If you’re a Lost Bayou Ramblers fan, you’ve certainly seen fiddler-singer Louis Michot on stage at times wearing a zippered jump suit—a Cajun onesie, as some came to call it. If you saw the band last January at New Orleans’ Orpheum Theatre, you certainly noticed a different sartorial approach, as he and his bandmates Andre Michot, Eric Heigle, Jonny Campos, Bryan Webre and Kirkland Middleton donned full formal wear. The music was dressed up too, as the band teamed with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
It proved a perfect, natural fit, as is clearly heard on this album drawn from that concert. The band is never hemmed in by the orchestra (no more tailoring puns, promise!), nor does the LPO ever seem to be dressing down (sorry) to sound “rustic” or resort to the faux-Copland Americana-isms that plague countless movie scores.
Fiddle and violins? Electric bass and double bass? Accordion and woodwinds? Guitar and brass? Drum kit and timpani? Triangle and … triangle? Cats and dogs living together! You bet. When they sync up, it’s gorgeous. When they clash, with purpose, it’s electric.
Any doubts are dispelled from the start with “The Bathtub,” one of four pieces that come from the Dan Romer and Benh Zeitlin score from their fantastical 2012 movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, which also featured the Ramblers. The opening strains of tinkling celeste joined by bassoon and flute evoke fireflies rising from Acadian’s prairies to join a chorus of frogs and swallows. A drum beat heralds the strings, and soon the Ramblers enter with an interpretation of the Balfa Brothers’ “Valse de Balfa.” The band and orchestra trade off taking the lead, the former with the raw Cajun tune, the latter spinning fantasias on the theme, the two streams sometimes blending delightfully.
Other pieces, some from arrangements done for a similar concert the Ramblers did in 2019 with the Acadiana Symphony Orchestra, some new for this event with gorgeous orchestrations by LPO conductor and musical director Carlos Miguel Prieto, explore a wide range of combinations. “Granny Smith” is a full-on fais do-do, with the “classical” ensemble bringing extra power, color and fire to the already powerful, colorful, and fiery fiddle, accordion, drums and electronically distorted electric guitar of the band. While it never reaches the gravity-breaking chaos the Ramblers can mount on their own live—guitarist Campos uses his various electronic effects sparingly and with purpose, complementing rather than competing with the orchestra—it comes thrillingly close.
From there the set ranges from the nearly all-orchestral “Once There Was a Hushpuppy” (one of the Beasts pieces) to the wetlands-in-peril medley of Ramblers originals “Aloha Golden Meadow” and “La Marée Noir” (“The Black Tide”), the former addressing erosion (the inland town, Louis notes in his introduction, “might be beachfront property one day”), the latter inspired by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. As the balance and dynamics shift, delightful surprises abound in the combinations of sounds.
And at the close, the Ramblers take near-full control with a rowdy encore of the Cajun classic “Bosco Stomp”—and stomp it does, as does the audibly excited audience. The LPO players? They were being fitted for jumpsuits.
