Steve Riley and The Mamou Playboys – Voyageurs

Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys are a Cajun band. But their interpretation of what that means doesn’t fit any of the usual definitions of that genre. “We’ve never really listened to what people want,” Riley says, laughing. “We might have pissed off a few people, but we won over a lot more than we pissed off.”

Since 1988, Riley and his band of travelers, or voyageurs, as they are called in his culture, have pushed the music in new directions, incorporating Zydeco and Swamp Pop alongside traditional Cajun tunes and their own originals.

That hasn’t always pleased some fans who want the music to stay straight-laced and traditional. But instead of peering into the rear view mirror, Riley’s vision has always been forward looking. “That’s what you have to do as a band,” he believes. “You have to grow, you have to keep moving ahead. We have too many ideas to keep staying in one place.”

Their latest, Voyageurs, stomps and reels through Cajun country. Its traditional, but interpreted by Riley and his band as something more, with a stiffer heartbeat, a funkier backbone. The Playboys’ music jumps out at you, seizes you by the feet and demands that you move with it. Even when he sings about leaving his hometown on “Au Revoir Grand Mamou,” it‘s still brassy and upbeat enuff to strut to, flinging your partner about in grand style as you waltz across the dance floor.

Fiddle player Kevin Wimmer had a big bow to tote replacing Playboys’ co -founder David Greely when he had to leave the band because of auditory damage from too many years of dancehall sound levels. But he‘s filled the gap admirably, trained like Riley by Cajun master fiddler Dewey Balfa. “Plus Creux,” co-written by Riley and Wemmer, shows off his traditional fiddling skills. But this one is a showcase for the whole band- guitarist Sam Broussard adds a country twang, with Brazos Huval backing the proceedings with a funky bassline that Riley soars over and chugs along with on accordion.

“Bernadette” gets beefed up considerably from Canray Fontneot’s original, rockin’ and reelin’ from Riley and Wemmer’s fiddle and accordion duels, undemined by Huval’s snaky bassline.

But for sheer dexterity, check out “Malcolm’s Reel,” with Riley’s, Broussard’s and Wemmer’s fleet fingers dancing across strings and keys at dizzying speed.

“Tite fille de la campagne” rockets by as well, Brossard playing an intricate fingerpicked counterpoint to Riley’s rocking locomotive chug making it seem an entirely different species from Dewey Balf’a’s version.

“Brasse donc, le couche-couche” (stir the couche-couche) keeps the same tempo as more traditional versions like the ’95 one by the Magnolia Sisters (Ann Savoy and Jane Vidrine)from Prends Courage, but punches it up and country-westernizes it with some very wiggly, weepy pedal steel-sounding guitar work from Broussard.

It’s a unique look at a musical culture that’s rapidly disappearing, ironically being kept alive and growing by change. Once again, Steve Riley and his band of voyageurs prove they can honor the past by bringing it forward.

Grant Britt