Submitted by Lopez Center
The Revelers, a six-person, Grammy-nominated Cajun band will perform at Lopez Center on Sunday, Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m. Their music combines swamp pop, Cajun, country, blues and zydeco into a powerful tonic of roots music that could only come from southwest Louisiana.
As individual musicians, they are each in high demand having performed and recorded with T-Bone Burnett, Natalie Merchant, Linda Ronstadt, Preston Frank, Walter Mouton, Mamadou Diabate, the Duhks, Cedric Watson, and Tim O’Brien, to name a few.
As a group, they play with a sense of empathy and depth that can only be fostered after years of making music together. They all appeared on the 2011 season finale of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and were handpicked by David Simon (producer/creator, The Wire) to be featured musicians for the third and fourth seasons of HBO’s “Tremé.”
Long-time fans of the Red Stick Ramblers may find themselves very familiar with The Revelers: the powerful singing and songwriting of Chas Justus and Eric Frey, a mix of traditional Cajun and zydeco music, some of the swing that was such a strong focus of early Red Sticks, the magical rhythm section chemistry of Glenn Fields and Eric Frey, and impressive musical virtuosity across the board.
Take what you know about the Red Sticks, add into the mix the crooning vocals of Glenn Fields, and the singing/songwriting of Blake Miller (founding member of the Pine Leaf Boys and unarguably the most prolific French songwriter coming out of Louisiana right now) the tightly arranged section of sax-fiddle-accordion, and you’ll start to get The Revelers’ picture.
With The Revelers the lines between traditional and original, Cajun, country, zydeco, swamp pop, and the blues, are blurred, and wide-ranging styles are honed into an extremely cohesive performance.The genre of swamp pop may bear some explanation. Little-known outside of Louisiana. It’s a music that’s nearly confined to the archives of the 50s and 60s, save for a handful of bands today. In short, swamp pop is Southwest Louisiana’s answer to the R&B and rock ‘n roll that came out of New Orleans, Memphis and Detroit in the 50s. When that unstoppable sound reached Cajun and zydeco musicians, they caught the bug and played their own versions the only way they knew how — sometimes in French, and traded in their fiddles and accordions for horns and electric guitars. It’s a perfect example of how everything that comes from Acadiana is dripping with its own unique culture.
Equally at home on a festival main stage, a late night dance party, or a performing arts hall, the Revelers have taken their mission coast to coast in the U.S. and around the world from Ireland to Denmark, to their own Black Pot Festival in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Tickets are $18 for adults and $10 for youth and are available at Paper Scissors on the Rock, Lopez Bookshop, Blossom, the South End General Store and www.lopezcenter.org. Risers will be set up for the performance.
The performance is made possible in part by the Western States Arts Federation and National Endowment for the Arts.
