Search - Coteau :: Highly Seasoned Cajun Music

In the mid-'70s, at the same time Michael Doucet was developing the all-acoustic Beausoleil into the finest Cajun band of its generation, the fiddler was also playing with an electrified Cajun-rock band called Coteau. The latter group was actually the more popular act, drawing big crowds of hippies and old-timers all along the Gulf Coast. Much of the repertoire was traditional French Louisiana material, but it was played with a rumbling rock beat and twin lead guitars that recalled the Allman Brothers more than the Balfa Brothers. Between 1974 and 1977, Coteau became the toast of Acadiana, played a few East Coast festivals, released a few singles and came frustratingly close to landing a major record deal. When the deal fell through, the group drifted apart. Doucet concentrated on Beausoleil; drummer Kenny Blevins went on to play with Sonny Landreth and John Hiatt; many of the others joined Zachary Richard's band. In 1997, 20 years after the group broke up, Coteau recorded and released its first ever album, Highly Seasoned Cajun Music. Beausoleil alumnus Tommy Comeaux replaced suicide victim Dana Breaux on guitar, but the other five original members are all on hand to recreate the songs they played every weekend in the dance halls between New Orleans and Lake Charles. If the results are a bit more mellow than the original rocking arrangements and a bit more dominated by the now famous Doucet, the playing is also more supple and accomplished. Blevins is a remarkably inventive drummer, and he manages to combine the traditional two-step beat with a true rock & roll propulsion, thus creating room for the twin guitars of Comeaux and Bruce MacDonald to find common ground with Doucet's fiddle and Bessyl Duhon's accordion. --Geoffrey Himes