“I live in hunting paradise and everybody around me hunts,” explains Slidell resident Viola Estain. “I wanted to do a modeling agency and I came up with the idea of the Raging Sexy Cajuns. I started thinking about what kind of book I wanted to do—I put together hunting, fishing and girls. There’s three ingredients to a man’s heart. That’s women, hunting, food. If you put those three together, you have a winner.”
Three of the Raging Sexy Cajun models—Amanda, Cassey and Rodi—pose with Supagroup on the cover of this month’s rockin’ issue, photographed by Romney in a hotel room generously provided by the Frenchmen Hotel (and while we’re issuing thanks for favors granted, Rio Hackford of El Matador Lounge supplied the liquor, and the bouquet of Peruvian alstromerias was donated by John Harkins, a.k.a. Harkins the Florist).
Now that Viola has published Sexy Cajun Adventures (her second volume of recipes and huntresses), she and partner Donna Nevels have even bigger plans: “My next step is to go into TV—a cooking and hunting show based on my books. The Raging Sexy Cajuns are going to go out and hunt boars, wrestle alligators, plunge for frogs and then they’re going to cook it up.
“It’s not easy to find these girls. When I started up the agency, I went through about a hundred girls. I got three who could actually hunt and were pretty.
“Sex sells. It doesn’t have to be obscene. Girls can be sexy in shorts. You can go into Wal-Mart and see a thousand calendars with bikinis on the beach. That gets boring. Guys are really getting bored with that. You put a girl in the swamp, with the gun, with the dog or some kind of animal—it’s a different look. Girls in bikinis are tiresome.”
When it comes to hunting and fishing, Viola is no dilettante: “When I was 17, I was married and he crabbed. His name was Jody Estain, Sr. He was a coonass, a commercial fisherman, and he taught me the ways of the lake. Then he passed away. I had my three boys. They had their own guns at nine-years-old. They were into all the hunting and fishing so that’s all I had to do: cook. That’s all that was in our refrigerator and freezer: deer and boar and stuff. That’s what I could afford. I had three kids and I was by myself so I had to live off of venison and fish.”
From her camp deep in the Honey Island swamp, Viola often treks after wild boar: “Some people use dogs but I prefer not to because boars have tusks located on both sides of their mouths. The largest boar I was involved in killing was a 502-pound razorback. He was the largest recorded one in Louisiana and the fifth largest in the world. His tusk was 23 inches long. It started from the right side of his mouth, goes back to the back of his head, over and came back out the other side. He killed my dog. So I will never use another dog again in boar hunting. They usually use pit bulls.
“The boar was old and you had to shoot him at an angle because their skin is so tough it’s like a shield. We killed him with a .44 Magnum. I’ve seen grown men chased up in trees for hours because they’re afraid of a boar. Boars are dangerous and I don’t feel guilty killing them either.”
Alligators are a different story—as long as you don’t accidentally ram them: “I was on a shoot one time and I had two models in the boat with me. We didn’t have a light and I lost track of time. In order to get out of the river, you have to go through a slough which is really narrow and really shallow. This time of the year, the water was really low so you had to hydroplane through the slough to get to a point where the river was deep. We could only see by moonlight. I gave the boat the gas to hydroplane and we just stopped in the dark. A gator went under the boat, the boat almost flipped over and the gator came up on the other side. The two models were screaming, my motor was still going and I had mud coming up in the air 50 feet. The model was saying, ‘What the fuck was that?!’ That was pretty funny.
“Gators won’t attack you. The only time they’ll attack you is if you get around a female with eggs in her nest. Then they’ll get aggressive. On land, gators feel unprotected so you don’t want to go toward ’em. They’re not going to come grab you if you’re not bothering them.
“My new boyfriend is Johnny Pelas. He is known as the Crocman. If there was a contest to get gators, he is the man you would want. If I had to be stranded in the swamp with one person, it would definitely be Johnny. He’s taught me a lot. He has no fear. I’ve seen him jump out of a boat into a bed of gators. He’s better than Crocodile Dundee.”
NO REPRISE FOR DR. JOHN
In the midst of his recent sessions at Piety Street Recording, Dr. John summoned me to the studio in order that I get the facts straight and/or watch him marinate a perfectly good tuna filet with a quart of Tabasco. Noting that producer Stewart Levine also produced his Goin’ Back to New Orleans album, I inquired if this might be a reprise of same.
The Nite Tripper was adamant: “No, fuck no, I don’t reprise shit. You can’t go back in life—fuck ‘goin’ back.’ I’m steppin’ rite now, whatever the hell. Whatever ‘back’ is, is like dat money’s spent. Whatever’s forward, you ain’t made dat yet. But rite now—that’s all ya fuckin’ got and ya better roll wit’ dat.”
Among those contributing to the project (tentatively titled New Orleans: Dis, Dat and Da Utha—hey, does that sound familiar?) were drummers Earl Palmer, Smokey Johnson and Herman Ernest; arranger Wardell Quezergue; pianists Willie Tee and Eddie Bo; guitarists Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Snooks Eaglin, John Fohl and Steve Masakowski; trumpeters Nicholas Payton, Charlie Miller, Dave Bartholomew, Leroy Jones and Bernard Floyd; a choir led by Davell Crawford; and since plenty of guitarists were already in the house, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown played his viola. The tunes include Bartholomew’s “The Monkey Speaks His Mind” and the best version of “The Saints” you’ve ever heard.
