I thought I had given up on zydeco. I first heard it in the late 1980s in the person of Clifton Chenier, the King of Zydeco. Also at about that time, I was fortunate to see in concert some superb zydeco acts: Queen Ida, Zachary Richard, and C.J. Chenier. It’s just great party music and dance music, full of soul, rhythm and funky rock. The problem is, most zydeco music that I have reviewed since then has been in more of a rut than a groove. Most of the young bands are making zydeco-inflected funk, repetitive, even monotonous to my ears.
Now along comes Stanley Dural, Jr., and his longtime, award-winning band Buckwheat Zydeco, breathing new-old life into the music with Lay Your Burden Down. It’s everything that’s good and right about zydeco music.
A mix of covers and originals, this album is Buckwheat Zydeco’s first since Hurricane Katrina, and it’s a tribute to the spirit of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast. It starts with a huge drum intro from Kevin Menard (now there’s a Cajun name for you), then with Sonny Landreth wailing on his bluesy slide guitar and Dural on the mightly Hammond B-3 (which he first played in Chenier’s band back in the ’70s), they absolutely rip up the Memphis Minnie classic “When The Levee Breaks.” After that, Dural picks up his accordion for a tour of all the various styles that make up zydeco. The bluesy R&B of “Don’t Leave Me” (with a great solo from Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews), the Mardi Gras party song “Throw Me Something, Mister,” swampy blues from Don Van Vliet’s “Too Much Time” (from his Captain Beefheart Clear Spot album), and swampy gospel in Warren Haynes’s title track, which features Haynes on guitar. Reggae pops up in “Let Your Yeah Be Yeah” and in a cover of Springsteen’s “Back In Your Arms.” Producer Steve Berlin (Los Lobos) plays some soulful bari sax on several numbers, and has a particularly hot solo in “Time Goes By.” And there’s just plain funky zydeco in songs like JJ Grey’s “The Wrong Side” (which has some more smoking Landreth guitar), “Ninth Place” and the swamp pop instrumental “Finding My Way Back Home” which closes the album.
Here’s that swampy, bluesy title song, “Lay Your Burden Down”:
This is music you need to dance to, but it also makes you feel. Come Lay Your Burden Down at the feet of the master, and he’ll cleanse your soul.
(Alligator, 2009)
