to rid the world of what they call "faux Cajun bands" ... characters whose music is more Lawrence Welk than Lawrence Walker. Their exaggerated accents and mispronunciations would make made-for-TV Cajun Justin Wilson blush. They dance around in crawfish hats, alligator shirts and white rubber boots, profess their love for "crayfish" (it's CRAW-fish) and New Orleans (not a Cajun town) and don't know Opelousas, Louisiana, from an Appaloosa horse.
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"They are just horrible," says Pine Leaf accordionist Wilson Savoy. "I don't usually use that word because I listen to music and try to figure it out ... but it's embarrassing to us that they call that 'Cajun music.' When we hear that stuff, we try to show [people] what Cajun really is."
The Pine Leaf Boys are young Cajun and Creole musicians who are as talented as they are irreverent. (They even poke fun at themselves with a band name that makes no sense: pine trees grow needles, not leaves.) But these needling Boys are seriously fluent in French, the native tongue of their ancestors, and adamant about preserving traditional music. While many south Louisiana musicians in their age group (late-teens to early-20s) drift toward the all-English zydeco--or the growing trend of rock 'n' roll with an accordion that is passed off as zydeco--the Boys stick to an all-French repertoire of originals and standards that date back to the Herbert Hoover administration and beyond.
The Pine Leaf Boys' youthful, energetic stamp on the old-time music is unmistakable, and often confuses first-time listeners.
"A lot people look at Cajun music through somewhat of an archivist perspective," says Savoy, 24. "We've always been specific to say that we don't play zydeco. We went to California and zydeco is a hot word. They asked 'what kind of music do y'all play?' When we told them Cajun, they thought it was old-man, hokey music. We don't want to hear that. Then they would hear us play and say, no, no, that's not Cajun. That's zydeco. They'd tell us what it was because there was energy to it. That wasn't associated with Cajun at the time."
The Boys have revived that old Cajun sound with a fresh twist on their debut CD, La Musique (The Music), released by Arhoolie Records. The CD includes originals like the "Pine Leaf Boy Two-Step" and "La Belle Josette (The Beautiful Josette)." They also put their own arrangements on standards like "I'm Not Lonesome Anymore," "La Branche de Murier (The Mulberry Branch)" and "Les Barres de la Prison (Prison Bars)."
Sales of their debut have gone so well that Arhoolie ran out of CDs for a short time. And this past April, the band made their first appearance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a major feat for a group that has only been together for a little more than a year. A busy summer waited, with gigs stretching from North Carolina to Chicago to California. Those appearances only add to their reputation as overnight sensations who over just a few months got kicked off a college campus, signed a record deal, and are enjoying a growing fan base in their native southwest Louisiana and beyond.
Savoy and guitarist Jon Bertrand (25), fiddler Cedric Watson (22), drummer Drew Simon (21) and bass man Blake Miller (19) can play multiple instruments and often swap chores on stage. They keep their creative juices flowing as roommates in a six-bedroom shotgun house in downtown Lafayette, only a few doors down from the Blue Moon Saloon, a guest house that hosts live bands on its back porch every weekend.
"We all live in the same house and we're always playing together," Savoy says. "We get infinite time to practice because none of us have jobs. We're all influenced by different things. I'm into piano boogie and blues. Cedric is into Creole and zydeco stuff. Put it all together and you get a lot of different ideas. Some of them work, some don't work."
"With the Blue Moon (Saloon) right next door, we get a good chance to try stuff out. Most of the songs, if they're not original, get our own spin to them. We tried to show everything we can do."
But the public wasn't always interested in what they can do. While band members were becoming quick friends and sharing their fondness for traditional French music, they decided to start holding jam sessions on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, just a few blocks from their home. The band was booted off campus for making too much noise, an incident that was reported in the local media. The irony was palpable as the university's athletic nickname is the Ragin' Cajuns.
