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He's out there again this year, rocking America with his spicy blend of rock, folk, r&b and Cajun styles. There is no one quite like Wayne Toups, as any attendee of his 125 sold-out shows a year can attest. This year, Toups is out there with a difference an album that bottles the outrageous energy of his performances with the Cajun tunes of his boyhood.
"I thought it would be good to touch my roots again," says the musician who is equally revered by Nashville stars who hire him to play on their records and critics who raved about seven prior albums. "This album is my roots, but I wanted to give the people something extra. It's not an all-French record. I wanted to reach back, yes, but I call this creating tradition within the tradition. So we took these old songs and made them 'Wayne Toups' songs. I'm trying to reflect our live show, so it's a party record." Toups calls his band Zydecajun, which is an attempt to describe his distinctive fusion. He draws on French-language traditional material of his Cajun ancestors, but adds the unmistakable r&b textures of Zydeco music. Add to that his undeniable charisma as a rocker and you begin to understand why he's been dubbed "The Cajun Springsteen" or "Le Boss." Little Wooden Box is an album that captures all of that. The English-language3 tunes range from the bluesy, late-night lament "Some of Your Love Tonight" to the Allman-tinged southern rocker "Southern Girls." The stately, swampy "Oh Louisiana" has echoes of the classic work by The Band and the bi-lingual "Bosco Blues" is colored by Wayne's deep reverence for the voice of Otis Redding. The title tune is nothing less than his life story in song. You don't need to speak French to get caught up in the excitement of the rest of his extraordinary album. The joyous energy and backbeat rhythms of "Lacassine Special," "Tous les Temps en Temps," "Jeunes Filles de la Compagne,' "La Chanson de Limonade" and Petite ou las Grosse" sound like the Saturday night before Mardi Gras. "Les Filles de la Ville" is pleading and plaintive. And La Valse des Musiciens" is a barroom waltz bar none. For those of you whose high school French is a little rusty, Wane Toups provides these plot synopses: "'Tous les Temps en Temps' is Every Now and Then,' as in I want to see my baby every now and then. "La Chanson de Limonade' is about going out on Saturday night, getting drunk and waking the next day having to drink a glass of lemonade for the hangover. 'Le Filles de la Ville,' well, that's just about New Orleans ladies. "In 'La Valse des Musiciens,' she has left him because he's a musician. In the second verse he tells her, 'You knew I was a musician when you met me.' And maybe one day she'll find a way to forgive him for the thing he's done. ';Les Jeunes Filles de las Campagne' is basically talking about a young girl from the country that you have to court before you can marry her. "'Couillion' means 'Fool'. The song was a John Wesley Ryles country hit. I did a translated version of it in 1979. 'Petite ou la Grosse' means 'the little one or the big one.' You don't want to know. OK, it's about a whorehouse, so we don't want to wirte too much about that one! Wayne Toups pours a lifetime of talent a energy into the 13 performances on Little Wooden Box. Born to a French-speaking rice farmer in Crowley, LA. Toups was steeped in bayou music from boyhood. He learned to play Cajun accordion at age 13 and was soon on stage in local talent contests playing the tunes of Iry LaJeune and other heroes of his culture. As he matured as a musician, Toups began incorporating the soul music of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge and Wilson Pickett into his sound. By the 1980's he'd picked up influences from rock bands such as The Doobie Brothers. Lynard Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers. He decided he wanted to make music for "the younger generation," as he puts it, by stirring all of this into his musical stew. He debuted his fusion style on a 1987 album called ZydeCajun. And he's been criss-crossing musical genres ever since. Signed to Mercury Records, Toups became the first Cajun act to crack the Top Pop Albums chart when Blast From the Bayou appeared in 1989. He was tapped to sing the theme song for TV's Broken Badges series and his "Two Step Mamou" appeared on the soundtrack of the hit movie Steel Magnolias. Mercury issued Fish Out of Water in 1990. This time, Toups toured Southeast Asia. A year later he conquered Europe with a series of S.R.O. concerts. Next, country stars began calling to request his sound on their records. Mark Chestnutt hired Toups and his accordion to back him on his No. 1 hits "Gonna Get a Life" and "It Sure is Monday." That's Toups on Clay Walker's chart-topper "Live Laugh Love." That's also Toups on the giant Alan Jackson hit "Little Bitty." Sammy Kershaw featured Toups in both his video and his recording of "Christmas Times A-Coming." George Jones, Mark Wills and others have requested the Toups touch on Music Row. So has British pop star Thomas Dolby, who hired Toups for his albums Astronauts & Heretics (1992) and Retrospective (1995). "The most recent time I was up in Nashville it was to work with Garth Brooks and Ty England," Toups reports. "Garth was producing him, and I think he's the one who requested me. We had our pictures taken together. He even drove us back to our hotel room afterwards. Maybe it was because I'm a musician and he was infatuated by the sound of the accordion and the way that I played it, but he was really a sweetheart to me and my wife." His own recording career has continued as well. His Back to The Bayou album of 1995 yielded a substantial regional hit, "Take My Hand" and other Toups tunes appeared on the soundtrack of the film Dirty Rice. "This year it's more of the same," says the acclaimed stylist, "all the festivals we normally do, with sold-out shows everywhere we go. We'll be out there doing 100 or 125 shows and I'd like to get it even higher than that. I love to work. It's exciting. I'm still loving every minute of it." |
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