Want to have friends in high places? Invest in a La Roue Qui Pend (The Hanging Wheel) CD by Les Frères Michot. It could pay more dividends that a sack full of Exxon stocks.
You’ll win brownie points with the band’s fiddler, Rick Michot, district judge for Lafayette, Vermilion and Acadia parishes. (Even if you don’t live in his district, you can’t have too many friends who are federal judges.)
Your CD purchase will impress contrabasse player, Mike Michot, state senator for Lafayette Parish. (Got a few potholes on your street? He’ll have his senate buddies just build you a new one.)
You’ll also please accordionist Tommy (a research biologist and pilot with the U.S. Department of the Interior), triangle player Louie (beverage industry) and guitarist Andre (Michot Family Properties, LLC). These Michots have fans in the White House, Buckingham Palace and the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge.
So, buying “La Roue Qui Pend,” and letting the Michots know how proud you are to own the CD, could pay off big time.
Of course, you can also buy the CD because it’s good, old-fashioned Cajun music. The Michots stubbornly stick to the acoustic, unamplified “bal de maison” (house dance) style of yesteryear, when family and neighbors danced their troubles away in living rooms across southwest Louisiana.
“We like the acoustic sound and we’ve always gravitated towards that,” said Tommy Michot. “When we were in high school and college, the folk-acoustic music was the big thing, with Peter, Paul and Mary and some of the other bands.
“We like that string sound, the reed instruments, the iron on the triangle, all that blending together. It’s a unique sound because all the other instruments have to pull together to carry the rhythm, as opposed to relying on a drum. To us, the drum is a little harsh. We like to let the voice of the other instruments come out.”
Those voices shine on La Roue Qui Pend, (named after the family’s camp in south Lafayette Parish), which was recently released on Swallow Records of Ville Platte. The disc contains 23 songs, along with a 16-page booklet of lyrics in French and English. Introductions explain the band’s connection to each song.
The Michots resurrect Leo Soileau’s “Unhappy Life” and Blind Uncle Gaspard’s “Baieonne” from the 1920s and ’30s. The band touches on spiritual themes in “I’m Going to See Her One Day” and a medley of “The Time is Coming to an End” and “Flames of Hell.”
But in “Lost Marsh Waltz” and the “Bayou Vermilion One-Step,” two originals by Tommy Michot, the focus is on the region’s changing environment. A translated verse of “Vermilion” states: “I answered to André and Louie, ‘I swam there when I was small, But now swimming there is not allowed, Because the Vermilion Bayou is polluted.’”
Tommy Michot calls the lyrics “a look at modern issues in the old way. The songs follow a certain theme of the environment and getting back to earth. A lot is about the natural landscape and the close relationships Cajuns have with the land with hunting, fishing, trapping, wetlands. Wetland loss and pollution in the Vermilion River is brought into it. We emphasize the rural part of Lafayette Parish. These things that haven’t been written about a lot.”
La Roue Qui Pend is only the band’s second recording since their debut album, Elevés à Pilette, in 1987. The album was produced by Zachary Richard and recorded at his home studio in Scott.
Because of their busy careers, the Michots needed eight years (1994-2002) to produce the follow-up. Yet Tommy Michot is pleased with the final result. “A lot of the older songs are from our parents or grandparents generation. But I think the new songs show what it means for our generation to be a Cajun.”
(Contact Herman Fuselier at [email protected].)
