Down Home With Buckwheat Zydeco
A new live album is only one part of Buckwheat Zydeco’s multi-faceted career.
By Arsenio Orteza
WHO: Buckwheat Zydeco
WHEN: 5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 28
WHERE: Sprint PCS/ LG Stage
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With a new record label, a new live album and a tribute to Clifton Chenier in the works, Buckwheat Zydeco is keeping himself more than busy.
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Of all the mementos in the Carencro office of Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural Jr., none testify to his success as the leader and personification of Buckwheat Zydeco more eloquently than the wall he’s covered with photos of him and the famous people he’s met and performed with: Eric Clapton, Fats Domino, Albert Collins, Ed Bradley — “The 60-minute man,” laughs Dural — and Stevie Wonder.
On this afternoon in late March, however, one photo in particular grabs Dural’s attention. “You know who that is?” he asks, pointing at a photo of him and a dapperly attired gentleman. “That’s Roger Troutman.”
Troutman — a.k.a. Roger — was the pioneering funk musician-composer-producer best known for his hits with the group Zapp and for making the vocoder an integral part of contemporary black music. He was shot to death by his brother and former band member Larry Troutman on April 25, 1999, not long after the photo of him and Dural was taken. “By his brother,” says Dural. “Can you believe that?”
The Troutman affair has special meaning for Dural, who later this evening will listen for the first time to what he hopes will be the next release on his own Tomorrow Recordings label, an as-yet-untitled solo album by Sean Ardoin, Chris Ardoin’s former Double Clutchin’ drummer, creative foil and older brother.
“Sean’s a good musician,” says Dural, “and Chris is real good, too. They’re good together or by themselves.” Dural admits, however, that the splitting of the brothers as a creative and performing duo is a shame, the zydeco equivalent of such notoriously counterproductive rock ’n’ roll sibling rivalries as Phil and Don Everly’s and Ray and Dave Davies’. “It’s so nice,” he adds wistfully, “when you can work together.”
At 53, Dural knows a lot about working together — so much, in fact, that if universities gave credit for coalition building and teamwork, he’d probably have a Ph.D. Ask him, for instance, to explain his rapid rise to the top of the post-Clifton Chenier zydeco heap, and he’ll cite the time in the mid-80s when he convinced a New York-based author named Ted Fox to put his writing aside and to take up managing Buckwheat Zydeco fulltime. He says he’s kept Tomorrow Recordings thriving partly by the interrelated contributions of his label’s various publicists (only one of which lives in Louisiana). True, nothing gets done without his approval, but he has surrounded himself with a group of people who understands that Tomorrow represents a roots-conscious, artist-friendly alternative to the major labels and that its ultimate success will be determined by the degree to which it stays true to its ideals.
“Island Records was great,” says Dural of the label for whom he recorded intermittently between 1987 and 1994. “All those companies were great, but those were giants, man. I was like a needle in a haystack.” And the worst consequence of being a needle, Dural discovered, was that his albums were often invisible in cities where his live act was doing some serious throwing down.
“You’ve got 20 other artists with income galore coming in already, and then you’ve got to stop and worry about me that ain’t started with the income yet? … That’s
no good for me, because my music’s too important for me to settle for that,” he says. “I’d prefer to be heard and not make a
dime than not being heard and still not
making nothing.”
To focus his own energies, Dural has kept Tomorrow’s commitments to a minimum. To date, the only non-Buckwheat Zydeco album has been Lil’ Brian and the Zydeco Travelers’ extremely well-received Funky Nation. But Dural intends to unearth more music — he has a drawer full of demo tapes from up-and-comers hoping to catch his ear — and not just zydeco, either. “I’m ready
to work with people that can invent, that have talent, talent that’s not heard yet and that don’t know how far that talent can go,” he says.
“When we started this company,” Dural continues, “I had a meeting for southwest Louisiana musicians, and I said, ‘This is what’s getting ready to happen. This is the invite. If you have anything to offer, give me a ring here in Louisiana or call Ted Fox in New York, and we’ll see if there’s something appropriate to work with.’ Everything started coming in.”
Dural clearly relishes the new hats his Tomorrow duties require him to wear. But, even though those duties haven’t cut into his touring schedule (he still averages more than 200 shows a year), some have begun to wonder whether they’ve cut into his songwriting. None of his past four releases — The Buckwheat Zydeco Story: A 20-Year Party (Tomorrow). Ultimate Collection (Hip-O), the reissue Trouble, and the brand-new Down Home Live! — focused on original material.
Dural, on the other hand, who has often spoken of his songs as coming to him instead of coming from him, considers his present fallow period just one more fringe benefit of being his own boss. There is no pressure to meet deadlines or deliver product, and as a result he’s free to concentrate on projects like “All the King’s Men,” the Clifton Chenier tribute that will take place under Dural’s direction on April 28 at Festival International in Lafayette, Dural’s hometown. The 75-minute set will unite such former Clifton Chenier band members as Dural, John Hart and Robert Alexander onstage for the first time in years.
But as excited as Dural is about the reunion angle of the set, he’s also acutely aware of the “King’s Men” who’ll be conspicuous by their absence: Cleveland Chenier (“He’s deceased, too”), Joseph Morris (“Joe’s in a home”), and, of course, the King himself. “I wish he was here to see these good things happening, you know? He’s no different than the football players that came out a long time ago and opened the gates for football players today who make $17 million a year.”
A current zydeco payday is still a far cry from an NFL salary, but Dural’s band members are motivated by the love of music, not money. “They take the music very seriously,” Dural explains. “You’ve got to understand, that’s what these cats do all their lives.”
Anyone who doesn’t understand should check out Down Home Live!, a 72-minute document of Buckwheat Zydeco’s performance last Thanksgiving at El Sid O’s, the Lafayette zydeco and blues club run by Nathan Williams’ brother Sid. Although a glance at the songlist might make fans consider whether they really need another version of “What You Gonna Do?,” “Beast of Burden,” “Hard to Stop” or “Make a Change,” noting the song lengths,
which average eight minutes, should
erase any doubts. Seldom have extended workouts revealed so much about the depths of what’s allegedly a simple, blues-based, rural folk music.
“That’s how come I like to play everything,” says Dural. “People say, ‘Buckwheat, where are you going with this music?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, man. I just take it as far as I can, with no limits except keeping it home, keeping it to the roots, and keeping it to the culture.’” .
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