2016 Grammy Nominee for BEST REGIONAL ROOTS MUSIC ALBUM!
“This project started when my lifelong friend Sam Broussard spoke to me about wanting to turn some of the poems in SUITE DU LOUP, by my alter ego Jean Arceneaux, into songs. ‘Promised Land’ is about the great Creole storyteller Ben Guine who lived along Bayou Teche. The lyrics of ‘Le Loup’ are a reworking of three of my poems about a werewolf whose love of killing is reawakened when he becomes aware of his dual nature. ‘Une derniere chanson’ was first recorded by the great D.L. Menard. Sam & I decided to do our own take on it. The lyrics are based on an apocryphal story about the legendary Creole musician Amede Ardoin who had been committed to the Louisiana State Mental Institution in Pineville after receiving a brain stem injury as the result of a brutal beating. We asked Anna Laura Edminston to sing on ‘Coeur casse’ because it occured to us that the storyline would be even more tragic in the voice of a woman. ‘Cathedrals’ and ‘Trop de pas’ reflect the sense of political activism we both learned in the 1960s. ‘Personne pour me recevoir’ and ‘Appuye dessues la barre’ are inverse reflections of my happy marriage to my wife Caroline. And ‘Conte de faits’ is a twist on fairy tales; here there is no happy ending, only the perverted logic of an anti-hero.” ~Barry Jean Ancelet. Released August 2016, 10 tracks.