On October 30, Hunter Hayes, the best-known of Acadiana’s growing brood of child-Cajun musicians, made what will no doubt turn out to be one of the most talked-about appearances of his young career. There he stood on the Cajundome stage, resplendent in a white cowboy hat and in front of a world-class nine-member band, while the SRO crowd chanted "Hun-ter! Hunter!" Yet despite such the encouragement and the additional urgings of his mother, the diminutive singer-accordionist stood on the Cajundome stage and refused to sing.

Why? He hadn’t thought to bring his accordion. Who brings an accordion to a Shania Twain show?

In Lafayette as elsewhere, Twain occasionally stopped her show to acknowledge local talent (members of the USL percussion ensemble backed her on one song, the Comeaux High show choir backed her on another, and a singer that Twain had heard just the night before at Randol’s restaurant sang a solo), and when someone in the front row slipped her Hunter Hayes’s business card, Twain, who began as a child performer herself, invited Hayes to the stage.

In the process of interviewing him, Twain discovered the extent of his professional experience and local renown. She tried to get him to sing, but he refused because he didn’t have an accordion and the one positioned behind him for use by Twain’s band looked twice as big and heavy as he did.

"He only sings Cajun and country songs," his mother explained. "I only sing Cajun songs!" Hayes corrected her. The principled young star continued to resist Twain’s coaxing, eventually silencing her — and bringing down the house — with "I just wanted to try get tickets for your show because I hear your songs all the time, and I just think you’re great."

It wasn’t all sweetness and light, however, at the Cajundome that night. Filing out after the show, several cowboy-hatted young white males couldn’t help demonstrating why David Duke does so well in Louisiana elections.

"I guarantee ya every one of ‘em’s queer as a three-dollar bill," said one, referring to the eight men in Twain’s band. "And it’s all because of Mutt Lange" (Twain’s producer-husband, the inference being that Lange wouldn’t trust a bunch of heterosexuals around his wife).

"That Chinese bastard’s in her video," said another, referring to the Twain-band member Ronnie Chong, a Chicago native.

"Ronnie," sneered the first guy.

"That sumbitch’s name ain’t ‘Ronnie.’"

"Nope."

Now, really, is this any way for a bunch of self-respecting coon-asses to talk?

Friends and fans of the late Dr. Tommy Comeaux will be glad to know that plans to establish the Dr. Tommy Comeaux Fund for Traditional Music at the University of Southwestern Louisiana School of Music continue apace.

December begins with the release of Medicine Show, Volume One, a CD collection of recordings culled in part from last year’s December 26 Tommy Comeaux memorial concert (a.k.a. "Medicine Show") at Lafayette’s Grant Street Dancehall. December ends with "Medicine Show II." Like last year, the show will take place on December 26 at Grant Street and will feature performances by bands such as BeauSoleil, Coteau, and Native Sons, bands to which Comeaux belonged when he wasn’t executing his duties as one of the state’s top pathologists.

Also like last year, advance tickets will be on sale in Lafayette at Raccoon Records and by mail from the Acadiana Arts Council (318-233-7060) for $15. According to Todd Mouton, the event’s organizer, 700 tickets will be made available, and the proceeds will go either to USL or into an interest-bearing account overseen by the Arts Council, the purpose of which is to fund future fundraising projects associated with the establishment of the Comeaux chair at USL. "To get an endowed chair, you’ve got to get $600,000," says Mouton. "Then the state comes in and matches it with $400,000, and you have a million-dollar principal."

As of this writing, the Comeaux Fund Campaign Committee has raised $70,000. Mouton hopes that sales of the tickets for Medicine Show II and of the Medicine Show CD will put the fund "over the top."

Once established, the Chair will be awarded on a three-year basis, meaning that whoever holds the position will live, work, and perform in the Lafayette area. Mouton sees the success of the project not only as a fitting memorial to Comeaux but as an "incredible thing" for USL and Acadiana in general. "Basically, we hope to bring in well-known musicians, filmmakers, and scholars to come and do documentary work, to put on clinics, and to put on concerts."

Those wary of spending money on multi-artist charity discs will be glad to know that, unlike George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh and U.S.A. for Africa’s We Are the World, the Medicine Show CD (which will also be available by mail order through the Acadiana Arts Council) features a dozen recordings worthy of Comeaux’s musical legacy.

Not all of the cuts were taken from last year’s Grant Street show. The version of "Chez Seychelles" that opens the disc, for example, was recorded at New Iberia’s Windmill Recording by Gary Newman, Billy Ware, and Michael Doucet, who plays one of Comeaux’s mandolins on the track.

The last two songs — "Carry Me to My Grave" and Comeaux’s solo, acoustic version of Mel Torme’s "The Christmas Song" — were taken from Comeaux’s home tapes.

The live-from-Grant-Street takes include performances by Sonny Landreth ("I’ve Had My Fun [Going Down Slow]," Key to the Highway"), the Clickin’ Chickens (Comeaux’s "Colonel’s Reel"), Native Sons ("Quiet Man"), BeauSoleil ("L’Amour Ou La Folie"), and Coteau ("Arc de Triomphe Two-Step," "La Chanson de Mardi Gras"). Although the disc represents Mouton’s first production effort, he has developed high sonic standards in his many years as a music critic. "I know that Chubby Carrier did a live record at Grant Street, and I know that Tab Benoit had a couple of cuts [from there], and, man, I know that Medicine Show’s the best-sounding disc to ever come out of Grant Street."

Another Acadiana music legend who’ll have new music out soon is Rod Bernard. Best known for his late-’50’s hits "This Should Go On Forever" (#20 in 1959) and "Colinda," Bernard hasn’t recorded an album since the 1970’s. And hasn’t expected to.

"I haven’t really recorded anything new in twenty-five or thirty years," says Bernard, who has worked as advertising salesman at KLFY-TV in Lafayette since 1970. "The last album I did was one with Clifton Chenier called Boogie in Black and White. Then Floyd put one out The Essential Collection."

Floyd is Floyd Soileau, the Ville Platte-based, Louisiana-music impresario who is probably responsible for recording, marketing, and distributing more southwest-Louisiana music than any other individual. The Essential Collection is Bernard’s 22-track best-of that came out in late-’97 on Soileau’s Jin Records. It was Bernard’s first domestic compilation, and it created fresh interest in Bernard as a recording artist. "Some of the DJs around here mentioned to me, ‘It’s a shame we don’t have any new swamp-pop songs.’ So I wrote some."

Bernard, incidentally, doesn’t like the term "swamp pop," but, because it’s shorter than his other term for the kind of music he makes — "that south-Louisiana sound" — and because his music-historian son Shane has built a career on writing about the music, he uses it. "I’ve been working on some songs for about 10 years, just as a hobby. I’d write two or three verses and put them in a briefcase in the trunk of my car. And I’d be driving along, and I’d think of something else, and I’d write two or three verses of another one. So when Jimmy called, I started digging all these things out and refreshing my memory."

Jimmy is Jimmy Rogers, the Forney, Texas-based head of CSP Productions, the label that has also released Van Broussard’s recent recordings. "I realized," Bernard continues, "that I had maybe 15 original songs written or halfway written. I got serious and started finishing them in the past three or four months."

Bernard expects the as-yet-untitled album to hit the stores by the first of the year. Aside from his 15 originals, he intends to include covers of Chuck Berry’s "Maybellene" and Bill Haley’s "See You Later, Alligator."

To this end, Bernard and his hand-picked cast of first-rate swamp-pop musicians have been meeting on Monday nights at Lafayette’s La Louisianne studios to lay down tracks. In addition to Glenn Himel (piano), Todd Stelly (guitar), Oran Guidry (bass), and Gene Romero and Percy Bernard (saxes), Bernard has corralled his fellow swamp-pop legend Warren Storm to play drums. "He and I are like brothers," says Bernard. "I just think he’s the greatest around."

The Bernard-Storm connection goes back to the 1960’s, when the two were members of a group called the Shondells. "We played six nights a week," Bernard recalls. "Every Sunday in Lawtell, every Tuesday in Jennings, every Wednesday in Morgan City, every Thursday in Lake Charles, every Friday in Alexandria, and every Saturday in Opelousas."

Bernard hopes his new album does well — not so well, however, that he’d have to take up touring again. "When I was in my twenties, it was fun," Bernard laughs. "But now that I’m 58, I couldn’t keep up a pace like that."