Email this article | Printer friendly page BackTalk with Terrance SimienBy Alex Rawls |
In February, OffBeat covered the controversy surrounding the first Grammy to be awarded for Best Cajun or Zydeco Album. The nominees were Louisiana artists Terrance Simien, the Pine Leaf Boys, the Lost Bayou Ramblers, Geno Delafose, Roddie Romero and the Hub-City All-Stars, and Racines. And Lisa Haley, the Californian fiddle player who had everybody worried. The Grammy voter math seemed to be on her side—there are more Grammy voters in some neighborhoods of Los Angeles than there are in all of Louisiana—but Simien, who spearheaded the effort to have the award instituted along with his wife Cynthia—won for Live! Worldwide.
The last time I saw you was at the after-party after the Grammys, and you looked so happy.
Oh man! I’ll tell you, that day couldn’t have went any better than it did for me. I was really nervous about opening up the show at the actual pre-tel [the ceremony before the Grammy broadcast where the majority of the awards are given, which Simien opened] in front of that crowd.
Why were you nervous?
I can’t explain it. It was a big gig, of course, and everything leading up to it, and that was coming out as nervous energy. Knowing who was in the crowd. A crowd of industry people and musicians. No matter how good you think you are your looking out at people like Robert Randolph and great musicians and playing for them you’re like, “Oh shit!”
I’ve seen so many people I admire and am a fan of out there listening to my stuff.
It kind of made my stomach tickle a little bit (laughs) but it was fun, it turned out good. When you get on stage you hope for the best but you never know when you’re going to suck. The crowd was a good crowd. Once that was over with, I was at ease. I was cool. Winning the award was an unbelievable feeling. I must have stayed awake for a week afterwards with a smile on my face, and if I was asleep, I was sleeping with a smile.
I was talking with Jon Bertrand from the Pine Leaf Boys the day before, and he said if all’s right in the heavens, Terrence will win this.
Aw. That was a sweet thing to say. What I wanted more than anything was to see someone from Louisiana win the first one. I have nothing against anyone who’s not from Louisiana that wants to play the music, but seeing as how this was the first year for the new category, I wanted someone from Louisiana to win it. I’d have been just as happy for them.
Reid Wick (an area representative for NARAS, which puts on the Grammys) was working in the media center, and after you won, he came into the press room and said, “Thank God. My life just got so much easier”.
Everyone was worried [someone from Louisiana wouldn’t win]. The people and musicians, those were the people I was worried about disappointing. I was worried about the people who make the music. I was worried about the young musicians. This is a big step for everybody. You get a nomination, you can carry that to the grave. “Grammy Award nominee”—you have that one little line in your press, that’s going to make people consider you for these types of gigs, and that’s the purpose.
We’ve got more musicians in Cajun and zydeco music than we ever did in the history of the music, and they keep coming. Almost every year you’ve got about three or four new bands of young guys starting up, but there’s a very limited amount of places to play. The only chance of making a living plying this music is to go out on the road. Sad, but it’s the truth. And this will be an incredible promotional tool for any band, whether you’re an upstart band or have been playing as long as I have.
Lisa Haley—I’ve got nothing against her, but the disappointment people felt when she was nominated… You think about Keith Frank and Chris Ardoin didn’t get nominated. Curley Taylor. That’s three people on the zydeco side, and there’s plenty more on the Cajun side, and she comes across with a nomination. It’s kind of hard to swallow. If she would have won, it would have been, whoaaa.
After working with the Memphis chapter of NARAS for years, you have to know how hard it is to get Louisiana musicians to join an organization. Hell, it’s hard getting anyone from Louisiana to join anything.
It’s hard to make a living playing music in any style of music. And then playing a roots genre like Cajun/ zydeco is even harder. I’ve been doing it since ’85. That’s 23 years. The only way I could have done it like that was to hit the road. About 63,000 miles a year driving, and I don’t know how many flights.
The kids and adults making this kind of music are just as good as anybody making music in any style of music. I’ve heard some people play the accordion who could play in a symphony. They could play with any jazz cat out there. Most of the music is just natural talent. A lot of them don’t even know how great they are, and the world needs to see that. This is one way that’s going to draw some attention.
Have you seen good zydeco or Cajun bands that weren’t from Louisiana?
I’ve seen some good musicians playing the music. People who were good musicians, but for me, the feel was not there. You talk to anybody else who was from Louisiana that would see a zydeco or Cajun band they’d, say it would sound good, but something is missing. The way it comes out it sounds different than [it would from] somebody who grew up in the culture, who drank the water here, eat the food. It’s a different feel. They can play the notes, but they don’t have the feel. The singing doesn’t have the moan. It’s a bloodline thing. If you’re not Cajun or Creole, you can’t feel what we’ve been through. What we’ve lived. Music comes from your heart more than any other part of your body.
I wonder also if it’s a semi rural thing. After all, Cajun and zydeco are musics that come from the small towns and country as much if not more than it does the city. I wonder if city people who lack exposure to the way of life around the music can truly play it.
When I played the World’s Fair in ’84, a lot of people in New Orleans didn’t even know what zydeco was. And that was ’84!
If you were in the city, you played a horn and you played jazz. If you grew up in the country, you played whatever you could get your hands on. There were some accordions out where we grew up, and we got our hands on that and made our music with that. The Creoles of the country played zydeco, the Creoles of the city played jazz.
So much current American music is based in cities.
You have to live it to feel it. To me, if someone’s going to hear zydeco music for the first time I would much rather them hear a Creole than someone who is not because sometimes we got to do damage control on the road. We’d come into town and hear this zydeco band from somewhere and it didn’t sound nothing like this. There are a lot of people that don’t know that much about the culture, and generalize and group it all together.
In zydeco music alone, you got so many bands doing so many different styles within that music. It’s still alive and people are still playing it for the people of today. I have a lot of friends of mine concerned about some of the young musicians adding the hip-hop element to it.
Would you be as excited if Chris Ardoin won a Grammy for his hip-hop zydeco?
Definitely I would be excited. I believe that music can’t be put in a box or controlled. Chris Ardoin is bringing people to the music that wouldn’t normally come to the music. A lot of them are going to listen to what he’s doing and like the hip-hop, but he does the traditional stuff and they’re going to like that even more. He’s exposing them to hip-hop and tradition.
Kids are smart. It takes a lot to please them these days. I got a 17-year-old daughter and I just observe her and her friends and musically what they do. They are listening to everything! They are not like I was growing up. They’ll be like, “That’s cool!” They are going to learn about themselves and their history. And it’s a history not being taught in the schools. It’s a history that has never really been properly explained to the kids locally.
If somebody like that gets popular, it doesn’t mean people are going to want to hear it just that way. That’s what people are afraid of. They’re going to want to know, “How did he get to that sound?” To quote Dr. John, “If it ain’t changing, it’s dying.” And amen to that. Those dudes are connecting to people, just like Clifton Chenier did when he added rock ’n’ roll and blues. If he hadn’t done that, the music would have died in the ’50s. If they don’t do that, it wouldn’t be around for our grandkids and their grandkids.
Change is inevitable in music. We’re not jukeboxes, we’re artists. You do the world an injustice when you don’t follow your heart and your feelings and create your art and make your own statement with your own music. I applaud those guys. People shouldn’t fear that; they should embrace it.
I think the next generation of Cajun and zydeco artists is one of the healthiest scenes happening, with people such as Chris Ardoin, the Pine Leaf Boys and the Lost Bayou Ramblers staying true to their roots, but making music for a new generation.
Thanks to the young guys playing today, we’ve got more choices than ever before. That ensures the music will be here for a long, long time. You’ve got people who choose to play a more traditional style. Chris Ardoin, hell, he’s an Ardoin. He comes from the root. He can play it all. Jeffrey Broussard is another one. He can play it all—traditional and go meet the kids where they are at. But some people are scared of that.
After personally working for so long to get the Cajun/zydeco category established, did it feel weird winning it?
I thought maybe I shouldn’t enter a record, but my drummer said, “Man, are you crazy? You had been doing this music for 27 years. Why not you?”
I don’t deserve it anymore than anybody else, but at the same time I am just as deserving as anybody else. I don’t know how else to put it. I’m going to continue to try to do things that help myself and the music as a whole, like our pioneers did. Just like Rockin’ Sidney or Clifton Chenier did. Like all the rest of the great musicians who made a difference. I want to do my part.
Next year there’s going to be a new winner. This year was my time, and I’m happy to have it. I’d have been just as happy if someone else would have won it, and that’s the God’s honest truth. Anybody who can say we shouldn’t have won it… I can’t tell you what they can do. There’s no way you can print it! (laughs)
Published May 2008, OffBeat Louisiana Music & Culture Magazine, Volume 21, No. 5.
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