Steve Riley talks about Burke Guillory the way many young men talk about LeBron James, Tom Brady or Eminem. Words like “cool,” “powerful” and “influence” slide off Riley’s tongue. But Guillory isn’t a famous athlete, actor or rapper. He was Riley’s grandfather, who taught him how to speak French, cherish music and enjoy life.

“I was closer to him than I was to my parents,” said Riley, 36. “He and my grandmother took care of me a lot when I was young. He died when I was seven years old and it took me a long time to get over it. I lost interest in a lot of things.

“When I was 13 years old, I was going through some of his things. I had kept a lot of his things, his old records, jewelry and things like that. It was like a shrine I had to him. I came across this record he had, the Balfa Brothers with Marc Savoy, The Balfa Brothers Play More Traditional Cajun Music. It hit me big time. I knew I wanted to play that type of music. I bought an accordion when I was 13 and I haven’t looked back ever since.”

Twenty-three years, nine CDs and two Grammy nominations later, Riley and his Mamou Playboys are playing songs from their 10th disc, Dominos, released on Rounder Records. The new 15-song CD contains more of the Playboys’ popular mix of originals and Cajun French classics revived with their own twists. The band adds new life to D.L. Menard’s “Bachelor’s Life,” Canray Fontenot’s “Coulee Rodair,” and “Wait Till I Finish Crying,” written by Nolan Dugas, father of drummer Kevin Dugas.

The group tips its hat to the first family of Creole music with the “Ardoin Medley,” a rocking mix of two-steps first recorded by Bois Sec Ardoin and Canray Fontenot. The Playboys show their a cappella skills with a stirring rendition of “Keys to the Prison,” one of the heralded Library of Congress recordings taped in 1934 by folklorist Allan Lomax as has traveled through Louisiana looking for real folk music.

Originals include fiddler David Greely’s “Dominos,” a two-step on the domino effect of music and culture on past and present generations. Guitarist Sam Broussard elaborates on that cultural connection with “River of Time,” a bilingual piece about the wisdom and joy born in the simple themes of Cajun songs.

A hidden track is found at the end of that song. It’s a short recording of a 5-year-old Steve Riley singing “J’ai Passe Devant Ta Porte.” His grandfather’s voice, which sounds eerily similar to Riley’s adult voice, follows with an introduction and asks Steve, in French, how old he is. Riley replies, “J’ai cinq ans.”

The recording comes from a field interview folklorist Barry Ancelet of the University of Louisiana did in 1975 with Guillory and others in Mamou. Riley said it’s one of the many treasured memories of his grandfather.

“Barry was going through some of his old interviews and found it,” said Riley. “He was listening to it and said, ‘Oh my God, that’s Steve Riley.’ He had given me a copy but I couldn’t find it. Kristi Guillory works in the archives (at UL) and had the whole interview, so we decided to put a little of it on the CD,” Riley says. He is glad to be the “domino” in line for his grandfather’s influence. “It was so cool to have a grandfather who would speak French to you, just kind of hang out and goof off. He was my biggest influence musically. He wasn’t a musician, but he loved music. He was very involved in the Cajun Music Festival in Mamou and he was one of the guys responsible from bringing back the old traditional Mardi Gras in Mamou.

“He was a very powerful presence in my life and he still is. I think he’s still with me. I can still feel his presence.”

OTHER NEWS

In other news, folklorist Nick Spitzer, host of the nationally syndicated “American Routes” radio program, has moved his operations back to New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina, Spitzer evacuated to Lafayette and broadcasted from KRVS-FM, a National Public Radio affiliate on the University of Louisiana campus. He and his staff also relocated their office and production facilities to the third floor of the Dupre Library at UL.

In Lafayette, Routes aired a series of “After the Storm” shows with stories and music about bad weather, recovery and thanksgiving. The series included an “Allons a Lafayette” program with the songs of Belton Richard, Sonny Landreth, Nathan Williams, Jr. and other local artists. Spitzer said he received overwhelming support in Lafayette, but feels his show has a responsibility to “fly the flag of New Orleans.” Continuing the show 150 miles to the west in Lafayette would fall short of that responsibility.

“This was a very hard decision,” said Spitzer, a professor of folklore and cultural conservation at the University of New Orleans. “We have houses. We have commitments to the universities. We were supposed to move into a new studio, four days after the hurricane had hit. Our whole studio was in boxes.” That made moving easier, but staying was a different challenge.

“We had a good time here and I seriously thought about continuing here for a while,” Spitzer says. “But we just had to come to a decision at the end of the year.”

Distributed by Public Radio International, Spitzer’s two-hour, weekly music program reaches a half million listeners on more than 200 stations from coast to coast. Besides broadcasting the diverse sounds of New Orleans, along with interviews with its musicians, “American Routes” also showcases a broad mix that includes Cajun music and zydeco, soul and gospel, Tejano and Latin, bluegrass and country and more.

Spitzer is no stranger to the Lafayette area. Since the 1970s, he has done extensive research and field recordings on Cajun and Creole musicians. Spitzer returns to a newly renovated studio facility at Basin Street Station in New Orleans. He plans to champion the importance of culture in rebuilding the city.

“I think the culture and the arts are the most important key to getting the city back,” he says. “I know they say infrastructure, but if you want infrastructure, move to Iowa, because you never had great infrastructure in New Orleans as it was. The power was always going out and the schools were terrible. What would bring people back is if New Orleans had some cultural continuity to its music, to its food, to its architecture and its neighborhood. I always argue if you¹re really going to do something, attract musicians. Give them deals. Get them into neighborhoods.

“I really think culture is the most powerful thing New Orleans has got to rebuild itself with. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to fix the schools, improve the environmental situation and discard some of the stupidity of class and race that separates us. New Orleans has built a cultural font that is a key to those transcendences. As bad as it all looks, it also, in a funny way, is what’s good about the place.”

Contact Herman Fuselier at [email protected].