This is a non-review since my Nippertown colleague Don Wilcock got the assignment and I shot photos, on Thursday, April 18, 2024

So, this is mainly to share these images, though I also have some word-thoughts, including a stab at a set-list, below. 

This was a listening crowd, in a church-y space, and everybody sat to listen except a boy and girl, aged four or six, who jumped up when the music started and never stopped moving.

At first, fiddler/singer/leader Michael Doucet entertained with playful introductions in which the northeast weather, the state of Texas and a Montana fan who hailed their “Confederate music” took equal hits. Then, he increasingly stressed, though still playful, how his Cajun music honors a vulnerable minority population of immigrants. Near the end, he traced the painful history of his people as suffering marginalization and displacement, with its music-reinforced and family-based culture supplying a proud, enduring resilience.

The music etched a somewhat different dynamic arc, sounding sweet, sedate and folkloric to start and finish, but generating a ferocious head of steam mid-set with in “L’Amour ou la folie,” then “Poison Love” and “Le Chanky-Chank Francais” holding the pedal to the metal.

Stage right to left, the band was Matthew Doucet – Michael’s son, a fiddle-maker – playing some fiddle but mostly triangle. And if this sounds rudimentary, the guy is to the triangle what Steve Amedee (the subdudes) is to tambourine: Matthew made a short, emphatic metallic clank when he set the base of the triangle on his knee and struck it, but a more open, ringing tone, and higher pitch, when he raised it to strike in mid-air.

Michael Doucet proved his usual triple-threat self as fiddler, singer and talker.

Tradition shaped his rhythms and supplied venerable melodies he taffy-pulled with elastic, jazzy gusto; his tenor voice had the same clarity. His song intros and digressions would work as standup even if he set the fiddle aside; but he honored his predecessors among Cajun and zydeco pioneers, both famous and obscure.

Bill Bennett’s acoustic bass guitar competed the rhythm section, playing tastefully few notes, always in the right place, where dancers’ feet would hit. 

The band’s bridge between beats and lead vocals and solos up front and strengthening everything, Chad Huval flexed Popeye-like forearms to squeeze a joyfully relentless, powerful chug from his diatonic (button-style) accordion, fingers flying around the melody.

Flat-pick guitarist David Doucet – Michael’s brother – also served up equal parts beat push and melodic merriment, and sang both leads and harmonies with relaxed command.

Together, they played as tight as the highest string on Michael Doucet’s fiddle.

The songs all felt like dance numbers though some rocked and some swung. Some of these titles represent best guesses…

Eunice Two-Step

Jolie Blon – introduced as the Louisiana national anthem

Acadian Two-Step (Dewey Balfa)

L’Amour ou la folie

Poison Love

Le Chanky-Chank Francais

Tous Les Deux Pour la Meme

Freeman Zydeco (tribute to Freeman Fontenot)

Quelle belle vie – Here a front-row older woman yelled, “That’s my FAVORITE!” in joyful, show-stopping falsetto. Doucet graciously sang it to her 

Theogene Creole (by the almost unknown Barisse Chunav)

Starvation Waltz

Little Darlin’ (an audience request)

Zydeco Gris-Gris (an early Bo Diddley beat settled into two-step rhythm)

Fishing Song

Untitled waltz

Parlez-Nou A Boire (Encore)