Drummer Warren Storm’s CV includes gigs with Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, and Lightnin' Slim in the '50s, session work with Freddy Fender and John Fogerty and a string of local hits under his own name, singer/pianist and songwriter David Egan has had songs recorded by Percy Sledge, Joe Cocker, and Irma Thomas and bassist Dave Ranson has regular gigs with John Hiatt and Sonny Landreth. There’s also a three-piece horn section, comprising Dickie Landry (Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass), David Greely (Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys) and Pat Breaux (Beausoliel) and pedal-steel guitarist Richard Comeaux to round out the nine-piece outfit.
From the opening of Spoonbread to the end of So Long you’re not going to hear anything new, and anyone with anything beyond a nodding acquaintance with the music that has emerged from southwest Louisiana over the years will find much that contains familiar echoes.
You might be inclined to go further than describing what’s on offer here as familiar echoes, but we’re talking a revival of a tradition and a desire to revisit the honky tonk environment in from which that tradition emerged, so what might be described as plagiarism in another environment works here as something cut from the same cloth, the way the great Delta blues players borrowed from each other and drew on similar strands of shared experience and influences in common.
You’re not going to hear anything startlingly original, but if you’re after something that goes well with beer, good company and seafood on the barbeque this cross-pollination of Cajun folk, pedal steel powered country and R&B might be right up your alley.