WYSO's Linzay Young and his show Louisiana Byways recently celebrated one year on the airwaves.
To mark this milestone, we revisited this previous WYSO Weekend interview with Jerry Kenney, during which Linzay Young discussed his background in Cajun music from southwest Louisiana, where his family has lived for generations.
He described the appeal of Cajun and zydeco music as "genuine music that appeals to that very deep part of everyone's soul."
Young showcases a range of Louisiana music on his radio show "Louisiana Byways," including Cajun, zydeco, jazz, and blues. He provides examples of Cajun and zydeco songs, highlighting the rhythmic and percussive elements that drive the music and the dance floor.
Young also shared in the interview how he started playing the fiddle at a young age, learning from local musicians and incorporating the instrument into his own musical journey.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Linzay Young: I do come from a background of Cajun music in southwest Louisiana. I grew up descended from French Canadians and my family settled in Louisiana before the Declaration of Independence was signed.
"The folk music in Louisiana always had a very, very special connection with me. And I think it connects people across the world, from my experience."
So we've been there for a long time and I grew up playing Cajun music around the age of 12, played with a lot of old timers growing up, and then in my 20s started a band called the Red Stick Ramblers with a childhood friend of mine, Joel Savoy, whose the son of Marc Savoy of Cajun music legend, and we spent our toes traveling around the world playing Cajun music, western swing, old jazz, just original tunes, things like that, and you know, just fell in love with music of all kinds, made a lot of friends all over the world and now doing the family thing, but still trying to keep the music alive.
Jerry Kenney: So sounds like it's in your blood. So for people maybe not familiar with it, what's the appeal?
Young: I think the appeal is, it's just genuine music that appeals to that very deep part of everyone's soul that that music touches. Right? You know, people talk about folk music and, you know, Louisiana and it's got folk music in the form of Cajun music and Creole, zydeco. There's also jazz music, which some people can think of as hoity toity or very complex. But Louis Armstrong said it best when he said all music is folk music. So music, it touches people in different ways. But we're going to run the gamut. We're going to start in my home area of southwest Louisiana and touch on some Cajun zydeco. But we're going to branch out and hear Leadbelly up in Shreveport. We're going to hear Lonnie Johnson in New Orleans. And New Orleans is a world in and of itself. But there's, so much Louisiana has to offer in terms of music and culture as well. So we'll talk about food. We'll have some live music now and then we're going to have a good time.
Kenney: What's one or two of your favorite tracks that you might like to preview for listeners?
Young: I think we're going to probably hear something called LA Zydeco, some possibly by Clifton Scheiner. So it’s kind of a catch, it's kind of a chestnut where I come from. But I think it's a poignant tune to choose because, that's where the term zydeco comes from. It's also just a rock and rhythm and blues tune sung in French.
You know, one of the cool things about that style of zydeco music is that, what we call the flat trois or the washboard, which just adds so much great percussion that just really drives the song along and gives it a lot of energy and traditionally also has really a lot of fun to watch zydeco bands because the freshwater player, the rubber player is just one of the most animated people on stage, you know, be dancing around and just really pumping up the crowd. Kind of like a hype man. So a lot of fun there. And Clifton is a seminal, seminal zydeco musician from Louisiana. We'll hear a lot from him in this show, along with a lot of other great zydeco musicians.
Kenney: So let me jump in. Just in that last minute, you gave us a lot of information. And so you're going to be threading a lot of needles in this show to talk about the influence of genres like Zydeco and how they all blend together to become this Louisiana Byways sound?
Young: Yeah, absolutely. I was really, really interested in anthropology, and I was actually studying ethnomusicology when I decided to stop going to college to start touring and do what I jokingly called fieldwork all that time. But, I always had a love for the folk connection of roots music in general, growing up in southwest Louisiana and just the feeling that I got playing that music with those people was just, it's not what I heard on the radio. It wasn't the pop music of the day, you know? And while I heard that stuff and was influenced by that stuff, the folk music in Louisiana always had a very, very special connection with me. And I think it connects people across the world from my experience. And so, yeah, I really look forward to digging into all aspects of it because it's not just the food, you know, it's all those facets of culture, music, food, traditions, rituals, you know, all those things tie together to just create one one beautiful jewel.
Kenney: So it should be great. Do you have another example of the music that you might play?
Young: Sure thing. Yeah. So I will stay close to home here. Nathan Abshire, who was a really cool old Cajun accordion player, real gritty guy, real rough guy, and the little track is called Sur Le Courtableu - Let's go to Bayou Courtableau. And he's basically talking about going camping with his buddies and how they're going to they're going to gather up a bunch of stuff to cook and eat, you know, and no doubt do a little bit of drinking on the side too. But talking about boiling up some two to lose some sand crabs, some alligators, some crawfish, some wah-wah, which are bullfrogs, you know, So just, you know, talking about talking about food mostly, But it's a really driving tune led by Nathan Abshire’s accordion.
[He’s] Speaking a lot of Cajun French that even people who speak proper French might not be able to understand because of the dialect, but, you know, like I said before, he's talking about gathering up sand crabs, crawfish, bullfrogs, catfish, alligators, anything they can catch and cook to make up some good Cajun food. So a couple of the things that I find really cool about that track, it's very rough. You know, it's it's very rhythmic. You can hear that kick drum in the background. That's about the only part of the drum kit that you can hear, and we call that down south. We call that the rice pump because it's just this constant pumping and it sounds like a machine, you know, and it's and that's what drives the dance floor, right? There's also some steel guitar and there are some really cool straight steel guitar, which is something that you find a lot in that era of '50s and '60s Cajun music, obvious, you know, evidence of crossover from country music. Cajun music was very, very open to pulling from different types of popular music of the era, too, to fit what the dancers wanted to hear, you know? So you had country music, crossover pop country from like Merle Haggard. Before that you had Western swing from, you know, the Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys type folks. And then even before that you had stuff coming from French Canada, France, Ireland, set dances driven by twin fiddles and things like that. So I was always primarily a dance music.
Kenney: You're going to have a lot to work with on your show, and Linzay, you also started playing this music at a young age, correct?
Young: Correct. Yeah. So I was simultaneously in a garage rock band, but also playing Cajun music on the fiddle. So, you know how many people out there were doing that, but I know at least a couple, me included.
Kenney: Well, I'm really glad that you brought a fiddle. It's right in front of us. Would you give us a few minutes?
Young: Yeah, absolutely. I bought the fiddle because I fully intend to be able to incorporate some live music into this because, again, I think music is such a living and breathing thing, listening to it on records is great, but there's still great music being created today. And you know, I think that just incorporating, having folks in the place of music live every now and then is, is something I want to incorporate into the show. And also this particular tune that I chose to play today I think is a great example of the cross-pollination between music way down south and, you know, up here in parts of Appalachia. So the fiddler that I learned this tune from, his name is [Wallace] Cheese Read. He called it The Empty Bottle Stomp, but he was in the military, and I believe he learned the tune from an Appalachian fiddler, and I don't actually know the name of the tune. I've heard it called by some other names, but it's definitely its own thing at this point. So I'm going to play a little bit of that for you just to kind of show you that cross-pollination between Louisiana and Appalachia.
I started when I was about 12 or 13. My grandfather gave me a fiddle and I just I was just fascinated by it. So I just picked it up and started kind of sitting around with old timers on their couch and learning by ear. And I just never stopped.
